Blame Game

 

When Trump dies, his tombstone (gilded obelisk, more likely) will say, “I blame Obama.”

Never has a “president” so readily blamed others, much less admitted mistakes. He takes credit for anything positive, like good job numbers or stock market ups, and reprehends his predecessors (or Hillary Clinton) for bads and downs. Usually, he’s wrong both ways.

Democrats’ warnings were right: turning the DOJ into his personal lawfare apparatus; skyrocketing budget deficits; ignoring judges and the law; imposing inflationary, job-killing tariffs. Then, having made unkeepable economic promises (some might call them lies), when the check-ins came home to roost, he fired the messenger, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economist Erika McEntarfer, who’d been confirmed 86 – 8 by senators, including JD Vance, who recognized her integrity.

The BLS (not the Commissioner) gathers employment numbers and reports them. And, when they need revision, revises. It’s safe to assume Trump’s replacement will reinforce Trump’s “down is up, up is down,” making the BLS, like every department in Trump’s “government,” untrustworthy. Ratify his lies or be gone. Do it, be moved to a “Club Fed.” 

Trump’s bleats notwithstanding, employment data can’t be “rigged.” Preliminarily miscalculated, evidently. But, in the end, hiring is binary: yes or no. MAGAs will believe whatever Trump says, but even right-leaning economists approved of Ms. McEntarfer’s corrected data. Shall we trust numbers from one who says he weighs 225 pounds, stands 6’3”, and promises to lower drug prices by 1,500 percent? 

It’s what Trump and the dictators he emulates do: Remove people who say things they don’t like. Fire (in the case of Putin, defenestrate or poison) watchdogs and investigators who reveal corruption or speak truth. Pam Bondi’s totally not weaponized DOJ is “investigating” Judge James Boasberg for the crime of enforcing the law. Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, too, for looking into Trump’s crimes, which he did so scrupulously and painstakingly that Trump was able to run out the clock. Other judges who ruled against Dear Leader are reporting serious threats from his America-greatening minions. Collaborators.

Until they eliminate them altogether, dictators ignore laws. That’s Trump. Same with facts. His EPA just un-scienced the finding that greenhouse gases are bad, paving the way to deregulate fossil fuel production. Snap of the finger: years of scientific research and documentation, gone. If the preceding outrages merely kill democracy, this will kill people. But, say MAGAs, Trump loves us. Warmly. So does his lunatic HHS Secretary, who just canceled $500 million for vaccine research. Including for flu and Covid. 

Is it getting Pyongyang in here? Part of the ransom Trump extracted from CBS was inclusion of a “bias monitor” who’ll report directly to him about any content deemed “too critical.” What’s worse: that Trump demanded it, CBS agreed to it, or Republicans rejoice in it? Criticism of leadership is indispensable in healthy democracies. What Trump wants and Republicans, who would hug our Constitution if it were a flag, are fine with, is untouchable monarchy.

“Nothing in this is, or shall be interpreted or construed as, an offer, promise, or acceptance of any form of bribery, undue influence, or corrupt practice.” So says the agreement for “gifting” that palatial Qatari jet to the U.S., the down-to-the-frame retrofitting of which, it’s calculated, will cost American taxpayers a billion dollars. Dollars that recent Fox talk-show host and current DEI-obsessed Defense Secretary Hegseth hid in a secret transfer from dedicated DOD funds. After renovation to Trump’s kingly standards, he’ll have personal use of it till death do he face. Well, then. Interpret, we shall not. Nor construe.

While Trump flies around in taxpayers’ billion-dollar bunko, if he carries out his dream of replacing the East Wing with a gargantuan, royal ballroom, we’ll be left with a desecrated White House. The People’s House, welcoming visitors from all walks of life, will become Trump’s auriferous legacy, a grandiose homage to his need for veneration. One person’s pathological narcissism will despoil something beautiful, its timeless architecture so understatedly American. It’s metaphorical.

Trump’s and his party’s war on facts, science, and truth is easy to understand. Those values expose their lies and failures. Campaigning on cruelty can’t win forever, and they know it’s all they have. On governance, they lose. Which is why Texas, as demanded by Trump, with all red states sure to follow, is taking its already-egregious gerrymandering to unseen levels, eliminating five Democratic districts. And now, Trump’s IRS says multimillionaire-run megachurches can endorse candidates and maintain tax-exempt status. Everywhere you look, it’s undisguised corruption. Like ending free tax-filing after a million-dollar donation from TurboTax. 

These perilous times for democracy demand that Democrats fight as dirty as Republicans; do the same in blue states as legislators are doing in red ones, for as long as it takes to return to voters the right to select their representatives, not the other way around. Then enact fair voting laws forever, or until the SCOTUS Six rewrite the Constitution yet again.

Whichever comes first.

Gaza And More

 

I took one of those send-your-spit DNA tests. As expected, it showed me to be 99% Ashkenazi Jewish, because both sides of my family are Jewish, going back past Adam and Eve, probably to Graecopithecus. I've written about why I'm not proud of things over which I had no control, born Jewish among them. But I'm glad of it.

When I meet Jewish people, I feel unspoken kinship. Jews have contributed disproportionately to the arts, technology, science, medicine. If I'm not among those contributors, I admire them from closer than afar. Jews have survived centuries of hatred. My grandfathers lost family in the Holocaust, which, contrary to the belief of many in the MAGA camp, actually happened. Seeing pictures of those skeletal outlasters of incarceration makes me physically ill. As does the rise of antisemitism under the leadership of "good people on both sides" Trump.

I'm glad for the existence of modern-day Israel, in awe of its research achievements that have benefited humankind. If its re-creation after World War II as haven and homeland for survivors of the Shoah engendered unceasing animus within the countries surrounding it, it was the right thing to do. As have been its wars of survival, like its stunning victory over the outnumbering, attacking nations in the Six Day War.

My point: I'm not someone you could consider antisemitic. So when I say I'm revulsed by what Israel is doing in Gaza, it's not about religion or ethnicity. It's about humanity. If a strong response to the horrifically cruel attacks by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, was absolutely called for, Israel has long-since gone beyond justification. I'm angry over it, and filled with sorrow. If I can't claim pride in being born Jewish, I can feel uneasy - embarrassed, even - to be associated, however tangentially, with the brutality, the indiscriminate slaughter being carried out by Israel. Starvation. Interdicting aid. Killing people, children included, as they scramble to receive what little nourishment is available. Recently allowing some food convoys back in, plus Trump's meager contribution of cash last week: too little, too late.

I abhor what Benyamin Netanyahu is doing and I hate that our "president" openly encouraged him. "Finish the job," he said. "Do whatever you want." No one should be surprised, though, because what Trump is doing to immigrants in America, adults and children, recent arrivals and law-abiding residents for decades, if not causing as many deaths as Israel's, is equally heartless and dismissive of the humanity of his victims. Plus, because Republicans cheer Trump's immigration cruelty at home and Trump facilitates Bibi's abroad, both are being done in our name.

Criticism of Israel's actions does not equate to antisemitism. Nor does it justify Trump's rounding up, imprisoning, and deporting students, here legally, who've been protesting them. (Which he's not doing to protect Jewish students: it's an excuse to subjugate universities to his will.) America has supported Israel since its creation and, as long-term policy, that shouldn't change. To preserve its existence, Israel will likely need America's help forever. But, especially now, it ought not be unconditional. Seeing children of bone and skin, barely holding off death, knowing there were many who couldn't: Enough is much more than enough.

The US could put its aid to Israel on hold. It might not halt the carnage, but it would disassociate us from the inhumanity. It would also, no doubt, cause outrage among many of Israel's American supporters. Matters of conscience, though, are more important than politics or the flow of money that's become indispensable to American politicians of all persuasions. They used to be.

I'd like to believe the majority of Israelis, like the majority of Americans who disapprove of virtually all of Trump's policies, reject Netanyahu's scorching of Gazan earth. Hamas is a barbarous terrorist organization that needs to be eradicated. Surely, though, a country as skillful as Israel could find a way to do it without starving civilians and, like MAGA's BFF Putin, bombing their hospitals and homes. Maybe that's impossible, but it ought to be the goal.

Enough said. If the Gaza tragedy is overwhelmingly awful, the Epstein saga continues to confound. Trump's former personal attorney, Todd Blanche, now an obedient DO"J" employee, has been interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's chief accomplice and pedophilic facilitator, serving twenty years for her crimes. Trump, who never lies, says he hasn't been following it, says issuing her a pardon after she says whatever they get her to say "… is not something I've thought about." Only the most Trumpomagafoxified could consider that, or her spillage, credible.

MAGAs have another challenge to rationalization: Trump only "wins" tournaments at his own golf resorts. From his taxpayer-funded trip to promote his courses in Scotland, there's now video proof of his oft-reported cheating. Defend, worshippers, the character of the man you revere, who cheats at golf and brags about winning. Because character isn't conditional. His explains everything he does.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Sometimes it’s necessary to beat a reanimated horse. The Epstein “situation” is about more than the horrific crimes of that man, Trump’s best buddy for years, who once received a wink-wink birthday letter from him. His denial of sending it floated like a Sherman tank in his birthday parade. The salience of the Epstein affair isn’t only the criminal exploitation and trafficking of young girls. That’s been known for decades. Nor is it news that Trump palled around with him; speculation on the extent of his involvement is understandable, but, for now, unprovable.

What’s more important is that even the most successfully MAGAfied Trumpists can no longer deny he’s a shameless, recidivist liar. Or that he and the people with whom he’s surrounded himself for protection, and his media enablers, are trying, as if everything depends on it, to hide what’s in those files. People don’t do that for something that, according to Trump’s cravenly obedient Attorney General, never existed. MAGAs are starting to notice.

Releasing Grand Jury testimony is a distraction attempt, a scam, more proof that Trump considers his voters stupid. If a judge allows the unlawful release of the testimony, it’ll contain nothing about Trump. That’s why, unlike the actual files, he ordered Pam Bondi to release it. It’s transparent non-transparency. Publishing the MLK, Jr. files, though, is transparent, proving how desperate he is to change the subject.

If Trump didn’t fear the Epstein files, he wouldn’t be calling them a hoax created by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Moreover, calling it a “hoax,” which it clearly isn’t, explains every not-hoax he’s called a hoax. Till now, lies as idiotic as that would be swallowed by Trumpists like cheeseburgers he forces on college athletes. Knowing the lies dropped from the same place as cowpies, Congressional Rs would nevertheless feed them to their constituents like strawberry shortcake. No longer. For once, some seek the truth. 

Trump doesn’t just think his supporters are stupid. He’s saying it out loud. So desperate is he to squirrel MAGA into looking the other way that he posted a fake video of President Barack Obama being arrested by ICE, hauled out of the Oval Office, and imprisoned. And another, akin to his picturing himself as Pope and, later, as Superman, as lead guitar and drummer for the rock band Journey. In addition to proving his dread of the truth, it’s a national embarrassment. For worse and worser, he’s President of the United States, and he’s beclowning himself and his voters. Having gotten away with lies all his life, he’s panicking at the thought of not, changing the subject any way he can.

Other presidents have had scandals that invited investigation. Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, for three. In those bygone days, Congress wasn’t controlled by people intent only on taking the dictations of their president. Those offences had special prosecutors and/or congressional investigations, whereas Trump’s DOJ and his congressional facilitators are doing everything they can to quash his. To avoid voting on a bipartisan demand to release the files, presumably told to do so by God, Holy Mike Johnson shut down the House prematurely, for months.

Via Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, Trump fired the prosecutors and agents who did their job by pursuing his and the J6ers’ criminality. Presumably following orders, Tulsi Gabbard, his obedient Director of National Intelligence, wants President Barack Obama and his team tried for treason, for the crime of investigating how Russia helped Trump become elected. Which, non-hoaxally, it did. Do it, Tulsi. Do it, Pam. Show us what ya got.

Democracy’s survival depends on the willingness of its citizens to follow the rules, for reasons bigger than themselves. It stumbles when people in power realize courts wield only words, not swords, and it dies when they conclude courts have no means to stop them. Trump, who knows nothing about many things, does know what to say when judges order him to stand down: “You and what army?” In increasing numbers, he and his administration are brazenly ignoring judicial orders. 

When will their Epstein-based recognition of Trump’s lies awaken MAGA Republicans to the danger this represents to every American, including themselves? For the good of the country they claim to love, when will they join the effort to vote the current crop of Republicans out of office?

Freed from judicial restraints, Trump is ending more than the rule of law. What looks like cruelty for its own sake, or, maybe, payoffs, he closed the office in charge of combatting human trafficking; federal buildings will no longer need accessibility ramps; HUD will stop investigating housing discrimination; The EPA will end research into dangerous chemicals; Homeland Security will begin deporting child victims of domestic abuse, previously protected as “Special Immigrant Juveniles.” (Links provided on request.) Is this what MAGAs voted for? Are they all as inhumane as Trump?

MAGA has finally stopped hiding its meaning: Make America Go Away. It was always the point.

It's Almost Here

 

Example number infinity that FOTUS can do or say whatever he wants and he’ll get no resistance from the MAGAfied, much less Congressional Republicans: Speaking of Rosie O’Donnell, Trump said, on unTruth Sociopath, “I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” You’d be excused if you thought that can’t possibly be true, even considering the sort of bizarrity he bleats hourly. 

As dismissive of the Constitution as he is, Trump might believe he has that right. We know he wouldn’t be informed otherwise by A.G. Pam Bondi, whose only legal concern is doing whatever Trump demands, unlawfulness notwithstanding and immaterial. Nor would his base stop to think about the implications, if a Democratic president were to assert that power. They hate everything Ms. O’Donnell is as much as Trump does. It’s a major motivator for their votes.

Thinking of thinking, think how much better off America would be if Trump hadn’t hired, and Congressional Rs hadn’t bent over to them, nothing but arrogant incompetents. According to him, it’s “evil” to ask questions about Kristy Noem’s requirement to get her permission for FEMA expenditures over $100 thousand and how it delayed critical responses to the devastating Texas flood. That’s but one of many accouterments of dictatorship we’re seeing: suppressing probing questions, demonizing dissent. Inklings of a nascent police state have become inkblots, but MAGAs see only butterflies. 

Under Trump’s Bogus Belligerent Budget Bill, ICE will soon have more funding than the FBI, making it America’s largest and most well-financed “law enforcement” agency. Unlike the FBI, which requires college degrees and puts agents through months of training, including teaching what the law does and doesn’t allow, ICE, by rapidly increasing its numbers, will require practically nothing; not even a high school degree. With those enthusiastically brutal arrests by masked, anonymous ICE agents so widely publicized, people who apply must picture themselves doing it, and want in.

In addition to personnel, ICE’s budget includes billions for building new “detention” camps, modeling MAGA’s new objet d'amour, “Alligator Alcatraz.” And what of the hoped-for millions of undocumented residents to be incarcerated, who, according to law, are entitled to bond hearings for release until adjudication? Not under Trump. Millions, his acting ICE director says, must now remain incarcerated until trial, which means months or years. To that end, he just fired seventeen immigration judges. 

Other than arriving illegally, fleeing mortal danger, many are law-abiding, productive contributors to society. Until Trump’s supremely obedient courts allow him to disappear the Fourteenth Amendment, they’ll have children who are American citizens. But maybe they’ll be allowed out during daytime to join Medicaid recipients working as slave laborers on farms. 

The reason Trump, his henchfolk, and MAGAfied Americans countenance these outrages is simple. They see non-white migrants as less than human. They’re “the other,” and othering is a time-proven method dictators use to sneak their way to unchecked power. If “sneak” is the right word. Trump and MAGA’s lack of empathy, their penchant for undisguised cruelty, couldn’t be more obvious.

What people with any claim to righteousness would stand by as the Trump administration orders the incineration of 550 tons of food intended for children starving in war or disaster zones, as part of their heartless ending of USAID? They couldn’t let another organization distribute it? How confident is Trump that his base of believers will never push back? The White House, no joke, recently published this. Why is House Speaker Holy Mike Johnson, who waves his so-called Christianity like panties at a rock concert, silent on any of this?

Since it’s an increasingly hot topic, let’s not ignore those Epstein files which disappeared from Pam Bondi’s desk so thoroughly that they never existed. It’s not speculation to say Trump was in them. For years, by both of their accounts, they were bromantically involved. Because I’m not into conspiracies, I’m just asking. Which is more likely: Epstein hung himself to avoid trial and just happened to do it when cameras weren’t working, or that word got out that he was ready to tip over the bean jar to get a light sentence? Kowtowing to Trump instead of doing what’s right, per usual, House Republicans just voted down a Democratic effort to require release of the files. Might they know there’s there there?

Which makes the MAGA revolt over Ms. Bondi’s claim of nothing there puzzling. One assumes they expected dirt on the Clintons, the Bidens, and more. Because all lefties are pedos. MAGAs must assume Trump is featured, too, but, like everything else Trump, they’d manage to excuse it. He’s playing 4-D checkers. But he sure wants it to go away.

But wait!! Evidently, the files DO exist. Trump, fonda Bondi, is now saying she should release "whatever she thinks is credible." Because that’s how transparency works: his yes-lady will tell us what to believe, and Drump the rest. Pure as the melting glaciers.

America, We Hardly Knew Ye

Fantasy: If every voter knew and understood everything that was in Trump’s Big Bad Bogus Belligerent Belied Bereft Baleful Budget Bill, seventy percent of them would vote out of office every Republican who voted for it. It’s safe to assume, though, that those who get their “news” from the White House official media outlets, Fox, Newsmax, OAN, or their talk radio equivalents will never know. Add together Democrats’ signature inability to produce a coherent and clear message and Republicans’ Machiavellian methods of vote suppression, it’s a bad bet.

What did it take for the performatively recalcitrant but predictably foldable “holdout” Republican Congresspeople to fall in line? A trip to the Oval Office featuring Trump-signed tchotchkes and presidential puffery. To paraphrase the old saw, they know what they are; they were just arguing about the price. 

Those legislators are so sure their constituents care more about punishing immigrants than they do about their own healthcare or food security that they’ll overlook what’s being done to them. If not to them, to millions of others about whom they don’t care. They’ll have been convinced that the billions dedicated to DHS for incarceration and deportation are worth it, even though, of the people now being rounded up, fewer than ten percent have committed violent crimes. 

Now, most of the incarcerated are people who’ve obeyed the law since they arrived illegally, who’ve been here for years, contributing to society and our economy. People whose absence will put businesses out of business. But to MAGAs, it seems, the more immigrants are rounded up, the worse the conditions in which they’re imprisoned, the more gratified they feel.

In addition to the disinformation from rightwing media, Trump’s voters will have seen video of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the El Salvador mimicking concentration camp in Florida’s Everglades swamp. Cages, admired by jocular, visiting Trump. They’ll have seen the tasteless, unbecoming gloat from Kristy Noem’s Department of Homeland Security. They’ll have loved it, taking selfies by the tasteless, unbecoming signs outside the gulag. They’ll buy RNC-approved merch, while chuckling over Trump’s favorite adviser Laura Loomer’s sadistic commentary. Approval of the inexcusable: Team Trump counts on it.

As one who once considered this country fundamentally good, this is stomach-turning. Few, if any, disapprove of deporting murderers and rapists, the committers of violent crimes that constituted Trump’s least inconsistent campaign promise. But what’s happening now is cruelty for its own sake, spearheaded by Stephen Miller and his racist desire for an all-white America. In the future, will we be remembered not for building great things, but for stalags and gulags?

The BBBBBBBBB contains more intentional cruelty. There are, no doubt, people receiving healthcare and food benefits who take advantage of the system, but they are relatively few. Most people on Medicaid are working or can’t. Now, they’ll all have to fill out paperwork at least twice a year; some as much as monthly. Why? Because today’s Republican Party has long since internalized Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” vision of people in need.

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, “There are no change (sic) in benefits. There’s a change in requirements to get the benefits.” Translation: “It’s there. We’ve just made it hard to get, which we hope you don’t.” The same applies to food stamps, the cost of which is less than that now allotted to incarcerating or deporting migrants, and of which more white people partake than black or brown. Because of the same upside-down, Robbing-Hoodwink priorities, funds for school lunch programs will be eliminated. Climate change is a hoax, as we know, so tax credits for alternative energy will phase out. Because oil. Adapt or die.

Tariffs? Who knows? Trump has flipped, flopped, and flipped again. The bizarre letters he wrote to leaders of Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, and Tunisia thud somewhere between Mafia threat and freshman writing assignment. 

Between now and the election of 2026, it’ll be a battle of words. Truth vs. lies. Straight talk vs. deflection. What characterization applies to which side will be retinized by the beholder. As usual, burdened with a predilection for factuality, Democrats will fight with their hands behind their backs, against a virtual state media conglomerate within which lies and deflection are what bring and keep their viewers and listeners.

We can’t depart before changing the subject to the – what to call it? – strangeness of the DOJ, whose words are its Bondis, announcing there’s no Epstein client list after all, having previously said it was on General Pam’s desk being reviewed. And that Epstein definitely, absolutely, no question killed himself. Nope, not at all suspicious. The DOJ is independent and liars don’t lie.

Another: Now that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in US custody, why haven’t we seen pictures of the MS13 knuckle tattoos that Trump assured us were absolutely, definitely, pinky-swear not fake? 

Independence?

 

Independence Day. May it trigger a desire for freedom from the cult of MAGA for enough people to restore America’s greatness. May those waving Old Glory do so while shedding the chains of Trumpism, weighing them down, unrecognized. May they join in furthering the day when America regains its defining goodness.

Pride, according to Christian teaching, is a deadly sin. I’ve never been proud of things over which I’ve had no control. I’m tall. It has given me undeserved advantages, for which I'm not proud. I learned to be a surgeon; I think I did a good job of it. Should I be proud of not being bad? I’m not. No more than having never robbed a bank.

I’m glad I was born in the USA, but, having had no part in it, it’s not a source of pride. Nevertheless, for all its faults, I admire how, as it evolved, America hasn’t denied them, but has worked, if imperfectly, to correct them. Until about ten years ago, I believed our democratic republic was the most moral, ethical, generous, and productive form of government there’s ever been. I’d bet our founders had pride in their product. Then again, most of them were Deists, not Christians.

Because it all happened without me, I’ve never felt proud to be American. If I ever had, though, I couldn’t now. For the same reasoning as pridefulness, I shouldn’t feel shame on this day of celebration, either. I didn’t create nor would I ever join MAGA. So, not ashamed. Deeply disappointed. Sad. Embarrassed. And very, very worried.

It’s not just the unkindness into which America has descended, as if on a down escalator, at the hands of Trump and his punitory cabineteers. It’s that so many Americans – a people I’ve always considered generous, welcoming, and mostly moral – are not only fine with what we’ve become: they’re proud of it.

At every Trump rally, “Proud To Be An American” is played while the congregants sing along. Their pride must be real, but for what? Clearly not for America’s eventual commitment to civil rights for all: they’re glad to see it disappear at the hands of ideologically blinded Justices. That, except for Native Americans, we’re a nation of immigrants is obviously not a source of pride.

Nor, incredibly, are our world-leading institutions of higher education, or the advances in science, technology, and medicine for which their American creators, until Trumpism, were admired gratefully, worldwide. MAGA loves his attacks on them and his attempts to dictate what’s taught.

Are they proud to see immigrants, following the rules, outside courtrooms awaiting hearings for citizenship, snatched by masked, unidentifiable men, sent to prisons abroad? Does it shake their belief that immigrants are “moochers” when it’s workplaces being raided? Does pride burst forth, knowing children are starving and, according to a study in The Lancet, millions of people will die as a result of ending USAID, America’s world-leading beneficence? Not in me. Did our nation’s lifesaving generosity mortify them?

What fireworks are best to celebrate Trump’s undisguised corruption? Are they singing their pride for handing world leadership in research and development to China? Or for America’s role in the resurrection of measles? Do they agree with JD Vance that millions of Americans losing health insurance under Trump’s just-passed Big Bogus Bill is “immaterial”? 

Maybe not. Endungeoned within news sources that ignore those horrors, they probably haven’t heard of them. So they require no proof the election was stolen, that Democrats want to change their children’s gender, that they plan to replace Caucasians with illegal, brown voters. They accept that migrants who fled danger to come here decades ago and have made a better life for their families deserve unadjudicated deportation.

Perhaps not all set out to believe Trumpism’s falsehoods, but they chose news sources that provide nothing else. Telling them diversity in a population destroys it, equity of opportunity diminishes theirs, inclusion of people not like them means exclusion of them. So they find nothing ominous in Trump’s banning of words and books that refer, even obliquely, to those values.

MAGA pride must include seeing reporters who told the truth about Trump’s paltry bombing of Iraq accused by Trump and his belly-baring Cabinet of “demoralizing” the troops who carried out the raid. Like all Trumpish phantasms, they believe it.

On Independence Day, they'll profess pride in America, founded on free speech and the right of assembly, happy that, under Trump, those rights no longer apply to liberals; glad that institutions designed to rebuff authoritarianism are caving to his autocratic threats. Who can be surprised, though? Their movement was founded on Kenyan birth and “Lock her up.”

Surely, many under the spell of MAGA retain reachable decency. What will it take to bring them back? They could start by watching this. And, to understand the appeal, hear this. 

On July Fourth, I’d be proud of those who break free.

Man O' War

 

No matter what one thinks about Trump joining the Israel/Iran war, no matter the outcome, it was impressive proof of American military technology, capability, planning, and, notwithstanding Tulsi Gabbard as DNI, intelligence-gathering. As Bibi said, it’s unlikely any other nation could have pulled it off. If nothing else, it triggered a Big, Beautiful Gloat. 

Here, from the New York Times, with no paywall, is a comprehensive, behind-the-scenes background on the runup. Both “sides” will find items of interest.

Impressive as it was, we must wonder: had Trump’s dreamed-of, watch-this-Vlad-and-Kim military parade not been so humiliating, had it not made him look so embarrassingly weak, would he have rushed to enter the war? Given skin thin as single-ply tissue and his need to appear superhero strong, who knows? For context, Trump once bleated, “Now that Obama’s numbers are in tailspin, watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.”

According to that NYT article, he was impressed with how Israel’s attack was “playing” on Fox “News.” Was that his metric? How am I playing? Slurping Kool-Aid like lemonade under a heat dome, Little Marco said it’s “irrelevant” whether we had intelligence indicating intent to make nukes. That’s alarming.

Has Iran’s nuclear capability been “totally obliterated,” as Trump said, “degraded” as Joint Chief’s Chairman Caine said, or, as JD Vance put it “delayed.” (Vance wins). The regional and global ramifications remain to be seen. It could turn out to be the best decision Trump has ever made, or, like George Bush’s, another Iraq. Let’s hope for the former.

Unlike ill-considered tariffs, threatened, deployed, reversed, and reversed again, wars can’t be undone. The plans were brilliant, but can we trust that it wasn’t another incidence of Trump’s “gut” telling him what to do? Did he take talk-show host Pete Hegseth’s advice? (See that NYT article, above.) Would the generals he fired have urged a different path?

Nothing about Trump’s prior behavior (Covid!) instills confidence that his decision reflected deep thought and thorough consideration of options and consequences. We’ll never know the outcome, had he pursued the diplomacy to which he once seemed committed; returning, in essence, to the Obama-brokered agreement he reflexively ended on Day One the first. Because Obama.

Iran claims to have moved all nuclear material and equipment away before the attack. According to that NYT article, some insiders felt Trump’s blabbery gave them reason and time to do it.

Before the attack, Trump produced dishonestly edited testimony by DNI Gabbard, on the outs for casting doubt on whether Iran was making nuclear weapons; inaccurately implying she said they were “weeks away.” This is how it works: tell Trump what he wants to hear or become gone. Praise, don’t challenge. When it comes to making decisions about war, that’s hypo-optimal.

Nor is it desirable, assuming it’s ideal for Americans to be behind a war of choice, to have a “president” who makes it clear that he cares about only half the country, calling the other half America-hating “lunatics,” punishing them at every opportunity. It makes impartial reflection difficult.

To those saying Trump broke his promise not to be a war president, based on which many voted for him, JD Vance, doppleganging Bill Clinton, said, “It depends on what the definition of war is.”

The risk of increased attacks on America, cyber and living flesh, has undoubtedly risen after Trump’s military action, and the timing isn’t good. He’s disbanded the team responsible for cybersecurity and put in charge of counterterrorism a 22-year-old with zero experience who, until his appointment, had been a gardener and grocery clerk. That ought to worry even the most MAGA of MAGAs. It’s almost as if Trump intentionally tore down the wall, if not for Khamenei, then for Putin. It would explain the inexplicable.

The final words of Trump’s post-strike speech were somewhere between his suborning of election interference “Russia, if you’re listening ...” and a tipsy toast at a wedding. “I want to just thank everybody, in particular, God. I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military, protect them...”

From the least godly president ever, who nevertheless has managed to convince Christian supporters of the opposite, it was unconvincing and weird. But, as someone who all but admits he doesn’t pray privately, he must have no idea how to do it. “God, if you’re listening...” But maybe he deserves a pass on that, too. He was talking to MAGA, not God.

If the announced ceasefire between Israel and Iran is lasting and becomes a model for the Middle East, Trump might get that Nobel Peace Prize after all. A day after its announcement, it was looking shaky. “PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT,” he posted. We’ll see. If I knew how, I’d pray for lasting peace.

Donald Dud

Like Trump, I bailed from his birthday parade early. I, however, could turn it off and watch clips later. He had to stay for the whole thing and didn’t look happy about it. Having gone from standing and saluting, grim-faced and look-at-me leading, he ended up slumped, dejected, fighting sleep while those around him looked equally sad. Little Marco failed to suppress a yawn. Hegseth seemed to want to disappear.

Will whoever selected the music lose their job? Was playing Creedence’s “Fortunate Son” a deliberate snark against the draft-dodger in chief, or, like playing a gay anthem at every Trump rally, unintentionally clueless? 

We can be sure Trump fantasized a North Korea-style show of military might and fawning fealty, thousands of troops marching in lockstep precision, turning as one to salute him, amongst wave after wave of mighty weapons of war. Instead, he got impassive soldiers, many looking bored, walking unsynchronized as corporate sponsors were announced. Some saluted, some didn’t. Some turned their faces to him, some didn’t. Smiling to the thin crowds, mechanized troops waved and made heart signs with their hands. That was nice. Hoping instead for menace, Trump thought otherwise.

In the bleachers, empty seats outnumbered the filled. If the event was intended to intimidate our adversaries and portray Trump as a powerful leader, it was a Donald Dud. The flyovers were impressive, though, like Seafair. And the robot dogs were cool. Perhaps the research behind them will survive Trump’s anti-science agenda.

Hewing to their disinformation-spreading business model, counting on audience credulity, Fox “news” spoke of the “energy” and enthusiasm of the parade. Black, they assured us, was white. Down, they insisted, was up. It appears they even added fake cheering to drown out the silence. Trump’s Joseph Goebbels, Steven Cheung, said 250,000 people attended and the country-wide protests were “miniscule.” Such is Trumpworld’s view of their voters’ intelligence.

Did Trump see images of the millions of citizens who turned out in hundreds of cities, including in red states, to protest his “king”dom? Evidently. That night, he took to “Truthless Antisocial” to demand law enforcement redouble their intimidation in blue-state cities, using rhetoric that made undeniable his dictatorial politicization of the DOJ. Or, as he calls it, “running the country.”  That those millions marched peacefully, providing no excuse for violent reprisals, must have been disappointing. There was, however, a favored MAGA tactic, blessed by Ron DeSantis, of attempted vehicular homicide.

The weekend held other horrors: As awful as the murders in Minnesota were, more portentous for our future was the MAGA response, including from sitting US senators, Elon Musk, and, predictably, Foxians. Despite the murderer’s manifesto and hitlist attacking Democrats, despite his roommate’s confirmation that he’s a staunch Trump supporter, right-wingers insisted the man was a liberal, a Marxist, blaming the murder on “the extreme left.” There were even suggestions on Trumpic media that Governor Tim Walz hired the man to off a political enemy. 

We may argue over which party has most lost its mind (though the answer is as obvious as the aforementioned and Mr. Cheung’s lies), but when the divide between them is this unbridgeable, the adherence to truth so unequal, prospects for joining together in commitment to democracy are dim.

Changing subjects again, to the missiles flying between Israel and Iran: In concert with the wishes of the Western world, Israel’s intent is to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons. As the Middle East threatens another conflagration, let’s remember that, if not for Trump, this wouldn’t have happened. Calling it “the worst deal in the world,” reflexively undoing President Barack Obama’s most beneficial initiatives in his first “presidency,” he pulled out of the tough nuclear agreement with Iran that Obama’s team had forged. The deal included regular, expert inspections, with which Iran was complying.

Iranically, the currently disrupted negotiations between the US and Iran would return to the status established by President Obama’s “worst deal.” Bringing things back to how they were before Trump ruined them is also a fair description of the ephemeral trade agreement, supposedly in the works, with China.

Speaking of bad things that happened because Trump was president, he’d have us believe that some world events happened because he wasn’t. Like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which, because of his unmatched leadership skills and plenary power over Putin, he’d be ending the day after he was elected. It follows that if Putin had been afraid to invade while Trump was president, he’d certainly be acceding to Trump’s demands to end hostilities, of which there’ve been many, after every one of which, Putin, playing Trump like a balalaika, escalated his attacks.

Were I to claim my columns prevent Trump from imprisoning everyone who opposes him, no one could prove it false; but I’d put that assertion alongside Trump’s about Russia and Ukraine. And it’d be fair to call me megalomaniacal and nuts.

Protest Is Bravery Now

America’s history is dotted with instances of civil (and uncivil) disobedience that moved public opinion and changed our country for the better. Knowing that, by assembly and by voting, citizens are the ultimate protectors of freedom, the creators of our Constitution placed protection for the right to assemble and speech first in the Bill of Rights. Civil rights, women’s suffrage, voting rights, ending wars, – these markers of American greatness only occurred after massive, nationwide demonstrations. Even more so when the government reacted brutally: the Boston Massacre, the march on Edmund Pettis Bridge, Kent State.

The importance of unsuppressed protest in free, democratic countries can’t be overstated. Which is why it’s so maddening, so outrageous, so antithetical when they turn violent. They destroy the message; they make the violence the only thing people remember. They justify shutting them down. It’s as if the rioting is arranged by governments against which the protests are mounted. As if?

It’s a truism that when Trump or Trumpists accuse someone of doing something dire, it’s they who are doing it. So when Trump suggested the violence in Los Angeles is at the hands of paid protestors, it might prove the rule; also the one that when Trump speaks off-script, nonsense ensues. Why would he want to imply that the violence didn’t come from the protestors but from paid agitators? Back when the DOJ wasn’t in the tank for a corrupt president, we learned that much, if not most of the violence associated with BLM demonstrations came not from Antifa, whatever that is, but from white supremacist groups from all over, intent on discrediting the movement. 

It’s not conspiratorial to recognize the benefit to Trump when legitimate protests of illegitimate government acts turn violent. Thinking Trumpists are behind it might be. Or might not.

The people feeding Trump his thoughts are smart enough to understand history, which is why they’re rewriting or expunging it wherever they can. And they understand the power of the people when organized, which is why they want to suppress it. Using US military personnel to do so required ignoring the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes that use illegal except in the case of insurrection.

Excepting the January 6 riot, the violent perpetrators of which Trump has pardoned en masse, confirming the hypocrisy of his current actions, protests are not insurrections. Not even when cars are alight and stores are looted by students whose teams win national championships. Nor are protests against unlawful arrests and deportations by masked ICE agents, disappearing people they call moochers looking for work at Home Depot or actually at work. Or protesting raids on elementary school graduations, terrorizing children and their parents.

The silence of MAGA Republicans, who dislike liberals as much as they dislike democracy, voting by mail, science, vaccines, and help for poor people, see Trump’s use of the National Guard and, now, the Marines, and love it like they love autocracy. They’re afraid to dissent, so the less they see it in others, the better they feel. ICE raids, no matter against whom, even US citizens or residents who’ve been here and working for decades, are fine with them, as is knowing that most of the migrants deported to the El Salvador gulag had no criminal records.

California is no stranger to protests. Its leaders haven’t shied away from arresting violent perpetrators. The only reason for Trump’s use of troops, overriding state governors’ wishes, is to intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with him and to fulfill his tough-guy neediness and consolidate his quest for absolute power.

The same is true for the North Korea/China/Russia conjuring military parade he ordered the willing Pete Hegseth to put on for him. If there won’t be goose-stepping and head-turned salutes to him, they’ll be happening in his mind. If you don’t hate this, you don’t love America and everything for which it has always stood. Even more, you should hate Trump’s promise that demonstrations against it will be met with “very heavy force.”

As much freude was schadened by the brief breakup of Trump and Musk, the lesson is how far those two, abetted by our ideological Supreme Court, have brought us toward the end of democracy. Money is speech, they found, buried somewhere in the Constitution, giving people like Musk untold power over elections. A president can do no wrong, they concluded, so Trump is free to do whatever he wants; especially since our Republican-controlled Congress has abandoned its role as a checker and balancer. At the height (or low point) of their feud, Musk threatened Republican Congress-dwellers with financing Democratic challengers. Trump promised “very serious consequences” if he did. Musk, who has billions in government contracts, backed down.

Since before he was ever elected, Trump has expressed his love of dictators and desire to be one. It’s almost here. Protests need to continue. Whoever is behind the violence needs to think thrice about the implications. Meanwhile, everyone should think hard about California Governor Newsom’s response to Trump’s pretensions.

Veritas

 

In the year 50 B.T., I was awarded a seven-year scholarship to Harvard, one given, back then, to only fifty applicants per year. Had I done well enough, it included acceptance to grad school. To my grandmother’s chagrin, I turned it down. It wasn’t because of Ivy League stigma. It was because I was sure they’d made a mistake. Imposter syndrome, I guess. From the right, that stigma is gospel. I attach none to Harvard graduates, though, and not just because I married one.

Notwithstanding MAGAfied asperity, Harvard, like many other storied universities, has contributed immensely to our nation. If successful, Trump’s Id-iotic need to take them down would cloud the future of all of us. Turning away or deporting foreign students who come to partake of American scholarship already has. Whether they stay or return home, those students become positive representations of America, wherever they are. The US and the world need them. Typical of the current administration, shutting them out is short-sighted ignorance.

Trump, who lies about everything, denies being rejected by Harvard. Which means it’s true. Given daddy’s war bucks, a consequential qualification in decades past, that says a lot. In Trump, imposter isn’t a syndrome, it’s a definition. His native-born narcissism compels him to say he knows “more than anyone” about everything, voluminous evidence to the contrary. His birthright insecurity demands he “gets even” with any critic or institution that reveals the truth. That, he doesn’t deny. He’s proud of it. 

From this thin-skinned, partial president, having, as his niece tells us, “absolutely no redeeming qualities,” unchecked vengeance is ominous. Like his embarrassingly false Harvard accusations. Antisemitism is promoted there? From a guy who surrounds himself with de facto Nazis? Whose eponymous “university” scammed people out of millions? That guy wants to dictate how and what to teach in America, and who can do it.

For Stephen Miller and the Project 2025ers skulking around 1600, enfleshing their resentment of “the other” and fear of the educated, Trump’s attacks on universities are a perfect match. Aware that small-ell liberal education is a disinformation repellent, Republicans have pushed anti-intellectualism for decades. But it’s only with Trump that it’s come to reside so openly in the White House. Yet millions of voters observe Trump’s inability to carry an off-script thought to completion and consider it laudable.

The danger to democracy of Trump’s Projectile 2025 attacks on universities and public education can’t be overstated. That includes his whisperers’ desire to control what courses are taught, which words are acceptable, and to expunge books that refer in positive ways to anyone not white and Christian. Even in the Library of Congress. 

MAGA’s un-Christian priorities, manifested in their “Big Beautiful Budget Bill,” make their aims copiously clear. As everyone not sitting to the right of Congressional aisles knows, their tax cuts for wealthy donors, etched in reaganite, are “balanced” by cuts to every program that, for decades, has helped the less fortunate have a shot at dignity and overcoming poverty. Dismissed by Trumpists as moochers. But they’d in-your-face the Ten Commandments, to which none adhere, into all public buildings.

The BBBB not only doesn’t balance the budget, it REALLY doesn’t. insisting it doesn’t increase the national debt, Holy Mike Johnson, whom God has on speed-dial according to Mike, bears false witness. This, despite calculations by the Congressional Budget Office and conservative and liberal economists, all of whom predict increases in the trillions. Surely the Bible-brandishing Speaker knows Revelation 22:15. He must think doing what he considers God’s work excuses all transgressions. That the bill will lead to more hunger and disease, pollution and poverty, he must assume, is included in the absolution. If he were capable of it, he’d be ashamed.

But none of them feel shame. Shame at America’s foundational values and basic decency being discarded like Trump’s first two wives. Shame at defunding vital research, causing scientists to abandon their work, halting nascent discoveries. Shame at ceding intellectual leadership to geopolitical adversaries, at cutting disaster aid and weather warnings, because who cares? Shame at the emergence of a police state, in which ICE agents, enthusiastically cruel, wear masks to hide their identity, like criminals. In which elected members of the opposing party are arrested, their staff zip-tied “for their safety.” Shameless, America-rejecting MAGAs love what they see, incurious about what they don’t.

Trump’s vengeful attacks on Harvard are crimson lib-stick. Trump’s voters, made unable to look beyond their cultish glee, are blind to the dire implications for America. Which is precisely the point of his pre-dawn bleats and ill-conceived executive orders: feed them the phobic satisfaction they crave, while he enriches himself with paid-for pardons, bitcoin scams, and other shameless corruption. And while his gang of anti-democratic oligarchs, the ones actually in charge, destroy constitutional governance, brick by bricolage.

But why worry? As Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) reminded us, defending her party’s cruelty, “We’re all going to die.” 

China Syndrome

 

I had coffee this week with a friend who, after living in Everett for many years, moved, two years ago, to China. His wife is Chinese and wanted, following tradition, to be able to help her aging parents, back home. He had several interesting things to say about his adopted home, especially how foreigners are treated.

As a retired military lifer, he gets a decent government pension. For the first five years of living in China, that income is not taxed. After five years, he’ll qualify for what amounts to a permanent Green Card, allowing him pretty much all the benefits that citizens enjoy there, like owning a business. He and his wife live in a commodious apartment with an ocean view, for which he pays $400 per month.

But they’ve just bought a brand-new condo, in the process of finishing of which to make it livable they are. It’s in a “small” city, by Chinese standards: 450,000 people. In pictures he showed, the city bursts with development: high-rise buildings everywhere. Cars. Restaurants. Other stuff.

He plans to buy an electric car; the leading Chinese automaker, BYD, makes EVs now considered the best in the world. He intends to get their top model, which sells for $19,000. They’re pushing the envelope in battery technology, too, surpassing Elon’s by far. 

As a foreigner, my friend is allowed his own VPN, whatever that is, providing access to all of the internet that we have, here. Chinese citizens have no such freedom. I suppose his is because the government recognizes that most non-citizens are there doing mutually beneficial business.

My point is not to tout Chinese governance, but it’s apparent that its one-party autocracy is able to get things done there, and much faster than we do. Making efforts to combat climate change, for example, which Trump is deliberately undoing. My friend says his city has more EV charging stations than gas stations. When, if ever, might that happen here?

I have no desire to move to China, though I hear they have good Chinese food. I like living in a two-party, democratic republic. Especially when both parties have the greater good as central to their goals. Since Newt Gingrich and those of his time in power, that stopped being the case for the once-great Republican Party. It’s unpleasant.

As Trump steadily withdraws the US from the world stage, speeding the time when our country will no longer be seen as “indispensable” or a source of generosity and humanitarianism around the world, China acts to fill that void. Unlike Trump, they understand the value of “soft power;” not just for the recipients, but for their national standing, too. Trump’s America pulled its support for the World Health Organization, saver of countless lives. China just donated $500 million to it.

MAGA likes the idea of letting the needy, here and abroad, fend for themselves. Moochers. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...” Emma Lazarus. What a load of liberal crap, even if it’s exactly what Jesus taught. We’re MAGA. We make our own rules.

Our drastic reduction of support for USAID is already costing thousands of lives, according to people who know. Especially in Africa, especially children, from disease and starvation. It’s likely China will step in there, too. And the world will look to them, not us, for leadership. 

It’s depressing to see the US coddling dictators, insulting our allies, isolated, handing the future to other nations. RFK, Jr. just announced that scientists of the NIH will no longer be allowed to publish in such highly respected journals as Britain’s The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine. Because, he said, without evidence, they’re “corrupt.” He should know: in Trump, he sees corruption up close.

But maybe it won’t matter: he’s cutting funding for medical and other scientific research to the point where it may become impossible for those important labs to continue, no matter where they might have shared their results. Happily for humanity, science is still valued in China, in Europe, in Israel. So research will continue, just not here. Unless Trump’s destructive tariffs make them too expensive, the scientific and technological advances in those countries will, presumably, be available to Americans. We’ll just have to wait for them; takers, not makers, dependent on countries with more outward-looking priorities.

As the economist Dani Rodrik wrote, “Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.” 

Meanwhile, Republican-controlled Congress ignores Trump’s increasingly blatant self-enrichment, while crafting a budget that represents the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy, cutting those things that might, you know, MAGA. 

Anyone for dim sum?

86 The 86

 

By now we can all agree we had a leader who, in the latter part of his presidency, was failing mentally. Until it wasn’t, his team was successful in hiding the decline; on more than one occasion, even his wife stepped in to lead him out of a sentence in which he’d become lost. It was as sad as it was shameful.

Nevertheless, history remembers him more for “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” than for the Iran-Contra scandal, the “tax cuts pay for themselves” lie, or “trees cause air pollution.” Or ending all the energy-saving measures his predecessor had put in place, which, had they remained, might have prevented subsequent energy crises. Not to mention addressing climate change when we still had a chance.

So let it be with Biden. May he be remembered more for guiding the country out of the throes of the grossly mishandled pandemic and crashing economy left to him by his predecessor, than for his end-of-term failings. Not for the NOT-wide-open border but for rebuilding infrastructure, bringing down post-pandemic inflation, never as high in the US as elsewhere. Enacting the CHIPS Act, adding millions of jobs. Strengthening NATO. Et several more ceteras. 

If Trump and his coterie of confabulators have any say in it, he won’t be. Last weekend, for example, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, doing the Full Ginsburg, claimed that, under Trump, inflation has come down for the first time in four years. That’s like insisting that Trump made the sun rise in the East for the first time. Not a single show host called him on it. Trump has successfully threatened honest news agencies into avoiding the truth which once, as they say, had the ability to set us free. History may judge his snuffing of the free press to have been even more damaging than stuffing his sidekickery with amoral acolytes willing to carry out his every act of lawless government weaponization.

Hair-triggered, Trump and his outrage-ready cadre pounced on former FBI Director Comey for shelling out a picture containing the numbers 8647. Had he showed up at the White House, armed, in combat gear, they concluded, his intentions wouldn’t have been more clear. That Trumpists sold 86-46 paraphernalia slipped their “minds.” Same with Matt Gaetz bragging he’d “86ed McCarthy, McDaniel, and McConnell.” The term, legend has it, came not from murderer’s row, but from restaurant lingo.

Which should be considered more threatening? Comey’s beach photography or Trump saying, of Liz Cheney, “... Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

But weaponized outrage points only leftward. Recall the Foxian apoplexy when President Barack Obama, thankfully not wearing that shockingly disrespectful tan suit, bent slightly at the waist when meeting Saudi Arabia’s murderous Mohammed bin Salman? What, other than groveling, shall we call Trump’s words to him? "He's your greatest representative, greatest representative. And if I didn't like him, I'd get out of here so fast. You know that, don't you? He knows me well. I do -- I like him a lot. I like him too much. That's why we give so much, you know? Too much. I like you too much." While MBS sat grinning like the cat who trapped the canary, fattened it up, toyed with it for a while, then ate it. Was there silence from the right? Is the Pope American?

Nor was there a peep about the worshipful, Kim-Jong-Il-mimicking, larger-than-life poster of tough-scowling Trump hanging from a government building, meant for public adoration and submission. 

The cult of Trump approves his every normative transgression. Like the lib-sticking, white-supremacist-coddling importation of white South African non-victims of non-existent “white genocide of farmers.” Not only might they not be farmers, at least one appears to be an antisemite worse than the college students (anti-Israel ≠ antisemite) Trump has been deporting for formerly protected speech. 

We’re living in the Upside Down, where intelligence analysts are fired for truths that disprove Trumpic lies. Where, if not fired, they’re pressured to change their conclusions. Where, when corporations like Walmart announce price hikes due to tariffs, Trump demands they “eat” the costs, confirming his lie that China pays. Like so many other institutions that are money strong but democracy weak, they’ll probably cave, too.

Trump’s unrelenting attacks on every Constitutional creation intended to secure and protect democracy are working. Their success depends on dictatorial threats, willingness of his crew of unconscionables to enact them, and, most of all, the cowardice and greed of those given the power to stop it. Without evident irony, Holy Mike Johnson says that since Trump’s corruption is unhidden, it’s okay.

Trump wants us to become so inured to it that it becomes ignorable. For much of the country, it already is. Even arresting legislators, former government officials, students, and legal immigrants. And petty, thin-skinned threats toward pop stars who speak out against him.