A time to put aside secular concerns like politics

"The fear of the Easter bunny is often related to leporiphobia which is the fear of rabbits." 

 

Maybe I'm a psychic: I have foreseen an all-out attack by our U.S. president on the Federal Reserve. Our top headline today - this day three days before Easter - confirms my feelings. And when DJT launches an attack, he does so with not a trace of the kind of civility or decorum we used to expect from our president. 

Surely you can't dispute me when I say he does this like a seventh grade male bully. A seventh grade male bully "in the lavatory" perhaps. "Lavatory" is an interesting term - I remember it from when I was an elementary school student at Longfellow in west Morris. 

What does it say about our U.S. culture when we no longer expect a president to behave in a dignified and restrained way? Oh, he could still have his agenda which could be aggressive. 

 

What's good for the goose. . .

Since we have so clearly lowered our standards - cheapened our culture - we might expect the same diminished norms for when the political left comes surging back. It will come surging back when Americans' distress over what is happening to them gets extreme. Extreme circumstances call for an uprooting of the regime in power. 

It's unlikely for the "rebellion" as it were to germinate in places like West Central Minnesota. In West Central Minnesota we have a 100 percent sycophant for the Trump regime representing us in Congress. You wouldn't dispute me on that, would you? 

This Sunday is Easter when the devout souls file into the church pews. Too many churches - such a diffuse religion this Christianity is. It has courted peril in the long term by becoming so joined-at-the-hip with MAGA "Make America Great Again." The churches who have tried to stay separated from that now appear on their heels. They are struggling to even survive. 

Those of us in those outlying churches do not connect our faith devotion to DJT, nor would we do this with any political regime. Political regimes come and go even though I realize that Trump and MAGA have been with us for nine years. 

I have tried to write skeptically about Trump like a true journalist right from the start. From when he "came down the escalator." Oh, I was certainly willing to give him a chance. I'd see other skeptics in the news saying "if he actually gets elected he will mature into the role and lead responsibly." What an assumption we were trying to make. But, not an unreasonable assumption. 

Gambling in politics? Well yes, hoping that the best in human nature can win out. Because, surely us Americans will elect fundamentally good people even with their occasional idiosyncrasies. 

He does not belong with Easter

Obviously the worst has come true with Trump. We find that he is a vile and disgusting person, willing to ship people who annoy him (brown-skinned especially) to inhuman foreign prisons without due process. Without due process our American legal system would wither away. I'll remind you it is the cornerstone. 

It has become abundantly clear how DJT and his people manipulate the legal system, play "word games" with it to suit their own ends. Wasn't John Roberts making it abundantly clear that the Court simply wanted the administration to make sure this wrongly-deported man was brought home? So why couldn't DJT have just done it? He had the means as the world's most powerful person. But I don't know, China appears to be catching up to us. 

If DJT lacked the means, the Supreme Court would not have delivered the kind of mandate that it did. 

Will the current situation lead to the genuine "mass deportation camps" that were foreseen in the presidential campaign? Haven't Trump's people spoken openly about such a thing? So we'll end up deporting lots of inexpensive labor. With a resulting rise in prices for us all? 

 

No surprise here

The reason I'm in this little "spiel" on this morning three days before Easter is that our headlines today confirm something that I was sure was going to happen: DJT has begun his absolutely frontal assault on the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell. Wow! 

When I was a young person, we learned about the norm of how a president should never make comments about the Federal Reserve. "Don't fight the Fed" was the wisdom. One of the "unwritten rules" of the Beltway. Such rules or norms must have existed for a reason. Now we have a president who pays no attention to any rules, and surely you can see this. "Bull in a china shop" might accurately describe. 

So here's what could happen: Trump finds a way to remove the Fed chairman "for cause." I'll repeat that the Trump movement manipulates and massages the words of our laws. "For cause" is a huge opening but not for a normal and rational leader. DJT will take that guideline and simply say Powell is mentally ill or deranged because his economic judgments are so off base. You think Trump wouldn't do that? 

This will follow the familiar pattern: at first many of us will frown, feel concern and maybe disapprove totally. But we'll go back to our regular lives and then discover that the most absurd scenario happened anyway. And if the sky does not fall immediately, well we'll just go back to our own affairs and not really pay any mind to it. Happens over and over again. It appears to be happening now with the deportations to foreign prisons without due process. 

One step at a time, one brick at a time. Until what? Until true hyperinflation maybe? Yes, this is the biggest danger. Trump will wrest control of "the Fed" because he will insist on lower interest rates. Powell's professional judgment won't matter at all to him. 

 

Mueller, then Powell

Powell will be pushed aside and left to be looking pathetic just like Robert Mueller. Mueller had such a long and distinguished career. Then the Trump people started asserting he had mental decline (the most polite way to put it). Mueller was poking into the Russia connection. After such a commendable career, the guy will now be remembered for his apparent "fumbling" in the probe which was accelerated by Bill Barr's alignment with the Trump people. 

Jerome Powell could be thrown on the same scrap heap. While the American people are left to scramble and maybe panic because of the hyperinflation that could well be coming. You will care when it happens.

 

This is off-limits for yours truly

Easter buffet, for how much?

Easter is in the offing. You can have a nice Easter buffet at a high-end Morris restaurant for $26 on up, so I hear. 

I will go to DeToy's where I'm sure the price is more reasonable. But there are fewer and fewer "middle class" restaurants out there. In fact, haven't you noticed there isn't really a middle class any more? The great American middle class that was formed after the end of WWII? 

Lower interest rates push inflation. Deporting cheap labor pushes inflation. And when all is said and done, all DJT wants really is to be propped up like an authoritarian. We're allowing this. Our congressperson is fine with it. 

So many of us will file into our local "conservative" churches for Easter and be eager to heap more praise on DJT. I'll be at DeToy's eating chicken. I can't have a chocolate bunny because I'm diabetic.

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com