This weekend in Billy Rubinland we observe the passing of the torch from one president to another with the same level of dread that tens of millions are experiencing, and as such there isn't much to say, for certainly the words of the new President himself could not be a clearer elucidation of a philosophy of mendacity and unscrupulousness that Donald Trump has not in any way concealed since the very first moment he descended the escalator from his office tower to announce his intentions to supersize his medium-level business practice, which has always sordidly combined corruption and legal intimidation, into levels not previously witnessed in the American political landscape. His candidacy was a long shot, one that involved playing to the basest and most disgusting of the American--that is to say, the white American--id as part of a campaign to satiate an ego that can brook no criticism, and whose philosophy was really only that of self-adulation and worship of the little people because, well...him. He didn't adopt the Republican talking points of the past generation so much as exposed them for the galling hypocrisies that they were, channeling the white rage that Nixon kindled with his "Southern strategy" and Lee Atwater torched with Willie Horton and Rupert Murdoch poured gasoline on with Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, dispensing with the code language that allowed so-called "conservative" politicians to maintain with a straight face that their unhinged hatred of a very mild-mannered, compromise-oriented centrist in Barack Obama was really all about ideology and had nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with race. After the 2016 presidential campaign, anyone who voted for such a scalawag was either an unapologetically virulent racist, a totally uninformed voter who did not bother to listen to his message, or was in absolute denial that somehow this man rejected the putative values of what heretofore had been the official ideology of the Republican party. To those who can't see the man for what he really is, there's not much point in having a discussion.
As I said, there isn't much to say. Basically, I would say this, if I could.
Instead, as we prepare for the Trump administration coming to power and the high likelihood that it will deliver justice on the national and international stage in a thoroughly arbitrary matter, I only wish to talk, ever so briefly, about one small piece of the vast edifice of hatred and hypocrisy that defines at least some of his supporters, and has been validated by the results of the election: the subject of free speech, treason, and the meaning of national flags.
Unsurprisingly, the US flag has become an object of scorn not only outside the United States, but from within as well. (Anyone from beyond the borders who didn't have a favorable opinion of the US prior to today's inaugural address just got a fresh & tasty justification that they were right to hold such views based on words issuing directly from the mouth of the new President himself.) Note here, for instance: US protesters engaged in the burning of the American flag in one of many demonstrations across the country. There were tens of thousands of people expressing their opinions in such marches without resorting to burning the flag, but the right-wing organs of media, along with Trump himself in the run up to the inauguration, immediately turned the actions of perhaps twelve justifiably angry people exercising their right to free speech into a matter of grave importance worthy of ignoring the unprecedented ethical conflicts of interest that--far from draining it--are about to make Washington DC a swamp that will be the envy of third-world tinpot dictators. After all, when uninformed billionaires who think poor people got that way because they are stupid and lazy are handed the keys to government power by a political movement that somehow thought it was--one tries in desperation to stifle a laugh--sticking it to elites....then it's of much, much greater importance to decide whether we should incarcerate some pissed-off millennial for years on the charge that he's somehow damaged the integrity of the country by setting flame to one US Flag.
It's one in a series of Three-card Monte games that will continue for the next four years--or, quite possibly as a result of some truly outrageous voter suppression shenanigans to which Jeff Sessions will minister, much longer. Today, marchers are marching as part of what is thus far not fully coordinated resistance to the Trump administration, and I am with them in spirit, but frankly I'm too depressed to head to the streets. If we live in a democracy that chooses a man such as Donald Trump to run our Government, then there's something very wrong with our democracy, and I'm not sure if marches or voting registration drives or legal filings by smart lawyers who actually fight for the small guys against the real elites will make any difference.
I know this is a hopeless and not especially helpful view of the matter. I would have been appalled by the presidency of a Ted Cruz or a Marco Rubio, and I would have at least have grumbled in disgust at the presidency of a Jeb Bush or a John Kasich or a Rick Perry, but I could at least feel like the combination of venality and shortsightedness was what I was used to. Trump, however, is in a class all by himself. He combines the bullying instincts of Chris Christie, the vengefulness of Rudy Giuliani, and the cluelessness of Ben Carson into one perfect package of American ignoramical anger. What makes him so unlike the other sixteen men who vied for the Republican nomination is that he never tried to hide it; even Christie, who at the start of 2016 I considered the most dangerous candidate, mouthed various pieties on the campaign trail about the value of democracy, and tried to distance himself from the most overtly racist rhetoric of the right-wing rallies. Trump by contrast brought the most deplorable elements--yes, Hillary Clinton was one hundred percent correct when she used the term--front and center into his traveling show of hate and resentment, shocking the Republican establishment which thought that you could only win if you used racism via the means of code words.
Now there's no more code words, and a monster sits in the White House, surrounding himself with people who on the whole are to the "establishment" what street thugs are to poor neighborhoods, with what seems to be only one well-informed and intelligent cabinet member not in possession of reams of conflicts of interest, and he happens to go by the nickname of "Mad Dog." Which is to say, not encouraging. If 60 million people can be presented this kind of a man and want to support him, we're no better off than Berlin was in 1933.
So I'm not going to try to engage in some sort of earnest appeal to anyone about which of the dozens of fubar elements of the Donald Trump presidency are worthy of shock and outrage, as there's not much point. The one quality I find so fresh and appealing about him is that one can't hide behind the veil of being uninformed when opting to support him. He doesn't trouble himself with the details of policy, and doesn't think you should bother, either. His brand, which he made exceedingly clear in his inaugural address, is hate, and you don't need a PhD in government studies or be familiar with the company Blackwater or understand the importance of the Iran-Contra affair or remember who Spiro Agnew was to know what Trump is about. Which is precisely why I see no point in any dialogue with any of his supporters.
But I am perfectly fine, on this first day of the new administration, to point out the standard asymmetric commentary--which is to say, frank hypocrisy--that's been part of the right-wing playbook for the last 40 years on one small matter. The flag-burning issue is, on the one hand, tedious: it forces centrists and liberals into legally defending an action that is, at the very least, aesthetically unpleasant, turning the dialogue into how to keep the mob quiet. (Not, of course, that the right-wing mob has a corner on the market: For left-wing hypocrisies, see "defending the good work that most cops do" or "supporting Israel's right to self-determination" during discussions about either systemic police violence against African-Americans or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the left-wing mob isn't bankrolled by billions of dollars of organized Pravda-like media whipping them up into an ignorant frenzy on a daily basis.)
Anyway, it's a classic dumb issue intended to distract attention from the true outrages, but regardless it's still rank hypocrisy, for the free speech that Trump and his merry band of Republican lawmakers are prepared to punish in the most severe terms possible--treason is a crime that can carry the penalty of death, of course**--they're perfectly happy to endorse in the form of the waving of the Confederate flag. Since we have become so culturally inured to seeing the rebel flag, it's worth noting that this represents a political entity that was a mortal enemy of the United States of America. Our country has gone to war with many nations, demanding surrender of some of them, signing peace treaties with others. But the United States of America dissolved the Confederate States as an enemy nation, and while there has never been a federal law banning its display or use, it's clear that one who finds the burning of the US flag a crime should be moved in equal measure to criminalize the display of an enemy nation as part of political speech.
Personally I don't care about flag burning, but I'd be perfectly happy if we were willing to categorize traitors consistently across the board. Will our prisons be enough to hold so many? Of course, the penalty for treason includes death, so perhaps we can move things along at a quick clip.
--Billy
(**Not long after the election, I had a long and unpleasant exchange with an acquaintance on Facebook, someone with whom I went to high school and an ardent Trump supporter, about the penalty for treason, since she had joined the chorus that Trump started by posting something vapid about punishing flag-burners. It became a painfully drawn-out conversation because I merely wished for her to acknowledge the simple fact that she was stating her belief that one of her fellow Americans should be shot to death because they burned a flag in a protest. Faced with the unassailable conclusion of her belief, she eventually agreed, at which point I was called an asshole.)
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