much alarm

current politics are alive with distortions, dissembling, evasions, and outright lies…the denizen of the white house is attempting to stonewall congress…and there are bitter divisions in a polity balkanized along ideological lines that extend well beyond democrat/republican and range from pro choice/pro life ( to grossly simplify a debate and debase the subtlety of some of the arguments to political buzz words…framing the debate goes well beyond “fake news” and “alternate facts” ) to pepsi/coke…trumpy is not the cause of this, he is an effect, amplified by personality and the above balkanization, of constitutional dissembling over who actually runs the country…examples of past political misbehavior are manifold and varied in content…i am inclined to think trumpy is obstructing justice…probably suborning perjury from administration and staff members as well…nothing new in that…nixon leaps to mind…there were earlier instances however…when dan sickles shot barton key dead in broad daylight in Washington d.c. on february twenty-seventh 1859 ( and subsequently successfully pioneered the “temporary insanity” defense ) the event was witnessed by a white house page who went back and told president james buchanan what he had seen…sickles was aligned with tammany hall ( and here we touch on the storied history of corruption in government which is turbo-charged in the trumpy era but nothing new ) and a ranking buchanan supporter…the presiden, thinking the page might have been the only witness, gave him a razor, some cash, and put him on a train out of town to avert the page being questioned on what he saw…obstructing justice…precedents for presidents…trumpy isn’t the first to be called “unfit” for the job…daniel webster had this to say; “I feel much alarm at the prospect of seeing general Jackson president. he is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place.” jackson’s reputation as a boozed and brawler ( at his inauguration the white house was so overfilled with well-wishers and office seekers the new president relieved the pressure by having the whiskey barrels taken out onto the lawn ) preceded him and, one imagines, have trailed after as well…wealth controls congress…through campaign contributions…at least that’s what’s on the books…one suspects bribery and kickbacks and, again, past practice shows the way...credit mobilier was mostly a fraud perpetrated on the union pacific..however some of the cash they hijacked went to congress in return for favorable legislation concerning railroads and in the aftermath of teapot dome fall led the way to prison for subsequent cabinet members and staffers and highlighted the unending influence of wealthy elites in how the nation is administered…politicians lie and never more so than when campaigning…the “rail splitter” may indeed have been born in a log cabin but when the call came he was a prosperous attorney doing yeoman service for the illinois central railroad in obtaining rights of way and unloading the onus of fencing those rights of way to keep livestock off the rails onto the farmers who had just lost land to the railroad…sounds like a republican to me…Indiana has produced only one exceedingly short term president ( and recently some mostly sub-standard vice presidents who, fortunately, seem to vanish from public view after their terms )…wiliam henry Harrison triumphed over van buren in the “log cabin and hard cider campaign” which portrayed his as a homespun frontiersman…that he was born on a virgina estate and that his father had both signed the declaration of independence and been governor of Virginia were quietly covered up by his handlers…the polity seemingly ate it up…for sheer visciousness the 1800 campaign has few rivals…hamilton basically said, “ john adams is bald, toothless, and insane but would still be a better president than Jefferson” prompting Jefferson to unleash james thompson callender who exposed hamiton’s affair with mrs. reynolds and setting a series of events in motion that would end in the destruction of political power and influence in weehawken in 1804…in the end there is nothing much new going on here today…if jackson wasn’t a racist fuck I’ll eat my hat with no salt...and if wealthy elites will not continue to expend some of that wealth in efforts to protect and broaden their prerogatives in the halls of congress then we will know the system has finally collapsed after humming along since 1789..we can and should dump trumpy…don’t expect business as usual to change much if that happens…and if there is a second term the true basis of the system will be illuminated that even those still buried under the propaganda of high school civics will have to notice.