Things fall apart, the center cannot hold
That's far from surprising. Set aside the cabinet of cranks and kleptocrats. Set aside the ominous requests for names of government scientists working on climate change. Set aside the gag order on EPA scientists (it's working already -- I'm gagging, and I'm not even a scientist). Set aside the plans for Soviet-style military parades in our cities. These are characteristic acts of a despot, and while despots are evil, they are not necessarily mentally unstable.
Consider instead the insistence on lying about things that are easily checked for veracity. We've all heard about Trump's unhinged reaction to media reports on the mediocre turnout for his inauguration, and the blatant untruths he required Spicer and Conway to spout on his behalf. He's now making equally fatuous assertions about the response to his speech at the CIA Memorial Wall, despite almost universal condemnation of its disrespectful and vulgar use of the venue, and despite the widely-broadcasted revelation that the applause heard there came from flunkies brought along for the purpose. And he's now demanding an investigation into his own delusional claims that "illegal voting" accounted for Hillary's huge victory margin in the popular vote, claims supported by absolutely nothing except bald assertion.
Burr Deming suggests that Trump may be driven by a need to assert masculinity -- as Marco Rubio might put it, if a man has a small inaugural-crowd size, something else may be small as well. But millions of men suffer from feelings of inadequacy and an urge to assert manliness. It doesn't usually drive them to make up easily-refuted lies (sorry, "alternative facts") out of thin air and then try to bully the rest of the world into accepting them as true despite the plain reality they can see with their own eyes. Most men, after all, have an even stronger desire to avoid appearing ridiculous. Something is very wrong here, probably above and beyond the long-standing diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.
My question to those "Republican officials" who are now suddenly so alarmed, though, is this -- have you been living in a cave for the last year and a half? Trump didn't suddenly start behaving like this six days ago. Throughout the whole primary and general-election campaign, he displayed the mental stability of a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered toddler. Why didn't you stop him? The Republican establishment's anti-Trump efforts are already going down in history as the epitome of fecklessness and cowardice. "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," with H-bombs on standby yet, and now all of a sudden you've noticed that this guy is too unstable and impulsive to occupy the position you helped him get "elected" to?
Even if enough Congressional Republicans see the light to join with Democrats in impeaching this preposterous and appalling miscarriage of democracy, your party will forever be tarred with the fact that you inflicted such a fiasco on the world in the first place. And we will never, ever let you forget it.
Ah, well, at least the growing alarm and doubts among the enemy offer us some comfort. It's at least some of the worst who lack all conviction. And based on what we saw on Saturday, when our female-led pink-hatted legions thronged city streets across the nation and around the planet, it's the best who are full of passionate intensity.
posted by Infidel753 at 6:14 PM
7 Comments:
Excellent, Infidel.
I also loved this: "My question to those "Republican officials" who are now suddenly so alarmed, though, is this -- have you been living in a cave for the last year and a half?"
Indeed. Not just the GOP, of course, but the media who had a healthy obsession with Hillary's emails; the unrepentant supporters of Sanders who refused to vote for Hillary despite the fact that the majority of Sanders supporters did; and the purists who ran to Johnson and Stein while claiming that Hillary was going to be worse than Trump.
In fact, the person who basically exposed Trump as the bellowing, Queeg-like buffoon he truly is was none other than Hillary Clinton.
It was there for all of us to see--all of it. Some paid attention, others shut their eyes, and others just shrugged and went back to their "both parties are the same" fantasyland.
I'm younger than you, but being someone who paid attention to politics since Reagan's time, I have to say that I've never seen things go downhill this quickly. I cannot gloat or snicker about it; I can only shake my head in shame.
The truly frustrating part of seeing this? Knowing that all of this could have been avoided had the media done their jobs, the GOP had not embraced batshit crazy nonsense, and the purist Left had embraced pragmatism and thought about the world outside their bubble.
The Trump Administration is like a Jenga tower, and they've knocked out many of the blocks. The whole thing is an unstable, shaky mess, and if any more blocks go, down it comes. And yes, the GOP owns this, and it must be rubbed in their faces from now until the 2018 midterms and beyond.
Honestly, if this does not show that no, both political parties are not the same, I don't know what will.
Thanks! Yes, it's infuriating that a relatively small number of dumb people helped bring about this mess which we are all now stuck with. Not only did most Sanders supporters vote for Hillary, but Sanders himself campaigned for her. He can't be faulted, but some of his followers decided to be "more Catholic than the Pope".
Honestly, if this does not show that no, both political parties are not the same, I don't know what will.
Some people are unreachable. I've long said that only an utter fool could look back on the Bush years and think that having Gore as President would have made no difference. And surely not even an utter fool would thank that Hillary as President would be doing any of this fascist/absurdist crap that Trump is doing. But fools will always be with us.
And I still think the Republican party is doomed eventually. The election of Trump required a whole combination of freak circumstances, and the absence of any of them would probably have left him defeated. Demographic change is still inexorably working against them. Trump's obvious instability and fascistic tendencies are tarring the whole party since so far they're mostly going along with him, at least publicly. If anything, Trump is provoking a mass mobilization against himself -- as we saw Saturday -- and in favor of many of the programs and freedoms the Republicans want to destroy.
Trump is a setback, and a big one, but that's all he is.
Thank you for the mention. If my thesis is correct, Mr. Trump's reflexive urge to defend his manhood is fueled by a brutal upbringing that denigrated his high pitched voice, his feminine vocabulary, and his delicate gestures. He is ruled by a childhood conviction that his masculinity is lacking.
Burr: Whereas in fact it's his adulthood that's lacking. He's not short on bluster, he's short on maturity and self-restraint.
A.M.: I will have no both-siderist nonsense here. If you can look at the totality of Trump's behavior and not see that he's dangerously mentally deficient and needs to be stopped, it just calls your own sanity into question.
@Infidel: It never fails to amaze me that even as Trump and the GOP lay bare just how they are not qualified to run the country, much less hold office, there are those who still must utter the "both sides!" line. Even when the proof is right there in front of them, they whipsaw back to that way of thinking, even dragging in Hillary by claiming that she would have done X or Y, just like Trump.
It's a bunch of bulls**t, to be sure, and it must be put down.
Marc: It's getting rarer now. Frankly I think some people are contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. I'm not putting up with that here, either.
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