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APPENDIX, November 6, 2024:
(We normally find the Appendix at the end, but it fits better here. Call it a Prependix.)
Yesterday the US had our election for President etc., and as the world knows, "we" elected Donald Trump again. This came as a shock to most of the world, as well as to those Americans who hold to the view that we don't elect convicted criminals to the presidency. At least, we've never done it before.
To a degree, we know what to expect from Trump. His first act when taking office will be to order "his" Justice Department to drop the pending court cases against him, and of course he'll fire the prosecutor. Then he'll demonstratively sign an order withdrawing (again) the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, while proclaiming that problem phony and non-existent. He'll (equally demonstratively) undo a series of Biden orders that had undone Trump's earlier orders opening several nature reserves, including a vast wilderness area in Alaska, to oil drilling. In fact, Trump will have located all Biden orders that reversed earlier Trump orders; he'll reverse all of those to make his world just like he left it four years ago.
Trump has learned something about making a Cabinet. Last time he had folks who occasionally disagreed with him. There won't be any of that this time. They'll all be loyal hardliners. He'll want a military parade in DC, with tanks and missiles like Putin and Xi have, and this time he'll retire the general who objects. He'll then play his ace card: an order to round up all "undocumented" people (illegal aliens) in the country and deport them forthwith, and he will announce a restart on building the wall on the Mexican border. He'll announce the use of new electronic surveillance methods at the border, and may build massive primitive detention prisons to hold captive migrants for some months in great discomfort before shipping them back.
NATO and Ukraine are right to be nervous. Trump will "offer" Putin the Crimea and Donbas regions for peace (Trump has said he would end the war in a day), a deal that Ukraine's President Zelinskiy will immediately disown. Nothing will come of that, and Trump will blame Zelinskiy for the continuation of the war and will cut off all aid to Ukraine. NATO will hold crisis meetings, with the US threatening to withdraw. (Outcome uncertain.)
There will be four years of such crises. If Trump lives that long he'll outrank Biden as the oldest US president ever. If he doesn't, his VP and acolyte, Vance, is a true would-be storm trooper. That's something to look forward to.
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Current essay:
Donald Trump's treasonous betrayal of America
Where was is the public outrage?
Abstract:
We haven't words to characterize the undescribably low, gross behavior of Donald Trump during his last months in office following his 2020 election loss, and his betrayal of the United States, which he had taken an oath to defend. His re-emergence in American politics should have been unthinkable.
Almost four years have passed since Donald Trump nearly had to be carried out of the Oval Office after his failed attempt at a coup d'état, and the country has tried to settle into a sort of normalcy again. That, unfortunately, has not been possible, largely on account of the continued influence that the only treasonous president in our history continues to exercise over his co-conspirators and hangers-on, many of them elected to Congress by those who prefer autocracy to democracy. And now, unbelievably, we are on the threshold of a new election where the Republican Party has promoted the failed Trump as their candidate for the US presidency again.
Before turning to Trump's final months of infamy, let's recall some highlights of Trump's presidency. With a background as a hotel- and casino-owner, TV game show host, and "Miss Universe" beauty pageant owner, among other ventures, Trump had a decidedly nonstandard resumé for a president of the United States. One thing that turned out to be a drawback to successful performance as US president was his near-total lack of knowledge of which authorities and responsibilities the president, the Congress, the courts and the administration have, what they are supposed to be doing, and how they are expected to work together. Similarly, the countries of the world and their leaders were largely unknown to him, as were international organizations and agreements, or foreign policy along with the nature of diplomacy. He knew virtually nothing about military matters, and even less of environmental issues. He was, in short, the least prepared and the worst informed person ever to be inaugurated as US president, and reserves for all time his place at the bottom of the "Best US Presidents" list, relieving Mssrs Pierce and/or Buchanan of that dishonor. The most recent poll of some hundreds of presidential historians ranked Trump as no. 45 of the 45 presidents we have had: Dead last by a large margin. He is by their professional assessment the worst president in our history.
He did know some things, though. He knew that the government's environmental regulations had at times been bothersome for the bottom line of his business ventures, and he was out to loosen these. Allowing more pollution to increase profits became his core mission. Trump proceeded to reverse as many as he could of federal anti-pollution measures. He proudly announced his achievement of getting more carcinogens and poisons released to the nation's air, waters, and soil. Oddly, this campaigner for states' rights managed to forbid California's right to set its own strict air pollution standard. The current administration has had to spend considerable resources to undo most of Trump's environmental damage.
The United States has faced four existential crises in its history – oddly at roughly eight decade intervals. The first was our revolution in 1776. George Washington stepped up and led the nation to independence. The second was the threat of a break-up of the nation through secession in 1860. Again we found a great leader in Abraham Lincoln to lead us through the crisis. The third was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought us into World War II in 1941. We were again fortunate then to have a leader of Franklin Roosevelt's caliber. We think of these three giants as our greatest presidents. And our fourth great crisis was upon us in 2016. It is by far the greatest crisis of the four, as it threatens not only our national existence, but the continued existence of the human species. The crisis is of course the fact of the heating of the Earth through our intemperate discharge of "greenhouse gases" which has brought Earth's natural climate out of balance. The crisis was and remains world-wide, immediate, and catastrophic.
Our previous presidents had acted on the climate crisis by joining international compacts intended to combat the problem, and by domestic policies intended to reduce our use of coal and oil, though their actions had been inadequate and by 2016 our situation was critical. An international effort based on US leadership was needed. And in this existential crisis, the American electorate chose Donald Trump to see us through. But instead of tackling the problem, Trump, who did not understand the crisis, withdrew the US from the international effort, purged the government's web pages of any reference to climate or global warming, fired the scientists working to find solutions to the crisis, cut subsidies for sustainable energy development, and expanded the drilling and mining for fossil fuels – all actions that were the opposite of what was needed. While both the US science community and the Department of Defense had identified "climate change" as our primary national security threat, Trump literally laughed off the problem. Against all evidence, against the recommendations of US defense and science officials, he denied the existence of any security threat, which was a clear violation of his presidential oath to "protect and defend" the country and was an act of treachery, evidently the first by a US president. (I suppose one could argue that since the oath only requires the president to act "to the best of my ability", and given that Trump had minimal ability, he is not in violation of his oath; he was instead simply incapable.)
The result of Trump's turning his ignorance into national policy is the pattern of continued warming, including especially of the waters of the Caribbean, where we now reap the hurricanes that are Trump's legacy. Yes, we've had hurricanes before, but their greater intensity is a result of the incremental warming that could have been avoided. His re-election to the presidency would mean that we will again ignore our greatest hazard. In my view this was and will remain an impeachable offense. (As I write I see the news that Trump is suggesting to his gullible flock that the Democrats are somehow steering hurricanes over Republican states to prevent them from voting! This may rate as the stupidest thing he has ever said – which is really saying something, and its effect has already been death threats by his followers toward meteorologists! Nothing has changed – the man is unhinged.)
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How did we deal with the shock of the events between election day, November 3, 2020, and the inauguration of Mr. Biden on January 20, 2021? Even though Trump had announced, as early as July 2020 and repeatedly throughout the fall, that he might not accept the result of the election were he to lose, hardly any Americans took that seriously. His failure to call Mr. Biden and concede following the election was not in itself a shock: it was in line with the routine display of bad grace that we had come to expect of Trump. It was a couple of days later, when he still hadn't conceded (hell, four years later he still hasn't conceded) that we learned of The Phone Call: on election day while checking of the vote count was still going on, Trump somehow got through on the phone to Georgia's top election official and harangued him for an hour to "find" more votes for himself, just the 11,000 votes to make up the shortfall that he lagged behind Mr. Biden, who appeared to have won the Georgia election. The Georgia official naturally refused to bend to Trump's threats, and Trump quickly called for his dismissal.
Our media, as well as the Democratic Party, have in our current election been strangely quiet about the national trauma and embarrassment of Trump's last few months in office, during which he effectively ceased doing the job of president and took on the air of a whining, whimpering child, stuck in an interminable hissy fit. But while a child can be forgiven for such behavior – they will hopefully grow out of it – Donald Trump is not a child; he will not grow out of it, and his unprecedented and outrageous, even treasonous behavior must not be either forgotten or forgiven.
While the travesty of the last election's transitional period was ongoing, Trump was daily accusing our election workers and officials of fraud. Note that his accusation was general; he has apparently not accused any named person of fraud. That could land him in court accused of slander and having to prove his allegation – something he can't do since it's a lie. The mainstream media were seemingly in shock and denial about the significance of Trump's antics. Perhaps trapped and to a degree paralyzed by their own sense of fair play, and unwilling to sensationalize the ongoing events, perhaps reluctant to broadcast our national shame around the world, the daily lead stories up until January 6 dealt with vote recounts, court appointments, legal challenges and rulings, and pronouncements by diverse politicos, while the outgoing president was clearly attempting a coup d'état. Yes, the newspapers covered Trump's words, but where was the outrage, where were the fat headlines? Books have now appeared that relate in some detail this scandalous episode, but in the meantime let's take some moments to remember and reflect on those horrible final months of the Trump presidency.
There was nary a day between the election on November 3, 2020 and Inauguration Day on January 20 that Donald Trump failed to whine that he won the election, knowing well that this was a lie. He was in effect announcing to the world that American democracy was a fraud. Not only that, he was announcing that he himself had failed as president to safeguard the nation's election system, a task required of his Homeland Security Department. He was accusing himself, as the person responsible for the security of our elections, of having failed to ensure this critical function. His performance during these two-and-a-half months had the appearance of a clownish vaudeville show, though unfortunately he was both the clown and the actual president of the United States, and his actions served to tear our country apart.
The United States is now only a few weeks from our presidential election, and the feeling in much of the country is surreal. Can it really be correct, as reported by opinion polls, that nearly half of our voters intend to vote for a convicted criminal? It's not like Donald Trump's conviction was for youthful excesses a half century ago; no, it's as fresh as can be, from this very year – convicted for financial fraud, for cheating his investors, his lenders, and the State and people of New York. It's so fresh that the judge hasn't read out his sentence yet – likely for fear of his own safety; Trump commands goons that wouldn't hesitate to strike, and being a judge is no protection. Incidentally, a few months prior to his most recent conviction, Trump was also found by a court to have committed rape, which again does not seem to have dimmed his luster in the eyes of his followers. (Not to mention the 20 or so other women who claim to have been violated by Trump. As is common in rape cases, they have lacked proof, but that's a lot of smoke, and knowing he's done it once ...)
He was responsible for the greatest budget deficit in our history, in order to pass an unfunded and unjustified tax break that overwhelmingly favored the rich, including himself and his friends. Passing himself off as a financial wizard, we found out this year that he wasn't even a competent financial crook!
Outside our borders, Trump in office was a laughing stock who diminished the US's reputation worldwide. To watch his submissive lapdog adulation in his meetings with the dictators Putin and Xie, whom he was eager to emulate, was disgusting for most Americans, for whom he wound up a whining, miserable loser who should never be heard from again. But he earned one distinction that he is unlikely ever to lose: His ballcap proclaimed him as #45. Fitting then that he should be ranked as #45: the worst president of all time.
We can only pray that the citizens of our country are able to come to their senses in time, and send this empty, soul-less, pity-less but pitiful man who never laughs and has no actual friends home to await his punishment for his many crimes.
H. Paul Lillebo
Previous essay:
The Meaning of Europe
Abstract:
Vladimir Putin went to war with Europe, and has removed his country from the idea of Europe. It will not turn out well for him or for Russia.
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Next previous essay:
Israel and Palestine Act II
Abstract:
On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters from Gaza crossed the unguarded border into Israel and killed more than 1,200 civilians. Israel responded with a vicious campaign of wanton destruction of the Gaza strip. 3000 years ago, there was a bloody prelude to Israel's current slaughter in Gaza. (Call it Act I.) It was also directed by Israel's God, and the gory details are in the Bible.
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Special legacy essay:
The Holocene Calendar
Making life easier
Abstract:
Promoting and celebrating a 100-year old proposal to change our Gregorian calendar. It makes good sense for several reasons.
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