Mug Shot

 Of the things Trumpists have said about Trump’s mug shot, I think the dumbest is the claim that having to face the hombre behind that stern, tough guy visage would put the fear in Putin, Xi, and other bad actors in the world and make them straighten up. The United States does not need a blustering bullyboy in the White House to deal with its enemies. Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were two old men with sunny public dispositions, one of them a cripple. They directed the destruction of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (though in each case the final victory happened under a successor). The things needed are competence, knowledge, courage, steadfastness, vision, ability to inspire, decisiveness, and capacity for strategic thought. Trump lacks all of them. I would guess that Putin and the rest would be fine with having him back in power.

Vacations Long Ago

 

Susan Vass’s Ammo Grrll column this Friday recounts a memorable vacation trip she made with her parents and siblings in 1965. She suggested others think back to their memorable vacations from their youth. When I was a kid my parents never took trips except to visit relatives. The ones I remember most are the trips we made from our home in west Texas to visit my mother’s sister in Alexandria, Virginia, probably because they were the longest. Leaving early the first day we would make it made it to my father’s sister’s house in Linden, Texas or his brother’s house in Texarkana and spent the night there. Linden and Texarkana are almost in Louisiana or Arkansas and definitely part of the south, while our home was sixty miles from New Mexico and part of the west. There were so many more trees. That first day was the easy day for driving with over half of the way in mainly empty country where the roads were not crowded, and the towns were far apart. From there the going would get slower and harder. There were no interstates. The highways were mainly crowded two lane roads that went right through the middle of the many towns along the route. It was always our hope to make it all the way from east Texas to Chattanooga in one day, but we never did. On one trip we made it in a long day to Attalla, Alabama. We stayed that night at a little motel I still remember. It was beside the highway. There was a lawn between the rooms and the highway with swings, and my brother and I played out there after dinner until it got dark. At motels my mother and brother and I stayed in the car, while my father went with the manager or desk clerk to check the room and make sure it was okay before checking in. That was common in the days before there were many chain motels. The third day usually took us to some place in southwestern Virginia, with our arriving in Arlington on the following one. On the road we mainly just drove. We didn’t stop at any of the the alligator farms, souvenir joints, or places promising to display freaks of nature such as two headed snakes along the way. We never saw Rock City despite reading invitations to do so on barns all over the place. We did stop at some places on some trips, though. One time in Chattanooga we visited a place called the Confederama which had a large relief diorama with toy soldiers and flashing lights illustrating the story of battles around the city. My brother and I thought that  was cool. Another time we visited the famous natural bridge in Virginia, but such stops were not usual. My aunt’s small house was on a couple of acres on what was then the outskirts of Alexandria. The lot was on a small hill and my brother and I had fun enacting battles as we charged up and down it. We did and saw a lot in the area around Washington on those trips. We saw the Capitol and the famous monuments. We visited Gettysburg, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and the Washington zoo. I saw the ocean. It was fun. My aunt was glad to see her sister’s family and made a fuss over us kids. My uncle did not like kids, but, like many childless men had firm notions of how to raise them and what to expect from them. I came up short, but there was nothing really unpleasant about it. My mother told us he was just a brusque northerner (he grew up New York), but I doubt that was it. The trips run together in memory. I have no records, and am not fully sure what thing happened on which trip. What is clear in my mind is that the trips were good and good for us kids, if not necessarily for my father. It is also clear that it was a different, poorer, and more backward world then in the parts of the south we drove through, and that even with the congestion on the interstates, traveling by car is much easier these days. Those trips were special and may have done something to stimulate my lifelong fondness for the open road.

Dangerous Chicken Littles

 

Several well known conservatives and Trumpists in the media are writing that America is no longer a free country but has become or is becoming a leftist tyranny as shown by the actions of the “deep state” and indicated recently by the indictments against Trump. It is worth trying to understand those claims and find useful ways to argue against them.  For it will be dangerous for the country if very many people come to believe them, since the right response to the approach of tyranny is war or rebellion.

One might begin by admitting that there is some truth to the claims of conservatives that “deep state” organizations such as the IRS, FBI, and DOJ are acting against them and as agents or protectors of their opponents. Democrats like taxes and tax collectors and generally favor giving those collectors as much arbitrary power as they can get away with giving them. Republicans often favor reducing some of those powers. Since bureaucrats naturally are for expanding their power and authority, people in the IRS tend to favor the Democrats on things such as granting or revoking tax exempt status to organizations and perhaps selecting targets for audits. It would be odd if they didn’t. The FBI has a long history of treating political undesirables especially harshly going back to Randy Weaver, Cointelpro and the Panthers, and for decades farther. The bureau is a federal bureaucracy. Bureaucratic officials want to please the higher ups. These days the higher ups in the administration dislike conservatives, Trumpists, and anti-abortionists. It would be strange and atypical if people running the bureau were not, as they say, sensitive to that. The DOJ is a unit of the administration, run by political appointees who like that administration’s supporters and do not care for its opponents – today the same conservatives, Trumpists, and anti-abortionists. It is to be expected that its employees would know which way the winds are blowing. These things are not right, but neither are they new or unusually sinister as government and politics go. The United States is still a mainly free country governed mainly under the constitution. The FBI, DOJ, and IRS are little if any worse than they often have been in the past (and in some ways better than was usual earlier).

As to Trump, conservatives should remember that he did try to remain in power illegally after December 14^th 2020, that his order to Pence on January 6^th 2021 was an attempted coup d’etat, and that months later he demanded in writing to have the constitution overthrown to place him back in power. His apologists are right that no former president has been treated as he has been. They forget that no other president did the things he did. As a useful thought experiment, they should ask themselves how they would have reacted if Barack Obama had claimed Hillary Clinton really won in 2016, brought rioters in to support his claim, incited them to attack the Capitol, and ordered his vice president to overturn the election by certifying electoral votes for Clinton from a few states Trump won. I think they would have seen it as an attack on the country and not minded when the law caught up with him later. I doubt if very many of them would have been ranting about those prosecuting him being domestic terrorists or have seen his prosecution as evidence that the republic was finished. They probable would have thought he had it coming, as he would have if he had done such thing, and as Trump does, since he did.

The republic is not going or gone, and the dictators are not coming or already here. Responsible conservatives and any possible responsible Trumpists need to acknowledge that and reject the apocalyptic stuff before things get out of hand. Then those who want to can be mad about the law catching up with Trump all they want.

Trump's Latest Indictment

 

There are various reactions coming from Republicans and conservatives to Trump’s most recent indictment. Some accept the fact that the man tried to overthrow the republic and consider the charges appropriate to the crimes he committed. I do not hear of very many who are doing that. Others agree that Trump was wrong, but argue on technical legal grounds that his wrongdoing was not felonious. There seem to be a few more who are saying that.

The reaction I hear most supporting and standing with Trump, arguing that he is an innocent victim of a witch hunt by Democrats trying to punish him for using his constitutional right to say he really won the election. The argument is not only wrong but silly. Trump is not being charged with saying he really won the election, but the Democrats and the deep state stole his victory from him, or with trying to get courts to agree with him. If all he had done was gripe, pout, rant, sue, and play the sad victim, there would have been no legal case against him. He is being charged with trying to void the election and remain in power illegally and unconstitutionally, and he did it. He attempted a coup d’etat.

Then there are those who say the indictment is not only wrong but almost or even actually the end of the republic, providing conclusive evidence that America is no longer a free country but rather a dictatorial police state run by Democrats. One can have a very low opinion of the Democrats and still realize this is crazy and dangerous. It is very nearly a call for rebellion. If taken literally, it would be a call to rebellion. They should be careful.