In all the Manafort furor, there are a few strands that seem neglected. Two are followed along by "Lincoln's Bible", a twitter account that uses threads to be almost like a blog. Now I've gotten curious enough to trace back to Jay MacKenzie on Medium, which was a location for writing that I once subscribed to, but left behind when its more dubious bait-and-switch elements took over. That is, at first it proposed to support new writers, but in the end depended on established people. Nevermind.
This began with "Lincoln's Bible", the twitter source, which suggested two things of special note to me. One was the description of Trump and Manafort as second-generation mafia families whose grandfathers were embedded in crimes of stigma (alcohol, sex, gambling, money laundering, etc.) which were absorbed by the Russian Mafia when they became powerful on the American continent after the native mafia was crushed by US government forces like the FBI.
Lincoln's Bible asserts that Trump and Manafort are desperate to protect their fathers. Manafort's family powers come from New Britain, Connecticut, and earlier wars happened when I was nearby in Hartford doing my clergy internship. I knew very little about it but I have a "feel for the territory." It echoes.
The other factor is also more felt than known by me, but begins to describe the invasion of the New England mafia in the area where I live now, the high prairie in the boundary country along both sides of the 49th parallel. "Lincoln's Bible" thinks that the Mounties drove the mafia out of Alberta, but I wonder. It was a hot area for bootlegging (consult Wallace Stegner's semi-autobiographical novels). Part of the reason for the creation of Glacier National Park was, they say, for the sake of the railroad, but also there were many local moonshine stills that are still remembered by people slightly older than me. Consumption and status in the Big Hotels also supported traffic between the two countries, one where booze was legal and the other where booze was not. One route is across a small lake between the countries.
I do not think that Mark Zuckerburg loved skiing so much that he bought a house near Whitefish. I do not think the "Outlaw Inn" was carelessly named. It's known that Wild Horse Island in Flathead Lake was a dry-out place for assassins. I do not think it is a surprise that politicians from the Flathead have dodgy relationships with resource development and aren't from Montana at all.
Likewise, I've heard many stories about the KKK in Alberta, about the whoring strings that stretch along the border so that the women can move from one node to another as soon as they are recognizable. Crime and prejudice and stigma are familiar with each other, even dependent on each other. Soon they get into politics as demonstrated by Premier Diefenbaker who has an "underground" biography. The best place to hide is always in plain sight.
The principle of the fractal is that small repetitions, like the illicit small town operations of those who crave profit, eventually create a large pattern that is very much the same, so that now governments shake down other governments with extortion and bribes. The cover stories of founding and idealism work for a long time. But evidently the antibody fractals of a democracy can also become linked and strong.
The first generation criminal activities of "Trump" and "Manafort" did a lot better than their contemporary descendants. Trump has clearly NOT been the rich, powerful, and competent man he pretended to be. Putin owns him in one sense, as we see in the photo of the two men emerging from a conference with Putin grinning and Trump looking about ready to vomit. In another, now that Trump's sources of supply are cut off or too wary to act, he can't do anything but Tweet lies. The US government now formally owns an apartment in Trump Tower and Trump himself never really owned the Trump International Hotel made from the Old Post Office. He broke laws to pretend he owned it.
Likewise Manafort the Minor has depended on rich men, oligarchs, without understanding the relationship between government and mafias. Does anyone? Their strength is in mystery. But in an age of technology keeping secrets is far more difficult and expensive, since it depends on defeating devices, transmissions , and records that far exceed expectations or any previous bookkeeping. In fact, once block chain systems are really developed, money-laundering will be impossible because the money systems will wither. Mega-banking will no longer be able to rely on the covert.
Worse than that, we may finally figure out how to organize the world without depending on competing nation states and may at last get over the fantasy that a business can be a person.
Another element is slowly emerging but not really apparent in the Trump/Manafort entwinement. That is the bureaucratic corporation of religion, particularly the world religion with its roots (same as the mafia) in Italy. Feeding on hidden money and forbidden sexual practices, the "old men" of the central enclaves are beginning to be overmatched by the Third World, which actually demand what Jesus proposed. The present Pope is part of this.
But also there is a shift in shared meaning that is new grass coming up through the old entanglements of WWII compromises and workarounds. The biggest problem will be clearing away the debris of former industry and monuments, which has already begun. I'm working on it in my own life. Partly it is dismay over what I once thought was worthy -- education, denomination, government, the practice of art, and partly it is an awakening to new concepts and coalitions across the planet.
One of Manafort's daughters has already gone to court to change her name. Trump's children are too limited to see their future, unless their relentlessly competent mothers take hold of them the way the they took hold of "The Donald" and tried to support his fantasy of success. They were porn stars of reality, pretending to consort with this old man with a ponytail flipped over his head because he -- unlike Putin -- is afraid of being bald. Prison: the revenge of the hair follicles. Will they let him wear one of those knit prison caps, a watch cap with no bill and no writing?
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