Of Dissemblers And Dismemberers

Elizabeth Warren

The maliciously mocking, malevolent, maladroit, misfit, malappropriating the White House got his comeuppance this week … at least for a while.  Senator Elizabeth Warren released her DNA test results conducted by noted Stanford University expert Professor Carlos D. Bustamente.  The results prove a Native American ancestor six to ten generations ago, supporting her claim that her great-great-great grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith was at least partly Native American.

Donald Trump who mocks her as ‘Pocahontas’ had this summer upped the ante by his offer to pay $1 million to a charity of the Senator’s choice if she took a DNA test.  She has, and she has named the charity, the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, which protects Native American women from violence, including sexual violence.  The onus is now on Mr. Trump to make good his word.

Of course he is not going to.  Somewhat lacking in grace, Mr. Trump says he will pay the $1 million only if he can test her personally.  Later, he also disavowed the offer.  And so it goes on … vintage Trump.  Suppliers to his businesses also had great difficulty getting paid.

By the way, he did say when he made the offer that he would toss the  DNA kit to her gently as it is the #MeToo generation, etc.  But most people would consider that to be theatrics, not literal.  Perhaps Senator Warren ought not to have bothered … it is almost impossible to win a facts contest against the dissembler-in-chief.

Remember the birther movement when Mr. Trump insisted President Obama was not born in Hawaii or anywhere in the U.S., thus ineligible for the presidency.  When proven wrong, he did a quick turnaround, blaming Hillary Clinton falsely for starting the whole birth issue.

There should have been more serious issues occupying President Trump.  Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and journalist posting a monthly column for the Washington Post, disappeared after he went into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to sign some divorce papers.  He expected to be about ten minutes according to his Turkish fiancee waiting outside.  He never reappeared.

Imagine a country in the 21st century, an absolute monarchy, and a de facto ruler so thin-skinned that he has a critic silenced, not by wit or sophistication, but by turning a consulate into an abattoir.  The chief butcher, a forensics man holding a senior position in the country’s Interior Ministry slaps on earphones to listen to music and advises the onlookers to do likewise while he dismembers the body.  The hapless Khashoggi first had his fingers cut off while alive, presumably as symbolism for his writing.

The remains were then stuffed into diplomatic bags immune to customs inspection, and the 15-man hit squad flew home in their private jet.  The latter acquired from an airline shut down earlier.  Or, did they bury their gruesome opus in a forest outside Istanbul?  Forensic technicians are searching.

How did the Turks piece up the story.  They have a tape recording, presumably because they had the place bugged — a 20th century practice the hit squads’ master never suspected.  Perhaps it is what happens when the methods are medieval.

The world is revulsed and nauseated.

Dr Arshad M Khan (http://ofthisandthat.org/index.html) is a former Professor based in the U.S. whose comments over several decades have appeared in a wide-ranging array of print and internet media.  His work has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in the Congressional Record.

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