What The H?

Today’s episode is brought to you by the letter H.

Few things in life are as predictable as reactions to gun violence in America. (“In America,” of course, goes almost without saying.) When one of their own is threatened, Republicans will blame the rhetoric of Democrats. They’ll call for repression of speech. Like Gym Jordan, they’ll make connections that don’t exist and lie about them, as when he said, "I don't think it should be lost on anyone that we have a third assassination attempt on President Trump in the same week we learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been paying and generating hate."

For the record, like the FBI, with which the SPLC cooperates, it engages paid informants within hate groups, which is not “paying and generating hate.” Jordan knows that. He’s venal but not stupid.

If it’s one of their own who committed the act, they’ll make no mention of Republican rhetoric that preceded it. Like, oh, “Journalists are the enemy of the people.” “Democrats are the party of ‘hate, evil, and Satan.’” “Democrats want to destroy our country.” “I’m glad he’s dead.” “No Kings marchers hate America.” “[Senator Mark Kelly and others] ... should be put to death.” Stuff like that.

You didn’t hear criticism of Trump from the right when he shared the home address of President Barack Obama, following which a man was arrested outside, with a gun.

Until Trump, there was never a president who openly sought to foment that level of hate and violence against an opposing political party. And, before Trump, no president had a party that loved him for it.

What you will hear is that the person was mentally ill and doesn’t represent their party, and that a “president” spewing hate for liberals has nothing to do with it. What you won’t hear are suggestions for making guns less available to people with a history of violence or mental illness. Nor will you hear calls for funding treatment of mental illness.

You will hear conspiracy theories from both sides. Staged. False flag. Crisis actors. Ear cartilage. Groomed. In that, there is political equity. However, those theories generally emerge from higher up the right-wing chain than ones from the left, both media personalities and elected officials.

Still, people pushing those theories, from whatever direction, demean us all, just as political violence endangers us all. As do calls to punish those who speak the truth. Or tell jokes on TV. As Donald Rumsfeld famously told us, “Democracy is messy.”

Something original did come from the correspondents’ dinner episode: Trump demanded, his words received throughout right-wing media like tablets from Sinai and put on loop, that his ridiculous ballroom be built immediately, lest he be in “grave danger.” Lindsey Graham wants taxpayers to pay for it. Let's keep the secret hidey-hole underneath. Rebuild the East Wing.

More sponsorship from the letter H:

Trump just re-indicted James Comey. Remember when Rs investigated President Biden for “weaponizing” government and came up empty? Trump’s is as obvious as it is copious.

Republicans rejoiced when Texas initiated the mid-term gerrymandering that gave them five newly red districts. Trusting Democrats to cling to their tradition of clinging to their tradition, other red states followed suit. Then, OMG! Virginia Democrats did the same dang thing. Backlash from the right is set to eleven. The Washington Bezos, which previously editorialized that the Texas ploy was no big deal, called Virginia’s move a danger to democracy. N.B.: House Democrats teed up a bill outlawing gerrymandering months ago. Republicans refuse.

Trump just fired all members of the National Science Board, which sets scientific standards “for how rigorous, intellectual, scientific decisions should be made.” Like education, rigorous science, whether applied to healthcare, climate change, pollution, and more, is a greater threat to Trumpism than Democratic gerrymandering. Right up there with free speech.

Some have praised Trump for dropping his suit against Fed Chair Jerome Powell. No, it wasn’t because it was petty and unfounded. It was to get Senator Tom Tillis to drop his hold on the nomination of Kevin Warsh until the suit was dropped. It was and he did. As with every Trump nominee, Warsh is expected to do Trump’s bidding, for his sake, not ours.

We’ve just learned Trump’s State Department, headed by born-again yes-man Marco Rubio, will be putting Trump’s image on US passports, in honor of America’s 250th anniversary. It’s always and only about Trump. He’ll be on our money next.

Never has any American leader displayed such malignant narcissism. It’s reflected in everything he does. In foreign “policy,” the results have been disastrous. Can anyone imagine the reaction from the right, the apoplexy on Trump-state media, if Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden had demanded such a thing? Or added their name to the Kennedy Center, torn down the East Wing for a ballroom, proposed a garish memorial arch? Or launched a war, expecting surrender in two days, after ignoring warnings of the inevitable consequences?

In fact, everyone can imagine it. It’s filed under “H.”

Funny Not Funny

 

Analogy: Lucy Van Pelt is Iran. The football is the Strait of Hormuz. And Trump is, well, Trump.

As he decompensates while his stupid war spins out of control like a buzz-bomb firecracker, it’s obvious that Iranian leaders have figured him out. It’s the B-side of what other world leaders have recognized and used to their advantage: praise him like a child who used a potty, flatter him with participation trophies, and get what they want. Iran’s insight is to lie to him like he lies to everyone, get him to announce the latest “agreement,” deny it exists, induce him to make ridiculous, madman threats, announce more agreements, threaten more war crimes, back off, produce deadlines, rescind them, while they enjoy the result as he looks more out of touch, less and less powerful, and definitely not in control of anything; least of all, himself. Watch as the world backs away from him in dismay.

This is what Trump has done to America’s once-admirable standing in the world. Unconditional surrender was the goal. Or ending their nuclear program, “two weeks away from a bomb” every two weeks for ten years. Or opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was closed only because of his war. Since Trump spends most of his time on social media and watching toady TV, he must have seen Iran’s hilarious trolling videos, of which this is but one example. He’s become so dislodged from reality and unstable that aides kept him out of the room where it happened when planning the rescues of those downed pilots, lest he start issuing damaging orders.

This is the “president” we have, thanks to MAGA. It should frighten everyone. It's the patriotic duty of every American to vote only for Democrats until every MAGA Republican has been replaced in Congress.

The mullahs must be having a constant laugh as they make Trump look ridiculous to the world, including, of late, even former Trump-fluffer Tucker Carlson, who stopped licking and started looking. Though it was obvious before he descended that golden escalator, deniers can no longer deny: everything Trump says is a lie. About Iran, about elections, about climate change. About anything and everything. In a “president,” it’s an undesirable quality. Recent example: Iran’s “totally obliterated” navy just commandeered two commercial ships.

Trump’s calamitous, unnecessary, undeclared war/not-war has strengthened China and Russia, and convinced Iran that it doesn’t need nuclear arms. In its control of the Strait of Hormuz, it has a far more powerful weapon. No rational world leader other than Trump, who isn’t, would use nukes. Thanks to Trump, Iran now understands they don’t need them to disrupt the entire world and get whatever it wants. 

Foxotrumpic media insists he’s playing 4-D chess. He’s playing checkers. And, because he thinks the pieces are Oreos, he’s eating them. The best we can hope for from this debacle is a return to the parameters of the nuclear agreement President Barack Obama negotiated with Iran years ago, by which they were abiding, and which Trump, because his only constant is a need to punish those who don’t debase themselves for him, ended.

His unfitness is also manifested in the incompetence, criminality, and danger of the people he chose for his Cabinet. Three have been dismissed in the last few weeks, all women, despite the tendentious testicular travesties, the fulminating phallic failings of his male maladies. Atop the list is Pentagon Pete, who treats war like a game, a platform for self-promotion, strutting and puffing before his hand-culled press, embarrassing us before the world. Not content with firing minority generals and admirals, trying, apparently, to out-crazy Junior Arfkay, he just ended mandatory flu shots for troops. He must assume Trump will get his 1.5 trillion-dollar defense budget, in which case the expense of caring for unnecessarily sick soldiers won’t matter.

Tied for worst appointment, ever, is Kash Patel. Trump : judgment = strychnine : food.

For humor’s sake, recalling his promise to end Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine on day one, part deux, Trump predicted he’d have ended the Vietnam War “very quickly,” in five months. Why five? One for every deferment he got to keep him out of it.

Finally, this: Trump’s ill-planned, unjustified war, his undeniable decompensation over it, the worldwide effects of it all, are driving from memory the litany of his previous failures, the number of ways he’s endangered America, civilization, and the planet. But maybe that’s the point. If his war/not-war is over by November, Trump hopes, voters will be relieved enough to overlook the horrible and, in many cases, irreversible damage he’s caused in a mere six years.

Against that possibility, here’s a gift link to a New York Times article by Thomas B. Edsall. It’s a fact-supported recounting of all that Trump has wrought, and should be required reading for every voter, better written and more comprehensive than anything I could do. 

Holy Crap

 

Since I graduated from medical school fifty-six years ago, I’ve hung around with hundreds of doctors. I’ve even been one myself, based on which I can say categorically that I’ve seen none of them, including me, wearing biblical robes; nor have any held mysteriously glowing orbs in their hands (other than smartphones). From none of them has emanated holy light when laying hands upon patients, not even in Catholic hospitals. Scrubs, sure. White coats, of course. Stethoscopes, name tags dangling. Never robes, though, nor – let’s assume – sandals. Not once. Not half of once. If a doctor showed up at your bedside cosplaying like that, would you assume you were about to die?

Doctors who act Godlike aren’t revered for it, nor would they depict themselves as such on their websites. None – Ben Carson excepted – hang portraits of themselves collaborating with Jesus. So, no. Trump posted his blasphemy fully embracing the representation. Consistent with his numerous pathologies, it’s how he sees himself. In fact, he just did it again. Why anyone not similarly afflicted sees him as Jesus incarnate is mystifying.

Even in bluish Snohomish County, it’s probable there’s a dozen or so people who do. Some might accept his laughable lie that he thought the picture of himself he posted on Truthless Sociopath, Christlike, appearing to heal someone while holy and unholy alike looked on, presented him as a doctor. That kind of bottomless credulity is expected from red-state MAGAs.

Nor is it just that the picture shows a four-fingered supplicant, un-airworthy fighter jets, and a fivesome of video game-like characters, one of whom is headless and four-armed. Trump can post and expunge whatever revelation of mental affliction he chooses. The real significance of this one is that he not only sees himself that way but assumes his voters do, too. Gratifyingly, enough of them didn’t, and said so, that he disappeared it.

Even for some MAGAs, whose threshold for outrage against anything other than liberalism is higher than RFK, Jr. formerly on heroin, and who claim Jesus as exclusively theirs while ignoring everything He preached, there are limits to glorification of a boastful, constant, and amoral liar. If only that harbinged the electoral revolution here that just occurred in Hungary.

Viktor Orban was Hungary’s prime minister for sixteen years, during which time his autocratic style made him a Republican hero, their anti-constitutional leadership ideal. Which explains why he was actively supported by similarly disposed Vladimir Putin and Trump. And Tucker Carlson. And all of CPAC, which, his successor revealed, he funded. Right before the election he lost in the landslide that Trump continues to claim for himself, as big a lie as stolen elections. In another of his high-profile failures, J.D. Vance flew there in support. Maybe the huge turnout, at least in part, was a repudiation of Trumpism, too. Maybe it’s infectious.

Orban became the strongman of Trump’s dreams: controlling Hungary’s legislature, judiciary, press, and, to a lesser extent than he’d hoped, its elections. His anti-LGBT actions were, for MAGA, frosting on the cake. In times lost to dim memory, the Republican Party would have shunned him. That he’d become its hero is, for America, a warning.

To Vik’s credit, he immediately conceded and congratulated his opponent, things Trump has never done; anathema to him like a medium-rare burger. Maybe, seeing similar diminution of democracy here, unlike MAGAs, who love it, enough unblinded citizens will turn out in November to overwhelm Trump’s attempts to disallow their votes.

Maybe people of all faiths will find his and recent-convert in more ways than one, J.D. Vance’s attacks on the Pope disturbing. For Trump, it must be maddening that whereas he’s revered only by a few million Americans, Papa Leo is by a billion or so Earthlings. In a can’t-be-true-but-is statement, Vance warned that the Pope should “... be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” Which smacks more gobs than his attempt to characterize Trump’s Jesus-posting as our jolly funnyman “president,” joking.

Perhaps I’m making too much of it. The posting was, after all, just another example of Trump’s damaged id’s constant need for adoration and, when challenged, lying wantonly, confident, as always, that it’ll be amplified by Foxian state media and received as Gospel by his cult. But, seen in the context of his increasingly desperate, contradictory, and ineffective attempts to turn his calamitous Iran war failures into success, it exemplifies what happens when a malignant narcissist is given nearly unlimited power and finds it falling apart around him.

It’s not just tasteless monuments to himself. His pretentious ballroom, that vulgar, inglorious arch, gilding the Oval Office like a bordello – all of those are merely repulsive. But his wars, his promise to preemptively pardon all the lawbreakers in his White House, his unprecedented corruption, and the increasingly obvious disintegration of his mind endanger us and the world. It’s not too late for patriotic Americans to organize. And Orbanize.

Our Stone Age "President"

With hinge screws flying off like sweat from an overweight “president” on an unstoppable treadmill, Trump, on Easter Sunday no less, posted the following NSFW screed on his North Korea-emulating propaganda outlet, Truthless Sociopath:

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

How very presidential. How honorably he presents America to the world. Our breasts should balloon with pride like... 

Nope, not going there.

No matter that he backed down, as usual. Every American who considers the presidency a position from which wisdom and humanity ought to emanate should find that rant unspeakably disgusting, demeaning the office and America.

MAGA doesn’t, of course, proving yet again how irreparably divided our country has become under Trump; how the regressive world-view of a belligerent minority has come to dominate American governance, despite representing not even a plurality of opinions. This isn’t “Art of the Deal.” It’s a madman, raving.

That Iran didn’t blink and Trump did makes it no less disturbing. Iran gets full control of the Strait of Hormuz, extracting millions in tolls, sanctions lifted, no constraints on building weapons, and declares victory. If it holds, Trump moves on, taking no responsibility for his economy-imperiling, America-diminishing war that empowered China and Russia. And, yes, Iran. But we’re to sing the praises of an arsonist who stopped setting fires. For now.

“Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace,” was the Easter message from the first American pope, Leo XIV. Contrarily, Trump whisperer Laura Loomer wrote, “This is what I voted for. Bomb jihadis back to the Stone Age, where their mentality permanently lives. Trump said he’s going to bomb their infrastructure in Iran, and then he said ‘Praise be to Allah.’ On Easter. Amazing. Just amazing. Strategic bombing wins wars.”

Of which homily would Jesus approve? It’s a question the “Christian” Nationalists marionetting Trump stopped asking years ago. In Jesus’s name, they chose death and destruction. It’s confounding that people see the same thing and draw radically different conclusions.

Among the rotating stock of justifications for Trump’s war/not-war/but-really-war was liberating the Iranian people. “Rise up,” he exhorted. “We’ll have your backs.” Not exactly “bomb them back to the Stone Age, where they belong,” as Trump later put it, more cruel than Lovely Laura. No running water, no electricity, no hospitals. No fuel. No food storage, mass starvation. To Trump, to whom empathy is another obscenity, that’s “where they belong” – all of them, women, children, the brave souls who protested their government; students, teachers, healthcare workers.

Such inhumanity, even the threat of which is a war crime, is the wettest of MAGA dreams. They love it like they love a man who lies with every exhalation, who validates their hatreds, who hires people like Hegseth, not despite incompetence but because of it. Competence and sycophancy are incompatible.

As ill-considered as Trump’s war was, as obvious that he ignored warnings of its predictable, global consequences, he’s now ensuring that he’ll encounter no such pushback against his next war of choice, predicated on a draft-dodger’s need to appear tough. Firing General Randy George, Army Chief of Staff, was a warning to all senior officers to shut up and salute. When military leadership is left only to the most compliant, who’ll be there to refuse his next war crime, or, as General Mark Milley was, to resist another call to shoot protestors “in the legs or something”?

Trump unmasked the weakness of a Constitution predicated on goodwill, a commodity lacking among MAGA Republicans. His mental instability hasn’t triggered the 25th Amendment, nor impeachment and removal. When Congress is majoritized by people whose feck fits in a pixie’s hipflask, checks and balances become as outdated as the muskets behind the Second Amendment. A return to the respect for law and humankind presumed by the founders would require MAGAs to rediscover their humanity, currently Trumpofoxified out of existence.

When church and state become one, as the founders feared, we get stupid wars of arrogance, managed by people claiming God’s approval. People like Pentagon Pete, second only to Holy Mike Johnson in flashing faux righteousness like opening a trenchcoat in a city park. Maybe Trump’s handlers have convinced him that he, too, is doing God’s work. As a lifelong apostate, it’s unlikely he believes it, but he’s made billions by convincing MAGA he does. A miasmic, flattery-demanding “president“ and a Bible-banging Secretary of Defense, unchecked by spineless Congressional Republicans, makes a poisonous witches’ brew. It’s boiling over.

Footnote: Having taken a break to address health issues, I’ve been reassessing. Writing exercises an aging brain and offloads some stress, but its nugatory nature is undeniable. Further assessment to follow.