The Donald's Date with Cinderella

On Thursday, January 26, a grim announcement  ticked across the news wires and internet but was buried to the point of near-obscurity by the blitz of executive orders and incessant accusations by the new administration of widespread voter fraud and media manipulation of  inaugural crowd reporting.

On November 14, 2016, an interview of Noam Chomsky— linguistics scholar, political philosopher, and public intellectual—by C. J. Polychroniou was published on the website of political news outlet Truthout. In the interview, Chomsky made the assertion that the Republican Party had become the most dangerous organization in world history. The assertion expectedly drew criticism for being preposterously partisan hyperbole, and some other things not quite so nice.

Chomsky’s point was made on observations about the two most potentially destructive human creations ever, each having within its exclusive characteristic to cause “catastrophes that could wipe out all of humanity or, at least, devastate modern civilization.” Either of the two acting alone and left unimpeded could fulfill  its nightmarish potential in due course. Those two Frankensteins-in-waiting are Anthropogenic Global Warming (climate change) and nuclear war. And to those, the members of the Republican Party either—on the subject of climate change—sneer at the overwhelming consensus of individual researchers and the esteemed agencies of NOAA, NASA, and many others based internationally, or—in the case of nuclear weapons—make frequent loose-lipped referrals and jingoistic threats to nukes as possible solutions to conflict, as did Sen. Ted Cruz did in recommending “making the sand glow” in combating ISIS; or the even more ominous suggestions to restart the arms race to add even further destructive power to those running the show.

The announcement Thursday was made by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the publication of a group that is comprised of physicists and environmentalist working in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which currently sits 15 Nobel Laureates—including luminaries Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss. The Bulletin originated at the University of Chicago by some of the same scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear bomb. In 1947, reports The Bulletin on its information webpage,

the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors...

"The clock was initially based on the threat of nuclear conflagration only, but in 2007 was expanded to include other potential civilization-altering calamities including climate change, and cyber-and biological warfare. It was first set at 7 minutes before midnight, and has been reset 20-odd times in the last 70 years. The furthest from midnight was in 1991 when the SALT agreement was signed by the U. S. and Moscow, soon followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The closest it was moved toward the bewitching hour was 11:58—just two minutes shy—in 1953, when the U. S. tested its first thermonuclear device, followed in the same year by the Soviets."

Thursday’s announcement advanced the clock to two and one-half minutes before twelve, the nearest it has been since that “two-minute warning” in 1953. The symbolic time-setters at The Bulletin have no supernatural ability to foresee the future, but given their familiarity with the history of this project, and the serious nature of their opinions and the effects of their pronouncements, one could only hope they make them only after rigorous evaluation and with religious regard the weighty consequences involved in their interpretation. Reasons for advancing the clock this year were: “the rise of nationalism, here and in Europe; the threat of a new arms race between the U. S. and Russia, along with heightened tensions in eastern Europe and NATO; President Trump’s comments on nuclear weapons; and the disbelief in the scientific consensus on climate change by the Trump administration.”

You would think Noam Chomsky was on the Board of Sponsors, having basically said much of the same thing two months earlier. Chomsky might wish, however, to rephrase his comment about the Republican Party to include the volatile and unknowable Trump as its leader as being a major factor in making his judgement. Such an amendment could change what seemed preposterous partisan hyperbole for some to an undeniable truism for all.

Your Government Takes Shape

Committees sent these Trump nominees to the full Senate today:

Betsy DeVos - Education	Rick Perry - Energy
Never taught  in public schools; never ran a public school. Wants to siphon tax dollars from public schools to private schools without requiring the private schools to meet state standards.	Proclaimed he wanted to shut down the Department of Energy, until he was offered this job. Staffers had to explain to him what the department actually does.

Malicious Counterproductive and Inept

"Malicious, counterproductive and inept," is how Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson characterized President Trump's recent travel directive. Formerly a policy adviser at the Heritage Foundation, and for five years a speechwriter for George W.  Bush, Gerson is hardly a "bleeding-heart liberal." No doubt there are Republicans and other conservatives who support the president's order, but criticism from both the left and right has deservedly reached vitriolic levels.

Gerson further described the Trump administration's travel ban as "the half-baked work of amateurs who know little about security, little about immigration law and nothing about compassion." "Every U.S. president since World War II has disagreed with the stunted and self-defeating view of the country now held by Trump," he criticizes. He ends his essay with, "When Donald Trump speaks on foreign policy, tyrants rest easier and dissidents and refugees lose hope."

This seems an apt summary of our situation. It would be bad enough if the President and his cabinet were merely inexperienced tinkerers, but the current administration are not so harmless as that. They have real goals and objectives, and suffer from the delusion that they know how to achieve them. This delusion runs so deep that the administration aren't even aware of their need to check with staffers who actually understand how immigration, national security, or the global economy work. Having chosen, on day one, to make enemies of the press, they have no way to explain themselves to the public. Having chosen similarly to make enemies of multiple intelligence agencies and replace knowledgeable staffers with sycophants, there is no expertise on hand to guide them.

I fear for America, and now I fear America.

Thinking About Consequences

In a Public Radio interview this morning, Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud storage company Box, had this to say about Trump's immigration directive:

"I'm very sensitive to the need to keep the U.S. secure, and also highly driven by data and logic and thinking that through. There's no data to suggest that anything about this particular ban would improve our security.  In fact, most of the bright minds on the subject reinforce and suggest this will harm our security in its ability to fan the flames of our enemies and, importantly, divide us from our allies."

(Listen to the Marketplace Podcast here).

This is a particularly brilliant quote from a CEO of a successful enterprise. Note the emphasis on something radically missing within the current administration: let's start with DATA, rather than campaign rhetoric; let's apply LOGIC and THINK THINGS THROUGH; let's consider the consequences of our actions; let's check with the BRIGHT MINDS, people who actually know how things work and have demonstrated a tendency for incisive and rational thought.


Mr. Levie and many other leaders in the High Tech sector understand something that President Trump and his Cabinet simply do not: that U.S. isolationism is not an option in today's global economy. Sadly, the incompetence with which Friday's new immigration rules were put into place is fast becoming the hallmark of Trump's administration. With the most experienced people gone, and with ideologues and propagandists calling the shots, no one bothered to consider the difficulties that might be caused by the Presidential Order, or even whether the order could pass constitutional scrutiny.


I've written before about manufacturing in the 21st century, which is often a global process for even the simplest of products. Many service businesses as well are international in scope, and many more rely on the free travel of sales people, scientists, and technical experts from around the world. A large part of the grocery business in the United States relies on imported goods. The administration seems unwilling to acknowledge that basic facts of modern life. Or perhaps modern life itself is what they want to stop. 

In the hands of amateurs such as now govern these United States, there is grave danger. The complex web of exports and imports of goods and services has never been planned out at a high level. It has, rather, developed organically, emerging from millions of independent decisions to buy a certain product from a certain source or hire an individual with a specific set of qualifications. By changing the flow of personnel, altering the availability of information, and changing import taxes, the Trump administration is making massive changes in the economic web, apparently with little thought to the consequences. The economic web will respond as organically as it developed. Markets will seek lower costs, new sources and new customers will be found, tariffs will be met with tariffs, qualified experts will go to different employers. This will happen nation by nation, company by company, and buyer by buyer, and not even President Trump can stop it.

I hope Americans are willing to give up their bananas, avocados, and cellphones.

The Poetry Corner

Sometimes the worst of times brings out the best of us in one way or another.  Angst and trepidation have been inspirations for all forms of artistic release, and often serve as beginnings for previously latent or suppressed talent. The editors at Life in the Trumpocene are not sure if the author of the following poem would claim any of those circumstances as his personally, but know he is on the right track. Check out this free verse styling  from  local Jared Elliot:

Oompa Loompa what did y'all doopity doo? Trump's signed another Executive Order without thinking shit through. Orange leathery looks like a shoe; booted brown people from the country, cause they got the wrong hue. Stranded banned wondering what the hell to do. Fuck you Donald Trump, the ACLU is gonna sue you. America will not stand for that radioactive nutria teeth colored tan. Man, you glow like weapons grade shot straight up from Iran, but we know Chernobyl is where Putin slipped the ring up on that tiny hand.

We do not speak your language, your values give us anguish. You will not take us back to the white washed utopia that you languish. So with red canisters in our hand, we resist, cue white foam, bye girl, you're...... 

In Case You're Counting...

Mark Rudd, an activist in the New Left in the 60's, is still active, though not quite as militant as in the days of the SDS, and published this list on his Facebook page earlier today. The authors of this blog do not claim to have fact checked this list, but have no reason to doubt that most of the claims could be verified. (This side has enough alternative real facts.) Not to mention the last couple of days worth of bad news, including, but not limited to, reaffirmations of the voter fraud case by administration spokesmen, executive orders banning suspected terrorists and people from suspect countries, beginning of border war and "end" of border wall with Mexico, and  Vip Pence as clarion and evangelical bitch of anti-choice at a large anti-choice rally in D. C. 

Several very close friends contend that there's ultimately no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Here's a list of actions taken by Trump or his advisors in the last few days. Read them and weep. Amazing. It's the complete ultimate rightwing agenda.

This is from a guy at Amherst:

For those who wanted to give Trump a chance, see below. I take no pleasure, no self-satisfaction in saying I'm not surprised; this is what I expected. We're only four days into his administration and with the conservative Republican agenda now empowered by this maverick, we could feel the effects, the repression for decades to come.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the DOJ’s Violence Against Women programs.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Minority Business Development Agency.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Economic Development Administration.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the International Trade Administration.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Legal Services Corporation.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Fossil Energy.
* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered all regulatory powers of all federal agencies frozen.
* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered the National Parks Service to stop using social media after RTing factual, side by side photos of the crowds for the 2009 and 2017 inaugurations.
* On January 20th, 2017, roughly 230 protestors were arrested in DC and face unprecedented felony riot charges. Among them were legal observers, journalists, and medics.
* On January 20th, 2017, a member of the International Workers of the World was shot in the stomach at an anti-fascist protest in Seattle. He remains in critical condition.
* On January 21st, 2017, DT brought a group of 40 cheerleaders to a meeting with the CIA to cheer for him during a speech that consisted almost entirely of framing himself as the victim of dishonest press.
* On January 21st, 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press conference largely to attack the press for accurately reporting the size of attendance at the inaugural festivities, saying that the inauguration had the largest audience of any in history, “period.”
* On January 22nd, 2017, White House advisor Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer’s lies as “alternative facts” on national television news.
* On January 22nd, 2017, DT appeared to blow a kiss to director James Comey during a meeting with the FBI, and then opened his arms in a gesture of strange, paternal affection, before hugging him with a pat on the back.
* On January 23rd, 2017, DT reinstated the global gag order, which defunds international organizations that even mention abortion as a medical option.
* On January 23rd, 2017, Spicer said that the US will not tolerate China’s expansion onto islands in the South China Sea, essentially threatening war with China.
* On January 23rd, 2017, DT repeated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing him the popular vote.
* On January 23rd, 2017, it was announced that the man who shot the anti-fascist protester in Seattle was released without charges, despite turning himself in.
* On January 24th, 2017, Spicer reiterated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing DT the popular vote.
* On January 24th, 2017, DT tweeted a picture from his personal Twitter account of a photo he says depicts the crowd at his inauguration and will hang in the White House press room. The photo is of the 2009 inauguration of 44th President Barack Obama, and is curiously dated January 21st, 2017, the day AFTER the inauguration and the day of the Women’s March, the largest inauguration related protest in history.
* On January 24th, 2017, the EPA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to freeze all grants and contracts.
* On January 24th, 2017, the USDA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to stop publishing any papers or research. All communication with the press would also have to be authorized and vetted by the White House.
* On January 24th, 2017, HR7, a bill that would prohibit federal funding not only to abortion service providers, but to any insurance coverage, including Medicaid, that provides abortion coverage, went to the floor of the House for a vote.
* On January 24th, 2017, DT ordered the resumption of construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, while the North Dakota state congress considers a bill that would legalize hitting and killing protestors with cars if they are on roadways.
* On January 24th, 2017, it was discovered that police officers had used confiscated cell phones to search the emails and messages of the 230 demonstrators now facing felony riot charges for protesting on January 20th, including lawyers and journalists whose email accounts contain privileged information of clients and sources

It's as BAD as we thought it would be!

Barely three weeks ago Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway was rightly ridiculed after she complained that the media "want to go with what’s come out of his mouth rather than what’s in his heart.” She was, of course, asking a great deal of the press and public. Obviously, voters ought to judge any and every candidate for elected office by the words that come out of the candidate's mouth, doubly so for a candidate with no political history to evaluate.

The words of candidate Trump were as inflammatory as they were vague. President-Elect Trump's words were often self-contradictory, as he flip-flopped his way through his own shock that he'd actually won. Conway didn't want us to judge those words, but Trump is no longer a mere candidate or electee. Trump is now President of the United States of America, and his words are fast becoming deeds. The reality his words are weaving is a horror to behold. The heart that Conway wanted us to image is now laid bare. It isn't pretty.

The beast he is conjuring is now taking shape. The wall along the Mexican border was not just idle campaign rhetoric but is now a presidential order, a vast boondoggle to be paid for by American taxpayers. Some unspecified reprisals will be made against the economic well-being of Mexico just so Trump can claim to have made Mexico foot the bill. Trump is now trying to run aspects of the U.S. economy by command, a totalitarian experiment in economics with outcomes none can predict. Science has been subordinated to political propaganda by the sweep of the presidential pen, requiring studies and publications to be approved by members of Trump's cabinet. The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be defunded because Trump in particular and Republicans in general disapprove of that high-brow, cultural stuff.  Parts of the Department of Justice that focus on protecting women and minorities, including the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) are on the chopping block. The list goes on and daily expands.

Day by day Trump's beast will take on more form. Gleeful minions will chant "Trump! Trump! Trump!" even as the beast turns and gores them. No matter. The minions are quite willing to immolate themselves as long as those "others" are destroyed too, as long as scary brown people and Muslims are kept out of "our" country, as long as globalism and internationalism and the development of other economies are all curtailed, as long as women go back to the kitchen and queers go back in the closet and those nasty intellectuals get their comeuppance, as long as we can all say "Merry Christmas" again instead of "Happy Holidays." Welcome to the Trumpocene!