8/2/23

 Wednesday, August 2, 2023

In bed before 10, awake at 3:55 with bad back pain, moved to BR recliner til 4:40, got up, let Lilly out. 68℉, high of 84℉ with DPs 61-64. AQI=43, Good.  The wind is S at 10 mph, 6-11/25 mph.  Sunrise at 5:43, set at 8:12, 14+29. 

Back pain is getting worse, worrying me that one of these days I won't be able to lift myself out of bed and Geri will have to call 911 for help.  I may call the triage nurse at the VA today.  Next appointment with Dr. Chatt is on my 82nd birthday, 3 weeks from now.

LTMW at the sparrows, finches, chickadees, nuthatches, et al. rushing to the sunflower tube that I refilled at 7 a.m.  Also enjoying the elegant mourning doves foraging under the feeders on the larger seeds and nuts I drop on the ground from their space on the bottom of the tube, too large to be nabbed through the small mesh spaces. 

Thinking about the Trump indictment and wondering what we will be experiencing between today and November 5, 2024.  I'm wondering whether Judge Tanya Sue Chutkan will schedule an early trial of this case rather than wait the now-normal one and one half years in the D.C. District for the case to move from indictment to trial.  Also wondering how long it will take for Trump's lawyers to move to recuse her based on her sentencing record in other January 6 cases and comments she has made in those cases (not to mention her race and appointment by Obama.)  We are 15 months away from the presidential election, a year and a quarter within which we can be sure Trump and his supporters will be fomenting mischief.  Are the circumstances right for another Oklahoma City bombing-type incident?  Or Madison's Sterling Hall?  Arsons?  Shootings?  The far-Left got violent in the 60s, will the far-Right get violent in the 20s?  The most recent NYT/Siena poll shows Trump and Biden tied at 43% each, suggesting that the election may be even closer than the 2020 election.  The Republicans see themselves well-situated to recapture the White House and the Senate and to increase their majority in the House, i.e., on the brink of gaining complete control of the federal government: the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court.  The stakes could not be higher.  Biden's legislative and economic accomplishments have not been enough to increase his lousy approval numbers and he will be continually attacked for his age, his running mate of Kamala Harris, and the really scuzzy record of son Hunter.  And I confess to tending to believe Barack Obama's perhaps apochryphal assessment of his vice-president: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up."  The nation is in a fraught condition and will likely stay in a fraught condition right up to and through the 2024 election, with Trump's 3 and likely 4 criminal prosecutions hanging over everything.  Regarding the trial date, methinks "If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly." Macbeth, Act I, scene vii.  On the other hand, quaere whether the Supreme Court might put a hold on the case by reviewing a likely ruling by Judge Chutkan denying a motion to dismiss challenging the legal sufficiency of the indictment or some other interlocutory appeal.

THINKING OUT LOUD - DREAD, FEAR AND TREMBLING:  I am afraid that in my lifetime, assuming I live through 11/5/2024, I will see the United States descend from the sole superpower in the world, governed as a very imperfect but nonethelesss liberal democracy into a degenerate fascist autocracy.  When I was born, a bit more than 3 months before Pearl Harbor, America was still coming out of the Great Depression but by the time I was 4 years old, American was the world's hegemon, economically and militarily and as a model of Liberal Democracy.  If Donald Trump wins the election next year, it is hard to imagine what will be retained of liberal democracy in this country, what will happen with the nation's relationships with liberal democracies around the world and what will happen with our relationships with fascist governments.  What will happen with law enforcement under Trump II?  How will "I am your vengeance" be acted out?  How will "the deep state" and "the administrative state" be deconstructed a la Steve Bannon?  How will the judiciary be affected, and through it, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, etc.?  What will happen to civil rights?  We could see not merely radical but revolutionary changes wrought in the federal government, changes that won't be affected by subsequent elections because the important rules (and personnel) will have been changed before those elections occur.  America, the America that our chldren and grandchildren will live in, will be changed for a generation or probably more.  This is my dread, my 'fear and trembling.'  Call me pisher.

From my journal entry on 6/19/23:  Am I really just too paranoid, pessimistic, and cynical or is the country truly in danger of becoming a Fascist, corporate, oligarchic plutocracy?  Yesterday's WaPo carried a piece by Dan Balz, Ann E. Marimow, and Perry Stein entitled Trump’s indictment plus candidacy could endanger democracy and the Rule of Law.

Not since the Vietnam War in the 1960s or perhaps the mid-19th century before the Civil War has the country’s governing structure faced such disunity and peril, given the unprecedented nature of a federal criminal indictment of a former president compounded by the fact that Trump has been charged by the Justice Department in the administration of the Democrat who defeated him in 2020 and who is his likeliest general election opponent in 2024, if Trump is nominated again by the Republican Party.

Scholars, legal experts and political strategists agree that what lies ahead is ugly and unpredictable. Many fear that the 2024 election will not overcome the distrust of many Americans in their government and its pillars, almost no matter the outcome. “A constitutional democracy stands or falls with the effectiveness and trustworthiness of the systems through which laws are created and enforced,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution. “If you have fundamental doubts raised about those institutions, then constitutional democracy as a whole is in trouble.”  Attacks on the legitimacy of government institutions are most virulent on the political right, led by Trump. But many on the left also have doubts, especially about a Supreme Court that now has a solid conservative majority and whose rulings in cases including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the constitutional right to abortion, have inflamed the political debate.  These are likely to be the conditions throughout the coming election year. By any measure, this represents a gloomy prospect for restoring a thriving democracy.

“At the level of national politics and presidential politics, things do feel quite fragile, and I don’t have much reason to think we’re about to turn the corner in 2024,” said Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who studies issues of democracy. . . . A conviction and a decisive defeat at the ballot box might force Trump from the political scene and cause the Republican Party to move in a different direction, although in an era of close elections, the prospect of 2024 producing a blowout in either direction remains doubtful — and even that would not necessarily cleanse the system.  “The country functioned after the Civil War,” Galston added, “but it was a long time before the system was drained of the political poisons of the Civil War.”

Quaere whether any informed, intelligent person can really believe the the 'system' has been 'drained of the political poisons of the Civil War.'   Quaere whether we are already reliving the 1850s and on our way into our new civil war.   

Quaere whether many on the Left, like me, aren't disgusted by the anti-democratic constitutional structure of our government that vests seemingly almost permanent power in a non-urban, less educated, anti-democratic White minority.