The Lion Sleeps...In Meetings

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." - George Orwell

Does anyone else find it a little creepy that so many Orwell quotes seem so apt? Maybe it's just me. It's as though we're living through Project 1984. Sorry, I meant 2025. OK, no I didn't.

But before I get to the serious stuff, let's talk about Donald Trump's racism. Ah, ah. Don't even attempt a refutation, because it is not exactly a Manhattan Project-level secret.

The video he posted on his Dollar Store-version social media platform "Truth Social," that depicted the Obamas as monkeys is simply indefensible. But I am amused at how many people try anyway. That is when they talk about it at all. Fox News, which is an insult to both words, didn't mention it until the evening programs. That meant a whole day spent trying to figure out how to pretend Trump, yet again, didn't manage to suppress his inner 8-year-old.

Even the ever-loyal Senator Tim Scott, pictured here in the Oval Office...

... as the only black Republican in the Senate, had to admit it was racist. But for guys like David Duke, a great kick-off to Black History Month.

To be honest, though, it's not like that revelation was hidden like an old Epstein birthday card. We've known his problem with black, brown and lady-type people for years.

We of course know about his issues with female reporter-types, the latest being, as he sought to avoid another Epstein question, telling CNN's Caitlin Collins that she never smiles. You know, like this...

Or, maybe it's reserved for non-jerks. Just a guess.

But let's travel down memory lane for a moment. Here was the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2024...

And now let's guess which two were fired almost immediately. I know, too easy.

And then there's the time the President complained that the National Museum of African American History and Culture's slavery exhibition was not balanced enough, though I'm trying to figure out the actual balanced view here, since that is the actual mechanism that brought black folks here in the first place. Outside of the free trans-Atlantic cruise, I'm drawing a blank.

And, in the wake of firing the black guy and the woman in the Joint Chiefs, the Pentagon got busy on the white snowflake front.

• Content Targeted: The content flagged for removal from military exhibits and website pages included historical articles, photographs, and profiles of numerous trailblazers. Specific examples related to Black Americans include:
  • The profile of Sgt. William Carney, the first Black Medal of Honor recipient.
  • Stories and photos related to the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military pilots.
  • Multiple articles about baseball legend Jackie Robinson's Army service and court-martial for refusing to move to the back of a bus.
  • The story of Doris Miller, the first Black sailor to earn the Navy Cross for his actions at Pearl Harbor.
  • Pages and links to African American history at Arlington National Cemetery.

They even took the black stuff out of General Colin Powell's bio. Navajo Code Talkers, I guess, became a bunch of guys talking Pig Latin.

Recently, the Jackson, Mississippi, home of murdered civil rights figure Medgar Evers, which has been named a national historic site, underwent a change. The brochures, held in a kiosk next to the driveway where he was shot, were recalled for changes. They told the story of his murder by a Ku Klux Klansman named Byron De La Beckwith. The Park Service had pulled the brochures in anticipation of replacing them with a new version, which would remove the word “racist” to describe the killer

In 1963, Beckwith shot the civil rights leader in the back on the driveway of the Evers family home in Jackson. It would take 31 more years before a Mississippi jury would convict Beckwith.

Six years after the killing, he was caught trying to plant a bomb outside a Jewish leader’s home in New Orleans and went to prison. 

In a 1990 interview, Beckwith repeatedly used racial slurs. He called African Americans “beasts,” referred to Medgar Evers as a “mongrel,” and said, “God hates mongrels.”

The pulled brochures called Beckwith “a member of the racist and segregationist White Citizens’ Council.” Maybe it's just me, but if you squint real hard and let your mind wander, that description kind of fits.

But it's too divisive, apparently. We don't want Klansmen to feel they've been insulted.

Then there's Trump himself calling Somali immigrants “garbage”, " talking about “shithole countries”, and describing Covid-19 as the “kung flu”. He launched his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants drug dealers, criminals, and rapists. He repeatedly questioned Obama’s birth certificate. He initiated a so-called Muslim ban and used the word “Palestinian” as a slur.

And remember Haitian immigrants are eating your dogs and cats. He and his developer father were sued by the government for housing discrimination. He wanted the so-called "Central Park Five" who were falsely accused of murder, executed before they were exonerated.

So the whole Obama/monkey thing wasn't a real thunderclap shocker, to be honest. The real hard part is continuing to defend this. I don't envy Trump lickspittles their task.

What does worry me is a comment from a sensible conservative writer and historian, Robert Kagan. His theory is not to worry about an impending dictatorship, it's already here. And the deployment of masked, undertrained goons with guns in largely blue cities is meant to stir up resistance. That could allow Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. Here is the Wikipedia synopsis...

The Insurrection Act of 1807, or just the Insurrection Act, is the U.S. federal law that empowers the president of the United States to nationally deploy the Armed Forces and to federalize the National Guard units of the individual states in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder, of insurrection, and of armed rebellion against the federal government. The Insurrection Act provides a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act (1878) that limits the president's deploying the U.S. military to enforce either civil law or criminal law within the United States.

It has been used before, actually, many times. But Kagan fears it will be a ruse to federalize the mid-term election. Ergo the wacky raid on a Georgia elections office, and the presence of the head of National Intelligence there. What did Tulsi Gabbard want? I mean, other than more Dalmatians for a new coat?

Kagan's theory is that considering the almost total dismantling of the US government, alienation of our allies, abandonment of Ukraine, subservience of Congress, decimation of our trade relationships, and personal enrichment from the office, we are already there.

What more could Putin want?

Well, other than keeping the Epstein files under wraps.