The problem with news coming so fast and furious (and with equally silly sequels) is that I really can’t keep up. On the other hand, waiting a little bit to comment means that one catches all the subsequent news that expands the context of the news event beyond the immediate hot take.
For example, the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. It wasn’t even that long after the fact that people found out the shooter was able to obtain his weapons, legally, once he reached his 18th birthday. Which is exactly what he did.
Every one of these mass shootings brought up by the media is indeed a macabre ritual, and we are reaching the stage of the rite where liberal high dudgeon sinks into resignation and despair as they realize yet again that all their “common sense gun safety measures” would not have stopped the Uvalde shooting, that nothing short of precrime would have stopped this shooting, and barring psychic powers, the only thing that would have is the state of Texas being just as prejudiced against gun fans as they are against women seeking abortions.
Then there’s what we found out about the police response. Or acute lack thereof. Apparently a member of the Department of Public Safety was one of the first officers to confront the shooter. At one point there were cops on the scene for the better part of an hour, but according to the Public Safety officer, they waited because “they could’ve been shot.”
As one Internet wag put it, “Never saw a fireman stand outside a burning building cause they were too scared to go in. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any ‘fuck the fire department’ songs.”
I mean, half the argument made by the gun nuts is that you need guns to protect yourself in the heat of the moment cause 911 Is A Joke, “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six”, and all that. And the liberal counter-argument is that we’re supposed to trust the police to secure law and order. Really?
Maybe Republicans are right and we should be should be arming the teachers. After all, if a thug comes busting in the school, it’s not like the POLICE are gonna do anything.
But Uvalde was hardly the only shooting in the limited period. It’s just the one that got publicity for some reason. If one defines a “mass shooting” as one where four or more people are shot in the same incident, then since the Uvalde shooting on May 24 there have been…. well, I quit counting after 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2022 Four were on June 19. Keep checking the link!
Even so, the fact that Uvalde is just a few bullets dropped on an over-full bucket meant that Democrats in Washington were actually able to pressure Republicans into having bipartisan negotiations toward gun regulations. I guess some professional Christians actually figured out there’s no point in protecting individual pregnancies when it’s so easy to commit retroactive abortion in mass quantities. Of course everyone acted like some progress was going to be made, and then some of the Republicans who declared themselves in favor of negotiation started to back off.
The main objection seems to be with the concept of “red flag” provisions against domestic abusers, including eliminating “the boyfriend loophole” where the laws do not apply to an individual who had not been co-habiting with a potential victim. This is allegedly because of a concern that such laws could be abused against certain targets, but it really seems to be because Republicans know their base.
I mean, I could make serious cases against these laws on Second Amendment grounds or the rights of an accused, but it should be pretty clear from the past few years, if not decades, that “conservative” positions are based on the most superficial, bad-faith and political ulterior motives. Rights of the individual, let alone the functioning of government, are meaningless compared to pandering for votes.
Again, my position is actually that of arch-conservative Senator John Kennedy (BR.-Louisiana) who said, “We don’t need gun control, we need idiot control.” But again, in both cases it’s Kennedy’s Republican Party that’s standing in the way of that, cause if there’s anything they love more than guns, it’s idiots.
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Which gets to my second issue: The January 6 hearings and why they still matter.
The congressional hearings, managed by Bennie Thompson (D.-Mississippi) and Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney (representing what’s left of the non-Trump Republican Party), determined among other things, that Trump’s “Stop the Steal” fundraiser campaign didn’t go to legal efforts to contest the vote but straight into his pockets (certainly the least surprising news so far), that the Proud Boys (whom Viceroy Trump told to ‘stand back and stand by’ in a debate) would have killed Mike Pence if they had had a chance, and that while some of the actual ‘peaceful tourists’ were milling about the area or listening to Trump’s speech, some of the Proud Boys were taking advance positions, some of which they’d been shown the day before, and assaulted security barricades before Trump’s speech even finished.
“The attack on our Capitol was not a spontaneous riot,” committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said. She added that intelligence available before Jan. 6 identified plans to “invade the Capitol, occupy the Capitol, and take other steps to halt Congress’s count of electoral votes that day.”
That sort of advance maneuver and coordination (such as bringing zip ties, body armor and a scaffolding to a ‘peaceful protest’, as one does) not only undermines the idea that we had a spontaneous gathering that “got a little out of hand”, it directly confronts Trump’s best defense, what legal people would call mens rea – basically that Trump was too stupid or ignorant or crazy to know he was breaking the law. Several times, people who were not crazy (like Bill Barr) and even people who ARE crazy (like Rudy Guiliani) told Trump that his substitute-electors scheme was not legally feasible, and the fact that he pursued it anyway demonstrates intent. And while Trump, like any good Mob boss, was at pains to avoid direct involvement, this week the committee brought up how he pressured various state election boards and was caught on tape by the Georgia Secretary of State telling him to “find” just enough votes to swing the state. (Remember, the Trump Organization is like the Corleone Family, except everybody is Fredo.)
All of which returns us to the question that has been pressing ever since the 2016 presidential campaign: Why haven’t we put this babbling orangutan in a cage where he belongs?
But then we know the answer to that question is the answer to how he became president in the first place: Because enough people in enough critical states supported him and continue to do so. It’s why Mitch “the Bitch” McConnell refused to press for a conviction in Trump’s second impeachment, even though his term was over and conviction was simply a matter of making sure he could never run again. Because enough people (besides Trump himself) would like that.
Which is pretty clear, because if the Banana Republican Party really wished to “move on” and start over, they wouldn’t be so defensive about the subject. They could just say, “hey we agreed with Trump’s policies, he gave us a conservative court, but he made a huge mistake and we have other candidates who can do what he did without the baggage.” But no.
No, you have Church of Trump junior priests like Congressman Gym Jordan (BR.-Ohio) tweeting that the Democratic Congress is ignoring “Gas at $5 per gallon. Moms can’t find baby formula. Grocery prices skyrocketing. Border in crisis.”
Christ on a pogo stick. Yes, Trumpniks. The economy sucks. Inflation sucks. Democrats suck. Now, can you point out the section of the Constitution that says a bunch of crybabies with Confederate flags get to overturn the result of the Electoral College once gas hits five dollars a gallon? Because if you can’t, that argument is just dodging the point.
As if that objection even matters though, cause even if you acknowledge there’s only so much this or any other president can do about global supply chain issues, it doesn’t make inflation hurt any less. But then the Republican Party is no longer the conservative wing of a political system where everyone believes in market liberal economics and constitutional rule of law. It’s the right-wing version of a Leninist party that participates in the political system only to the extent that it can game its rules to make sure they never have to worry about elections again. And to do that they need to make sure the declared defenders of that system – the Democrats – fail.
And if the suck-ass economy continues to drag down the country, it may drag down the Democrats in the midterms and there won’t be much chance of bringing the coup party to justice.
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Which leads to my third set of observations.
It seems that Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is finally starting to turn against the defenders. One bad sign: The Western media isn’t covering Ukraine nearly as much anymore.
The fact is, Putin’s current strategy is the one he probably should have pursued all along. After mistakenly thinking that the Russian military had the logistics and operational capacity to take down a country the size of Ukraine in a few days or weeks, Putin downsized his expectations and narrowed the focus to the small eastern area of Donets where he already has local support and a concentrated front. Now most of Ukraine’s casualties are being inflicted by Russians at a safe distance with artillery, and Ukraine is running out of the Soviet/Russian gear they started off with, while the better Western gear is going to take time to deliver, and time to train with.
And while the goal of the West was to use sanctions to cut off Russia from its oil-based economic supports, according to Business Insider, “Russia is on track to make more money off oil and gas exports this year than it did in 2021, and it’s got the EU to thank“. The Russian ruble actually increased in value from its prewar levels. As it turns out, restricting the supply of something, either via war or sanctions, makes it more valuable. Capitalism works, who knew? Apparently not the Biden Administration.
To such extent as we have had a sanctions regime, Russia has been getting around it with exports to India, China and other places that aren’t really aligned against or with the US. And since both Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of food staples like grain and sunflower oil, Putin’s war of choice is already creating a global food crisis. And we can already see that as this goes on, the domestic impact is undermining the governments that are trying to resist Putin in favor of his local friends.
It’s almost like Russia’s national policy depends on making the entire world worse.
And the domestic impact of this manufactured crisis may be worse for EU countries than it is for America. We can ramp up our oil production, but for nations like Germany and Hungary, American fuel exports aren’t as convenient as those from Russia. But you know who has a lot of oil and mineral deposits in Europe outside of Russia? Ukraine!
Now does all this make more sense?
Putin was clearly trying to assimilate the entire nation (for one thing it was the main export route for Russian natural gas to those EU countries) but what he’s got right now is the next best thing.
Right now, the sketch plan looks like this:
- Invade Ukraine, Russia’s main competitor and secondary source for both food and fuel,
- Thereby creating both a food crisis and energy crisis which itself raises prices on everything else,
- Block off the Black Sea so Ukraine can’t export food and fuel, exacerbating the artificial price crisis,
- Keep the pressure on Ukraine (no matter what the cost to ordinary Russians) and maintain the manufactured inflation until the Western nations get sick of it,
- Have Putin’s Little Bitch Boy run for president again, help him win (again) and wait until 2025 so he can turn the USA back into Russian North America,
- Profit!
Of course bad as things look for Ukraine, and as bad as they’re going to get, this mode of thinking really means that Putin is trying to hurt the West at least as much as Ukraine. And we’re not the ones really hurting. That may be one reason the American public’s commitment is lacking, but by the same token, it’s not like the government really needs a public commitment to engage in foreign policy maneuvers. After all, who really asked for a war in Yemen which is continuing without any real resolution? Nobody, except the Saudis and the Americans who are financing that war effort, and that business opportunity is what matters to them.
Basically, Putin is betting that our entitled consumer culture and greed will cause us to succumb to Russia but Russia will not succumb to the greed and production capacity of our military-industrial complex.
I seem to recall that Putin’s mentors in the Soviet Union made a similar bet with the invasion of Afghanistan. It didn’t work out too well.