We’ve just returned from visiting my brother and his family in NYC, which we hadn’t done for several years. Between getting up at 4:30 a.m. for both flights, long and sleepless, staying in one of the smallest hotel rooms anywhere, I’m still uncombobbled. This offering, therefore, will lack my usual cohesive brilliance.
Even if back to “normal” it’d be hard to process Trump’s inaugural speech and its sequelae. I still haven’t, dark as it was and dully delivered. Bravado and bull. Claiming a mandate where none exists, but joyously received by the select crowd.
Sidebar: why is the Vice-Presidential Oath so much longer than the Presidential? Perhaps the Founders anticipated the current short attention span and difficulty reading. But he managed to articulate the lies and contradictions.
Trump swore that he would faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and would, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. It might not have been a lie.
“To the best of my ability” is the escape clause. He’s made it clear he has no inclination to preserve, protect, and defend. But ability? Based on the last eight years, four in, four out, not much. So, no matter how bad, it’ll be the best he can do. Plus, he’s been granted immunity by the SCOTUS Five.
His speech was surprisingly listless, even when he described the past four years, in which a pandemic ended, employment and markets soared, businesses were created at a record pace, infrastructure finally began long overdue rebuilding, as the most bleak in all of history. And took credit for the (three) Israeli hostages being released.
As soon as circumstances were unpomped, he headed downstairs, where he unloosed a more typical tirade, the usual disproved untruths, the self-pity, the threats. It was far more nefandous and much more in character.
Later, sitting behind the Resolute Desk, he signed out of the Paris Climate Accords, benefitting fossil fuelers and harming everyone else, especially those alive in twenty years or so. Same with abandoning the World Health Organization, saving a few nickels, potentially costing many lives. Also, making JD Vance look like an idiot for saying he wouldn’t, he pardoned or commuted all of the anti-constitutional actors of J6, including the most violent and those convicted of seditious conspiracy. There’s no clearer evidence of his disdain for the law and love of those who share that disdain in his favor. Has any Congressional R criticized the pardons? Does a bear fly in the sky?
This is the lesson to be learned from his pardons and commutations of the J6 criminals: the rule of law no longer applies. It impedes his agenda and he has no intention of following it. Now he has 1,500 grateful foot soldiers ready to be the core he’ll call upon, to threaten lawmakers, federal and local. Scare them into falling into line. Fear worked during his two impeachments, even without an army of directed mobsters.
This time, the Proud Boys and their ilk, the “militias,” the racists and anti-Semites know they’ll not have prosecutions to worry about, whatever they do. They’ll be the core of Trump’s Gestapo, his SS, and he’ll use them to cow every Republican in office. Am I over the top? No. I got the message, is all. He made it clear: The era of Constitutional government is over. It had a good run, though. Will any of those who voted for him care? Before the election, he couldn’t have made it clearer. They saw it and voted him in.
15,000 trans people are serving in the military, honorably. Trump has banned them. As usual, cruelty, not the best interests of anyone but himself, is the point. Same with his banning of further refugee admissions, which includes Afghan citizens and their families who aided Americans during the Afghanistan war.
Nor can I ignore the “my-chance-in-the-spotlight,” hyperbolic praise of Trump, the least religious, most un-Christian man ever to occupy the White House, by the inaugural clergy, including the Rabbi, virtually anointing him God’s avatar on Earth. To any but the most besotted, Franklin Graham’s elegiac effusiveness and prayerful praise, barely short of equating Trump with God, was borborygmic.
Next day, in his presence, a brave lady bishop preached love and charity. He’s demanding an apology. Too Christ-like, evidently. I can’t define “evil,” but I know it when I see it.
So let’s end happier: Importantly, people speculated about Melania’s hat. Some pointed to the similarity to the Pizza Hut logo; or the Hamburgler; or Spy vs Spy. Clearly, though, the purpose was to fend off any attempt by Trump to kiss her. It mostly worked. So there’s that.
Also, far as I can tell, day one has passed. Did the war in Ukraine end?
. Trump suffers from malignant narcissism, a diagnosis far more toxic and dangerous than mere narcissistic personality disorder because it combines narcissism with three other severely pathological components: paranoia, sociopathy, and sadism. When combined, this perfect storm of psychopathology defines the ‘quintessence of evil,’ The closest thing psychiatry has to describing a true human monster.”
ReplyDeleteThe essence – and biggest danger – of malignant narcissism is that it keeps growing, like malignant cancer. Fromm wrote: “It is a madness that tends to grow in the lifetime of the afflicted person. The more he tries to be a god, the more he isolates himself from the human race; this isolation makes him more frightened, everybody becomes his enemy, and in order to stand the resulting fright he has to increase his power, his ruthlessness, and his narcissism.
He shovels down Sudafed. It's the illegal stuff. His paranoias gives him energy as well. He's in constant panic mode while on the end of a meth addiction.
DeleteUnfortunately. They hide his shortcomings just like Bidens' team did. And many POTUS' before them.
At least Melania didnt wear her bra out in the open to bare her Chesticles like Lauren the plastic pig…so there is that. Says Shelley the middle aged human here
ReplyDeleteShe wore a hat so the pig couldn't kiss her.
DeleteYou didn't read to the end, where I said that, with a link?
DeleteYes, I was agreeing with you. I mean. It was pretty obvious. There was no need for speculation. She's a clothes horse. She knows a big brimmed hat that's pulled down low is impossible unless BOTH parties cooperate. It was one of the funniest, and appropriate "don't kiss me you troglodyte."
DeleteI wonder if his diaper was clean.
I'm doing my best not to be overwhelmed by these incompetent tools/fools, and that's my goal for now. I know they want me grasping at their shiny objects and latest outrages by becoming outraged myself. Eyes on the prize. I am no longer taking their bait but waiting to read the analysis of folks much smarter than I.
ReplyDeleteThey can't require local law enforcement to carry out the work of rounding up deportees. Just can't require it, period.
They can't end birthright citizenship. Can't do it without amending the constitution.
Those are just two examples of the overreach and we know there will be many more. The finding out part of all this is starting to happen and even MAGA is going to pitch a fit. The VA? Prescription drugs? Tariffs? Even if his weaseliness doesn't actually hit them in their solar plexus (like it should), the six degrees of separation will bring it home to them fairly quickly.
Mary...The resistance against MAGA starts here.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdPBaWabrwg
What is the link to? I can't copy or activate it.
DeleteTriumph the Insult Comic Dog Leads Anti-Trump March in Storming the... Coffee Shop | The Daily Show
DeletePick first on the list.
I went straight to it. You may have restrictions on your searches.
Maddow/Indivisible solution to fight back.
Deletehttps://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rescinds-federal-funding-freeze-memo-chaos-confusion-rcna189851?cid=eml_maddow_20250129&user_email=fc66f1f7269b229e2460170946fa6f41e6153bc57ef9c5d002f9aa613fcb2eea&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TRMS%201/29/25&utm_term=Rachel%20Maddow%20Show
Happy New Year Sid! This was just as good and hard hitting as all of your other posts, even if you were "uncombobbled" when you wrote it. We're back to an even worse version of 2017-20 when I woke every day to find out what was the then unbelievable horror of the day. This time will for sure be worse. It will eventually end - not sure how. I can't even imagine the damage that will be done to us, this country and the world. Now that he has pardoned his gang of traitors, he has the start of what will become death squads that do his bidding when he can't get it done with the military or FBI. So sickening. My only hope, so far, is that we will win enough of the special elections to prevent the fascist lemmings from having control of Congress. The chances of that seem remote, unfortunately. Even if we win back Congress in two years, so much damage will be done by then it is hard to imagine it getting fixed anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteDan from Colo.
Thanks, Dan. Good to see your voice.
DeleteUSMC- Devil Dogs get it
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/7797zxfZBgU
this is what you can expect. The wealth is being stolen.
ReplyDeleteGenerating profit should not be the main purpose of the prison system.
AOC criticized lawmakers supporting the Laken Riley Act, a recently passed immigration enforcement bill that requires federal authorities to detain undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes.
The congresswoman suggested lawmakers will profit from investments in private prisons and benefit from the bill's $83 billion price tag.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3ojnNL5uzdo
Part 2 A:
ReplyDeleteWhat history has always taught us is that real change never takes place from the top on down. It always occurs from the bottom on up. It occurs when ordinary people get sick and tired of oppression and injustice - and fight back. That is the history of the founding of our nation, the abolitionist movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement and the gay rights movement. That is how we elected dozens of progressives to Congress and made the Congressional Progressive Caucus one of the most important entities in the U.S. House of Representatives. That is the history of every effort that has brought about transformational change in our society.
It won’t be easy but, together, we will educate, organize and build an unstoppable grassroots movement around a progressive agenda that is based on the principles of justice and compassion, not greed and oligarchy. Together, we will lead the fight to create the kind of nation and world we know we can become.
Sisters and brothers, we are right now in the midst of a struggle between a progressive movement that mobilizes around a shared vision of prosperity, security and dignity for all people, against one that defends oligarchy and massive global income and wealth inequality.
It is a struggle that, for ourselves and future generations, we cannot lose. Let us go forward together.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteToday in America we have more income in wealth inequality than we have ever had. We have more concentration of ownership in the financial services sector, health care, agriculture, transportation energy, food and housing than we have ever had. We have more media consolidation than we have ever had. And we have a political system that is increasingly controlled by the billionaire class.
Add it all together and what you see is a nation and world trending very strongly toward oligarchy – where a small number of multi-billionaires exercise enormous economic and political power over everyone else. Increasingly, government is just one more entity owned by these enormously powerful forces.
So, in the midst of all of this, where do we go from here?
First, we don’t have time to moan and groan and bury our heads in despair. Yes. Many of us are angry and frustrated at a Democratic Party establishment that continues to turn its back on the needs of working people. But our job now is not to look back, but to look forward.
Let me be clear. One of the tools that the Oligarchs use to maintain their position of power is to make it appear that real change is impossible, and opposition is useless. They have the power. Ain’t nothing we can do about it. That’s the way it is and always will be. Give up trying.
Fortunately, these masters of the universe are wrong. Very wrong.
For years and years in the corporate media, you'd only heard the word 'oligarch' preceded by the word 'Russian.' But oligarchs aren't uniquely a Russian phenomenon or a foreign concept.
ReplyDeleteNo. The United States has its own oligarchy.
When I first started talking about this, many people didn't understand what I meant. Well, that's changed.
When the 3 wealthiest men in America sit behind Trump at his inauguration, everyone understands that the billionaire class now controls our government. They also understand that one of the major functions of government policy will be to make these incredibly rich people even richer and more powerful.
When those same 3 men control some of the largest media and information distribution channels in America, everyone understands that the billionaire class now controls our media. They also understand that one of the major functions of that billionaire owned media (think Musk and twitter) will be to manufacture massive amounts of disinformation and outright lies.
When 1 of those men spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Donald Trump and another used his power as a newspaper owner to withhold an endorsement of Kamala Harris, everyone understands that the billionaire class now significantly controls our politics, as well. They also understand that one of the major functions of our political system is to maintain the pretense that we are a real democracy when, in fact, the average citizen has less and less impact over what goes on.
But it is not just Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.