About Last Night
About Last Night
The embarrassing spectacle of a United States president speaking to a joint session of Congress, his cabinet, and the Supreme Court was little more than a well-crafted piece of propaganda.
Not to be outdone was the shameless fawning by virtually all of the Republicans present, some of whom had a different and more accurate view just a few short years ago.
Them there's the paradox of fact-checking – when there so many lies, the only sensible reaction is to start assuming everything that person says is a lie.
When someone, especially a public figure, makes a pronouncement, our default perception is that it's true, but if it seems to be not true, then we take the time and effort to rebut it – commonly referred to as fact-checking. But when that same individual lies so frequently and prodigiously, the job of proving whether a certain assertion is true can be overwhelming, which neatly explains Steve Bannon's “flood the zone with shit” strategy.
In such a case, as we saw last night in a speech riddled with lies and half-truths, we ought to reach the point where the default should be that it's false, and shift the burden of showing that they weren't lies to those who wish to prove the truth. For instance, why should anyone have to waste their time debunking Trump's utterly silly and inane comments about millions of dollars being wasted on making transgender mice?
As Bernie Sanders told us just minutes after the speech, much if this blather was merely a way to avoid talking about the real problems that we face, and which he and his cabinet so far seem incompetent to effectively address, and indeed may well create more problems.
Just a few other comments, not intended to be comprehensive:
Panama
Following Trump's reckless remarks about the Panama Canal, the president of Panama has responded appropriately.
Ceding of the Panama Canal to Panama was by 1978 treaty (ratified in a two-thirds vote in the Senate in accordance with Article II, Sec. 2, cl. 2 of the Constitution), and thus the “supreme Law of the Land” (Article VI). Although the Constitution does not explicitly prohibit a President from summarily breaking a treaty, it is dubious at best that the Framers meant that a president (who has sworn to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”) has, on their own, the power to violate “the supreme Law of the Land” as a legitimate way to annex territory. Moreover, such an assertion flies in the face of common sense and a commitment to the rule of law.
The Supreme Court has held (5-4) that the issue was “non-justiciable”, refusing to hear a case where, ironically, then President Carter had withdrawn from a defense treaty with Taiwan. In the case of the Panama Canal, though, the question involves an effort clearly directed toward seizing control of property in a sovereign nation in violation of international law and the U.N. charter.
Greenland
Trump's remarks about Greenland, in which he said the U.S. would acquire Greenland “one way or another”, are equally disturbing, if not more so. He suggests that perhaps the people of Greenland might wish to be U.S. citizens and favor acquisition of Greenland by the U.S. Such an approach echoes the way in which Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 – by putting troops not identified as Russian in Crimea so as to simulate rebellion, taking control, and then rigging a referendum vote to approve control of Russia. Professor Jeffrey Sachs might disagree, but he has indicated that the aggression by Putin only arose because the president of Ukraine refused to allow a 30-year lease for a Russian naval base in Sevastopol, never mind that Russia already had ample coastal territory in the Black Sea. Sachs makes no mention of the means by which Putin subsequently acquired Crimea.
Death penalty
Another statement by Trump, i.e., that there should be a mandatory death penalty for anyone convicted of killing a police officer is an outrageous declaration by one who pardoned hundreds of insurrectionists whose actions in his behalf and at his behest resulted in the deaths of four officers, to say nothing of his distain for the law and the Constitution, in wiping out the hard work of prosecutors, the courts, and the jurors who did the difficult and demanding convicting them of various crimes in connection with that insurrection.
People in the U.S. and all over the world deserve better from a President of the United States. And we should not tolerate this kind of behavior.
Notes:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1979/79-856
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/05/opinion/supreme-court-trump.html