Naming the Republican Tax Bill

Have decided that the Republican tax bill should be called the "Destroy the Middle Class and Give Its Money to the Rich" bill.

Next Year Will Be Even Worse

The fascists know that the Republicans are likely to lose in 2018, and again in 2020. So they're going to try to get as much of their agenda enacted in 2018 as they can. Holy sadness, Batman!

To Senators and Republicans (edited tweets)

To the Senators and Representatives who did this thing [passing this disastrous tax bill]: you will not have a peaceful retirement. There are going to be a lot of angry people. They will remember that we held the world in our hands, and you threw it away.

Dear Republican elected officials: no one believes you anymore, not even most of your supporters.

Fascist Monsters from the Id: Marat/Sade and Trump

Over at Balloon Juice, front-pager Doug! asked about the French Revolution and if there might be a model for revolution now. I would have to say it was a very bad one, and then someone brought up the Judy Collins medley of songs from Marat/Sade, which I'd just finally seen on film. That led me to write this short review of the film and its applicability to our current situation.

The 1962 Peter Weiss play, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, usually called Marat/Sade in self-defense, or perhaps just to save column inches, is worth watching, though it is not an easy watch.

It is exactly what the title says it is. The Marquis de Sade really did write plays when confined at Charenton, and he really did have inmates perform them. He did not write “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat,” but he very well could have. There’s a lot there, and a lot of it bears on our current situation. In the filmed play-within-a-play, the Marquis (Patrick McNee) debates Marat (Ian Richardson), a nihilistic libertarian arguing with one of the great socialist rhetoricians, as the very simple plot tells the story of Marat’s rise to prominence and assassination by Charlotte Corday, portrayed by a narcoleptic inmate (Glenda Jackson.) In the background, the insane cast of inmates act atrociously and, ultimately, revolt. The lyrics of Adrian Mitchell’s “The People’s Reaction” might have been written as expression of the motivations of Trump supporters. There is a waterboarding scene (it was psychotherapy once, though I doubt it was used at Charenton during the Marquis’s time; the actual director of Charenton, who gets short shrift in Marat/Sade, disliked torture.) There is even – yes! – a compulsive rapist.

The play was enormously influential both as social commentary and as theater, shaping the art in the second half of the 20th century as well as the careers of great actors. Weiss, who I judge one of the great artists of the 20th century, nailed our current situation. I think there is a Freudian subtext with the Marquis as ego (self), Marat as superego (conscience), and the inmate cast as id. Freudianism has not worn well, but Marat/Sade, connecting sexuality and political revolution, has. It is also about Naziism; Weiss's family were refugees from the Nazis.

And so, here we are, dealing with fascist monsters from the id.

The Light from the Gates of Hell, Again

Last July I wrote, of the ACA repeal: "The main thing here is not the health care bill, which will be bad enough, but that Ryan, McConnell and their shadowy backers can pass enormously cruel and unpopular laws – even laws which will kill Americans – written in secret. Now that they have succeeded in that, there will be more such laws passed. The USA is now an authoritarian state run by a largely secret faction."

Except that did not happen after all. Instead, five months later, we have the tax rewrite, written by lobbyists, released at 5pm on a Friday. It is likely to pass; one of the last holdouts, Sen. Robert Corker, was persuaded to vote for it, demonstrating that his deficit hawkery was all along hypocrisy. So unless something extraordinary happens, it will pass. No single person even knows every provision of the law; indeed, one that seems to be specifically for the Trump family was snuck in at the last moment.

Now what? Do we need a constitutional amendment that forbids the creation and maintenance of aristocratic fortunes?

What Professor Krugman said

“It's easy to get acclimatized to our situation, but step back and look at what's happening both on taxes and on the Trump coverup: one of our two major political parties, currently running the government, is suffering an intellectual and moral implosion. It's terrifying.” – Paul Krugman

Black Votes Matter

At this point, it appears that Democrat Doug Jones has won the special election for Senate in Alabama. I am happy, but still waiting to see if Jones is actually seated in the Senate, indeed, if Moore successfully challenges the vote.