Le Coup pour Rien

 -- By Tom Phillips                   

The first rule of a revolution is that you need to win it; because you'll be harshly punished if you fail.  

Mao Zedong, who won the biggest revolution of the 20th Century, wrote:  “A revolution is not a tea party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery...  A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

President Trump has been impeached for "incitement of insurrection," but it wasn't a real insurrection, and had no chance of winning.  It was just the the final episode of play-acting in a show that's been running for four years, a fantastical grand finale in which five people actually died.  Mr. Trump lives by appearances, and can't cope with realities -- e.g. the Coronavirus, or the election results.  He keeps thinking he can fix things without doing anything about them. 

This week, as he summoned a mob and sent it against Congress, he failed to understand that a show of force is not the same as actual force.  Actual force performs work, as in one class overthrowing another.  A show of force is just a photo-op.   

Future Bible Stories: King Donald and the Bugs

 The manuscript fragment below was recently discovered by Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's campaign to develop a vaccine before election day. Sources say the project had accelerated to several times the speed of light when engineers discovered they were in a time warp.  The manuscript was discovered stuck to the windshield in the year 4525 CE.  It was damaged during the rapid deceleration that followed as team members worked frantically to return to their present lives. It appears to tell the story of the 2020 presidential campaign, in the language of a latter-day Bible.  

In the fourth year of the reign of King Donald, in the second month, the Lord sent a bug to plague the people of the earth, as a sign against the king because he did not love justice.        

The prophet Woodward went to the king, and he was afraid.  The king said, "You just breathe the air and that is how it is passed.  It is also more deadly that even your strenuous flu.  This is deadly stuff."  And the prophet wrote that in his book.  

Then the king went to tell the people. He stood at the gate and told them, "When it gets a little warmer it miraculously goes away.  The King of China is working hard and it's going to work out fine."  And the people went home and did not fear the plague.  

Viral Spring #16: Masters of Deceit

-- By Tom Phillips

President Trump is kneeling on the neck of American democracy, and we are gasping for air.  The only thing in his way is the US Constitution, and that will be his next target.  

A classic coup d'etat is in progress, with all the earmarks of tactics school children learned to watch out for in the 1950s.  FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover wrote a book on the truth-defying tricks of the Soviet communist party -- the "Masters of Deceit."  

The KGB's playbook -- adapted from the Bolshevik revolution -- was designed so that a small, determined group could seize power over a large nation, and make it look like the people's choice.  The key was co-opting legitimate protests, turning them violent, creating chaos and confusion, and then presenting the party as the only force that could restore order.  And both the KGB and CIA used this tactic during the Cold War, fomenting unrest as a pretext for seizing power in countries as big as Indonesia, Iran and Afghanistan. 

George Floyd

Now it's come home to America.  Following the police killing of George Floyd, multiple sources reported violence instigated by  young white men, heavily masked, smashing windows and setting fires.  Local people then took the opportunity to pillage, helping themselves to a sliver of America's luxury consumer wealth.  And TV News did its part, constructing a lurid loop of riot footage to accompany the news night and day  -- a misleading mashup that makes it appear the entire country is in flames.     

Just before he called governors to demand a military crackdown, our president talked by phone with Vladimir Putin.  The White House says they had an airy discussion of G7 invitations, the successful US space shot, and steps they're taking to fight the pandemic. Pardon my skepticism but I think there was another item on the agenda.  

Putin, the former KGB whiz kid, is today's Master of Deceit.  The President of the United States is his Apprentice.  Their playbook comes courtesy of the KGB and CIA, which manipulated the world for decades, fooling journalists like me into reporting phony crises that resulted in the rise of client regimes. Now they'd like you to believe those black-clad masked invaders are just irate citizens; that what you see on TV is what's happening in America. 

Do yourself a favor, America.  Walk out into the real world today and see how it compares with the president's fever-dream.  

Then try to breathe. The worst is yet to come. 

-- Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips 

Viral Spring #14: The Glamour of Evil

-- by Tom Phillips 

Yes Sir, Boss: Parscale models campaign gear

When President Trump's  campaign manager Brad Parscale called his media attack machine the Death Star, Democrats mocked him for invoking the Evil Empire from Star Wars, and scolded him for joking about death while the world is in the grip of a Pandemic.  But Parscale didn't apologize, and won't.  "Laugh all you want," he tweeted. "We'll take the win."  

It's the Democrats who are being naive here.  They don't understand that evil and death are part of the president's appeal.     

Viral Spring #13: The Death Star

-- By Tom Phillips 

Inside the Death Star 

Listen up, everybody:  Brad Parscale, President Donny's campaign manager, has an important announcement,  Brad?  

"For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc. In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time." !!!!

Thus tweeted Parscale last week, shortly after the President threatened to sue him over a poll showing him ten points behind Joe Biden.

The last guy who boasted about an attack before pressing "fire" was Donald Rumsfeld, defense secretary for George W. Bush -- who in 2003 called his machine "Shock and Awe." It was supposed to be so awful that the invasion of Iraq would be over almost as soon as it began, with Iraqis panicking at the sight of American power.

Like Rumsfeld, Parscale is super smart and super confident. He says Joe Biden won't know what hit him. So what can we expect from his video game?

Mobbed Up at the White House

AKA Stormy Daniels, on CBS "60 Minutes"

-- By Tom Phillips 

“That’s a beautiful little girl.  It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”  

With that quote from a thug in Las Vegas parking lot, Stephanie Clifford parted the curtains on the Trump White House and the family business.  It took a porn star, a businesswoman who understands how things are done, to reveal what we’re living with and how difficult it may be to extricate ourselves.  America, these people are mobbed up.  

President Oprah!

-- by Tom Phillips

I'm not an Oprah fan.  I didn't see her speech to the Golden Globes, just a clip of her tearful peroration.  She strikes me as a complex lady with a complicated life, who nonetheless is able to project a simple, powerful image through the media -- an image that speaks to the American value of self-reliance, and at the same time to the universal value of compassion, the virtue so conspicuously missing from today's White House. 

So: What other Democrat could beat Donald Trump at his own game?  Donald vs. Oprah! would be the ultimate talk show -- image vs. image, self-styled genius vs. self-made woman.  Brashness and bullshit vs. tears and guts.  Combover vs. hairstyle. 

And what's wrong with having a celebrity president?   Look at the present day -- a celebrity president tweets up a circus, entertaining the masses with imaginary battles against Black football players and a sinister Asian clown. Meanwhile a typical Republican administration goes about its business: taking from the poor to help the rich, giving business and the military free rein, handing out favors to wealthy donors. 

Under President Oprah!, the chief could entertain us with stirring speeches, celebrity feuds and friendships, must-read books and crash diets, while a typical Democratic administration could go about its business: taxing the rich to help the poor, reining in business and the military, and of course, handing out favors to wealthy donors. 

Don't get me wrong.  I voted for Bernie, I love Elizabeth Warren.  But in this age the President of the United States is willy-nilly the world's leading celebrity.  Why not go for someone with experience, and let Chuck and Nancy handle the politics?

Make sense?   


--  Copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips



  

Poor Tom Speaks to the President-Elect

-- By Tom Phillips  

(After fasting through the Winter Solstice, Poor Tom puts on his clothes and comes in from the cold.)

Poor Tom in "King Lear"

OK friends, I apologize.  As some of you realized, Poor Tom was just a naked disguise, and his impenetrable essays on Irony no more than a post-election distraction for an old man -- an old man fearing for his grandchildren, trying to step back and love the world from an ironic distance, a literary perspective.

Still, it was a timely topic.

The primary definition of irony -- saying one thing and meaning another -- is Trumpspeak, the new lingua franca of our land.  A University means a scam.  I grabbed her by the private parts means I didn't do anything. "Make America Great Again" means make the rich richer.  "Lock her up" means drop the case.  A Wall means a fence, and then nothing.  NATO means NADA.

Everything he says means nothing -- he speaks in the moment only, and the meaning disappears like a post on Snapchat.   This is the ultimate in irony -- not the distance between one meaning and another, but the distance between meaning and non-meaning, being and nothingness.

However!

(With little hope but firm resolve, Poor Tom dons a scholar's robe, shakes his sleeves and begins to speak into the air)

Listen up, Mr. President-elect:

That Murrow Moment

 -- By Tom Phillips

Last summer, journalists great and small were questioning whether 2016 was a "Murrow Moment"  -- whether they should cast off their  professional neutrality and warn the nation about the dangers of Donald Trump.  The New York Times, after a brief struggle, went all in -- calling out his falsehoods in every news story, while thundering daily denunciations from the editorial and Op-ed pages.

The Huffington Post huffed and posted -- and tagged every story with a disclaimer, complete with otiose adjectives:  "Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist etc etc.."

On election night, Rachel Maddow melted down, blaming his win on the hapless Libertarian candidate who siphoned votes from who knows who?  MSNBC punctuated its coverage with sighs of grief and an audible "Jeez.."

Even the supposed right-wing nuts who led Fox News's coverage were in denial: long after midnight, Shepard Smith was looking grimly away from the handwriting on the wall, murmuring  "it's not over, it's not over."

But it is.   The "Murrow Moment" has come and gone.  Those who tried to turn the tide found the power of the press was zero, or less. 

The Art of the Ego

Donald & Marla, 1990

-- By Tom Phillips 

One night in 1990, my Presbyterian minister wife and I were seated on the couch, watching raptly along with thirty million Americans as Diane Sawyer scored her exclusive interview with the woman of the hour -- Marla Maples, the girlfriend of Donald Trump.  The real estate mogul was leaving his wife Ivana for this foxy anonymous model, and the nation was transfixed.  The tale was taking on biblical proportions, like David and Bathsheba.

Suddenly I sat up.  What the hell were we doing?  Neither of us cared a fig for moguls or models.  How had this semi-scandalous affair become a national obsession?  How had it sucked us in? 

Well, it wasn't her.  Marla soon faded back into anonymity, just another ex-wife.  But the Donald never went away.  I can't stand him, never want to be in the same room with him, cringe with terror at the thought of his becoming president.  But like millions of hapless onlookers, I still can't take my eyeballs off him.  What is going on?

A "Murrow Moment"?

Edward R. Murrow

-- By Tom Phillips

This year's presidential campaign is proving to be a challenge, or maybe just a temptation, for some journalists.  In the last week some have questioned the old standard of "objectivity" -- asking whether it's time to declare an emergency, jettison a disinterested approach to events, and ride like Paul Revere to the rescue of American civilization.

A front-page article in the New York Times asked rhetorically what reporters should do if they believe  Donald Trump is a demagogue who would be dangerous with nuclear weapons.  The answer: "you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, and approach it in a way you've never approached anything in your career."  Really?