So we’ll get public schools shaped by people who’ve never attended one, law and order from people who’ve lived their lives behind security gates, health care from people who have personal physicians, and transportation policy from people who have their own jets. We’ll also get a lot of extra drug testing, reduced wages, and cuts to unemployment—because these billionaires know it’s you working people who are taking more than you’re worth.Sumner refers indirectly to an article in Politico naming the various rich older white people either named or rumored to be in line for cabinet positions ("Trump's Team of Gazillionaires"). That article's also worth a look, to see who Rump will have in place to protect the interests of the White Working Class (spoiler alert: =snicker=).
While others at the New York Effing Times were busy affixing their lips to Rump's rump =cough= Maggie Haberman =cough= , Charles Blow wasn't going to go along to get along:
You are an aberration and abomination who is willing to do and say anything — no matter whom it aligns you with and whom it hurts — to satisfy your ambitions.
I don’t believe you care much at all about this country or your party or the American people. I believe that the only thing you care about is self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. Your strongest allegiance is to your own cupidity.
I also believe that much of your campaign was an act of psychological projection, as we are now learning that many of the things you slammed Clinton for are things of which you may actually be guilty. [snip]
You are a fraud and a charlatan. Yes, you will be president, but you will not get any breaks just because one branch of your forked tongue is silver.Blow's op/ ed is worth saving and referring back to whenever the sight of the corporate media kowtowing to the non- popularly- elected shitgibbon becomes too much to bear. It burns with the righteous intensity missing in most of the post- election chatter.
Joy-Ann Reid warns of the corporate media's dressing Rump in the "Emperor's new clothes," a process already well underway:
You may be asked, over the next four years, to accept things you never dreamed would be acceptable, and to turn a blind eye to vulgarity and hypocrisy and failure. You’ll be sold the pageantry of presidential succession, along with lighthearted stories about Melania’s New York shopping sprees or Ivanka’s parenting tips. Long forgotten will be questions about the former’s immigration lies or the fact that potentially any world leader has seen photographs of the first lady naked; or about the many times the latter has been the object of prurient commentary by her father. Religious leaders will grin and embrace the Trump presidency as if it was blessed by God almighty, even as they hover over bill signings designed to consign women and gays back to second class status and ignore the Biblical admonition to see to the poor, the widow and the orphan.While her message is addressed to fellow journalists as well as the public, the understanding is that the corporate media may already be too compromised to serve as a moral truth- teller in the face of Trumpism:
... [T]raditional media are bending under the weight of fake news and meme culture. And the tug of normalization is powerful; even pleasing, when reality is unthinkable. The urge to look away, to pretend to see fine threads when the king comes strolling by, with his bare belly jutting out, can be irresistible.
For the good of the country, here’s hoping enough people resist.Amen to that.
Finally, please go over and check out the great, eclectic links provided by Infidel 753. It's a better digest than you'll get in the New York Effing Times Sunday edition.
