Tag Archives: Robert Porath

Without Rails

Posted on by

The undercurrent of the Resistance to ICE in Minneapolis is the stipulation in the Constitution that law and order is built around maintaining human dignity and protecting human rights, not on brute force and power. In the ICE raids ordered by Tom Homan and Kristi Noem, due process in the court of law is replaced with Palantir algorithms identifying non-White immigrants targeted for arrest and deportation. This arises from Donald Trump’s promotion of White nationalism and embrace of the violence he pardoned in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. His Art of the Deal and The Apprentice are manuals of manipulation for personal gain, the skills with which he built his portfolio of wealth, privilege, and power. In his second Presidency, this wealth has ballooned “beyond anything ever seen before, never” in American politics, and his ambition has grown into disrupting the global political-economic order and forcing it into a megalomaniacal vision of himself orchestrating, god-like from on high. His deepest fear is being seen as a loser in any aspect of life. All opposition is met with vengeance. Psychoanalytically, this is certifiable sociopathy. The danger in America moving forward after Trump is the degree to which this fixation on holding and wielding power is ingrained in our cultural ethos, One sees it smoldering in the eyes of his enablers. The exploitation of human and natural resources has been here since the first immigrant arrivals, the establishment of slavery, and the “settling” of the continent. Donald Trump today need be seen as a breakthrough revelation of the extremes to which it can rise. Overall, this is a hard lesson for America and for all humanity. 

RP

Christian Values vs. Political Power: A Critical Look

Posted on by

It is becoming difficult not to feel cynical about the trajectory of the nation and the world as propelled by the “visionary” concepts of Donald Trump. A first concern is the environment. Climate change and global warming will not cease to exist because he claims it is a hoax, nor is it the inevitable cost of having a vibrant economy. Droughts, floods, and violent storms are the new everyday life on Earth. Denial of reality is an addict’s path. A second is the Conservative Right’s claim that America is a Christian nation. In my Sunday school education, I learned that the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ stress on compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and charity, were the core essence and distinguishing exception of Christianity over earlier religions. This is in sharp contrast with hard-right beliefs, be they evangelical or Catholic, which are more in line with the exercise of vengeance and power portrayed in the Old Testament, wherein humanity is a tooth-and-claw struggle for dominion. Care of the Earth and of those less fortunate are dismissed in today’s social and economic stratification. The power of wealth is valued above all. That this ethos thrives foremost with the President, in the halls of Congress and Justice, and in corner corporate offices leaves little optimism for the future of humanity in America, or, for that matter, life on planet Earth.

RP

Wave Boarding

Posted on by

Leaders of nations around the world, autocratic and/or elected, are all riding varying waves of political and cultural history and momentum. The United States is no exception, but what Donald Trump has ingeniously done is change the American ethos from one of being an amalgam “Melting Pot” of diverse peoples and cultures to the earlier one of “Manifest Destiny”, the belief that the bounty of New World was God’s gift to enterprising, primarily white immigrants claiming ownership of land and utilizing the newly arriving labor to create personal wealth and build a nation of winners and losers based on capitalist exploitation. Black slavery was eventually abolished, but “people of color” and women have long belonged to a distinctly lesser class to be put to use. In Donald Trump’s view, America has always been a white man’s world.

For those who thought and hoped his semi-coherent rambling was merely political bluster and posturing are today waking up to the realization that America has elected an ego maniac who fully intends to do everything he said he would do in leading the free world into the 21st Century. Those less zealous riding his coattails into the future should be questioning just what exactly they have signed up on.

When the unelected million/billionaire Tech titans are seated in the front row with the incoming Cabinet members behind them at the inauguration, it is clear who Trump sees as the best Americans to be rewarded, those making the most money. His pardon of the Capital rioters indicates his concept of law-and-order is that criminals supporting him are heroes, not criminals, and he intends to “weaponize the Justice Department” against his perceived enemies. The talk radio spin and doublethink on all this is mind boggling, but having January 6th made a national holiday looms as an actual possibility. Further, on the subject of mania and beyond, Elon Musk, the Buck Rogers dreamer of space travel and the colonization of Mars and self appointed Czar of government efficiency is not the first genius mind in history to go off the rails. His dalliance and embrace of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany is more than sadly disturbing. It is dangerous in our next four year journey into the future.

RP

Destiny in Question

Posted on by

Donald Trump, his MAGA acolytes, and his millionaire/billionaire supporters are simply a continuation of America’s “Manifest Destiny”, the belief that this New World continent was God’s gift to White men. That the birth of the United States included the genocide of the America’s First People, slavery, women regarded as second class citizens, and the exploitation of the Earth and human labor is not important to these “true” American patriots. Everything was for the taking, a concept that has not left the country. With its belief that racial and cultural diversity leads to the undoing of American values, the Trump phenomenon has deep roots in our history and heritage, and can be seen as an heirloom fruit of the Founding Fathers. Countering that embedded cultural momentum and its resulting concentration of wealth and power, and addressing human-caused global warming will require a monumental shift of national and human ingenuity and identity. It is not just us, the entire world faces a daunting future. There will be no easy sailing for whoever is the next President.

Media Machine

Posted on by

Between Elon Musk’s Twittersphere and the country-wide talk radio echo chamber Donald Trump’s Republican Party has a media propaganda machine equal to that of the Communist Party in China, Vladimir Putin’s autocracy in Russia, and Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. Information available to the public is to be tightly controlled and manipulated to favor the ruling regime. 1984 explores, in combining Orwell’s experience and insights expressed in two earlier novels, the callous oblivion of British capitalism in Burmese Days and Stalin’s betrayal in the Spanish Civil War of a truly populist people’s rebellion in Homage to Catalonia, the end of truth, love, and caring in power politics. Like Big Brother, Trump continually expresses an aura of absolute certainty of his correctness. More than ever Orwell should be required reading for everyone of voting age.

The Future of Trumpism

Posted on by

The MAGA rioters who stormed the Capitol and the Neo-Nazi Fascist Klansmen marching at a Trump rally in Charlottesville regarded themselves as patriotic revolutionaries acting under a romantic illusion that brute force was a realistic means to keep Donald Trump in the White House. The real insurrectionists today are the authors and proponents of Project 2025 who recognize that the true power in capitalist America is money, even more so since the Conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that it had unlimited “free speech” power. Project 2025 is structured around a Libertarian ethos of freedom from regulation, maximum profit, and concentrated wealth that will radically alter the historical arc of American democracy. It has deep pocket corporate and individual backers. Donald Trump aspires to personal autocratic power, able to hire and fire as he sees fit, but at the forefront of Project 2025, he is largely a storefront manikin and incoherent entry level drug to an authoritarian rule of wealth. J D Vance has had a few opening glitches, but with his manly White embrace of religious and family values, his roots in the Midwest, and time spent in the tech world of Silicon Valley, he stands as a reliably malleable successor to lead the Project 2025 revolution. In this election, America stands at a crossroads of its self-definition.

RP

Capitalism Is Not A System of Government

Posted on by
To the Editor:
    Given the nature of human nature, history shows that the so-called “freedom” of unregulated, free-market capitalism simply does not work.  Further, “capitalism” is merely an economic system that allows wealth to be made from wealth.  It is not a system of government and is not, by its nature, automatically conducive to democracy and, in fact, seems increasingly a corrupting influence on our representative democracy. The joke about the Golden Rule, that those with the gold make the rules, demonstrates just how far from being democratically governed we are today in America.
    Important also to note here is that we are not dealing with absolutes.  Neither capitalism nor democracy is, of its own, intrinsically good or bad.  What seems lacking is a morality of discipline and self-government with a watchful eye toward a common good.  Edith Hamilton’s claim that Athenian Greece invented the freedom of self-government, rose to glory, then fell by succumbing to the lure of unlimited freedom and power should stand as a warning to all Americans that conscience is still an integral part of any social contract.
RP

Media Should Hold Government Accountable

Posted on by
To the Editor:
    The devil is in the details.  Insider trading for elected officials and their staffs, legislation written by lobbyists, campaign funding offered and solicited, kickbacks, perks, travel junkets, and who knows what other  shenanigans, all being conducted behind the scenes, accepted as normal behavior, and overlooked by mainstream media outlets; and yet it is precisely the details that are important and the devils in them need to be brought into the light.  Government can be seen as the problem, but it needs to be made clear the players and impetus for the legislative actions that helped precipitate the financial collapse,  Clearly Congress cannot be trusted to police itself.  It is up to the media, that fourth estate of government, to do the deed.
RP

Church and State

Posted on by
To the Editor:
    The current pressure on the Catholic Church to comply with federal law is not unprecedented.  In 1895, in order to attain statehood, the Territory of Utah abandoned the Mormon Church’s sanction of polygamy, although it is still practiced by break-away sects.  If  the Catholic ban on insurance coverage for contraception falls under the umbrella of religious freedom, shouldn’t also Mormon polygamy, Evangelical refusal of inoculation against communicable diseases or medical care for sick children, or, for that matter, Islamic Sharia Law?  This is not an intrusion into religious belief.  Catholic women may act as they see fit, but insurance policy must meet federal standards.
RP