A Tyranny of Tuskers
TUCSON — When elephants fight, an old Swahili saying goes, the grass suffers. I've seen what that means since the 1960s, covering coups and upheaval in places Donald Trump calls shitholes. We are all seeing it already in America.
As Republicans war among themselves for favor from a trumpeting old bull, workaday families face a mire of pachyderm plop. The nation's grass roots run deep. Still, its character, decency, prosperity and good sense all hang in the balance.
When a threat comes with tanks and artillery, civilians put their lives on the line to defend democracy. In America, people only need to show up at the polls. In November, a third of those eligible did not bother to do even that.
A would-be king surpassed all expectations during his tragicomic coronation. The Clintons chortled onstage behind him at his "Gulf of America" declaration. But Elon Musk's later Seig Heil! salute fired up homegrown neo-Nazis and sent shivers abroad.
Trump again took the United States out of the Paris climate accords and the World Health Organization. Those acts of blind hubris alone imperil countless lives on a planet his mega-billionaire backers intend to ravage with selfish abandon.
There is no border emergency. America badly needs more labor and entrepreneurs who create jobs. It has plenty of room for screened newcomers who arrive at its doors. Yet it repels families fleeing climate calamity and conflict for which it bears heavy blame.
Trump has frozen vital foreign aid that helps families stay home, where most would rather be. The European Union, overcrowded, pays Libyan pirates to deter new arrivals. Desperate migrants trapped in limbo are a ticking human time bomb.
Bludgeoning allies with high tariffs raises prices at home, and it enables slashed taxes for the rich. Tactics such as strong-arming Colombia into accepting two planeloads of 160 deportees are turning that "shining city on a hill" into a despised Gomorrah.
Countries that admired a nation which did so much to pick up the pieces after World War II now see tweets like this from Trump's puerile new press secretary: "Yesterday, Mexico accepted a record 4 deportation flights in 1 day!" America is not great again.
Hubert Vedrine, a former French foreign minister, captured the mood in what remains of a free world committed to democracy and a common front against global crises: "Trump is like an asteroid headed to Earth."
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Biden's parting message warned of oligarchy. Many had to google the word. Others didn't trouble to listen, waiting apathetically to be flocked and fleeced like sheep. The speech is no longer on the White House website. Trump is scrubbing history.
Like a tinpot dictator, he fired 19 inspectors general, whose nonpartisan oversight weeded out corruption and waste. A 2022 law requires a president to give 30 days notice to Congress along with a "substantial rationale" for dismissal.
The crux of this is as simple as armed robbery. A study reported in Time found that from 1981 until 2020, the top one percent of Americans took $50 trillion from the bottom 90 percent. Biden tried to reverse the trend. Trump now aims for the stratosphere.
Overwhelmed, people repeatedly ask what one person can do. The answer ranges from at least something to a hell of a lot. Look beyond a towering babble of non-news for trusted sources and observable fact. Find what alarms you most and spread the word.
Edmund Burke, the Irish parliamentarian, said it well in the 1700's: "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." Heather Cox Richardson said it better last week: "Some weenie coming in with a bunch of misfits is only possible if we allow it."
Heather's peptalk and action plan is attached below along with a link to the Indivisible Project, which has sound specific advice and avenues to pursue.
Keep a sense of humor, stay healthy and do something politically constructive every day. Trump's juggernaut amounts to a clown car with a whiny toddler at the wheel whose main interest, as Heather says, "is staying out of jail and beaucoup bucks."
As Bernie Sanders put it, oligarchs maintain that because they have the wealth and power, opposition is useless. Give up trying. "Fortunately," he added, "these masters of the universe are wrong. Very wrong."
But those billionaires and office-seekers they bankroll matter in an outdated electoral system. Today, along with gerrymandering, voter suppression, primary elections and prostituted media, computer wizardry and artificial intelligence tip the scales.
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On the eve of an inaugural address truffled with blood-libel untruths, the man who insists his 2020 election was stolen appeared to confirm suspicions that his new best friend helped rig his return to power.
Trump had given coy hints during the campaign. He winked at House speaker Mike Johnson, saying they shared a secret. He told crowds it didn't matter whether they voted. He had it covered.
At a rally on Jan. 19, basking in his cultists' adulation, he effused over Elon Musk, his new best friend, who spent six weeks in Pennsylvania before election day.
"He was very effective," Trump said. "He knows those computers better than anybody. Those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good… Thank you to Elon.”
He won the state's 19 electoral votes by 120,266 popular ballots under dubious circumstances. New York Rep. Dan Goldman, an ex-federal prosecutor who was the Democratic lead counsel in Trump's first impeachment, demanded an investigation.
Philadelphia prosecutors had sued Musk over his lottery that gave nine $1 million checks to voters in swing states. But a judge ruled Musk's PAC did not require a promise to vote for Trump.
In early January, Smart Elections, a nonprofit group, reported a software malfunction required some Pennsylvania ballets to be counted by hand. "There are very serious concerns focused on unnatural data patterns that are emerging daily," it reported.
Michigan's Arab Americans punished Harris over Gaza: 15 electors. Arizona's eight electors put Trump above the required 270 with an edge of 187,382 popular votes. Nearly a million Arizonans did not cast a ballot.
Despite his narrow victory and thin hold on Congress, Trump claims a landslide mandate to make America red and white, leaving out the blue. Outraged constituents need to show Republican legislators their own seats are at stake next time.
Frigid weather prevented pageantry on the Mall with a crowd size to boast about. No matter. Trump strutted and preened as if crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Still, his immutable cultists are a minority in a nation of 330 million.
An authoritative AP-NORC poll found six in 10 people sampled oppose a government influenced by billionaires. Expect that to worsen when Trump faces the unrepealable laws of gravity.
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Other polls say 70 percent of voters oppose pardons for 1,500-plus insurrectionists. Some beat police so viciously that several later died or committed suicide. They chased the vice president with a noose and ransacked Nancy Pelosi's confidential files.
Here in Arizona, that bellowing "shaman" in war paint, fur and buffalo horns later meekly apologized. He said Trump had misled him. Today he is buying more guns. Ringleaders who faced decades in prison revisited the Capitol as freed hostages.
Three U.S. District Court judges in Washington condemned Trump's pardons and commutations. Judge Beryl Howell wrote:
"No 'national injustice' occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election. No 'process of national reconciliation' can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress...with impunity."
At the National Prayer Service, Trump glowered at the Episcopal bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde, who looked him in the eye and spoke calmly but bluntly:
"In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We’re scared now. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals...
"The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here."
Trump's predawn "nasty woman" response came after regal events funded by tech moguls at a million dollars a pop. He demanded an apology from "a Radical Left hard line Trump hater...who brought her church into the World of politics."
He repeated his baseless claim that many migrants from jails and mental asylums slaughtered Americans. Lapdog legislators chimed in. Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia suggested the second-generation, New Jersey-born bishop be deported.
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Trump sent troops to the southern border, violating the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the military from policing America. As an excuse, he declared a national emergency although Biden had dramatically reduced the number of illegal crossers.
Repeated big lies are entrenched. Trump blocked a bipartisan border bill so he could campaign on a crisis. Migrants he forced to stay in Mexico now risk rape and robbery as their scant resources dwindle.
Tom Homan, the new "border czar," threatens to arrest mayors who protect migrants awaiting legal outcomes. He mocks humanitarians who oppose his overreach. "It's kind of cool that they live in my head," he told a TV interviewer.
People like Homan on the public payroll who abuse the helpless in America's name live in my gall bladder, along with diehard amoebas I picked up over decades of watching figurative elephants trample hungry families.
Most Americans see Congress as it is, hamstrung by rueful comedy and toxic tragedy. But the greatest dangers are abroad. Trump's rapacity now makes them immeasurably worse.
His pattern is clear. He triggered the Afghan debacle and the Ukraine invasion yet blames Biden. The Covid hecatomb he let happen was China's fault. Biden reversed it; he claims credit. He stopped protecting Anthony Fauci from death threats he provoked.
An upcoming dispatch will tour the world Americans ignore at their peril. For now, a brief look at the unholy land sheds harsh light on his transparent duplicity.
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Trump asserts that he alone freed Gaza hostages in a matter of days after his predecessor made such a mess in the Middle East. Big lies do not get more shamelessly preposterous.
He scornfully scrapped the deal with the United States, Europe, China and Russia to monitor Iran's nuclear program, normalize relations and allow more moderate rule. The mullahs then doubled down on nukes and support for anti-Israel terrorist proxies.
His Abraham Accords with Arab states left Palestinians in second-class status. Settlers protected by Israeli troops muscled into the West Bank. Young resisters fought back. Hamas burst out of Gaza, taking hostages. Israel hit back hard, killing close to 50,000.
Benjamin Netanyahu, an old Trump crony, resisted American efforts to hold him back. Still, Biden opened relief channels and blunted the Gaza onslaught. He flew to Israel for blunt talks in private. His aides shuttled nonstop for 450 days to avert wider war.
Arab states backed Biden's demand for a two-state agreement. U.S. forces helped cripple Hezbollah in Lebanon, end the al-Assad rule in Syria and keep Yemeni Houthis at bay.
Biden proposed a several-stage armistice in May. Trump declined to pressure Israel to accept it. Death and suffering continued until late December.
Trump named an envoy to work with Biden's team for the final details. Then, true to form, he took full credit for the hostage-prisoner exchange.
An autonomous Palestine is again off the table. Trump now muses about the seafront resorts and golf courses that can be built once Palestinians are moved someplace else.
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A new president's first call abroad is traditionally to Britain, America's closest ally. Trump called Saudi Arabia where he plans a Trump Tower in Jeddah.
Next, he spoke with El Salvador's president who champions cryptocurrency. Trump wants a “national digital asset stockpile.” He dismissed bitcoin in his first term as an aberration that sidesteps global monetary controls, a boon to crooks and terrorists.
In his bald effort to profit as much as he can from presidential powers, all bets are off. It is early days. He can be stopped. If not, the above is only a sampling of what awaits if Americans allow elephants to rampage unchecked. In short, our ass is grass.
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