Bayer: Trump, treason and Confederate rebels

These days I don't post much to TILIS because I've just about blown my wad; I've said everything that I can possibly say about America's political economy that is not just blow-for-blow, he said/she said bullshit, or simple repetition with further supporting facts.

But Alexei Bayer's on-point op-ed in the Kyiv Post hit on so many ugly, uncomfortable truths about America that I just had to. [Bold mine].

Apropos, I encourage readers to check out one of my most popular posts on the strange schizophrenia, the cognitive dissonance, of Americans who fly the rebel battle flag yet claim they are the most patriotic, "real Americans:" The Confederate flag: Celebrating treason.

Trump's treasonous candidacy
By Alexei Bayer
Kyiv Post | July 30, 2016

Five months ago, I wrote a column titled “Why does America want a Putin in the White House?” (Kyiv Post, Feb. 20). It was, of course, about the affinity between Donald Trump, then a leading contender for the Republican nomination, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Since then, Trump became a Republican nominee and the affinity between him and Putin has been shown to be a direct connection, not just a mere similarity. His people purged the Republican platform of its rather important and widely supported plank, calling for supplying Ukraine with weapons to combat separatists and defend itself against Russian aggression. It was, incidentally, the only point of the platform they cared about and had any interest in changing.

Trump then talked about reneging on America’s treaty obligation to come to the defense of its NATO allies - meaning Eastern European and ex-Soviet member-states - if Russia attacked or tried to destabilize them. More recently, it has been revealed that Russian hackers were almost certainly behind the theft of the Democratic National Committee’s emails, which were made public via Wikileaks on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

And now Trump has announced that as president he would consider recognizing Crimea as part of Russia and removing economic sanctions. He has publicly invited Russians to commit an illegal and hostile act: to hack US servers in order to help him win in November. Even if Trump was making a sarcastic remark as he now claims - a big if - it was, at the very least, dangerous. Henry II could also claim that inquiring “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” was nothing but a joke - but Thomas Beckett ending up dead was no laughing matter.

As a result of these events, lots of people started to dig into Trump’s business connections with Russian oligarchs and his advisors’ dealings with various unsavory post-Soviet characters. Conservative pundit George Will - a staunch opponent of Trump - has indicated in this regard that having Trump release his tax returns (which Trump says are being audited and therefore can’t be shown publicly) is now imperative: the nation needs to see how much the self-proclaimed billionaire is in hock to various Russian interests.

Indeed, I believe that Hillary Clinton should refuse to debate Trump until he shows his tax returns - on the very likely assumption that the Republican candidate may be liable to be persecuted for high treason. Also, it's the least the American public should do, considering that Trump himself spent years demanding that Barack Obama show him his birth certificate.

Plus, in view of Trump’s invitation to Russian hackers, a possibility has opened up that someone might hack into the IRS to ferret out Trump’s taxes.

The interesting question is this: will Trump’s flag-waving, America-first supporters turn away from him because he has been shown to be chummy with the Russians?

Not in the least. I have recently been travelling the back roads of rural Pennsylvania. It’s Trump territory and even though Philadelphia, parts of Pittsburgh and college towns across the state are heavily pro-Hillary, the Keystone State as a whole is very much in play. In some polls, Trump has been shown to be in the lead.

What strikes you is the abundance of Confederate flags bedecking people’s houses. I have also seen this in upstate New York, a state that Trump says he will win thanks to his support in rural areas, on Long Island and some New York City boroughs - including, amazingly enough, among Russian-speaking Jews on Brighton Beach.

New York and Pennsylvania were the core part of the Union and major routes of the Underground Railroad. The two states suffered the largest number of battle deaths in the Civil War among Northern states.

The Confederate flag is flown typically by Trump supporters side by side with the Stars and Stripes. Even though the Southern secession was a treasonous and subversive act, these people consider themselves true patriots - much truer, apparently, than the official Washington for which they harbor nothing but profound disdain.

Those Confederate flags proliferated after last year’s shooting of nine black parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina. Horrified by the racist attack, state officials decided to remove the Confederate flag from the State Capitol. Since then, flying it has become an act of defiance, a way to stick a finger in the eye of the authorities at all levels and a show of contempt for political correctness and the liberal dogma.

This is the milieu from which Trump draws his support. His core constituency is not in opposition to the existing government as much as it is hostile. Trump’s voters, while wrapping themselves in the flag, are declaring themselves to be against the United States of America, its political system, its institutions and its Constitution. They are nihilists rejecting the very principles on which the country was built.

They are, to put it bluntly, America’s enemies. This is why their flag-bearer, Trump, has no program how he’s going to govern and why almost everything he promises to do contravenes the Constitution. Some statements he makes suggest that he has never even read the document.

This is also why joining forces with Putin, whose propaganda spreads lies about the United States in different languages and whose government believes that it is already in a state of hybrid war with Washington, is so natural for Trump. As he embraces America’s enemies, Trump’s supporters remain completely unfazed. On the contrary, it would be perfectly natural for them to follow their leader and start admiring Putin for being decisive, direct and s great leader.

Anthony Burgess has written about it in his 1962 novel, Clockwork Orange. In the book, violent hoodlums from lower middle class housing estates invent and use Natsat, a teen slang consisting mostly of Russian-inspired words such as kisa (girl), krovy (blood) and jeezny (life). They are siding with the enemy with the express purpose of taking the mickey out of their elders, teachers and cops.

And so Trump’s voters might now want add the Russian tricolor - or, better still, the flag of the self-proclaimed Novorossia, which incidentally is a carbon copy of the Confederate flag - to the flags they are already flying.

Responding to: '6 Mistakes the West Makes in Ukraine'

(HT: AK).  I'm loath to respond to this nonsense but since this article carries some academic cache I feel I must (sigh). So here goes....

So-called Myth #1: "Ukrainians are one people, united in their support of change."  Most countries are diverse -- ethnically, ideologically, geographically, linguistically and so on.  Ukraine is not unique in that respect; in fact Ukraine is more homogeneous than many states. The U.S. is terribly divided politically, as any Red-Blue electoral map will demonstrate.  And so what?  But not all countries have a foreign power -- Russia -- willfully destabilizing them by force of arms and agents.  France doesn't play Catalans against Spaniards, for example, for its own purposes.  

Ukrainians are united in their disgust with state corruption, and leaders who promise one thing -- like joining the EU -- and then do another.

So-called Myth #2: "Supporting the Euromaidan’s ouster of president Yanukovych." The Feb. 21 agreement was not signed or endorsed by Russia!!!  Can I underline that fact enough times?  And the next day ex-president Yanukovych fled Kyiv, in a mysterious peripatetic route, ending in his own exile in Russia.  Nobody forced Yanukovych to leave Ukraine. Maybe the imminent discovery by the interim government of some $70 billion missing from Ukraine's treasury had something to do with Yanukovych's decision to flee?....

So-called Myth #3: "Failing to stand behind the February 21 agreement." Follow the link provided in this article, then judge for yourself whether these conditions were not met. The Constitution of 2004 was restored. Presidential elections were scheduled -- for May 25. Investigations into acts of violence, mainly by Yanukovych's governments, are ongoing.  And so on. The 6th condition -- that all violence should end -- has not been upheld by Russia, which has imported arms, mercenaries and special forces troops into Ukraine to foment violent unrest.  So Russia has no grounds to complain. Russia is the main violator of the February 21 agreement, which it did not sign.

So-called Myth #4: "Ignoring the rise of the Radical Right." Where is the evidence that a so-called "neo-fascist" or "radical right" is running rampant in Ukraine? Foreign journalists and observers are everywhere in Ukraine now. Why haven't we heard about any of these cases?  Because they don't exist.  It's Putin's propaganda. Indeed, rumors and disinformation are running rampant, especially in the East.

So-called Myth #5: "Labeling protesters in the East and South 'pro-Russian' and 'separatists.'" What do you call people who call for either unification with Russia or a separate "Donbas Republic?"  Certainly not "pro-Ukrainian" or "pro-unity." Yes, the truth is that most Ukrainians, even in Donbas, want Ukraine to remain intact. Only a few hundred malcontents and thugs, armed and coordinated by Russia, are causing all the trouble we read about in the news. And what a few babushkas say at separatist-held checkpoints and monuments to Lenin... this is political theater, not political reality. 

The few hundred malcontents in the East are indeed supported by Russia, hence it is entirely apt to call them "pro-Russians." If Russia were not in the equation, none of this would be happening. It's that simple.  

So-called Myth #6: "Blaming Russia for Ukraine’s problems." Blaming Russia for Ukraine's problems!?  Nobody is doing that.  Ukrainians spent three months in the ice and snow because they knew their own problems: endemic corruption, bad governance, economic stagnation, etc.  But what is happening now in Donbas is instigated by Russia.  It's the "Crimean scenario" being repeated quite crudely and openly.

Myth #7, "What Ought To Be Done Instead." Let's paraphrase this myth as, letting Russia dictate internal politics of Ukraine by non-democratic means.  I mean, how can a government of "national unity" be established outside of democratic norms -- elections -- scheduled on May 25??  Should goons with guns be given a seat at the table with elected officials and European diplomats?  This is madness.  No country would tolerate this, certainly not Putin's Russia.

Furthermore, "decentralization" may indeed happen -- incidentally, this is part of the program of the "far-right" party Svoboda -- but such a decision must be made within a democratic framework -- not as a precondition to ending violence or holding elections!  No country worth its salt negotiates with terrorists.

And certainly not  the kind of "federalization" that Russia has in mind -- where regions are nearly autonomous and have their own foreign policy. This would be in fact a confederation.  And I can't think of a single confederation of states that has governed well or lasted very long. Two experiments with confederacy in the United States were a disaster, under the Articles of Confederation and the Confederate States of America.  If the U.S. couldn't make it work, no one can. And probably Russia understands this: Putin wants Ukraine to be weak, disjointed and ultimately a failed state.

Six Mistakes the West Has Made (and Continues to Make) in Ukraine

By Nicolai N. Petro

May 8, 2014 | The National Interest

URL: http://nationalinterest.org/feature/six-mistakes-the-west-has-made-continues-make-ukraine-10397

Gun nuts defend Confederate, not U.S., Constitution

YES!  Finally somebody else had the balls to say it: 

Although nullification, secession and armed conflict are not exclusively Southern responses to Obama's gun safety agenda, they certainly are much stronger there than elsewhere and they reflect the historical reality that these same false constitutional doctrines helped pave the way to the Civil War - the only episode of mass treason in US history.  

Once you allow this simple historical fact to sink in, the whole notion of "constitutional conservatism" finally starts to make sense. You see, the constitution these folks are referring to is not the Constitution of the United States of America.  It's the constitution of the Confederate States of America, whose entire reason for existing was to preserve the institution of slavery, and the political power of the slave-owning elite. 

And that constitution, thankfully, has already been shot full of holes, in the bloodiest war in American history, which it was the cause of. Nothing tells us more about what "constitutional conservatives" are really up to than a look back at the horrors of that war, and the unspeakable evils that it sought to preserve and protect. 

If these gun nuts want to re-fight the Civil War then, in the immortal words of George Dubya Bush: "Bring 'em on." The result will be the same. Just ask Randy Weaver and David Koresh.

P.S. -- Rand Paul's complaints about "King Obama" prove he is a blithering idiot who doesn't understand our Constitution or system of government. Even worse, he doesn't have his dad's wit, simple charisma, consistency or the courage of his [absolutely wrong] convictions. I'll say it again: these scions of prominent politicians are the worst kind -- Rand Paul, Mitt Romney, Dubya, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Al Gore -- and we should avoid them like the plague, because they are out to prove something, not to do what they think is right.

Gun lobby's bad aim shoots down myth of 'constitutional conservatism'

By Paul Rosenberg

February 6, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132371127714836.html