ABSURDARAMA!

Tales of the Absurd in this Mad, Mad World

America has become a Country of the Absurd

In the United States, perhaps 50-70 million voters, including a vast majority of Republican voters and almost all Republican legislators and elected officials, are living in a fictional parallel universe ruled by Donald Trump.

Trump and his sycophantic supporters are earnestly embarked on a mission to enact state laws that will suppress the Democratic vote, particularly among African Americans and other minorities, and to amend state legislation in ways which will give Republican governors, legislatures, and other officials the tools they need to nullify or overturn the results of popular votes in future elections.

These developments represent an imminent threat to American democracy–imminent in the sense that they could thwart the people’s will as early as 2022, and could overthrow the true popular and electoral results in the 1924 presidential election.

Donald Trump, who led an attempted coup d’état following the November 2020 election, committed numerous election-related crimes after November 3, and through his four years in office committed numerous crimes involving obstruction of justice and other crimes for some of which he was impeached in 2019 and 2021, is allowed to militate openly in support of the delusional alternate universe and propaganda bubble which keeps him in the public eye, His public appearances are reported with excerpts on top television programs. His co-conspirators are interviewed and reported on as if they were legitimate political leaders who support democracy.

It as if some foreign country that is an enemy of democracy had launched a massive missile attack on the United States that unleashed a tasteless, odorless gas on the entire population, causing total amnesia regarding certain tenets of democracy and the rule of law.

One such bedrock principle of the rule of law is that crimes must be punished, criminals must be indicted and tried, and, when found guilty, sent to prison.

In the absurd country which  America has become, however, the feckless Democrats have become complicit in the Normalization of Impunity for high public officials who commit political crimes while in office.

If Trump gave us the Normalization of the Unthinkable and the Normalization of the Unforgivable, President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have given us the Normalization of Impunity for political crimes and other felonies committed by high public officials.

The scene is reminiscent of the situation in Medellín, Coloumbia in the 1990’s when Pablo Escobar, the notorious head of the Medellín Drug Cartel, was allowed to roam freely in Medellín and even to undertake certain charitable activities to bolster his support among the population.

The situation in America is so absurd that one turns to one’s imagination to try to understand what is going on,  One uses one’s imagination to enquire into what life in Germany might have been like if Adolf Hitler had not committed suicide in April 1945 and, even after the surrender to the Allies on May 8, 1945, had been allowed to miltate for a resurgence of Nazism.  What might it have been like  if, and after a few years, Hitler had been allowed  to propagate a second  Big Lie, that Germany had not really lost World War II, but had only come under Allied Occupation as the result of a second “stab in the back” and the machinations of a massive worldwide Jewish Conspiracy.  What would it have been like if Hitler could have given interviews on the radio and in the press and held mass rallies in support of his resurgent Nazi party?

That, of course, would have been ABSURD!

What is going on–TODAY–in the United States is equally ABSURD!

America has become a Country of the Absurd, in which democracy is hanging by a thread.

The Moderator of the Absurd

 

Trump appoints elephant to Supreme Court

During the reign of Roman Emperor Caligula (37-41 A.D.), according to myth and legend, the Emperor appointed his favorite horse, Incitatus, to be Consul and preside over the Senate. The Senate, at the time, was among other things a kind of a Supreme Court that could review criminal and other court decisions. Historians, however, cast doubt on the idea that Incitatus was ever actually appointed Consul.

But for President Donald Trump, these subtleties of historical fact were of little interest.

On September 22, 2020, it had become clear that Senate Republicans comprising a majority of the Senate would vote for President Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, whoever that nominee might turn out to be.

As noted, according to legend, the Emperor Caligula appointed his favorite horse, Incitatus, to be Consul, and to lead the Roman Senate. Not to be outdone by Emperor Caligula, on Semptember 26, 2020, President Trump appointed an elephant to the Supreme Court of the United States. There is no provision in the Constitution prohibiting him from doing so.

Republican Senators defended the choice, pointing out that elephants are extraordinarily intelligent creatures. While Madame Dumbina, the new nominee, does not have judicial or legal experience, Republican Senadors defended her selection pointing out that she would bring broader experience to the Court, and that her appointment would help redress the gender imbalance on the Court.

Moreover, Madame Dumbina had long served as the leader of her herd of elephants, who were renowned throughout the world for their peaceful relations among themselves, and their progressive social policies in areas such as childcare and protection of the rights of the elderly.

While Madame Dumbina is not a lawyer or a member of the bar, neither of these qualifications is necessary to sit on the Supreme Court. President Trump declared at the nomination ceremony , on September 26, 2020, that “Some people are saying she can read, and has been studying previous Supreme Court decisions.”

Republican Senators defending the President’s choice stressed that Madame Dumbina, in various moot court trials, had voted with the other Justices, after seeing how the conservative majority was going to vote, by raising her trunk. In a close case where she could be the deciding vote, Republican Senators said that when she casts the deciding vote they expected that she would loudly trumpet the victory of the Republican majority on the Court.

Architects have already begun remodeling the Supreme Court’s main hall and the Justices’s chambers and restrooms in order to accomodate Madame Dumbina’s special needs.

Absurdo

Exponential Absurdity in the Covid-19 World

The need for humor in the face of the exponentially Absurd

Who would have thought that Absurdity could increase exponentially in a world already marked by Absurdity?

But it has.

We live in the Exponentially Absurd World of Covid-19 now.

Above all, we mustn’t lose our sense of humor. The Moderator of the Absurd urgently requests submissions of examples, links, and stories of the Absurd in this new Absurd Covid-19 world.

We are looking for absurd quotes, anecdotes, and stories that make you laugh.

Tragic Absurdities

Unfortunately, there are also absurd things going on that make you want to cry.

For example, what is more absurd than a staff member in an assisted-care facility not wearing a mask, or not wearing it properly to cover both the mouth and the nose?

What is more absurd than people congregating in public and not observing physical-distancing rules or recommendations?

What is more absurd than younger people who ignore stay-at-home and physical-distancing rules, believing they are bullet-proof, when in fact they can get infected and become asymptomatic spreaders of the coronavirus germ?

What is more absurd than young people who don’t care if their rule-breaking behavior maintains and increases the spread of the virus in the community, and endangers the lives of their parents, grandparents, spouses or companions, and children? What kind of moral universe are they living in?

What is more absurd than a president, like President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who flouts social-distancing rules while failing to take urgent action at the federal level necessary to slow the spread of the disease?

What, indeed, is more absurd than government leaders too quickly easing social restrictions when the data and the science show the infection rate is rising, and that similar easing of restrictions in other countries has produced, after the two-three week incubation period, a significant increase in the rate of infection?

What is more absurd than political leaders saying we are going to have to accept a lot of deaths in order to get the economy going?

These questions are absurdly depressing.

Humorous Absurdities

Let us turn our attention to the kinds of absurd actions that might make you laugh.

What could be more absurd than the visit by President Donald Trump on May 5 to a factory in Arizona making masks, without him and company officials wearing masks–in flagrant violation of the company’s own policies?

There is obviously a huge number of absurd activities and actions that are taking place.

We need to find and report on the humorous absurdities that we read about and see, so that we can at least laugh and smile in the face of the tragic absurdities we observe every day.

The Moderator of the Absurd

Sexual harrassment hysteria and mob justice: Garrison Keillor and Al Franken denied due process

Amid the current hysteria over allegations of sexual abuse of women by men, Garrison Keillor, the long-time host of Prairie Home Companion and until this week of The Writer’s Almanac, had the temerity to write the following in regard to allegations against Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota):

The greatest absurdity of our time is You Know Whom, which goes without saying but I will anyway. What his election showed is that a considerable number of people, in order to demonstrate their frustration with the world as it is, are willing to drive their car, with their children in the back seat, over a cliff, smash the radiator, bust an axle and walk away feeling good about themselves.

And then there is Sen. Al Franken. He did USO tours overseas when he was in the comedy biz. He did it from deep in his heart, out of patriotism, and the show he did was broad comedy of a sort that goes back to the Middle Ages. Shakespeare used those jokes now and then, and so did Bob Hope and Joey Heatherton when they entertained the troops. If you thought that Al stood outdoors at bases in Iraq and Afghanistan and told stories about small-town life in the Midwest, you were wrong. On the flight home, in a spirit of low comedy, Al ogled Miss Tweeden and pretended to grab her and a picture was taken. Eleven years later, a talk show host in LA, she goes public, and there is talk of resignation. This is pure absurdity, and the atrocity it leads to is a code of public deadliness. No kidding.

–Garrison Keillor (Op-ed) “Al Franken should resign? That’s absurd,” Washington Post, November 28, 2017.

Following this expression of his opinion, in an op-ed column, Minnesota Public Radio cut all ties with Keillor, and even blocked access to the archives of both Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. I, Absurdo, the author of this article, have been an avid listener to The Writer’s Almanac, which provided listeners with a five-minute dose of culture and a poem every morning, a rare event indeed in the vast cultural wasteland of American television and radio. MPR’s statement sought to fudge the point that judgment was apparently passed before an impartial investigation into the allegations had been carried out.

The Washington Post, whose motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness”, entered into the darkest heart of darkness on November 30, when Fred Hiatt, the Editorial Page Editor, wrote that the Post had ended its Op-ed agreement with Keillor because,

Knowing he was under investigation for his workplace behavior, he should not have written a column on that subject; or, if he was going to write, he should have told his editors and readers that he was under investigation. Instead, he wrote a column defending Sen. Al Franken without any disclosure of his own situation.

In other words, Hiatt asserted that if you are an opinion writer for the Post, if you believe you are the subject of false allegations and want to write in the defense of someone else who you believe may be falsely accused, or simply comment on the absurdity of his or her situation, you are ethically prevented from doing so unless you broadcast to the world the details or a summary of the allegations you believe are false or taken out of context of which you are accused.

Hiatt says nothing about what may be his conflicts of interest, of whose intervention produced such swift and intemperate action on his part. Could someone from the Bezos family have intervened? What process led to Hiatt’s decision? Why did he have to act so swiftly, apparently without giving Keillor an opportunity to defend himself? Moreover, is the Washington Post really going to impose its new restriction of the freedom of speech on opinion writers or on all of its writers? Who will act as the police?

Hiatt’s position is absurd, and the darkness at the Post will contribute to the death of democracy in the United States until his position is reversed, and light is thrown upon the entire process of decision which led to throttling such an eloquent cultural voice and critic of Donald Trump.

Now, the raging hysteria over sexual harrassment of women by men has engulfed Democratic senators who are calling upon Franken to resign. He may do so on Thursday, December 7.

Yet he should not, for he is uniquely situated to act to bring the current wave of hysteria to a halt. He has a unique opportunity to give a civics lesson to Democrats, Republicans, and the nation as a whole. To do so will require great courage, a new profile in courage, to stand against the winds of outrage that threaten to blow him down.

If we believe in due process, Franken should have the right to know the acts of which he is accused, and the identity of his accuser. He should have the right to confront his accuser, and to cross-examine his accuser in order to allow an impartial decision-maker to arrive at the truth.

Moreover, does any proposed punishment fit the offense, or crime if there was one? A fundamental tenet of our legal system is that no one shall be punished for actions that did not constitute a crime prior to their occurrence (nulla poena sine legge–“No penalty without a law”).

The Constitution provides for the election of a U.S. senator to a six-year term of office. It does not provide that he may be hounded from office by other senators caught up in a wave of hysteria without the benefit of a fair hearing and due process of law. Indeed, the Constitution confers the right on the citizens of Minnesota to elect their Senator, and no extra-constitutional procedure not based on due process should be allowed to replace their opinions expressed at the ballot box.

What should happen is that Franken should not resign because of  these unproven allegations. Rather, they should be investigated instead of being taken as true and at face value. Memories are colored by emotion and time. Both sides and the context in which alleged behavior took place should be taken into account. Serious consideration must be given to the nature of the alleged behavior, and if Franken is found to be responsible, with inadmissible intent, then he should definitely be held accountable. That can happen through an investigation and recommendation by the Senate Ethics Committee, or a special committee can be established for that purpose.

Franken should stand his ground pending an investigation in order to break the fury of the hysteria that is whipping through the country. Why the rush to judgment, if not to maintain the hysteria of the mob?

Why have the Democrats formed a circular firing squad over this issue?

Donald Trump and Steve Bannon will be laughing all the way to the polls. Trump brags of kissing women without their permission and grabbing their p____y, but suffers no consequences. Roy Moore is running neck and neck with the Democrat in the Senate race in Alabama, and may indeed win. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders fall by the wayside. No one asks who might be orchestrating the hysteria, which seems to weaken trust in the media while taking down leading critics of Trump. Could the Russians be whipping up emotions on the two sides? Who is orchestrating these campaigns? What role is social media playing?

The pay-off for Trump and Bannon is twofold. Not only do they see the media and the Democrats weakened, but by opposing the hysteria of the Democrats they play to their base in opposing what they characterize as extreme political correctness on the other side.

The arguments set forth above represent a simple call to reason. Men who are found, after a fair process of inquiry, to be guilty of alleged behavior which is illegal or offensive, should be held to account. But the “crimes” or offensive behavior they have committed must be articulated, and if they are punished the punishment should fit the crime or the offense.

That is, after all, why we have a legal system and norms requiring a fair process of inquiry, and judgment by an impartial decision-maker. This is simply due process and the rule of law. We would be fooling ourselves if we thought the legal system can be bypassed on this single issue, and could not be bypassed by Trump and his supporters on another.

See A Man for All Seasons (1966):

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
–Attributed to Sir Thomas Moore, in the film A Man for All Seasons (1966)

Let’s take time to sort all of this out. To do so, let us stop the mob at the jailhouse door, and avoid the excesses of mob justice such as those that were committed in the French Revolution, during the Red Scare in 1919-1920, by the Klu Klux Klan in the South, and during the McCarthy period in the early 1950’s.

Absurdo