The Media’s 24/7 Crying Fest for Elizabeth and the Ominous Trump Win It Ignores
(Trump’s critical victory in a Florida Court may help restore him to power in 2024, but the media devotes all its coverage to Elizabeth)
By
David Gottfried
As I am writing this, the American media is swooning over the death of Queen Elizabeth. At the very same time, the American media has forgotten all about Judge Cannon’s ruling in Florida, regarding the top-secret documents Trump transferred to Mara Lago, even though this may have the most momentous implications for the survival of our democracy and the defense of this nation. In a moment, I will explain why this is not hyperbole. But first I will discuss the fun and stupid stuff that the American media is gaga about: Queen Elizabeth’s death.
ISN’T IT FUN HAVING A GOOD CRY OVER QUEEN ELIZABETH AND HEARING SAPPY STORIES, 24/7, OVER WHAT A NEATO GRANDMA SHE WAS
Of course, the death of Queen Elizabeth does not have any implications, whatsoever, on international relations or domestic relations in either the United States, Great Britain, or any nations of the British commonwealth. As every person who graduated from grade school ought to know, she is a figurehead. Her most important job was getting dressed every day and determining what she would wear, how ostentatious or reserved she would be in the donning of jewelry, and whether she wanted to strike a pose of faux humility so she could pretend that she was just another Briton eating fish and chips or whether she wanted to radiate aristocratic grandeur and imperial panache.
However, Britain, like America, is carried away with a sort of phony feminism which suggests that a woman’s marginal role is really very important. Just as many men joke that their wives call all the shots in the family, Americans and Britons pretend that well-placed women are doing very, very important things when in fact they are simply glorified hostesses. Of course, there were glorified hostesses all over Paris during the reign of the last Bourbon King, but I don’t think many of us would say that women were terribly liberated in those days.
And in this country, prissy, pseudo intellectuals on public television have, for the past two decades, given us a deluge of programs on C span and kindred outlets which exaggerate the importance of the wives of American presidents. About once every six months, or so it seems, public television in New York tells us that Jackie Kennedy once gave the American people a televised tour of the Whitehouse, and this little bit of favorable press, churned out to better JFK’s prospects for re-election in 1964, is treated by the mincing, mushy “television scholars” as a cultural and political event on a par with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Yes, Jackie Kennedy was gorgeous. Jackie was brilliant. When we heard her speak French, we thought that Paul Mc Cartney was thinking of her when he wrote “Michelle.” But nothing that she did had the slightest bearing on our growing involvement in South Vietnam, the Berlin Wall or anything else.
And while people go gaga over Queen Elizabeth, they won’t be able to refer to a single thing she did that had any bearing on
England’s decision to go to war against Egypt in 1956, to largely abandon its imperial pretensions after the Soviet Union, and the United States, denounced Britain and France after the Suez crisis – and I am sure that most of the gossipy, girly twerps chattering about Elizabeth don’t know a damn thing about British policy in 1956 or in any other year of Elizabeth’s long and storied reign. For these delightful, spoiled princesses who clutter up the airwaves with perfumed, willowy accounts of ballrooms and Diana’s bulimia, Tiaras and tacky television tailor made for a fish-wifey menopausal woman whose “Weltanschauung” (German for world-view) is whatever Joy Behar has told her to believe, flash bulbs and klieg lights are the North Star of their existence.
IMPORTANT NEWS IS NOT DISCUSSED IF IT DOESN’T HAVE A CERTAIN TRASHY, GOSSIPY CHARM
There is another news story that broke a couple of days before Elizabeth died. I am referring to the decision, of a Judge in Florida, to allow a “Special Master” to examine all of the documents that the Department of Justice seized from Don Corleone Trump’s Mara Lago palace. Most importantly, the Florida Judge ruled that those documents could not be used by the Department of Justice to investigate Trump while the Special Master reviewed them.
Very simply, the Judge has given the green light to Trump to delay and delay some more. Trump hopes that the investigation will not be completed before the November election, Republicans will take control of the House in the upcoming election, and that a new House of Representatives, ruled by the Republicans, will halt or enfeeble all investigations against Trump. (Most people believe that Democratic prospects in the upcoming election have improved, but by this they mean that the Democrats will probably retain control of the Senate; most analysts believe the House will revert to Republican rule.)
In my last article on substack, published on September 6, 2022 and entitled “The Paradox in Prosecuting Trump: Legal Initiatives Against Trump have made him Stronger,” I said that legal efforts to constrain Trump were failing and that Trump had a fair chance of goose-stepping his way into the Whitehouse in 2024 (Footnote 1). The Florida Judge’s decision, which effectively halts the DOJ’s investigation, confirms my fears.
Moreover, why don’t people come right out and say why Trump’s seizure of top-secret documents is so dangerous: Trump’s loyalty to this nation is suspect:
a) Many close associates of Trump, including his first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and the manager of his 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort, got huge infusions of money from Russia (Manafort got over 1 million), and they lied to the FBI, falsely alleging that they had no meetings or interactions with key Russian officials.
b) Trump did collude with Russia to subvert our 2016 campaign: Trump gave the Russians confidential polling data regarding mid-western battle ground states which showed that black support for Clinton was irresolute and soft, the Russians posted ads on Facebook, reputedly placed by African Americans, which pilloried Clinton, and the black vote in Midwestern states such as Michigan nose- dived.
c) When the Ukraine asked Trump for weapons, to help it resist Russia, Trump demanded that Ukraine first give him, Trump, dirt on Hunter Biden. (That was the subject of the second attempt to impeach Trump)
d) According to several articles in the New York Times, for the past 20 years Trump had difficulty borrowing from American bankers because of his propensity to direct corporations, which he controls, to declare bankruptcy and evade their debts. Therefore, Trump’s chief financier has been Russia. He has camouflaged Russian support because Russian money, to Trump, has been laundered thanks to the financial trickery of Deutschebank, the bank of Germany.
Therefore, Trump, it appears, may very well be an agent of Russia. (Footnote 2) He may very well have taken documents out of the White House to impress and satisfy his masters in Moscow. And if you don’t think Russia has had him by the balls, I urge you to look at Putin and Trump’s first joint press conference following Trump’s seizure of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2016.
-----------
Footnotes:
1)
2) Some readers may recall that in prior substack articles I said that Russian hostility to the West to a large extent is understandable because a) since 1989, NATO, an essentially anti-Russian alliance, has advanced more than a thousand miles to the East even though Bush the elder promised, in 1989, that NATO would not advance one inch toward the East, b) NATO now includes many eastern European nations which were allied with Nazi Germany and which joined the Germans in exterminating Russians and Jews and c) Russia does have valid claims on certain parts of Ukraine, such as Crimea, which is populated mostly by ethnic Russians.
To some readers my sympathy for some Russian sentiments and actions will seem inconsistent with my denunciation of Russian-Trump collusion to sabotage American foreign policy. However, I am not being inconsistent. While I have some sympathy for Russia, I detest traitors and liars and Trump is a traitor as despicable as Quisling, a Norwegian leader who gave Norway to Nazi Germany in the Spring of 1940.
I don't think you are right about Queen Elizabeth. She was, as you say, in constitutional terms a mere figurehead. However, over 70 years, having 15 Prime Ministers, and meeting countless Heads of State she exercised a very quiet diplomacy that earned respect from all over the world. She helped, for example, to normalise relations between Britain and Germany after WW2, and between Britain and Japan. Taking a longer perspective, by giving Charles a lot of freedom to pursue his interests he was able to spearhead developments in organic farming and other areas that might otherwise have taken much longer to materialise. She was the patron of over 400 charities and I'm sure that must have helped those organisations raise money and their profile. As for Suez, perhaps that debacle might have been even worse had she not been on the scene. Also, I think you may have underestimated the deep affection and respect many of us Brits had for the Queen. We haven't all been brainwashed by the media!
I admire and am jealous of - the way you write about your feelings. We all feel different ways about every different thing, but there is no "pussy-footing" around with your observations, and analogies on politics.
I have to say that while I don't embrace Canada's current political choices, I like our chances better than the prospect of having another Trumpian Presidential reign of (fill in the blank) ________________.
Peace!