Inside the House of Horrors

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves."

- William Shakespeare


Authoritarian leadership includes suppression of a free press, imprisonment of dissidents, police state tactics, and the perversion of law enforcement agencies, jailing or poisoning reporters and opposition government officials. Our current president espouses these principles as his idea of statecraft and admires those who can actually do those malevolences.


American institutions are strong, but numerous books, including the Road to Unfreedom by the noted Yale scholar Timothy Snyder, enumerate the steps in history that lead to dystopian or autocratic governments. George Orwell often pointed out that lies told often enough become an alternate reality to those who have no other source of information.  People stuck on Fox News, for example, hear very little about the current madness at the White House, including an anonymous high level inside editorialist reflecting upon the “Crazytown” fulminations of President Trump. In his new book, “Fear,” Bob Woodward, the scrupulous journalist has compiled eyewitness, recorded documentation of the inherent agony of working in a crucible of disinformation, lies and alternative reality, with a president who does not have the patience to understand policy, empathize with others, or discern anything other than his own self-interest. 


The people there are either saints or devils, struggling to inform America what may be coming next. A 25th Amendment removal around the corner? Is that what the NewYorkTimes op-ed was hinting? Impeachment beginning as early as the new congress takes office, not that long away, assuming a Democratic victory? And maybe Republicans will wake up if there is a wave election and their constituents push them to control the hurricane. 


If the Democrats win the House of Representatives, there will be a parade of witnesses, subpoenas, hearings, bills protecting special counsel Muller, to name a few of the television treats for CNN, MSNBC, and FOX keeping their ratings stratospheric.  We will have a show far worse than Watergate. Even Nixon respected the dignity of the Presidency and did not conduct Nurnberg type rallies to fire up his base, consisting of white people fearing brown and yellow people, stoked by Trump’s continuing divisive con. America’s racism is on steady display and Trump’s demagoguery is fueling the inferno.


None of us have any idea, though, what will happen. Pundits on CNN decry the crisis, pundits on FOX say Trump is delivering for the American people. All manner of civility has disappeared from the national dialog. Tax cuts, trade deals, military expenditures to make us strong, they argue.  But is Trump really doing that or he a stooge for Putin, or the subject of Kompromat? Will the Republicans in congress put country above party? Are the Democrats sensing blood? How far should partisanship be carried? Becoming increasingly clear is that the Trump Organization has operated for many years as a gigantic money laundry for Russian oligarchs and probably Vladimir Putin. One can be sure that Muller has all this information, including the surreptitious tax returns of the President. It is quite possible that following the money will be far larger than any “Russian collusion.”


Trump calls the anonymous New York Times op-ed cowardly; he may be right. The author should perhaps have the courage to identify himself and then resign. If it is a cabal of more than one, (A Murder on the Orient Express scenario ) then they all should resign en masse to protest what they consider to be unfitness of the President to lead our country. The notion that they are staying on to protect the Republic because there are “adults” still in the room rings hollow. Moreover, they have not been elected to a regency. No one voted for them. Stealing papers off the President’s desk so he will not do something impulsive or rash seems like a de facto coup d’etat. It is almost like a three year old being fenced in to keep him away from the swimming pool or a dog put in what politically correct owners say is a crate, but is really a cage, preventing Fido from peeing on the rug.


On the other hand, some argue that they are working in the interest of the country by putting a leash on the president. But there are constitutional methods to remove the president. Impeachment is an unwieldy, long vote of no confidence. In the UK for example, if the Prime Minister were insane, his party or Parliament could remove him with a vote of no confidence.


Clearly, our electoral system is broken, the Constitution not functioning very well, the Republican Party, hijacked by a gerrymandered congress and a minority president, laying waste to what Lindsay Graham says is that if you want to appoint supreme court justices, you must win elections. The thing is that our system has effectively disenfranchised more than 3,000,000 Americans and the prospect very dim that Trump will be ousted by his own party, were they interested in more than tax cuts and corporate profits. And asserting as Senator Graham disingenuously has done undermines democracy.


People do fear that the nation is in danger, however. But still, Trump has done nothing as destructive as invading the wrong country (Iraq) or torturing enemy combatants as was done under the Bush administration.


Trump says Jeff Sessions, the attorney general of the United States has an obligation to protect Trump, as if he were his own personal lawyer. But he is not. He is a member of the cabinet, the people’s lawyer. Trump thinks that Sessions should be doing what Michael Cohen did, who now will be disbarred and don an orange jump suit. Sessions, as deplorable as is his policies, did the only thing he could do—recuse himself from the Russia investigation. 


Democrats need a plan to unseat him. They need a candidate who can debate Trump and make him look like the foolish knave that he is. Political correctness unseated Al Franken, and that is semi tragic, because he could beat Trump at his own game—by mocking him. And even if women think he is another Harvey Weinstein, he is not. He is a warrior for woman’s rights and the anti Trump. Franken is Trump’s Kryptonite. He is the anti Trump. Other Democratic candidates do not immediately come to mind, but perhaps one will emerge.


And now, we are entering a more pronounced phase of insanity, as the walls close in on an unhinged, cornered man whose paranoia is overwhelming him.

Share This Post

Recent Post

Why the West is allowing Ukrainians to Bleed and Die

November 21, 2025
During his “wilderness years,” Churchill understood Adolf Hitler’s ambitions, presciently shouting to a deaf world the dangers ahead. The Rhineland. Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia gobbled up while appeasers twiddled. England and France could have sent Hitler packing. Instead, they gave him three more years to arm. It was too late. Fifty million died. Stalin, double-crossed by his former Poland-dividing German friend, decided too late that he had to fight. Millions of Soviets soldiers and civilians died because of his dithering. FDR had to contend with America Firsters and could have entered the war sooner; he had third term political considerations in in 1940; but he knew he had to fight, too. Eventually. WE RELIVE THE MISTAKES OF HISTORY AT OUR OWN PERIL, LIKE WILEY CAYOTE CHASING THE ROAD RUNNER. PUTIN INVADED A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY. STOP HIM, GERMANS. STOP HIM, FRENCHMEN. STOP HIM, NATO. STOP HIM, AMERICA. UKRAINIAN CHILDREN ARE FREEZING AND STARVING. PEOPLE ARE LOSING THEIR LIVES TO A RUSSIAN BLOODTHIRSTY PYROMANIAC, A HANNIBAL LECTER. Here’s the rub: using time as his weapon, like Hitler, Putin is conscripting, propagandizing, and gradually conscripting massive manpower—constructing his war machine, gaslighting his people, building support, slowly, craftily, cunningly, odiously. Russians believe his lies about Ukraine as a Nazi haven, a virtual pizza parlor filled with basement dwelling pedophiles, or in this case, jackbooted storm troopers. Despite President Zelensky’s Churchillian appearance before congress, we must move swiftly, because time is on Putin’s side. A war of attrition is not on Ukraine’s side. Even with US Ordinance, rockets, drones, artillery. Western fear is Putin’s ally. Time is Putin’s ally. Wars start slowly but inevitably spiral out of control; aid the west provides the Ukrainians resembles aid the US gave to England in 1940, followed by exponential materiel increase from the great American “arsenal of democracy.” It was not enough. Not in 1940 and not enough in 2022; it will not be enough in 2023, 2024, 2025 as this war drags on. Too many Russians, too much manpower. Too much time. Victory requires a credible threat of NATO mobilization—an army ready to do battle. And an ultimatum. But that will not happen, I fear. Billions of dollars for weapons in a proxy war with Ukrainians fighting Russians has been impactful. Americans can watch Netflix war movies while Ukrainians bleed. They can watch Tom Hanks storm the beach at Normandy. Much less dangerous. Let’s just ship some more rockets to Ukraine instead. Yellowstone is on. Even so, it was heartening to see the bipartisan support for Ukraine in the Congress. Military planners in the Pentagon and in Western European capitals should be preparing for a wider war. It would be malfeasant for them not to do. We just don’t realize it yet. NATO is obliged to tell Putin to get out of Ukraine or face an allied army to evict him. Putin must be given an ultimatum to get out or face military force. Germans and French, British and American, Canadian and Australian. Putin understands naked power. The west must mobilize. He does not understand anything else. Lenin said, “push forward the bayonet. If you find soft flesh, push. If you find steel, retreat.” Putin learned Lenin in school; Lenin is in his DNA. He learned it in the KGB. He learned it in Mother Russia. He wants it all. He is Czar Nicholas, Comrade Stalin, Comrade Lenin all rolled into a painting in the Hermitage, his hometown museum, where he went as a schoolboy, where his parents took him, where he learned of the greatness of Russia. Where the Czar had palaces. Russians never had democratic traditions. Ask Nicholas II and his family, brutally executed by Bolsheviks. Ask the millions starved by Stalin in the Ukraine during his communized agriculture plan. Ask the people sent to the Gulag, or the Hungarians who dared to revolt against the Soviet hammer and sickle. Ask the subjugated Poles carved up by Stalin and Hitler. Ask all of the subjugated and terrorized people who suffered behind the iron curtain. Ask Alexi Navalny, a political prisoner, poisoned once, and now jailed in a Russian gulag. A delusional revanchist KGB agent in the Kremlin tries to raise the Soviet corpse by terrorizing a sovereign nation. A nation which had its own history before Lenin and his desciples created a dark Bolshevik empire. NATO, led by Germany and France and then the United States, face the eventual inevitability of mobilizing an army to kick Putin out of Ukraine and Crimea. The alternative is too grim to contemplate. Trench warfare. Stalemate. Ukrainians under siege. Massive Russian armies. Possibly being defeated. World economic disruption. Continued war crimes. A war of attrition, cold and misery. I hope I am wrong about this.  Western ambitions about this outrageous war ending through negotiation are delusional. If Putin sees that we are serious about the sovereignty of nations, he must face a serious military threat-- mobilization of NATO forces. Only then he will likely back down. Until then brave Ukrainians will bleed, freeze and die bearing the brunt of our fear.

Thank Goodness the Election is Over

November 21, 2025
This is my first blog entry, and a fine time it is for it, if I must say so myself. Florida has now elected an ethically challenged Republican governor, who essentially flooded the airwaves with negative ads about Alex Sink, the democratic candidate. People who have voted for him will not be surprised if he disappoints by trying to shut the door to the courthouse to "protect" businesses which despoil the environment, drill for oil in pristine seas off the coast, or manufacture harmful products. On the national scene, people are amazed that tea partiers have gained so many seats in the House of Representatives, by mouthing standard platitudes of how they are going to slash spending. But where? They do not say. Elected to the United States Senate is Marco Rubio, a 39 year old tea party conservative, who has railed against a woman's right to choose, waffled on global warming, and thinks that America is moving in the wrong direction. He expects to cure this problem by slashing the budget and making "hard choices," but has failed to specify which choices. Not social security because his 80 something mother is a beneficiary, but more likely because he fears the wrath of Florida's seniors. He is supposedly a rising star in the Republican party and since the other tea partiers are pretty crazy, he probably won't be around for his full term, unless he keeps his seat while running for higher office a la Joe Lieberman. The selling of candidates like bars of soap continues, and the insulting, demeaning ads are over, but the consequences of the electorate not having to think too much about the candidates or listen seriously to debates about complex issues should be troublesome to any thoughtful person. People in Florida should not be discouraged, however. Now that the GOP has some power, they will be held responsible by the punditry, including yours truly in the next election.

George Bush has His New Book Out.....

November 21, 2025
George Bush has his new book out. I have not yet read it, but I have heard him interviewed on TV and have read reviews of the book. This frat boy, this pious peddler of religious virtue, this hypocrite now wants to sell his writing (if he wrote it at all) as though he would be regarded kindly by history. He will not. He lacks no chutzpah. Ignorance surely is bliss. His absence of remorse for sending our young service men and women to fight and die or have a leg or an arm blown off, is an exemplar of hubris and rationalization with which history will be able to evaluate his Presidency for its true worthlessness. Claiming to "protect Americans," he invaded a country that did not present an existential threat to our national security, violating his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. Arguably he is a war criminal, having authorized torture and assuming responsibility for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of American youths, as well as around 100,000 innocent civilian Iraqis. Speaking of audacity, the current occupant of the White House could use some. His potential compromise of the Bush tax cuts, favoring the richest of Americans threatens to perpetuate a growing disparity between the super rich and the rest of us. Imposing taxes to implement social policy, despite Republican protestations, is not a new phenomenon. Seems that the American people have been fed and are voraciously consuming the malarkey of the conservatives who, despite evidence to the contrary, still believe that these rich folk are benefactors who create more jobs when they fail to pay their fair share of taxes. These are the same people who spent two trillion dollars on two wars and insist that we need a fleet of warplanes and billion dollar aircraft carriers to fight an amorphous band of illiterate religious fundamentalist terrorist thugs who have to smuggle explosive-laden printer cartridges onto airplanes or fill a truck with explosives to attack us. Now we need to get spending under control, they say. No present day politician, Republican, Democrat or Tea Partier seems to have the courage to tell us exactly what they will cut. Social Security? The defense budget? Veterans Benefits? Medicare? The truth be told, no one dares. It must be the fault of the lawyers