Roy Cohn's Spirit infuses the Trump Campaign

Like Jacob Marley in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Roy Cohn is dead and gone. Now his ghost is paying us a visit in the context of Donald Trump's candidacy for President. There are some differences. Marley's spirit sought to warn Scrooge to mend his ways; Cohn's spirit, in the form of his protégé Roger Stone, is the apparent advocate of the worst of Trump's rhetoric including his claim that the November election is rigged and threatening a revolution if Trump loses the rigged election. See https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/05/trump-confidante-roger-stone-pushes-clinton-aide-911-conspiracy-claims-trump-views-rnc-chairman/212214

Roy Cohn is immortal. In Angels in America, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg tells us so.

ETHEL ROSENBERG: You're immortal.
 ROY: I'm immortal. Ethel. (He forces himself to stand) 
I have forced my way into history. I ain't never gonna die.

Angels' America is a bleak surreal plain, where lost souls teeter on the brink of apocalypse. Cohn is a metaphor for the seductive, dark side of the American dream. Awash in intransigent denial, the playwright limns Cohn's audacious ego, cunning seductiveness, brutal transcendent power and helplessness against ravages of AIDS. It is a chilling, provocative portrait. 

As black as the playwright's perception may be, the reality of Cohn's life is darker still. His career embodies the confluence of two primeval forces of our day, organized crime and rabid anti-communism, into a single, swift current. Those forces manifested themselves in Las Vegas casinos, Havana gambling palaces, the Bay of Pigs, Dealey Plaza, Watergate and beyond. While Roy Cohn was not solely responsible for these events, or clearly a direct participant in all of them, so much of the current of his life runs through each of them, that the study of his life and power enlightens the causes and effects of many of the most significant events of our times.

There is an excellent posting this week which relate Stone's involvement with Trump's campaign. 
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/08/jacob_weisberg_s_classic_new_republic_profile_of_trump_adviser_roger_stone.html 

Another posting warns of Russian interference in our election process on Trump's behalf.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/an_interview_with_anne_applebaum_on_the_russian_hack_of_the_dnc.html

I would also recommend Wayne Barrett's Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention which has been updated and reissued for this campaign year. It's available in E-Book format or paperback on all major internet bookseller pages.

As Bob Dylan sang:

"You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing."

-------------------------------------

This is not a promo for my book Quantum Christ but you can find out about it at:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-coming-of-quantum-christ-has-arrived.html

Can Democracy survive the Internet?

I suppose I should be complimented. I seem to be getting a lot of hits on my blog from Russia. Somehow, however, when I check the stats from Google, the individual hits do not add-up. No doubt there are non-sinister reasons for this. Maybe.

However, there is an old saying: even paranoids have enemies. I have one in particular who quite skilled at Internet stalking. He is quite angry at me for my success in preserving a news stand site for an Indian imagrant that he wanted. I get these terrible comments for my page that I delete and do not allow to be posted. One of them claimed that a departed relative was burning in Hell.

Today there is story in Slate which really bothers me and I connect it to a Wiki-leaks story yesterday revealing hacked and embarrassing E-Mail from the Democratic National Committee. Then there is a story about how Putin intervened in European elections to aid ultra-right candidates Prime examples are Marie Le Penn in France and Berlusconi in Italy. Of course Berlusconi was ousted eventually and Le Penn has yet to win control but her influence is growing.

Putin is the new Stalin seeking to expand his influence. I do not think there is any limit to his ambition. One of his goals to break-up the unity of Europe (and the United States).  That seems to be okay with Trump.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/07/vladimir_putin_has_a_plan_for_destroying_the_west_and_it_looks_a_lot_like.html

The Wiki-Leaks release was clearly designed to drive disaffected Bernie Sanders voters away from Clinton.

Frankly, I'm scared. Saturday afternoon, I saw Tim Kaine get and deliver a knock-out performance in Miami when introduced by Clinton. While, I am bit to his left, he is supporting the Democratic platform to be adopted at the DNC and that is more than enough for now.

But, there is no question that Trump in his statements about the NATO and the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) is music to Putin's ears.

I have at times metaphorically tabbed Trump the Anti-Christ because of his blatant narcissism and his disdain for nuclear non-proliferation. It now seems clear that he is at best a tool for a real Anti-Christ, his pal Vladmir Putin.

Then there is story on why  all the Brexit vote wrong. When I first became involved in Bronx reform politics in 1969, I was told that "We have to win by 10% because anything less they steal."

We have become so dependent on the Internet. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is not a promo for my book Quantum Christ but you can find out about it at:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-coming-of-quantum-christ-has-arrived.html