Opinion

Biden warns of ‘the tech-industrial complex’

There’s no guarantee democracy won’t turn despotic – again.

There’s no compromising with evil, although some Democrats apparently think they can. Evil, by its very nature, will always win in such situations, even when it appears to have compromised or cooperated.

“Evil” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a force that causes bad things to happen.”

At this point, I think it needs to be said that there’s a feeling among liberals and Democrats, and I would suggest especially affluent white liberals and Democrats, that liberal democracy isn’t really dead.

I would say there’s a deep sense of denial among these folks. They tell themselves that the dearly departed is much too dear to be truly departed. I would say there’s also a good deal of magical thinking in this denial, as if the criminals who shot their beloved will come to justice, and once they do, their beloved will rise again, good as new.

It may seem counter-intuitive, given that most people think of dictators as bad guys themselves, but the simple reality is that without proclaiming enemies — larger than life enemies — dictators have a hard time hanging onto power and accomplishing the things they want to do.

Hitler had Jews. Mussolini had the Italian Socialist Party. For Duterte it was drug dealers. Stalin vilified the “Kulaks” (wealthy peasants) as a threat to the Soviet Union. Mao blamed the bourgeoisie. Pol Pot said intellectuals were the enemy and so ordered everybody who could read killed. Idi Amin blamed Indians and Asians for the problems of Uganda. Robert Mugabe said white farmers were destroying Zimbabwe. Slobodan Milošević pointed to the Kosovo Albanians. Pinochet blamed the trade unions for Chile’s struggles.

The US Department of Defense is the largest government agency in the country. A sprawling and massive bureaucracy, the DOD houses the world’s largest military power, employs nearly 3 million people — greater than the population of many states — and has direct control over the armed forces of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Command.

The Secretary of Defense manages an annual budget exceeding $800 billion, with 1.3 million servicemembers on active duty, 825,000 Reserve and National Guard members, and another 600,000 civilian employees. Frank Carlucci, Secretary of Defense under Reagan, described the position as “one of the more difficult jobs anywhere in the world. He has to be a mini-Secretary of State, a procurement expert, a congressional relations expert. He has to understand the budget process. And he should have operational knowledge.”

As you’re reading these words, Trump and his Republican allies are spraying “a firehose of lies” accusing Democrats of responsibility for the fires in LA. And those lies are working; even mainstream media like The New York Times and The Washington Post are repeating them. Not to mention they’re being pushed like peanuts at a ball game into the faces of hundreds of millions by the right-leaning algorithms of social media.

If Democrats were to create a “Shadow Cabinet,” they could effectively neuter much of this BS. Details on that in a minute, but first some background.

Ever since the lights went out following the most disappointing and terrifying election in my lifetime, I have been looking for answers in all the dark places.

What could possibly lead so many people to vote for an overtly racist criminal and blubbering idiot, who poured Lysol on a raging pandemic, before spearheading an attempted coup, instead of the incredibly accomplished woman, who has actually spent the bulk of her professional life standing up for the rule of law and protecting our country instead of attacking it?

— The fossil fuel industry is apparently paying off Republicans — in a practice legalized by Republicans on the Supreme Court — to make sure Congress never passes legislation to hold them accountable for all the death and destruction they’ve caused by lying about climate change for the past 50 years. Here, for example, are the biggest recipients of their largesse, according to OpenSecrets: Romney, Mitt (R-UT) $8,291,262; Cornyn, John (R-TX) $4,678,062; Cruz, Ted (R-TX) $4,138,421; McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) $2,852,107; McCarthy, Kevin (R-CA) $2,581,832; Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R-TX) $2,332,021; Inhofe, James M (R-OK) $2,320,139; Pearce, Steve (R-NM) $2,236,714; Barton, Joe (R-TX) $2,211,987; Brady, Kevin (R-TX) $2,087,396; Scalise, Steve (R-LA) $1,847,013; Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK) $1,792,602. If you haven’t yet noticed the trend, just check out the party affiliation of each…

— Convicted Felon Trump now has the “Scarlet F”: Our first felon President. There was a time that many of us remember when America — for all our faults, history, and stupid international meddling — was seen around the world as a beacon of morality and the staunchest defender of democratic values. Now, we’re the laughingstock — or the terror — of the developed world, since a grifting adjudicated sexual abuser, Putin lackey, and chronic liar is about to become president again. Alexander Hamilton warned us, but our media was far too busy fluffing Trump’s ego and sanewashing his BS to remind us that our first Secretary of the Treasury and the main author of the Federalist Papers wrote, in 1792:

The Associated Press reported Monday that the former first lady will not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration next week. Her husband will be there, however. So will the other former presidents and their spouses. So will the current president and the current first lady.

Michelle Obama didn’t attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral, so her decision to skip Trump’s swearing-in can be interpreted as less pointed than it seems. However, I’m not buying speculation about her health. She has said on more than one occasion that Trump’s white-power rhetoric (not her words) literally puts her life and her loved one’s lives at risk.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,it expects what never was and never will be.”

—Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816

Donald Trump was sentenced for his 34-count conviction on business fraud and other New York state felonies in connection with silencing a porn actress about their affair before the 2016 election. But despite his crimes, he received no punishment.

It would be hard for a novelist to imagine a more telling scene in the larger story of our moment in which a privileged old man can’t say enough to be racist, can’t break enough laws to be incarcerated, can’t fail enough to be a failure and can’t be stupid enough to be stupid.