Christmas on Fireball Island

Vulcanic Delights

Choose Your Path Carefully

Divergent Ways, All Doomed

Vul-Kar Is Angry

How the Hell Did He Manage to Escape

We Want Trump

In March of 2017 I offered the following scoring system for Crack the Case, "What Did General Mike Know" (The Golden Wiretapps).

Solution Timetable 

Master Detective         2017                6 points

Private Eye                 2018                 5 points 

Flatfoot                        2020                4 points

Of no surprise to the loyal tough guy detectives of game kings, my predictions have once again missed the mark. I allowed no scoring for solving the case in 2019 which, although time yet remains in 2018, is looking pretty good to wrap this one up.

Now any fan of courtroom drama can tell you that the case for the prosecution, no matter how strong, may always, in the eyes of the jury, suffer transformation into a case for the defense. The facts in evidence here may yet be enough to crush a teary confession from the defendant, Errol Stanley Gardner style. Testimony to this point is still heavily reliant on spooks and perjurers. Nevertheless, only the willfully blind can fail to see the writing on the wall. However, if the evidence remains so tantalizing redacted from whence do we hear the crescendo of noir orchestration that is signalling the denouement?

In this flatfoot's estimation there are two exhibits for the people to consider.

Exhibit A. The Republican Party has already obtained everything from its bargain with Trump that it could reasonably expect. It has the tax cuts that are so dear to its heart with the accompanying final round of "who wants to be a billionaire" safely tucked away in tax havens for the rainy days to come. It also has two freshly minted hirelings on the Supreme Court for a majority that it is confident will shield the relations of production in the days ahead. With such victories it is no wonder so many of its ranks were content to retire from the battlefield in the last election to bask in the acclaim of the masses and collect their fitting recompense.

So what more can the party which has no governing platform of its own expect from the television personality it has proclaimed emperor? Although his mass following now constitutes the only numbers they can reliably count, that will not prevent them from seeking salvation in a ritual sacrifice to appease the disappointed on Wall St. and in Youngstown.

Exhibit B. 

It's not difficult to hear the political tone of this. Whether the "president of the rich" will ultimately succeed where he is currently stumbling it is delusional to interpret the situation in France as an affirmation of the "emperor of the rich" and yet delusion is the order of the day, (Trump retweets apparently false claim of Paris protesters chanting). Missteps and lies in the service of right wing policies can and are overlooked and understood. But in this case Trump is summoning a devil he knows nothing about which no one is his crumbling circle of supporters will be prepared to welcome. 

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to find the defendant guilty of being both unnecessary and a danger to his class.

And might I add:

And on a closing note:

The party as we have known it must disappear. It will disappear. It is disappearing. It will disappear as the state will disappear. The whole labouring population becomes the state. That is the disappearance of the state. It can have no other meaning. It withers away by expanding to such a degree that it is transformed into its opposite. And the party does the same. The state withers away and the party withers away. But for the proletariat the most important, the primary thing is the withering away of the party. For if the party does not wither away, the state never will. - Notes on Dialectics - C.L.R. James