The drowning leader

We've heard it before: our domestic Dear Leader is hopelessly incompetent. His penchant for demonstrating that on a daily, sometimes hourly basis tends to numb us to that unsettling truth.

So every once in a while I need to be reminded of how staggeringly bad he is at management, a task that the first modern so-called businessman-president had bragged he could do far better than any of his predecessors.

Thank you, Matt Yglesias at Vox, for today's reminder: a sorrowful look at how Trump completely botched the federal government's reaction to Hurricane Maria, dooming Puerto Rico's residents to a year (and counting) of misery.

... something anyone in the media could tell you is that cable producers’ news judgment is not an infallible guide to the substantive importance of various stories....

This is why presidents have traditionally relied upon staff and the massive information-gathering capabilities of the American government for information rather than letting television set the agenda. Trump has a different philosophy, however, and spent the post-storm Saturday glued to his television and letting the hosts of Fox & Friends drag him into an ill-advised Twitter spat with NBA star Steph Curry and various NFL players.

...

Because Trump wasn’t paying attention, the [Maria] situation evolved into a catastrophe. And because the situation evolved into a catastrophe, it eventually ended up on television.

The Washington Post reports that by Monday, Trump “was becoming frustrated by the coverage he was seeing on TV.”

Yglesias notes that Puerto Rico already was more vulnerable to the disruption of a major natural disaster than it should have been. That wasn't Trump's fault. However, his administration's failure to focus on and to respond to the knowable facts on the ground was nothing less than an abdication of its responsibilities. Putting it more succinctly, the administration flatly failed to provide the aid Puerto Rico needed in a timely fashion.

The administration claimed that its response was "fantastic". Well, you can claim anything when you don't give a shit about the truth.

The administration didn't care that the official death toll of 64, issued by the Puerto Rican governor's office in the hurricane's immediate aftermath, was farcically low. Anybody with two functioning brain cells knew that that number could not be squared with the devastation on the ground and the dire calls for more aid that could not be entirely ignored by the media.

Of course, that official death toll was, a year later, finally revised — upward. It now far exceeds the death toll from Katrina, Bush 43's most damaging domestic crisis, and rivals the total count from the 11 September 2001 attacks.

That's staggering. It's also extremely embarrassing, to view it in terms of cold politics for a moment.

And yet our domestic Dear Leader denies any mistakes.

The tragedy of 2,975 American citizens (yes, Puerto Ricans are American citizens and have been for a century) dying as a result of a natural disaster cannot be minimized.

Yet it's merely a particularly grotesque and appalling example of the larger truth about this administration: it is incompetent. And the incompetence starts at the very top.

Trump likes to pretend that his executive orders are effective governance, but the truth is that the government only functions because a handful of his senior appointees know what they're doing and can keep the lights on. Trump himself does not comprehend his own responsibilities, much less what all his Cabinet members are supposed to be doing.

Until recently he didn't care, either, because as long as he was able to enrich himself and his family and friends, all was right in the world. Now, however, it's dawning on him that his casual corruption — which I suspect he doesn't even comprehend is corruption — will have legal consequences that could harm him and his family and friends.

He still doesn't know how far short he falls of his job's requirements. He will never understand that. (Indeed, it would be difficult to find another American as wrong for the job because very few people combine pathological self-absorption, obliviousness to their own shortcomings, and enough wealth to buy their way out of trouble.) But it's becoming clearer to him that he doesn't have a team he can trust to help him weather the storms on the horizon.

He's drowning: he just doesn't know it yet.

As always, he will be the last to know.

"American white people really hate being called 'white people' ", David Roberts

David Roberts' piece appears in Vox. It jumps off from the reaction to a poll in which Americans were asked whether becoming a so-called "majority-minority" nation will be net good or bad for the nation, with Roberts noting that the very question is premised on an assumption that is almost never stated in this country: that being white and male (and heterosexual) is the norm by which everything else is judged.

This is one of the more striking observations I've read in a while:

In most situations in the US, a woman is a female person. Someone part of a racial minority is a black person or a Latino person, etc. Gay people. Trans people. Immigrant people. All these groups are [adjective] people, people with an asterisk, while a white, heterosexual male is simply a person, as generic as he chooses. His presence is taken for granted; it rarely occurs to anyone to question it. A white man in khakis and a polo shirt can walk into almost any milieu in the US and, even if he’s greeted with hostility, be taken seriously. His legitimacy is assumed.

The power and privilege that come along with that — being the base model, a person with no asterisk — are invisible to many white men. Simply calling them “white people,” much less questioning the behavior or beliefs of white people, drags that power and privilege into the open.

This is indeed an eye-opening observation for those white (heterosexual) men who have never thought about the assumption that underlies everything in this country.

Nearly every country struggling with its self-identity right now seems to be majority-white, so it would be tempting to regard this as a "white person problem" if one was anxious to demonize. However, there's the instructive exception of India, which has been riven by divisions between Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists for generations. One wonders how a similar poll conducted there would play out.

My guess: what Roberts observes is not a "white people problem", it's a declining-majority problem.

That said, the fear among those who have it cannot be ignored. They will act on that fear. In the person of our domestic Dear Leader, they already have.

Anthony Bourdain

Writer, TV host and onetime chef Anthony Bourdain committed suicide in France on 8 June.

I was a fan. I enjoyed his often sardonic take on travel and TV, and I appreciated the glimpses he gave of cultures I will never see for myself. I preferred his older show, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, with its greater focus on food, but I think that if you buy into Bourdain's style at all, any of his work is entertaining.

His death has been treated as a tragedy by the media, which is all well and good except that a certain amount of hagiography is occurring. Yes, he had a significant impact on Americans' perception of other cultures, especially in his CNN series Parts Unknown. Yes, his brashness was occasionally bracing and, as his support for his girlfriend Asia Argento when she publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of rape shows, often admirable.

Yet Bourdain, it should be remembered, was not above cruelty. If he disdained a fellow chef or celebrity, he often didn't just say he didn't respect that person: he committed character assassination. I find Paula Deen despicable (and have said so four times) but to call her "the worst, most dangerous person in America" took gall only Bourdain had. Bourdain was arguably even crueler about TV food celebrity Sandra Lee, about whom he said, "I hate her works on this planet".

The media seems to be treading very lightly around the issue of his suicide: it has been reported but nobody has dwelt on the subject, except to emphasize seeking help for suicidal thoughts.

Should we condemn his suicide? I don't believe there's a right answer. Having been in the grip of severe depression I recognize suicide's seductive logic at that point. You're so bereft of happiness that you can't think straight. Or perhaps you are thinking straight, and you're simply marking time or making excuses in living your "normal" life. You probably don't agree but you can't say I'm wrong: you're not in my head — and neither of us was in Bourdain's. I won't condemn him. I don't understand his decision any more than I understood Robin Williams', but being famous and successful by others' standards doesn't mean one lives up to one's own.

I only hope his daughter isn't too badly hurt by his loss. She's the only one whom I could reproach Bourdain for not considering before he made his decision. Not knowing their relationship, though, I'm not inclined to reproach him even for that.

I'll miss his insights, especially in an age which doesn't value thoughtfulness. He was a rare public figure who seemed to be able to espouse the value of knowledge and understanding (not the same things) without being dismissed by the portion of the population that typically discounts intellectualism. And he exposed a lot of us to some really good food, too.

Abuse of power

Our domestic Dear Leader and his Congressional henchmen put pressure on the Justice Department to disclose evidence related to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This is the investigation, you might remember, in which our domestic Dear Leader is a subject and a potential target — that is, our domestic Dear Leader could face criminal charges as a result of the investigation.

One of our domestic Dear Leader's own attorneys attended at least part of the meeting, as did Congressional Republicans who are known to be friendly to the administration. Any or all of these men could brief our domestic Dear Leader on everything the Justice Department disclosed in that meeting.

But this is all too polite and indirect. Let's stop pretending to give anybody in or allied to this administration the benefit of the doubt, because they don't deserve it.

Congressional Republicans will share everything they learn with Trump. They will do everything in their power to obstruct and to compromise Robert Mueller's investigation. They will resort to criminal measures if they think such measures are needed. I don't know why. They may be running scared of Trump, whose stranglehold over the Republican base is undisputed. They may be so deluded that they genuinely think they need to do these things to preserve our republic. (I weep if that's the case.) Why they will do these things is irrelevant: the point is, they've shown their colors. They've sided with corruption and criminality. They've abetted corruption and criminality.

In private life Trump used his money and his lawyers to screw everyone he could, whether to save money or to indulge his petty insecurities. He has tried to use his legal authority as president to screw those he calls his enemies. He has used his legal authority as president to protect himself and those on whom he depends as best he can. And he has now used his authority as president to peek into what he can of the Mueller investigation.

So in addition to open bigotry, compulsive lying, shameless profiteering, sexual predation and serial philanderering, and contemptible bullying, Trump can add "abuse of power" to his resumé.

Neither Trump nor Congress had a right to interrogate the Justice Department on Mueller's investigation at this time, while it's still under way. This meeting only took place because Trump and Congressional Republicans have been and continue to be complicit in obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

Complicit. As in equally guilty. As in legally liable if, as seems likely, we someday find that actual crimes took place.

If today's meeting had never happened and Mueller eventually concluded that Trump did not commit a crime during the campaign, Trump could have made a case that he was "totally innocent". But that meeting did happen. As a result, no matter what Mueller concludes, the majority of the country that doesn't support Trump will always believe that he is guilty of something.

And that majority will be right. Trump's provably guilty of abuse of power.

Again with the White House Correspondents' Dinner?

Michelle Wolf came in for criticism for her swipes at press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The criticism is leading to speculation that the dinner in its current form is over.

Maybe that's not a bad idea. Not because the administration and its allies are pissed, but because the White House Correspondents' Association is too cowardly to defend its principles.

Leaving aside the shameless hypocrisy of this White House's anger, Wolf's zingers weren't the attacks on physical appearance that they've been claimed to be. They were attacks on Sanders' mendacity, which is not just fair game but absolutely crucial in these troubled times.

The association has disavowed Wolf. Why they're quaking in fear of this administration I don't know, but I despise them for doing so. Individually and as a group, they should be ashamed of their contemptible spinelessness.

So to the association I say, if you won't stand up for those telling truth to power, stop patting yourselves on the back every year.

Trump and honesty

The Atlantic piece's title is "The Dangerous Confusion of Trump's Celebrity Fans". The headline is not promising if, like me, you're irritated by clickbait and you're especially irritated when you fall for it. However, the first paragraph included a howler:

Shania Twain, the Canadian country-pop pioneer, told The Guardian that if she could have participated in the U.S. election, she would have voted for Trump because “even though he was offensive, he seemed honest.”

Left unsaid, at least in the piece, is whether she still thinks so.

I assume Twain did mean "honest", but I think she did not recognize to what she really was responding. What I suspect she liked about Donnie was not his honesty, but his willingness not to edit himself.

Because even the fiercest supporter of our domestic Dear Leader cannot call him "honest" in the sense of "faithful to the truth". He is only "honest" in that he blurts out whatever's currently on his mind, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.

It's one thing to blurt out uncomfortable truths for other people's good. If you have a body-odor problem, it might take an uncomfortably frank conversation with a close friend or family member to effect a change.

It's another thing entirely simply to be offensive for the sake of being offensive. That is most often — nearly all the time, really — what Dear Leader is. It's an effective way to achieve a couple of his perpetual goals: focusing everyone's attention on him, and taking people's minds off of situations that are triggering uncomfortable questions for him.

Dear Leader is blunt, indifferent to civility, and uninterested in truth. In other words, he's anything but honest.

Congressional leaders are now complicit with Trump

As of right now, neither Mitch McConnell nor Paul Ryan is willing to protect special counsel Robert Mueller.

The effort to pass legislation to protect Robert Mueller’s job as special counsel appeared to hit a dead end Tuesday as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would not allow the bill to come to the floor for a full Senate vote.

...

Earlier in the day, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said again that legislation to protect Mueller's position was “unnecessary” because, based on “the kinds of conversations we have had," he believes that the president will not take steps to dismiss the special counsel.

McConnell was referring to a bipartisan bill that was being considered in committee. Similar legislation, also bipartisan, was pending in the House.

Both bills had bipartisan support, though whether they actually could have passed either chamber is not clear. Politico reports that McConnell's arguments for not bringing the Senate bill to the floor were that it was "not necessary" and that anyway, Trump wouldn't sign it.

Nobody has ever accused Mitch McConnell of being a stupid politician. Unprincipled and contemptible, perhaps, but not stupid. I haven't paid as much attention to Paul Ryan but I don't think you can have a twenty-year Congressional career if you're a moron.

So we can dispense with any supposition that these two men genuinely believe Dear Leader won't fire Mueller. They have seen enough of Dear Leader's behavior to know that he damned well could go off half-cocked, and if nobody in the Oval Office can talk him down when he does, Mueller (and anybody in the way, like Rod Rosenstein) would be out of a job lickety-split.

We must therefore assume that McConnell and Ryan have no objection to Mueller being fired and his team's investigation stopped in its tracks.

In short, McConnell and Ryan are complicit in Dear Leader's ongoing attempts to obstruct justice. I hope there's a law somewhere that will make them accountable when the crimes and corruption of this administration are finally revealed.