Not Necessarily Stoned, But Beautiful

june 15

1967

june 15

1999

“The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.”

Bob Dylan in the NYT today, in a piece where a few artists in their 80s were asked about the best and worst parts of reaching that age, and whether they had advice for the president on his getting to the milestone. (Dylan apparently demurred on the final question, not surprisingly.)

Lance Rosen 

Is There An Internal Coup Plot Against Trump Underway As We Speak? If There's Not, I'd Be Shocked--

A friend shared a link to Bob Reich's Facebook column today. It's a doozy, a big deal.

Reich published an open letter from former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt and former Democratic Senator Tim Wirth. Most of you likely heard of these two.

It's pretty stark. They wrote the article that I should have written, was actually planning to write, but didn't because I was blocking. And honestly I wasn't ready to start a project that might send me into a tailspin because it is just so much lunacy.

It is a thorough summation of the recent overt moves by the Trump regime to institute dictatorship, void election results, mass imprison dissidents under so-called anti-terrorism executive orders, to deploy the military, ICE, and CBP as an armed force to conduct a Nazi-style election interference (my description, not theirs) and to expand their illegal global wars in order to seize raw materials and territory, overriding Congress entirely.

My friend was sending me this post to make the point that those quoted in Reich's article were saying things similar to my own recent coverage.

Well, yes, and no. They addressed what is in the headlines. In my view it is what they omitted which is much needed as the subject of my response to my friend. It is not by any stretch a refutation at all of anything they warned about, all of which are more than valid concerns. These are both super-qualified and experienced people, but I believe they are holding back to avoid spreading panic. We here will be looking at the third dimension of what amounts to a 3-D Chess game.

These long time Democratic stalwarts, like many opponents of Hitler in the 1930's, underestimate Trump's capacity for destruction and evil. The fact that none of them use the words "madman" or "insane" to describe his recent actions and statements is a function of their blindspot. Which is...

...the word "nuclear" is nowhere in their open letter. They need to revise the damned thing and re-release it as an addendum. I have some things to say about this.

Here is the Facebook link to Bob Reich's piece.

Here is my response, written for everyone, not just my friend.

"Thank you, I just read the whole thing.

It is always very eventful when a dedicated non-alarmist sounds the alarm, especially when it's done in a clinical, analytic fashion by two former Democratic leaders who between them never had much in the way of drama or big political scandals tied to their names.

But I have to say that they sound like morticians doing a pre-autopsy on someone who isn't dead yet.

The part that's missing, is that Trump wants to use nuclear weapons vs Iran. I'm not going to let myself or others to block on this. Reich misses the boat on the most important thing, in the name of trying to not sound alarmist.

The oligarchy itself is in massive internal conflict, chaos, and division, right now. A faction is trying to figure out how to put down the monster of their own creation.

Unless we start there with this strategic gestalt, we are looking at the problems from the bottom up, instead of the big picture.

I believe there is a kind of internal coup plot to remove him in the near term before he destroys everything, including them.

This has happened before. Hitler was funded by powerful Wall Street families. The ones who caused the Great Depression with their looting of labor and stock bubble speculation.

They supported racial eugenics and they wanted to re-arm Germany to march eastward and break up the Soviet Union. Hitler crossed up the Anglo-Americans, and moved westward first instead, provoking war with England by invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France, as well as the north countries. So the oligarchy which installed him reached a blowback crisis point where they had to get rid of their own creation in order to survive.

Wall Street stopped interfering with FDR's economic and war buildup because their survival depended on it too. FDR himself was a part of the oligarchy, but was looked at by the old blue-blood families as a renegade who betrayed his class. They did nothing but obstruct him for eight years, just like today with MAGA, using a right-wing Supreme Court to throw up obstacles. When we were getting pulled into the war, the obstruction ceased. They had to let FDR take full rein, to mobilize the country to produce enough, to build enough, in order to wage a global conflict.

Everything the oligarchy has done since then was intended to undo what FDR did to beat the Depression and the Axis.

This is what they do. They create monsters and disasters, then have to step back to let the real leaders lead, if for no other patriotic reason just to save their own asses. Then when the beast is finally put down at great cost in human lives, they'll crawl out of their crypts and do the same thing again which created the last crisis.

As you have probably guessed, this response from me is for everyone and not just in response to your comment and share of Bob Reich's piece. I'm here to give a general briefing.

I'm looking past the mainstream media headlines at the dynamics that are driving strategic events. I don't just kvetch about what Trump does on any given day, bad as it is. There is a bigger picture.

I keep saying he is in his downfall stage, and it is going to be a total effing mess, but I fear that people are getting very little in the way of leadership or deeper analysis.

The headlines don't tell the full story. Human nature is telling the story. And we need to put more time into thinking about that, because that's how we will figure out what to do.