20 XI 2024: An anti-competent cabinet of cronies

Trump has purposely selected for his cabinet people who seem unprepared by prior experience for the jobs assigned to them. J.D. Vance is, as the saying goes, one heart-beat away from the presidency, and brings to his work two whole years in the Senate. Pete Hegseth is, like Trump, a TV star with apparent sexual irregularities in his past. Matt Gaetz has had a lot of experience, but his experience suits him better for the presidency of a degenerate fraternity. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is famous, or, rather, has a famous name. He is himself infamous for his own sexual irregularities and his whimsical ideas about medicine. Linda McMahon is the tsar among professional wrestling impresarios. Pro wrestling is Trump’s favorite sport. Kristi Noem is a dog-shooting woman. That is her sole qualification. Elise Stefanik is a more moral and a little less grossly offensive version of Matt Gaetz, but is afflicted with an enormous “attitude” problem.

These and other cabinet members who can boast of what we might call a non-traditional background or lack of preparation, and in some cases, a record of Trumpian sexual misbehavior, will accomplish Trump’s ambition to disassemble the Government, this in keeping with Steve Bannon’s advice to “Blow everything up and then seize power.”

18 XI 2024: American peace crimes

I’ve visited a number of websites that offer explanations and examples of what is a war crime. A common rudimentary list of these is as follows:

murder

extermination

enslavement

deportation

torture

sexual or gender-based violence.

The United States could well be charged with commission of most of these crimes, not in war time, but in what the people in power agreed to call peace. 

The more obvious: 

The U.S. made repeated efforts of exterminate American Indians.

The U.S. encouraged the enslavement of blacks.

The U.S. caused the mass deportation of vulnerable populations, sc., the kidnapping and deportation of Africans as slaves and the deportation of Indians from property coveted by white America.

And now the Trump regime is plotting the mass deportation of a large part of the population of the United States. Of course, these likely deportees are not citizens of the United, but neither were the native inhabitants of America. This mass deportation will not be a response to pretended wartime necessity, but will be an indulgence of the fanatical racism and crippling selfishness of a mob of descendants of onetime immigrants to the United States.

15 XI 2024: No one smarter than Trump

One characteristic of trump-base voters is that they distrust and despise anyone who seems more bright, more clever, more competent than they. It has always been this way. The “people” don’t like folks who use big words or complex syntax. They assume that folks who do are city slickers out to deceive them or sneer at them.

I wonder if there is something similar at work in Trump’s selections for his cabinet and staff. Trump too does not want to have around him people who are smarter and more capable than he, experienced and intelligent people who might “show him up,” who might show their contempt for him, as have so many in Trump’s earlier staff.

There is, of course, a lot more to it. It’s easy to undermine the United States. Just appoint belligerent and incompetent people to positions of great importance and let things fall apart.

Appointment of trump-types will require bypassing the required Senate approval, but that approval, required by the Constitution, is to the trumpian mentality a mere legalism.

Indeed, I think we’re going to see Trump trying to govern without legislative approval or cooperation. He will do it through “executive orders” and “emergency decrees.” There is precedent for this. The Nazis manufactured an emergency in which the Chancellor, Hitler, could govern by decree. The emergency became permanent and Hitler never ceased governing by decree.

9 XI 2024: Very good question

See on CNN the editorial by Smercornish “Did Trump change America or reveal it?” 

Ever since the rise of Trumpism I’ve been scratching my head, asking “Who knew? Who knew that the American electorate is so ignorant, sub-rational, amoral?” But the question cited above is the answer. People like me have been clinging to the hope that America still means what it says, remains committed to the values it has professed. But it is now clear that the majority of Americans have abandoned, indeed, probably have never accepted these values. This fact has been evident all along, but our hope and self-deception blinded us to it.

8 XI 2024:  Shouldn’t let the children vote

Well, Trump, known to his friends as Shitler, has been elected. It’s wonderful how so many people can be convinced to act against their best interests. It reminds me of the hypothetical situation described by Plato (Gorgias): In a trial, the opponents are a Physician and a Pastry-cook, the jury is made up of children. Who are the children likely to support? The point is that politicians do not try to do what is best, but only to humor the many. And we see how well this works.

28 X 2024: Biggest trash in the can

Trump has called America a garbage can, and for his Nazi-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden he managed to scrape up from the bottom some real pieces of trash: Hulk Hogan, Rudy Giuliani, Dr. Phil, Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance, with a supposed comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, to tell some dirty, i.e., racist jokes. The response of the mob gathered to listen to this show was more than enthusiastic, was rapturous, as they listened to these notorious low-life demagogues celebrate their ignorance and prejudice.

All this serves to show that MAGA is, at bottom, a White Trash Movement. Trump is white trash, as are the cast selected for this hate-fest, because the hard core of MAGA is, in fact, White Trash. Other kinds of trash, the Monied Trash, the Commercial Trash, and the Semi-criminal Trash, have included themselves in this movement because they believe that White Trash demagoguery can produce the votes they need and mask their manipulation of the United States.

9 X 2024: Fact avoidance

Trump will not now participate in any debate or interview that might involve fact checking. Trump shares this annoyance at fact checking will every old fart whose inebriated pontificating is interrupted by a correction based on fact. Trump’s distress at fact checking goes far back. I recall that during the 2016 campaign his mouthpieces were claiming that fact checking is inherently aggressive and hostile. 

Now he’s claiming that VP Harris’ 60 Minute interview was the result of massive cutting and splicing and alteration to make Harris seem more lucid and presidential. But, of course, Trump can only be made to appear at all lucid and presidential when he is limited to sound bites uninterrupted by any truth.

I think that in Trump’s case the policy must be to replace intolerant and aggressive fact checkings with guaranteed “lie tolerant” settings of the Fox News variety.

1 X 2024: Image of Trump “in poor taste”???

 saw a picture of a silly statue of Trump that bore this caption: “A 43-foot-tall nude effigy of Donald Trump erected near Las Vegas, Nevada September 28, 2024. Conservatives have decried the sculpture as being in poor taste.”

Between the nude statue and Donald Trump and Conservatives, which is in bad taste?

28 IX 2024: Trumpian tick-tok

Donald Trump has announced a new franchise that will sell wrist watches with Trumpian name and symbols that range in price from $499 for Trumpites of modest means up to $100,000 for truly enthusiastic devotees.

These watches, vulgarized rip-offs of over-priced watches, are the latest manifestation of one of Trump’s fundamental problems. Trump has for most of his life affected membership in the monied + high-fashioned + impenetrably tasteful elite, and has invariably been rejected. And his latest business venture is yet another failure to achieve his heart’s desire.

Would anyone with any social and aesthetic self-respect want to be seen flashing one of these expensive grotesqueries that embody lack of taste and gullibility?

23 IX 2024: Israel invites violence

I do not mean the following as any kind of apology for Israel’s enemies, but the fact remains that much of the physical, psychological, and political harm suffered by Israel is self-inflicted as a consequence of its aggressive and, at times, criminal behavior. Israel’s indifference to non-Jewish human life is becoming more and more evident as it continues its efforts towards colonization and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and on the West Bank. Israel continues to sow the wind and act aggrieved when it must reap the whirlwind. The United States, indeed, the Western world generally have been Israel’s woefully naive accomplices, and Israel refuses to cooperate with them while demanding their assistance. There is no end to all of this in sight. However, some terrible cataclysm seems inevitable.