4 February—Due to a catastrophe that struck the Monitor edifice yesterday, today’s disquisition will be a little less tiresome than usual.
First, Wiley Miller’s Non Sequitur panel in yesterday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican was brilliantly trenchant, as usual. It pictured a couple standing on a snow-cleared street, looking at a sign warning “CAUTION, WATCH FOR DANGEROUS ICE.” In the balloon, the man says, “I miss the days when we assumed that’s just in regard to the weather.”
On the subject of the Hearst RepublicanAmerican, then, a loyal Monitor reader writes:
“I know how much you like the new version of the Waterbury rag so I thought I’d let you know: I’m just about to pay my bill for the next 8 weeks of 7-day print. It used to be $48.00 before any tip added for the delivery person. It just increased to $66.00 for 8 weeks, a 37% increase. That now means if it doesn’t increase again soon, the annual cost will be about $400.00 vs. about $300.00 in the past, a 33% increase.
“I will need to decide soon on whether to continue with delivery of a newspaper that has virtually no local news coverage and sports news that is generally a day late and concentrates on UConn and national coverage that interests me little.”
So that’s price optimization pure and simple. Despite what they may say, Hearst is in the business first and foremost to make a profit. And their bean counters are counting on the forbearance and charity of the shrinking cadre of HRA legacy subscribers who haven’t yet done the rational thing and dumped their subscriptions (because the execrable rag is hardly worth taking out of the plastic bag it comes in) staying the course till doomsday.
The Hearst RepublicanAmerican, which isn’t worth anything like $300 a year, certainly isn’t worth $400 a year, let alone the $1,600 published “subscription offer” joke. But Hearst Connecticut Media’s subscription terms have proven to be rather flexible because reduced circulation generates reduced advertising revenue—and their ad and obit sales people appear to be considerably more adept than their editorial staff. (Not that it matters, but do people actually read ads? Anywhere?)
So a call to subscriber service with a threat to dump the HRA will probably reduce the pain somewhat. And if a remote operator doesn’t or can’t give satisfaction, a direct call to the customer service manager should . . .
3 February—The Monitor may not be the first, but what the hell. Congratulations to Ned Lamont on being elected to his third term as Connecticut’s 89th governor on 3 November 2026. That’s nine months away, if you haven’t noticed.
As Benjamin Franklin wrote to a French friend in 1789, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” But Ned Lamont’s reelection is pretty certain thanks to Donald Trump. It doesn’t really matter if Trump decides to actually stick his nose in the Connecticut state gubernatorial election this year by endorsing a candidate, because the three leading Republicans vying for the moribund party’s nomination have killed their chances of being elected by not distancing themselves from Trump, let alone denouncing him as he well deserves.
Simply put, Trump’s endorsement of anyone is anathema to most Connecticut voters, the kiss of death to a candidate. And the very mention of his name in any positive way rubs most voters the wrong way. Nationally too, one hopes.
But former New Britain mayor Erin Stewart and sitting Greenwich state senator Ryan Fazio have said they’d welcome Trump’s endorsement. And former New York lieutenant governor and current ultra-right-wing media character Betsy McCaughey is even closer to Trump—in age as well as sociopathic politics.
For whatever reasons, Connecticut Republicans, as the state GOP establishment that should be in hospice care is known, refuse (or refuses) to face electoral reality and insist (or insists) on sticking by Trump, to say the least. In other words, Connecticut Republicans aren’t just stubborn and blind, they’re also stupid. Really stupid.
But it’s those asses who run and ruin the party. And any Connecticut Republican who hopes to become a candidate in a general election must first suck his or her way through a state convention. One would hope that’s why Erin and Ryan haven’t at this stage dumped on Trump.
Betsy’s another story. Besides making patently ridiculous albeit not unexpected promises—like repealing the state income tax—Betsy’s political whore résumé should be a definite loser in Connecticut; and what we know of her agenda is laughable. But given the imbeciles who run the state’s Republican establishment, Betsy McCaughey is virtually certain to win the convention. Because she’s close to Trump and close to 80. And even young Connecticut Republicans are crusty old farts. And born losers. You read it here.
And in the event that Erin Stewart and/or Ryan Fazio should force a primary, they’d lose. Because, incredible as it may seem, over 90 percent of Connecticut Republicans—the clearly benighted loyal majority—are unrealistically and inexplicably supportive of Donald Trump and even enthusiastic about the delusional, mendacious tyrant.
So once again an unsatisfactory candidate will win the Connecticut Republican convention and go on—and deserve—to lose the general election for the very reason she or he won the convention . . .
2 February—Donald Trump announced last night that the “broken” Kennedy Center, to which he magnanimously added his glorious name, will be closing down in July for two years to enable needed repair and renovation. The Kennedy Center is certainly in need of repair and renovation. But thanks to Trump and his flunkies it’s also in need of good performers and patrons.
That’s why, come July, at the order of Donald J. Trump, the living memorial to John F. Kennedy will be demolished to make way for yet another monument to Donald J. Trump. That hasn’t been announced, of course, but loose lips in the White House have revealed that at the suggestion of his Jewish Nazi, Stephen Miller, Trump is determined to build what Adolf Hitler never got around to building because the Allies got in his way—the Volkshalle (People’s Hall), also known as the Große Halle (Great Hall), the Ruhmeshalle (Hall of Glory), and the Monsterbau (Monster Building).
Trump, of course, will call the humongous monument to himself the Great Donald J. Trump People’s Hall of Glory. For obvious reasons, he’d like to distance himself from anything involving the word monster. In all events, he kind of telegraphed his intention last night when he said the new, improved building will be “unlike anything ever done or seen before.” He can say that again. And again. And again. Because White House loose lips confirm that the monumental GDJTPHofG will be built to the concept sketched by Hitler himself and refined by his architect, Albert Speer.
Like Trump’s, Hitler’s narcissistic ego tended to limit his vision to the superlative, specifically to the biggest, although Trump also blathers about the most beautiful—as if he had the taste to discern real beauty.
So pending construction of the GDJTPHofG you’ll want to know that it’s to be 950 feet high, with a dome 820 feet in diameter. For comparison, the U.S. Capitol is a mere 288 feet high and its dome is a piddling 135 feet in diameter. The Washington Monument is 555 feet high. Just as the Hitler-Speer Monsterbau was intended to dwarf all other buildings in Berlin, the Hitler-Speer-Trump GDJTPHofG is intended to dwarf all other buildings in Washington D.C. Of course.
Since Trump attracts the biggest crowds—rather, audiences—known to man, his Monsterbau will be able to hold—but not seat—some 180,000 faithful and others. That compares to 132,000 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in India (yes, that Modi, wannabe Trump of India) and 107,000 at the Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. Note that although the Monsterbau is enclosed, its dome has an oculus—a big uncovered hole on top—151 feet in diameter, wide enough to fit the entire dome of the U.S. Capitol or St. Peter’s Basilica.
Not that it matters, but the interior volume of the Hitler-Speer-Trump Monsterbau is so bloody immense that it’s thought it could generate its own weather—clouds and rain in particular. So the weather will be yet another thing for Trump to tyrannize . . .
1 February—Last October, at a press briefing in the Oval Office, when Donald Trump displayed a model of what his flunkies call the Independence Arch, CBS News reporter Ed O’Keefe asked Trump if it would be called the Arc de Trump. Of course Trump liked O’Keefe’s suggestion, implying that what he envisioned as “the biggest one of all” would indeed be a monument to himself. So what else is new?
Pharaohs, kings, emperors, dictators, and tyrants of all degrees from the dawn of civilization have built monuments to themselves. But, to be honest, haven’t we all—and not just in physical structures? Haven’t we all tried, at any rate?
So it’s a question of scale and taste. As for scale, there’s no question that Trump’s narcissistic ego has always gone for the superlative—“the biggest one of all.” As for taste, there’s no question that Trump’s is in his mouth—if even there.
Back to the Arc de Trump, then, Donald Trump’s total lack of taste is evident in his abuse of scale. There’s his unneeded and inappropriate White House ballroom which dwarfs the White House, for instance. And even though a 250-foot-high Arc de Trump would dwarf the nearby Lincoln Memorial, that’s the size he prefers, rather than the two smaller options—because “I’d like it to be the biggest one of all,” as well, of course, as “the most beautiful in the world,” as Trump told reporters last night.
White House flunky Davis Ingle gushed: “The Arch is going to be one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world. President Trump’s bold vision will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and be felt by generations to come. His successes will continue to give the greatest Nation on earth—America—the glory it deserves.”
(That Davis Ingle thought it necessary to remind us that the greatest Nation [his capitalization] is America can be construed as rather disturbing. But we won’t delve into his insecurity.)
Evidently the Arc de Trump is intended to be festooned with a central sculpture of Lady Liberty (conspicuously gilded, of course, and clearly out of proportion with the arch) flanked by a pair of bald eagles, the predatory opportunistic raptors that Trump clearly identifies with. Is it serendipitous, then, or intentional that in the stylized sketches the alleged eagles appear to be hands with the middle fingers extended. Talk about flipping the bird to America . . .
31 January—Just as Marcel Duchamp rose from his grave to immortalize Donald Trump and Stephen Miller in “Crude Descending a Staircase with Jewish Nazi,” previewed in yesterday’s Litchfield Monitor, yesterday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican reported that “On this date, 1935, [i]n the first known attempt to assassinate a U.S. president, an unemployed house painter tried to kill President Andrew Jackson, but both HIS pistols misfired and he was tackled as Jackson was safely hustled away.”
It’s worth noting that the unsuccessful assassination was carried out in front of the U.S. Capitol and that President Jackson beat the would-be assassin with his cane before the perp was safely hustled away by Congressman Davy Crockett and other heroes. Moreover, the house painter-perp was unemployed by his own choice, having quit his job because he claimed the U.S. government owed him lots of money. Talk about entitlements. And he had moved in with his sister and brother-in-law anyway.
In 1935, you’d figure the would-be assassin would have used more reliable handguns than muzzle-loading cap-and-ball single-shot compact flintlocks he’d converted to percussion-caps, one .32-caliber, the other .22-caliber. (On the other hand, John Wilkes Booth’s .44-caliber cap-and-ball Deringer proved reliable.)
Oh oh oh. It wasn’t 1935 at all. The HRA must have got the date wrong. By a century. So it’s also worth noting that the would-be assassin was an immigrant, not a native-born nor naturalized United States citizen. There was no ICE back then, nor, for that matter, Secret Service.
So Richard Lawrence, the would-be assassin, was a Brit who had come over in his early adolescence with his parents during the War of 1812 (go figure) and settled in Virginia. He reckoned that the U.S. owed him money stemming from real estate claims because he was actually King Richard III and that Jackson’s opposition to the Second Bank of the United States was standing in the way of what he considered his substantial entitlement. (Don’t ask about Jackson versus the Bank of the United States, known as the Bank War. But something like it could happen again.)
Lawrence had lost his marbles, it’s thought, because of the paint he didn’t realize he’d been sniffing. So he was tried, prosecuted by Francis Scott Key (who had written “Defence of Fort M’Henry” 21 years earlier), found not guilty by reason of insanity, and institutionalized until his death in 1861.
It’s not impossible that Richard Lawrence hadn’t lost all his marbles and was sequestered in funny farms for political reasons. Never in America, you’re thinking. Right? But Lawrence conspicuously referred to Jackson as King Andrew. And Jackson was in fact regarded by many in his day—and since—as a tyrant. He disregarded the rule of law and the Supreme Court when they were inconvenient, for instance. Sound familiar?
And Jackson notoriously implemented the infamous spoils system, wherein loyalty trumped merit in rewarding supporters with government jobs. Sound familiar? Suffice to say, the spoils system led to inefficiency and downright corruption in government. Sound familiar? And until the accession of Crass King Donald to the Tasteless Throne of Glitz and Corruption it was largely replaced by a merit-based civil service.
And now Trump wants to build a TRiUMPhal arch a hundred feet taller than the Arc de Triomphe. He probably doesn’t know that Hitler had wanted to build an even taller one . . .
30 January—Surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp, known to some as the Daddy of Dada and the Grandpa of Pop, is best known for “Fountain,” a porcelain urinal embellished with “R. Mutt” and “1917”; putting a mustache on Leonardo’s overhyped “La Gioconda” (“Mona Lisa”); and three iterations of “Nude Descending a Staircase.” He died at 81 in 1968 and was interred in Rouen.
But the late M. Duchamp kept in touch with the underground and was so disgusted by Donald Trump and his repulsive henchman Stephen Miller that he rose from his grave to create “Crude Descending a Staircase with Jewish Nazi.”
The Litchfield Monitor is privileged to preview the posthumous masterpiece before it’s put on display in the Museum of Modern Art on the very wall that once held Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica.” It’ll be a stretch . . .
29 January—Most undocumented immigrants are guilty only of being in the United States without authorization. That’s not even a crime. Rather, like speeding a few miles over the limit, it’s a civil violation. It’s punishable by deportation but not incarceration.
Why, then, are undocumented immigrants locked up and not infrequently made to suffer inhumane detention? Well, even though the American concentration camps may have all the appearances of third-world prisons, they’re officially on the books as detention centers and are there only to ensure that noncriminal illegals appear for hearings. Sure.
Even more troubling, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol operatives are supposed to be fully aware of the civil—noncriminal—status of most undocumented immigrants, why are they so brutal in arresting them? Can you imagine a cop pepper-spraying and cuffing you for a traffic violation? [Okay, something like that happened not too long ago in Connecticut.]
That could well be construed as a rhetorical question. But the painful answer, in reality, lies in the totally inappropriate, utterly disgraceful and disgusting—but politically expedient—Donald Trump-Stephen Miller neo-Hitlerian persecution of vulnerable minorities.
The Department of Homeland Security needed—needs—lots more people to do the dirty work of ridding the nation of easy targets, most of whom look and sound different from the mainstream. And in the single year of Trump’s second reign of terror alone, the goon force has more than doubled, from 10,000 to 22,000. And DHS is desperately looking for still more, offering $50,000 signing bonuses and other luring benefits, as well as lowering hiring and training standards.
And let’s not forget immunity and impunity. Despite what Trump flunkies call “federal immunity,” ICE and CBP agents aren’t technically above the law—they’re not supposed to be immune from criminal prosecution or civil litigation. But without going into detail, between qualified immunity in civil lawsuits and federal supremacy over states in criminal cases, DHS thugs don’t have much to worry about—even absent “federal immunity.”
Moreover, the Department of Justice retains the ultimate authority to prosecute federal functionaries who violate criminal statutes. That’s happened very rarely in the past. And, given the blatant Trumpian criminality of the current DOJ, it’s highly unlikely that anybody at all doing the emperor’s bidding will be prosecuted . . .
28 January—These days, thanks to Donald Trump’s patently demented autocratic lust to rule the world and bully his way to the Nobel Peace Prize in the bargain, MAGA is gaining popularity all over the globe as the acronym for MAKE AMERICA GO AWAY.
Yesterday—and, regrettably, not for the first time—the Monitor, sidetracked by typically unpleasant contemporary affairs, neglected to even mention Wolfgang Mozart’s birthday. What can we say? Peccavimus et nos pænitet. It would have been his 270th. In dilatory celebration thereof, then, here’s a marvelous performance of his delightful Sonata for Piano Four Hands in D Major, K 381.
And getting back to MAGA, it’s also the acronym for MOZART’S ALWAYS GREAT ARTISTRY . . .
27 January—No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place, according to a Zen proverb. No doubt. But after minutes upon minutes of heated debate, the Litchfield Monitor’s sanhedrin (editorial bored) managed to synthesize this corollary: When does only one snowflake fall? So live with it.
A culture of immunity is one in which privileged individuals and institutions enjoy—and not infrequently misuse and abuse—legal and pseudo-legal protections not enjoyed by the populace in general. That naturally engenders a culture of impunity, in which individuals and institutions are able to evade punishment for illegal acts—and commonly abuse the privilege.
The incestuous culture of immunity and impunity has been a hallmark of government since government has existed and a definite attraction for functionaries—as long as they keep on the right side of the rulers, whatever they may be called.
The Trump administration has cultured immunity and impunity of and for its loyalists to excess. That’s why we don’t expect the Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs who committed two murders in Minneapolis to pay any penalties for their crimes.
Here are links to coverage of one of those murders, Alex Pretti’s, including videos, from The Guardian and The New York Times. They’re well worth watching:
26 January—Noreaster? Blizzard? Does it matter? Plowed, snowblew, shoveled, swept. It’s snowing again. Ah well. Maybe it won’t drift. So here’s a picture of a Rolls-Royce the owner probably couldn’t put in the garage because it wouldn’t start. Can’t make out the license plate, but it’s not Connecticut:
Since everything is about Donald Trump, two weeks after his ICE-Gestapo goons murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month, here’s what he blathered to a press briefing:
“When I learned that her parents, and her father in particular, is like—I hope he still is, but I don’t know—was a tremendous Trump fan. He was all for Trump. Loved Trump. It’s terrible. I was told that by a lot of people. They say, ‘Oh, he loves you.’ He was a—I hope he still feels that way. It’s a hard, hard situation. But her father was a tremendous—and parents, were tremendous Trump fans. It’s so sad. It just happens. It’s terrible.”
[Ignoring context, the sequence that sticks in your mind is: “He was all for Trump. Loved Trump. It’s Terrible. I was told that by a lot of people.” Tremendous! Would it were so!]
What a guy!
And here’s Trump’s design for a new Department of Justice seal. It really is all about him:
25 January—So Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons committed yet another wanton murder in Minneapolis yesterday. And you can bet the ICE murderers won’t be punished for this crime. Either.
A week after an ICE goon murdered Renee Good on 7 January, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal compared ICE to Hitler’s Gestapo. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz calls ICE a modern-day Gestapo. After an ICE goon murdered Alex Pretti yesterday, then, let’s see just a little of how ICE and the Gestapo actually compare. Incidentally, last year the Monitor called the FBI Trump’s Gestapo. Suffice to say, the Gestapo shoe fits both Trump’s FBI and Trump’s ICE.
Of no real importance but worth noting, both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Geheime Staatspolizei (secret state police) are commonly known by their acronyms, ICE and Gestapo. For convenience, the comparison will be stated mostly in the present tense.
Both the Gestapo and ICE most obviously are indisputably aggressive, brutal paramilitary tentacles of authoritarian regimes, are known for use of excessive force, and victimize so-called marginalized groups. Both agencies use masked, armed thugs to target specific populations. Both agencies dehumanize, terrorize, and work in secret until they carry out abductions rationalized and euphemized as law enforcement.
Both the Gestapo and ICE rely on opacity, secrecy, anonymity to do their dirty. Both agencies operate with impunity (like Hitler and Trump), Gestapo’s de jure, ICE’s de facto. Gestapo agents were punished for things like disloyalty to Hitler and corruption. ICE agents certainly will be punished for disloyalty to Trump. As for corruption, however, no government functionary in good standing with any regime will ever be punished by that regime.
The Gestapo was in business to stifle all dissent and enforce racial purity laws. While neither of those reprehensible undertakings is in ICE’s official remit, that’s precisely what it does. The Nazi regime sanctioned the Gestapo’s use of torture and summary executions. ICE’s inhumane tactics are tantamount to torture; and its detention facilities are really concentration camps. Then there are ICE’s summary executions . . .
