Recently, a friend wrote to challenge me to “write a great article about Trump’s introduction of ‘lightning war’ into politics,” citing Nazi Germany’s use of Blitzkrieg in the opening campaigns of World War II. My friend sympathizes with Trump, so his political Blitzkrieg comparison wasn’t meant pejoratively.
Image of Blitzkrieg from the Imperial War Museum. It wasn’t my idea for Trump…
Whether you call it Blitzkrieg or a “flood the zone” strategy, there’s little doubt Trump’s rapid-fire orders and actions have put those who oppose him on the defensive. Democrats are throwing up their hands in surrender-like motions. Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries plaintively asked: “What leverage do we have?” Then he added: “They [the Republicans] control the House, the Senate, and the presidency. It’s their government.”
The Democratic battle flag is a white cross on a field of white. They claim they can do nothing to stop Trump and his rampaging billionaire sidekick, Elon Musk.
It’s funny: When the Democrats had control of the House, Senate, and presidency, I often recall them complaining they couldn’t get much done due to obstruction by Republicans. How come Republicans can obstruct but not Democrats?
Leaving that aside, what about my friend’s praise of Trump as having launched Blitzkrieg politics? Reversing Clausewitz, is politics simply a continuation of war by other means?
America, so I’ve been taught, was founded as a republic with a Constitution. We claim to be a nation of laws. We like to think we’re a representative democracy. The House and Senate are supposed to be deliberative bodies where laws are made and money is spent in accordance with the will of the people.
I know: nice fantasy, right?
The U.S. government has become corrupted by money and special interests. We know our representatives rarely represent us. They represent their owners and donors. That breeds cynicism and a certain level of affection among some for Trump as a disruptor.
But smashing government isn’t the smartest and most effective way of reforming or even of rebuilding it. Empowering autocrats and plutocrats like Trump and Musk isn’t going to produce democracy and a government that serves the people. A Trump “political Blitzkrieg” will likely echo the Nazi Blitzkrieg of 1939-41, featuring widespread destruction and subjugation of “enemies.” It’s not a method conducive to greater justice and a more perfect union.
So, to my friend’s challenge, I say this: Political Blitzkrieg may provide an illusion of victory, but “victory” for whom, and for what? Wars, whether real shooting ones or political ones, are corrosive to liberty, freedom, and equality. In war, it’s typically the workers and poor who suffer most, the rich who profit most, as power congeals at the top.
Trump’s so-called Blitzkrieg, combined with a Democratic attitude of surrender, is producing a government by and for men like Elon Musk, even more so than it already is. If you truly desire plutocracy and one-party rule, Trump/Musk is your dynamic duo.
I still prefer democracy, however imperfect, and a system that doesn’t elevate and empower the richest among us as dictators.
Will anything good come from Trump-Musk DOGE chaos?
Despite our rebel reputations, Americans are often more than deferential to authority. Consider those who say: If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to hide. As if authority figures were completely trustworthy; as if ordinary Americans didn’t have a Constitutional right to privacy.
Indeed, that saying needs to be turned around: If the government’s done nothing wrong, it has nothing to hide. The government, after all, is supposed to be transparent to the people. It is supposed to serve us. We pay for it as taxpayers; we elect its representatives; we should be able to hold it accountable when it goes wrong and does wrong.
Sadly, the few revelatory truths about “our” government usually come from whistleblowers, who are then persecuted and often prosecuted. Consider Daniel Ellsberg. Edward Snowden. Daniel Hale. Chelsea Manning. John Kiriakou.
The problem, of course, is that “our” government has done, and keeps doing, many things wrong, and many wrong things, meaning it has plenty to hide. Which is one big reason why President Trump and his billionaire sidekick Elon Musk are taking plenty of flak from the powers that be as they go after agencies like USAID, DOE, perhaps even the DoD (in which case they, or their efforts, may soon be DOA).
The wrecking balls are swinging (Reuters/Carlos Barria)
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t support Trump and Musk. Their methods and motives are less than noble. Or just plain ignoble. Put differently, their methods are akin to taking sledgehammers and wrecking balls to a house that has termite damage. Sure, as they demolish the house, some termite damage will be exposed, but shouldn’t the point be to fix the damage rather than destroying the house?
That said, can something good come from their “Hulk smash!” attacks on the federal government?
A slightly different question: Why has it taken so long for a little light to be shed on highly dubious government spending? Isn’t there another way, other than Trump/Musk engineered chaos, for citizens to gain insight into how our money is being spent? Why can’t we call to account powerful government agencies and agents for their budgets and their decisions? It’s our money, right?
Congress, of course, holds the purse strings. Our representatives are supposed to be providing oversight with respect to spending, ensuring a modicum of integrity and competence. Yet complicity (and personal enrichment) rather than oversight seems to be the default mode of operation adopted by most members of Congress.
Congress, instead of opposing Trump, should get ahead of him. Throw open the windows of the federal budget! Air out the dirty musty bloody laundry! Do your jobs! And by that I mean do the people’s work, rather than the work of the owners and donors who’ve bought you with their campaign donations, their promises of future high-paying positions, their threats to remove you from power by throwing their support to yet another politician with no moral spine.
Congress, instead of blocking Trump/Musk, should render them redundant by doing the people’s work. Make government accountable to the people again, and the people won’t feel that they need to vote for chaos agents like Trump.
If Congress was doing its job, a DOGE would be worse than useless. Who needs duplication of effort? It’s so inefficient!
Welcome to the era of state-sponsored thought police
Yesterday, journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Their testimony, and the risible reactions of Democrats on the subcommittee, are well worth watching; I watched the entire hearing, which lasted 140 minutes. Kim Iverson has an excellent summary here which lasts about 23 minutes. As Iverson notes, the Democrats on the subcommittee demonized the journalists while supporting censorship of ordinary Americans for political advantage, a clear violation of freedom of speech and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Shellenberger and Taibbi, “so-called” journalists according to Democrats
Clearly, the Twitter Files have revealed government-directed censorship of lawful speech. The reactions and strategy of the Democrats on the subcommittee were as follows:
To smear the two journalists who volunteered to appear before Congress as “so-called” journalists; as being biased witnesses in favor of the right (even though Shellenberger testified he’d voted for Biden, and Taibbi described himself as a traditional ACLU liberal); as having the basest of motives, such as taking payments and otherwise profiting from their journalism; and of being willing or unwilling dupes of Elon Musk.
To repeat, again and again, that Russia massively interfered in the 2016 and 2020 elections, therefore government-directed efforts to suppress “foreign interference” in U.S. elections was both legitimate and praiseworthy.
To associate Elon Musk with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and other alleged bad actors, thereby suggesting that the Twitter Files are tainted and compromised by foreign information ops and influence.
To defend the FBI and other government agencies like the DHS and CIA as trustworthy and reliable defenders of truth as well as upholders of the First Amendment.
To suggest that the journalists involved posed a “direct threat,” e.g. to workers at Twitter, not the federal government or powerful corporations like Twitter itself or Facebook.
To imply the subcommittee’s purpose wasn’t about free speech at all; that its purpose was purely political and intended to advance right-wing agendas.
Specific to the Hunter Biden laptop story, one Democrat implied the hard drive could have been altered, thus calling into question the validity of emails and other data on that drive.
To change the subject by accusing Republicans of being worse offenders since they’re trying to ban books; also that Donald Trump is worse because he jailed one of his opponents.
Not one Democrat on the subcommittee expressed concern about the peril of state-sponsored censorship and suppression of free expression. Indeed, the Democrats took pains to portray the journalists in front of them as the real peril, along with Russia, Elon Musk, Republican book-banners, and other bad actors.
It was all rather amazing, a “shit storm” to quote Kim Iverson.
Matt Taibbi, award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience, dismissed as an Elon Musk tool by Democrats
So many important points made by Taibbi and Shellenberger could easily get lost in this political shit storm, which I suppose was the Democrats’ strategy. Here’s a short list of those points:
As Taibbi said, state-directed censorship on Twitter didn’t just affect the right but also people on the left and publications like Consortium News and Truthout.
We’re looking at an emerging censorship-industrial complex, an unholy alliance between government and private corporations to filter, constrain, and otherwise control information sources. A form of “digital McCarthyism.”
Ordinary Americans are being deprived of their free speech rights without due process. Not only that: some are de-platformed and then denied access to pay sources (like PayPal) as punishment. So, not only can’t you speak freely: you also can’t support yourself financially.
Government calls (in this case by the FTC) to investigate the backgrounds of Taibbi, Shellenberger, and other journalists involved in the Twitter Files creates a chilling effect on journalism. As Shellenberger noted, it’s reminiscent of the Stasi (secret police) in East Germany.
Democrats on the subcommittee had no interest in any of this. Their strategy was to dismiss the hearing as politically motivated and the journalists involved as greedy opportunists handpicked by Elon Musk (whom, you might recall, was associated with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Darth Vader).
Interestingly, I learned a new word in the hearings: “pre-bunking.” Apparently, the Democrats in 2020 knew the Republicans had Hunter Biden’s laptop, so they engaged in an exercise to “pre-bunk” the release of embarrassing details from that computer. To wit, mainstream media “journalists” were encouraged not to follow the “Pentagon Papers” model of publishing leaked and legitimate material quickly. Rather, they were primed not to cover such a story, or to cover it as a case of Russian disinformation.
And that’s exactly what the mainstream media did in October 2020: as a group, they wrongly dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop revelations as Russian disinformation as the government worked hand-in-glove with Twitter, Facebook, and others to suppress the story as malicious and false. As we now know (and as was known then), the Hunter Biden laptop story was well-sourced and accurate. There was no Russian connection whatsoever. (Kudos to the Democrats for their dirty tricks here; even Richard Nixon couldn’t have done it better.)
Again, Democrats on the subcommittee showed no interest in or concern about an emerging censorship-industrial complex and its suppression of free speech rights. They painted the journalists before them as bad or sketchy actors and the FBI and other government agencies like DHS and the CIA as the good guys, working selflessly and without bias to protect us all from the “dangerous” ideas of our fellow citizens.
Welcome to the era of state-sponsored thought police, brought to you by your Democratic friends in Congress.
Addendum (3/11): All those Democrats so eager to pillory Taibbi and Shellenberger: they all took an oath to support and uphold the Constitution.
I’m not sure there’s any more fundamental right to that oath than freedom of speech.
If you take your oath seriously as a Member of Congress, your focus at the hearing should — must — have been on upholding that fundamental right against government-directed interference and censorship.
Yet none of them mentioned this or their oath — their sworn duty — to the Constitution.
This is worse than mendacity; they are derelict in their duties as representatives and public servants.
Back in March, Tom Engelhardt had a stimulating article at TomDispatch.com on the wounding of planet Earth. He also made mention of the Covid-19 pandemic. And as I read his piece, I thought of Mother Earth suffering from a human-made pandemic. A virus of humans. A human-made flu of fevers (heat waves and fires), chills (freezes in the South), coughs (turbulent weather), thirst (droughts out West), and pain (nearly everywhere).
But, sadly, there’s no vaccine for Mother Earth. All we humans can do is relieve the symptoms by changing our behavior. Mother Earth is already infected with us; now we need to leave her alone, let her rest, allow her to recover. But we don’t. We keep stressing her with our actions (and inaction on climate change) and making her symptoms worse.
The only problem: When Mother Earth dies, we all die.
We’re on the fast track to dystopia, which puts me to mind of a recent Splinterlands trilogy written by John Feffer. His latest and last volume is called Songlands, which he writes about here at TomDispatch.com. For a dystopic trilogy, I found it strangely uplifting, for Feffer still sees hope in humans who are willing to sacrifice to save our planet. I urge you to check it out.
It’s amazing to me that ultra-rich billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are saluted for their “investment” in space exploration, as if we humans are going to save ourselves by building stations on the moon or Mars. If Bezos and Musk truly wanted to give back to humanity, they’d be focusing on reducing consumption here on Earth while fighting for preservation and conservation. But their space trips are really ego trips, and their fuel has always been money.
Here’s hoping humanity rejects the “final frontier” nonsense of Bezos and Musk and turns its attention to what really matters: the health and welfare of this wonderful yet fragile world of ours.
For if we refuse to honor Mother Earth, it may be the last sin we humans commit.
Bracing Views 