Lobsters in the Pot are Starting to Get Steamed

Better than getting reamed and steam-cleaned!

February 24-25

By Marc Cooper

Los Angeles, CA

Hello, fellow lobsters! Getting a little too hot for you, maybe? Times to crawl out or get eaten at a Mart-a-Lago banquet..

After five weeks in Chile, I came down to L.A. for a week to see old friends and family and for a routine cardiac check (all A-OK).

I’m returning now to my regular publishing schedule, and there’s so much happening that I’m not going to try to squeeze everything into a singular narrative. This edition of The Coop Scoop will instead be a series of mid-length modules looking at the bogus “peace talks,” the ongoing destruction of the state, the status of Trump’s regime, and some major cracks in the MAGA united front. And, quite importantly, Trump’s takeover of the Armed Forces and State Security (the FBI), and why not a few words about the definite killing of the Western Alliance, the betrayal of Ukraine, and our new partners in Moscow.

Let’s see if I can get through the whole list and not necessarily in that order. I will try to be brief on each subject (don’t believe that!). And if you have a question or objection to what I am about to state, PLEASE step forward in the comments section, and I will reply to you within 24 hours.

THE STATE OF PLAY OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

After just five weeks into his four-year term, we are currently deep into an ongoing transition to a presidential dictatorship led by a bat-shit-crazy fascist. How it will proceed is unknowable, but we are well along that road. No, we are not in a constitutional crisis as the pundits clutch their pearls. We are already in a post-constitutional regime.

Those who think fascism requires stormtroopers and goose-stepping goons in uniform have spent too much time watching the History Channel. American fascism is not a counter-revolution, as there has been no insurgency to crush. It’s a Brooks Brothers – or in this case, a basically peaceful Armani-clad – seizure of power within a weakened democratic shell and supported by way too many embittered, vengeful, and brainwashed fellow citizens.

In a short five weeks, Trump has successfully concentrated all state power in his hands and those of the executive branch. The separation of powers is a dead letter. The MAGA Congress has ceded 100% of its power to him. Parts of the judiciary have been minor irritants to his seizure, but the courts have issued relatively minor, temporary restraining orders that will soon expire as the cases move into district courts, many of which are Trump-friendly.

Trump has already been found to have violated at least two of the TROs, but the respective judges stopped short of issuing bench warrants for contempt. In the next year or so, some prominent cases will hit SCOTUS, and I suspect he will win most of the cases and lose some. If he defies the Supremes, then the last façade of democracy will fade, and we will be confronted by a lawless official dictatorship.

Trump’s popularity is falling rapidly, but not as fast as that of his heat shield, the increasingly bonkers and irrational Elon Musk. Yet, Trump still retains about 38-40% favorability, the lowest in modern history for a president only one month into his tenure. Captain Cueball, James Carville, predicted on Sunday that Trump’s regime will “collapse” within a month. In a non-parliamentary system, I don’t think that means a damn thing. Dictators are often unpopular. A cornered and dangerous lame-duck Trump might become more ferocious if he drops another 20 points and figures he has nothing to lose by going the Full Monty. Democratic wishcasting is exactly that. For the moment, he is still aggregating and usurping more and more state power.

TRUMP’S TAKEOVER OF THE ARMED FORCES AND THE INTERNAL SECURITY FORCES

The so-called Friday Night Massacre that saw Trump purge and then take political (not jus constitutional) control of the Armed Forces should be taken damn seriously. Yes, he predictably replaced the black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the female chief of the Coast Guard (two “DEI hires'“) but chillingly he wiped out the trio of JAG’s in the Army, Navy and Air Force. JAG’S are the uniformed legal chiefs who review the rules of engagement and more importantly are the ultimate judges of whether commands, even from the top, are legal or if they are war crimes.

State Security in hands of Kash and Bongino

“ Interviewed on Fox News, [Defense Secretary] Hegseth justified the firings as a necessary removal of those who could potentially act as “roadblocks to anything that happens.” Bookmark that phrase, “anything that happens,” says expert on fascism, Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat in her quite lucid substack called LUCID.

I didn’t want to bring Hitler into this but, alas, I must even briefly. Once the Fuhrer was firmly in power and to quiet down the SS who wanted to become the national army, he made the Wehrmacht (army) officers and recruits recite a pledge of personal loyalty to him and not the Reich, the nation. This is what Trump Is now doing albeit without messy and scary Nuremberg rallies.

It's worse over at the FBI where the supremely unqualified and childishly MAGA zealot Kash Patel was put in charge by a compliant vote of the MAGA congress and this is a more radical break than with the army. At least Trump can sort of justify his direct control of the armed forces as commander-in-chief, but that’s different than demanding total loyalty to him.

The FBI, since Watergate, has ostensibly been an independent agency free of partisan or political color. Kash was bad enough but now he has named a true fringe extremist, podcaster Dan Bongino, as Number Two, the Deputy Director of the FBI in charge of day to day direct operation. Two Trump worshippers and liars. Bongino is a militant MAGAoid who sits about a half a degree to the left of Alex Jones. Says The New York Times:

“The combination of Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino will represent the least experienced leadership pair in the bureau’s history. It is also all but certain to prompt concerns about how the men, who have freely peddled misinformation and embraced partisan politics, will run an agency typically insulated from White House interference. “

“My entire life right now is about owning the libs,” Mr. Bongino said in 2018. He has also echoed a popular grievance among the far right denouncing the so-called deep state…”

“… A former Fox News host, Mr. Bongino left the network in 2023. Notably, he hosted Mr. Trump on his show in 2021, at a time when the network — and much of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire — was trying to turn the page on the Trump era.

“On Fox News in December 2021, Geraldo Rivera called the events of Jan. 6 a riot “unleashed, incited and inspired” by Mr. Trump, leading Mr. Bongino to question his fealty. “The back-stabbing of the president you’re engaging in is really disgusting,” he said. “

“His tough-talking style catapulted him to stardom on radio and on social media, where he often peddles rampant misinformation. That includes spreading the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen, falsely claiming that masks are ineffective at preventing the spread of the coronavirus, and perpetuating labyrinthine and baseless conspiracy theories involving a plot by Democrats to spy on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. “

“In an interview with The New Yorker, Pete Hegseth, then a fellow Fox News host and now the defense secretary, equated Mr. Bongino to a general who, like him, got “to serve in information warfare.”

Oh, OK, let’s hear from Bongino himself in 2023 just in case the Times is shilling for the Deep State.

Quite an eloquent and refined non-partisan gentleman!

The FBI is for the moment at least not serving like the Gestapo. But if Leader Trump should decide to go that route his two top guys at the FBI are locked and loaded and ready to fo full bore.

THE BETRAYAL OF UKRAINE AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WESTERN ALLIANCE.

You’ve seen The Sopranos when Tony allied with rival New York capo Johnny Sack where they decide to carve up and profit together from the multimillion dollar “waterfront project?”

That’s what comes to mind in the “deal” now being cooked up by Trump and Putin under the cover of a Ukraine peace conference that does not include Ukraine. If it comes to pass, Putin gets to annex a chunk of occupied Ukrainian territory including the Crimea which he stole a decade ago. And Trump gets to “wet his beak” by forcing Ukraine –in perpetuity—to kick back a percentage of Ukraine’s exports of rich minerals. Seems fair but not sure what Uncle June’s cut is gonna be.

Call me naïve but I don’t understand how this can stop the war as the Russians are not going to stage a one sided cease fire as Ukrainian troops continue their existential fight against an invading foreign army. Unless, that is, Ukraine is forced to surrender by a total cut off all U.S. support –that second part you can take to the bank.

Over the weekend, Trump claimed that Ukraine owes the U.S. $350 billion which, in, reality is about half that much. And of the $180B the U.S. has allocated to Ukraine, at least more than half of that was funding given to US defense contractors who provided Ukraine with the hardware.

At Monday’s joint press conference of Trump and French President Macron, Trump shaded the Europeans for not giving enough to Ukraine, had nothing good to say about Ukraine, a lot of compliments to the Russians and basically said Ukraine is now the problem of only the Europeans. And, further, that the last 60 years of US relations with Europe were taking a radical turn…i.e. he is killing NATO and Putin is our new best ally.

Macron showed some back bone by contradicting Trump’s position and diplomatically saying Europe would fill the gap being left by the US and quite politely and indirectly addressing the future of NATO told Trump to not slam the door on his way out. He also saluted the courageous Ukrainians, the president of whom Trumo has called a “dictator.”

Foreign affairs are about as popular among Americans as Hitler’s Bar Mitzvah. After all we are The Indispensable Nation, the Center of the World, and have no reason to even think about the rest of the world except for the rising threat from Canada. None of what is happening this week comes as a surprise as Trump already said last week ““Ukraine started the war.” He has not yet, however, said the L.A. Fire Department started the big blaze last month in L.A. (That was caused, instead by DEI). And, JD Vance, if you can remember him, went to Munich the week before to piss all over NATO, refused to meet with the German chancellor but had a personal love fest with the neo-nazi AfD party who has been ostracized by every other party in Germany.

As little attention as the breaking of the Western Alliance has roused the American public, this is a major inflection point in global history, During the Cold War, NATO and the Warsaw Pact vied for global hegemony.

But the world has radically changed since then. And the brain dead demi-world of sectarian leftists now celebrating the collapse of NATO as a blow against U.S. imperialism, are living in a 1968 time warp. Given the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, it’s incursion into Ukraine in 2014 and its full scale invasion in 2022, NATO took on a new, vital and defensive role against an aggressive and expansionist Russia. For those ossified anti-NATO critics, I suggest they go to the Baltic republics, Moldava and Poland and ask the locals if they feel any safer now that the US has sandbagged the alliance. And they better go quickly before Putin’s hooligan army gets there first.

U.S. imperialism is still a reality but not in the same form as 30 or 60 years ago. The future immediatelty in front of us is “global” order of three hegemons, three gangster states: The U,S. Russia and China who will now decide who gets what in return for what.

THE MAGA MESS, MUSK, AND THE OPPOSITION

Man-boy Elon Musk—no kidding around—I believe is in the midst of a second psychotic break in the last five years. The first one came shortly before his acquisition of Twitter, when he gulped a bottle of red pills. The second one is now blossoming as he messes up and screws over tens of thousands of federal workers he has already dismissed with zero criteria, and the two million more to whom he gave an ultimatum on Friday: Either email his team five things they accomplished last week by Monday evening, or they will be considered terminated. Musk has no power or authority to use this sort of psychological terror, and I firmly believe the richest man on Earth is either rock stupid, stoned on ketamine, mentally ill, or all of the above.

This latest move was about two bridges too far even for the MAGATS and immediately provoked a public rebuke from several Trump cabinet members and agency heads. Justice, Defense, Education, DHS, and several other federal agencies told their respective workforces to ignore the ultimatum and pay no attention. There are myriad reports this Monday afternoon that MAGA mucky mucks have privately told Trump to start reeling in this head case, as their own MAGA constituents are starting to rebel against them in town halls and through a tsunami of phone calls. To date, this is the biggest crack yet to appear in MAGA. I don’t think it’s impossible that Trump will soon pack Elmo off in one of his rockets and replace him with the equally twisted Steve Bannon.

But that assumes that Trump is not too impaired, not too “neurodivergent” to even follow this story. I am not being flip nor sarcastic when I say that I suspect Trump is really, and truly, out of it. I conclude this from his tweets, spontaneous mumblings, and actions.

Trump is NOT an ideologue. He has no personal aspirations other than constant attention and more money. He couldn’t care less about the Republican Party, MAGA, or any real policies. He’s not only a sociopathic narcissist, but he’s also pretty damn dumb, and I am convinced he’s radically impaired.

He does not appear to keep track of anything; he makes it all up as he goes, and probably needs name tags to remember his cabinet members. When he published the photo of himself wearing a crown on the White House Xitter feed, and when he shouted at the Maine Governor the English version of L'État C'est Moi, he was not fooling around.

I suspect he is indeed like some senile king who everybody protects, and he probably constantly mumbles out oblique orders which his vassals and minions attempt to carry out, only to later come back to him and brief him with pictures, if he still remembers them. Musk and the Muskian cabinet are to Trump as MBS is to the 89-year-old King Salman, who they keep cooped up in some attic, and whom we never hear about.

So, finally, where does this all leave us? It should not leave you down Carville’s road, thinking that somehow Trump and MAGA will disappear in a month or two. These guys might be little more than chimpanzees with machine guns, as the Bulwark’s JVL puts it. But they hold state power and will for at least another four years. We are not on the cusp of some great insurgency. We are on the defensive against an erratic and incompetent but ever-expanding presidential dictatorship. A very dangerous and evil one.

The last few weeks have seen an inspiring uptick in protests, and I have been impressed by the emergence of the 5051 organization, which has pulled off dozens of peaceful protests coast to coast in the last 10 days.

I am grateful that these moderate center-leftists got the jump on the fringe hard-left groups who have been hijacking protests for the last 20 years. I refer to ANSWER, Code Pink, and several tiny but well-oiled Marxist-Leninist sects (though there are still many rusted-over individual leftists out there applauding the NATO crisis and even praising Musk for proposing a cut in Pentagon spending). He’s aiming for an anemic ten percent cut that will come from disbanding imaginary “woke” sectors, i.e., recruitment of minorities and women, etc.

But when I spoke on a panel Saturday night to a good crowd of mostly Westside L.A. liberals, I was pleased by the high turnout and palpable energy, but depressed as well by the inability of many to stop engaging in denial. Or at best, a sort of noblesse oblige saying that as white people, their most important role is to defend Latinos against deportation—as if their own asses weren’t also on the line. They need to be actors, or engaged allies, not just helpers, and willing to make their own sacrifices. Taking down dictatorships always requires personal courage, ownership of as a member of the opposition and accepting the reality there will be sacrifices. Sending $25 to CARECEN is a good charity, Not an act of opposition.. My reporting experience tells me that exiled Mexicans and Salvadorans know a hell of a lot more about political organizing than the Lexus team does in any case.

There were the usual questions: What can we do? How and where can we find the protests? I gave several lengthy answers that readers of The Coop Scoop have repeatedly read from me.

By the end of the evening, I synthesized my answer into a couple of short sentences: There is no social change unless there is a strong and organized social movement with healthy leadership and clear goals. If you don’t know what that means, go back and study the civil rights movement. And the state of emergency, the state of exception that we are in, requires exceptional counter-measures. The same old same old counseled by professional party consultants, and web-based non-profits and Superpacs are dead ends. We are not there yet, but we will be before this is over, because we must.++

I am not going to plead and beg for your support. I am merely going to remind you that corporate media alone isn’t sufficient and independent news and analysis are more important than ever. Please make your support effective. Thanks,

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