The Night of the Living Trump

Trump’s approval ratings are lower than those of any new U.S. president in the history of polling: Just 36 percent of Americans are pleased with his performance so far. Some 80 percent of British citizens think Trump will make a “bad president,” along with 77 percent of those polled in France and 78 percent in Germany. And that’s just week one.  Tom Malinowski - Foreign Policy

 The USA is just a little over 240 years old and 240 years is time enough for anything to happen.

And so now, after all these years, the White House of Washington is finally occupied by someone who is mentally ill, seriously mentally ill. Bat-shit crazy, in fact.

This takes some getting used to.

I have held off writing about this until now because the situation appears to me much too numbingly, depressingly, chaotic to really analyze... yet.

For me the most significant thing in this Night of the Living Trump, is the world-wide horror, depression and confusion it is producing.

And the most encouraging thing is the galvanization of what appears to be a "new" left in America, (and much of the rest of the world it would appear) that is no longer so concerned about who can use what bathroom, but more tuned into saving the country and perhaps the entire world from an evil maniac.

So in the weeks and months to come, I will leave trying to analyze what this malignant narcissist does and concentrate my modest efforts on recording and examining what America and the world comes up with to wriggle out of his tiny-handed grip. DS

History to Bush: quo vadis... turkey?

"As long as George Bush is commander-in-chief of the US military and he and his advisers are intent on getting the US into a shooting war with Iran, Iran is the issue." Josh Marshall

David Seaton's News Links
Webster defines the word, "surreal" as, "marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream". That Bush, failed in Iraq, struggling in Afghanistan, could, may very well... in fact, probably will, start another war... very soon, has all the qualities necessary to fill Webster´s definition.

Dream? Nightmare? Why quibble?

Philip Stephens wrote in his Financial Times column that "the White House once again seems hell-bent on being outwitted in the court of global opinion; and, maybe, on making a strategic miscalculation that could make the war in Iraq look like a sideshow."

There is much speculation that all of this is to be done for Israel's benefit: Both the Israel lobby, AIPAC and Norman Podhoretz, a senior foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani and the "godfather of neoconservatism", beat the drum ceaslessly for a war with Iran, but according to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Israeli "Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel"

David Ignatius wrote in the Washingon Post,"Military action would be irrational for both sides. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. I wish the Bush administration could see that with each step it takes closer to conflict, it is walking toward a well-planned trap."

"Irrational", sister to "surreal" is the operative word.

As Paul Krugman said, "All of this would be funny if it weren’t so serious." Fareed Zacharia wrote in Newsweek, "This would all be funny if it weren't so dangerous." Russian President Vladimir Putin commented, "I think running around like a lunatic -- with a razor and waving a red banner -- isn't the best way to solve this kind of problem". And a New York Times editorial said, “With a different White House, we might dismiss this as posturing — or bank on sanity to carry the day, or the warnings of exhausted generals or a defense secretary more rational than his predecessor. Not this crowd.”

Albert Einstein once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Los Angeles Times columnist, Rosa Brooks has come right out and accused Bush of being clinically insane. Rosa Brooks is not only a columnist, she is also a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who specializes in international law, human rights, law of war, state failure, terrorism and rule of law issues. So this is not some bag lady shouting on a street corner. She wrote, "What's a constitutional democracy to do when the president and vice president lose their marbles? The U.S. is full of ordinary people with serious forms of mental illness -- delusional people with violent fantasies who think they're the president, or who think they get instructions from the CIA through their dental fillings. The problem with Bush is that he is the president -- and he gives instructions to the CIA and military, without having to go through his dental fillings."

Certainly the declining months of Bush's raj are reminiscent of those old Hollywood films about the Roman empire... Nero and his magic violin, Caligula and his consul horse. The world hanging on the product of a diseased brain. DS

Michael Hirsh: Another Turn of the Screw - Newsweek
Abstract: For some people, it all felt unnervingly like a lurch back to 2002—the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration's announcement of wide-ranging sanctions against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Defense Ministry—as well as its major banks—tarred much of Tehran's officialdom as rogues, terror supporters or proliferators. Russian President Vladimir Putin, displaying his gift for anti-American metaphor, likened the Bush officials to "mad people wielding razor blades." Democratic lion Sen. Robert Byrd thundered: "Congress will not be kept out of the loop while this administration plots another march to war."(...) their new approach does seem to cut off the possibility of high-level negotiations with the current Iranian government, at least for the present. Even a key U.S. ally, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, says the sanctions alienate U.S. officials from the only real decision makers in Iran. "The Revolutionary Guards … are the ones who are running the Iranian government," Zebari said last week. While Bush administration officials insist that Tehran intends to build a bomb, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is concerned that Iran wants eventually to become a "virtual nuclear- weapons state," like Japan. That is, it wants to have the technology, industry and expertise to produce a bomb on short notice, but doesn't necessarily want to make or test one. ("Yes, that is what we are doing," a senior Iranian envoy, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told NEWSWEEK last week.) Many Iranians hint that this would be a sufficient strategic deterrent, unless the United States attacks first. READ IT ALL

Rosa Brooks accuses Bush of being clinically insane

David Seaton's News Links

The article below is by far the roughest thing I've ever read about Bush in a mainstream publication. In this article Rosa Brooks actually accuses Bush and Cheney of being clinically insane. Dynamite!

Rosa Brooks is not only a columnist, she is a a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center whose scholarly work focuses on international law, human rights, law of war, state failure, terrorism and rule of law issues. So this is not the rant of some blogger in pajamas (heh, heh).

Breaking with News Links traditions, I'm quoting the article in full, because a column this rough about the chief of state could get a journalist thrown in jail is some countries that are widely considered democracies.

In fact any country where you can write something this hard about a sitting chief of state and not be "disappeared" can be considered a democracy. In American jurisdiction it turns out that Bush is having people disappeared, so the more places the article can be found the better. DS


Straitjacket Bush - Los Angeles Times
Forget impeachment.

By Roda Brooks
25 October 2007

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Because they've clearly gone mad. Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.

That would be with Iran, and you'd have to be deaf not to hear the war drums. Last week, Bush remarked that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." On Sunday, Cheney warned of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power . . . [we] cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions." On Tuesday, Bush insisted on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat."

Huh? Iran is now a major threat to Europe? The Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile (that they don't yet possess) against Europe (for reasons unknown because, as far as we know, they're not mad at anyone in Europe)? This is lunacy in action.

Writing in Newsweek on Oct. 20, Fareed Zakaria, a solid centrist and former editor of Foreign Affairs, put it best. Citing Bush's invocation of "the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon," ZZakaria concluded that "the American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. . . . Iran has an economy the size of Finland's. . . . It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are . . . allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"

Planet Cheney.

Zakaria may be misinterpreting the president's remark about World War III though. He saw it as a dangerously loopy Bush prediction about the future behavior of a nuclear Iran -- the idea being, presumably, that possessing "the knowledge" to make a nuclear weapon would so empower Iran's repressive leaders that they'll giddily rush out and start World War III.

But you could read Bush's remark as a madman's threat rather than a madman's prediction -- as a warning to recalcitrant states, from Germany to Russia, that don't seem to share his crazed obsession with Iran. The message: Fall into line with administration policy toward Iran or you can count on the U.S.A. to try to start World War III on its own. And when it comes to sparking global conflagration, a U.S. attack on Iran might be just the thing. Yee haw!

You'd better believe these guys would do it too. Why not? They have nothing to lose -- they're out of office in 15 months anyway. Après Bush-Cheney, le déluge! (Have fun, Hillary.)

But all this creates a conundrum. What's a constitutional democracy to do when the president and vice president lose their marbles?

The U.S. is full of ordinary people with serious forms of mental illness -- delusional people with violent fantasies who think they're the president, or who think they get instructions from the CIA through their dental fillings.

The problem with Bush is that he is the president -- and he gives instructions to the CIA and military, without having to go through his dental fillings.

Impeachment's not the solution to psychosis, no matter how flagrant. But despite their impressive foresight in other areas, the framers unaccountably neglected to include an involuntary civil commitment procedure in the Constitution.

Still, don't lose hope. By enlisting the aid of mental health professionals and the court system, Congress can act to remedy that constitutional oversight. The goal: Get Bush and Cheney committed to an appropriate inpatient facility, where they can get the treatment they so desperately need. In Washington, the appropriate statutory law is already in place: If a "court or jury finds that [a] person is mentally ill and is likely to injure himself or other persons if allowed to remain at liberty, the court may order his hospitalization."

I'll even serve on the jury. When it comes to averting World War III, it's really the least I can do.