The Conversation -- January 27, 2025
Marie: I have to be away for quite a while this afternoon, so if Trump invades Canada or arrests Barack Obama or whatever, please mention it in the Comments.
Ron Dicker of the Huffington Post: "Kristi Noem kept Vice President JD Vance waiting about 25 minutes to swear her in after she was confirmed for homeland security secretary on Saturday, so he left without doing the honor, Politico reported.... The Associated Press noted the delay previously, reporting that she eventually took the oath from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. 'It was made even more meaningful by being sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at his home,' Noem wrote on X with a video of the moment. 'Thank you, President Trump for putting your trust in me to help keep America safe.'" And I swear on the lives of my beloved puppies and goats that I will put America first whenever it's convenient. Thanks to RAS for the link.
Will Bunch of the Inquirer: "On the surface, Trump's dictator-on-Day-One orders were a campaign-promise-fulfilling war on 21st-century liberal 'wokeness,' but in reality the MAGA movement was stabbing at the heart of MLK, of LBJ's 'Great Society,' and the progressive victories that have sustained my generation for our lifetimes. In a matter of hours, an American strongman had achieved the long-held dream of the far right, to toss the wave of liberations of the Long Sixties down an Orwellian memory hole.... What we thought was the ever-upward arc of the moral universe turned out to be -- as the great historian Heather Cox Richardson and others have noted -- a pendulum, requiring a constant push against the unholy forces of small-minded reaction." MB: This is a free link, via the Democratic Underground. RAS has a direct link to this column in today's Comments.
Devlin Barrett, et al., of the New York Times: "The frenetic scale and speed of leadership changes that the Trump administration has made at the Justice Department in its first week alone indicate the degree to which it intends to remake not just the political direction of the department, but also the makeup of its senior career ranks. Senior officials handling national security and public corruption at the department have been transferred to areas far outside their expertise, as have high-ranking employees overseeing environmental, antitrust and criminal cases. Top officials overseeing the immigration court system were outright fired. Every new administration replaces the political leadership of federal agencies and, over time, changes some of the senior career officials. But what happened in just a matter of days at the department is much different -- sloughing off decades of apolitical expertise to new assignments widely seen in the building as punishments likely to result in resignations."
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Genevieve Glatsky, et al., of the New York Times: "Under threats from ... [Donald] Trump that included steep tariffs, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia has relented and will allow U.S. military planes to fly deportees into the country, after turning two transports back in response to what he called inhumane treatment. The two leaders had engaged in a war of words on Sunday after Colombia's move to block Mr. Trump's use of military aircraft in deporting thousands of unauthorized immigrants. But on Sunday night, the White House released a statement in which it said that because Mr. Petro had agreed to all of its terms, the tariffs and sanctions Mr. Trump had threatened would be 'held in reserve.' Other penalties, such as visa sanctions, will remain in effect until the first planeload of deportees had arrived in Colombia, the statement said. 'Today's events make clear to the world that America is respected again,' it added." Read on. The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Only a stupid person would confuse "respect" with fear & loathing. Speaking of stupid, yesterday's Comments feature a lively discussion about the, uh, "moral characters" of the TMZ (Trump-Musk-Zuck, et al.) crowd. ~~~
~~~ Conor Dougherty of the New York Times: "The possibility of a trade war erupted on Sunday between the United States and Colombia that could make coffee, flowers and raw materials more expensive for Americans, while U.S. corn growers and chemical companies could find billions of dollars in sales at risk.... The United States is Colombia's largest trading partner, but Colombian products make up a relatively minor share of U.S. imports. Some Colombian products are much more exposed than others." ~~~
~~~ Douglas Magno, et al., of the AFP, via Yahoo! News: "Brazil's government expressed outrage on Saturday after dozens of immigrants deported from the United States arrived by plane in handcuffs, calling it a 'flagrant disregard' for their rights. The foreign ministry said it would demand an explanation from Washingto over the 'degrading treatment of passengers on the flight'. The spat comes as Latin America grapples with ... Donald Trump's return to power bringing a hard-line anti-immigration agenda, promising crackdowns on irregular migration and mass deportations. When the plane landed in the northern city of Manaus, Brazilian authorities ordered US officials to 'immediately remove the handcuffs,' the justice ministry said in a statement.... Edgar Da Silva Moura, a 31-year-old computer technician, was on the flight, after seven months in detention in the United States. 'On the plane they didn't give us water, we were tied hands and feet, they wouldn't even let us go to the bathroom,' he told AFP. 'It was very hot, some people fainted." ~~~
~~~ Nick Miroff & Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post: "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been directed by Trump officials to aggressively ramp up the number of people they arrest, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500, because the president has been disappointed with the results of his mass deportation campaign so far.... The quotas were outlined Saturday in a call with senior ICE officials, who were told that each of the agency's field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets.... The orders significantly increase the chance that officers will engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations as they strain to meet quotas, according to current and former ICE officials....
"ICE officers ... [took] fewer than 400 [people into custody] on Tuesday..., nearly 600 on Friday ... [and] 286 on Saturday, according to ICE. Trump's supporters and others have pointed out that those totals will not yield the 'millions' of deportations the president has promised. Trump made a similar promise during his first term and came up far short, reaching a peak of about 267,000 during the 2019 fiscal year. The Biden administration deported 271,000 in fiscal year 2024, the highest annual total in a decade. Trump has long had little patience for explanations of why his goals are not realistic." A related NBC News story is here.
~~~ Marie: If the figures cited (and my math) are correct, the Biden administration deported an average of 742 people per day in 2024; that is, significantly higher than the highest number of those deported in Trump's supposed "shock and awe" week of massive deportations of scary, scary felons. No wonder Grumpy Trumpy is "disappointed."
Ezra Klein of the New York Times argues that "attention, not cash, is the form of power that most interests [Donald Trump].... Attention, not money, is now the fuel of American politics. It seemed clear in 2022 that [Elon] Musk had overpaid when he bought Twitter for $44 billion. And if it's judged as a business transaction, he probably did overpay.... But we did not know then ... how to value the attention he bought. In terms of attention, Musk's purchase of Twitter turned him into the most powerful person in the world, save perhaps Trump. What is that worth?" ~~~
~~~ Marie: Looks to me as if Ezra is just catching up. Trump has craved attention all his life. It seems a bit ridiculous to argue that attention is more important to Trump than is money, when he relentlessly craves both. Those daily fundraising letters & his hundreds of cheesy moneymaking schemes are not merely attention-seeking devices. If there is one ultimate form of power Trump seeks, it is "respect." (See his remarks re: bullying Colombia.) Trump seeks to gain that respect via avenues that will never work on discerning people: money, attention & what one might call "situational dominance." His quest is in vain.
Marie: There has been a good deal of discussion here and elsewhere as to just how retro Trump is. Does he want to take us back to the 1950s when white men ruled without much question? Maybe even the Gilded Age, when there was no income tax at all and the titans of industry did as they pleased? I'm going with pre-Civil War, when the post-Civil War Constitutional Amendments didn't threaten the established order. Adam Liptak of the New York Times asks, "Is Trump's Plan to End Birthright Citizenship "Dred Scott II"?
Michael Phillis & Alexa St. John of the AP: "For four years, the Environmental Protection Agency made environmental justice one of its biggest priorities, working to improve health conditions in heavily-polluted communities often made up largely of Black, Latino and low-income Americans. Now that short-lived era is over.... Donald Trump in his first week eliminated a team of White House advisors whose job it was to ensure the entire federal government helped communities located near heavy industry, ports and roadways. Trump eliminated the 'Justice40' initiative the Biden administraton had created. It required 40% of the benefits from certain environmental programs go to hard-hit communities. When the government reviews new facilities now, experts say officials are likely to ignore how any pollution they create may exacerbate what communities already experience. Trump's actions will likely halt funds from Biden administration's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, for climate programs and environmental justice. In making the decision this week, Trump eliminated federal policy dating back to the Clinton-era, which had established a government priority of addressing environmental health problems for low-income and minority groups." ~~~
~~~ Marie: This is just one of Trump's way of telling minorities that they are nothing to him. It is retribution of a sort, a power-play against human decency. "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" "I have none, and I'm proud of it."
Ruth Graham & Elizabeth Dias of the New York Times: "Speaking at a prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington the day after ... [Donald] Trump's inauguration, [Episcopalian Bishop Mariann E. Budde] faced the president and made a direct plea: 'Have mercy.' After the service, Mr. Trump called Bishop Budde a 'Radical Left hard line Trump hater' in a social media post. His foes immediately hailed her as an icon of the resistance. But for many progressive Christians and their leaders, the confrontation was ... an eloquent expression of basic Christian theology, expressed in an extraordinarily public forum.... Bishop Budde's sermon delivered a jolt of energy in many mainline Protestant churches, whose numbers and influence have declined steeply from a high point in the middle of the last century."
Devlin Barrett of the New York Times: "The Justice Department announced Sunday it had begun a multiagency immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, as the Trump administration sought to show it is quickly fulfilling a campaign promise to ramp up arrests and deportations. Officials said a host of law enforcement agencies would conduct such operations in the coming days. The Justice Department announced that its acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, had traveled to Chicago to oversee the effort to address what he called a 'national emergency.'"
Zach Montague of the New York Times: "In a wide-ranging interview ... on CBS's 'Face the Nation' ... on Sunday, Vice President JD Vance defended a variety of plans set in motion by ... [Donald] Trump during the first week of his term, including the beginnings of a promised crackdown on migrants living in the United States and an effort to supercharge oil and gas production.... But even as he offered an endorsement of the Trump administration's first week, Mr. Vance grew defensive when asked to speak about previous statements that conflicted with his current ones. After saying earlier this month that anyone who engaged in violence on Jan. 6 'obviously' should not receive a pardon, Mr. Vance backtracked on Sunday, saying that Mr. Trump's decision to issue blanket pardons, even for people convicted of assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy in connection with the riot, was 'the right decision.'"
Naomi Nix & Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Washington Post: "With Trump back in the Oval Office, [Mark] Zuckerberg is rebranding the company to go all-in on a MAGA-dominated Washington, shelving Meta's once-lauded fact-checking program, eliminating DEI initiatives and installing [Meta's top Republican lobbyist, Joel] Kaplan as the face of the company's policy division to replace the liberal-leaning former British politician Nick Clegg." MB: See my comments below on Ronald Lauder. They certainly apply to Zuck & Kaplan. And to anyone who considers himself a decent person. How's about you, JayDee? (According to the Zach Montague's NYT article linked above, JayDee said, 'I think the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has, frankly, not been a good partner in common sense immigration enforcement that the American people voted for. And I hope, again, as a devout Catholic, that they'll do better.") What happened to Christian mercy, you hypocritical punk?
I would encourage the president to revisit the decision for those people who are being targeted by Iran. -- Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) ~~~
~~~ Oh! The Meek Can Speak. Meekly. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Two Republican Senate allies of President Trump urged him on Sunday to rethink his decision to strip security details from former advisers who have been targeted by Iran, saying the move could chill his current aides from doing their jobs effectively. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, spoke after Mr. Trump abruptly halted government security protection for three officials from his first time who were involved in his Iran policy and have remained under threat. One of them, John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump's third national security adviser, has been a vocal critic of Mr. Trump since departing the administration in 2019. The other two, his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and another former top State Department official, Brian Hook, have been supportive of Mr. Trump. His decision to pull their details surprised and alarmed some of the president's allies." ~~~
~~~ Maya Miller of the New York Times: "Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a key Trump ally, spoke out Sunday against ... [Donald] Trump's pardoning of violent rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, several of whom were convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers. 'I've always said that when you pardon people who attack police officers, you're sending the wrong signal to the public at large,' Mr. Graham told CNN's Dana Bash. 'And that's not what you want to do to protect cops.' 'But he has that power,' he added. Mr. Graham also criticized former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s use of pardons for his family members and a last-minute commutation for Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous-rights activist who spent nearly 50 years in prison in connection with a shootout that killed two F.B.I. agents." The AP report is here.
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Andrew Higgins of the New York Times: "More than 50 world leaders, including King Charles III, will join a dwindling group of Nazi death camp survivors on Monday in southern Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Red Army's liberation of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered. A day of solemn ceremony, shadowed by a resurgence of nationalism in Germany and several other European countries, will take place near a former gas chamber and crematory in the Polish town of Oswiecim, whose name was Germanized to Auschwitz during Hitler's 1939-1945 occupation of Poland....
At an election rally on Saturday in eastern Germany, AfD politicians and Elon Musk, a top adviser to ... [Donald] Trump,
Marie: The article cites remarks by billionaire Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation: "We thought the virus of anti-Semitism was dead, but it was just in hiding." Lauder supports Donald Trump & attended his inauguration. I have news for Lauder and every single Jewish person who think that's okay: whatever tax breaks or other advantages you may get out of Trump, they cannot possibly be worth the price of the rabid anti-Semitism that is the cost of doing business with Trump and his fascist friends. Anti-Semitism is not in hiding, Mr. Lauder; you were looking at the broad backside of it at the inauguration. Shame on you. You have betrayed the memories of the innocent victims of the Holocaust. You have betrayed the positions of trust you hold. Belarus. Such a Popular Fellow. Andrew Higgins of the New York Times: "Europe's longest-serving leader, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, cruised to his seventh election victory in a row on Sunday in a contest that his exiled opponents dismissed as a sham whose only purpose was to cement his autocratic grip on the former Soviet republic, Russia's closest ally. 'Don't use the word election to describe this farce,' said Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, an opposition leader who fled Belarus after the country's previous presidential vote in 2020 and a brutal crackdown on nationwide protests over election fraud. 'It is a staged performance by Lukashenko to cling to power at any cost.'" Israel's Wars, etc. The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Israel's wars are here: "Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians were walking toward their homes in northern Gaza on Monday, nearly 16 months after they were forced to flee at the start of Israel's military offensive. A column of people that stretched for miles marched north along Gaza's coastal road, many carrying their few possessions on their heads, on makeshift carts and in plastic bags slung over their backs. The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas remained in place after it appeared to falter over the weekend.... As [the Palestinians] began arriving in Gaza City, in the north of the territory, they confronted a wasteland of rubble after the Israeli military destroyed whole neighborhoods and Hamas booby-trapped many buildings." ~~~ ~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here. ~~~ ~~~ ⭐Judd Legum of Popular Information: Donald "Trump's Middle East policy took a dark turn on Saturday when he announced on Air Force One that he favored the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. 'You're talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,' Trump said.... His administration is already taking steps to try to remove more Palestinians from the area. Trump said he spoke with King Abdullah II of Jordan, a country that has already taken in nearly 2.4 million Palestinian refugees, "to take on more." He indicated he would press Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to take in Palestinians currently living in Gaza in a call on Sunday.... Trump discussed his vision for Gaza on January 20, his first day in the office, suggesting Gaza could be an ideal site for real estate development.... Trump's policy of relocating Gazans and redeveloping the country closely matches a vision floated by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, last year.... If Palestinians are removed from Gaza and the land is absorbed by Israel, both Kushner and Trump could benefit financially from its redevelopment." ~~~ ⭐Peter Beinart of the New York Times: "If America's leaders prioritized the lives of all those who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, it would become clear that asking if Israel has a right to exist is the wrong question. The better question is: Does Israel, as a Jewish state, adequately protect the rights of all the individuals under its dominion? The answer is no.... Roughly half the people under Israeli control are Palestinian. Most of those -- the residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- cannot become citizens of the state that wields life-or-death power over them.... Even the minority of Palestinians under Israeli control who hold Israeli citizenship -- sometimes called 'Israeli Arabs' -- lack legal equality.... American Jewish leaders don't just insist on Israel's right to exist. They insist on its right to exist as a Jewish state.... They are effectively saying there is nothing Israel can do -- no amount of harm it can inflict upon the people within its domain -- that would require rethinking the character of the state. They have done so even as Israel's human-rights abuses have grown ever more blatant.... When you deny people basic rights, you subject them to tremendous violence. And, sooner or later, that violence endangers everyone.... What Jewish leaders and American politicians can't countenance is equality between Palestinians and Jews -- because that would violate Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state."
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Reader Comments (16)
I have to retrain my brain to correctly process information I take in nowadays, such as when I come across a sentence beginning “The Justice Department announced…”. I must remember that the writer is now referring to the Trump Justice Department which means that announcement, action, reference, or concern has zero to do with actual justice, and in all probability is neither legal nor constitutional, and is more than likely inimical to the very essence of justice.
Thus the brain very soon will be able to instead read “The Injustice Department, the Offensive Department, Homeland Insecurity, the State of Chaos Department, Miseducation Department (while that one still exists), Department of Trump’s Treasury, the Federalist Society’s Bureau of Insurrection, etc.
It won’t take long.
Although my brain has started reading “Blight House” for White House, which, because it sounds too much like “Light House”, is categorically and abominably incorrect. I’m opting instead for the more Dickensian “Bleak House”, that author’s tale of titanic mistreatment of the non-rich by avaricious, doltish, and satanically corrupt public officials.
Much more accurate.
@Akhilleus: Quite right. It is jarring.
Think back to 2017. Trump is president* & the execrable Jeff Sessions heads up the DOJ. Now imagine that a small but rabid group of armed Trump supporters surprises the Capitol police, breaks into the Senate chamber, threatens senators and staff with bodily harm and demands the senators declare Trump king forever. In short order, the Capitol police subdue the group.
What happens next? Why, Jeff Sessions' DOJ charges the members of the group with any number of federal crimes, DOJ prosecutors take them to court and by the time the case comes to trial, a few Trump-appointed judges convict them in bench trials, and they go to jail for years.
That, I submit, is not what would happen next if such a disruption occurred today.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/27/trump-debt-ceiling-democrats/
Goodness. IMO, if the Dems wish to use the internal divisions in the Republican Congress as an opportunity to eliminate the debt ceiling, they couldn't be more wrong.
Trump wants the debt limit raised yet again so he can renew or expand his low tax rate on the wealthy. The Dems should never agree unless a higher tax is part of the package, since the Bush II and Trump tax cuts are two of the main reasons the national debt has continued to grow.
If the Dems agree to get rid of the debt limit without moving taxes on the higher brackets back to at least Obama levels, the R's will be in charge for the rest of this term at least and there will be no disagreement among themselves on lower taxes for the rich...
The majority of R's don't care about the debt. The Pretender sure doesn't.
I'd hate to see the Dems waste another opportunity. Or so Ken's conservative gene tells him.
Tech
"TikTok's 'cute winter boots' trend explained
As the U.S. government seeks to enact stricter controls over online speech, TikTok users are adopting more coded 'algospeak' to criticize and resist the government
The phrase “cute winter boots” is not about footwear. It's a code phrase being used to discuss resistance to Trump and how to fight back against the draconian immigration policies his administration is enacting. Users talking about “cute winter boots” keeping people safe from "ice," are referencing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Cute winter boots" is just the latest example of algospeak, coded phrases and words aimed at subverting algorithmic filters.
As the U.S. government seeks to enact stricter controls over speech online, TikTok users are adopting more coded language specifically aimed at criticizing the government and alerting others to government surveillance of online spaces. For instance, the phrase "Senator, I'm Singaporean," a quote uttered by TikTok's CEO Shou Chew in response to Sen. Tom Cotton's racist line of questioning implying that Chew was a Chinese government agent, is now frequently posted in the comments of videos by users seeking to warn others about the content they're posting. The phrase "Senator, I'm Singaporean," has come to mean that a video is not something that the government wants, or that they're going to show this type of video to congress, a creator explained."
Will Bunch
"Children of the 1960s watch in pain as the story of our lifetime is erased
For boomers, the rapid reversal of 1960s-era gains for civil rights, women, LGBTQ, etc., has unraveled the story of our lifetimes.
The end of federal affirmative action was just the cutting edge of a rampage of reactionary Week One backlash that also struck at the very heart of LGBTQ rights, academic freedom on college campuses, the environmental movement, and decades of rising empowerment for women. On the surface, Trump’s dictator-on-Day-One orders were a campaign-promise-fulfilling war on 21st-century liberal “wokeness,” but in reality the MAGA movement was stabbing at the heart of MLK, of LBJ’s “Great Society,” and the progressive victories that have sustained my generation for our lifetimes.
Boomers who filled the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in April 1970 to hear the Broadway cast of Hair sing “Air!” and successfully demand legislation for clear skies and clean water have lived to see their president declare a bogus “energy emergency” to help fossil-fuel billionaires pump more toxins into the atmosphere and to seek to block clean wind power, on the whims of sheer ignorance."
I don't know why those Central Americans can't come into the U.S,A.
on Einstein visas.
They're probably as smart as that Eastern European model who did.
Re: Will Bunch: here is a "free" link to Bunch's Inquirer column, via the Democratic Underground.
I don't like to take advantage of publications, as I get that they need to make money, but the Inquirer does not offer a single free link/month to any of its articles, so I'm making an exception here, partly because of the importance of Bunch's column and party because, well, fuck the establishment is a big part of what "the long 60s" were all about.
Anne Applebaum, in The Atlantic, writes
Elon Musk Is Giving Europeans a Headache
"Until recently, Russia was the most important state seeking to undermine European institutions. Vladimir Putin has long disliked the EU because it restricts Russian companies’ ability to intimidate and bribe European political leaders and companies, and because the EU is larger and more powerful than Russia, whereas European countries on their own are not. Now a group of American oligarchs also want to undermine European institutions, because they don’t want to be regulated—and they may have the American president on their side. Quite soon, the European Union, along with Great Britain and other democracies around the world, might find that they have to choose between their alliance with the United States and their ability to run their own elections and select their own leaders without the pressure of aggressive outside manipulation. "
Well Run Organization
"Kristi Noem Is So Late To Her Swearing-In By JD Vance, He Leaves: Report
The new homeland security secretary eventually took her oath elsewhere at a notable conservative's home.
Kristi Noem kept Vice President JD Vance waiting about 25 minutes to swear her in after she was confirmed for homeland security secretary on Saturday, so he left without doing the honor, Politico reported.
Vance could not stay any longer at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building without messing up his schedule, the political site wrote, citing people familiar with the matter. She reportedly arrived 15 minutes after Vance had departed. Jacob Reses, Vance’s chief of staff, let the former South Dakota governor know that duty called.
“It was made even more meaningful by being sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at his home,” Noem wrote on X with a video of the moment."
Of course Thomas is already hosting Republican operatives at his home, it has been a whole week since the new president* was handed the keys to the castle.
Hello and welcome to 1945 or maybe earlier: It is really hard to read about all of our gains as women and liberals going down the drain as fast as we expected them to, or more... I really do not care what happens to the people who voted for this monster incarnate. If that includes people who voted by mistake for the wrong person, voted against K as a racist misogynist, or persons swept up by the gestapo who also voted for this maggot, or anyone's niece or brother-in-law who is "just flabbergasted" by this destruction of civilized society, too bad. You can all thank Peter Baker and his buddies, Moscow Mitch and his underlings, WaPo, utterly disgusting rich techbros, and John Roberts and his brownshirts.
There was plenty of warning. For those who couldn't hear or read the warnings for years, great. You will forever be the cause of this nation's greatness being shredded immediately. How embarrassing to be bullying lesser countries (Colombia, Denmark, Panama, Canada etc etc). For those who hate women, and they know who they are, also congratulations on becoming lesser people. I don't know how any of this lawless nazi-ism can be addressed when there isn't any mechanism for enforcing anything as of this past week.
Must go cook up some gruel and take off my shoes. There is no respect or f***s available at the store, and I am all out...
Cartoon animals have it better
Marie points out, correctly, the difference between true respect and fear and loathing. Fat Hitler interprets every act of forced fealty and obedience as proof that he is loved and respected.
A famous Disney cartoon from 1943 depicts Donald Duck, as an overworked laborer in a Nazi munitions plant, forced to sieg heil at every opportunity. It’s a startling reminder of our own Hitler’s obsession with and need for constant adulation and obedience.
Obedience at the point of a bayonet (real or metaphorical) in no way translates as respect. But Fat Hitler’s entire life has been marked by a feeling of disrespect.
Disrespect from the NYC glitterati who refused him entrance into their company, who laughed at his tabloid clown antics, his sleazy schemes, hyper-public messy divorces and scandals, self-aggrandizing projects that blew up in his face, and his constant embarrassingly gaudy self-promotional stunts. Disrespect from Wall Street banks which wanted nothing to do with a huckstered-up chiseler who borrowed millions then skipped out on repayments by declaring bankruptcy. Disrespect from media types who ridiculed him as a small fingered vulgarian. Most of all, likely, disrespect from his KKK authoritarian father.
But Trump has never understood that respect must be earned. It is not automatically granted because you were born wealthy with unearned connections and millions in the bank you were handed.
He has always wanted to crowbar others into respecting him.
Still does. And since he sees himself as an avatar of the United States, he interprets a healthy respect of the power of this country’s military and economic might as respect for him personally.
He’s still a sleazy loser at heart, but now he has atomic weapons at his disposal, and an Injustice Department he has twisted into his own personal law firm to sic on his enemies.
Unfortunately for us, the happy ending Donald Duck experiences in the cartoon is unavailable to us, living under the tiny thumbs of Donald Fuck, the eternal huckster.
Don't know how Waldman read and reacted to Akhillleus' message above about EARNING respect, but looks like he did.
https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/stop-respecting-the-american-voter?utm_source=post-email-
The Reality TV Presidency
"Dr. Phil Tags Along On ICE Raid And Gets Recognized
The TV shrink recently joined ICE deportation raids in the windy city, which he then featured on Merit TV."
Felon with a gun.
"Indiana man fatally shot by sheriff's deputy identified as Jan. 6 defendant
During the traffic stop, a Jasper County sheriff's deputy attempted to arrest the suspect, but the suspect resisted, officials said.
"An altercation took place between the suspect and the officer, which resulted in the officer firing his weapon and fatally wounding the suspect," the Jasper County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
Further investigation revealed the suspect was armed with a gun during the traffic stop."
Krugman
"Paul Krugman on Leaving the New York Times
The paper wanted to take away his newsletter or make him write less frequently, he says."
The Richly Educated