All posts by Steve Stern

The FBI has raided Trump’s attorney, or, officially, the office and home of Michael Cohen

Current Affairs, Politics

I want to start with The FBI is out to get Trump (and back pedal from there). Trump slandered the FBI throughout his campaign and – and there is no better way to say this – fucked over the FBI ever since he has been President. The fact that he has actually done this ignores one of life’s cardinal axioms,  You can’t fight City Hall and it makes me wonder Why would he do this? I can come up with a theory on the slandering during the election part; he may have thought that it gave him street cred as an outsider – especially compared to Hillary Clinton, who he kept saying, was left off easy by the FBI because she was an insider – it gave the message that his campaign was not just against the Democrats but against the unfair and unresponsive insider government itself, and it was a pre-excuse for why he lost, if he did lose, which, a lot of evidence seems to show, Trump expected. But, once Trump was elected President, Why did he go out of his way to alienate the FBI?. I don’t know but I’ve got a half-baked theory.

Going all the back to 1973, Trump has acted as if he were above the law and reacted to problems by suing and then, often, settling. In that first year, 1973, he was sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination and he sued back for 100 million dollars. They settled and he, essentially, agreed to follow the law. As an aside, he didn’t follow the law and he was sued again for breaking the settlement agreement. End aside. Since then, Trump has defended about 1,450 lawsuits and usually settled for less than he would have had to pay if he had honored the agreement (he has also sued about 1,900 times). I think that this has left him with the belief that laws are malleable and law enforcement pretty weak.

Trump has been referred to as a businessman and, while he has been in business, he is not an organizational chart kind of businessman with the kind of checks and balances that implies. He is more of a mafia-type businessman in which he is the absolute monarch at the center of an organization. It was easy for Trump to confused loyalty to him with virtue so that anybody who is not loyal to him is, de facto, not virtuous and shouldn’t be in the organization. He has never had a Board of Directors to moderate his impulses, and, one thing for sure, he is impulsive. That those impulses have largely worked out in the past has emboldened him. The FBI with its loyalty to its own rules and procedures is never going to be loyal enough to Trump for Trump; that aggravates him and he lashes out. Why not? He is now more powerful than ever. 

People join the FBI for all kinds of different reasons, to help make society safer, to bring criminals to justice, for some, it is a safe government job and for some, it is a way and place to feel powerful, to feel dominant. I once heard an interview with an L.A. gang member, in talking about the anti-gang unit, he said: “They are the biggest, most powerful, gang; they always win.” Well, the biggest, most powerful except for the FBI.

The FBI embodies the same desires as its agents, it wants to make America safer, jail criminals, and it wants to be dominant, it wants to be the most effective law enforcement agency in the world. This is not an organization that takes criticism well, especially fake criticism. Trump has picked a fight with the biggest gang in the country and it is already not going well for him. To show how serious this is, the FBI has even broken through the client/attorney privilege. That must not have been easy, they had to prove to a judge that they were looking for something, not just fishing for anything, but looking for a specific something that they had a good reason to think they would find in Michael Cohen’s office. In the process, they must now have all his hard drives, and our hard drives know even more about us than Facebook. 

Tsar Validimer

Americana

There is an interesting article in the Economist that paints Putin as being more in the tradition of the Tsars rather than the Communist leaders (well, it came out in November of last year but I just got around to reading it). On the cover of the magazine is a photoshopped picture of Putin in a tsarist uniform made up of, mostly, military hardware with a heading saying A tsar is born. Inside is an article with the picture above above a heading saying: Enter Tzar Vladimir. It got me thinking Russia has never been democratic, the Russian tradition is of being ruled by the Tsar. Russia’s reverting back to the good old days is a reversion back to autocratic rule. 

When, as I read almost every day, about Turkey’s slide from Democracy as Recep Erdoğan consolidates his power or Poland and Hungary sliding into fascism, it seems to me that all they have in common is that they were countries that were born and prospered under autocratic rule.  Their institutional memory is not of being Democratic. The United States, on the other hand, has always been a Democracy; maybe not a Democracy as we understand it today with only white, male, landowners having voting rights but, still, a country with a history of Democratic ideals. I find that heartening.  

These kids are awesome

Americana, Local events

Michele and I went to Redwood City to see and listen to the speeches at our local Fight for our Lives. The speakers were children, committed, energized, articulate, children; doing a job that their elders should have done a long time ago. They were inspiring and they gave me more hope than I have had in a very long time. 

Mosaic

Television

Last week, we watched Mosaic by Steven Soderberg, a six part mini-series on HBO, and this week we rewatched it. I was ready to give up after the first episode, the first time around and, now, I have no idea why. Mosaic is about the murder and possible murderers of a beloved children’s author, Olivia Lake, played by Sharon Stone who is somewhat of a cougar. It did not get especially good reviews but I liked it a lot. Soderbergh is one of this generation’s best directors and, while he does mainstream movies like Ocean’s 11 – I think just to prove he can – he is often more experimental and, I keep reading, Mosaic is one of those experiments.

I also read that Mosaic is slow and the end is ambiguous, that was not my experience. It took us a while to get into it,  but once we did, we blasted through all six episodes in three days. The acting is great; Sharon Stone plays a famous writer and she just exudes star but the center of the movie is held by Devin Ratray, an actor I didn’t know, who is superb as a small town police detective, Nate Henry. One of the things that Soderberg does well is how he handles regular people parts with affection and Nate Henry is one of those parts. He is not a Brad Pitt detective, Henry is just a regular guy trying to do a decent job. Mosaic is a good way to spend six hours – twelve in our case – and I heartily recommend it. 

Shocking, just shocking I tell ya

Americana, Politics

path·o·log·i·cal, paTHəˈläjək(ə)l: compulsive; obsessive. Google dictionary.
 
By now, most people realize that President Donald Trump is a liar. What I didn’t know until last week is that he brags about it, as in: “Trudeau came to see me, he’s a good man, he said we have no trade deficit with you, we have none…I said, well Justin, you do. I didn’t even know. Josh, I had no idea. I just said you’re wrong. You’re wrong. It was so stupid.”
 
This shocks me. He was meeting with a foreign leader to talk about a trade deficit and he didn’t even bother to look at the numbers beforehand. The point of the meeting was to talk about trade numbers and Trump didn’t even know if we have a trade deficit or a surplus with Canada. That is a level of not giving a shit that would be shocking in a high school drop out.
 
Then he lied to a guy who did know the numbers. When I was in the merchant building biz – the development biz a little like Trump, really – I saw lots of people lie but I don’t remember ever seeing somebody lie to a guy that knew the truth. A purchasing agent might tell a sub his bid was high when it wasn’t but the sub had no idea. A salesperson might lie about the schedule of a house but the buyer didn’t know the real schedule. Here, however, Trudeau knew the real numbers and Trump lied to him. Maybe Trudeau gave him the benefit of the doubt and just thought, He must have been given the wrong numbers, maybe Trudeau just thought This guy is an idiot but, either way, he knew Trump was wrong. 
 
Lastly, in a public forum, sure to be reported, Trump bragged about being ignorant and lying. To me, this is the most shocking of all. Lying to a foreign leader about something that is checkable is stupid, bragging about it in public is shockingly idiotic.