by Surly1, Doomstead Diner

The Week the World Changed: Feb. 2, 2020

“Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.”

. . . ― Julius Caesar

Certain weeks in history resonate with a significance not always understood at the time, but made clearer as the days pass into months, years, and into history.

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The week of October 14,1066 the Battle of Hastings was fought, leading to the Norman conquest of England and the end of Anglo-Saxon rule. During the week of April 12,1861, Pierre Beauregard ordered the shelling of Fort Sumter, and with that act of sedition the beginning of America’s Civil War. The week of June 28, 1914 a Bosnian separatist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive Hapsburg heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and touched off a series of events that led to the first World War. One could make a case that the past week may join them in the ranks of infamy: the US Senate, for all intents and purposes, elevated a king; Great Britain left the European Union; and the Wuhan coronavirus, an agent of uncertain communicability but established lethality, was making its way across the globe via air routes.

After his return to Rome and settling the resultant civil war, Julius Caesar, noting the ranks of the Roman Senate had been depleted, appointed many new senators, partisans all. In this way did Caesar grease the skids for the exercise of unlimited power, to be checked only by one of history’s most famous assassinations.The Senate had elevated Julius Caesar to “dictator in perpetuity” among the various titles and honors the Senate bestowed upon him, one month before his assassination in February, 44 BC.

This week we witnessed another wholly co-opted legislative body render itself impotent and hold another executive beyond the reach of law and accountability, as it decided to not entertain witnesses at Trump’s impeachment trial. WaPo reports the Senate set to acquit Trump next week after bid for witnesses is defeated. Retiring 79-year old Lamar Alexander gave the game away when he folded his chin-stroking concerns. Lisa Murkowski did likewise. All 47 Democrats and two Republicans, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, vote in favor of hearing witnesses in an impressive display of party loyalty.

Alexander thus explained himself:

I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense. There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; he said this on television on October 3, 2019, and during his July 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of Ukraine. There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a “mountain of overwhelming evidence.”

But so what? Just to make sure you didn’t miss it: Alexander (and the other Senate Rs) hold that bribery, extortion and misappropriating Congressionally allocated funds for foreign aid is A-OK.

Likewise foreign interference in Presidential elections: the door is wide open.

Alexander acknowledged the illegality of Trump’s actions while also concluding that those actions don’t meet the standard for removal. He said there was no need to call witnesses, because the Democrats had already proved the facts of their case against Trump. It just wasn’t impeachment-worthy.

One wonders what would be. It is clear, as The Guardian observed, Even a smoking gun would not be enough.

House lawyers like Alan Dershowitz argued that if the President thinks that his actions are in the national interest, he can get away with anything that crosses his mind. Thus the unitary executive dream of Richard Nixon is realized:

“If the President does it, it can’t be illegal.”

The Trump team has out-brazened Nixon in withholding evidence, ignoring subpoenas, alternately bribing and intimidating jurors, and extending “executive privilege” well past all previous limits. And the Senate has effectively signed off on this, placing Trump beyond accountability or consequence.

One recognizes that A Trial Without Witnesses Is No Trial at All. Senate Republicans were quite clear that no amount of evidence was going to oblige them to remove an active felon from office, because judges, abortion, Israel, and most importantly, that sweet, sweet boodle flowing in from billionaire bunkers, Las Vegas casinos and St. Petersburg banks, all of it flowing over the body politic like a steady, soothing stream of warm urine.

In The New Yorker, Susan Glasser put the Senate out of its misery with a fine article, The Senate Can Stop Pretending Now:

Alexander’s late-night statement was no real surprise. The “closest friend” to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – as McConnell made sure to point out to the Times, earlier this week – Alexander ended up where most Senate Republicans were always expected to end up. He criticized Trump but refused to vote to remove him from office. After making that decision, Alexander went a step further and said that there was no real need to hear any of the evidence that Trump has so far successfully ordered his Administration not to provide. Even the last-minute revelation, on Sunday night, in the Times, of Bolton’s unpublished manuscript, could not sway Alexander; he knew enough.

When your mind is made up, who needs additional evidence? One marvels at the way that fear of Trump has knuckled these solons.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy noted on TV that there appeared to be two impeachment trials: for Democrats, one about Trump’s crimes; and for Republicans, one about the malfeasances of the “deep state” and the “fake news media.”

Apparently “laws” only account when Repugs can use them as weapons on Dems. And while on the subject of “laws,” let’s not forget that Rand Paul, that human pustule with a bad toupee, tried to work the alleged whistle-blower’s name into a question on the Senate floor. John Roberts woke from his otherwise deep sleep to have none of that. So Paul took to a press conference and to Twitter to reveal the whistleblower’s supposed identity.

That used to be a crime.

And Charlie Pierce, in Lamar Alexander Has Ushered in the Age of Fearful Men, gets it exactly:

Late Thursday night, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, pretty much sank the effort to have witnesses testify in the impeachment trial of the president, and Alexander did so in a statement that is going to go down in the annals of unmitigated weaselspeak …

Alexander is being a poltroon on so many different levels here. In addition to arguing that a guilty president* is guilty but should go unpunished, Alexander is claiming that the solution to a ratfcked election is to hope the next one isn’t ratfcked. Good Christ, what a waste of a handsome piece of office furniture in the Senate chamber this man has turned out to be.

As your government slips away as surely as a cabal murdered Caesar, keep in mind that Trump and his minions have orchestrated a limited TV series for a remarkably uninformed audience: According to the Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey, 1 in 5 Americans can’t name single branch of U.S. government. Other findings:

• In 2019, 2 in 5 Americans (39%) were able to name all three branches of government.
• More than half of Americans (55%) correctly said it’s inaccurate to state that people who are in the U.S. illegally do not have any rights under the Constitution. In other words, that people who are in the U.S. illegally do have some rights under the Constitution.
• More than a third of those surveyed (37 percent) cannot name any of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

When my daughter was in high school, I was astonished to learn that she had NOT had a civics class. Apparently some of what we used to learn in civics is covered in “US History,” and we all know how well history classes were taught. By high school football coaches reading from an open textbook. So a majority of people taking their place as adults have no idea how the government is supposed to work. And they vote. Enjoy your republic.

In Brexit news, The UK has now left the European Union, after 47 years inside the bloc. The Prime minister, a lower-octane Trump, rang the gong celebrating his own success and pledged to make no concessions to the EU in negotiating necessary trade deals as he salutes ‘a turning point in the life of our nation.’ And on Brexit day one: Johnson went for broke with hardline trade deal:

No sooner had the union jacks been lowered in Brussels and Strasbourg, after 47 years of tortured British membership, than Boris Johnson was preparing to launch the UK into yet another uncompromising battle with the remaining 27 nations of the European Union.

As he hit the gong with glee, he was just flexing his muscles for more combat with the UK’s now ex-partners. There now begins an 11-month transition period during which the prime minister and his government will face the herculean task of securing a future trading and security relationship with the EU. If there is no deal by 31 December, the UK will face a cliff-edge descent into the economic unknown.

Here is a summary of the yesterday’s events:

• The EU will back Spain over its territorial claims to Gibraltar in the next phase of Brexit negotiations by giving Madrid the power to exclude the British overseas territory from any trade deal struck with Brussels. The Spanish government has insisted that the Rock be included in the EU’s opening negotiating position.

• Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU in a break with previous government policy, according to reports. The government’s policy had been to waive customs checks and tariffs on 87% of goods coming into the country and only impose limited checks on goods.

You might be surprised to learn that, as the Wuhan coronavirus has claimed more than 300 people in China, and several Chinese cities, including Wuhan, are under lockdown and quarantine, China has erected a hospital in Wuhan to deal with the emergency in nine days. Cases have popped up all over the world via air travelers from China. Meanwhile, here at home, the United States has never been less prepared for a pandemic. Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy reported that Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response – not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.

In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is.

In a cost-cutting fury in spring of 2018, The Trump administration, reduced $15 billion in national health spending, slashed staffing and the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. The sort of wasteful expense that gets in the way of tax cuts for the rich.

In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”

The Trump administration has appointed a 12-member “blue-ribbon” commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the former pharmaceutical lobbyist and pharma CEO. No idea how this task force will function or when it will even meet. This ad hoc group is supposed to fulfill the function of lashing together the efforts of a number of different organizations and management layers.

Bess Levin reported in Vanity Fair that from the guy who brought you attacking another country as “after-dinner entertainment” and furloughed government employees unable to afford food should “take out a loan,” comes this:

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday that the coronavirus outbreak in China will help “accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”

“Well, first of all, every American’s heart has to go out to the victims of the coronavirus. So I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease. But the fact is, it does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain,” Ross said during an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo … .

The virus has killed more than 100 people and sickened thousands, and while the cases are mostly concentrated in China, it has been detected in more than a dozen other countries, including the U.S.

Happy days are here again. So we’ve got that going for us.

Published on the Doomstead Diner 02 February 2020.

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