@PlacidPenguin Graham got right to it. Clapper and Yates sworn in, and at 3:11 he asked ‘What did you tell the White House about Mr. Flynn?’ SY: ‘We warned that Flynn could be blackmailed by Russians.’
@aungericht You are not. Many years ago, I wrote some very boring paragraphs which were submitted up the line, signed by my then superiors, and wound up in the Congressional Record. This is the source of most of what is published every day- staffers five levels down who are tasked to write simple descriptions of whatever projects, requests, or actions. It’s still fun to be a part of the system.
/giphy cogs
@OldCatLady
No time to watch or listen today, will have to make do with the soundclips.
I once watched all of Senator Sam Ervin’s Senate Watergate Committee proceedings for all those months. If that was on, I wasn’t in class. (The profs were understanding as long as you did the work.) I remember Erlichman and Haldeman on the stand, and John Dean and his wife Maureen Dean. I remember the moment Alexander Butterfield revealed to the world at large the existence of the WH Oval Office and West Wing automatic taping systems.
When John Dean did his book tour a few years back, he spent a day at my brother’s law firm’s office in Baltimore. I think the firm invited/paid him to speak on ethics or lack of ethics within the executive branch, and on ethics or the lack of ethics in relationships between law firms and the executive branch. My brother got to talk with him for an extended time. My bro said Dean was an interesting and insightful speaker.
John W. Dean III starts most days wondering how the current president will exceed the narcissism and paranoia of his old boss. Then Dean moves on to Twitter, where he routinely filets the Trump administration with a knife that was sharpened in the tribal warfare of the Nixon White House; these tweets are really a running list of mental notes about a book he’ll eventually write on Trump. His book on the last Republican administration, featuring George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, was titled “Worse Than Watergate.”
“I should’ve saved that title actually,” says Dean, the top aide whose congressional testimony was instrumental in taking down the Nixon presidency.
Re the Congressional Record:
In the 1950’s and 1960’s my Always-Right Grandmother subscribed. She received a bound book the size of a Manhattan phone book by mail for every day Congressional business was conducted. They were stacked all over her house. When we were pre-schoolers, she would read to us and teach us. Once we learned to read, we used to scour them for material with which to torment her about the Russkies coming our way, and she took this conduct from us in good humor.
The reasons she got them: not entirely certain, but she was politically obsessed. And she used them for resources when she was policing the local editorial pages, and newspaper publishers (she had memorized their phone numbers, and they took her calls); and when she lectured US Congressman Jim Wright about anything and everything (she did this a lot). And the Records were resources for her endless vigilance against commie infiltration.
@f00l I would like to see Dean do a series of interviews right now. He already sounded the Saturday Night Massacre parallel - back in February. The Monday Night Massacre: Current Parallels To Nixon Administration https://n.pr/2kc0Efn
@f00l Dean is on MSNBC right now; this is ‘in the same style’ as the SNM. He’s projecting a few possible next steps for Congress to take, and discussing limitations to power. He’s surprised that the White House has ‘learned nothing from history.’ Really?
@cengland0 Yeah, more like a slasher movie every minute. The latest news is that 45 had the termination letter delivered to Comey’s office in DC- by his personal bodyguard. Comey is in Los Angeles.
@f00l Not watching, on phone, waiting at vet’s office. Next fireworks should be whenever the open House Intel Cmte. hearing on Russia/election is; Brennan, Clapper and Yates have been invited to that one. There has already been a closed meeting, on 4 May. http://intelligence.house.gov/calendar/
@f00l I had never seen that. It’s magnificent. The 45 Enemies List probably looks like 'Hillary, Nancy Pelosi, Alec Baldwin, Stephen Colbert, Wolf Blitzer, all of ABC, CBS, NBC- look, a squirrel! Very sick, sad squirrel!
Popcorn on the menu again. 45 just fired FBI director James Comey, allegedly at the direction of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Wonder what corrupt piece of filth will be appointed in his place. Getting congressional approval will be, shall we say, difficult. It’s a 10-year term, served at the pleasure of the president.
Wow, I missed the breaking news announcement (due to fooding time).
A local news channel is only showing this news in the ticker at the bottom, and all 3 C-Span channels are preoccupied, though they’re making this news easily noticed.
@f00l MSNBC and CNN are lining up people from that era to explain WTFO, and perhaps put some perspective in place. Dean has been a guest on late night news for a few weeks now. Timing is interesting; late night comedy shows just finished taping tonight’s show. I’m sure it was deliberate. Brian Williams on MSNBC scrambled and took over the 6-7 EST slot; he’s on again at 11 PM. Even FNC is reporting on it. Carl Rove is on FNC right now, which ought to be educational.
@OldCatLady Welp, glad I got a passport. Which Duolingo course should I take to prepare for a life in exile from my home country? French, German, Spanish, or something else?
@sanspoint I’d go for German, but only because it’s the one I know least. I’m staying right here. The weasels and stoats may have taken over Toad Hall, but I have confidence in the system. It will, however, be a wild ride. That reminds me, other countries’ news coverage should be worth watching. 45 has few friends in the international community.
/giphy Toad Hall
@OldCatLady I’m likely to be somewhat insulated, since I’m in New York City, but boy howdy, I’d prefer to be in a country with a functioning Democracy.
Sessions doesn’t have to give a shit about his reputation, as long as he gets what he wants: making people of color, LGBTQ people, and women into second-class citizens (at best.)
I thought Jeff Sessions had s sense of history. I thought he kinda understood what, in historical terms, he could get away with, and what he couldn’t get away with in the long term.
So I thought he would resist doing stuff like today’s move. Now, if our democracy survives, Jeff Sessions will almost certainly be a historical villian. I thought he was smart enough, and had enough of a sense of his own historocal position, that he would control himself somewhat in order to preserve his own reputation.
Perhaps Sessions is losing it mentally to a degree. He used be sufficiently aware of the way things work to wish to look dignified in public, at least to the degree that he could get away with.
@f00l Then I’d say French, as the Canadians were making somewhat tongue in cheek offers to take in US refugees before the election. Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia is having serious problems keeping its population up that really does want US immigrants. Being retired, I don’t need work and I can live anywhere that’s affordable. Bob and I were half seriously looking at it, I found a house three times the size of mine on a big lot right across the street from the ocean selling for what my home’s valued at. I just don’t think I could take the cold. Bob and I were more seriously talking about moving to Roatan, many Central and South American countries are facilitating immigration for US retirees. They bring their retirement income with them and contribute much more to the economy than they take.
@sanspoint I wish I could say we are insulated. I’m in a blue city in red Texas, the poorest one, the one dependent on good relations with our closest neighbor, Cuidad Juarez. Just about the only thing I see on the horizon that might help us is that we have an enormous Army base that will hopefully see a share of increased defense spending. Some of that money filters into the local economy, but nothing like the income we get from Mexican shoppers.
Colbert had Sam Bee and Jon Stewart scheduled. It would be fun to watch it go live. Spicey ought to have a lively time tomorrow, if he dares to hold a press conference. FNC appears to have turned on a dime and is calling it a constitutional crisis. I never thought I’d hear THAT.
When you’re under investigation, fire the investigator?
I was reading that 45 wants to dismiss any allegations as a reaction to being fired. And he wants more control over the investigation, more control in general.
@KDemo It does have 45’s personal stench all over it- impatience, cruelty and obliviousness (?) to the end effects. Malcolm Nance just pointed out that it’s his hallmark belief that cutting off the head of an organization will stop it. My personal belief is ‘fiat justitia ruat cælum’.
@OldCatLady - Had to look up the Latin , and that would be the best outcome at this point. Not holding out lots of hope, though, unless a special prosecutor is appointed.
@f00l Rachel just pointed out that Comey was due to testify in an open Senate hearing on ‘worldwide threats’, on Thursday. Oddly, the calendar has not yet been updated, as of 9:22 PM EST.
@OldCatLady - I just signed up to pay the extra $5/mo to add MSNBC to my Sling subscription. I’ve missed Rachel for a long time, this was the straw that pushed me over the edge.
@f00l Lol, you make me feel so shallow. I have Sling for SyFy, USA and El Rey. I really appreciate you guys keeping me up to date on the death throes of American democracy as I am too depressed to watch the news.
@moondrake
I just don’t have time for much in the way of dramatic series right now. And after they air you can get them from streaming or blu-ray or whatever later.
News … I’m waiting. Hoping. There is going to be something that gets to the Trump White House, something that he/they can’t control and can’t effectively tweet or spin his/their way out of. Something that speaks to some of his base, and something that makes many of the powerful and respectable who work with him now just refuse to keep doing that, or only do so under very stringent conditions.
We’re not quite there yet, even with the Comey news, but we’re getting closer, due as much to the decision processes from the White House as anything else.
Someone, somewhere, is going to have to put him on a leash; or else he has to be impeached, and then we get Pence; or else the democracy is in serious danger.
I watched the election with intense fascination because Trump was so completely unfit and yet so capable of stirring real and phony drama; and because I hoped that last year’s election would put enough “good guys” in power that we could most forward with some sanity.
Now I watch because this White House does so many incredibly stupid and wildly dramatic things so quickly.
I think it was last week sometime that Morning Joe played clips of Trump tv interviews on political topics from the 80’s and 90’s, contrasted with him today.
20-30 years ago he was still incredible ego-driven and combative and impulsive, and ready to be loud-mouthed about all things he did or did not have a clue about. But he was different then, in signal ways: He was more controlled. He could think on his feet and speak, to a degree, in complex sentences and entire thematic paragraphs. He kept composure far better. He was way less into fake facts that no one believed but him. He seemed to understand that not everyone would just believe him or think he had great judgment, he understood that he actually had to make at least marginally credible arguments. He seemed to understand that he wasn’t the expert on everything.
Now he’s seemingly given his entire brain over to congratulating himself, accusing others, and deploying combat slogans. Everything is a threat, he must verbally stamp all events with a self-aggrandizing comeback, he’s ego-driven to take everything that happens as a challenge and to throw out more of his slogans.
His voters chose him for a combative, sloganeering, rabble-rousing attitude (“do ya feel lucky, punk?”), and for giving voice to simplistic views of various fears and suspicions and conspiracies, as much as for any other reason. They love how he makes them feel. He seems to get drunk on the feedback loop, and on screaming approval; 20 years ago he would not have been obsessed with crowd size or with having crowds scream for him while all the time he knew that the people whose approval most mattered to him were cringing or snickering at him. He would have understood that he actually had to accomplish meaningful things.
20 years ago he would have tried to avoid looking like an idiot. It would have bothered him. Now it’s just a reason to respond with a new attack. Pure red meat politics, driven by his current cognitive limits.
If he weren’t President, and hadn’t ripped so many people off, and hadn’t been hideous to so many people; then, as I watch him operate now, I might be moved to feel some pity for him in what appears to be his decline.
If my theory is correct, then I wonder how his conduct will appear in another year or two. Can we have, and would we want under current circumstances, a conservatorship presidency?
@f00l Can we have a conservatorship presidency? I think so. I don’t have 1% of your political acumen, but I’ve been under the impression that at some level Reagan’s second term was as figurehead, that Alzheimers had already eaten into his ability to do the job. Also Edith Wilson supposedly ran the government following Woodrow Wilson’s life changing stroke. Do we want such a presidency? I would have said no, because at least Trump does not act in secrecy, but if there is no limit to his antics then that’s no shield. In reading your comment I wondered how much of the changes in Trump are due to the relentless losses of age (and as you’ve pointed out a diet of junk food doesn’t help anyone’s brain), and how much is tied to the rise of the internet and the 24 hour news cycle. It seems his deterioration in some ways mirrors how facts and truths have been undermined and all but extinguished in the tide of opinion and willful blindness that informs modern media. In some ways Trump is very much a product of our times, odd in a man his age but perhaps his psyche was uniquely primed for this environment. I have heard him referred to as the id of the American people, an assessment that seems frighteningly accurate.
Reagan was going at the end, but Reagan could still handle himself with assistance, and could still do masterful public appearances.
And Reagan had spent a life of considerable discipline and mostly excellent personal relationships - those skills did not desert him. And to Reagan, it was never personal and he never had to respond to every “attack” will a bully’s impulsive ferocity.
@f00l I wasn’t comparing Trump to Reagan. While I didn’t care for his presidency, I think he mostly did what he believed was right, and he was one of the most gifted public speakers ever to occupy the office. Just thinking about presidents and conservatorship. I don’t think the concept of right and wrong actually exist for Trump, I think he defines it all as win or lose.
@moondrake
I think Trump defines right and wrong according to his own reactions and what he wants.
I.E. the use of Sarin gas was bad enough for him to take action, because he saw it on tv, and it really bothered him.
If he wants something, then there is some justification for it, and he will find a way to embrace it.
On moral and ethical issues, perhaps the only person he will actually listen to seems to be Ivanka.
Yesterday’s events: he really has almost no judgment. And his staff, and the Justice Dept: how could they not have realized it would be a firestorm? Are they utterly clueless about law and politics? Everyone else I know knew what to expect the minute each heard the news. And none of us are politicians.
I wonder how much of his lifelong capacities he actually retains at present?
@f00l He’s a vindictive loose cannon, and it does not matter whether he would have ever had more restraint. He orders things to be done because he can, and glories in his power. Several news organizations have put out ‘emergency’ podcasts, and I had time today to listen.
Check out Claude Taylor on Twitter. https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated
He says ‘A source with knowledge of the investigation says that nine sealed indictments came down in one case with sixteen more expected in others.’
Also hearing that McMaster may be next on the chopping block because he is not controllable, not good at stroking egos. Of course 45 would get rid of someone with integrity - obviously a frightening trait in this administration.
@f00l Possibly everyone else realized that whatever they say can, and will, be used against them, first by the other party, then by their own party. I notice that tomorrow’s press briefer is going to be Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Possibly Spicey is busy elsewhere?
@OldCatLady
Spicey - I may just feel a twinge of old style pity for him now - Spicey prob just can’t handle what he knows is coming.
For this, who do you need? Hmmm. Someone glossy and imperturbable and always perfectly behaved. A complete media-promotional cypher who never loses their cool, never acts undignified, never seems flustered, never runs low on standard defensive BS and can go on for hours non-stop.
Someone who can do and be all that whether they are explaining the actions of an angel or a monster.
@KDemo
Only someone like O’Reilly as press secretary if you want the networks all endlessly replaying the press-briefing-combat-footage all day every day, and people starting to bet on favorites, and O’Reilly becoming an endless meme, effective in terms of getting attention, but useless or worse in terms of message. And the whole business would drown out Trump half the time, even if Trump were being Outrageous As Usual.
@f00l After consideration, I think it’s because AC has experience with smart-mouths saying completely outrageous things. He and Kathy Griffin do a great job on New Year’s Eve. I think of KAC as a vicious, unintentional comic, a truly evil clown.
The press secretary, by definition, gets more screen time than anyone else. It needs to be someone who can be brought to heel, who is obedient, and who has no personal base. Never O’Reilly.
@OldCatLady - I’m sure you’ve noticed that if KA Conjob is not lying, she never answers a question. Every time she points away and says “but look at what ‘they’ did”. Can’t believe they let her back out of her room.
@KDemo Oh yes, she is a spectacular success at redirection. I understand that she has never been ‘away’, and that she has been all over ‘her’ select media, spinning to a receptive audience. It’s worth remembering that to a large segment of the population, she is a hero. It’s scary.
@cranky1950 Yes, there are several former federal prosecutors on the ‘good buddy’ list. I’m pretty sure that some of the plum jobs still vacant will be made available to that list.
@OldCatLady
After the follow up news on the firing, one of the things any prospective Fire for FBI chief will be asked by the Senate under oath is whether that person has been asked to give a loyalty oathnor promise, and whether that person be willing under any circumstances to swear such an oath or promise. .
I wonder how many Trump hires have been asked for such an oath, or have given one?
@f00l Before this year, I would have have been positive that such a thing was impossible. The oath of office (5 U.S. Code § 3331 - Oath of office) for all civil servants and military personnel is clear, and everyone I ever knew took it solemnly and truthfully. However, hearing of some ‘loyalty pledge’ requirement now wouldn’t surprise me. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3331
@OldCatLady There’s a logic to Chris Christie, He hired a Russian agent to National Intelligence, only makes sense to hire a mafia bitch to run the FBI.
I will never, ever again think that he has committed the ultimate in ghastly acts. He keeps outdoing himself. Oh, and Comey is back on the list to testify in a closed hearing tomorrow.
I do feel for all newspeople. Keeping up with just the breaking news is wild. Inviting subject matter experts has to be a full time job. Comey is being quoted as saying ‘outside the realm of normal, even crazy’ IRT some of the tweetstorms.
TRUMP
Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Trump does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
KELLYANNE CONWAY
What do you mean?
TRUMP
Still it cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house.
“Trump Tower hath murdered sleep, and therefore America
Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.”
KELLYANNE CONWAY
Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength to think
So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there. Go carry them and smear
The sleepy jourmalists with blood.
TRUMP
I’ll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on ’t again I dare not.
KELLYANNE CONWAY
Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I’ll gild the faces of the journalists withal,
For it must seem their guilt.
@f00l Well, now you’ve jinxed things. (That was absolutely great, BTW. Thanks!) If only there were a Play where maddened journalists rose up. Or is that ‘The Birds’, where the great prize is Sovereignty?
Since the Day 2 Comeygate madness seems far worse for the WH than the Day 1 madness, what classic play shall we cast him in?
What kind of President/WH/AttnyGen choose, without taking time for reflection or consultation, to completely lose credibility with the vast majority of FBI agents?
Can Rosenstein recover his previously excellent reputation?
Inside info from someone who used to work on budgets for Federal prosecutors: for whatever it means: the budgets Sessions used to request for drug enforcement were many times larger than the budget requested by other Federal prosecutors covering similar populations. I don’t know Session’s history in any detail. Just thought that was interesting.
How many previously excellent or viable careers - political and administrative - will be destroyed by people attempting to stand with Trump, or execute the foolish and incompetent orders of what the Morning Joe Show calls our “day-trading President”?
@f00l Comparing budgets and expenditures, and seeing what pops out at you is one of the quiet joys of auditing operations. It doesn’t sound like much, but there is a deep satisfaction in, for instance, seeing security personnel swoop down upon a very crooked operator. I had a part in putting together the proof of his malfeasance. That person was scheduled to retire the next week, with a fat pension and lots of benefits. He forfeited everything and spent some time in prison. One could wish something similar would happen to others.
@OldCatLady
They don’t abide by ethics rules, but they do attempt to abide by loyalty oaths?
Except that, working under President Trump, abiding by a loyalty oath requires twisting oneself into an anti-logical knotted pretzel in a manner that is beyond the capacity of our human kind?
What Trump’s political capital would be if the Republicans in Congress stopped protecting him and enabling him and offering pretenses about him, and instead followed their consciences.
@f00l Many of the recent actions, and most of the Presidential orders, are longtime efforts from the Rs in Congress. There is no way that 45 knows the words in most of the orders, or the legislation. He is easy enough to manipulate, and his handlers know how to push his buttons. Firing Comey was probably his idea, and his lackeys came up with the words to flesh it out. However, I think that Comey’s sins were to get more press than 45, and to be a taller alpha male, and to refuse to take a fealty oath to 45.
(I lied about it being a change of pace, but I had not heard of Claudia Rankine before I read that, and now have one of her books on the way from Amazon.)
Today’s giggle from Merriam-Webster. I love dictionaries, and libraries. The Nixon library weighed in earlier this week, not to 45’s benefit.
Merriam-Webster politely tells Drumpf he did not invent phrase “prime the pump” Education for 45
@OldCatLady
Back in during Spring 2016, there were a number of decent articles on Trump, his techniques, game theory, and the art of war.
The best one that I recall analyzed how Trump was able to turn the strengths of other candidates into weakness, get way way way inside their analysis and decision cycles, and take over their media images. They simply couldn’t keep up with him. And they couldn’t make their arguments stick, given his gift for sloganeering, and his being so compellingly watchable, even if he watcher thinks Trump doesn’t even have a brain.
Everyone is going to choose watching a train wreck over watching someone like Jeb Bush.
It may have been in Atlantic Mag? Trying to track it down.
He’s using the same tactics now, or trying to. It doesn’t work quite as well, now that he can’t just make wild promises and rosy claims, but actually has to deliver stuff that people must live with one way or another. And I hope that the media and personality magic of his promises and claims will start to wear very thin, even to those suspectible to his personality and methods.
I briefly spoke to and listened to two pro-Trumpers this week, both at work (diff biz locations) but outdoors on break. In both cases I overheard remarks about the Coming firing, just before the person in question turned to me and said hello.
I was on company property both times as a visitor, and didn’t want to get into anything.
The first one: I tried to say something innocuous - “isn’t it wild in Washington right now”, or whatever.
The first encounter was settled and civilized and calm enough. The person, a divorced Mom who’s doing all right, just talked about how great it was that Trump was shaking up everything in Washington, and he hadn’t even gotten started yet. She couldn’t wait to see what Trump did next.
Perhaps I should mention that this Mom has a grown daughter who is in a serious relationship with a non-white female, and the Mom is incredibly supportive of her daughter and of the relationship. I don’t get how she reasons her way to supporting Trump - afaik she isn’t anti-Islam either. I just walked away wondering, hypothetically: if I were to try to discuss politics with her, with a view to opening up alternative possible perspectives, what might I even, theoretically, say, that she could or would hearing consider? I have no idea. She appears to be in a state of mind that doesn’t seem to allow for that sort of thinking.
The second one was talking with someone else I knew, heatedly, and the two disagreed. After they fretted me and one asked what I thought, I mentioned that I thought the Comey firing was an error. I shouldn’t have. I should have kept my mouth shut.
She started raging against Islam and Hillary and how we’re not going to go all to become Muslims here in America (like everyone is in Europe, according to her), and then on about Bernie and socialism, and then how Hillary is the biggest traitor and criminal who ever lived, and about Bengazi, Saudi Arabia, and how the Clintons and their Foundation steal money from everyone, how Podesta is a crook as proved by his emails, how the Clinton email server proves she’s evil evil evil, and if the Russians hacked the Democrats, the Dems deserved it, how we’re all better off knowing how venal and hideous the Dems are, and how Flynn was a hero who stood up to that pathetic excuse for a President, Obama, and how Obama was a Muslim and a traitor, and how Comey just wants press and more press, and on and on.
Most of her family is getting health insurance thru Obamacare, which she hates and despises, and “Trump is gonna give us good insurance and build a wall and cut our taxes, and he will Make America Great Again”.
My emotions were higher than usual, given the Comey firing, and I said something or other about “alternative facts” news sites, and that her ideas were not really a defensible point of view, given that those facts were neither supportable nor correct. That’s all I said, but afterwards I really wished I had said nothing political at all, as in my normal practice. I spoke in emotional heat, but with no possible eventual gain to justify speaking at all.
I felt embarrassed and ashamed a bit over my conduct with the second one, because although my tone and words were level and reasonable (I think), I spoke with internal emotion, and felt some degree of an unapproved irrational instinctual impulse toward combat conversation. For what? There’s no possible “Win” there.
Both of these people went to college for at least a few years. Both of them are very hard-working, nice, funny, friendly, warm, supportive, and non-judgmental in normal daily life. I like both of them personally quite a bit, outside of politics. I suppose I see their politics, as stated, as a sort of mental affliction.
I have no idea what I could have said to either of them to make a bit of difference. Or to any other Trump voter I know of (I know many); I can’t think of anything that would not backfire and cause more resentment, at least until these persons come to see things differently thru their own lives and judgments.
Most liberals, progressives, and Democrats I know here never discuss politics in public, many not even with their families. And they’ve tried. It’s just completely hostile territory here, and it just makes things worse: everyone is angry or resentful or condemnatory afterwards, for a good while.
@f00l “He’s using the same tactics now, or trying to. It doesn’t work quite as well, now that he can’t…”
Also the “They’re all picking on me and my family because they don’t like it when we tell truth to power” doesn’t fly when you and the family you’ve installed in government positions are the power.
@f00l I haven’t been able to have a civil and meaningful conversation with any of his supporters. Ever. If I limit to weather or sports, talking to my neighbors is possible, briefly. At the library where I volunteer, every single employee is opposed to him, his party, and all their policies. The only place they can talk about it is in the staff areas, which are badged access. My friends there are my island of sanity, and vice versa.
@OldCatLady The only headway I’ve ever made with a Trump supporter was before the election when my friend (a 58 year old die hard Republican who has been a pizza delivery driver living paycheck to paycheck most of his life) and I were having a fully oppositional but polite discussion about it. While my primary concern is the environment, he’s a global warming denier (it’s happening but it’s natural, not manmade) and doesn’t support any environmental protections. So I was talking about the impact to the poor in gutting social programs, because he is a good person and does care about others. I concluded with saying that I hoped that he had room in his tiny 1br apartment for three of his good friends of 50 years who are all essentially unemployable, disabled and have been living for decades off food stamps, MHMR and other social programs. That was clearly a sobering thought for him, and while I’m sure it didn’t change his vote it put human faces and real world catastrophes on the conservative budget cuts.
Incomprehensibly, the three welfare dependents are also Republicans. In my social group there is a clear political economic divide, those with careers, steady income, homeowners, etc are Democrats, and those with subsistence or no jobs, living hand to mouth with no safety net are Republicans. It’s confounding.
@OldCatLady
Yeah I saw that. But that’s not the article that impressed me most last spring. The one that sticks with me appeared during the primaries before Trump had sewn up the nomination.
I think it was written by a combat-veteran and game-theory academic who works in the Dept of Defense on war strategy. I’m going to try to track it down.
I haven’t been able to have a civil and meaningful conversation with any of his supporters.
I managed to have a few decent conversations (civil, respectful, considerate, and thoughtful on both sides) with I think 2 or three Trump supporters during the primaries and the general election.
It helped me to understand their thinking a little. I changed no one’s mind, not even 1%, and they prob had about the same degree of success or less with me.
To put it very, very mildly, the home email server thing was HUGE. The people I spoke with either had been in the military, or had friends or family who had been in the military, or they had been LEOs, or had friends and family who were LEOs. Just the mention of it: they tended to get red in the face, and not be able to speak, for fear of saying something they would regret later because it was just too strong, even tho they would have still believed in it.
That, combined, with Comey’s public scolding of HRC, the Clinton Foundation rumors, the HRC investment bank speeches, and their general dislike of all things Clinton, plus the stuff that came out in the DNC and Clinton hacks: and, to some degree, they bought into Trump’s combative conservative optimism (as they saw it); and they simply didn’t believe he meant the horrible and rude things he said, or the incredible things he was accused of. Plus most of them saw the election thru the Fox News lens.
Only a few of them actually want a wall. Most explicitly don’t. But they thought Trump would do something about immigration, and they liked that idea. They really liked him for his gung-ho, endlessly self-confident attitudes. The stuff that made most of us cringe or look on, disbelieving and repulsed, they tended to think was all Trump’s ongoing personal entertainment show.
The people I spoke with in a fairly candid fashion were all people I have known reasonably well for a decade or more, with a good deal of trust, and, I hope, a good deal of mutual respect. I certainly had and have respect for these people. I was not surprised by their perspective, and did not expect to have any influence.
Most of my family identifies as Republican. The few R exiles among us joke about it. My cousins, my aunt (the only one living), and my nieces and nephews all hoped for a Kasich or a Bush sort to get the R nomination. Then they intended to vote for Trump, as of summer 2016, since he wasn’t HRC. They could and did give sophisticated economic and social reasons why. (Younger bro could have been a star writer on the National Review had he chosen.) Then, the fall news about Trump came in, and they couldn’t vote for him. A few of them wrote Kasich or Bush in, I think a few left it blank, perhaps 1 or 2 went libertarian, and I think a few voted for HRC and won’t admit it. I never took a poll, of course.
My Mom died more than 40 years ago. My Dad remarried a wonderful person who had kids and now has a lot of grandkids and great-grandkids of her own. These are all low key, soft-spoken, hard-working people, they think of themselves as “working-class”, some are small-business owners. They didn’t go to college, let alone at some name place out of state. They lack the verbal confidence of the family I grew up in - which perhaps came from a set of relations full of lawyers, plus my Always-Right Grandmother who would have cheerfully argued at length even to set her Deity straight.
I didn’t talk to these among my step-family before the election. I thought it would not have been much appreciated. I did talk to several of them, in very low key and relaxed conversations, at Thanksgiving.
Their reasons were the same or similar to those given above. And they strongly resented being “looked down on”. They do not think of themselves as even slightly intolerant or anti-Muslim, and in a few instances have the personal relationships to prove it.
I thought, and think, that they bought into the Trump and Fox News myths, and did not think critically about it.
Objectively, I think that’s prob fairly true, as far as “objectivity” goes when talking about politics, which is to say, “not all that far”. But all this worries me some in myself, even tho I don’t internally doubt my conclusions about the political scene (tho I always seek more depth of insight, or think I do - and it bothers me how little I know and how little I can interpret as fully as I would wish).
What bothers me, ethically, and in terms of potential and actual unexamined arrogance in my “soul” (as it were), is how terribly easy it is for verbal people who have always been confident and able to hold our own in conversations among the educated and well-read; how easy for me, for instance, to just make assumptions about those who are don’t feel as ease in those settings, and who, when the obviously-educated and verbally gifted are speaking, tend to be silent, and to assume they aren’t worthy to be part of the conversation, because the flow of somewhat sophisticated ideas and arguments don’t come as easily to them.
I know this other side of my family well-enough; have seen the two sides of the family interact enough … the side of the family I grew up with literally talks differently among ourselves, than when all the tribe are all together; and no one mentions it, and for the family I grew up with, the adjustment is automatic. But my step-family knows.
If they, and others who also don’t claim membership among the easily-verbal feel silenced when among the educated, or feel resentment about assumptions the media-savvy make about them, I can well understand it. The chattering classes don’t exactly come out and talk with them much, are obviously not inclusive, and when those savvy sorts do encounter them, there are clear and visible class assumptions based on presumed intellect, and on visible education. These not-verbal people know it, can see it, can feel it.
They tend to believe they owe no explanations to anyone. And I do get why they feel that way.
We are in a very dangerous time. And i suspect it won’t get fixed easily or quickly or nicely. I think we are in for it - a very long, very hard time.
I think - I hope - that the good guys finally win. I do expect lies and intolerance and horribleness and casualties; and if in the end we win, a long, slow, painful healing.
Tempestuous times always look, long after they are done, like their denouements were inevitable. But I suspect that little was inevitable during the chaos of those times when intellectual and moral honor and decency were terribly at risk, and when finally those who we think of as “the good guys” prevailed.
Makes even some leftists kinda wish for the Reagan era a little. Politicians tended to do that (put country first sometimes), a bit, now and then, in those days.
(Compared to now.)
Today’s politics is what winning a Cold War will get you. Too many of them think nothing serious could be at risk.
Remember that political science talk in the early 1990’s about “the end of history”?
At the time I heard about it, my reaction was exactly;
The End Of History, My Ass
I think someone got caught up in fantasies of big, sweeping, historical trends and completely forgot about our constant capacities to utterly fuck up in ways large and small.
From an article in The Guardian, 2014
(Google amp link below)
In the summer of 1989, the American magazine the National Interest published an essay with the strikingly bold title “The End of History?”. Its author, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama, announced that the great ideological battles between east and west were over, and that western liberal democracy had triumphed. With anti-communist protests sweeping across the former Soviet Union, the essay seemed right on the money. Fukuyama became an unlikely star of political science, dubbed the “court philosopher of global capitalism” by John Gray. When his book The End of History and the Last Man appeared three years later, the qualifying question mark was gone.
…
Pessimism about our species and planetary futures is warranted and prescient because of our wide-spread inability to even understand what logical thought is or would be, when we are working with fuzzy concepts in English or another natural language. (This inability includes “experts”).
Because of our psychological inability to measure and deal with risk and danger, even if we understand it conceptually.
Because of our native tendency to default to idiot economics and not think clearly about international, national, and local risks. (Think 2007-08 and the run-up).
Became we we wanna feel good even if it means being stupid.
And a zillion other reasons.
And all of those flaws and more, I am more than tarnished by, personally. As is almost everyone.
But there are better, and worse, philosophies and methods, for all that.
@KDemo
Ya know, Fukuyama, or someone, should have predicted Trump + Twitter.
Did Toffler? Did someone? All the elements were there. After the Wall came down (irony, that, given that soon a wall might go up), and we breathed a bit… mass comm was coming. Once you have it, … mass comm where everyone could make noise all at once, and someone with the hoaxing and sloganeering and sales-promises and rabble-rousing skill was coming to use it also. The personality type is kinda known.
Surely it’s in some SF novel somewhere, if not laid out by some futurist.
@f00l The Dunning-Kruger Effect was first postulated in 1999. It explains why so many of 45’s True Believers accept everything he says. Faux caters to them extensively, marketing itself as what they would say if they knew the words.
Stephen Fry explains why some people believe nearly everything Drumpf says Dunning Kruger and 45
Looking forward, just a little. The 43rd G-7 Summit will be held 26-27 May in Taormina, Sicily. That means that 45 will be flying in to Sigonella. Maybe he’ll fall off a mountain; the roads are treacherous. Just thinking of a motorcade on Sicilian roads is enough to make me smile. In reality, he’ll take a helicopter to the site. Hmm. Wonder how the locals feel about him. For perspective, here’s the road from the bus station in Taormina, which is WAAAYYY up the side of Etna, down to sea level.
I haven’t looked at today’s agenda yet.
@PlacidPenguin Graham got right to it. Clapper and Yates sworn in, and at 3:11 he asked ‘What did you tell the White House about Mr. Flynn?’ SY: ‘We warned that Flynn could be blackmailed by Russians.’
Wow, I thought I was the only one who watched the raw politics rather than through a political expert’s recap.
@aungericht You are not. Many years ago, I wrote some very boring paragraphs which were submitted up the line, signed by my then superiors, and wound up in the Congressional Record. This is the source of most of what is published every day- staffers five levels down who are tasked to write simple descriptions of whatever projects, requests, or actions. It’s still fun to be a part of the system.
/giphy cogs
@OldCatLady
No time to watch or listen today, will have to make do with the soundclips.
I once watched all of Senator Sam Ervin’s Senate Watergate Committee proceedings for all those months. If that was on, I wasn’t in class. (The profs were understanding as long as you did the work.) I remember Erlichman and Haldeman on the stand, and John Dean and his wife Maureen Dean. I remember the moment Alexander Butterfield revealed to the world at large the existence of the WH Oval Office and West Wing automatic taping systems.
When John Dean did his book tour a few years back, he spent a day at my brother’s law firm’s office in Baltimore. I think the firm invited/paid him to speak on ethics or lack of ethics within the executive branch, and on ethics or the lack of ethics in relationships between law firms and the executive branch. My brother got to talk with him for an extended time. My bro said Dean was an interesting and insightful speaker.
John Dean in 1973
Maureen Dean in 1973
John Dean in 2008 I think
John Deans’s comments on President Trump, March 2017:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/john-dean-experienced-watergate-from-inside-hes-watching-donald-trump-closely/2017/03/13/0590ce2a-051f-11e7-b9fa-ed727b644a0b_story.html
Re the Congressional Record:
In the 1950’s and 1960’s my Always-Right Grandmother subscribed. She received a bound book the size of a Manhattan phone book by mail for every day Congressional business was conducted. They were stacked all over her house. When we were pre-schoolers, she would read to us and teach us. Once we learned to read, we used to scour them for material with which to torment her about the Russkies coming our way, and she took this conduct from us in good humor.
The reasons she got them: not entirely certain, but she was politically obsessed. And she used them for resources when she was policing the local editorial pages, and newspaper publishers (she had memorized their phone numbers, and they took her calls); and when she lectured US Congressman Jim Wright about anything and everything (she did this a lot). And the Records were resources for her endless vigilance against commie infiltration.
@f00l I would like to see Dean do a series of interviews right now. He already sounded the Saturday Night Massacre parallel - back in February. The Monday Night Massacre: Current Parallels To Nixon Administration https://n.pr/2kc0Efn
@f00l Dean is on MSNBC right now; this is ‘in the same style’ as the SNM. He’s projecting a few possible next steps for Congress to take, and discussing limitations to power. He’s surprised that the White House has ‘learned nothing from history.’ Really?
Is this anything like Netflix and chill?
@cengland0
/giphy Chiller scary good
/youtube Chiller scary good
/youtube Chiller the movies you died to see
@cengland0 Yeah, more like a slasher movie every minute. The latest news is that 45 had the termination letter delivered to Comey’s office in DC- by his personal bodyguard. Comey is in Los Angeles.
@OldCatLady
Had the letter delivered to the FBI after the news media had the firing news officially and were all running with it.
@OldCatLady
Are you watching today? Is anything likely to be good coming up?
@f00l Not watching, on phone, waiting at vet’s office. Next fireworks should be whenever the open House Intel Cmte. hearing on Russia/election is; Brennan, Clapper and Yates have been invited to that one. There has already been a closed meeting, on 4 May. http://intelligence.house.gov/calendar/
@OldCatLady
Sometimes, occasionally, someone in Congress steps up.
@OldCatLady
Remember this?
How reporter Daniel Schorr found out that he was included on the Nixon White House “enemies list”:
@f00l I had never seen that. It’s magnificent. The 45 Enemies List probably looks like 'Hillary, Nancy Pelosi, Alec Baldwin, Stephen Colbert, Wolf Blitzer, all of ABC, CBS, NBC- look, a squirrel! Very sick, sad squirrel!
Popcorn on the menu again. 45 just fired FBI director James Comey, allegedly at the direction of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Wonder what corrupt piece of filth will be appointed in his place. Getting congressional approval will be, shall we say, difficult. It’s a 10-year term, served at the pleasure of the president.
@OldCatLady
Yeah.
Dust off all the special conspiracy theories, they will all be media stars for a while.
And some of them may be true.
The real problem with Comey is that Trump doesn’t own him.
@f00l Wonder who wrote that startling dismissal letter. It had polysyllabic words, and it ran to three pages.
@OldCatLady
Supposedly Sessions of one of his aides.
Does it feel a little like 1969?
@f00l The alarming news does, but now I know enough to see some of the repercussions. I still can’t project what’s coming next. No change there.
@f00l WaPo says Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein wrote the letter, which has blindsided the rank and file of the FBI. The ant farm is boiling.
@OldCatLady
Wow, I missed the breaking news announcement (due to fooding time).
A local news channel is only showing this news in the ticker at the bottom, and all 3 C-Span channels are preoccupied, though they’re making this news easily noticed.
@OldCatLady
This changes things for me. It looks suddenly much darker now.
Remember the Saturday Night Massacre?
I didn’t think that during my lifetime the US would again face a time like the late 1960’s.
@f00l MSNBC and CNN are lining up people from that era to explain WTFO, and perhaps put some perspective in place. Dean has been a guest on late night news for a few weeks now. Timing is interesting; late night comedy shows just finished taping tonight’s show. I’m sure it was deliberate. Brian Williams on MSNBC scrambled and took over the 6-7 EST slot; he’s on again at 11 PM. Even FNC is reporting on it. Carl Rove is on FNC right now, which ought to be educational.
@OldCatLady
I never thought I would miss having Dick Cheney in office.
Re late nite shows: they can throw in a few extras. Hope they do.
@OldCatLady Welp, glad I got a passport. Which Duolingo course should I take to prepare for a life in exile from my home country? French, German, Spanish, or something else?
@sanspoint I’d go for German, but only because it’s the one I know least. I’m staying right here. The weasels and stoats may have taken over Toad Hall, but I have confidence in the system. It will, however, be a wild ride. That reminds me, other countries’ news coverage should be worth watching. 45 has few friends in the international community.
/giphy Toad Hall
@OldCatLady I’m likely to be somewhat insulated, since I’m in New York City, but boy howdy, I’d prefer to be in a country with a functioning Democracy.
@sanspoint
I guess over the next few years we will find out if we have a functioning democracy or not.
And we will find out a lot about Republican members on Congress.
Sessions - I don’t know what he could possibly do to repair his reputation now.
Trump has the excuse of being Trump. Who knows how he makes decisions?
Sessions is acting on his own values.
@f00l According to the EIU, we’re a “flawed democracy”: https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index
Sessions doesn’t have to give a shit about his reputation, as long as he gets what he wants: making people of color, LGBTQ people, and women into second-class citizens (at best.)
@sanspoint
I thought Jeff Sessions had s sense of history. I thought he kinda understood what, in historical terms, he could get away with, and what he couldn’t get away with in the long term.
So I thought he would resist doing stuff like today’s move. Now, if our democracy survives, Jeff Sessions will almost certainly be a historical villian. I thought he was smart enough, and had enough of a sense of his own historocal position, that he would control himself somewhat in order to preserve his own reputation.
Perhaps Sessions is losing it mentally to a degree. He used be sufficiently aware of the way things work to wish to look dignified in public, at least to the degree that he could get away with.
Not my favorite evening.
@sanspoint
If you’re serious, then you should intend to go wherever they’ll let you in.
@f00l Then I’d say French, as the Canadians were making somewhat tongue in cheek offers to take in US refugees before the election. Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia is having serious problems keeping its population up that really does want US immigrants. Being retired, I don’t need work and I can live anywhere that’s affordable. Bob and I were half seriously looking at it, I found a house three times the size of mine on a big lot right across the street from the ocean selling for what my home’s valued at. I just don’t think I could take the cold. Bob and I were more seriously talking about moving to Roatan, many Central and South American countries are facilitating immigration for US retirees. They bring their retirement income with them and contribute much more to the economy than they take.
@sanspoint I wish I could say we are insulated. I’m in a blue city in red Texas, the poorest one, the one dependent on good relations with our closest neighbor, Cuidad Juarez. Just about the only thing I see on the horizon that might help us is that we have an enormous Army base that will hopefully see a share of increased defense spending. Some of that money filters into the local economy, but nothing like the income we get from Mexican shoppers.
Colbert had Sam Bee and Jon Stewart scheduled. It would be fun to watch it go live. Spicey ought to have a lively time tomorrow, if he dares to hold a press conference. FNC appears to have turned on a dime and is calling it a constitutional crisis. I never thought I’d hear THAT.
@OldCatLady
Rachel outta be on fire.
@OldCatLady
An hour away from home but listening to Rachel over Sirius.
When you’re under investigation, fire the investigator?
I was reading that 45 wants to dismiss any allegations as a reaction to being fired. And he wants more control over the investigation, more control in general.
Very scary for democracy.
@KDemo It does have 45’s personal stench all over it- impatience, cruelty and obliviousness (?) to the end effects. Malcolm Nance just pointed out that it’s his hallmark belief that cutting off the head of an organization will stop it. My personal belief is ‘fiat justitia ruat cælum’.
@OldCatLady - Had to look up the Latin
, and that would be the best outcome at this point. Not holding out lots of hope, though, unless a special prosecutor is appointed.
@OldCatLady We are living in interesting times… Your Latin quote has become popular (no surprise):
@Shrdlu
Now I am fascinated to see how the Republicans on the Hill will react.
And I am depressed as hell. Gotta get over that.
@f00l Rachel just pointed out that Comey was due to testify in an open Senate hearing on ‘worldwide threats’, on Thursday. Oddly, the calendar has not yet been updated, as of 9:22 PM EST.
@OldCatLady - I just signed up to pay the extra $5/mo to add MSNBC to my Sling subscription. I’ve missed Rachel for a long time, this was the straw that pushed me over the edge.
@KDemo
MSNBC is the biggest reason I have sling.
@OldCatLady
Re hearings: I wonder if they will still want Comey to show up.
@f00l Well, perhaps they do, but just now I wouldn’t give him ANY forum, if I were in Congress. I would expect the hearing to be rescheduled.
@f00l Lol, you make me feel so shallow. I have Sling for SyFy, USA and El Rey. I really appreciate you guys keeping me up to date on the death throes of American democracy as I am too depressed to watch the news.
@moondrake
I just don’t have time for much in the way of dramatic series right now. And after they air you can get them from streaming or blu-ray or whatever later.
News … I’m waiting. Hoping. There is going to be something that gets to the Trump White House, something that he/they can’t control and can’t effectively tweet or spin his/their way out of. Something that speaks to some of his base, and something that makes many of the powerful and respectable who work with him now just refuse to keep doing that, or only do so under very stringent conditions.
We’re not quite there yet, even with the Comey news, but we’re getting closer, due as much to the decision processes from the White House as anything else.
Someone, somewhere, is going to have to put him on a leash; or else he has to be impeached, and then we get Pence; or else the democracy is in serious danger.
I watched the election with intense fascination because Trump was so completely unfit and yet so capable of stirring real and phony drama; and because I hoped that last year’s election would put enough “good guys” in power that we could most forward with some sanity.
Now I watch because this White House does so many incredibly stupid and wildly dramatic things so quickly.
I think it was last week sometime that Morning Joe played clips of Trump tv interviews on political topics from the 80’s and 90’s, contrasted with him today.
20-30 years ago he was still incredible ego-driven and combative and impulsive, and ready to be loud-mouthed about all things he did or did not have a clue about. But he was different then, in signal ways: He was more controlled. He could think on his feet and speak, to a degree, in complex sentences and entire thematic paragraphs. He kept composure far better. He was way less into fake facts that no one believed but him. He seemed to understand that not everyone would just believe him or think he had great judgment, he understood that he actually had to make at least marginally credible arguments. He seemed to understand that he wasn’t the expert on everything.
Now he’s seemingly given his entire brain over to congratulating himself, accusing others, and deploying combat slogans. Everything is a threat, he must verbally stamp all events with a self-aggrandizing comeback, he’s ego-driven to take everything that happens as a challenge and to throw out more of his slogans.
His voters chose him for a combative, sloganeering, rabble-rousing attitude (“do ya feel lucky, punk?”), and for giving voice to simplistic views of various fears and suspicions and conspiracies, as much as for any other reason. They love how he makes them feel. He seems to get drunk on the feedback loop, and on screaming approval; 20 years ago he would not have been obsessed with crowd size or with having crowds scream for him while all the time he knew that the people whose approval most mattered to him were cringing or snickering at him. He would have understood that he actually had to accomplish meaningful things.
20 years ago he would have tried to avoid looking like an idiot. It would have bothered him. Now it’s just a reason to respond with a new attack. Pure red meat politics, driven by his current cognitive limits.
If he weren’t President, and hadn’t ripped so many people off, and hadn’t been hideous to so many people; then, as I watch him operate now, I might be moved to feel some pity for him in what appears to be his decline.
If my theory is correct, then I wonder how his conduct will appear in another year or two. Can we have, and would we want under current circumstances, a conservatorship presidency?
@f00l Can we have a conservatorship presidency? I think so. I don’t have 1% of your political acumen, but I’ve been under the impression that at some level Reagan’s second term was as figurehead, that Alzheimers had already eaten into his ability to do the job. Also Edith Wilson supposedly ran the government following Woodrow Wilson’s life changing stroke. Do we want such a presidency? I would have said no, because at least Trump does not act in secrecy, but if there is no limit to his antics then that’s no shield. In reading your comment I wondered how much of the changes in Trump are due to the relentless losses of age (and as you’ve pointed out a diet of junk food doesn’t help anyone’s brain), and how much is tied to the rise of the internet and the 24 hour news cycle. It seems his deterioration in some ways mirrors how facts and truths have been undermined and all but extinguished in the tide of opinion and willful blindness that informs modern media. In some ways Trump is very much a product of our times, odd in a man his age but perhaps his psyche was uniquely primed for this environment. I have heard him referred to as the id of the American people, an assessment that seems frighteningly accurate.
@moondrake
I also wonder how much Trump sleeps.
Reagan was going at the end, but Reagan could still handle himself with assistance, and could still do masterful public appearances.
And Reagan had spent a life of considerable discipline and mostly excellent personal relationships - those skills did not desert him. And to Reagan, it was never personal and he never had to respond to every “attack” will a bully’s impulsive ferocity.
So … 44 months and change remaining? Sigh.
@f00l I wasn’t comparing Trump to Reagan. While I didn’t care for his presidency, I think he mostly did what he believed was right, and he was one of the most gifted public speakers ever to occupy the office. Just thinking about presidents and conservatorship. I don’t think the concept of right and wrong actually exist for Trump, I think he defines it all as win or lose.
@moondrake
I think Trump defines right and wrong according to his own reactions and what he wants.
I.E. the use of Sarin gas was bad enough for him to take action, because he saw it on tv, and it really bothered him.
If he wants something, then there is some justification for it, and he will find a way to embrace it.
On moral and ethical issues, perhaps the only person he will actually listen to seems to be Ivanka.
Yesterday’s events: he really has almost no judgment. And his staff, and the Justice Dept: how could they not have realized it would be a firestorm? Are they utterly clueless about law and politics? Everyone else I know knew what to expect the minute each heard the news. And none of us are politicians.
I wonder how much of his lifelong capacities he actually retains at present?
@f00l He’s a vindictive loose cannon, and it does not matter whether he would have ever had more restraint. He orders things to be done because he can, and glories in his power. Several news organizations have put out ‘emergency’ podcasts, and I had time today to listen.
Too late, punk. Updated 9:24 PM-
CNN exclusive: Grand jury subpoenas issued in FBI’s Russia investigation @CNNPolitics http://cnn.it/2pxsbrA
@OldCatLady
Awesome. Thx.
Check out Claude Taylor on Twitter. https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated
He says ‘A source with knowledge of the investigation says that nine sealed indictments came down in one case with sixteen more expected in others.’
Also hearing that McMaster may be next on the chopping block because he is not controllable, not good at stroking egos. Of course 45 would get rid of someone with integrity - obviously a frightening trait in this administration.
@KDemo Did you ever play pickup sticks? That’s what this whole thing reminds me of.
@OldCatLady - Oh yes! But in slooow motion.
Anyone up on the Fox News party line this evening?
Just got this on my mind phone:
Conway. I see the White House is being a little casual regarding credibility in picking their spokesperson for tonight’s news.
She’s banned from many shows on MSNBC and elsewhere for provably lying on the air. Why the hell does CNN let her onto Cooper’s show?
@f00l I give up, why? Who else is batshit enough to poke their head up today?
@OldCatLady
Plenty of Trump’s people know how to Talk Like A Politician and aren’t improvisational nutcases. She is the worst choice.
@f00l Possibly everyone else realized that whatever they say can, and will, be used against them, first by the other party, then by their own party. I notice that tomorrow’s press briefer is going to be Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Possibly Spicey is busy elsewhere?
@OldCatLady
Spicey - I may just feel a twinge of old style pity for him now - Spicey prob just can’t handle what he knows is coming.
For this, who do you need? Hmmm. Someone glossy and imperturbable and always perfectly behaved. A complete media-promotional cypher who never loses their cool, never acts undignified, never seems flustered, never runs low on standard defensive BS and can go on for hours non-stop.
Someone who can do and be all that whether they are explaining the actions of an angel or a monster.
@f00l So - Not O’Reilly then?
@KDemo
Only someone like O’Reilly as press secretary if you want the networks all endlessly replaying the press-briefing-combat-footage all day every day, and people starting to bet on favorites, and O’Reilly becoming an endless meme, effective in terms of getting attention, but useless or worse in terms of message. And the whole business would drown out Trump half the time, even if Trump were being Outrageous As Usual.
@f00l After consideration, I think it’s because AC has experience with smart-mouths saying completely outrageous things. He and Kathy Griffin do a great job on New Year’s Eve. I think of KAC as a vicious, unintentional comic, a truly evil clown.
The press secretary, by definition, gets more screen time than anyone else. It needs to be someone who can be brought to heel, who is obedient, and who has no personal base. Never O’Reilly.
@OldCatLady - I’m sure you’ve noticed that if KA Conjob is not lying, she never answers a question. Every time she points away and says “but look at what ‘they’ did”. Can’t believe they let her back out of her room.
@KDemo Oh yes, she is a spectacular success at redirection. I understand that she has never been ‘away’, and that she has been all over ‘her’ select media, spinning to a receptive audience. It’s worth remembering that to a large segment of the population, she is a hero. It’s scary.
@OldCatLady
Heard that Spicey was doing his military Reserve service.
Good for him. Away from toxicity, plus a few amends.
Honestly, as he’s not that old, what kind of career progression will be left to him after this Presidency?
Job at Trump’s Presidential Library?
Blowhard trainer?
Trumpfan recovery counselor?
I see him in some slightly ceremonial position.
I kinda hope he’s not up for
Federal Inmate.
Today’s theme: The Walls Come Tumbling Down
WaPo breaking news alert popped up on my screen. When I clicked through, I got this 404 message:
Needed a laugh.
Have you heard Giuliani is on the short list for FBI head?
Will we ever hit bottom?
Correction - Giuliani is denying the rumor. There’s hope for someone that’s worthy? Haha. jk.
@KDemo
The hearings on that will be an … uh … event.
Trumps wants “wins” yet he keeps digging the hole deeper.
If he keeps going like this, many Congressional Republicans may have to walk away from him for the sake of their careers.
@KDemo Maybe Chris Christie
@cranky1950 Yes, there are several former federal prosecutors on the ‘good buddy’ list. I’m pretty sure that some of the plum jobs still vacant will be made available to that list.
@OldCatLady
After the follow up news on the firing, one of the things any prospective Fire for FBI chief will be asked by the Senate under oath is whether that person has been asked to give a loyalty oathnor promise, and whether that person be willing under any circumstances to swear such an oath or promise. .
I wonder how many Trump hires have been asked for such an oath, or have given one?
@f00l Before this year, I would have have been positive that such a thing was impossible. The oath of office (5 U.S. Code § 3331 - Oath of office) for all civil servants and military personnel is clear, and everyone I ever knew took it solemnly and truthfully. However, hearing of some ‘loyalty pledge’ requirement now wouldn’t surprise me.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3331
@OldCatLady There’s a logic to Chris Christie, He hired a Russian agent to National Intelligence, only makes sense to hire a mafia bitch to run the FBI.
I will never, ever again think that he has committed the ultimate in ghastly acts. He keeps outdoing himself. Oh, and Comey is back on the list to testify in a closed hearing tomorrow.
@OldCatLady - Tried to watch CSpan today. Had to turn it off when McConnell showed up.
Just. Can’t.
@KDemo
Keep the mute button at the ready always.
@f00l @KDemo Don’t forget to watch the ‘Accordion To’ routine again. It makes me smile every time.
I do feel for all newspeople. Keeping up with just the breaking news is wild. Inviting subject matter experts has to be a full time job. Comey is being quoted as saying ‘outside the realm of normal, even crazy’ IRT some of the tweetstorms.
@OldCatLady
TRUMP
Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Trump does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
KELLYANNE CONWAY
What do you mean?
TRUMP
Still it cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house.
“Trump Tower hath murdered sleep, and therefore America
Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.”
KELLYANNE CONWAY
Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength to think
So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there. Go carry them and smear
The sleepy jourmalists with blood.
TRUMP
I’ll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on ’t again I dare not.
KELLYANNE CONWAY
Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I’ll gild the faces of the journalists withal,
For it must seem their guilt.
@f00l Well, now you’ve jinxed things. (That was absolutely great, BTW. Thanks!) If only there were a Play where maddened journalists rose up. Or is that ‘The Birds’, where the great prize is Sovereignty?
@OldCatLady
I screwed up tho.
Missed a “MacBeth” that should have been changed to “Trump”.
: (
@f00l Noticed. Plus “jourmalists”. We all make mistakes. But still very entertaining.
@f00l Now would you write him completely out of this Play, please?
@OldCatLady
I wish I had Shakespeare’s powers on that.
Since the Day 2 Comeygate madness seems far worse for the WH than the Day 1 madness, what classic play shall we cast him in?
What kind of President/WH/AttnyGen choose, without taking time for reflection or consultation, to completely lose credibility with the vast majority of FBI agents?
Can Rosenstein recover his previously excellent reputation?
Inside info from someone who used to work on budgets for Federal prosecutors: for whatever it means: the budgets Sessions used to request for drug enforcement were many times larger than the budget requested by other Federal prosecutors covering similar populations. I don’t know Session’s history in any detail. Just thought that was interesting.
How many previously excellent or viable careers - political and administrative - will be destroyed by people attempting to stand with Trump, or execute the foolish and incompetent orders of what the Morning Joe Show calls our “day-trading President”?
@f00l Comparing budgets and expenditures, and seeing what pops out at you is one of the quiet joys of auditing operations. It doesn’t sound like much, but there is a deep satisfaction in, for instance, seeing security personnel swoop down upon a very crooked operator. I had a part in putting together the proof of his malfeasance. That person was scheduled to retire the next week, with a fat pension and lots of benefits. He forfeited everything and spent some time in prison. One could wish something similar would happen to others.
@OldCatLady I did similar work. I used to call it CSI: CD (my department).
@f00l IRT ‘standing with’ and ‘executing…orders’, government ethics training includes very specific guidance on what to do, and how to make those thorny decisions. Helpfully, it’s required annually. https://www2.oge.gov/Web/oge.nsf/Resources/5+C.F.R.+Part+2635:++Standards+of+ethical+conduct+for+employees+of+the+executive+branch
@OldCatLady
the rules and understandings about ethics and conflicts of interest do not seem to afflict political appointees. sigh.
@f00l They do apply, but are not being enforced. http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/trump-white-house-appears-kill-obamas-ethics-rule-appointees-may-not-be-signing
@OldCatLady
They don’t abide by ethics rules, but they do attempt to abide by loyalty oaths?
Except that, working under President Trump, abiding by a loyalty oath requires twisting oneself into an anti-logical knotted pretzel in a manner that is beyond the capacity of our human kind?
Every Congressperson and Senator’s stand on the Comey Firing
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/10/us/politics/congress-statements-comey.html
(If they try to make you subscribe, clear your cookies or use another browser. Or … subscribe …)
@f00l lol @ Rep. Joyce Beatty
Trump to his Press Office:
Trump’s political capital
/image $20
What Trump’s political capital would be if the Republicans in Congress stopped protecting him and enabling him and offering pretenses about him, and instead followed their consciences.
/image zero
@f00l
Huh. Cute. Trump loves Andrew Jackson, about whom he is completely ignorant.
I wasn’t thinking about Andrew Jackson when I decided on $20.
Coincidence or Fate?
@f00l Coincidences are the building blocks of fate.
@f00l Many of the recent actions, and most of the Presidential orders, are longtime efforts from the Rs in Congress. There is no way that 45 knows the words in most of the orders, or the legislation. He is easy enough to manipulate, and his handlers know how to push his buttons. Firing Comey was probably his idea, and his lackeys came up with the words to flesh it out. However, I think that Comey’s sins were to get more press than 45, and to be a taller alpha male, and to refuse to take a fealty oath to 45.
For a little light reading, here’s a nice change of pace:
http://lithub.com/claudia-rankine-i-think-we-need-to-be-frightened/
(I lied about it being a change of pace, but I had not heard of Claudia Rankine before I read that, and now have one of her books on the way from Amazon.)
Today’s giggle from Merriam-Webster. I love dictionaries, and libraries. The Nixon library weighed in earlier this week, not to 45’s benefit.
Merriam-Webster politely tells Drumpf he did not invent phrase “prime the pump” Education for 45
Why the traditional media are slow on the uptake lately, and how to figure out what the headlines mean:
Citizen Journalists (aux armes, citoyens!)
@OldCatLady
Back in during Spring 2016, there were a number of decent articles on Trump, his techniques, game theory, and the art of war.
The best one that I recall analyzed how Trump was able to turn the strengths of other candidates into weakness, get way way way inside their analysis and decision cycles, and take over their media images. They simply couldn’t keep up with him. And they couldn’t make their arguments stick, given his gift for sloganeering, and his being so compellingly watchable, even if he watcher thinks Trump doesn’t even have a brain.
Everyone is going to choose watching a train wreck over watching someone like Jeb Bush.
It may have been in Atlantic Mag? Trying to track it down.
He’s using the same tactics now, or trying to. It doesn’t work quite as well, now that he can’t just make wild promises and rosy claims, but actually has to deliver stuff that people must live with one way or another. And I hope that the media and personality magic of his promises and claims will start to wear very thin, even to those suspectible to his personality and methods.
I briefly spoke to and listened to two pro-Trumpers this week, both at work (diff biz locations) but outdoors on break. In both cases I overheard remarks about the Coming firing, just before the person in question turned to me and said hello.
I was on company property both times as a visitor, and didn’t want to get into anything.
The first one: I tried to say something innocuous - “isn’t it wild in Washington right now”, or whatever.
The first encounter was settled and civilized and calm enough. The person, a divorced Mom who’s doing all right, just talked about how great it was that Trump was shaking up everything in Washington, and he hadn’t even gotten started yet. She couldn’t wait to see what Trump did next.
Perhaps I should mention that this Mom has a grown daughter who is in a serious relationship with a non-white female, and the Mom is incredibly supportive of her daughter and of the relationship. I don’t get how she reasons her way to supporting Trump - afaik she isn’t anti-Islam either. I just walked away wondering, hypothetically: if I were to try to discuss politics with her, with a view to opening up alternative possible perspectives, what might I even, theoretically, say, that she could or would hearing consider? I have no idea. She appears to be in a state of mind that doesn’t seem to allow for that sort of thinking.
The second one was talking with someone else I knew, heatedly, and the two disagreed. After they fretted me and one asked what I thought, I mentioned that I thought the Comey firing was an error. I shouldn’t have. I should have kept my mouth shut.
She started raging against Islam and Hillary and how we’re not going to go all to become Muslims here in America (like everyone is in Europe, according to her), and then on about Bernie and socialism, and then how Hillary is the biggest traitor and criminal who ever lived, and about Bengazi, Saudi Arabia, and how the Clintons and their Foundation steal money from everyone, how Podesta is a crook as proved by his emails, how the Clinton email server proves she’s evil evil evil, and if the Russians hacked the Democrats, the Dems deserved it, how we’re all better off knowing how venal and hideous the Dems are, and how Flynn was a hero who stood up to that pathetic excuse for a President, Obama, and how Obama was a Muslim and a traitor, and how Comey just wants press and more press, and on and on.
Most of her family is getting health insurance thru Obamacare, which she hates and despises, and “Trump is gonna give us good insurance and build a wall and cut our taxes, and he will Make America Great Again”.
My emotions were higher than usual, given the Comey firing, and I said something or other about “alternative facts” news sites, and that her ideas were not really a defensible point of view, given that those facts were neither supportable nor correct. That’s all I said, but afterwards I really wished I had said nothing political at all, as in my normal practice. I spoke in emotional heat, but with no possible eventual gain to justify speaking at all.
I felt embarrassed and ashamed a bit over my conduct with the second one, because although my tone and words were level and reasonable (I think), I spoke with internal emotion, and felt some degree of an unapproved irrational instinctual impulse toward combat conversation. For what? There’s no possible “Win” there.
Both of these people went to college for at least a few years. Both of them are very hard-working, nice, funny, friendly, warm, supportive, and non-judgmental in normal daily life. I like both of them personally quite a bit, outside of politics. I suppose I see their politics, as stated, as a sort of mental affliction.
I have no idea what I could have said to either of them to make a bit of difference. Or to any other Trump voter I know of (I know many); I can’t think of anything that would not backfire and cause more resentment, at least until these persons come to see things differently thru their own lives and judgments.
Most liberals, progressives, and Democrats I know here never discuss politics in public, many not even with their families. And they’ve tried. It’s just completely hostile territory here, and it just makes things worse: everyone is angry or resentful or condemnatory afterwards, for a good while.
: (
@f00l “He’s using the same tactics now, or trying to. It doesn’t work quite as well, now that he can’t…”
Also the “They’re all picking on me and my family because they don’t like it when we tell truth to power” doesn’t fly when you and the family you’ve installed in government positions are the power.
@f00l I haven’t been able to have a civil and meaningful conversation with any of his supporters. Ever. If I limit to weather or sports, talking to my neighbors is possible, briefly. At the library where I volunteer, every single employee is opposed to him, his party, and all their policies. The only place they can talk about it is in the staff areas, which are badged access. My friends there are my island of sanity, and vice versa.
@f00l Well, it’s not the Atlantic, but close. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/what-game-theory-tells-us-about-donald-trump-20160511
@OldCatLady The only headway I’ve ever made with a Trump supporter was before the election when my friend (a 58 year old die hard Republican who has been a pizza delivery driver living paycheck to paycheck most of his life) and I were having a fully oppositional but polite discussion about it. While my primary concern is the environment, he’s a global warming denier (it’s happening but it’s natural, not manmade) and doesn’t support any environmental protections. So I was talking about the impact to the poor in gutting social programs, because he is a good person and does care about others. I concluded with saying that I hoped that he had room in his tiny 1br apartment for three of his good friends of 50 years who are all essentially unemployable, disabled and have been living for decades off food stamps, MHMR and other social programs. That was clearly a sobering thought for him, and while I’m sure it didn’t change his vote it put human faces and real world catastrophes on the conservative budget cuts.
Incomprehensibly, the three welfare dependents are also Republicans. In my social group there is a clear political economic divide, those with careers, steady income, homeowners, etc are Democrats, and those with subsistence or no jobs, living hand to mouth with no safety net are Republicans. It’s confounding.
@OldCatLady
Yeah I saw that. But that’s not the article that impressed me most last spring. The one that sticks with me appeared during the primaries before Trump had sewn up the nomination.
I think it was written by a combat-veteran and game-theory academic who works in the Dept of Defense on war strategy. I’m going to try to track it down.
@OldCatLady
I managed to have a few decent conversations (civil, respectful, considerate, and thoughtful on both sides) with I think 2 or three Trump supporters during the primaries and the general election.
It helped me to understand their thinking a little. I changed no one’s mind, not even 1%, and they prob had about the same degree of success or less with me.
To put it very, very mildly, the home email server thing was HUGE. The people I spoke with either had been in the military, or had friends or family who had been in the military, or they had been LEOs, or had friends and family who were LEOs. Just the mention of it: they tended to get red in the face, and not be able to speak, for fear of saying something they would regret later because it was just too strong, even tho they would have still believed in it.
That, combined, with Comey’s public scolding of HRC, the Clinton Foundation rumors, the HRC investment bank speeches, and their general dislike of all things Clinton, plus the stuff that came out in the DNC and Clinton hacks: and, to some degree, they bought into Trump’s combative conservative optimism (as they saw it); and they simply didn’t believe he meant the horrible and rude things he said, or the incredible things he was accused of. Plus most of them saw the election thru the Fox News lens.
Only a few of them actually want a wall. Most explicitly don’t. But they thought Trump would do something about immigration, and they liked that idea. They really liked him for his gung-ho, endlessly self-confident attitudes. The stuff that made most of us cringe or look on, disbelieving and repulsed, they tended to think was all Trump’s ongoing personal entertainment show.
The people I spoke with in a fairly candid fashion were all people I have known reasonably well for a decade or more, with a good deal of trust, and, I hope, a good deal of mutual respect. I certainly had and have respect for these people. I was not surprised by their perspective, and did not expect to have any influence.
Most of my family identifies as Republican. The few R exiles among us joke about it. My cousins, my aunt (the only one living), and my nieces and nephews all hoped for a Kasich or a Bush sort to get the R nomination. Then they intended to vote for Trump, as of summer 2016, since he wasn’t HRC. They could and did give sophisticated economic and social reasons why. (Younger bro could have been a star writer on the National Review had he chosen.) Then, the fall news about Trump came in, and they couldn’t vote for him. A few of them wrote Kasich or Bush in, I think a few left it blank, perhaps 1 or 2 went libertarian, and I think a few voted for HRC and won’t admit it. I never took a poll, of course.
My Mom died more than 40 years ago. My Dad remarried a wonderful person who had kids and now has a lot of grandkids and great-grandkids of her own. These are all low key, soft-spoken, hard-working people, they think of themselves as “working-class”, some are small-business owners. They didn’t go to college, let alone at some name place out of state. They lack the verbal confidence of the family I grew up in - which perhaps came from a set of relations full of lawyers, plus my Always-Right Grandmother who would have cheerfully argued at length even to set her Deity straight.
I didn’t talk to these among my step-family before the election. I thought it would not have been much appreciated. I did talk to several of them, in very low key and relaxed conversations, at Thanksgiving.
Their reasons were the same or similar to those given above. And they strongly resented being “looked down on”. They do not think of themselves as even slightly intolerant or anti-Muslim, and in a few instances have the personal relationships to prove it.
I thought, and think, that they bought into the Trump and Fox News myths, and did not think critically about it.
Objectively, I think that’s prob fairly true, as far as “objectivity” goes when talking about politics, which is to say, “not all that far”. But all this worries me some in myself, even tho I don’t internally doubt my conclusions about the political scene (tho I always seek more depth of insight, or think I do - and it bothers me how little I know and how little I can interpret as fully as I would wish).
What bothers me, ethically, and in terms of potential and actual unexamined arrogance in my “soul” (as it were), is how terribly easy it is for verbal people who have always been confident and able to hold our own in conversations among the educated and well-read; how easy for me, for instance, to just make assumptions about those who are don’t feel as ease in those settings, and who, when the obviously-educated and verbally gifted are speaking, tend to be silent, and to assume they aren’t worthy to be part of the conversation, because the flow of somewhat sophisticated ideas and arguments don’t come as easily to them.
I know this other side of my family well-enough; have seen the two sides of the family interact enough … the side of the family I grew up with literally talks differently among ourselves, than when all the tribe are all together; and no one mentions it, and for the family I grew up with, the adjustment is automatic. But my step-family knows.
If they, and others who also don’t claim membership among the easily-verbal feel silenced when among the educated, or feel resentment about assumptions the media-savvy make about them, I can well understand it. The chattering classes don’t exactly come out and talk with them much, are obviously not inclusive, and when those savvy sorts do encounter them, there are clear and visible class assumptions based on presumed intellect, and on visible education. These not-verbal people know it, can see it, can feel it.
They tend to believe they owe no explanations to anyone. And I do get why they feel that way.
You are clearly no fool, @f00l.
@KDemo
Thx.
But actually I am. And damned proud of it!
A chilling overview of our current constitutional crisis. Jump to 22:00 - 23:30
https://cpa.ds.npr.org/kuow/audio/2017/05/WIR_20170512.mp3?siteplayer=true&dl=1
Speaker is Chris Vance, former Washington State Republican Party chair, on a local NPR panel show today.
"We are in an authoritarian dictatorship, not a democracy."
Is anyone still saying we will be all right?
@KDemo
We are in a very dangerous time. And i suspect it won’t get fixed easily or quickly or nicely. I think we are in for it - a very long, very hard time.
I think - I hope - that the good guys finally win. I do expect lies and intolerance and horribleness and casualties; and if in the end we win, a long, slow, painful healing.
Tempestuous times always look, long after they are done, like their denouements were inevitable. But I suspect that little was inevitable during the chaos of those times when intellectual and moral honor and decency were terribly at risk, and when finally those who we think of as “the good guys” prevailed.
I play this song sometimes
Live Aid, 1985
@f00l - Thanks, Love TP, and that’s a favorite. Also The Waiting.
If the Rs would stop drinking the Kool-Aid and put the good of the country over party politics, then we might have a chance.
@KDemo
Re: country vs party
Makes even some leftists kinda wish for the Reagan era a little. Politicians tended to do that (put country first sometimes), a bit, now and then, in those days.
(Compared to now.)
Today’s politics is what winning a Cold War will get you. Too many of them think nothing serious could be at risk.
Remember that political science talk in the early 1990’s about “the end of history”?
At the time I heard about it, my reaction was exactly;
The End Of History, My Ass
I think someone got caught up in fantasies of big, sweeping, historical trends and completely forgot about our constant capacities to utterly fuck up in ways large and small.
From an article in The Guardian, 2014
(Google amp link below)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/21/bring-back-ideology-fukuyama-end-history-25-years-on
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man
@f00l - Pretty fascinating stuff. I guess Fukuyama was prescient on one point:
He predicted Twitter.
@KDemo
Pessimism about our species and planetary futures is warranted and prescient because of our wide-spread inability to even understand what logical thought is or would be, when we are working with fuzzy concepts in English or another natural language. (This inability includes “experts”).
Because of our psychological inability to measure and deal with risk and danger, even if we understand it conceptually.
Because of our native tendency to default to idiot economics and not think clearly about international, national, and local risks. (Think 2007-08 and the run-up).
Became we we wanna feel good even if it means being stupid.
And a zillion other reasons.
And all of those flaws and more, I am more than tarnished by, personally. As is almost everyone.
But there are better, and worse, philosophies and methods, for all that.
@f00l - Dang. I thought I made a pretty good joke.
You made me smarter, though. In my own stupid way.
Thanks.
@KDemo
Oh, we’re all plenty dumb. Who isn’t?
Ok, I admit I do think I’m mostly smarter than the folks in the Trump hardcore base.
I hear vanity and pride are, in traditional terms, sins.
Guilty guilty guilty I spoze.
But there is dumb,
.
.
.
.
.
and there is dumber.
“When they go low, we go …”
/image Michelle Obama
@KDemo
Ya know, Fukuyama, or someone, should have predicted Trump + Twitter.
Did Toffler? Did someone? All the elements were there. After the Wall came down (irony, that, given that soon a wall might go up), and we breathed a bit… mass comm was coming. Once you have it, … mass comm where everyone could make noise all at once, and someone with the hoaxing and sloganeering and sales-promises and rabble-rousing skill was coming to use it also. The personality type is kinda known.
Surely it’s in some SF novel somewhere, if not laid out by some futurist.
@f00l The Dunning-Kruger Effect was first postulated in 1999. It explains why so many of 45’s True Believers accept everything he says. Faux caters to them extensively, marketing itself as what they would say if they knew the words.
Stephen Fry explains why some people believe nearly everything Drumpf says
Dunning Kruger and 45
Looking forward, just a little. The 43rd G-7 Summit will be held 26-27 May in Taormina, Sicily. That means that 45 will be flying in to Sigonella. Maybe he’ll fall off a mountain; the roads are treacherous. Just thinking of a motorcade on Sicilian roads is enough to make me smile. In reality, he’ll take a helicopter to the site. Hmm. Wonder how the locals feel about him. For perspective, here’s the road from the bus station in Taormina, which is WAAAYYY up the side of Etna, down to sea level.
It’s nice to see that nothing has changed. Seems the Italians really, truly wanted to invite Vlad, so Russia could ‘return to the fold’. Next time!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-31/sicilians-race-to-get-ready-for-trump-in-shadow-of-the-volcano