It feels like there is a fatal equation currently governing the American republic, and I find myself returning to it with deepening dread. We live in a remarkably dangerous, deeply serious time, yet our fate is dictated by profoundly unserious, intrinsically dangerous people. This catastrophic mismatch is not merely confined to the occupants of the executive branch. It extends to the American populace itself, an electorate that looked directly at an increasingly volatile world and consciously chose to empower a lethal circus.
History does not forgive this caliber of frivolity. When the sheer volatility of the international order demands rigorous statecraft, we are instead subjected to a governing apparatus consumed by malignant narcissism and cheap political theater. The utter lack of gravity at the highest levels of power is breathtaking. Diplomatic capital is squandered dispatching the Vice President to Hungary to prop up the sagging electoral fortunes of a two-bit autocrat, while the First Lady commandeers the Cross Hall of the White House to desperately sever her own reputational liabilities from her husband’s radioactive ties to Jeffrey Epstein. These are the grotesque priorities of a decaying administration, completely unequipped for the monumental duties it holds.
We cannot afford the cowardice of blaming this solely on the politicians. The convergence of a highly volatile global environment with a cabal of petty, intellectually vacant leaders is a direct reflection of a public that has abandoned the sober duties of citizenship in favor of grievance-fueled entertainment. We are an unserious people who handed the vast, lethal apparatus of the state to dangerous amateurs. It is a terrifying equation, and the math guarantees a brutal reckoning.
A nation that insists on being entertained by arsonists has no right to weep when the republic burns.
Every empire eventally falls. Usually because they're too comfortable to adapt to an ever-changing world. Here we are. Unfortunately, it all could have been avoided.
Read Meg Wheatley. She has a recent podcast describing the collapse of civilizations—and they ALL fall. We’re living in the throes of it right now. Each time the people thought they were at the height of civilization and didn’t see the beginnings of the downside. And especially now, technology is part of it. There’s even a term for it: Technological Magisterium—the feeling technology will save us. It’s global. One other point is that at the end of civilizations, people thrive on celebrity culture for inspiration & loyalty. Sometimes it’s for relief from the constant feeling of helplessness.
Voting for presidential candidates with ZERO experience in elected or appointed govt offices is a clear sign voters have no clue what they're voting for, so deserve everything they get.
When large portions of a people decide that NEITHER expertise NOR experience matter, don't they NEED a fall of their civilization as an intellectual purgative?
Tangent: there's no way to teach wisdom. Let's pray the people of the US have reached peak foolishness and are on their path to regressing to the mean.
NOT the court jester. Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are the court jesters. They speak truth to power, often in ways that are WAY over the heads of the people in power. “The play is the thing, wherein we catch the conscience of the king.” Good ol’ Shakespeare.
Exactly, and not just the Supreme Court, but billionaire authoritarians (Theil, Musk) and their followers who put endless amounts of money to put his minions in place. And draft an oligarchy (Project 2025) takeover that would support the oligharchy.
It started with St Ronnie and his anti government/anti tax rhetoric. He also marked the beginning of the deep state bs, and the pro life agenda masking racism with it's purposeful use of the Evangelicals to form the core piece of the GOP base. Add Rush Limbaugh, FOX news, and Face Book shortly there after, wait three decades to let the bread and circus rise, and here we are.
Preach, sister. I think I sometimes become annoying to my friends and family because of my frequent harping on how the gospel of St. Ronnie, partnered with Rush and FOX, brainwashed a significant portion of our fellow citizens to believe the things you cite.
For me specifically it's been the pro life block. That's a bone you can't dislodge because they ate the whole dog. I got so sick of 'evil' democrats and their evil ways allowing for millions of late term abortions...even infanticide. Plus it served as the bed rock for the complete distortion of Christianity in the US. This one won't go away with Trump.
I can't agree. I think it was the post WWII economic boom that led to "decadence" and eventually to where we are today. Until the oil shock of the 70's US citizens on the whole led prosperous lives. They expected their children to do so too and many times they did.
Things were shaken a bit with the surge in oil prices in the late 70's but evened out and the next economic boom came from the tech world at the turn of the century. But it was smaller than the earlier one and benefited a smaller number of people. As each subsequent decade unfolded people began to notice that they weren't doing as well economically as other people in the US were; that it took 2 adults working jobs for money to pay for what their grandparents or even parents could do with one 1 adult working. They started to look for someone to blame.
max - it’s no ONE thing. Neil Postman raised a key element in Amusing Ourselves to Death - communication/ entertainment technologies that over time fundamentally changed our ways & abilities to think. To me a second key element starting around same time as that book was the financial industry upsetting the previous more concrete models of economics. Once the cord to objective objects & services was switched out for gambling potential numbers on paper, grandpa’s job stamping out widgets was no longer the American dream
I have a bit of pique seeing numerous cites of Postman these days. I thought 'Amusing...' was a rather dumbed-down gloss on more serious and perceptive thinkers... and I had an odd micro-encounter with him in which he displayed arrogant assholery. He was writing for a wider audience than say Baudrillard or Jameson, which is laudable in a way, but not when you step right up to the role of political economy in the subject and then just paper over it, as he did in the "Now, this...." section.
Anyway, for an accessible (if not exactly lively) overview of the terrain I'd recommend 'The Condition of Postmodernity' by David Harvey.
Agree about Postman's observations in the 80s. But I think the manufacturing job losses came before financial services became the dominant economic sector. In "The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order," historian Gary Gerstle captures this story and how Reagan's economic policies - deregulation, personal freedoms, open borders and globalization - drove it
I grew up in the Midwest and lived through the early days of the Rust Belt. I always wondered what caused the end of the New Deal era and ushered in the Neoliberal. I learned that by the late 1960s, the New Deal's Keynesianism was no longer delivering economic prosperity because American companies now had competitors in Germany and Japan. Then in the 70s, the oil crisis and stagflation - high unemployment and inflation - plunged the economy into crisis. The Neoliberal order was a response to this. It died in 2008.
I do think there was always a dark underbelly, corruption, migrant workers, racism, swelling incarceration, it just got ignored because of the materialistic culture that didn’t want to see.
American Traditional Conservatism (racist sexist, ethno-nationalist, nominally "Christian") has always been there, often under the surface. It is just out in the open once again.
It always could have been avoided, except in the cases where external factors (usually environmental) brought about the fall. That is always the sad part.
Those Americans alive today, who have witnessed and experienced what has happened have the answer to the question--how did someone like <insert horrible dictator> get into power? Why did so many people support them?
I mean, we KNEW the answer to that question (at least the people who were interested and cared). But it can't happen here, amiright? (which is one of the reasons it IS happening here).
Yes, empires all fall, but they are usually okay after that. The Roman empire fell but Italy is fine. The British empire dissolved but the UK is okay. The Japanese colonial empire fell catastrophically in 1945. It did not have to be that way. It might have dissolved slowly like the European colonial empires. But in any case, Japan is fine. It is better off without a colonial empire. The U.S. would be better off being just another country, rather than the World's Policeman.
Whoa. It takes a bit of a breathtaking level of historical creativity to survey the bloody, catastrophic collapse of global empires and summarize the aftermath as "usually okay." To casually claim that "Italy is fine" following the fall of Rome is to cheerfully gloss over centuries of brutal warlordism, total economic disintegration, and a population collapse so severe that the city of Rome itself devolved from a sprawling metropolis of a million people into a plague-ridden ruin of scavengers. Yes, Italy is "fine" today, fifteen hundred years and countless rivers of blood later.
Using Japan as a supporting argument is even more shocking. The Japanese empire did not peacefully dissolve, it was violently dismantled at the cost of millions of lives, culminating in dual nuclear detonations, the incineration of its major cities, and total foreign subjugation. Japan is "fine" today exclusively because the United States, the very global hegemon you are so eager to dismantle, spent decades and billions of dollars rebuilding it into an allied democracy from the ashes of its own suicidal imperialism.
The fantasy that the United States can simply abdicate its role as the anchor of the international order and peacefully retire to become a giant, harmless Switzerland is a pretty "creative" understanding of geopolitics. Power vacuums do not remain empty. If the American security umbrella is folded, the resulting void will not be filled by a utopian global brotherhood, it will be rapidly and violently seized by revanchist autocracies.
We did not hold our position out of mere vanity. The unprecedented domestic prosperity, economic leverage, and physical security we currently enjoy are directly subsidized by our hegemonic status. You do not get to gracefully resign from being a superpower. The collapse of American influence will not yield a quiet, comfortable retirement, it will yield a brutal, chaotic world order where our adversaries dictate the terms of our existence and control the arteries of global trade. To look at the historical slaughterhouse of imperial collapse and shrug it off as "okay" is the ultimate luxury of someone completely insulated from the unforgiving realities of how the world actually functions.
I said the Japanese colonial empire "might have" dissolved peacefully, the way the British empire did after WWII. Obviously, I know it did not.
All of the European and Japanese empires should have been given up the way the British gave up India. They were fools to fight on, the way the French fought in Algeria and Vietnam.
My point is that the UK, Japan, France and the others did not need colonial empires. They were better off without them.
I'm pretty sure your clarification only deepens the fundamental category error at the heart of your argument. You are conflating 19th-century territorial colonialism with the modern American security architecture, treating them as if they are interchangeable geopolitical models. They are not.
It is absolutely true that France and Britain were ultimately "better off" shedding their colonial possessions. By the mid-20th century, direct territorial occupation, whether suppressing insurgencies in Algeria or maintaining imperial administration in India, had become a staggering economic and moral hemorrhage. They abandoned those territories because the cost of violent subjugation had vastly outweighed the extractive yield.
The United States, however, does not govern a colonial empire, we manage a hegemonic global order. We do not occupy foreign lands to plunder their spices or rubber. Instead (or we didn't before the Rotting Orange was empowered), we underwrite the global security umbrella, enforce the freedom of navigation that allows modern supply chains to exist, and maintain the financial architecture that establishes the dollar as the world's reserve currency. This is not a charitable endeavor, nor is it an imperial burden we need to altruistically shed. It is the exact mechanism that guarantees our unprecedented domestic prosperity and insulates us from the chaos of a predatory world.
To suggest we should peacefully abdicate this role, as if we are simply handing the keys back to a foreign territory, is a catastrophic misunderstanding of how global power functions. When the British Empire left India, India eventually governed itself. When the United States folds its security umbrella and withdraws from the Pacific, Eastern Europe, or the Middle East, those regions do not magically revert to peaceful autonomy. The resulting vacuum is immediately and violently seized by revanchist autocracies.
The naive belief that we can simply resign from global leadership and become "just another country" ignores the cold reality of physics: power abhors a vacuum. Dismantling the American-led international order will not yield the quiet, comfortable isolationism you envision. It will yield a brutal, fractured globe where our adversaries dictate the terms of trade, choke our supply chains, and define the boundaries of our security. Wishing away our global leverage is not a strategy, it is a suicide pact wrapped in historical mythos.
Not all empires are 'okay' after they fall. They sometimes just cease to exist, to the extent that the modern remnant is barely recognizable compared to what it once was. The Mayan Empire. The Byzantine Empire. The Persian Empire. The Soviet Empire -- Russia still exists but is not really okay, it is a thuggish rogue state run like a mafia, with an anemic economy for a country of its vast size and resources. It has spent over four years and most of its resources trying to subjugate a far smaller and weaker country next door, and still hasn't succeeded. The United States, if the MAGA government persists, may eventually resemble this unfortunate model.
The UK was fine for decades. It can recover. It does not need a colonial empire to do that. Japan did not get any financial help or material help such as factory equipment from the U.S., except food aid and fertilizer for a few years. It was not covered by the Marshall Plan. On the contrary, the Japanese government paid the U.S. a lot during the occupation.
The U.S. gave Japan freedom, a new Constitution, and wholesale reforms of institutions such as marriage and labor laws. Most of these reforms were suggested by Japanese liberals before the war, so they fit in well with society. They were codified by American experts during the war who were quite familiar with the situation in Japan, and knew their counterparts such as labor leaders and teachers.
See Cohen, T., "Remaking Japan" for details. Cohen wrote the labor law reforms. All of the policies implemented by MacArthur were spelled by Cohen and other experts during the war. A friend of my mother wrote the agricultural policies.
(Note that I went to college in the U.S. and Japan in the 1970s. Some of my professors were people who implemented the Occupation policies. So I know a lot about this.)
Yes, I know Japan was not covered by the Marshall Plan. But re "Japan did not get any financial help or material help such as factory equipment from the U.S., except food aid and fertilizer for a few years" - just food aid and fertilizer? A simple search revealed the aid also fostered economic recovery and technological support, the latter through the work of the American statistician W. Edwards Deming. He taught Toyota and Sony statistical process control, which was developed by the American physicist, engineer and statistician Walter A. Shewhart in the 1930s. It revolutionized Japanese manufacturing which led to their dominance in many US consumer markets in the 1970s.
I meant they got very little physical, material aid. Yes, of course they got a lot of intellectual aid. Deming did not begin until 1950 when the Occupation was almost over, but there were many others.
I mentioned marriage and labor laws as examples. Of course there were hundreds of other reforms. The Constitution to start with, written mostly by Beate Sirota Gordon, at age 22.
You are correct, Patrick. I have to admit to being rather entertained by the Melania spectacle and the public meltdowns and MRGA (I have changed MAGA to MRGA - Make Russia Great Again in my mind) internecine warfare that broke to the surface yesterday, but I also felt utterly sick about it. You have perfectly elucidated why the sick feeling should win over the momentary glee of schadenfreude, but damn! I think (and I don't think I am alone here) that I am so desperate for a sign that the fever is breaking and the end of our national nightmare may be nigh; and this week has been so extra-insane and tense, that the petty satisfaction of witnessing the grievance-fueled entertainers turn on each other is experienced as stress relief and even joy. I am not proud of it, but there it is.
Danielle, your impulse to find temporary relief in their cannibalism is entirely human and appreciated. I've written close to a million words on how and why we need to violently disabuse ourselves of the comforting metaphor that this is a "fever." Fevers break. Fevers imply a healthy host body temporarily fighting off an acute pathogen before returning to its natural equilibrium. What we are witnessing in the American republic is not a passing illness; it is profound, structural rot.
Undoing this magnitude of civic vandalism is not a matter of surviving one disastrous administration; it requires a grueling, multi-generational rebuild, and if we look unblinkingly at the current American appetite for shared sacrifice and serious governance, it is a rebuild we are highly unlikely to execute. I could lay out a million reasons why the math of our decline is unforgiving, but the most honest response I can offer is simply this:
I understand you fully. The exhaustion of watching the collapse is profound, and the desperate desire for it to just be over is the heaviest burden of seeing reality clearly.
Good point, Patrick. I think you are saying something like the Trump administration is similar to the canary in the coal mine, signaling that there are some serious, long term problems that need to be fixed if things are to get better. Our country was made great by all the people who came here from other places with their vigor, persistence, intelligence, and ambition and together worked to form the United States of America. We call them immigrants. If we can elect a Congress that passes bills to get control of how immigration works, maybe we can attract people like that again.
Patrick, you are, of course correct that this will not be something we remedy with an election (See Biden 2020), but rather it will be dozens, maybe another 47 of them, to get things nudged enough to really see a difference. It took us 250 years to get here. Why should we think it will not take 250 more?
Hi Sandy, I like your attitude, I am finding some strength in taking it one day at a time too. One of the quotes I came across that is helping me is from Confucius I think, who said "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
I've been thinking "what would it take to face down all of the hard work ahead to pay the cost of America's decadence exemplified in Trump, once he has left the stage?" I think it's the moral values we've all been taught that we need to return to - those are what help us to not stop.
Ultimately my comfort from this episode of Trump's second term, in which we seem to be on the road to facing heavy losses as a country, which we may not have the wherewithal to bear over the next several decades, is the hope that from the wreckage we could learn a collective lesson of humility, that brings us to a more sober place of judgment. Of course I'm still hoping too that we don't get put to the final test.
I've felt in some ways that Trump is uncannily like an anti-George Washington. Just as George Washington and many others helped set an example that has carried our country thru 250 years, and even if all of the progress contributed selflessly by every upstanding American from the time of George Washington until now would all be cut down by one man in the end, squandered for the self-enrichment of a few, yet if the American people can learn a collective lesson and find a way to keep going, however slowly, then maybe down the road our country could get back to a place of broadly shared prosperity again.
Thanks for your reply, Matthew. Love the Confucious quote. I think the best place to get support for returning to those moral values are LIBERAL Jewish and Christian churches. The Progressive Episcopal Church is one, and the Pope is leading the Catholic Church to focus on the ethical principles of the Bible.
I myself think we DO have the wherewithal to face heavy losses as a country, especially if we are connected to in-person local communities, which religious organizations provide. So do local civic organizations like Indivisible. We subscribers can debate whether we do or don't have the wherewithal, as no one knows for sure, but I'm moving forward thinking we do. If it turns out that I'm wrong, then so be it.
Patrick: I think MAGA can be described as a fever, an infection metaphor, in part because your concept of 'fever' is grossly inaccurate medically. Not all fevers break, with the body returning to healthy equilibrium, by a long shot. If we look at history, there are any number of instances of societies going off the deep end for awhile, and then recovering - but typically the recovery of the body politic leaves a lot of dead human bodies behind, eh?
But my hypothesis is that our current madness IS different, because the unease underneath it is different. I don't see mere moral rot as much as frightened desperate people intuiting their doom going nuts, like all the animals stampeding wildly because they sense the massive danger, Kong or Tsunami, coming though not yet visible. Which for humans involves grasping on the coat-tails of false saviors in a quest for "relief from the constant feeling of helplessness". Which helplessness, I hypothesize is rooted in intimation that the scientists are right, a climate apocalypse is not just a threat, like nuclear war has been or the singularity is now, but an already done deal that simply awaits for the loosed pachinko balls to drop the rest of the way through the maze of pins and end the game.
Ohhhhhh boy. I guess let’s dispense with the clinical pedantry regarding the exact pathology of a fever, because clinging to that metaphor is getting genuinely eye-roll inducing. Arguing over whether a biological fever always returns a host to equilibrium is a spectacular way to avoid confronting the reality of our political decay. I’m reading as you are desperately trying to frame this as an external infection, a temporary madness that simply washed over us, because the alternative is admitting that this is exactly who the American electorate is, and that they are doing exactly what they want to do.
To compound that evasion, it takes a remarkable degree of intellectual contortion to diagnose a political movement defined by gleeful anti-science resentment as a subconscious reaction to climate change. Ascribing a repressed, tragic eco-anxiety to a voting bloc that explicitly cheers for environmental deregulation and actively mocks the very concept of a changing climate is an exercise in profound projection. It assigns an unearned psychological depth to a coalition driven almost entirely by cultural grievance, racial animus, and the desire to punish out-groups.
These voters are not desperately grasping for a savior because they subconsciously intuit the collapse of the biosphere, they are rallying behind a strongman because they want to exact revenge on a modern society that no longer centers them.
Furthermore, your metaphor of "stampeding animals" sensing a tsunami is worse than inaccurate, it is an explicit evasion of accountability. By framing authoritarian foot soldiers as helpless beasts driven mad by impending environmental doom, you strip them of their agency and sanitize their malice. They are not tragic victims of a looming planetary apocalypse seeking relief from helplessness. They are conscious, willing participants in the systemic destruction of the republic.
We do ourselves no favors by inventing sophisticated, sympathetic origin stories for straightforward political cruelty. The rot we are witnessing requires no complex ecological explanations. It is simply the banality of a populace that has abandoned the rigorous duties of democracy for the cheap thrill of authoritarian retribution.
Wait... What? I'M pedantic?? The point of re-framing the fever metaphor, which is still a METAPHOR, is that I don't like the 'fever will break' hopium either, notwithstanding actuals facts like Germany and Japan now being quite different from Final Solutions and rapes of Nanking, etc. etc. Your assertion that I'm "desperately trying to frame this as a temporary madness" does not speak well for your reading comprehension, as I was positing the infection may well be fatal. And I don't mean 'fatal' metaphorically.
As far as 'infection' generally as a metaphor goes, there's nothing necessarily simple about it (I guess you never watched 'House'), and it's a hell of lot better theory of 'political decay' than 'people are just bad' because (duh) if that were the case there would have been no better state from which to decay from. (Or did you listen to too much Devo and not get the joke?)
You see... or rather you don't but should... that who people are and what they want to do are conditioned by power relations within which their selves and thoughts are formed to begin with. As material individuals, this would be more of a toxicity metaphor, but within the construct of a body politic 'infection' serves fine - as we have 'outbreaks' 'epidemics' and 'pandemics' that can be traced to 'pathogens' - like Fox news for a current paradigmatic example, or what Althusser called ISAs generally.
I don't know where you've lived or what you've studied, but I got a doctorate in media theory at the U of Iowa. So I know people in that state, including people close to me, have changed, appearing now to be quite different people than they were in the fore-times. And I also know exactly how a long term right-wing oligarch-backed propaganda strategy arose during Nixon years, and how much the present situation looks like what those plans envisioned.
Human beings are vulnerable. They can be survive physical catastrophes but get scarred by psychic wounds that may appear trivial to others. They can be duped, led astray, corrupted. And you, apparently, would let all the con-artists and demagogues off the hook because the people they sucked in are just morally bankrupt or stupid or both.
Let me guess; you're an ex-Republican amirite? Still showing utter contempt for regular people. Seems you should just abandon the democracy thing since you've determined we just aren't up to the rigorous sober duties.
About that 'we'. What a fantasy to imagine this massive 'we' exists in any meaningful way. Are you really in it? Methinks you think not.
I smell an intellectual laziness, foregoing the rigorous work necessary to grapple with the complex workings of social change for good or ill in favor of the cheap thrill of holding high dudgeon moral superiority to the masses.
So of course you project 'them' as conscious and willing, because that's EASY. You don't have to grapple with all the sub-conscious weirdness of human psyches (plural) that sits underneath an apparent willful unified rational individual subject.
If you knew anything about social or cultural theory, or certain basic concepts in psychology like "cognitive dissonance" you'd understand how much displacement and metaphor is involved in the construction of mythology, not just in the mythologies of the ancients or isolated pre-modern indigenous folk (e.g. cargo cults), but the 'mythologies' of contemporary media culture (following Barthes perceptive usage). I could be wrong about a general pervading sense of doom springing sub-consciously from climate change, but if was there it would manifest exactly in some form of denialism and grasping at false reassurances -- because that is what people do all the time in response to trauma.
It's also easy to imagine 'America' or 'the electorate' as a unity, for good or ill. What's hard is to grapple with the truth articulated by leftist analyses - we are divided along lines of class, race, ethnicity, gender -- all articulated to the increased ideological polarization now causing so much consternation -- and even beyond/beneath those overt conflicts there are more subtle contestations of power along all these lines, such that much of everyday life is a "site of struggle".
Whatever sense of 'America' unites me with Elon Musk and the Epstein class pales in the sense that doesn't (cue RATM medley). The first question may be "what is to be done", but the second is "which side are you on".
[BTW, you misused 'banality'. 'Banal' is a synonym for 'mundane': unremarkable, boring, everyday, routine. The phrase 'banality of evil' as used by Arendt discussing Eichmann does not mean 'evil is mundane' that banality is therefore a sign of evil. It's an awkward translation, parallel to forms like "the cinema of trangression'. IOW banality is not an adjective, but a noun. The phrase means 'that banality which is also evil'. The idea being that Eichmann did not project stereotypical villainous relish (as did, say Hitler), but as a dull bureaucratic paper-pushing functionary. That THAT could counter-intuitively be vector of the most horrible evil was the insight. You can call this note pedantry, but I started out as a high school writing teacher and I see pointing out that "the banality of a populace" makes no damn sense as a professional service... And you're welcome.]
Buddy, I am genuinely concerned you are having an aneurysm. This frantic, ego-bruised word salad reads less like a theoretical rebuttal and more like a catastrophic neurological event.
Since you offered a "professional service" as a former teacher, let's quickly dissect your spectacular, three-tiered self-own. First, "the banality of a populace" uses the word as a noun, matching Arendt’s exact syntax. Second, Arendt wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem in English for an American magazine, there is no "awkward translation," you simply fabricated that history to sound erudite. Third, pointing out that mundane, unexceptional people eagerly drive systemic cruelty is the literal application of her concept.
Please, put down the pseudo-intellectualism and get someone to drive you to the nearest ER.
Patrick, IMO, it's too soon to declare a profound, structural rot. Wait till the results of the midterms come in. If the Dems take not only the House but also the Senate, we begin the rebuild.
A lot of people are willing to spend an agonizing amount of time in these forums debating which institutional lever to pull, entirely ignoring the grim reality that the machine itself has been disconnected from the power source. I don't do that. Waiting for a midterm election or a Supreme Court ruling to save the American republic is an exercise in profound normalcy bias. You do not schedule a renovation for a building that has already collapsed.
I have meticulously cataloged the systematic disassembly of our constitutional governance. The resulting document is not a warning of impending danger; it is a structural inspection of a condemned property. From launching unauthorized wars and abducting foreign heads of state to deploying biometric surveillance against domestic protesters and blatantly ignoring the Supreme Court on taxation, the executive branch has realized a fatal truth. The Constitution is merely advisory if no one possesses the mechanical means to enforce it. The Founders’ three-legged stool, an informed public, a robust Congress, and an independent judiciary, has been reduced to rubble. Congress has surrendered its authority to become a cheering section, the judiciary’s rulings dissolve the moment they meet executive defiance, and a heavily propagandized electorate has eagerly handed the state to dangerous amateurs.
I spent the last year desperately searching for a single load-bearing wall that still holds. I could not find one. Every institutional exit the public is reaching for has already been bricked over by executive decree and congressional cowardice.
I lay out the full structural math, and the unavoidable conclusion, here: https://complexsimplicity.substack.com/p/sixteen-months-of-constitutional. I encourage you to read the inspection report. If you can identify a single institutional pillar that remains functional enough to bear the load of a multi-generational recovery, I invite you to point it out. If you cannot, then it is time to stop pretending we can vote our way out of a ruin.
Patrick, the tone of your prose puts me off, which diminishes my motivation to read your article. You accuse me of ignorance of "the grim reality that the machine itself has been disconnected from the power source". Is that a fact? I don' think it is. My disagreeing with you doesn't make me ignorant.
Then you accuse me of normalcy bias. Then you tell me I'm pretending.
So I'm not going to read your article. If you could provide a summary, I would read that.
BTW, regarding the single load-bearing wall, have you read Jonathan Rauch's "Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy" (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300273540/cross-purposes/)? He says Christianity acts as a load-bearing wall for American democracy, providing necessary social cohesion, moral values, and civic virtue. Its "broken bargain" with democracy is that it has shifted from a social good to a polarized force that is either "too thin" (weak/declining) or "too sharp" (political/divisive). He calls for a return to a "thicker" Christianity, focused on the ethical teachings of Jesus (humility and forgiveness) rather than political power."
Sandy, let us correct the record, I did not call you ignorant. I stated that people are "entirely ignoring the grim reality." There is a profound intellectual difference between lacking access to information, which is ignorance and consciously refusing to look at the structural math placed directly in front of you. I'm not sure why you conflated the two, but I have some guesses.
You sought out this exchange. You replied to my commentary, entirely unprompted, to inform me I was wrong. When I laid out the exact structural mechanics of why I am not, your response was to announce you refuse to read the evidence and demand a summarized, tone-policed version instead. That is not a disagreement; that is intellectually hiding. You are welcome to feel however you wish, but when engaging with my writing, we operate within the unforgiving confines of empirical reality.
As for the supposed merit of your "load-bearing wall," you are fundamentally confusing sociological sentiment with hard institutional power. Jonathan Rauch’s hope for a "thicker" Christianity provides an interesting thesis for a divinity school seminar, but civic cohesion is not a structural check on a rogue executive branch. The Progressive Episcopal Church and the Vatican do not command the military. They do not possess subpoena power. They cannot enforce a Supreme Court injunction or freeze congressionally appropriated funds.
Furthermore, presenting American Christianity as the potential savior of our democratic institutions requires a staggering denial of the political environment we currently inhabit. The dominant, politically potent iteration of Christianity in this country is not a defense against authoritarianism, it is the ideological engine powering it. Relying on a marginalized, progressive sliver of the faith to somehow neutralize the massive, mobilized juggernaut of Christian Nationalism is not a political strategy. It is magical thinking.
If you prefer to ignore these structural realities in favor of a comforting delusion, you are free to retreat to spaces that prioritize your emotional comfort, but in this conversation, we do not substitute a sermon on humility for a constitutional mechanism.
We'll know the fever is breaking if the Dems take control of the Senate (control of the House is likely assured, barring any unforeseen event). And all of this internecine fighting helps them do it, so relax, stay tuned, and get active in supporting the Dem wins. See DCCC.org, DSCC.org, and https://swingleft.org.
The only correction I would make here is that many of these people (politicians and media types) are VERY serious people. They are VERY serious about amassing wealth and influence. They don't much care about how they do it and have no real other end in mind, but they ARE serious about it.
I agree with you (and Mike in response), and I wonder if there are any equivalents of the Bulwark that were around in the late Roman Republic, 18th-century France (Voltaire?), or others.
We do have Orwell and "Shooting an Elephant," and I imagine Barbara Tuchman must have tapped into a few sources for "The March of Folly" (which I really have to reread), but in the end all the Cassandras in the world are forgotten while history simply remembers the terrible people who ran a good thing into the ground.
Sometimes the most agonizing element of the Cassandra curse is not the impending destruction itself, but the profound, suffocating isolation of seeing it clearly while everyone else dances on the tracks. There is no social reward for prescience in a society structurally addicted to denial. Being right early is, socially speaking, functionally identical to being a madman.
This is precisely why I value JVL's role so deeply. He does the grueling, thankless work of anchoring the conversation to the grim mathematical realities of our situation, often absorbing the nervous laughter and reflexive mockery of co-hosts who still desperately want to believe the center will hold. Pointing out the obvious trajectory of a collapsing republic is treated as a breach of etiquette, an unwelcome intrusion of physics into a room that prefers magic. JVL refuses to soften the blow, and that refusal is a rare public service.
I know the exact personal cost of this dynamic. I have lost friends simply for articulating the horrors of our reality before they materialized, and it is a bitter, universal truth that they never reach out afterward. People do not sever ties because you were wrong, they often excommunicate you because your clarity threatens their comfortable delusions. To return and admit you were right would require them to confront their own willful blindness, and most people would rather forfeit a friendship than swallow that pill. The tragic irony of demanding seriousness in an unserious time is that you will simply be left alone, watching the disaster unfold exactly as you predicted, surrounded only by the deafening silence of those who refused to listen.
I do hope you are not totally left alone, Patrick, but have a group that agrees with you to be a part of. I am fortunate that I have a smallish group of friends and my numerous siblings and their spouses that I can vent to.
Sure. The tricky thing is seeing that things are getting better when they are at their worst. I think we passed a turning point that might inspire the best from us and bring an insurgent leadership change after this MAGA tradjectory meets hard ground. The pieces need to be put back together without the AI and Cryto bros pulling the strings, Project 2025 dismantled brick by brick, a fair and equitable or even, dare I say, progressive tax structure and social benifits that provide a saftey net removing so much fear, medical bankrupcy, homlessness, lack of good education and medical neglect. Mostly though, removal of dark money and the ruling of Citizens United v. FEC is needed, that is what allowed a lot of this power grab. Also removing compromised leadership subject to blackmail might be nice.
Clay, there is a profound, almost tragic innocence to your optimism. I genuinely understand the psychological desire to view our current political abyss as a rock-bottom turning point, a necessary dark night of the soul before a sweeping progressive renaissance. It is a comforting vision. We must be unsparingly honest about the structural realities we face, because clinging to the mirage of an imminent utopian correction is its own form of dangerous denial. Things are not getting better, and we are not on the verge of dismantling this machinery brick by brick.
The sheer mathematical permanence of the judicial branch is something almost no one talks about. The Supreme Court has been successfully captured and will remain held by a hard-right, ideologically rigid supermajority for the next four decades. You cannot simply legislate away Citizens United, execute sweeping progressive tax structures, or permanently fortify the social safety net when the ultimate arbiters of American law are structurally locked into dismantling those exact efforts for a generation. The vanguard controlling the courts does not care if the current MAGA trajectory eventually hits "hard ground"; their power is insulated, lifetime-appointed, and entirely immune to the shifting moods of the electorate.
The comforting fiction here is that once the current political apparatus falters, the system will naturally reset to a state of equitable grace. The devastating reality is that the system itself is thoroughly rotten, and the institutional guardrails have been permanently lowered. What we might experience in the near future is not a grand reversal, but merely a brief, chaotic pause. The true, existential threat lies in what comes next. The blueprints for dismantling the administrative state and consolidating executive power have already been drawn. Eventually, a vastly more disciplined, highly competent operator will step into this, someone who understands exactly how to wield the authoritarian machinery that has been normalized, but without the crippling liabilities of erratic personal indiscipline.
It is a beautiful thought to imagine this era as the catalyst for our best, most equitable selves. I do not fault you for wishing it were true, but we cannot fight the battles of the next half-century while hallucinating a fantasy where the damage is easily undone. We are in for a grueling, generational winter, and pretending spring is just around the corner only leaves us entirely unprepared for the freeze.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. There is a collective intellegance that brings solutions into being that can not be initially concieved by individuls in the thick of the worst of it. This is the thing that is hard to see. Its the hopelessness that triggers it. JVL gets it, things have to get bad enough to change its why he seems to be hoping for poor outcomes in the short-term. There is a flow of back and forth across history with slight odds in the houses favor towards progress. It has to do with the way we humans work things out, we all are cogs that rarely see things clearly until we are looking back. You can see it work though our own history, we didnt start out with Unions and a middle class when industrialization hit, or the declaration of independance in the USA post feudilism, a magna carta or even religious and philisophical thinking all evolved from need. Everything we cherish and think is beautiful evolved from need. As individuals we are all kind of wired for differnt things by default, when things get bad enough some of us just can't help working out solutions, its literally in our DNA for some of us. I am sure you are brilliant but you are not as intellegent as a socitety as a whole, after it has bottomed. You can not accurately predict how the change will come about, but it comes about, just unexpectadly. Just about the time you personally give up on these large outcomes is when you can see the turn. Its when things seem most hopeless that the fixers in our species wake up, hyperfocus, self-sacrafice and create new comunities around change that are actually effective. Otherwise we are lazy as F. Its what we do. We also do the bad things before the solutions are necasary, sure, but that runs its course. Its a good sign you think things are hopeless, for the reasons you were stating really. No, I don't believe it will be quick or easy. To use your seasonal alagory after the longest night of the year things start improving causally, even though it is the FIRST day of winter. The first day of winter is also when the days start getting longer. I think the longest night of the year was sitting on the edge of nuclear escalation a few days ago in a war with no benifit for anyone. I think that was a sea change. It really was a wake up call for a lot of people. I could talk existencial risks with you all day, I get it, but humans really do like existing and unexpectedly phase shift into something new when the urgency is high enough.
And let's not forget the millions of voters who were too lazy/indifferent to vote and their absence from the polls helping the traitorous/pervert get elected in 2016 and 2024.
I am afraid that many of those who didn't vote were not so much motivated by laziness, but, even having soured on Trump/MAGA, could not imagine themselves every voting for a Democrat. I have talked to enough people who said that they have family members who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump, but had bought into the years of brainwashing about the commie, immoral, even demonic Dems that they would never consider voting for one of them. So they just didn't vote at all that election, or at least didn't vote for President.
my younger brother went off the deep end with Limbaugh and his fairly new wife's church, He yelled at my father right before in home hospice, " you're a baby killer " My father, with a lot of help from my mother had fourteen healthy offspring, the last seven or so, she had a Catholic physician... we're Lutheran. Then my Dad remarried after a disturbing divorce at a month less than thirty years, They both remarried quite quickly , the woman that moved in , brought eight children with her, the youngest aged two. How could someone who simply said I'm going to vote Democrat from now on to my little brother; after having provided forr 22 children be a ' baby killer ' . He's called me worse. I fight him tooth and nail.
Thank you for your well written summary of this horrible, unforgivable chapter in American history. I'm calling it a "chapter" because I desperately want to regard it as something that has an ending. That does not come from any deep well of optimism in me which somehow found its way through the seemingly intractable pessimism. It's simply me fighting the 24/7 existential dread with both hands tied behind my back.
If we could bury the two Trump presidencies and everyone and everything adjacent thereto, I propose we use one sentence from your comment as an epitaph for the entire catastrophe, because it truly is the whole "ball of wax":
"History does not forgive this caliber of frivolity."
Indeed.
Thanks for taking the time to write such thoughtful words.
Thank you for being you. I often find a specific, agonizing exhaustion in fighting off existential dread when the architects of our decline are so profoundly "who they are." I recognize the sheer endurance it takes to push back against that daily suffocation, and I appreciate that you refuse to look away. When the weight of this catastrophe threatens to crush whatever psychological reserves we have left, I sometimes find a benefit from a radical shift in perspective.
Sometimes it actually helps me to think that we are currently agonizing over the terminal decay of a republic, driven by the petty grievances of malignant narcissists, on a rocky planet that is nothing more than a microscopic speck of dust suspended in a staggeringly indifferent universe. Our entire solar system is a rounding error in the vastness of a single galaxy, which itself is merely a speck within an expanding, silent cosmic infiniteness.
This scale does not absolve the politicians of their malice, nor does it minimize the flesh-and-blood suffering this administration is inflicting, the destruction on the ground remains absolute, but when the walls of this condemned building feel entirely suffocating, it is strangely liberating to remember the sheer, incomprehensible magnitude of the cosmos. The lethal frivolity we are witnessing is devastating up close, but on a universal timeline, this horrific chapter, and the dangerous clowns who authored it, will flash out of existence with less than a whisper. Remembering our profound, structural insignificance is sometimes the only way to process the absolute absurdity of letting small, foolish men destroy something as rare as a functional civilization.
I managed to delete a nearly finished comment in response to yours. It's a shame that I can think the thoughts but my brain works against me properly "pushing the buttons." The gist of my comment was 1) that I felt we may have been separated at birth and 2) that for someone squarely in the "words person" camp of the binary world of "words person" v. "numbers person" I have always been fairly inexplicably drawn to astrophysics. I attributed my interest/deeply tenuous understanding of the subject to my brain getting bored of knowing what it already knows, and liking stars. However, as I read/contemplated your comment, it struck me that it may be deeper. While I do, indeed, refuse to look away (which implies that I'm not "checking out" or gunning for self-erasure,) perhaps my interest in reading/thinking about the Universe is something that lets some of the pressure OFF of the existential dread. Just as the "scale does not absolve the politicians of their malice," in a corollary way the scale removes the psychic pressure/impossible task I feel, at both a macro and micro level to "do something about all this to make it right." To be clear I'm not looking to/am not designed to be a "hey man whatever" person. That said, your words "profound, structural insignificance" were very comforting to me. I think this means I find Ego to be a burden. I wish "the politicians" did, but then they wouldn't be politicians. This seems like a fundamental flaw. But again, in the context of a "staggering indifferent universe," the need for me to decry human nature/the lack of human decency to such as extent that it results in self harm seems misplaced or unnecessary. Somehow saying that "out loud" seems irresponsible. But perhaps that's because old neural pathways die hard. I sincerely thank you for providing some ballast for the agony of the last decade. I have a stubborn brain. Your posts make a lot of sense to it. That's a rare gift.
This collapse was aided by an "entertainment" news media that repeatedly told lies coming from a media conglomerate owned by an old man with more money than decency or character..
Unfortunately, Patrick, I agree with you on pretty much all you say. I am not a historian, like Heather Cox Richardson, but I keep thinking of other once powerful nations who fell from power, who once were so powerful that they governed huge parts of the world: Rome, Spain, France, England. Are there common reasons that explain how they fell and how we are falling? I would love to have an expert historian do a piece about this.
Always ask: qui bono? Who benefits from this devaluation of our country and its citizens? Whose political campaigns are they funding? What media are they supporting? Musk, for example, negotiates directly with Russia, China, and India. Does he have any interest in America leading the world and remaining stable and prosperous? What about Peter Thiel, Erik Prince, the Koch brothers, the other defense contractors, big oil companies, etc.?
The problem with Melania is that she’s such a cipher, but she probably knows more about Donald’s health records than most of is do. Early positioning for when he’s gone or smoke signals of things to come — who knows. The Trump family fights once Donald is gone will be a thing of beauty. I doubt the first Trump children cherish our first lady.
She's been pretty savvy so far in positioning her spawn for the downmarket War of the Roses that's practically inevitable. No way of knowing how smart Barron is (or how he feels about being named after a financial periodical), but with the possible exception of big sister Ivanka, the competition does not seem that formidable.
Her mother taught her well. Tiffany’s husband is a professional inheritor worth $20M whose family companies in Africa, in particular Nigeria, seem pretty aboveboard. He doesn’t seem grifty enough to hang with the first set of devil spawn.
Tiffany seems pretty much out of the loop, if she’s smart she’ll put some serious distance between her half-siblings and herself before dear old Dad shuffles off this mortal coil.
I doubt she knows anything about his health records. You really think Melania is sitting with him in the waiting room before a physical? I'd be shocked if she knew what the "J" in Donald J. Trump stands for.
Melania is no rocket scientist but she's savvy about anything having to do with her own survival and prosperity. She's with Trump on Air Force One and in the White House and Mar-a-Lago. She knows how he's really feeling, what his actual symptoms are that staff are covering up, whether or not he's n the White House on-site clinic or off to Walter Reed for other medical treatments, and probably what medications he's taking. She's in a better position to judge his mental deterioration than anyone else, actually.
According to one of Michael Wolff's earlier Trump books, Melania surprised Javanka, Jr, and Eric by pwning them on every single conflict. She *always* got what she wanted.
Whatever her ties to Epstein, they must be dreadful for her to throw Trump under the bus at this moment.
Well we now know the one person who can give Donald the middle finger with impunity: Melania gets what Melania wants. Take note all you simpering Republican *leaders*.
Another interesting thing one learns in the Melania film is that her father is a home video hobbyist. Some of the footage in the film even came from his video camera! Makes you wonder what else dear old granddad has caught on tape while pottering around Mar-a-Lago, etc.
"So get off the bus, Gus. You don't need to discuss much. Just drop off the key, Lee. And set yourself free"...............Fifty Ways to lose your Lover
Every time "Donald Trump" and "bus" are mentioned together I have a painfully acute memory: me telling my husband "thank God this is over" after the pussy grabbing audio was release from the Access Hollywood bus. (Release date October 7, 2016.) I'm a pretty cynical person-hard to fool, a doubting Thomas, void of optimism, etc. And yet I remember that I believed without a doubt he was done. And inevitably I feel like a jackass because I don't like being "had." The thought about ME passes through my mind in a nanosecond and then expands to the decade (minus 4 years of quasi-sanity under Biden, which were quasi because J6 happened and you can't stuff the genie back in the bottle) the country/world has been subjected to this man and all he has wrought. "Grab them by the pussy" approximately 9.5 years ago didn't DQ him from being elected president. (I still think it should have.) Threatening genocide not even a week ago isn't making him budge either. It's interesting because what these two statements say about HIM is pretty unambiguous. What is unfathomable to me is what they say about our fellow Americans who elected him, the people we voted for to represent us in Congress, members of the judiciary who have veered wildly from the oaths they all took to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. Checks and balances only work if the people inhabiting the three branches of government are not complicit in this misdeeds of the executive. But ultimately, because this is/was a democracy, "We The People" are the ones who put people in place to BECOME part of the checks and balances. So it seems to me that whereas the moral rot has always existed at the "top," too many of "We The People" bear the responsibility for this travesty-either by empowering it actively or by looking the other way. How naïve I feel. I was apparently never misanthropic ENOUGH.
I apologize. This was supposed to be a comment about a bus. I'm just really, really mad.
I feel you. I actually remember walking home from work the day that news dropped thinking it was over, and being absolutely stunned a couple weeks later with how many women who still supported him and would say in interviews "That's just how men talk."
The super pro-military voters weren't fazed by his comments on John McCain or Gold Star families. The ultra religious voters didn't care about his infidelity or predatory behavior. White collar small business owners ignored his decades of stiffing companies just like them. How many Black and Latino voters in 2024 didn't care about the Central Park 5 or his history of racist rental practices?
I will never understand what makes Donald Trump teflon to so many people.
Well said! When Melania speaks, she is more transparent than anyone else in the administration.
First she wore the jacket on the way to visit migrant children at the border in detention: “I don’t care, do you!”
Moreover, this told us three things. She couldn’t care less about the kids—cryptically, and she hates being married to The Donald and her job as First Lady. And lastly, she’s as superficial and opportunistic as the rest of the Trump clan! Good riddance!
Secondly, in yesterday’s speech, she distances herself from Epstein and Trump. Actually, I believe her when she says that she didn’t have a formal relationship through Epstein.
Furthermore, she was related to Epstein through the legitimate modeling agency acting as a front for the sex trafficking ring and extortion racket—it’s not her style; she may be apathetic by nature, but she cares incessantly for her reputation and that of her son Baron—she’s protecting both of them.
That’s it—there’s no secret sauce here. Melania is protecting Baron and hates the rest of her life as a Trump—except the trappings of luxury and the power it projects.
Bottom line, she won’t go down with the ship, and if it comes down to her or Trump; she’s already half way into the lifeboat—exactly to be expected when you live in a glass house; even with the gold plated trimmings! IMHO…:)
I’m not saying she didn’t know him or wasn’t socially involved with him—amicable, but there’s a difference between knowing about some of Epstein’s illegal activities and just being friendly with a guy who happens to be friends with many of the same people Epstein hangs around with.
Trump and Epstein were friends. Trump knew, and all evidence from the birthday note, to his FBI interviews corroborates the fact that Trump knew about Epstein’s crimes and even participated.
However, there was another network; Epstein funding academics and putting diplomats and businessmen into deals and positions of power. This gave Epstein the power and influence with the rich and famous.
Therefore, and naturally, even if people in Epstein’s social circles suspected that he was a pedophile, the mere fact he had so many famous and influential people in his social circle that most people would just shrugged and say, “If it were true, why would all these famous and venerated people continue to socialize with the guy? That’s my point!
I suspect Melania knows a few things about men and their distasteful proclivities given her resume, but for the moment we are playing the choir girl angle and wearing our virgin Mary face.
I wonder if she stated that she was never a friend of Jeffery Epstein because she was actually a victim. Maybe DJT actually purchased her from JE. Just a random thought floating around in my brain.🤷♀️
What would “affair” mean now? Can’t imagine cankles is capable of physical infidelity, even with pharmaceutical help, and they’re both too transactional for emotional infidelity. Financial infidelity? Weird photo opps? Even loony Loomer is engaged now.
Hmmm, good point. Not that I think Melania would give a sh*t. But maybe, just maybe, all those little blue pills would have a deleterious effect on DJT's health...? We can only hope.
If Melania can become the person to orchestrate her husband's removal from office and banishment from relevance, even better toward a jail cell for crimes committed, then she is the one in the marriage who belongs on a future denomination of U.S. currency.
I was talking to my Gen Z son about this today. He and I do not see eye to eye on a number of things, but on Epstein we do agree. He pointed out that it would be ironic if this spurs more productive examination into the Epstein files and brings down the Trump regime she would be the most important first lady ever!
That she is makes this all the more perfect, in my mind. What we are all seeing, on full display for the world to witness, is what a world driven by unmitigated selfishness looks like.
I've assumed that any removal from office would be at the instigation of Vance, who could strike a deal with the Cabinet heads that they would keep their jobs. I don't think he'd do it; too risky. Interesting if Melania turns out to be the catalyst, getting him to resign rather than be removed.
You bet it would be risky. Trump is shedding support, but the faithful who still stand with him include fanatical, dangerous cultists. They hate Democrats with white-hot passion, but they hate Republican "traitors" even more. Vance knows that, and so does every Republican in Congress. If they doubt it, Mike Pence could explain it to them.
Trump orchestrated a huge surge in popularity for the mullahs. The Iranians will never look to us as potential saviors, never aspire to be like us, again.
First term: Trump disbands the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit attached to NSC—two years later we get COVID, and people start drinking bleach and are told they should be honored to die for the country; so others could live! In short, they couldn’t govern so death becomes patriotic—get the point?
Second term: Ridiculous tariffs on allies. Threatening to invade NATO countries. Sucking up to dictators and kleptocrats alike. Hare-brained scheme to invade Iran. And only president to ever invade 8 sovereign nations in a year.
This is madness, and we have become the pariahs of the world. And ironically, the tech bro’s and neocons who support this chaos—are still winning! Even Iran is taking payment in bitcoin, while the US dollar is eventually rendered obsolete; not fully—but we won’t be the reserve currency of the world for long; which is part of this insidious plan! IMHO…:)
"Well into the new millennium, America was the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the planet, the ideological leader of a peaceful world order. Then Trump got involved!"
Agreed if you’re talking about the Iranian’s—and exactly my point! Trump’s hare brained scheme has left the Iranian’s stronger not weaker—we are the losers because the Straight is still closed.
Additionally, Iran is making more money off of their oil than any time in the last 47 years since we’ve had sanctions imposed on them from their storming g of the US embassy in 1979.
And most importantly, the regime is still in place and allowed to continue to enrich their uranium to weapons grade. So……:)
"Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, that's all anyone wants to talk about. We need to do something to change the headlines. Let's do another of those 12-hour Venezuela things, but in Iran this time."
"Mr. President, that's an incredibly great idea. That's like a move right out of 4-demensional chess. Leave it to you to find the solution. Can we get you another Big Mac?"
A few days ago:
"Iran, Iran, Iran, that's all anyone wants to talk about. We need to do something to change the headlines. Let's have Melania say something about the Epstein shit. Anything to shift the focus off the Iran thing."
"Mr. President, that's an incredibly great idea. That's like a move right out of 4-demensional chess. Leave it to you to find the solution. Can we get you another Big Mac?"
Yes, I feel like many pundits are overcomplicating this. I had seen some allegations about Melania in the news recently. Maybe Suzie Wiles thought, why not have encourage her to make a statement. After the Melania film, we know she loves to be on camera creating drama. People are making such a big deal about her expressing sympathy for the victims, but isn't that in line with her Be Best campaign? Maybe she's simply tossing the ball into another court (Congress) that doesn't seem to be able to do anything with it, while creating at least a momentary distraction from Iran.
"Vice President JD Vance went all the way to Hungary this week to rally on Orbán’s behalf, while the president last night posted a long, glowing endorsement on Truth Social."
There's a term for this; it's called "interfering in foreign elections." If PM Mark Carney came down here and campaigned for Gavin Newsom in 2028, the right would be apoplectic, and justifiably so. But for Trump, any foreign election interference on his behalf is acceptable and welcome, and any interfering he does in foreign elections is by definition righteous and just, because it's something he did, and he can only do righteous and just things.
"Trump denounced Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones"
I don't know who's responsible for the footnote, but that's my nightmare blunt rotation.
“Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the agreement we have!”
That's one way to look at it. Or, more accurately, you could say "Iran is doing a great job of not allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz."
As for Melania's surprise press conference, it certainly was odd. Seems ominous for Donald Trump; seems ominous for Melania, even. But as far as Melania being a rat jumping off a sinking ship, we've thought that before, and she's often surprised us by being just as bad as everyone else in her orbit. She's a wretched, vile, wicked Cruella, and while she's trying to save herself, I wouldn't go so far as to say she's actively throwing her husband under the bus. She's passed up on the opportunity to do so too many times in the last decade.
But now she has her own money. FelonTrump used to brag about paying his first wife, who was in charge of choosing the decorations of Trump Tower, with “a couple of dresses.” She did all the planning and managing and got a couple of new dresses. He never paid her. At least one of those dresses cost him $100,000.00. Hope she sold it and kept the cash.
Are we lost in the Doom Loop of DJT's brain? If I understand, he has sent JD, our VP, a strong advocate and crusader for Theocratic White Nationalism, Wittcoff, a Real Estate buddy and Jared, his son in law to negotiate with Iran. JD is as much a fascist as DJT, Wittcoff and Kushner are both ardent supporters of the Netanyahu government in Israel. So, I ask. What can go wrong with this strategy? Today he released completely crazed, anti immigrant tweets that have the authorship of Stephen Miller "written" all over them. What's next? Just when Trump is trying to transition from the episode "A HAPPY ENDING" to his great victory against Iran, Melania absolves herself from the Epstein business. Is anyone sane working or living at the White House?
Of course there are. And shame on you for letting the cooks, tour guides, and pages catch some strays. But if you were referring to anyone with some semblance of power or agency in the administration, than the answer is no. (Though to be fair, Sean Duffy has had a moment or two, like when he verbally slapped Elon down at a cabinet meeting when explaining how he had to intervene to prevent DOGE from firing air traffic controllers shortly after we had a number of plane crashes.)
I have to ask; Does anybody else notice the parallels between Melania’s speech, and Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinski.”? Just before we found out that indeed he did have sex with that woman? Asking for a friend.
He supported the German hard right wing candidate a couple of months ago. I suspect he might be on a project of his own. The rest of the administration, including the president, might not care whether he does this or not.
It also occurs to me that Steve Bannon was in Europe for a while trying to stir up some sort of right wing political action. Is Vance's friend Thiel into this sort of activity too?
Melania apparently likes her revenge best served cold, which was on full display with her cold and calculated performance yesterday. If I were Donald, I’d sleep with one eye open.
She's trying to get out in front of the story that she had ICE deport someone as a personal favor to her former agent so he could win a custody battle:
Actually, if Trump does not succeed in totally destroying America and the world, the backlash to his rule could be something many of us have always hoped for. That would be a somewhat diminished and chastened America, that is more willing to treat other countries as equals, negotiate in good faith with our adversaries, such as China, and restore a truer form of democracy in America, with tighter guardrails, a concern for the betterment of all of our citizens, and a genuine attempt at equal justice for all.
Either Melania is positioning herself for a post Trump life which may indicate that Trump's health is failing rapidly or Michael Wolff's "reporting" is about to he widely disseminated.
Wolff has claimed that Melania was with Epstein before Trump, that he introduced her to Trump, and that Trump and Melania had sex for the first time on the Lolita Express. The owner of the "modeling" agency she worked for has been tied to sex trafficking of Eastern European women and had a relationship with Epstein.
Melania threatened a 1B suit against Wolff for merely mentioning that she knew Epstein. She never filed it. Wolff has responded with a SLAPP suit against her for her attempt to suppress his "journslism".
A serious investigation of all of these allegations is needed to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Someone must have put a bee in Melania's bonnet. I could see Ghislaine Maxwell suggesting she would spill some beans on Melania if Melania didn't push Donald into pardoning her. I could see Melania's response being something along the lines of FU you POS, I'm getting out way ahead of both of you, and so she did. This might turn out to be a sort of reverse Streisand effect. But whatever the real reason turns out to be, yesterday was delicious.
For the first time in a decade, I have hope that this is the straw that breaks Trump's f'ng back. Melania's timing was exquisite. Just when Trump has his base fracturing over Iran, she, of all people, is out there from behind the Presidential podium, reminding everyone about his first major betrayal of his base. Chef's kiss.
I agree with DD, interesting. All these overly privileged, too rich for their own good, garbage people will shiv each other rather than have friends.
That place is a basket of poisonous snakes and our adversaries are rubbing their hands in glee. What a concentration of bad/evil/stupid/greedy under one roof.
It's being reported in a lot of places that Melania just used ICE to deport her former agent's ex-girlfriend to help him in a custody battle. That deported woman is on social media right now threatening to tell everything she knows about Epstein.
Zampolli is a choice piece of work. His baby wife would definitely have a case of beans to spill. Zampolli is the guy who got Melania her Einstein Visa. As Jeri observed, quite the concentration of bad/evil/stupid/greedy folks.
It feels like there is a fatal equation currently governing the American republic, and I find myself returning to it with deepening dread. We live in a remarkably dangerous, deeply serious time, yet our fate is dictated by profoundly unserious, intrinsically dangerous people. This catastrophic mismatch is not merely confined to the occupants of the executive branch. It extends to the American populace itself, an electorate that looked directly at an increasingly volatile world and consciously chose to empower a lethal circus.
History does not forgive this caliber of frivolity. When the sheer volatility of the international order demands rigorous statecraft, we are instead subjected to a governing apparatus consumed by malignant narcissism and cheap political theater. The utter lack of gravity at the highest levels of power is breathtaking. Diplomatic capital is squandered dispatching the Vice President to Hungary to prop up the sagging electoral fortunes of a two-bit autocrat, while the First Lady commandeers the Cross Hall of the White House to desperately sever her own reputational liabilities from her husband’s radioactive ties to Jeffrey Epstein. These are the grotesque priorities of a decaying administration, completely unequipped for the monumental duties it holds.
We cannot afford the cowardice of blaming this solely on the politicians. The convergence of a highly volatile global environment with a cabal of petty, intellectually vacant leaders is a direct reflection of a public that has abandoned the sober duties of citizenship in favor of grievance-fueled entertainment. We are an unserious people who handed the vast, lethal apparatus of the state to dangerous amateurs. It is a terrifying equation, and the math guarantees a brutal reckoning.
A nation that insists on being entertained by arsonists has no right to weep when the republic burns.
Every empire eventally falls. Usually because they're too comfortable to adapt to an ever-changing world. Here we are. Unfortunately, it all could have been avoided.
Read Meg Wheatley. She has a recent podcast describing the collapse of civilizations—and they ALL fall. We’re living in the throes of it right now. Each time the people thought they were at the height of civilization and didn’t see the beginnings of the downside. And especially now, technology is part of it. There’s even a term for it: Technological Magisterium—the feeling technology will save us. It’s global. One other point is that at the end of civilizations, people thrive on celebrity culture for inspiration & loyalty. Sometimes it’s for relief from the constant feeling of helplessness.
Voting for presidential candidates with ZERO experience in elected or appointed govt offices is a clear sign voters have no clue what they're voting for, so deserve everything they get.
When large portions of a people decide that NEITHER expertise NOR experience matter, don't they NEED a fall of their civilization as an intellectual purgative?
Tangent: there's no way to teach wisdom. Let's pray the people of the US have reached peak foolishness and are on their path to regressing to the mean.
Jan - this synopsis is brilliant. I mean, not great for us but well stated
Makes perfect sense!
We're learning the hard way that technology (alone) will not save us. It's technology, focused by the lens of our values and vision that might.
Should have read this first before I made my comment! I will check out Meg Wheatlely.
Where is this podcast?
shows.acast.com/wild-with-sarah-wilson/episodes/collapse-series-meg-wheatley
Thank you!
True, but this empire didn't fall. Trump took it to the top of a building and pushed it off the roof.
The Supreme Court pushed it off the roof. Trump was the capering fool to get people to look the other way.
The court jester in other words.
NOT the court jester. Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are the court jesters. They speak truth to power, often in ways that are WAY over the heads of the people in power. “The play is the thing, wherein we catch the conscience of the king.” Good ol’ Shakespeare.
And Secretary of the Weekend Morning Dunk Tank.
Exactly, and not just the Supreme Court, but billionaire authoritarians (Theil, Musk) and their followers who put endless amounts of money to put his minions in place. And draft an oligarchy (Project 2025) takeover that would support the oligharchy.
"capering" - had to look it up. Perfect description.
Tossed it down a golden escalator, or maybe down the stairs like Ivana…
I think about that a lot.
I blame the end of the Cold War. Until that point, we had a perceived rival that we had to stay on top of. Once we lost that, pure decadence.
It started with St Ronnie and his anti government/anti tax rhetoric. He also marked the beginning of the deep state bs, and the pro life agenda masking racism with it's purposeful use of the Evangelicals to form the core piece of the GOP base. Add Rush Limbaugh, FOX news, and Face Book shortly there after, wait three decades to let the bread and circus rise, and here we are.
All excellent points!
Preach, sister. I think I sometimes become annoying to my friends and family because of my frequent harping on how the gospel of St. Ronnie, partnered with Rush and FOX, brainwashed a significant portion of our fellow citizens to believe the things you cite.
For me specifically it's been the pro life block. That's a bone you can't dislodge because they ate the whole dog. I got so sick of 'evil' democrats and their evil ways allowing for millions of late term abortions...even infanticide. Plus it served as the bed rock for the complete distortion of Christianity in the US. This one won't go away with Trump.
The harder they go for the religious right the crazier the behavior becomes. Go figure!
I can't agree. I think it was the post WWII economic boom that led to "decadence" and eventually to where we are today. Until the oil shock of the 70's US citizens on the whole led prosperous lives. They expected their children to do so too and many times they did.
Things were shaken a bit with the surge in oil prices in the late 70's but evened out and the next economic boom came from the tech world at the turn of the century. But it was smaller than the earlier one and benefited a smaller number of people. As each subsequent decade unfolded people began to notice that they weren't doing as well economically as other people in the US were; that it took 2 adults working jobs for money to pay for what their grandparents or even parents could do with one 1 adult working. They started to look for someone to blame.
max - it’s no ONE thing. Neil Postman raised a key element in Amusing Ourselves to Death - communication/ entertainment technologies that over time fundamentally changed our ways & abilities to think. To me a second key element starting around same time as that book was the financial industry upsetting the previous more concrete models of economics. Once the cord to objective objects & services was switched out for gambling potential numbers on paper, grandpa’s job stamping out widgets was no longer the American dream
And here I thought it was because folks were upset that blacks and women were getting "uppity".
I have a bit of pique seeing numerous cites of Postman these days. I thought 'Amusing...' was a rather dumbed-down gloss on more serious and perceptive thinkers... and I had an odd micro-encounter with him in which he displayed arrogant assholery. He was writing for a wider audience than say Baudrillard or Jameson, which is laudable in a way, but not when you step right up to the role of political economy in the subject and then just paper over it, as he did in the "Now, this...." section.
Anyway, for an accessible (if not exactly lively) overview of the terrain I'd recommend 'The Condition of Postmodernity' by David Harvey.
Agree about Postman's observations in the 80s. But I think the manufacturing job losses came before financial services became the dominant economic sector. In "The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order," historian Gary Gerstle captures this story and how Reagan's economic policies - deregulation, personal freedoms, open borders and globalization - drove it
I grew up in the Midwest and lived through the early days of the Rust Belt. I always wondered what caused the end of the New Deal era and ushered in the Neoliberal. I learned that by the late 1960s, the New Deal's Keynesianism was no longer delivering economic prosperity because American companies now had competitors in Germany and Japan. Then in the 70s, the oil crisis and stagflation - high unemployment and inflation - plunged the economy into crisis. The Neoliberal order was a response to this. It died in 2008.
Gerstle also describes the emerging political economy that will follow the neoliberal order : " . . . states must intervene in markets to address questions of economic security, opportunity, and welfare. Beneath some of the hubbub of American politics, a new political economy along these lines is indeed taking shape" (https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/series/analytical-series/cafe-econ-a-new-political-order-emerges).
This should be the Democratic platform in 2028.
I do think there was always a dark underbelly, corruption, migrant workers, racism, swelling incarceration, it just got ignored because of the materialistic culture that didn’t want to see.
American Traditional Conservatism (racist sexist, ethno-nationalist, nominally "Christian") has always been there, often under the surface. It is just out in the open once again.
Also, we're still fighting the Civil War.
I can't argue with any of that!
It always could have been avoided, except in the cases where external factors (usually environmental) brought about the fall. That is always the sad part.
Those Americans alive today, who have witnessed and experienced what has happened have the answer to the question--how did someone like <insert horrible dictator> get into power? Why did so many people support them?
I mean, we KNEW the answer to that question (at least the people who were interested and cared). But it can't happen here, amiright? (which is one of the reasons it IS happening here).
It couldn't happen here because prosperity was widely shared until income inequality became the norm. "High income inequality poses a severe threat to democracy by driving democratic erosion, reducing trust in institutions, and allowing elites to influence political outcomes" (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11725924/#:~:text=Significance,effect%20of%20strengthening%20democratic%20systems.).
This is what the Dems must begin to undo when they get control of Congress and the White House.
We knew propaganda works. So we decided to swim in it.
Yes, empires all fall, but they are usually okay after that. The Roman empire fell but Italy is fine. The British empire dissolved but the UK is okay. The Japanese colonial empire fell catastrophically in 1945. It did not have to be that way. It might have dissolved slowly like the European colonial empires. But in any case, Japan is fine. It is better off without a colonial empire. The U.S. would be better off being just another country, rather than the World's Policeman.
Whoa. It takes a bit of a breathtaking level of historical creativity to survey the bloody, catastrophic collapse of global empires and summarize the aftermath as "usually okay." To casually claim that "Italy is fine" following the fall of Rome is to cheerfully gloss over centuries of brutal warlordism, total economic disintegration, and a population collapse so severe that the city of Rome itself devolved from a sprawling metropolis of a million people into a plague-ridden ruin of scavengers. Yes, Italy is "fine" today, fifteen hundred years and countless rivers of blood later.
Using Japan as a supporting argument is even more shocking. The Japanese empire did not peacefully dissolve, it was violently dismantled at the cost of millions of lives, culminating in dual nuclear detonations, the incineration of its major cities, and total foreign subjugation. Japan is "fine" today exclusively because the United States, the very global hegemon you are so eager to dismantle, spent decades and billions of dollars rebuilding it into an allied democracy from the ashes of its own suicidal imperialism.
The fantasy that the United States can simply abdicate its role as the anchor of the international order and peacefully retire to become a giant, harmless Switzerland is a pretty "creative" understanding of geopolitics. Power vacuums do not remain empty. If the American security umbrella is folded, the resulting void will not be filled by a utopian global brotherhood, it will be rapidly and violently seized by revanchist autocracies.
We did not hold our position out of mere vanity. The unprecedented domestic prosperity, economic leverage, and physical security we currently enjoy are directly subsidized by our hegemonic status. You do not get to gracefully resign from being a superpower. The collapse of American influence will not yield a quiet, comfortable retirement, it will yield a brutal, chaotic world order where our adversaries dictate the terms of our existence and control the arteries of global trade. To look at the historical slaughterhouse of imperial collapse and shrug it off as "okay" is the ultimate luxury of someone completely insulated from the unforgiving realities of how the world actually functions.
I said the Japanese colonial empire "might have" dissolved peacefully, the way the British empire did after WWII. Obviously, I know it did not.
All of the European and Japanese empires should have been given up the way the British gave up India. They were fools to fight on, the way the French fought in Algeria and Vietnam.
My point is that the UK, Japan, France and the others did not need colonial empires. They were better off without them.
I'm pretty sure your clarification only deepens the fundamental category error at the heart of your argument. You are conflating 19th-century territorial colonialism with the modern American security architecture, treating them as if they are interchangeable geopolitical models. They are not.
It is absolutely true that France and Britain were ultimately "better off" shedding their colonial possessions. By the mid-20th century, direct territorial occupation, whether suppressing insurgencies in Algeria or maintaining imperial administration in India, had become a staggering economic and moral hemorrhage. They abandoned those territories because the cost of violent subjugation had vastly outweighed the extractive yield.
The United States, however, does not govern a colonial empire, we manage a hegemonic global order. We do not occupy foreign lands to plunder their spices or rubber. Instead (or we didn't before the Rotting Orange was empowered), we underwrite the global security umbrella, enforce the freedom of navigation that allows modern supply chains to exist, and maintain the financial architecture that establishes the dollar as the world's reserve currency. This is not a charitable endeavor, nor is it an imperial burden we need to altruistically shed. It is the exact mechanism that guarantees our unprecedented domestic prosperity and insulates us from the chaos of a predatory world.
To suggest we should peacefully abdicate this role, as if we are simply handing the keys back to a foreign territory, is a catastrophic misunderstanding of how global power functions. When the British Empire left India, India eventually governed itself. When the United States folds its security umbrella and withdraws from the Pacific, Eastern Europe, or the Middle East, those regions do not magically revert to peaceful autonomy. The resulting vacuum is immediately and violently seized by revanchist autocracies.
The naive belief that we can simply resign from global leadership and become "just another country" ignores the cold reality of physics: power abhors a vacuum. Dismantling the American-led international order will not yield the quiet, comfortable isolationism you envision. It will yield a brutal, fractured globe where our adversaries dictate the terms of trade, choke our supply chains, and define the boundaries of our security. Wishing away our global leverage is not a strategy, it is a suicide pact wrapped in historical mythos.
Yes, we'll be fine, but it's a shame to lose our nation's position because of how lazy and selfish our society became.
Not all empires are 'okay' after they fall. They sometimes just cease to exist, to the extent that the modern remnant is barely recognizable compared to what it once was. The Mayan Empire. The Byzantine Empire. The Persian Empire. The Soviet Empire -- Russia still exists but is not really okay, it is a thuggish rogue state run like a mafia, with an anemic economy for a country of its vast size and resources. It has spent over four years and most of its resources trying to subjugate a far smaller and weaker country next door, and still hasn't succeeded. The United States, if the MAGA government persists, may eventually resemble this unfortunate model.
Thank you Sumi. I was reading that comment and thing wow, this is shockingly detached from reality.
Thx, Sumi.
The UK is not fine today. And Japan recovered its catastrophic fall due to the help of US aid. Who's gonna help us?
The UK was fine for decades. It can recover. It does not need a colonial empire to do that. Japan did not get any financial help or material help such as factory equipment from the U.S., except food aid and fertilizer for a few years. It was not covered by the Marshall Plan. On the contrary, the Japanese government paid the U.S. a lot during the occupation.
The U.S. gave Japan freedom, a new Constitution, and wholesale reforms of institutions such as marriage and labor laws. Most of these reforms were suggested by Japanese liberals before the war, so they fit in well with society. They were codified by American experts during the war who were quite familiar with the situation in Japan, and knew their counterparts such as labor leaders and teachers.
See Cohen, T., "Remaking Japan" for details. Cohen wrote the labor law reforms. All of the policies implemented by MacArthur were spelled by Cohen and other experts during the war. A friend of my mother wrote the agricultural policies.
(Note that I went to college in the U.S. and Japan in the 1970s. Some of my professors were people who implemented the Occupation policies. So I know a lot about this.)
Yes, I know Japan was not covered by the Marshall Plan. But re "Japan did not get any financial help or material help such as factory equipment from the U.S., except food aid and fertilizer for a few years" - just food aid and fertilizer? A simple search revealed the aid also fostered economic recovery and technological support, the latter through the work of the American statistician W. Edwards Deming. He taught Toyota and Sony statistical process control, which was developed by the American physicist, engineer and statistician Walter A. Shewhart in the 1930s. It revolutionized Japanese manufacturing which led to their dominance in many US consumer markets in the 1970s.
Way more than reforming marriage and labor laws.
I meant they got very little physical, material aid. Yes, of course they got a lot of intellectual aid. Deming did not begin until 1950 when the Occupation was almost over, but there were many others.
I mentioned marriage and labor laws as examples. Of course there were hundreds of other reforms. The Constitution to start with, written mostly by Beate Sirota Gordon, at age 22.
Great points!
You are correct, Patrick. I have to admit to being rather entertained by the Melania spectacle and the public meltdowns and MRGA (I have changed MAGA to MRGA - Make Russia Great Again in my mind) internecine warfare that broke to the surface yesterday, but I also felt utterly sick about it. You have perfectly elucidated why the sick feeling should win over the momentary glee of schadenfreude, but damn! I think (and I don't think I am alone here) that I am so desperate for a sign that the fever is breaking and the end of our national nightmare may be nigh; and this week has been so extra-insane and tense, that the petty satisfaction of witnessing the grievance-fueled entertainers turn on each other is experienced as stress relief and even joy. I am not proud of it, but there it is.
Danielle, your impulse to find temporary relief in their cannibalism is entirely human and appreciated. I've written close to a million words on how and why we need to violently disabuse ourselves of the comforting metaphor that this is a "fever." Fevers break. Fevers imply a healthy host body temporarily fighting off an acute pathogen before returning to its natural equilibrium. What we are witnessing in the American republic is not a passing illness; it is profound, structural rot.
Undoing this magnitude of civic vandalism is not a matter of surviving one disastrous administration; it requires a grueling, multi-generational rebuild, and if we look unblinkingly at the current American appetite for shared sacrifice and serious governance, it is a rebuild we are highly unlikely to execute. I could lay out a million reasons why the math of our decline is unforgiving, but the most honest response I can offer is simply this:
I understand you fully. The exhaustion of watching the collapse is profound, and the desperate desire for it to just be over is the heaviest burden of seeing reality clearly.
Thank you for being you.
Thank you, Patrick. Your clarity of thought and empathetic response has literally made me tear up at work. I agree with you. And it is a lot.
Good point, Patrick. I think you are saying something like the Trump administration is similar to the canary in the coal mine, signaling that there are some serious, long term problems that need to be fixed if things are to get better. Our country was made great by all the people who came here from other places with their vigor, persistence, intelligence, and ambition and together worked to form the United States of America. We call them immigrants. If we can elect a Congress that passes bills to get control of how immigration works, maybe we can attract people like that again.
Patrick, you are, of course correct that this will not be something we remedy with an election (See Biden 2020), but rather it will be dozens, maybe another 47 of them, to get things nudged enough to really see a difference. It took us 250 years to get here. Why should we think it will not take 250 more?
But an election - the midterms - is the beginning. One step at a time.
Hi Sandy, I like your attitude, I am finding some strength in taking it one day at a time too. One of the quotes I came across that is helping me is from Confucius I think, who said "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
I've been thinking "what would it take to face down all of the hard work ahead to pay the cost of America's decadence exemplified in Trump, once he has left the stage?" I think it's the moral values we've all been taught that we need to return to - those are what help us to not stop.
Ultimately my comfort from this episode of Trump's second term, in which we seem to be on the road to facing heavy losses as a country, which we may not have the wherewithal to bear over the next several decades, is the hope that from the wreckage we could learn a collective lesson of humility, that brings us to a more sober place of judgment. Of course I'm still hoping too that we don't get put to the final test.
I've felt in some ways that Trump is uncannily like an anti-George Washington. Just as George Washington and many others helped set an example that has carried our country thru 250 years, and even if all of the progress contributed selflessly by every upstanding American from the time of George Washington until now would all be cut down by one man in the end, squandered for the self-enrichment of a few, yet if the American people can learn a collective lesson and find a way to keep going, however slowly, then maybe down the road our country could get back to a place of broadly shared prosperity again.
Thanks for your reply, Matthew. Love the Confucious quote. I think the best place to get support for returning to those moral values are LIBERAL Jewish and Christian churches. The Progressive Episcopal Church is one, and the Pope is leading the Catholic Church to focus on the ethical principles of the Bible.
I myself think we DO have the wherewithal to face heavy losses as a country, especially if we are connected to in-person local communities, which religious organizations provide. So do local civic organizations like Indivisible. We subscribers can debate whether we do or don't have the wherewithal, as no one knows for sure, but I'm moving forward thinking we do. If it turns out that I'm wrong, then so be it.
Patrick: I think MAGA can be described as a fever, an infection metaphor, in part because your concept of 'fever' is grossly inaccurate medically. Not all fevers break, with the body returning to healthy equilibrium, by a long shot. If we look at history, there are any number of instances of societies going off the deep end for awhile, and then recovering - but typically the recovery of the body politic leaves a lot of dead human bodies behind, eh?
But my hypothesis is that our current madness IS different, because the unease underneath it is different. I don't see mere moral rot as much as frightened desperate people intuiting their doom going nuts, like all the animals stampeding wildly because they sense the massive danger, Kong or Tsunami, coming though not yet visible. Which for humans involves grasping on the coat-tails of false saviors in a quest for "relief from the constant feeling of helplessness". Which helplessness, I hypothesize is rooted in intimation that the scientists are right, a climate apocalypse is not just a threat, like nuclear war has been or the singularity is now, but an already done deal that simply awaits for the loosed pachinko balls to drop the rest of the way through the maze of pins and end the game.
Ohhhhhh boy. I guess let’s dispense with the clinical pedantry regarding the exact pathology of a fever, because clinging to that metaphor is getting genuinely eye-roll inducing. Arguing over whether a biological fever always returns a host to equilibrium is a spectacular way to avoid confronting the reality of our political decay. I’m reading as you are desperately trying to frame this as an external infection, a temporary madness that simply washed over us, because the alternative is admitting that this is exactly who the American electorate is, and that they are doing exactly what they want to do.
To compound that evasion, it takes a remarkable degree of intellectual contortion to diagnose a political movement defined by gleeful anti-science resentment as a subconscious reaction to climate change. Ascribing a repressed, tragic eco-anxiety to a voting bloc that explicitly cheers for environmental deregulation and actively mocks the very concept of a changing climate is an exercise in profound projection. It assigns an unearned psychological depth to a coalition driven almost entirely by cultural grievance, racial animus, and the desire to punish out-groups.
These voters are not desperately grasping for a savior because they subconsciously intuit the collapse of the biosphere, they are rallying behind a strongman because they want to exact revenge on a modern society that no longer centers them.
Furthermore, your metaphor of "stampeding animals" sensing a tsunami is worse than inaccurate, it is an explicit evasion of accountability. By framing authoritarian foot soldiers as helpless beasts driven mad by impending environmental doom, you strip them of their agency and sanitize their malice. They are not tragic victims of a looming planetary apocalypse seeking relief from helplessness. They are conscious, willing participants in the systemic destruction of the republic.
We do ourselves no favors by inventing sophisticated, sympathetic origin stories for straightforward political cruelty. The rot we are witnessing requires no complex ecological explanations. It is simply the banality of a populace that has abandoned the rigorous duties of democracy for the cheap thrill of authoritarian retribution.
Thanks for allowing my eyes to stretch though.
Wait... What? I'M pedantic?? The point of re-framing the fever metaphor, which is still a METAPHOR, is that I don't like the 'fever will break' hopium either, notwithstanding actuals facts like Germany and Japan now being quite different from Final Solutions and rapes of Nanking, etc. etc. Your assertion that I'm "desperately trying to frame this as a temporary madness" does not speak well for your reading comprehension, as I was positing the infection may well be fatal. And I don't mean 'fatal' metaphorically.
As far as 'infection' generally as a metaphor goes, there's nothing necessarily simple about it (I guess you never watched 'House'), and it's a hell of lot better theory of 'political decay' than 'people are just bad' because (duh) if that were the case there would have been no better state from which to decay from. (Or did you listen to too much Devo and not get the joke?)
You see... or rather you don't but should... that who people are and what they want to do are conditioned by power relations within which their selves and thoughts are formed to begin with. As material individuals, this would be more of a toxicity metaphor, but within the construct of a body politic 'infection' serves fine - as we have 'outbreaks' 'epidemics' and 'pandemics' that can be traced to 'pathogens' - like Fox news for a current paradigmatic example, or what Althusser called ISAs generally.
I don't know where you've lived or what you've studied, but I got a doctorate in media theory at the U of Iowa. So I know people in that state, including people close to me, have changed, appearing now to be quite different people than they were in the fore-times. And I also know exactly how a long term right-wing oligarch-backed propaganda strategy arose during Nixon years, and how much the present situation looks like what those plans envisioned.
Human beings are vulnerable. They can be survive physical catastrophes but get scarred by psychic wounds that may appear trivial to others. They can be duped, led astray, corrupted. And you, apparently, would let all the con-artists and demagogues off the hook because the people they sucked in are just morally bankrupt or stupid or both.
Let me guess; you're an ex-Republican amirite? Still showing utter contempt for regular people. Seems you should just abandon the democracy thing since you've determined we just aren't up to the rigorous sober duties.
About that 'we'. What a fantasy to imagine this massive 'we' exists in any meaningful way. Are you really in it? Methinks you think not.
I smell an intellectual laziness, foregoing the rigorous work necessary to grapple with the complex workings of social change for good or ill in favor of the cheap thrill of holding high dudgeon moral superiority to the masses.
So of course you project 'them' as conscious and willing, because that's EASY. You don't have to grapple with all the sub-conscious weirdness of human psyches (plural) that sits underneath an apparent willful unified rational individual subject.
If you knew anything about social or cultural theory, or certain basic concepts in psychology like "cognitive dissonance" you'd understand how much displacement and metaphor is involved in the construction of mythology, not just in the mythologies of the ancients or isolated pre-modern indigenous folk (e.g. cargo cults), but the 'mythologies' of contemporary media culture (following Barthes perceptive usage). I could be wrong about a general pervading sense of doom springing sub-consciously from climate change, but if was there it would manifest exactly in some form of denialism and grasping at false reassurances -- because that is what people do all the time in response to trauma.
It's also easy to imagine 'America' or 'the electorate' as a unity, for good or ill. What's hard is to grapple with the truth articulated by leftist analyses - we are divided along lines of class, race, ethnicity, gender -- all articulated to the increased ideological polarization now causing so much consternation -- and even beyond/beneath those overt conflicts there are more subtle contestations of power along all these lines, such that much of everyday life is a "site of struggle".
Whatever sense of 'America' unites me with Elon Musk and the Epstein class pales in the sense that doesn't (cue RATM medley). The first question may be "what is to be done", but the second is "which side are you on".
[BTW, you misused 'banality'. 'Banal' is a synonym for 'mundane': unremarkable, boring, everyday, routine. The phrase 'banality of evil' as used by Arendt discussing Eichmann does not mean 'evil is mundane' that banality is therefore a sign of evil. It's an awkward translation, parallel to forms like "the cinema of trangression'. IOW banality is not an adjective, but a noun. The phrase means 'that banality which is also evil'. The idea being that Eichmann did not project stereotypical villainous relish (as did, say Hitler), but as a dull bureaucratic paper-pushing functionary. That THAT could counter-intuitively be vector of the most horrible evil was the insight. You can call this note pedantry, but I started out as a high school writing teacher and I see pointing out that "the banality of a populace" makes no damn sense as a professional service... And you're welcome.]
Buddy, I am genuinely concerned you are having an aneurysm. This frantic, ego-bruised word salad reads less like a theoretical rebuttal and more like a catastrophic neurological event.
Since you offered a "professional service" as a former teacher, let's quickly dissect your spectacular, three-tiered self-own. First, "the banality of a populace" uses the word as a noun, matching Arendt’s exact syntax. Second, Arendt wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem in English for an American magazine, there is no "awkward translation," you simply fabricated that history to sound erudite. Third, pointing out that mundane, unexceptional people eagerly drive systemic cruelty is the literal application of her concept.
Please, put down the pseudo-intellectualism and get someone to drive you to the nearest ER.
Good luck on your health journey.
Patrick, IMO, it's too soon to declare a profound, structural rot. Wait till the results of the midterms come in. If the Dems take not only the House but also the Senate, we begin the rebuild.
A lot of people are willing to spend an agonizing amount of time in these forums debating which institutional lever to pull, entirely ignoring the grim reality that the machine itself has been disconnected from the power source. I don't do that. Waiting for a midterm election or a Supreme Court ruling to save the American republic is an exercise in profound normalcy bias. You do not schedule a renovation for a building that has already collapsed.
I have meticulously cataloged the systematic disassembly of our constitutional governance. The resulting document is not a warning of impending danger; it is a structural inspection of a condemned property. From launching unauthorized wars and abducting foreign heads of state to deploying biometric surveillance against domestic protesters and blatantly ignoring the Supreme Court on taxation, the executive branch has realized a fatal truth. The Constitution is merely advisory if no one possesses the mechanical means to enforce it. The Founders’ three-legged stool, an informed public, a robust Congress, and an independent judiciary, has been reduced to rubble. Congress has surrendered its authority to become a cheering section, the judiciary’s rulings dissolve the moment they meet executive defiance, and a heavily propagandized electorate has eagerly handed the state to dangerous amateurs.
I spent the last year desperately searching for a single load-bearing wall that still holds. I could not find one. Every institutional exit the public is reaching for has already been bricked over by executive decree and congressional cowardice.
I lay out the full structural math, and the unavoidable conclusion, here: https://complexsimplicity.substack.com/p/sixteen-months-of-constitutional. I encourage you to read the inspection report. If you can identify a single institutional pillar that remains functional enough to bear the load of a multi-generational recovery, I invite you to point it out. If you cannot, then it is time to stop pretending we can vote our way out of a ruin.
Patrick, the tone of your prose puts me off, which diminishes my motivation to read your article. You accuse me of ignorance of "the grim reality that the machine itself has been disconnected from the power source". Is that a fact? I don' think it is. My disagreeing with you doesn't make me ignorant.
Then you accuse me of normalcy bias. Then you tell me I'm pretending.
So I'm not going to read your article. If you could provide a summary, I would read that.
BTW, regarding the single load-bearing wall, have you read Jonathan Rauch's "Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy" (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300273540/cross-purposes/)? He says Christianity acts as a load-bearing wall for American democracy, providing necessary social cohesion, moral values, and civic virtue. Its "broken bargain" with democracy is that it has shifted from a social good to a polarized force that is either "too thin" (weak/declining) or "too sharp" (political/divisive). He calls for a return to a "thicker" Christianity, focused on the ethical teachings of Jesus (humility and forgiveness) rather than political power."
This is entirely possible IMO. Certainly the Progressive Episcopal Church to which I now belong is focused on the ethical teachings and speaking truth to power. See https://washingtonian.com/2025/04/01/dcs-episcopal-bishop-mariann-budde-on-trump-kindness-and-respect/.
And the current Pope? He's on it!
Sandy, let us correct the record, I did not call you ignorant. I stated that people are "entirely ignoring the grim reality." There is a profound intellectual difference between lacking access to information, which is ignorance and consciously refusing to look at the structural math placed directly in front of you. I'm not sure why you conflated the two, but I have some guesses.
You sought out this exchange. You replied to my commentary, entirely unprompted, to inform me I was wrong. When I laid out the exact structural mechanics of why I am not, your response was to announce you refuse to read the evidence and demand a summarized, tone-policed version instead. That is not a disagreement; that is intellectually hiding. You are welcome to feel however you wish, but when engaging with my writing, we operate within the unforgiving confines of empirical reality.
As for the supposed merit of your "load-bearing wall," you are fundamentally confusing sociological sentiment with hard institutional power. Jonathan Rauch’s hope for a "thicker" Christianity provides an interesting thesis for a divinity school seminar, but civic cohesion is not a structural check on a rogue executive branch. The Progressive Episcopal Church and the Vatican do not command the military. They do not possess subpoena power. They cannot enforce a Supreme Court injunction or freeze congressionally appropriated funds.
Furthermore, presenting American Christianity as the potential savior of our democratic institutions requires a staggering denial of the political environment we currently inhabit. The dominant, politically potent iteration of Christianity in this country is not a defense against authoritarianism, it is the ideological engine powering it. Relying on a marginalized, progressive sliver of the faith to somehow neutralize the massive, mobilized juggernaut of Christian Nationalism is not a political strategy. It is magical thinking.
If you prefer to ignore these structural realities in favor of a comforting delusion, you are free to retreat to spaces that prioritize your emotional comfort, but in this conversation, we do not substitute a sermon on humility for a constitutional mechanism.
We'll know the fever is breaking if the Dems take control of the Senate (control of the House is likely assured, barring any unforeseen event). And all of this internecine fighting helps them do it, so relax, stay tuned, and get active in supporting the Dem wins. See DCCC.org, DSCC.org, and https://swingleft.org.
MRGA! 🤣
The only correction I would make here is that many of these people (politicians and media types) are VERY serious people. They are VERY serious about amassing wealth and influence. They don't much care about how they do it and have no real other end in mind, but they ARE serious about it.
I agree with you (and Mike in response), and I wonder if there are any equivalents of the Bulwark that were around in the late Roman Republic, 18th-century France (Voltaire?), or others.
We do have Orwell and "Shooting an Elephant," and I imagine Barbara Tuchman must have tapped into a few sources for "The March of Folly" (which I really have to reread), but in the end all the Cassandras in the world are forgotten while history simply remembers the terrible people who ran a good thing into the ground.
Sometimes the most agonizing element of the Cassandra curse is not the impending destruction itself, but the profound, suffocating isolation of seeing it clearly while everyone else dances on the tracks. There is no social reward for prescience in a society structurally addicted to denial. Being right early is, socially speaking, functionally identical to being a madman.
This is precisely why I value JVL's role so deeply. He does the grueling, thankless work of anchoring the conversation to the grim mathematical realities of our situation, often absorbing the nervous laughter and reflexive mockery of co-hosts who still desperately want to believe the center will hold. Pointing out the obvious trajectory of a collapsing republic is treated as a breach of etiquette, an unwelcome intrusion of physics into a room that prefers magic. JVL refuses to soften the blow, and that refusal is a rare public service.
I know the exact personal cost of this dynamic. I have lost friends simply for articulating the horrors of our reality before they materialized, and it is a bitter, universal truth that they never reach out afterward. People do not sever ties because you were wrong, they often excommunicate you because your clarity threatens their comfortable delusions. To return and admit you were right would require them to confront their own willful blindness, and most people would rather forfeit a friendship than swallow that pill. The tragic irony of demanding seriousness in an unserious time is that you will simply be left alone, watching the disaster unfold exactly as you predicted, surrounded only by the deafening silence of those who refused to listen.
My God. You are singing my sad, sad song.
There is a reason why authors often have the truth of the case spoken by madmen.
I do hope you are not totally left alone, Patrick, but have a group that agrees with you to be a part of. I am fortunate that I have a smallish group of friends and my numerous siblings and their spouses that I can vent to.
Thank you Mary. Not alone, small groups of wonderful friends are vital.
thanks for being so very clear.
Plans for Trump’s arch are released
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/us/politics/arch-washington-trump.html
🤮
My feelings exactly.
🤣🤣
Sure. The tricky thing is seeing that things are getting better when they are at their worst. I think we passed a turning point that might inspire the best from us and bring an insurgent leadership change after this MAGA tradjectory meets hard ground. The pieces need to be put back together without the AI and Cryto bros pulling the strings, Project 2025 dismantled brick by brick, a fair and equitable or even, dare I say, progressive tax structure and social benifits that provide a saftey net removing so much fear, medical bankrupcy, homlessness, lack of good education and medical neglect. Mostly though, removal of dark money and the ruling of Citizens United v. FEC is needed, that is what allowed a lot of this power grab. Also removing compromised leadership subject to blackmail might be nice.
Clay, there is a profound, almost tragic innocence to your optimism. I genuinely understand the psychological desire to view our current political abyss as a rock-bottom turning point, a necessary dark night of the soul before a sweeping progressive renaissance. It is a comforting vision. We must be unsparingly honest about the structural realities we face, because clinging to the mirage of an imminent utopian correction is its own form of dangerous denial. Things are not getting better, and we are not on the verge of dismantling this machinery brick by brick.
The sheer mathematical permanence of the judicial branch is something almost no one talks about. The Supreme Court has been successfully captured and will remain held by a hard-right, ideologically rigid supermajority for the next four decades. You cannot simply legislate away Citizens United, execute sweeping progressive tax structures, or permanently fortify the social safety net when the ultimate arbiters of American law are structurally locked into dismantling those exact efforts for a generation. The vanguard controlling the courts does not care if the current MAGA trajectory eventually hits "hard ground"; their power is insulated, lifetime-appointed, and entirely immune to the shifting moods of the electorate.
The comforting fiction here is that once the current political apparatus falters, the system will naturally reset to a state of equitable grace. The devastating reality is that the system itself is thoroughly rotten, and the institutional guardrails have been permanently lowered. What we might experience in the near future is not a grand reversal, but merely a brief, chaotic pause. The true, existential threat lies in what comes next. The blueprints for dismantling the administrative state and consolidating executive power have already been drawn. Eventually, a vastly more disciplined, highly competent operator will step into this, someone who understands exactly how to wield the authoritarian machinery that has been normalized, but without the crippling liabilities of erratic personal indiscipline.
It is a beautiful thought to imagine this era as the catalyst for our best, most equitable selves. I do not fault you for wishing it were true, but we cannot fight the battles of the next half-century while hallucinating a fantasy where the damage is easily undone. We are in for a grueling, generational winter, and pretending spring is just around the corner only leaves us entirely unprepared for the freeze.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. There is a collective intellegance that brings solutions into being that can not be initially concieved by individuls in the thick of the worst of it. This is the thing that is hard to see. Its the hopelessness that triggers it. JVL gets it, things have to get bad enough to change its why he seems to be hoping for poor outcomes in the short-term. There is a flow of back and forth across history with slight odds in the houses favor towards progress. It has to do with the way we humans work things out, we all are cogs that rarely see things clearly until we are looking back. You can see it work though our own history, we didnt start out with Unions and a middle class when industrialization hit, or the declaration of independance in the USA post feudilism, a magna carta or even religious and philisophical thinking all evolved from need. Everything we cherish and think is beautiful evolved from need. As individuals we are all kind of wired for differnt things by default, when things get bad enough some of us just can't help working out solutions, its literally in our DNA for some of us. I am sure you are brilliant but you are not as intellegent as a socitety as a whole, after it has bottomed. You can not accurately predict how the change will come about, but it comes about, just unexpectadly. Just about the time you personally give up on these large outcomes is when you can see the turn. Its when things seem most hopeless that the fixers in our species wake up, hyperfocus, self-sacrafice and create new comunities around change that are actually effective. Otherwise we are lazy as F. Its what we do. We also do the bad things before the solutions are necasary, sure, but that runs its course. Its a good sign you think things are hopeless, for the reasons you were stating really. No, I don't believe it will be quick or easy. To use your seasonal alagory after the longest night of the year things start improving causally, even though it is the FIRST day of winter. The first day of winter is also when the days start getting longer. I think the longest night of the year was sitting on the edge of nuclear escalation a few days ago in a war with no benifit for anyone. I think that was a sea change. It really was a wake up call for a lot of people. I could talk existencial risks with you all day, I get it, but humans really do like existing and unexpectedly phase shift into something new when the urgency is high enough.
Also introducing a new political economy. The last one, Neoliberalism, led to the drastic income inequality that has partly fueled MAGA (demographic change - whites being a minority in 2045 is the other factor). See "A New Political Order Emerges" (https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/series/analytical-series/cafe-econ-a-new-political-order-emerges).
And let's not forget the millions of voters who were too lazy/indifferent to vote and their absence from the polls helping the traitorous/pervert get elected in 2016 and 2024.
I am afraid that many of those who didn't vote were not so much motivated by laziness, but, even having soured on Trump/MAGA, could not imagine themselves every voting for a Democrat. I have talked to enough people who said that they have family members who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump, but had bought into the years of brainwashing about the commie, immoral, even demonic Dems that they would never consider voting for one of them. So they just didn't vote at all that election, or at least didn't vote for President.
my younger brother went off the deep end with Limbaugh and his fairly new wife's church, He yelled at my father right before in home hospice, " you're a baby killer " My father, with a lot of help from my mother had fourteen healthy offspring, the last seven or so, she had a Catholic physician... we're Lutheran. Then my Dad remarried after a disturbing divorce at a month less than thirty years, They both remarried quite quickly , the woman that moved in , brought eight children with her, the youngest aged two. How could someone who simply said I'm going to vote Democrat from now on to my little brother; after having provided forr 22 children be a ' baby killer ' . He's called me worse. I fight him tooth and nail.
Yes, it's a lot of fear under an irrational despising .
Thank you for your well written summary of this horrible, unforgivable chapter in American history. I'm calling it a "chapter" because I desperately want to regard it as something that has an ending. That does not come from any deep well of optimism in me which somehow found its way through the seemingly intractable pessimism. It's simply me fighting the 24/7 existential dread with both hands tied behind my back.
If we could bury the two Trump presidencies and everyone and everything adjacent thereto, I propose we use one sentence from your comment as an epitaph for the entire catastrophe, because it truly is the whole "ball of wax":
"History does not forgive this caliber of frivolity."
Indeed.
Thanks for taking the time to write such thoughtful words.
Thank you for being you. I often find a specific, agonizing exhaustion in fighting off existential dread when the architects of our decline are so profoundly "who they are." I recognize the sheer endurance it takes to push back against that daily suffocation, and I appreciate that you refuse to look away. When the weight of this catastrophe threatens to crush whatever psychological reserves we have left, I sometimes find a benefit from a radical shift in perspective.
Sometimes it actually helps me to think that we are currently agonizing over the terminal decay of a republic, driven by the petty grievances of malignant narcissists, on a rocky planet that is nothing more than a microscopic speck of dust suspended in a staggeringly indifferent universe. Our entire solar system is a rounding error in the vastness of a single galaxy, which itself is merely a speck within an expanding, silent cosmic infiniteness.
This scale does not absolve the politicians of their malice, nor does it minimize the flesh-and-blood suffering this administration is inflicting, the destruction on the ground remains absolute, but when the walls of this condemned building feel entirely suffocating, it is strangely liberating to remember the sheer, incomprehensible magnitude of the cosmos. The lethal frivolity we are witnessing is devastating up close, but on a universal timeline, this horrific chapter, and the dangerous clowns who authored it, will flash out of existence with less than a whisper. Remembering our profound, structural insignificance is sometimes the only way to process the absolute absurdity of letting small, foolish men destroy something as rare as a functional civilization.
I managed to delete a nearly finished comment in response to yours. It's a shame that I can think the thoughts but my brain works against me properly "pushing the buttons." The gist of my comment was 1) that I felt we may have been separated at birth and 2) that for someone squarely in the "words person" camp of the binary world of "words person" v. "numbers person" I have always been fairly inexplicably drawn to astrophysics. I attributed my interest/deeply tenuous understanding of the subject to my brain getting bored of knowing what it already knows, and liking stars. However, as I read/contemplated your comment, it struck me that it may be deeper. While I do, indeed, refuse to look away (which implies that I'm not "checking out" or gunning for self-erasure,) perhaps my interest in reading/thinking about the Universe is something that lets some of the pressure OFF of the existential dread. Just as the "scale does not absolve the politicians of their malice," in a corollary way the scale removes the psychic pressure/impossible task I feel, at both a macro and micro level to "do something about all this to make it right." To be clear I'm not looking to/am not designed to be a "hey man whatever" person. That said, your words "profound, structural insignificance" were very comforting to me. I think this means I find Ego to be a burden. I wish "the politicians" did, but then they wouldn't be politicians. This seems like a fundamental flaw. But again, in the context of a "staggering indifferent universe," the need for me to decry human nature/the lack of human decency to such as extent that it results in self harm seems misplaced or unnecessary. Somehow saying that "out loud" seems irresponsible. But perhaps that's because old neural pathways die hard. I sincerely thank you for providing some ballast for the agony of the last decade. I have a stubborn brain. Your posts make a lot of sense to it. That's a rare gift.
Well said.
This collapse was aided by an "entertainment" news media that repeatedly told lies coming from a media conglomerate owned by an old man with more money than decency or character..
Unfortunately, Patrick, I agree with you on pretty much all you say. I am not a historian, like Heather Cox Richardson, but I keep thinking of other once powerful nations who fell from power, who once were so powerful that they governed huge parts of the world: Rome, Spain, France, England. Are there common reasons that explain how they fell and how we are falling? I would love to have an expert historian do a piece about this.
You might find this of interest: "The 7-Stage Collapse Pattern: Spain, Britain, USSR... USA Is At Stage 5" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb39CeK_yWg&t=105s). Debt has a lot to do with it.
I'm not a trained historian, but I'm a well-read, former history teacher and this makes sense to me.
And yet, here we are. So…now what?
Always ask: qui bono? Who benefits from this devaluation of our country and its citizens? Whose political campaigns are they funding? What media are they supporting? Musk, for example, negotiates directly with Russia, China, and India. Does he have any interest in America leading the world and remaining stable and prosperous? What about Peter Thiel, Erik Prince, the Koch brothers, the other defense contractors, big oil companies, etc.?
Don't forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do.
This made my day yesterday, with the cherry on top when she demanded congressional hearings, thus ensuring that the Epstein Files will not die.
Someone's knows she's going to live another 30 to 40 years and needs to put some distance between herself and The Donald.
The problem with Melania is that she’s such a cipher, but she probably knows more about Donald’s health records than most of is do. Early positioning for when he’s gone or smoke signals of things to come — who knows. The Trump family fights once Donald is gone will be a thing of beauty. I doubt the first Trump children cherish our first lady.
She's been pretty savvy so far in positioning her spawn for the downmarket War of the Roses that's practically inevitable. No way of knowing how smart Barron is (or how he feels about being named after a financial periodical), but with the possible exception of big sister Ivanka, the competition does not seem that formidable.
or a phony phone it in reporter
Don't imagine they like the second wife either....or their half sister.
Her mother taught her well. Tiffany’s husband is a professional inheritor worth $20M whose family companies in Africa, in particular Nigeria, seem pretty aboveboard. He doesn’t seem grifty enough to hang with the first set of devil spawn.
Tiffany seems pretty much out of the loop, if she’s smart she’ll put some serious distance between her half-siblings and herself before dear old Dad shuffles off this mortal coil.
I doubt she knows anything about his health records. You really think Melania is sitting with him in the waiting room before a physical? I'd be shocked if she knew what the "J" in Donald J. Trump stands for.
Jackass
Melania is no rocket scientist but she's savvy about anything having to do with her own survival and prosperity. She's with Trump on Air Force One and in the White House and Mar-a-Lago. She knows how he's really feeling, what his actual symptoms are that staff are covering up, whether or not he's n the White House on-site clinic or off to Walter Reed for other medical treatments, and probably what medications he's taking. She's in a better position to judge his mental deterioration than anyone else, actually.
Agree.
To continue Bill's quote, " and in her time, one woman may play many parts."
According to one of Michael Wolff's earlier Trump books, Melania surprised Javanka, Jr, and Eric by pwning them on every single conflict. She *always* got what she wanted.
Whatever her ties to Epstein, they must be dreadful for her to throw Trump under the bus at this moment.
Well we now know the one person who can give Donald the middle finger with impunity: Melania gets what Melania wants. Take note all you simpering Republican *leaders*.
I would love to see what got buried with Ivana!
Another interesting thing one learns in the Melania film is that her father is a home video hobbyist. Some of the footage in the film even came from his video camera! Makes you wonder what else dear old granddad has caught on tape while pottering around Mar-a-Lago, etc.
Melania Throws Donald Under the Bus... exactly where he belongs! (hopefully there's plenty of roadkill down there).
And made sure she drove forwards backwards several times while wearing her designer bus driver hat.
Trump's bus must have wheels like a monster truck to have room for all the folks under there. Will be nice to see Donny himself under there as well.
It's a tremendous bus. Biggest bus you've ever seen. A big, strong bus with rain running down its headlights.
The wheels on the bus go round and round. All around the town.
"So get off the bus, Gus. You don't need to discuss much. Just drop off the key, Lee. And set yourself free"...............Fifty Ways to lose your Lover
no need to discuss much
One of my Simon favorites!
If there is, don't tell the Brain Worm Host, or he will beat everyone down there.
I think he already got there.
Every time "Donald Trump" and "bus" are mentioned together I have a painfully acute memory: me telling my husband "thank God this is over" after the pussy grabbing audio was release from the Access Hollywood bus. (Release date October 7, 2016.) I'm a pretty cynical person-hard to fool, a doubting Thomas, void of optimism, etc. And yet I remember that I believed without a doubt he was done. And inevitably I feel like a jackass because I don't like being "had." The thought about ME passes through my mind in a nanosecond and then expands to the decade (minus 4 years of quasi-sanity under Biden, which were quasi because J6 happened and you can't stuff the genie back in the bottle) the country/world has been subjected to this man and all he has wrought. "Grab them by the pussy" approximately 9.5 years ago didn't DQ him from being elected president. (I still think it should have.) Threatening genocide not even a week ago isn't making him budge either. It's interesting because what these two statements say about HIM is pretty unambiguous. What is unfathomable to me is what they say about our fellow Americans who elected him, the people we voted for to represent us in Congress, members of the judiciary who have veered wildly from the oaths they all took to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. Checks and balances only work if the people inhabiting the three branches of government are not complicit in this misdeeds of the executive. But ultimately, because this is/was a democracy, "We The People" are the ones who put people in place to BECOME part of the checks and balances. So it seems to me that whereas the moral rot has always existed at the "top," too many of "We The People" bear the responsibility for this travesty-either by empowering it actively or by looking the other way. How naïve I feel. I was apparently never misanthropic ENOUGH.
I apologize. This was supposed to be a comment about a bus. I'm just really, really mad.
I feel you. I actually remember walking home from work the day that news dropped thinking it was over, and being absolutely stunned a couple weeks later with how many women who still supported him and would say in interviews "That's just how men talk."
The super pro-military voters weren't fazed by his comments on John McCain or Gold Star families. The ultra religious voters didn't care about his infidelity or predatory behavior. White collar small business owners ignored his decades of stiffing companies just like them. How many Black and Latino voters in 2024 didn't care about the Central Park 5 or his history of racist rental practices?
I will never understand what makes Donald Trump teflon to so many people.
Well said! When Melania speaks, she is more transparent than anyone else in the administration.
First she wore the jacket on the way to visit migrant children at the border in detention: “I don’t care, do you!”
Moreover, this told us three things. She couldn’t care less about the kids—cryptically, and she hates being married to The Donald and her job as First Lady. And lastly, she’s as superficial and opportunistic as the rest of the Trump clan! Good riddance!
Secondly, in yesterday’s speech, she distances herself from Epstein and Trump. Actually, I believe her when she says that she didn’t have a formal relationship through Epstein.
Furthermore, she was related to Epstein through the legitimate modeling agency acting as a front for the sex trafficking ring and extortion racket—it’s not her style; she may be apathetic by nature, but she cares incessantly for her reputation and that of her son Baron—she’s protecting both of them.
That’s it—there’s no secret sauce here. Melania is protecting Baron and hates the rest of her life as a Trump—except the trappings of luxury and the power it projects.
Bottom line, she won’t go down with the ship, and if it comes down to her or Trump; she’s already half way into the lifeboat—exactly to be expected when you live in a glass house; even with the gold plated trimmings! IMHO…:)
Donald was perhaps more tolerable when he and Melania married-plus, Melania had the child she wanted, was able to being her parents to the U.S.
Now he's increasingly erratic and unhinged.
Melania got her big payoff from Amazon, and it's probably parked offshore.
Time to spend LOTS more time in NYC and Mar-a-Lago fir Melania
Well said! Don’t forget she renegotiated her prenuptial’s twice! Ironically, both times right before he assumed the office of the president…:)
There are, however, public photos of Melania with Epstein and Maxwell.
I’m not saying she didn’t know him or wasn’t socially involved with him—amicable, but there’s a difference between knowing about some of Epstein’s illegal activities and just being friendly with a guy who happens to be friends with many of the same people Epstein hangs around with.
Trump and Epstein were friends. Trump knew, and all evidence from the birthday note, to his FBI interviews corroborates the fact that Trump knew about Epstein’s crimes and even participated.
However, there was another network; Epstein funding academics and putting diplomats and businessmen into deals and positions of power. This gave Epstein the power and influence with the rich and famous.
Therefore, and naturally, even if people in Epstein’s social circles suspected that he was a pedophile, the mere fact he had so many famous and influential people in his social circle that most people would just shrugged and say, “If it were true, why would all these famous and venerated people continue to socialize with the guy? That’s my point!
I suspect Melania knows a few things about men and their distasteful proclivities given her resume, but for the moment we are playing the choir girl angle and wearing our virgin Mary face.
OK. Got it. Your additional points serve as more proof as to how murky the whole Epstein Affair really is.
I wonder if she stated that she was never a friend of Jeffery Epstein because she was actually a victim. Maybe DJT actually purchased her from JE. Just a random thought floating around in my brain.🤷♀️
Agreed!
@Robert Jaffee
🔊 please share 😆 VIDEO + review - The Con-Father II
https://ojaiohana.substack.com/p/video-and-review-the-con-father?r=5chxge&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Like Jack and Rose in Titanic. Only we hate Both.
This puts the Melania documentary in a very different light for me.
Yes, we all laughed and groaned that it was another giant grift, and it was.
But now it looks more like an image savvy person establishing their own "brand" distinct from the "Trump" brand.
Well, the $40MM didn't hurt her any!
She could walk away from this marriage in excellent shape.
Maybe she took a lesson from the Ivanka playbook: don't get even, get everything.
@Maggie
share 🔊 VIDEOS Splat ! Melania
https://ojaiohana.substack.com/p/videos-splat-melania-6-on-tomatometer?r=5chxge&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Sigh. I was really hoping those crazy kids would make it.
I'm extremely skeptical that this could lead to any real action. I suspect Trump is fine with what she said because it's juicy and distracts from Iran
I see icier relations between that cute couple. This time coming from DJT s side. Could another affair be far beside?
What would “affair” mean now? Can’t imagine cankles is capable of physical infidelity, even with pharmaceutical help, and they’re both too transactional for emotional infidelity. Financial infidelity? Weird photo opps? Even loony Loomer is engaged now.
Hmmm, good point. Not that I think Melania would give a sh*t. But maybe, just maybe, all those little blue pills would have a deleterious effect on DJT's health...? We can only hope.
The Streisand Effect (though this had to be somewhat deliberate) comes to the White House.
I wonder if there isn't some legal trick in all of this, though.
@OJVV
🔊 Amplify, please‼️VIDEO - Melania/Epstein - new reporting
https://ojaiohana.substack.com/p/video-amplify-please-melaniaepstein?r=5chxge&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
If Melania can become the person to orchestrate her husband's removal from office and banishment from relevance, even better toward a jail cell for crimes committed, then she is the one in the marriage who belongs on a future denomination of U.S. currency.
I was talking to my Gen Z son about this today. He and I do not see eye to eye on a number of things, but on Epstein we do agree. He pointed out that it would be ironic if this spurs more productive examination into the Epstein files and brings down the Trump regime she would be the most important first lady ever!
She is a deeply uninteresting, narcissistic and vapid person. She's not trying to help the American people - she's looking out for herself.
That she is makes this all the more perfect, in my mind. What we are all seeing, on full display for the world to witness, is what a world driven by unmitigated selfishness looks like.
I've assumed that any removal from office would be at the instigation of Vance, who could strike a deal with the Cabinet heads that they would keep their jobs. I don't think he'd do it; too risky. Interesting if Melania turns out to be the catalyst, getting him to resign rather than be removed.
You bet it would be risky. Trump is shedding support, but the faithful who still stand with him include fanatical, dangerous cultists. They hate Democrats with white-hot passion, but they hate Republican "traitors" even more. Vance knows that, and so does every Republican in Congress. If they doubt it, Mike Pence could explain it to them.
If nothing else, the Franklin Mint will put something out, though I suspect she'll happily receded from prominent view when this is all over.
Franklin Graham mint. The scales on evangelicals' eyes. Insufferable.
I'll start working up a draft proposal to nominate her for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Let's not get too carried away Mr. D. (-;
I'm just saying, in jest, considering the proposed alternative ...
True.
I knew you were funnin'.
“In short, the Iranian people were as close as they’d come since 1979 to overthrowing their torturers and oppressors. Then Trump got involved!”
Never more prescient words; and it pretty much sums up Trump’s entire two presidencies!..:)
Trump orchestrated a huge surge in popularity for the mullahs. The Iranians will never look to us as potential saviors, never aspire to be like us, again.
Exactly. Everything the guy touches dies.
First term: Trump disbands the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit attached to NSC—two years later we get COVID, and people start drinking bleach and are told they should be honored to die for the country; so others could live! In short, they couldn’t govern so death becomes patriotic—get the point?
Second term: Ridiculous tariffs on allies. Threatening to invade NATO countries. Sucking up to dictators and kleptocrats alike. Hare-brained scheme to invade Iran. And only president to ever invade 8 sovereign nations in a year.
This is madness, and we have become the pariahs of the world. And ironically, the tech bro’s and neocons who support this chaos—are still winning! Even Iran is taking payment in bitcoin, while the US dollar is eventually rendered obsolete; not fully—but we won’t be the reserve currency of the world for long; which is part of this insidious plan! IMHO…:)
The worst part for me is that his actions have turned activists for democracy into traitors in Iranians' perception.
Agreed!…:)
Truth be told, it hurts my heart. Those poor people, wanting a better, freer life for their country.
I know. These people treat the world like we’re all just pawns on a chess board. It’s sickening!
"Well into the new millennium, America was the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the planet, the ideological leader of a peaceful world order. Then Trump got involved!"
Exactly, he’s the gift that keeps on giving us anxiety disorders!….:)
Did you mean grift? That sounds like the felon. Gift giving is not his style. His niece said about him.
No, actually I was being sarcastic; a play on the adage “the gift that keeps on giving.” That said, yours is better…:)
Robert - wisdom of the crowd here, brother ☺️
The regime is stronger now than it was before PINO’s War.
Agreed if you’re talking about the Iranian’s—and exactly my point! Trump’s hare brained scheme has left the Iranian’s stronger not weaker—we are the losers because the Straight is still closed.
Additionally, Iran is making more money off of their oil than any time in the last 47 years since we’ve had sanctions imposed on them from their storming g of the US embassy in 1979.
And most importantly, the regime is still in place and allowed to continue to enrich their uranium to weapons grade. So……:)
ETTD
His entire life.
Touché!…:)
Let’s not absolve Melania. Is she telling the truth or is she getting out in front of some damaging information? She deserves to be heard. But
Melania’s #1 concern is not the Epstein victims. It’s Melania.
Agreed. No heroes in the story; it has a real Alien v. Predator vibe.
She's getting out in front of this story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/us/paolo-zampolli-ice-melania-trump-epstein.html
She had ICE arrest her former agents' girlfriend and deport her so he could win a custody battle.
Absolutely.
She might be as guilty as DJT and JE, or she might be a victim of DJT and JE, or a product of her own making.
A few weeks ago:
"Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, that's all anyone wants to talk about. We need to do something to change the headlines. Let's do another of those 12-hour Venezuela things, but in Iran this time."
"Mr. President, that's an incredibly great idea. That's like a move right out of 4-demensional chess. Leave it to you to find the solution. Can we get you another Big Mac?"
A few days ago:
"Iran, Iran, Iran, that's all anyone wants to talk about. We need to do something to change the headlines. Let's have Melania say something about the Epstein shit. Anything to shift the focus off the Iran thing."
"Mr. President, that's an incredibly great idea. That's like a move right out of 4-demensional chess. Leave it to you to find the solution. Can we get you another Big Mac?"
4-dimensional chess? Trump is still trying to figure out how to cheat at Candyland.
That does seem like the other possibility. Trump knows chum!
When you're between a rock and a hard place, what are you gonna do?
Apparently, t-rump never heard the geography joke, Where is Iran located? Between a rock (Iraq) and a hard place.
EPSTEIN!
That's saying something!
Yes, I feel like many pundits are overcomplicating this. I had seen some allegations about Melania in the news recently. Maybe Suzie Wiles thought, why not have encourage her to make a statement. After the Melania film, we know she loves to be on camera creating drama. People are making such a big deal about her expressing sympathy for the victims, but isn't that in line with her Be Best campaign? Maybe she's simply tossing the ball into another court (Congress) that doesn't seem to be able to do anything with it, while creating at least a momentary distraction from Iran.
"Vice President JD Vance went all the way to Hungary this week to rally on Orbán’s behalf, while the president last night posted a long, glowing endorsement on Truth Social."
There's a term for this; it's called "interfering in foreign elections." If PM Mark Carney came down here and campaigned for Gavin Newsom in 2028, the right would be apoplectic, and justifiably so. But for Trump, any foreign election interference on his behalf is acceptable and welcome, and any interfering he does in foreign elections is by definition righteous and just, because it's something he did, and he can only do righteous and just things.
"Trump denounced Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones"
I don't know who's responsible for the footnote, but that's my nightmare blunt rotation.
“Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the agreement we have!”
That's one way to look at it. Or, more accurately, you could say "Iran is doing a great job of not allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz."
As for Melania's surprise press conference, it certainly was odd. Seems ominous for Donald Trump; seems ominous for Melania, even. But as far as Melania being a rat jumping off a sinking ship, we've thought that before, and she's often surprised us by being just as bad as everyone else in her orbit. She's a wretched, vile, wicked Cruella, and while she's trying to save herself, I wouldn't go so far as to say she's actively throwing her husband under the bus. She's passed up on the opportunity to do so too many times in the last decade.
Hey, you’re giving Cruella a bad name.
True. Wearing a coat made from Dalmatian puppies would probably bolster Melania's image at this point.
Agree w/ all of it, but esp. the Melania part.
But now she has her own money. FelonTrump used to brag about paying his first wife, who was in charge of choosing the decorations of Trump Tower, with “a couple of dresses.” She did all the planning and managing and got a couple of new dresses. He never paid her. At least one of those dresses cost him $100,000.00. Hope she sold it and kept the cash.
If she's ready to break from Trump finally after she got all her Bezos money, I'll gladly take it.
She's trying to get out in front of the news that she uses ICE to arrest and deport people for personal favors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/us/paolo-zampolli-ice-melania-trump-epstein.html
Remember reading that story. What a great human being. She deserves to be stuck with her husband forever.
she should be de-naturalized, it is a real thing, they've done it to others
Are we lost in the Doom Loop of DJT's brain? If I understand, he has sent JD, our VP, a strong advocate and crusader for Theocratic White Nationalism, Wittcoff, a Real Estate buddy and Jared, his son in law to negotiate with Iran. JD is as much a fascist as DJT, Wittcoff and Kushner are both ardent supporters of the Netanyahu government in Israel. So, I ask. What can go wrong with this strategy? Today he released completely crazed, anti immigrant tweets that have the authorship of Stephen Miller "written" all over them. What's next? Just when Trump is trying to transition from the episode "A HAPPY ENDING" to his great victory against Iran, Melania absolves herself from the Epstein business. Is anyone sane working or living at the White House?
Apparently not.
I assume that's rhetorical...
Of course there are. And shame on you for letting the cooks, tour guides, and pages catch some strays. But if you were referring to anyone with some semblance of power or agency in the administration, than the answer is no. (Though to be fair, Sean Duffy has had a moment or two, like when he verbally slapped Elon down at a cabinet meeting when explaining how he had to intervene to prevent DOGE from firing air traffic controllers shortly after we had a number of plane crashes.)
The WH cook is the only sane one, he/she serves up the tacos Rump eats
Hah. I said the same thing, although I included tour guides and pages. No need for those folks to catch strays on behalf of Metamucilini.
Don’t overthink this. Melania is concerned about herself, full stop.
True, but the use of a well-placed shiv still feels good.
I have to ask; Does anybody else notice the parallels between Melania’s speech, and Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinski.”? Just before we found out that indeed he did have sex with that woman? Asking for a friend.
Am I the only one who thinks Vance is in Hungary to do recon for how to rig the midterms?
He supported the German hard right wing candidate a couple of months ago. I suspect he might be on a project of his own. The rest of the administration, including the president, might not care whether he does this or not.
It also occurs to me that Steve Bannon was in Europe for a while trying to stir up some sort of right wing political action. Is Vance's friend Thiel into this sort of activity too?
This <<insert upward pointing finger here>>
Melania apparently likes her revenge best served cold, which was on full display with her cold and calculated performance yesterday. If I were Donald, I’d sleep with one eye open.
Be best.
And she takes it in her separate apartment at Trump tower, so she doesn't have to interact with Trump.
She's trying to get out in front of the story that she had ICE deport someone as a personal favor to her former agent so he could win a custody battle:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/us/paolo-zampolli-ice-melania-trump-epstein.html
Actually, if Trump does not succeed in totally destroying America and the world, the backlash to his rule could be something many of us have always hoped for. That would be a somewhat diminished and chastened America, that is more willing to treat other countries as equals, negotiate in good faith with our adversaries, such as China, and restore a truer form of democracy in America, with tighter guardrails, a concern for the betterment of all of our citizens, and a genuine attempt at equal justice for all.
What a lovely dream.
Either Melania is positioning herself for a post Trump life which may indicate that Trump's health is failing rapidly or Michael Wolff's "reporting" is about to he widely disseminated.
Wolff has claimed that Melania was with Epstein before Trump, that he introduced her to Trump, and that Trump and Melania had sex for the first time on the Lolita Express. The owner of the "modeling" agency she worked for has been tied to sex trafficking of Eastern European women and had a relationship with Epstein.
Melania threatened a 1B suit against Wolff for merely mentioning that she knew Epstein. She never filed it. Wolff has responded with a SLAPP suit against her for her attempt to suppress his "journslism".
A serious investigation of all of these allegations is needed to separate the wheat from the chaff.
What happened to Jeffrey’s video of the action on the plane?
"Melania is perhaps not a deep thinker . . . ."
Perhaps.
If Melania were a deeper thinker she would never have tied the knot with old Donnie.
Nor does she talk pretty.
Someone must have put a bee in Melania's bonnet. I could see Ghislaine Maxwell suggesting she would spill some beans on Melania if Melania didn't push Donald into pardoning her. I could see Melania's response being something along the lines of FU you POS, I'm getting out way ahead of both of you, and so she did. This might turn out to be a sort of reverse Streisand effect. But whatever the real reason turns out to be, yesterday was delicious.
Now THAT's an interesting idea.
For the first time in a decade, I have hope that this is the straw that breaks Trump's f'ng back. Melania's timing was exquisite. Just when Trump has his base fracturing over Iran, she, of all people, is out there from behind the Presidential podium, reminding everyone about his first major betrayal of his base. Chef's kiss.
I agree with DD, interesting. All these overly privileged, too rich for their own good, garbage people will shiv each other rather than have friends.
That place is a basket of poisonous snakes and our adversaries are rubbing their hands in glee. What a concentration of bad/evil/stupid/greedy under one roof.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/us/paolo-zampolli-ice-melania-trump-epstein.html
It's being reported in a lot of places that Melania just used ICE to deport her former agent's ex-girlfriend to help him in a custody battle. That deported woman is on social media right now threatening to tell everything she knows about Epstein.
Zampolli is a choice piece of work. His baby wife would definitely have a case of beans to spill. Zampolli is the guy who got Melania her Einstein Visa. As Jeri observed, quite the concentration of bad/evil/stupid/greedy folks.