QOTD -- The Man The Founders Feared Would Come

 

Tom Nichols, retired professor at the Naval War College and international specialist, concludes an essay in The Atlantic with a warning about the man George Washington and the Founders feared would come one day, Donald Trump:

... Some Americans seem unable to accept how much peril they face should Trump return, perhaps because many of them have never lived in an autocracy. They may yet get their chance: The former president is campaigning on an authoritarian platform. He has claimed that “massive” electoral fraud—defined as the vote in any election he loses—“allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He refers to other American citizens as “vermin” and “human scum,” and to journalists as “enemies of the people.” He has described freedom of the press as “frankly disgusting.” He routinely attacks the American legal system, especially when it tries to hold him accountable for his actions. He has said that he will govern as a dictator—but only for a day.

Trump is the man the Founders feared might arise from a mire of populism and ignorance, a selfish demagogue who would stop at nothing to gain and keep power. Washington foresaw the threat to American democracy from someone like Trump: In his farewell address, he worried that “sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction” would manipulate the public’s emotions and their partisan loyalties “to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

Many Americans in 2016 ignored this warning, and Trump engaged in the greatest betrayal of Washington’s legacy in American history. If given the opportunity, he would betray that legacy again—and the damage to the republic may this time be irreparable.  (our emphasis)

Many Americans will ignore the warning in 2024, as they did in 2020.  He's already proven that, unlike Washington at the end of his second term, he won't go home.  He talks about 2024 being the last election people will have to vote in.  But many Americans will ignore that, too.  His cultists think of themselves as "patriots," but they're the farthest thing from it.

QOTD: The Untethered Malignant Loser

National security expert Tom Nichols writes in The Atlantic about the deranged Malignant Loser's widely remarked-on rally in Las Vegas, when he veered into talk about electric boats and sharks:

"Nor was the Vegas monologue the first time: Trump for years has fallen off one verbal cliff after another, with barely a ripple in the national consciousness. I am not a psychiatrist, and I am not diagnosing Trump with anything. I am, however, a man who has lived on this Earth for more than 60 years, and I know someone who has serious emotional problems when I see them played out in front of me, over and over. The 45th president is a disturbed person. [snip]

Donald Trump is unstable. Some of these problems were evident when he first ran, and we now know from revelations by many of his former staff that his problems processing information and staying tethered to reality are not part of some hammy act." (our emphasis)

It's gotten so bad with the Orange Turd that even his comfort zone, Fux "News", won't run his speeches live any more because they're clear evidence of a disturbed personality (they've also been burned by embracing his Big Lie, having lost a massive judgement to Dominion Voting Systems). 

Having the deranged Malignant Loser free to hold rallies where he spouts both nonsense and dangerous violent threats won't affect his numbers among his equally deranged hard core cult, but should remind voters who are undecided or wavering how unfit this convicted felon is to be the commander-in-chief.

QOTD -- Keep Calm And Carry On

 

Tom Nichols begins his article in The Atlantic "Don't Let Trump Exhaust You," with this:

The 2024 election has become a kind of waking nightmare in which many of us stare at Donald Trump as he unleashes some new attack on any number of targets: a judge’s daughter, immigrants, the rule of law, American national security, the Constitution. And we blink and shake our heads, stunned to think that many of our fellow citizens are eager to put this autocratic ignoramus back in the White House.

In a more normal time in American life, people had to leave politics for having a nanogram of Trump’s baggage. Think of the late Senator Thomas Eagleton, the 1972 Democratic vice-presidential pick who had to drop out of the race because he’d been treated for depression. The idea—how old-fashioned it seems now—was that America could not risk any possible mental-health issues not only in the president, but even in the person next in the line of succession. Today, however, we have a former president who exhibits all kinds of signs of a disordered personality—and yet the big worry among many voters (and too much of the media) is whether his opponent is missing a step because he’s roughly 42 months older than Trump...

The lies, incitement, faux martyrdom, racism, authoritarianism, etc., coming from the Malignant Loser every hour, every day are his way of overwhelming norms and of obscuring the existential threat he poses. They're also a tactic he's learned from Russian propaganda, the "firehose of falsehood" model which, according to a Rand Corporation paper (pdf), consists of two elements:  "high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions..."  The Malignant Loser is adept at the latter, and his accomplices in both the amoral horse race media and the Christofascist media miasma take care of the first.

But, as Nichols goes on to say, we must not give in to this tactic designed to exhaust us while it simultaneously energizes the numbnut MAGAt base.  It's important for the Malignant Loser's incompetence, depravity, and derangement to continue to be made clear to the broader electorate, some of whom are apparently suffering from post-2017-20 amnesia.  But this election is ultimately about the fortitude and endurance of the anti- Malignant Loser coalition to overcome the "moral swamp" we've already entered into.  In other words, Keep Calm and Carry On.

QOTD -- Friends And Enemies

 

Tom Nichols writes in The Atlantic about the unhinged Malignant Loser's recent comments about letting Russian war criminal Putin have his way with NATO allies:

... Americans outside of Trump’s personality cult—at least those who have retained any ability to be shocked—should be stunned at this kind of betrayal of American principles and America’s allies. Here in the United States, we have become accustomed to treating Trump like an angry child, ignoring his outbursts the way parents ignore a toddler who shouts threats and claims to hate mommy and daddy during tantrums.

But other nations do not see an overaged juvenile; they see a man who once held the keys to the U.S. nuclear arsenal and could once again become the commander in chief of the American military. They are watching him because they believe—as they should—that he is telling them exactly what he’ll do if he returns to office.

Trump’s spokespeople will likely try to clean up his remarks by saying he was merely playing hardball with recalcitrant European freeloaders. But anyone who’s watched Trump and his servile fascination with Putin long enough knows the truth: Donald Trump would make the United States a friend to the Kremlin and an enemy to NATO. Putin knows it, and after today, so should every American.  (our emphasis)

Spineless Florida Republican bootlicker Sen. Marco "Li'l Marco" Rubio has already tried pooh-poohing the Malignant Loser's disqualifying remarks, as you would expect the li'l gusano to do.  

It's a craven cult willing to put America and its allies in Putin's crosshairs.  They're enemies of America just as much as Putin.

Out For Revenge

 

We need to have clear vision when we look at the truth of American politics in 2024, not as we might wish it to be, but what it actually is.  Tom Nichols does that in The Atlantic when he tells us the stark truth about the people we call MAGAts, the Republican base that supports the Malignant Loser and his message of grievance and resentment.  Here's a long excerpt:

... The Republican base actively embraces Trump’s grievances; it emulates his pettiness; it supports his childlike inability to accept responsibility. These voters are not sighing in resignation and voting for the lesser of two or three or four evils. They are getting what they want—because they, too, are set on revenge.

These voters are not settling a political score. Rather, they want to get even with other Americans, their own neighbors, for a simmering (and likely unexpected) humiliation that many of them seem to have felt ever since swearing loyalty to Trump.

A lot of people, especially in the media, have a hard time accepting this simple truth. Millions of Americans, stung by the electoral rebukes of their fellow citizens, have become so resentful and detached from reality that they have plunged into a moral void, a vortex that disintegrates questions of politics or policies and replaces them with heroic fantasies of redeeming a supposedly fallen nation. [snip]

Strings of losses, including the 2018 Democratic-wave election, Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and the “red wave” that never happened in 2022, forced MAGA voters to construct an alternate reality in which the patriotic, hardworking majority has been repeatedly thwarted by schemes so complicated that SPECTRE would have struggled to execute them. Worse, a culture (especially in the media) that for a time was desperate to understand their views now either ignores them or treats them as dangerous curiosities.

The only good thing that came out of Iowa last night is that we are now spared further public performances from Vivek Ramaswamy. And it is a hopeful sign that nearly half of the caucus-goers chose someone besides Trump. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that the coming year will be just another peaceful competition between two political parties. Trump wants payback; so do millions of voters who have no one to blame for their sense of humiliation but themselves.  (our emphasis)

These are the majority of Republicans who say they'll vote for the Malignant Loser even if he's convicted of any of the 91 felonies on which he's been charged.  Their minds have been twisted and poisoned by decades of vicious lies and propaganda from right- wing media and scurrilous politicians profiting from stirring up hatreds and divisions, all reinforced by charlatan "clergy" and family / tribal tradition and conformity.  

This is the aggrieved mindset of every revanchist movement throughout history.  For America, it's the "Lost Cause 2.0"  Forewarned is forearmed.

(Photo: Don't worry, we won't be talking to you / Reuters)

To Defeat The Danger Ahead, We Fight The Fight We're In

 

Two former Republicans offer their thoughts on the cult of the Malignant Loser and the stakes involved. Here's Tom Nichols in ThreadReader:

I know it's obvious that Trump changes positions on a dime and how it's mystifying that his cult doesn't care, but picking all this apart is a fool's errand. They stick with him because he channels their diffuse anger about their lives at other Americans. But it's worse now:

After 2016, Trump voters thought they'd really made their point, pushed back change in America, and gained respect by electing a POTUS. All that blew up in their faces: They found out they're not a majority, and worse, the disdain of their fellow citizens only intensified.

2020 and J6 compounded their sense of humiliation and grievance. The know Trump is making fools of them, but they will never admit it. And Biden winning was like a national slap in the face. So now they're with him no matter what. They don't care about policy or positions. 

And this time, they'll support him as he does even more desperate and hideous things. He could call for open borders and free abortions and most of them wouldn't care. All they care about is that he's promising to go after people they hate even more now than in 2016.

Talking about how he and Biden "differ on Issues X/Y/Z" is pointless and a distraction. It's all part of the "normal political horse race" narrative that is blinding people to the danger ahead.

Former Republican ad man with Lincoln Project Reed Galen on Substack:

Donald Trump, he of the would-be coup, the 91 indictments, and willingness to admit he’d be a dictator on “day one” is going to be the Republican nominee for president, again. Despite all the words, deeds, disasters, and death, the GOP can’t quit him, and his opponents have struggled for years to understand how to beat him. It’s simple, really: Attack him. All day, every day.  [snip]

During a townhall with Sean Hannity earlier this week, Trump admitted he’d be a dictator if he retakes the White House. He was excited by Robert Kagan’s Washington Post op-ed warning of Trump’s tyrannical tendencies. MAGA goon Kash Patel threatened the media on Steve Bannon’s podcast this week. The men likely to occupy leadership posts in a second Trump term are for mass deportation, a system of organized camps, and unleashing the military on anti-Trump demonstrators as reported by Axios today.

As 2024 dawns on us, remind yourself and your organizations what we’re up against. Yes, we must defeat Donald J. Trump 48 weeks from now. He’s just the beginning. As Speaker Mike Johnson told a crowd in Washington on Tuesday that we are “engaged in a battle between worldviews” and “a great struggle for the future of the Republic.” He believes the White Christian nationalists will win.

If you’re not willing to go after the man who will make this dystopian worldview a reality, what are you willing to fight for? This isn’t about whether you like a certain way of campaigning or not. We fight the fight we’re in, not the one we’re used to. Next year is not a referendum, it’s a choice: America or Trump...

We're about a year out, and primary season is looming.  This is the time in a campaign cycle when everyone starts providing their opinion about strategy, messages, etc.  Both of these writers are essentially telling us not to waste time on the Malignant Loser's cultists;  they're a long lost cause.  You have to focus instead on your own base and on the distracted/ persuadable voters (how that is a thing these days is boggling, but it's reality).  It's going to be another close race (again, boggling) and, paraphrasing Galen, if you're not willing to go after the Malignant Loser and his dystopian worldview, what are you willing to fight for?

BONUS:  Also, don't be a "Doom Junkie!"

QOTD -- Infantalizing American Life

 

"Musk’s petty outbursts make you wonder how dangerous it would be if a narcissistic, self-interested, vindictive adolescent ever gained a major political office such as, say, the White House. But I digress. [snip]

"But we can at least shelve all of Musk’s blather about free speech. Twitter is an important part of how we disseminate and process news, and it’s now in the hands of an irritable and unpredictable child. This is one more step in the infantilization of American life, in which we must accommodate and work around the behavior of grown men and women who not so long ago would have been pushed out of public life either by our collective political disgust or by responsible shareholders who would insist that their corporate leaders get back to work instead of making a spectacle of themselves." -- Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, writing about "The Childish Drama of Elon Musk."   "Kanye, Elon, Trump."

QOTD -- Who Cares?!

 

"For years, I have been wondering when Americans would draw the line on Trump and his minions. We could rehearse the litany of Trump’s awfulness: his vulgarity, his racism, his callous disregard for veterans, his pathetic submissiveness around Vladimir Putin. We could remind ourselves of the attempt to pressure the Ukrainian government that got him impeached (the first time).

"None of it seems to matter, because for a large swath of the American public, nothing really matters. And here, I do not mean only the 'MAGA Republicans,' loyalists who are already a lost cause. (Trump was tragically prescient when he said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would not abandon him.) Nor do I mean the people who have attached their parasitical careers to their Trumpian host.

"No, I mean the ordinary Americans who shrug at a violent insurrection and the near-miss of a coup. As the historian Michael Beschloss said on MSNBC last night after the hearing, Trump 'probably wanted to declare martial law.' He also pointed out that the insurrection was a close-run thing, noting that if 'Trump and those rioters had been a little bit faster, we might be living in a country of unbelievable darkness and cruelty.'

"But who cares? After all, inflation is too high, and gas is still too expensive, and that’s a bigger problem than the overthrow of the government, isn’t it?" -- Tom Nichols in The Atlantic, wondering what we've been wondering for a long, long time about what it would take for our fellow citizens to care about what the Malignant Loser and his cult have wrought.  Nichols concludes that, to vote for the party that has aligned itself so intimately with this is to demonstrate no interest in the constitutional order or in the United States remaining a democracy.  There are tens of millions of the true believer cultists that cheerfully acknowledge this as their goal, but the mystery is the "ordinary Americans" who don't see the peril, or can't be bothered to care.  There was another time when "ordinary" citizens of a country were similarly blind or indifferent to the destruction of their institutions, ultimately becoming "willing executioners" of an evil order of "darkness and cruelty."

But we have more important things to vote on, right?!?

QOTD -- Don't Give Putin What He Wants

 

"Although some observers may believe that Putin would fold before he approaches the nuclear threshold, and others worry that even the smallest NATO action will inevitably spark World War III, such arguments at both extremes ignore the role of chance and risk. A nuclear crisis is not an orderly duel or a game with rules, but rather a maelstrom of poor information, conflicting signals, and highly charged emotions. To make matters worse, Putin has always been a poor strategist, a risk-taker who foolishly sets in motion—as he has done in Ukraine—forces he cannot control.

"In any case, even if Putin is too deluded to think about such risks, the rest of us must consider the dangers of ordering the largest military coalition in human history into battle against a disorganized and battered army led by incompetent officers and commanded by an isolated and delusional president. Putting so many military assets in play, with combat breaking out all over Europe, could spark a catastrophe that neither we nor Putin intended. The danger is not that the Russian war on Ukraine becomes a replay of 1939, in which a coalition must stop a mad dictator at all costs, but that a Russia-NATO war becomes a nuclear version of 1914, in which all the combatants would find themselves moving from a crisis none of them expected into a cataclysm none of them wanted." -- Tom Nichols in The Atlantic writing on how "Only NATO Can Save Putin."  The main point of Nichols' article is that war criminal Putin, in his desperation, will try to goad NATO into direct conflict with Russia in order to shore up support at home.  It's an interesting and compelling case that argues for not playing by Putin's rules while increasing the pressure on Russia by continuing to supply Ukraine with offensive and defensive weapons, tightening the noose around the Russian economy, shoring up NATO defenses, and opening NATO membership to Sweden and Finland if they wish to join.  But, Nichols argues, don't give Putin what he most wants -- a war with NATO.

Quotes Of The Day -- Trumpism

 

“'Make liberals cry again” is also the most succinct example of why Trumpism won’t end, even if Trump’s time in office is ended for him. When the goal is not victory but humiliation, there is no way to tell when the game is over. It’s not necessarily over when the Supreme Court is stacked, it’s not over when Roe v. Wade is overturned. It’s not over when all of Barack Obama’s executive orders have been repealed or when Hillary Clinton goes to jail.

"It’s not over, ever, because liberals can always be made to cry more, and longer. Long after Trump’s followers have forgotten why this was the goal, or what they gave up in order to achieve it, they can still make a liberal cry, again and again and again — a medicine for an ailment they will never cure." -- Monica Hesse, Washington Post.

________________________

"... [N]o matter how this election concludes, America is now a different country. Nearly half of the voters have seen Trump in all of his splendor—his infantile tirades, his disastrous and lethal policies, his contempt for democracy in all its forms—and they decided that they wanted more of it. His voters can no longer hide behind excuses about the corruption of Hillary Clinton or their willingness to take a chance on an unproven political novice. They cannot feign ignorance about how Trump would rule. They know, and they have embraced him." -- Tom Nichols, The Atlantic.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

As more rats jump ship, the Republican Party becomes the purest extension of the ego and whims of narcissistic moron Donald "Rump" Trump:

... Since Trump’s inauguration, a Washington Post analysis shows, nearly 40 percent of the 241 Republicans who were in office in January 2017 are gone or leaving because of election losses, retirements including former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), and some, such as [Michigan Rep. Paul] Mitchell, who are simply quitting in disgust.

The vast turnover is a reminder of just how much Trump has remade the GOP — and of the purge of those who dare to oppose him. Former congressman Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) lost his June 2018 primary after challenging Trump; he’s now a Republican presidential candidate. Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), the only Republican to accuse Trump of impeachable acts, quit the GOP in July citing the “partisan death spiral.” His political future is uncertain.  [snip]

The retirement numbers are particularly staggering. All told, 41 House Republicans have left national politics or announced they won’t seek reelection in the nearly three years since Trump took office. That dwarfs the 25 Democrats who retired in the first four years of former president Barack Obama’s tenure — and Republicans privately predict this is only the beginning.

Most of the departing Republicans publicly cite family as the reason for leaving. But behind the scenes, Republicans say the trend highlights a greater pessimism about the direction of the party under Trump — and their ability to win back the House next year.

They preferred it when dog whistles were used and the quiet parts weren't said out loud.

Dave Leonhardt has just the facts about Trump, in 40 sentences.  Here are his last 10:

He obstructed justice by trying to influence an investigation into his presidential campaign.

He violated federal law by directing his lawyer to pay $280,000 in hush money to cover up two apparent extramarital affairs.

He made his fortune partly through wide-scale financial fraud.

He has refused to release his tax returns.

He falsely accused his predecessor of wiretapping him.

He claimed that federal law-enforcement agents and prosecutors regularly fabricated evidence, thereby damaging the credibility of criminal investigations across the country.

He has ordered children to be physically separated from their parents.

He has suggested that America is no different from or better than Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

He has called America a “hellhole.”

He is the president of the United States, and he is a threat to virtually everything that the United States should stand for.

Conservative academic Tom Nichols focuses on the Trump-Ukraine scandal and what it should lead to:

As the Ukrainian Interior Ministry official Anton Gerashchenko told the Daily Beast when asked about the president’s apparent requests, “Clearly, Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.”

Clearly.

If this in itself is not impeachable, then the concept has no meaning. Trump’s grubby commandeering of the presidency’s fearsome and nearly uncheckable powers in foreign policy for his own ends is a gross abuse of power and an affront both to our constitutional order and to the integrity of our elections.

The story may even be worse than we know. If Trump tried to use military aid to Ukraine as leverage, as reporters are now investigating, then he held Ukrainian and American security hostage to his political vendettas. It means nothing to say that no such deal was reached; the important point is that Trump abused his position in the Oval Office.

In this matter, we need not rely on a newspaper account, nor even on the complaint, so far unseen, of a whistle-blower. Instead, we have a sweaty, panicked admission on national television by Trump’s bizarre homunculus, Rudy Giuliani, that he did in fact seek such an investigation on Trump’s behalf. Giuliani later again confirmed Trump’s role, tweeting that a “President telling a Pres-elect of a well known corrupt country he better investigate corruption that affects US is doing his job.”

The blabbering buffoon has now admitted he talked about Joe Biden in his call to the Ukrainian President.  We rest our case.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog tells us the Trump-Ukraine smear is a foreshadowing that should wake Joe Biden up to reality:

What's ironic about all this is that Biden -- the only major Democratic presidential candidate who thinks he'll be able to work easily with Republicans if he's elected -- is the first candidate to be treated the way Republicans will treat any Democrat who manages to be elected president. The current thuggishness has the stylistic hallmarks of Trump, but notice that much of the party is closing ranks around Trump and trying to turn this into a smear on Biden. The GOP's propaganda arm, Fox News, is all in on the smear.

Joe, this is what your presidency will be like starting the moment you're sworn in. Every other top Democrat understands what's coming if they win. None of them expect to deal with the opposition party in good faith. They know that the fever won't break after the campaign is over.

You've gotten the first real taste of what a Democratic presidency will be like starting in 2021, if it happens. Any second thoughts about your plans to pal around with Mitch McConnell and the rest of the gang?

Finally, please check out Infidel 753's latest link round- up for the best collection of interesting items you'll see until his next round- up.  We thought we'd share a picture of the Oregon coast that he links to just for it's soul- cleansing power (click on image to enlarge):



Now, head on over there!