Sometimes a couple of pictures are worth a thousand words:
While the president moans that he can’t find a Roy Cohn to protect him from the Russia probe, some on the left think it’s a new form of McCarthyism to attack politicians for adopting the Kremlin line. It’s a ludicrous critique. A series of serious crimes have been committed. There is a faction that includes both Kremlin trolls and vocal conservative members of Congress which is trying to prevent us from solving the crimes and holding people accountable. They obfuscate and deflect. They accuse others of the things they are guilty of doing. They generate and propagate fake news and conspiracy theories. They troll through our social media feeds. And they share the same talking points.
There’s no daylight anymore between these right-wing American politicians and the Kremlin. And it’s not McCarthyism to point it out. Roy Cohn was McCarthy’s lawyer. He was Trump’s lawyer and mentor.
It shows.
I used to believe that the Republicans were doing this because the word had come down from above that the Russians had scooped up some really bad, embarrassing RNC emails in the 2016 summer (along with the DNC ones they did release then), or they had something else really awful on the party, and so the republicans had to support Trump all the time or else these emails would be released.
But they don’t ACT like people under duress. They act like people who really believe Mueller is their enemy. They are willingly drinking the Kook-aid!
So now I wonder — just how bad is it? Why are they so afraid of what Mueller is finding out? What did they do, not in 2016 but yesterday? Have they been accepting so much money from Russian oligarchs that they have all be hopelessly compromised? Do they actually believe in a Twilight Zone version of alternate reality where Russia didn’t really do anything bad and therefore the CIA and the FBI and the NSA and the Pentagon are all the real traitors and are just lying to everyone because reasons…
Yeah I definitely wouldn’t reject it out of hand that many are compromised, including leadership. How they’re compromised (assuming they are) at this point is irrelevant because of how they’re acting.
Now it’s not the first place I go. I just take it as a pure inertial exercise. They’re getting what they want out of him, they know how to have access to power and what that takes to get it, and this is the most likely explanation. Take Lindsey Graham. He opposed Trump forcefully because he thought he would lose. Then he didn’t say much until he saw how others operated the president and how they got their choice preferences for ideology and power. It’s why he took up health care to wiggle his way into the President’s inner circle/go-to-guy, even though he knew jack shit about health care policy. There was an immediate shift after their first golf game which happened in March I believe. Lindsey probably isn’t being blackmailed, he’s just making wishes with the monkey’s paw and thinks it’ll turn out swell (or won’t be the worst thing, bc hey look judges).
They can’t get the same things from Pence because a Pence preseeincy is immediately weaker than a Trump one — something they recognize that some parts of the left apparently do not with their “but Pence!” nonsense.
Boy, I sure do agree with every particular of seabe’s comment here.
The point re. Pence is especially welcome. Number one, the Vice President’s persona, and some of his policy priorities, are poor matches for the voters most inspired by Trump. Pence is a very different person, and some of Trump’s base would trickle away.
Frankly, it doesn’t seem possible to me that Pence can avoid being damaged by this Mueller-led investigation. There were a ton of shenanigans that took place during the transition. Pence was the official chair of the presidential transition team. The Vice President is very exposed by his mendacious public statements regarding Michael Flynn’s actions during the transition.
If Trump is removed because of “the Russia stuff” then there’s no way Pence should be allowed to serve. He led the transition. He’s was handpicked by Paul Manafort. Why was Manafort so set on Pence? He didn’t just fake airplane trouble to avoid Christie, he made a point to recommend and lobby for Pence. Pence is eyeballs deep in Mercer money. Etc.
On the subject of people curiously unwilling to truly take on Trump, I enjoyed this sentence by mistermix over at Balloon Juice this morning:
“For someone who wants to burn the world down, (Bannon) sure folded pretty quickly once the Mercers yanked his money.”
Kushner’s Financial Ties to Israel Deepen Even With Mideast Diplomatic Role
Remember the part from the movie “All The President’s Men” when Jane Alexander’s character, a bookkeeper for CREEP, said to Woodward and Bernstein “If you guys could get John Mitchell, that would be beautiful”?
That’s how I feel about Kushner. That mofo is an obvious slimy, immoral worm. I want him in jail for a long, life-altering time.
By the way, Centerfield, this is a carry-over from the other thread, but “Mr. Progressive” Bill DeBlasio kisses Kushner’s ass every chance he gets.
https:/www.villagevoice.com/2017/01/12/jared-kushners-east-village-tenants-horrified-their-landlord
-will-be-working-in-the-white-house
http://www.boweryboogie.com/2017/01/local-groups-blast-de-blasio-bring-pleased-jared-kushners-appoin
tment-senior-white-house-adviser/
https:/therealdeal.com/2017/11/22/sweet-nothings-emails-show-de-blasio-and-glens-cozy-relationship-
with-kushner
Here, and here.
There’s nothing in these reportings that show Mayor de Blazio in any form of communication with Kushner since March.
But OK. This does lend more credence to your developer-servile representation of the Mayor.
Believe me, Kushner is far from the only developer De Blasio caters to. Read this just for
starters.
I can think of a few ways in which progressives might imagine Pence being worse, a couple of which are paradoxical. The one I’ve said myself is that if Pence replaced Trump, some of the Resistance would dry up and blow away, because it is about Trump personally, not whatever passes for his ideology. That doesn’t help in raising money and recruiting candidates, never mind that Trump might start a nuclear war before the next election. While Pence would likely be worse for single women and LGBT Americans, he isn’t as unstable or vulgar as Trump; he has experience in government and electoral politics, so he knows how to play the game even if he’s on the wrong team. Both of those lead to the paradoxical reasons why Pence might be considered worse than Trump. He is more disciplined, so he might be more effective at getting his reactionary agenda enacted. Also, he has a strong ideology, which is even more repulsive to progressives in some ways than what passes for Trump’s, so he’s going to be more consistently awful in his policy preferences. What that ignores is that Pence won’t appeal to the racists and crazies as effectively as Trump, so he won’t have the same level of support, and that he would be damaged if he ever succeeds Trump before his term expires. As a result, I think it’s a wash.
Yes, he is worse BECAUSE he is competent. The only Trump has manged was the Republicans wet dream of cutting taxes for the rich and raising them on working people. And THAT is due more to Ryan and McConnell than Trump. What rotten deeds might they achieve with a competent President? One who is the darling of the Evangelicals?
I’ve seen no evidence that this is true. His only competent person is Seema Verma, but she’s someone who would be tapped no matter what the Republican administration looked like. Pence was very unpopular in Indiana.
Trump is not driving the opposition all by himself. Republicans are already on the gas pedal of saying goodbye to college educated white voters with their agenda that doesn’t resonate with said voters, and it’s in service to someone they absolutely loathe. Trump might be a catalyst, but you can’t just take him away and everything goes back to the way it was. He’s already changing entire geopolitical relationships with his words even though everything action-wise is on auto-pilot, with a super increased rate of collateral murder. Remove Trump, and what do you have in Pence that appeals to the Democratic switchers? Nothing. They go back to not voting, or voting for the D downballot.
A removed Trump doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens when Republicans numbers are so bad they’re facing a 20+ generic ballot disadvantage.
Very true. But I meant worse for the country, not worse for the Democratic Party. Actually, the more he hurts the country, the better it is for the Democrats.
You write:
Yes indeed.
Me too.
But…first of all, we must define the word “compromised.”
If a politician takes money…legally or not so legally…that has implicit strings attached, strings that the politician recognizes are not truly in the public interest…is that politician “compromised” or is it just more of the whole “private/public” rigamarole like HRC’s public gaffe in her little talk to the Wall Street boyz and girlsz.
If we take that as being “compromised,” then I suppose that almost the whole edifice of U.S. politics is compromised.
But what if it was possible to eliminate that sort of “compromise?” I believe that the entire country would grind to a screeching halt.That action is the lubricant that has greased the gears of this politico-economic system from its very onset, and most likely every other at least moderately successful one as well. The Russian Revolution was an attempt to subvert that greasing, and within only a few years the grease was once again flowing through its system. The only difference was that it was in politburo form rather than czarist form.
Same grease, same type of greasers.
So…in this brave new world where “borders” are easily subverted by teen-aged hackers let alone massive governmental spying edifices…where do we draw the line?
Damned if I know.
Do we draw it by party affiliation?
If the Clinton Foundation/DNC takes grease from mysterious sources and so does the RNC, do we simply line up behind our party of choice and duke it out? That is what is happening now, except compromised entities of both parties have allied with each other to get rid of President Loose Cannon and whomever is really backing him.
Or do we finally stand up and say “Enough is enough!!! Israeli money, Saudi money, multinational corporate money, Russian money and all of the rest of the monies from other interested parties that hold their interests above that of the American people? Enough!!! Stand down!!! We will handle our own affairs from here on in, thank you very much.”
Is this even possible to do!!!??? I don’t really know. In a sense this is why I have been interested in such a seemingly disparate group of politicians over the past several decades, all of whom are labelled different names by different people. Ross Perot, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Trump’s campaign rhetoric if not his actions…even the much reviled Ralph Nader…they all at least sound like they are looking for a way to stop the anti-American grease from gumming up the works of government.
But “sounding” that way and actually being able to back it up with electoral victory are two very different things. Why? Because much of that money owns the media that are the controllers of most U.S. citizens’ minds, and other segments of that money are now being used to control peoples’ minds through social media.
What does this say about the U.S. electorate?
“We a bunch of dummies!!!” is what it says.
So it goes…
Sun Tzu said “Know your enemy.”
Walt Kelly said “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
And there we jolly well are, aren’t we. (So said Lord Buckley, and if you’re not hip to him you are not hip the anything!!!)
Gotta run now…think on this, please.
And if you come to any positive conclusions, you know where to find me. Get in touch.
Later…
AG
The above is now a standalone post.
Are We ALL McCarthyites? Puppets? If So, Who Is Pulling Our Strings?
Please comment there.
Thank you…
AG
Fuck no I won’t join you in your hidey hole in the diaries where you commiserate with two or three community members who are willing to engage your delusions. You’re engaging that strategy because you and your arguments are weak and can’t handle the scrutiny they get from the community on the front page.
I’ve very rarely troll rated you in the past; I preferred to take on your outrageous baloney and rotten ideology in direct exchanges. I’ve become convinced the best way to respond to your most hostile, evasive posts is to downrate you. It’s not good for the health of this community to for us to engage with you very often.
If large parts of this community remain blind to the grievous faults of its party of choice, then you are quite right. It is not good for its “state of health” to engage with you at all
The only thing is this…the state of health of this community is not good. Not if it continues to support the actions of criminal DNC. It doesn’t even realize it is sick.
So it goes…
AG
Holy balls! Seriously, that statement alone is so far off the fucking deep end, especially when we are dealing with a real criminal family and toadies running the show in the White House.
I do not believe it is at all off the deep end, DD. When the true history of this country is finally written…if that ever happens, of course…I believe that equal numbers of powerful Democrats and Republicans will be found to have colluded with either foreign powers, multinational corporations that have no interest in anything except profit and/or easily identifiably “criminal” organizations like the cartels that pour drugs into this country at an astounding rate. Also, many powerful members of the so-called “security” forces would be charged. Bet on it. If the off-shore style banks were completely hacked and an impartial investigation were to take place? Man!!! The chaos and panic in DC would be magnificent!!!
But…not yet.
If ever…
So that goes as well.
Dream on.
AG
. . . perch adoringly on your shoulders, “then you are quite right.”
Until then, not so much.
What a useless Trump-enabling clown you’ve become.
Hear, hear.
What a useless, DNC-enabling clown you have become!!!
Or is that nothing new for you?
AG
Whoa. So BOTH SIDES?
That’s deep, man.
(C’mon, Arthur. You know better’n this. Of course the whole edifice is compromised. You remind me of myself in High School, when I realized that the USA wasn’t perfect. It turns out that all feet are clay. That hurts, but walk it off. Get some perspective. You think ‘nobody is perfect’ means the same as ‘everyone is equally bad.’ Also, maybe it’s just me, but I can’t feel any joy in your bop prosody anymore. It’s all recycled B-sides now. Are you okay?)
I keep hearing that Trump wishes he had a Roy Cohn to defend him. I have read that Cohn was brutal in his protection of Trump and that Trump idolized Cohn…until he was stricken with AIDS and Trump distanced himself completely.
I dunno if that’s true, but if it is, it proves yet again that the Trump is loyal only as long as he sees someone as an asset. Fail him, and you’re out.
I’m still holding out hope that Mueller and his team are able to continue building their case about Russian involvement and everyone gets nailed, including Trump, his family, and all of his White House cohorts. I want them all burned.
Cohn was a hateful, corrupt human being, incapable of even the most simple human empathy.
Kind of like Stephen Miller, but with a brain.
Reading about Roy Cohn and AIDS reminds me of the fictional Cohn in “Angels in America.” Here is Al Pacino playing Cohn being visited by Meryl Streep playing the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg.
Yeah, an asshole to the end.
iirc Trump’s daddy hired Cohn to get DJT out of a legal mess (early ’70s). (Cohn had a second act as a successful NYC attorney; not the first or only scumbag that NYC has embraced.) The two then became buddies with Cohn teaching DJT some of the legal/political black arts, described by some a being a mentor to Trump.
That relationship alone should have been sufficient for all self-respecting Democrats and liberals to shun Trump. But I feel the same about Kissinger.
I’m convinced that the only thing that will take trump down is proven financial crime with the requisite paper trail. The obstruction beef will be accepted/swamped over by the GOP under the guise of ‘both sides do it’, and ‘just politics’.
So, BooMan, respectfully, who on “the Left” is taking this position? I want to understand it better so that I can condemn it more accurately, but I haven’t seen it.
Glenn Greenwald is probably the most visible, but he’s not “of the left” so much as he has been associated with left wing publications. I’ve noticed Jeremy Scahill’s standards steadily drop over time as he becomes more like Greenwald, and I’d definitely say he’s “of the left”.
Here’s Greenwald’s latest hit this morning: praise Jake Tapper for ending Stephen Miller’s appearance on Sunday shows this morning.
But wait, that’s not what he’s doing at all. He uses it as a hook to hit Dems with by lying about what the complaints actually are:
Woops the second quote messed up. Here it is:
That makes no sense at all. Totally different things unless you want to misunderstand.
Also thamk you for offering something concrete more than blind hippe punching assertions.
Obviously if you call yourself “of the left” and ally yourself with a government run by the richest man in the world entirely on behalf of himself and a small circle of billionaire friends, the imperial occupier of large chunks of Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine, the advocate of the “Eurasianist” philosophy, the backer of the most reactionary wing of the Orthodox church, and the suppressor of organized labor, you’re probably using the word “leftist” in a different way from most of us.
You spent “defender” wrong.
Who else can we count on to save them from the US, NATO, the EU, the ECB, the CIA/Mossad/MI6/BND/DGSE, and the neo-Nazis?
To defeat strength you need to ally with strength.
When you’re trying to smash a hegemon, you can’t be picky about your allies.
“Fraternal defender”
That comment pretty well sums up something I’ve observed on the Internet Tubes for a bit now. There is a subset of self-applied “leftists” of various stripes who seem to at least be willing to turn a blind eye to the actions of the current Russian Federation regime, if not voice outright support, to the extent that said regime periodically tweaks the US government’s and/or NATO’s noses. After all, the working mentality seems to be that the US Empire must be stopped at all costs. Among that bunch are some folks the are understandably derided as tankies. They’re not too difficult to find on places like Twitter and Tumblr. Their fetish for Russian (usually Soviet, but also present day) and North Korean militarism often gives them away. How “leftist” that bunch really is remains an open question. If nothing else, I’ve been once more asking a necessary question – to what extent is there an authoritarian tendency among self-described leftists (whether anti-capitalist or otherwise)? Regardless of the answer to that question, they’ve certainly used social media as transmitters of some ugly propaganda and “mainstreaming” it in a manner not unlike what the wingnuts on the right have done for decades.
For the most part, these people are working for Putin. He has control of something like 200 billion dollars, and with that kind of money he has to have hired a fair number of legitimate-looking journalists/bloggers to go along with literally entire buildings full of hired Russian trolls posting nonsense to social media. Also, he’s a KGB man, so some of those agents are going to have very good cover, and seem very reasonable and sensible apart from pushing very hard on pro-Putin positions.
I say pro-Putin, not pro-Russian because Putin is not working for the benefit of Russia either. An overblown military, multiple ongoing wars and almost unfathomable corruption aren’t in the interests of most Russians, even as they have made Putin probably the richest man on earth.
Really, it’s pretty damn simple, Jordan Orlando. The reasoning goes like this:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“The Clintons” are my enemy.
Therefore anyone who attacks “the Clintons” is my friend.
The Venn diagram of people misappropriating the term “McCarthyism” and people misappropriating the term “neoliberal” is a circle.
That probably also holds if you add to the Venn Diagram those who use the term Deep State.
Add as well “neo-centrist”.
No, you’re a towel.
The Trump enablers in Congress aren’t acting like defenders or even protectors of their own agendas. They really don’t seem to be crouching at all.
Sure they’re obstructing but more than that they seem individually happy rather than fearful. So, the question is, who or what has them feeling so hopeful about their own re elections and a secure financial future?
There’s a limited list than can fulfill both.
Furiously backpedaling on Trump and Trumpkin but in sync with Russia-Putin-evil empire:
Russia-Russians “evil-doers” since 1917 (except for the few years when they pulled out chestnuts out of the fire, “the west” would have lost without them).
Bannon lesson: 1) liars lie 2) snakes seek payback. IOW never get in bed with an enemy. (Bill Kristol etc. is still the enemy of the people even if he’s in The Resistance)
No evidence that people here grasp what McCarthyism was. At the most rudimentary level, it’s the state, media, and public that denounces people as commie-Russia agents and stooges with zero evidence to support the accusation. Those accused have their reputations and often their livelihood destroyed by the false allegations. That in turn leads to associates and industries and institutions to stifle speech, thought, etc. and denigrate anyone (classically those viewed as being on the left) remotely connected to identified targets.
Hollywood Blacklist. Silenced: Women and the Broadcast Blacklist Then there is: The Press and Joe:
And the FBI and CIA fed the media.
History rhymes but it doesn’t come neatly wrapped in the same old package. Hate/loathe Trump (he deserves it, but so too does GWB, GHWB, and Reagan), but Putin-Russia had nothing to do with putting him in the WH. Politicians (who wanted the GOP “pied piper” nominee?), the morass of TV media and “reality TV,” and voters, most of whom were stuck with a lousy choice.
stooge
sto͞oj/Submit
noun
1.
a person who serves merely to support or assist others, particularly in doing unpleasant work.
synonyms: underling, minion, lackey, subordinate; More
.
>>Putin-Russia had nothing to do with putting him in the WH
srsly?
over at c99 everyone will agree with you. in the world where things fall down not up this statement is fucking ridiculous.
It’s something Eugene McCarthy would say if he was still alive.
It’s incredibly amusing how McCarthyism has now switched from arguments of Russians influencing the government to Russians NOT influencing the government. And from republicans demonizing Russians, to defending them. Strange times.
.
Oops,
Joe
This seems to happen more, since Jan. 1. Maybe I should ease back on the consumables.
.
It’s about the autocratically inclined admiring those who cleverly subverted a nascent democracy and turned it into a kleptocratic autocracy. No wonder Donald Trump is their avatar.
Holy crap Joel! That’s quite the syllable mash up. I hope you got them all in the right order, or the on site grammar police will step all over you.
👮♂️
.
Oh thank you Great Teacher for riding in on your white horse with script in hand to enlighten The Great Unwashed.
snip “No evidence that people here grasp what McCarthyism was. At the most rudimentary level, it’s the state, media, and public that denounces people as commie-Russia agents…”
Wow. You need some remedial history lessons. Didn’t realize that the sick right wing McCarthy cabal = ‘the media, the state and [the] public”.
Try again.
“Communism” was never anything other than an allegory for progressive policy on industrial relations and race. American politics is exclusively domestic; any mention of any offshore entity is always an allegory for some domestic faction.
That said, when the Republicans of Joe McCarthy’s and Nixon’s day (! someone above, btw, does not know the difference between Joe and Eugene) looked at Communism in practice, what they were saying to themselves was, we gotta get us some o’ that.