Posts Tagged ‘dictatorship’
reading matters 3

Will he go? Trump and the looming election meltdown, by Lawrence Douglas, Professor of law, jurisprudence and social thought, Amherst College
Content hints
- failure of impeachment, high crimes and misdemenours, rigged voting, media scum, sleepy Joe, election hoax, treason, fraud, shades of 2016, tweetstorms, dictator worship, Putin, Erdoğan, Orbán, the USA’s quaint constitution, pathological lying, Presidential authority to ban media, Trump as weak authoritarian, foreign interference, catastrophic scenarios 1,2,3, the unforeseeable, the electoral college and faithless electors, uniquely awful system, hacked elections, profoundly antidemocratic outcomes, gerrymandering, swing states, 12th amendment, enemies of the people, problems of peaceful succession, civil war, hang on, bumpy ride.
Laws are more important than constitutions, get it?

Watching proceedings from afar against Trump and his blundering bovver boys, I become more agitated than I probably need to, but I quite often find my frustration directed more at the prosecutors than at Trump’s mostly contemptible allies. For example, MSNBC commentators and many of their guests, not to mention Nancy Pelosi, are still claiming that the crime here is bribery, when it’s clearly extortion, which is generally considered a more serious crime.
So what’s the difference? It should be obvious. A bribe generally involves appealing to a person’s venality. It’s usually presented in positive terms, as in ‘I’ll make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice if you just do this dirty job for me’. Extortion however is presented in more menacingly negative terms – ‘if you don’t do this dirty job for me, you’ll really really regret it’. Now, it’s notable that the infamous phone call from Trump was relatively polite, which is why he’s trying to characterise it as ‘perfect’. After all, by his boorishly bullying standards, it probably was. The near-polite asking of a favour, then, might be characterised as a bribe, but what was happening behind the scenes, directed by Trump, was definitely extortionate. That’s why focussing on the phone call as the main incident is definitely a mistake, and that’s why Giuliani, Mulvaney and Trump himself need to testify, and should of course be made to, and jailed immediately if they refuse, as should happen in any nation worthy of respect.
But this would only happen if the matter was being dealt with in court – where of course it should be dealt with.
Americans are profoundly worshipful of their constitution and their founding fathers. Indeed they seem to have been fine, upstanding, as well as colourful fellows. It’s my view, though, that given current circumstances, they’d have been the first to realise that the constitutional provisions for dealing with a law-breaking, rogue President were wholly inadequate. This isn’t surprising – experience is the best teacher in these matters, and the US experience has been mostly of Presidents priding themselves on being ‘gentlemen’. This is the only silver lining of this presidency, that it has exposed manifold inadequacies of the constitutional presidency system.
Constitutions are guides to how governments are to be constituted. I don’t think the framers of this or any other constitution ever imagined that later followers would expect that it constituted the entire law under which the head of state operated. That, to me, is virtually proven by the vague and minimalist treatment of the legal liabilities of the President in the US Constitution. Surely the founding fathers took it for granted that the President would be subject to all the laws of the land that any other citizen would be subject to. How could it be otherwise for someone in leadership, someone expected to set an example? Even minor infractions would be seen as ‘the thin end of the wedge’, and generally this is the case under the Westminster system.
The worst argument that could possibly be given for the kind of immunity granted to the US President is that he’s too powerful to be charged with a crime. You might call this the Putin argument (or the Stalin, Ghengis Khan or Ramses II argument, or name your favourite dictator). The argument hasn’t improved over the last 3000 years.
The boy in the white palace 4: extortion for dummies
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted…
Adam Smith

Jacinta: I’ve been bemused by the sloppy way, IMHO, that the boy king’s adversaries – the Great Patriots – are handling their strategy for the defence of the realm. Some are still using the Queer and Daft (Q&D) term quid pro quo, as if that’s going to be an effective rallying cry for the country’s GPs. In fact it’s so feeble that the boy’s courtiers and epigones are happy to use it themselves, saying quid pro quos are great things, very handy for the MAGA cause….
Canto: Yes but I do notice that some of the more quick-witted GPs are almost at the point of considering, in a consistent way, a more obviously criminal term for the lad’s crimes. Whoduv thunk it? Unfortunately they’re not quite sure which crime to bruit about.
Jacinta: And Q&D terminology is still de rigueur for many, especially the courtiers and epigones. The two more serious, and accurate, terms for the crimes being particularly focussed on – re impeachment….
Canto: And impeachment’s a process we’re going to have to deconstruct – to use a shitty po-mo term most appropriate for the occasion – in another post.
Jacinta: Indeed – the two crimes being whispered way too softly by the GPs are bribery and extortion, with bribery being, unfortunately, the most favoured. But the Great Patriots are wrong.
Canto: That’s bad.
Jacinta: I think the only reason they prefer bribery is because, apparently, it’s in the SACUSA…
Canto: Scusi?
Jacinta: What? Oh yes, dummy, the Sublimely Awesome Constitution of the USA. Get out from under your rock, mate. It’s apparently mentioned in the SACUSA as one of the high Crimes and Mis Demenours you’re not allowed to consort with. We’ll look into that later. But I think extortion’s the thing, to set before the wee king, because, well, it’s much more nasty-sounding. I also think it’s more accurate. Off the top of my head, it’s about demanding money – or a thing of value – with menaces. And the boy king doesn’t need money – he’s been rolling in it since he was in his nappies, according to the New York Times. He’s far more in need of something to trounce his enemies, so that he can stay in the White Palace until he’s all growed up – and that’s a long long time.
Canto: Is he still in his nappies d’you think? I’ve heard rumours…
Jacinta: Well, I don’t think I’d have the stomach for that piece of investigative journalism, but it would certainly raise a stink if that were true. But here’s the thing. Ukraine has a new leader, with an overwhelming mandate to beat off Madame Putain and fight internal corruption. It’s a vastly important, and simply vast, country lying between La Putain and his or her designs on Europe, and it desperately needs an alliance with the USA, Europe and any other region it can ally itself with, but their President, when he came to office, hadn’t yet cottoned on to the fact that the USA is an ex-democracy and that its wee king had googly eyes for La Putain. ..
Canto: So he was ripe for extortion, I get it. The boy loves La Putain and wants to be like him, master of all he surveys, so he wants to have the Ukraine slay his rival, so he menaces them with a range of shite – saddling the country with being behind interference in his ascension to the throne in 2016, refusing to have an alliance with it, and with-holding funds and weapons, in the hope that La Putain will invade, slay the putative wrong-doers and share the spoils with the wee laddie.
Jacinta: Yeah, something like that. But let’s just get back to demanding a thing of value with menaces. I think it’s pretty straightforward.
Canto: Yes, others use the term coercion, but it’s the same thing, and it definitely applies in this case. The boy’s courtiers even drafted exactly what they demanded the Ukrainian Prez had to publicly say about the poor wee Biden boy and his nasty papa.
Jacinta: It’s time to look more closely at what the SACUSA has to say on the matter. Impeachment gets a mention very early on (Article 1, Section 2), but the nub of the matter is expressed, albeit briefly, in Article 2, Section 4, entitled ‘Disqualification’:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
So only two actual crimes are specified, which is a wee bit disappointing for dealing with the Most Powerful King in the Multiverse – but I don’t want to get into the impeachment disaster here, we’ll save that for another post. For now I’ll just say that ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanours’ however vague, was surely meant to cover more than nothing, and extortion sounds pretty lofty as crimes go. So let’s look more closely at extortion.
Canto: I have one dictionary definition here: ‘the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats’. Sounds like just the Right Thing.
Jacinta: Yes, and what the boy-king wanted to obtain was far more valuable to him than all the gold in Ukraine….
Canto: Encyclopedia Brittanica gives the definition as ‘the unlawful exaction of money or property through intimidation’, but in an article about white-collar crime it describes extortion as ‘a threat made to obtain a benefit from either a private individual or a public official’, and the threat here made by the boy and his courtiers, was ‘if you don’t invent something to besmirch the reputation of my domestic enemy, or announce that he has a reputation as a criminal, you will have no alliance with our mighty kingdom, no aid or support in defeating your enemy, La Putain (my own true love), and your people will die in great numbers, crushed by his or her mighty fist’.
Jacinta: Hmmm. A more clear-cut and extremely serious case of extortion could hardly be found. A girl-boy lawyer would win the case with a few hours’ training, except that the king is apparently above all law. He’s only subject to the law’s feeble sibling, impeachment.
Canto: I note that one of the Royal lad’s acolytes, one Nikki Hayley, has sought to churlishly dismiss the affair by pointing out that Ukraine finally received the aid, so no problem. However, the above definition points out that the threat is the crime, not the success or otherwise of the threat.
Canto: It also should hardly need pointing out that Ukraine finally received the promised aid because the scheme against the country was being leaked out – the lad’s courtiers had learned about the whistleblower complaint – not because there was a change of heart. In fact it’s widely believed that mirabile dictu, the withered boy has never managed to develop a heart, the poor sod.
Jacinta: That’s ridiculous, a piece of fantasy emanating from the Deep Kingdom….
Canto: We should operate on the boy to find out – we need real, pulsating evidence. I’m even prepared to do it under anaesthetic. I’d like him to do us a favour though…
learning about Trump
Getting rid of the dictator is only a first step in establishing a free society. The dictatorship must also be disassembled.
George Ayittey
More about how I became drawn in to the Trump horrorshow
Trump and the USA’s failure, part 2: effective law and distributed power
I have established the republic. But today it is not clear whether the form of government is a republic, a dictatorship, or personal rule.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Australia has a Constitution, and so does Britain, but we don’t talk about them much – they don’t loom so large over the political system. The Westminster system doesn’t have an impeachment process, for the obvious reason that it is surplus to requirements. Due to its being a political process, impeachment is an unmitigated disaster.
So what happens, under the Westminster system, if a Prime Minister ‘goes rogue’ and either breaks the law or conducts herself in a manner contrary to the nation’s interest?
Well we need to step back a little to answer this question, because, under the US system, an elected President can be a rogue from the start. Trump is a clear case in point. Trump was, of course, far from being regarded as kosher by the Republican powers-that-be when he first suggested himself as a Presidential candidate, so he took his Barnum & Bailey campaign directly to the public, and in doing so highlighted the central problem of democracy, recognised two and a half thousand years ago, by Plato and Aristotle, who were unabashed anti-democratic elitists. The problem being, of course, demagoguery or populism – the notion that the public can be easily swayed by a candidate who promises everything and delivers nothing. The fact that this remains the most central problem of democracy surely says something about humanity in general – something that we may not be able to fix, but which we need to be on our guard against. Democracy is in fact a seriously flawed system – but far better than any other political system we’ve devised to regulate our seriously flawed human nature.
Under the Westminster system it’s far more difficult (though perhaps not impossible) for a ‘rogue from the beginning’ to reach the top of the political tree, because Prime Ministers aren’t directly elected. In fact the Westminster system has no correlate to the US presidential system, its general elections being much more correlated to the US mid-terms. This means, in effect, that under the Westminster system there is one set of general elections to two under the US system. Having two sets of general elections every four years seems a little over-indulgent. It means that you’re always preparing for or recovering from some election or other, and I’m not convinced that this is a good thing for your political health or your economy. And if you were ever to consider dispensing with one of those two sets of elections, clearly the Presidential elections should be the one to go.
Of course, this is sacrilege. Americans are obsessed with their Presidents – they even remember them as numbers – it’s bizarre. But it’s part-and-parcel, of course, with US individualism. It’s not surprising that the superhero is largely a US phenomenon. Many of your worst movies feature a Rambo or Indiana Jones-like character who single-handedly wins out over the baddies, often against a background of official incompetence or corruption. Think again of Trump’s OTT drain-the-swamp campaign rhetoric. And speaking of OTT, let’s not forget the carnivalesque razzamatazz of US Presidential elections, and the oodles of money that candidates are expected to raise, for no reasonable reason as far as I can see.
So, bearing all this in mind, let’s compare the situation and the job description of a Westminster-style Prime Minister with a US President.
Generally the Prime Minister is already an elected member of a party (either of the left or the right) and is chosen by parliamentary members of that party to be leader – much like a captain of a soccer team is already a player in the team and has proven herself to be experienced and knowledgable about playing the game and getting results. She has, in other words, earned the respect of her fellows. The Prime Minister works alongside her fellows, and under the scrutiny of her opponents, in the parliament. The President, on the other hand, is completely separate from parliament and surrounded by his own hand-picked team of very powerful courtiers, who need not have had any previous political experience.
The Prime Minister is able to choose her own cabinet, but only, of course, from elected members of parliament. All cabinet ministers, and indeed all MPs, are under continual scrutiny from other members of the House or the Senate. If the Prime Minister herself (or any other minister) is thought to be ‘going rogue’ or underperforming, she can be subjected to a no-confidence or censure motion in the House – requiring a simple majority. These have sometimes been successful, resulting in a change of Prime Minister between federal elections. While traumatic, such changes of leadership have nowhere near the impact that a change of President would have, since under the Westminster system the power is far more distributed, the team is far more important than its captain. The ‘great man’ Presidential system is such, however, that the only feasible way of dumping a President is by impeachment – an overly elaborate and highly political procedure that is almost designed to inflict trauma upon the populace.
There is, of course, no provision for impeachment in the Westminster system, and there has never been any need for such a process. A Prime Minister can, of course, be dumped for any number of reasons – most of which fall very far short of high crimes and misdemeanours. However, if a Prime Minister does go that far, she would be dealt with by law. There’s no suggestion under the Westminster system that a Prime Minister or any other minister or government official, would be immune from prosecution while in office. To me, the idea is totally absurd, for it seems far more reasonable that the precise opposite should be the case – that a country’s leader should be held to a higher legal standard than any other citizen. In other words, with great power comes greater legal responsibility, as a matter of course. Any political system that operates otherwise is simply rotten at its very core. It follows that the nation’s body of law, not the constitution, should govern the behaviour of those holding high office in government. For example, gaining a financial benefit from holding high office, other than the official salary and benefits that accrue to that office, should be illegal and cause for immediate dismissal in the most straightforward way. Contravening campaign finance laws should also be dealt with severely and immediately. If this causes a crisis in government, then clearly the system of government needs to be reformed, not the law. The constitution is at best a quasi-legal document, a laying out of the political system and the roles of its component parts. As an eighteenth century document, it can’t possibly be expected to cover the legal responsibilities of 21st century office-holders. That’s the vital role of a living, constantly adjusting body of law, to keep up with the legal responsibilities of a constantly modernising and complexifying political and business sector.
But let me return to the situation of Presidents, and candidates for the Presidency, since it’s unlikely that the US is going to give up on that institution.
You’ve learned the hard way that a rogue from the outset can bypass the traditional party system and win enough popular vote – with the help of a foreign nation – to become the leader of the most militarily and economically powerful nation on earth, despite having no political experience, no understanding of his nation’s history, no understanding of the geopolitical framework within which his nation operates, and no understanding of or interest in the global issues that all nations need to work together to solve. In other words, you’ve learned the hard way that anyone can indeed become your President, no matter how unsuited they are to the position. So how do you stop this from ever happening again?
Well if you insist on maintaining a system which ultimately pits one superhero against another, then you need I’m afraid, to admit to a serious but really rather obvious deficiency of democracy – the attraction of the demagogue (and I leave aside here the inherent problems of a state in which so many people can be hoodwinked). You need to vet all Presidential candidates with a set of questions and problems pertaining to both character and knowledge. Character questions wouldn’t be just of the type “What would you do if…” or ‘Do you think it is right to…’, questions that a sociopathic personality can always find the ‘successful’ answer to (though it’s doubtful that Trump could). They should be in the form of complex moral dilemmas that experimental psychologists have been adept at formulating over the years, requiring essay-type responses. The knowledge questions, by comparison, would be straightforward enough. Such tests should be assessed by professional diplomats and psychologists. This vetting, of course, cuts across the democratic process with a measure of ‘adults in the room’ intellectual, emotional and ethical elitism. Because of course you need a member of the intellectual and ethical elite to hold such a high office.
You might argue that Prime Ministers aren’t formally vetted, and that’s strictly true, but there’s at least an informal vetting system in that leaders have generally to climb from the ranks by impressing colleagues with their communication skills, their understanding of policy, their work ethic and so forth. It’s also the case that Prime Ministers have far less power than US Presidents – who have pardoning powers, special executive powers, power to shut down the government, veto powers, power to select unelected individuals to a range of high offices, power to appoint people to high judicial office and so forth. It’s hardly any wonder that characters like Trump are frustrated that they can’t take the next few steps towards total dictatorship. It’s interesting that I’ve recently heard a number of US pundits saying out loud ‘this isn’t a dictatorship’, as if they need to remind themselves of this fact!
Many will scoff at all this gratuitous advice. But you currently have a self-styled ‘very stable genius’ – a boorish, blustering, bullying, belly-aching buffoon in fact – in barricaded isolation in your White House and due to the multi-faceted failings of your politico-legal system, you can’t get rid of him as easily as you obviously should be able to, and I honestly feel that things will get much much worse before you do get rid of him. You can’t blame Trump for this – he has been exactly the same person for over 60 years. The fault lies with your system. If you don’t change it, you’ll never be able to regain the respect of the rest of the democratic world.
supporting Hong Kong 2: handover/return

Terms redolent of significance: in talking yesterday of ancient Egypt to my students, many of whom I tend to assume, after years of experience, are geographically challenged, I mentioned that it was in the north-east corner of Africa, just across the Red Sea and the Suez Canal from Israel. ‘Palestine’, one of my older Saudi students corrected, with a little grin.
I think also of the term ‘nakba’, which the Israeli government has been trying to erase from written records. It’s of course a very significant term for Palestinians everywhere. The Brits refer to 1997 re Hong Kong as the ‘handover’, which fails to refer to the extremely doubtful terms of its original acquisition. The Chinese refer to it as ‘the return’, which fails to refer to the massive value-adding, in human if not in environmental terms, that occurred under British control.
Hong Kong is now a ‘special administrative region’ of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and in relinquishing it, Britain brought its once-mighty empire to a whimpering end.
The twenty years or so before 1997 saw a lot of diplomatic manouevring, principally between the PRC’s main man Deng Xiaoping and Britain’s Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. At first, the negotiating teams were a long way apart. Deng was insistent that the territory should be handed over unconditionally, and that if necessary it would be taken by force, which, he argued, would be easy-peasy. Thatcher argued that a treaty was a treaty and that Britain always stood by its treaties, cited a ‘Convention for the extension of Hong Kong territory’, signed in 1890, and quibbled about the wording of the old treaties, but it was clear that the PRC had the upper hand. Even so, the economic transformation of the region, especially since the seventies, and the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, encouraged British officials to provide as many democratic safeguards against the Chinese oligarchy as possible, as 1997 drew near. Chris Patten, the last British governor, battled to increase the voting franchise in the early nineties, while the PRC fumed over lack of consultation. A watered-down package of reforms was accepted in 1994. It fell well short of full democracy. So when the big day came, on July 1 1997, the proposed ‘one country, two systems’ future was being much questioned and worreted over.
In the 22 years since, that date has been marked by demonstrations organised by Hong Kong’s Civil Human Rights Front, demanding universal suffrage. They started small, but in 2002-3, anti-PRC activists received a boost of sorts when a proposed law, Article 23, designed to suppress political activity and freedom of speech, especially criticism of the PRC, became a rallying issue. Article 23 was indefinitely shelved when half a million people came out in demonstrations against it in July 2003. Since that time the struggles between pro-democracy and pro-Beijing forces in Hong Kong have been increasingly overt. Since 1997, the PRC has been keen to have the territory controlled by regime puppets. The first was Tung Chee-hwa, a more or less unknown businessman given the title of Chief Executive of Hong Kong at handover. He faced extreme pressure to resign during the 2003 demonstrations, and finally stepped down in March 2005, under some pressure from Beijing for corporate mismanagement. He’s still influential in Hong Kong and recently blamed, at least in part, the introduction of liberal studies (during his administration) for the current unrest. Might be right there.
Tung’s replacement was Donald Tsang, who seems to have been a more able administrator, though his popularity gradually declined during his 7 years in office as he became involved in business scandals as well as mishandling, according to his own admission, a new Political Appointments System, which critics found lacking in transparency, among other things. Clearly with so much at stake, and with so much suspicion of Beijing interference, the Chief Executive role has been anything but an easy ride.
The third Chief Executive was Leung Chun-ying, surprisingly elected in 2012 – the electors being the 1200 or so members of the Election Committee, largely controlled by Beijing. He had a reputation as a reformer, within the extremely narrow confines acceptable to the PRC. During his incumbency social unrest culminated in the umbrella movement of late 2014. Like many similar protest movements over the past few years, this changed nothing in terms of democratisation for the region, even if it proclaimed to the world that Hong Kong was prepared to fight hard for its freedoms. Serious rioting also broke out in late 2016, in response to an attempted government crackdown on street hawkers. Again, Hong Kong residents and business people were showing their spirit for combatting government heavy-handedness. It’s also clear however, that the Beijing thugocracy knows nothing other than heavy-handed control of ‘its’ people. It’s a recipe for major confrontation.
In recent times Hong Kong has experienced serious housing problems and a growth in the proportion of people living below the poverty line. This and concerns about PRC interference have created growing levels of unrest. The manner in which the Hong Kong Chief Executive is elected has been a sore point, with protest leaders pointing out that it fails to satisfy ‘international standards in relation to universal suffrage’ – this is enshrined, for what it’s worth, in Article 45 of the Basic Law of Hong Kong, which requires ‘selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures’. Of course, this is as likely to be honoured by Beijing as is the UN-directed Palestinian ‘right of return’ by the Israeli government, and no reforms have occurred for the most recent election in 2017, which brought the current Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, to power. All of these CEs have been more or less pro-Beijing puppets.
The most recent unrest was, of course, sparked by a recent bill proposed by Lam, which would allow criminals, and political prisoners, to be extradited from Hong Kong to China. And we all know that political prisoners are to the Thugburo as an Englishman is to the Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum giant. The protests have been massive, causing the bill to be indefinitely shelved. Lam has since stated publicly that ‘the bill is dead’. Interestingly, though, the protest movement has continued…
This obviously inadequate summary of Hong Kong’s history has helped me in coming to a better understanding of current events, which the democratic world in particular is watching with fascination and foreboding. As I may have mentioned, I would’ve been in Kowloon next week but for a health issue (not my own) which caused us to cancel, so that adds to my interest in these tensions and their possible outcomes. In my next post I’ll try to get my head around more of the details of the current situation.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hong_Kong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_extradition_bill
The bandwagon of macho thuggery rolls on

Brazil has just elected a macho thug to lead its country down the descent to demagogic doom. So now, just off the top of my head, we have the USA, Russia, China, North Korea, Cambodia, the Philippines, Poland, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Belarus, Iran, Saudia Arabia, all full of shit leaders.
Tears of rage, tears of grief. Women, women, we need you to save us! Rise up, flush these scumbags down the toilet, and never never let a man run your country again! Never!