The Kakistocracy Pays Off Russia
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had been with Exxon for years before he was picked for this job in January, had been supervising a deal with Russia that was in the works when sanctions were applied against certain Russian officials in 2014 in retaliation for the annexation of the Crimea. This deal is estimated to be worth some $500 billion or more, but it was put on hold by the sanctions. Exxon has applied to the Treasury Department for a waiver to the sanctions in order to continue the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
The deal would help to prop up Vladimir Putin’s government, which has been in financial trouble since the price of oil dropped dramatically with the advent of fracking and other advanced drilling techniques. With this oil money, Putin could invest more in his military without crimping his overall budget. The financial bite of the sanctions would be undermined, which is almost as good as having the sanctions lifted completely. The negative publicity surrounding the lifting of sanctions could be avoided by approving Exxon’s waiver request.
The Kakistocracy Gains a Foothold in China
The Guardian has reported that, on the day Chinese President Xi Jinping met with President Don the Con and his daughter Ivanka, she gained preliminary approval for three new trademarks in China. Ivanka markets products like jewellry and handbags under her own trademarks, and she has applied for over three dozen trademarks in China. The approval will make it easier and more profitable for her to market her products in China, an emerging luxury market. Business conditions for foreign firms are notoriously difficult in China, and Ivanka’s move into the territory will be greatly eased by her relationship with the kakistocrat-in-chief. The opportunities for corrupt self-dealing are boundless in the new administration.
Don the Con, the Kakistocrat in Chief
Donald J. Trump has accumulated a lot of epithets, many of them centered around the color orange or his resemblance to an orangutang, a jackal, or other deplorable or outrageous animals. Donald himself has made a practice of using epithets for many people, from “Crooked Hillary” to “Lyin’ Ted”; he has insulted many more people with adjectives such as “failing” and “sad.”
The most important aspects of a good epithet for Donald are relevance, brevity, and insult value. “The Con” is descriptive because Donald is a con man, it is brief, and it rhymes. I propose that we should refer to “Don the Con” as much as possible.
“Kakistocracy” is, by the way, a government by the worst of men. That certainly applies to Don the Con, who has already been violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution and an express contract with the General Services Administration (GSA) since the day of his inauguration. (This refers to the Old Post Office, an historic building on which his company has a 60-year lease to operate a hotel; the contract he signed explicitly bars anyone with a government job from the lease. Naturally, after he was inaugurated, he appointed a new head for the GSA, and the contract was interpreted in a way that was favorable to him.)
Don the Con’s latest outrage, and little reported on, is to make secret ethics waivers for some of his appointees to allow them to work on areas that would be considered conflicts of interest. Since they are secret, we have no way of knowing which conflicts of interest that appear have already been waived by Don the Con. In addition, he has made the White House visitor logs secret “for national security and privacy reasons.” Naturally certain individuals would prefer that we not know that they have visited with Don the Con.
Never lose sight of the fact that while Don the Con is entertaining us with his outrageous corruption, he is infiltrating the Administration with ideological people who change or eliminate many aspects of government to fit their extreme views. Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch is only the most obvious of these nefarious individuals. In particular, large parts of the scientific work of agencies like NOAA, the Interior Department, and NIH are being altered or eliminated to avoid conflicts with extreme anti-scientific views held by alt-right conservatives. The destruction of scientific agencies is perhaps the worst crime of this administration, and it goes on largely in secret; by the time Don the Con is thrown out, decades of scientific work will have been lost and the general public will never know.
We must also avoid over-reacting; writing on Twitter that “Donald Trump must hang” does no good and may invite a visit from the Secret Service.
The Same Two Almond Trees
Here’s a bizarre thought: what if Putin told al-Assad to drop “just one” sarin bomb to give Donald an excuse to loudly berate the Russians and attack a Syrian air base (with minimal casualties)– all to distract the American public from the news that Carter Page had been the subject of a warrant for surveillance because of his Russia ties? In private, Vladimir could tell Secretary of State Tillerson that everything is really OK– just keep up the great job you are doing of dismantling the American government. After all, what could be better for the Russians than an America destabilized by poor government services to its neediest people? This is just what Donald is doing, exacerbating income and wealth inequality and freeing the police and the border patrol to abuse disfavored people– all of which leads to a less stable society, less able to counter the threat from a foreign enemy.
British intelligence agencies passed routine “sigint” (signals intelligence, e.g. tapped phones) on Trump associates’ unusual contacts with Russian agents who were under surveillance because of their activities, starting in late 2015, to American intelligence agencies. American agencies were described as “asleep” at the time in relation to Donald’s collusion with Russian “active measures” (disinformation including fake news stories, releasing hacked emails, etc.) that Vladimir Putin intended to attempt to sway the election against Hillary.
A story in today’s Guardian describes the intelligence that British agencies received as the fruit of routine surveillance of known Russian agents, but the British were so concerned about the connections to Donald’s campaign that they pointed this out to American intelligence agencies. Those agencies failed to make the connection until July 2016, when they requested a warrant for surveillance of Carter Page, a close aide to Donald.
In fact, Donald has been a subject of Russian cultivation since at least 2007, when he publicly lauded Vladimir as “doing a great job.” Now Russia has tested the limits of Donald’s friendship by authorizing al-Assad’s use of sarin on rebel civilians. It remains to be seen how far Donald will go in opposing Russia’s moves in what has become the Second Cold War.
(the photo above is the view to the east from the location of the two almond trees)
The White House, through Sean Spicer, released a four-page dossier of declassified intelligence about Bashar al-Assad’s latest sarin attack on rebels in Khan Sheikoun, accused Russia of spreading “false narratives” about it, and said Assad was worse than Hitler… as if anyone could be worse than Hitler. Spicer later apologized to the Israelis, and the Israeli Cabinet accepted his apology.
In other news, the British government confirmed that samples taken from the ground in the area of the attack tested positive for sarin or a sarin-like substance.
The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a holder of the Russian Order of Friendship, met with Vladimir Putin late today, Moscow time, for some two hours. Yesterday, in a speech to European leaders, Tillerson set out what sounded like an ultimatum to Vladimir to stop supporting Assad and cooperate with the US against ISIS. Likely there was nothing of substance accomplished during the tet a tet except an airing of views, and Rex explained to Vlad that he didn’t really mean to make it sound like he was giving him an ultimatum.
The situation appears to be a dramatic turn-around for Donald, but in reality it is merely a distraction: the American cruise missile strike on Syria was just a slap on the wrist and will change nothing about the strategic situation in the area. Donald merely struck out viscerally in response to an image he saw on TV. Donald is still guilty of being what the New York Times called an “agent of influence”:
Michael Morrell, a former acting C.I.A. director, wrote last fall that Mr. Trump seemed to be an “unwitting agent of influence” for Moscow.
The Kakistocracy Shapes Up
The battle between Donald’s former favorite advisor, Steve Bannon, and Donald’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been epic. Yesterday a puff piece in the Guardian showed Steve and Jared making up in front of a smiling Donald. Since Steve has already called Jared a “cuckservative” (literally, a “cuckolded conservative”) and a “globalist” (behind his back) and Jared is much more powerful (being a relative of Donald’s), it is likely that Steve will soon be shunted to a position without direct access to Donald. This means he will become effectively powerless.
This shift is also seen in the departure of KT McFarland as deputy national security advisor. She has been offered a post as Ambassador to Singapore. She is a former TV personality from Fox, and she will be replaced by a former Goldman Sachs executive named Powell.
These changes represent a distinct shift from alt-right to mainstream conservative in Donald’s team of advisors. It is likely that Donald will abandon his populist stands and conform (to some extent) to a more conventional Republican conservative approach. How do you suppose Donald’s most rabid populist supporters will feel about his abandonment of economic nationalism and anti-semitism? Could this be the last straw that estranges Donald’s 35% (those who still approve of him in opinion surveys)?
The Kakistocracy Watches Fox News
Donald’s motivation for ordering a cruise missile strike on the Syrian government air base that delivered a nerve-gas attack on rebel civilians in Idlib province? He saw horrifying pictures of the victims on Fox News. Reportedly, he was so incensed by the coverage of dead children with foam on their mouths that he immediately decided on a strike, which occurred just 60 hours later. There are so many problems with this explanation that it is hard to know where to begin. First, an immediate retaliatory strike which damaged the base from which the mission was flown and nothing else can be, rationally, justified. Second, it was technically a violation of international law, since it was done without the consent of the United Nations, NATO, or the government on which it was conducted.
Third, from a political point of view, it was the right move since it was very popular and distracted people from the notion that Donald is Vladimir’s puppet. Donald is, in truth, anything but Vlad’s puppet: he is more of a loose cannon. Donald is very difficult to blackmail, unless someone has documentary evidence that he directly colluded with Vladimir to throw the election his way; he himself has said that he could go out on Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot someone and it wouldn’t affect his popularity. Besides, it is hard to make an historically low popularity rating of 36 percent go down.
Fourth, do we want a president who makes decisions based on Fox News coverage of an event?
There are reports that Syrian rebels were disappointed with the strike because it had no effect on al-Assad’s ability to wage war on them. Militarily, it was a slap on the wrist. Truly, if this strike was justified, then a no-fly zone over the whole of Syria is even more justified; we can at least get NATO support for that, and Senate approval is also necessary. There is good evidence that Donald has no long range plan, but that he is leaning towards returning to Obama’s policy of regime change. That is more in line with the policy of the “deep state”, but sending American troops to Syria is not a good long term tactic as it will inevitably alienate locals and play into the Islamic State’s apocalyptic fantasies. Donald has already ordered 400 more American soldiers into Syria, in addition to the 500 or so Special Forces said to already be there. That is probably 400 too many. In addition, Americans are prime targets for capture and horrific execution, a propaganda bonanza for the IS.
Please read this article in Wikipedia, for your own good. It lays out a model of the news media that accounts for an enormous bias in the presentation of news. What is worse, it introduces the idea that when you consume something that is “free”, you are paying in ways other than money. For example, Facebook is “free”, but the program is designed to worm personal information out of its users that is then used to target advertising directed to them. The advertising revenue is what pays the money to keep Facebook running, and revenue is maximized by intensely particularized targeting of that advertising to users who are most likely to buy the products advertised.
Thus, as a user of Facebook, you are the product being sold to the advertiser, who is the actual consumer, economically speaking. The concept is neatly summarized in the “meme” illustrated above.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 