LITTLE SNAPPERS: THE ARROGANCE AND HUBRIS OF DONALD TRUMP AND MARK ZUCKERBERG

Summary: The arrogance, hubris, and treasonable incompetence of Messrs. Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg has revealed itself yet again. The Donald, in another, perhaps inevitable, display of churlishness, solipsism, and indeed treasonable incompetence, has managed, almost simultaneously, to betray our national security interests in Syria and to set up a shutdown of the government for which the Russian ... er, that is, the Republican Party, will ineluctably be held responsible, and with respect to which they will be ineluctably tarred with the same brush of treason as The Donald himself.

If The Donald’s own lack of self-awareness, and his own treasonable disposition, have left the Republican Party caught with its metaphorical cock and balls hanging out for everyone to see, Mark Zuckerberg’s own solipsism, arrogance, hubris, and pathetic want of self-awareness have left his company, Facebook, on the brink of intrusive and necessary legislation by hostile legislative bodies including, but not limited to, Congress, the California Legislature, the Imperial Parliament, the European Parliament, Dáil Éireann, and the Danish Folketing. The handwriting may be on the wall for scandal-plagued Facebook.

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The traitor-in-chief of the United States, Donald Trump, demonstrated yet again his treasonable incompetence within the last 48 hours. First, by announcing a withdrawal of all American military forces from Syria, on his mere ipse dixit, without the first shred of interagency review or participation in the decision, Trump has given material aid, and probably considerable comfort, to enemies national of the United States, including Russia and Iran.

Moreover, Trump’s demarche has also given aid, and a distinct amount of comfort, to Daesh, the entity known in the West as ISIS, or to the Obama administration as ISIL. Trump may have felt it appropriate to adopt the strategy of some time Vermont Sen. George Aiken, who, appreciating that we were backing into a quagmire in Vietnam, said that we should, in effect, “declare victory and pull out.”

Unfortunately, as with the Vietcong, Daesh is not the kind of opponent with respect to whom we can unilaterally declare victory and slink out of the battlespace. Daesh has demonstrated, time and time again, that it is not disposed to conduct itself according to the laws of war or the usages of civilized societies in either the Judeo Christian Roman world or in the Islamic community. To achieve victory against Daesh will require the kind of scorched earth, on-the-ground elimination of the enemy which Donald Trump is unprepared to contemplate, and which he actually quails from thinking about.

By withdrawing American forces from Syria, Trump the traitor-in-chief only emboldens Daesh, and gives openings to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and to Turkey’s neo-Ottoman dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Moscow will be looking to establish a de facto protectorate over Syria, with access to Syria’s warm-water port of Latakia; Ankara will be looking for an opportunity to crush the Kurds.

Either way, The Donald’s unilateral demarche is not only contrary to American interests, but also serves the interests of enemies national.

In addition to serving enemies national by screwing up the American position in Syria, The Donald has also betrayed this country by holding the United States government hostage to his hubristic demand for funding for his so-called Great Wall. The last head of a sovereign state to have a Great Wall associated with him was a Chinese Emperor Qin Shihuangdi, 2200 years ago. The Qin Emperor, though enumerated as the first Emperor of China, is uniformly reviled on both the Chinese mainland and in Taiwan for his excesses, his character flaws, and his bloodthirstiness.

Any student of Chinese history can tell you that the Qin Emperor’s project was not a success. Wanli Changcheng, as the Great Wall is known in China never stopped a barbarian invasion of China proper. In 1644, the Manchu turned Wanli Changcheng at Shanhaiguan, northeast of Beijing, and went on to conquer all China, ruling it as the Qing Dynasty until 1912.

By holding the United States government hostage, The Donald has managed to recapitulate many of the political mistakes and the character flaws which led to the collapse of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Certainly, by threatening to cripple large parts of the government, the Donald has given another Christmas present to Vladimir Vladimirovich: a government shutdown promotes instability and reduces the credibility of the United States with its alliance partners in both NATO and the Pacific.

Such a lack of basic competence in the skills of governing is not merely inexcusable, it constitutes what the Russian Imperial Criminal Code defined as treasonable incompetence: incompetence on a scale so massive, and so dangerous that one must infer malice on the part of the incompetent. In all, malice may be inferred where an action is taken with obvious and reckless disregard for its probable consequences.

For example, a person firing an AR 15 into a moving Amtrak train would not be able to defend him- or herself by denying any specific malicious intent to kill a passenger, but the law would infer malice from the high probability that death might result. In the same fashion, drunk driving offenses can be, and often are, charged as a second-degree murder, because of the high risk that death will occur as a result of the illegal conduct.

In the case of Donald Trump, adverse consequences to the United States stemming from his conduct, are so foreseeable that his incompetence may indeed be considered treasonable; it is not a defense for a bad actor to claim that he did not intend the results of his misconduct, when those consequences are reasonably foresseable to anybody with even a middle-school skill set or level of self-awareness.

The Donald has laid the groundwork for what should be an extensive set of articles of impeachment by the House of Representatives come January. His conduct is inexcusable, it is treasonable, and it should be punished accordingly.

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If anyone else can be accused of culpable incompetence, that person is Mark Zuckerberg, the man-child in charge at Facebook.

This week, Facebook was the subject of another exposé about its failure to respect its users’ privacy. This one, broken by the New York Times, comes hard on the heels of a series of other, not altogether unexpected, Facebook scandals. 

In every one of them, Gospodin Zuckerberg has managed to stumble his way into making a bad situation worse. Not only has Facebook lost nearly 30% of its market value, but it is now facing investigations into its business activities by a whole series of hostile legislative bodies including, but not limited to, Congress, the California Legislature, the Imperial Parliament, the European Parliament, Dáil Éireann, and the Danish Folketing.

Starting even before Cambridge Analytica, Facebook had confronted a series of privacy scandals. Gospodin Zuckerberg responded to each scandal with an anodyne non-apology “apology.” In every case, Zuckerberg’s pro forma apology was a cosmetic fiction, leading to no real reforms whatsoever. In fact, so inauthentic were Gospodin Zuckerberg’s apologies that we may not only doubt the sincerity of his current so-called apology tour, but we may also infer that his other apologies, those to Congress and to the Imperial Parliament, may well have been nothing more than carefully packaged, artfully orchestrated lies. 

The writing may be very much on the wall for the monstrosity of Menlo Park. Not only does Facebook have to confront the possibility of a growing #deletefacebook movement, but it must also contemplate the possibility that one or more of the legislative bodies looking into its business model may see fit either, in the case of Congress, to reassert in their fullest forms the antitrust remedies contemplated in the Sherman Antitrust Act, or to legislate Facebook out of existence altogether, a step being contemplated by the Imperial Parliament, Dáil Éireann, and the Danish Folketing.

Facebook may have no other option than to offer Gospodin Zuckerberg a gold watch for his service, buy him out, and put some figure of worldwide, unimpeachable integrity at the helm. If Zuckerberg continues his arrogance, his hubris, and his solipsism, Facebook may not be here come the elections of 2020. 

I’m not sure I would count that a great privation.

BRINGING TREASON IN FROM THE COLD: WHY THE DONALD SHOULD BE CRAPPING IN HIS PANTS

SUMMARY: District Judge Emmet Sullivan brought the concept of treason in from the cold this morning at the abortive sentencing hearing for Michael Flynn. By mentioning treason for the first time in a criminal proceeding involving The Donald, Judge Sullivan has very much upped the ante. Treason and bribery are the two specifically enumerated crimes that constitute grounds for impeachment under the constitution. Sullivan may very well have unstoppered the bottle and let the genie out.


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In a Washington, D.C. courtroom this morning, United States District Judge Emmet Sullivan tore a metaphorical strip off former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. In a series of pointed questions directed at the quondam general, Sullivan included one inquiring whether the investigators from the Special Counsel’s office had considered charging Flynn with other crimes, including treason.

Given that Flynn has already pled guilty to lying to the FBI in connection with his undeclared work as an agent of foreign governments, it might have seemed that ventilating the possibility of a treason prosecution might have been a bit of a reach.

Yet, as the evidence has continued to mount that the United States has been the subject of what amounts to an undeclared war by an enemy national, the question of whether the numerous contacts between Trump administration figures and agents of the Russian State constitutes treason has been one that has been very much bubbling along at the margins of our national conversation.

No one has been willing thus far, with the possible exception of former Naval Intelligence officer Malcolm Nance and  a number of other commentators on MSNBC, even to mention  the T-word.

Until today.

Because in his Washington courtroom today, Judge Sullivan brought the concept of treason in from the cold and set it right down at the table. Essentially, Judge Sullivan has done two things none had thought possible; he has mainstreamed the concept of treason prosecutions for one, some, or even all of the Trump entourage, and in so doing has decidedly upped the ante.

Basically, Judge Sullivan has blown the lid off of the generalized reluctance to link treason and Trump. If, as recently as last week, the concept of some kind of formal linkage between the Trump campaign and the concept of treason had been dismissible as the ravings of a marginal conspiracist, this morning’s courtroom colloquy, by bringing treason in from the cold, demands that we now engage in a serious, non-hysterical discussion about the possibility that one, some, or all of the senior leaders of the Trump administration may have been engaged with agents of the Russian State in a comprehensive effort to betray the United States.

Of course, many “lay lawyers,” imagining themselves as far more competent in the law than they really are, will protest that there is no declared war between the United States and Russia, and insist that a treason prosecution will only lie when there has been a formal declaration of war.

Aside from constituting the crime of unauthorized practice of law, the “lay lawyers’” analysis fails on two very simple points.

First, neither Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, which defines the federal offense of treason, nor 18 U.S. Code § 2381, which defines the statutory offense of treason, contain any textually demonstrable requirement that the United States be in an actual, declared state of war. In fact, the United States last declared war on December 8, 1941, when Congress, in consequence of “the unprovoked and dastardly attack” against Pearl Harbor the previous day, declared a state of war to have existed from December 7 between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Yet, if we were to accept the “lay lawyers’” formulation that a treason prosecution requires a declared war, then the treason statutes would fall into ineluctable desuetude, becoming unenforceable through nonuse.

Yet, when one considers the statutory history of treason statutes, both in this country and in England, one finds that from the time Parliament first legislated on the subject of treason, in the Statute of Treasons 25. Edw.3. c.5 s.2. (1351), that while levying war against the sovereign within the sovereign’s own jurisdiction was certainly treason, certain other acts could be considered treason as well.

What the statutory history makes quite clear, especially when one considers the various English Treason Acts following the original 1351 Act, is that the gravamen of the offense is that it constitutes an effort to contravene the authority of the State at the most basic level, by individuals who owe a duty of allegiance thereto. 

Moreover, it cannot be gainsaid that Russia’s “active measures” in the course of propaganda, disinformation, fomentation of division, and stirring up of unrest constitute what is known as “information warfare,” prosecuted by the Russian State against the United States and its allies may not be a declared war, but it is war, all the same. 

Consequently, if we accept the proposition that Russia’s “active measures” against the United States are a form of warfare, then any American assisting the Russian State in prosecuting such “active measures” against this country is unquestionably guilty of treason within the meaning of Article III, section 3 of the Constitution, and within the meaning of 18 U.S. Code § 2381.

Even the most basic understanding of the realities of how Russia’s “active measures” of information warfare do in fact constitute war against the United States should quickly dispose of any half-baked notion on the part of “lay lawyers” that assisting Russia against this country is not treason. 

 When Judge Sullivan dared to say the T-word in his courtroom, he not only brought treason, the redheaded stepchild whose name no one had dared to speak its name until now (pace Lord Alfred Douglas), into the mainstream of our national discussion, But, he also unstoppered the bottle, allowed the genie to escape, and also raised the very real possibility that treason prosecutions may very well become a part of the counterintelligence toolbox. 

Donald Trump should be afraid, afraid to the point of existential dread, about where the prosecution in U.S. v. Flynn is heading.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney. He lives in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as a member of the city council. He currently practices law in Rancho Mirage. The views expressed herein are his own.