Author Archives: Matthew Stevens

Trump’s Brand is Con.

So don’t be a sucker.

“Don’t Be a Sucker” was designed to warn pre-internet moviegoers about the dangers of being taken in by a populist demagogue. It’s seventy five years old, so it barely predates Don the Con. It also perfectly encapsulates a what he is, and always has been, a dyed-in-the-wool conman.

However, the fact that he is a Russian-backed conman puts him in another category. He and his family are not just in it for their personal gain (in the form of Russian hotels, and even possibly huge shares of Rosneft. 

Go down this incomplete list of pro-Russia actions Don the Con has taken in direct contravention to American commitments and interests:

  1. Exiting the Iran deal. Oil price rises, American influence declines.
  2. Praising strongmen: Duterte, Erdogan, Kim, Orban have all been praised by Trump, making Putin’s mob-run government seem legitimate and normal. American style democratic norms have been criticized as dumb and weak. How is it in our best interests to criticize the form of government we use and promote while praising an adversarial system?
  3. Attempting to lift Russia Sanctions for seizing Crimea: the sovereignty of a country is a primary tenet of the rule of law. Nevertheless, Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula doesn’t seem to be sanction-worthy for Trump. Our NATO allies depend on this precept for their survival! The negative impact on our NATO alliance is extreme and this rewards Russia’s aggression.
  4. Korean military exercises: our armed forces and South Korea’s require regular cooperative exercises to maintain readiness. We have gained neither security nor specific commitments from North Korea. But Russia has gained a reduced military readiness stance by U.S. forced near its borders.

This man is not in office for you, people like you, or even people you like. His policies on trade directly harm his own narrow constituency. His  rhetoric has consistently targeted minorities and his slogan itself is dredged from the darkest parts of American history. He’s in office for himself and for Putin (to save himself). He came into office in violation of his oath of office on day one. His actions and the actions of a still rising number of convicted flunkies indicate he’s guilty, psychologically duplicitous and fully-compromised. This cannot end well, but it will end. Let your conscience be your guide and most of all …

Don’t be a sucker!

Comey on Trump

“Donald Trump’s presidency threatens much of what is good about this country.”

Considering the content of this book, the investigation into Trump and his obstruction of justice, and the rumored pardoning of Scooter Libby who was himself convicted for obstruction, perjury and lying to investigators, any supporter or member of the GOP has got to ask themselves just exactly what level of criminality they are comfortable with. You don’t get a pass for merely liking GOP policies, because civic duty now requires collective action to support our system of government and the rule of law. The RNC has made its decision already. They are going to the mats against the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department will win this and you will forever be tainted as siding with autocracy, just as an FYI. You will be outed as not such a fan of democratic processes or even really a fan of civil discourse and civic pride in institutions.

Hungarians cave to fear and xenophobia.

Fidesz makes bogeymen out of people fleeing war, famine, poverty and hopelessness making it’s citizens fear for their Christianity, itself a dying religion. As a result they cede their own liberty, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and rights to petition the courts for a redress of grievances. This strategy, to wage a campaign based on self-generated fantasies, pushed into the minds of citizens in an environment of limited news resources is the surest way to degrade a democracy. Hungary as a Democracy is at its lowest point since the fall of Communism. But don’t worry! The “Viktator” has a lovely view of it all from his home overlooking his football stadium. Life is grand at the top, that it sits atop a wobbley mountain of corruption is of no importance.

We can see this will end badly, as all authoritarian regimes do. The question is how to the Hungarians organize a diverse opposition to this coalescing of power? Jobbik is a rude and inappropriate joke of a political party. Anti-Semitic fear-mongering is so last millennium but even they oppose Orbán in coalition with the left wing parties. However the election results show this will not have much effect on the FIdesz party’s ability to maul the constitution in the foreseeable future.

How the citizens of Hungary reassert Democratic principles is an open question. The Atlantic recently interview one of the lone independent investigative journalists about the state of affairs there and I recommend it. 

The GOP attacks voting, a Signature Move Towards Authoritarianism

Just was informed by my dad about this:

“In a little-noticed 6-3 vote today, the House Administration Committee voted along party lines to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission, which helps states run elections and is the only federal agency charged with making sure voting machines can’t be hacked. The EAC was created after the disastrous 2000 election in Florida as part of the Help America Vote Act to rectify problems like butterfly ballots and hanging chads. (Republicans have tried to kill the agency for years.) The Committee also voted to eliminate the public-financing system for presidential elections dating back to the 1970s. This cannot be tolerated, especially at a time when our voting systems are still under attack. Its criminal.

This puts the function of the EAC under the Office of Management and Budget, aka, Mike Mulvaney’s plaything.
Director of the Office of Management and Budget

On the 50th Anniversary of the Death of America’s greatest 20th Century Leader: Martin Luther King



Let’s remember in this time of rising authoritarianism one of Martin Luther King’s many important statements on oppression:

“To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor,”, King wrote in his essay “Three Ways of Meeting Oppression.”
We are obligated to resist as much as the oppressor is obligated to hear our protests. And so we resist..

When Gatekeeping Institutions Fail

Great quote from How Democracies Die. By Levitsky & Ziblatt
— “Collective abdication – the transfer of power to a leader who threatens Democracy — usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable or at least preferable to the alternatives.”

Still think Fox News is News?

Right now there are over 800 demonstrations happening across America and Fox News is running some bullshit “Extra” piece about how Social Security “entitlements” are going to overtake Defense spending.

Then when they do cover the protests they refer to them as “anti-gun rallies”. These are marches against gun violence and for gun legislation reform!

News outlets report, and you decide which are news outlets. It’s never been more obvious what a monstrous scam on America’s elderly population is being run right now.

It can and will get much much worse.

Trump hires the worst person, yet again.

When it comes to this regime, it can and almost certainly will get much, much worse. Bolton has no business speaking or working in public service and shouldn’t be allowed to spell “nuclear” much less negotiate with foreign states about it. His rudimentary thinking is anachronistic. He belongs to a time when serfs and peasants did not read, check email or vote. Just look at some of his brainier statements:

“The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.”

source: Voice of America.

This quote was over a decade ago. He clearly doesn’t think Iran can be a rational actor or that negotiating with a country can be successful. This view ignores past successes such as in Libya. Yes, Libya is what success looks like! It’s not pretty, but it also isn’t a nuclear power now.

And contrary to this view he thinks Russia is a hopeful scenario (surprise!).

“I wouldn’t give up on Russia, and with oil at $90 a barrel, they can refurbish their strategic capabilities and under an authoritarian regime, those nuclear weapons are still there and in the wrong hands we might have a problem again.”

source: Human Events

We need to consider whether the 2018 elections are going to allow the American electorate to impeach the President and Vice-President fast enough to prevent an unnecessary war. I mean even Joe Biden’s former national security advisor is pretty certain Bolton forebodes trumped up grounds for conflict.

And now we see an actual conservative like George Will recognizes the ensuing danger Trump has welcomed into his administration.

Trump appears poised to replace Rosenstein and have Mueller fired. So what comes next? How should the resistance respond? Is a national strike the only way forward once the President attempts to stop the investigation?

Trump fails to condemn Putin’s nerve gas attack in Britain.

Yesterday, without even informing the press corps, or the American public, the American President called Vladimir Putin and failed to condemn Putin’s nerve gas assassination attempt in Britain or the Russian hacking of American infrastructure facilities, among a litany of recent aggressions. Instead he congratulated Putin’s sham election victory!

To be fair, the American President appears to have successfully protected his financial exposure to Russian mobsters, uh, I mean creditors.

Speaking of sham election victories: The Guardian is reporting that the board of Cambridge Analytica has failed to oust the CEO even after he was caught on tape admitting to electioneering opting instead to suspend him. Bravo, fortune favors the bold, chums.

We cannot expect other strongmen to do much of anything beyond simple flattery of this American regime’s floundering head of state, before going about their anti-democratic business of self-enrichment. What have they got to lose? America may not be a perfect country, but we have clear interest in preserving democratic processes and encouraging democratic institutions globally. As long as the GOP fails to correct their catastrophic error in party judgement in choosing to support this criminal, they do harm to themselves as Americans, and the well-being of their own families far into the future. They serve themselves alone, for the brief flash of time they maintain in office.

Yes, we are tired of the “winning”… of other despots.