The great barrier with Kelly being effective is that the electorate can't tell the difference between the character of a John Kelly and, say, the character of Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
What would Trump supporters do with the cognitive dissonance produced when the leader of a flag waving political movement is revealed to have called our war dead "losers" and "suckers?" They will simply refuse to believe it, and the mental gymnastics will involve believing that John Kelly is somehow corrupt.
Yes, everyone is corrupt *except* Trump, who has been chosen by The Divine to "save" America. I wouldn't trust these people to operate a crayon, let alone vote.
I don't think they feel the cognitive dissonance. To them war produces guys with a chest full of medals. But thinking about the dead, the maimed, and those whose PTSD is very obvious makes them feel all icky inside, so they avoid thinking about that part entirely. Sort of like WW II movies...heroes. The only one that dealt with the aftermath in any accurate way was The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946. They skip over the Vietnam War movies as too icky.
MAGAs will always find a way to justify it, while the finest Trumpite thinkers say "Pay no attention to what he says! .... judges! .... woke tyranny! .... the Democrats are Marxists! .... This is our last chance to save America from the left!"
I once got into a discussion about the stolen election and was told that "2000 Mules" proved that it was stolen. As part of my response, I noted that even Bill Barr thought it was "unimpressive". That's when I found out that Barr is a member of the Deep State. If it can happen to Bill Barr, it can certainly happen to John Kelly.
Many don’t know or don’t believe the true reports of his character defects. They’ve been conditioned to believe the attacks and reports are exaggerations and lies.
That doesn't mean they're off the hook, Stephen. We have 50+ years of documentation that shows Trump is a wretched piece of filth. If these people are ignorant to those facts, that's because they're choosing to be so. My own theory is they support Trump just to piss people off and they don't care about the danger that he poses to our national and global security.
In my opinion, you're underestimating how effective Trump and his media allies have been at discrediting what they call the mainstream media. If its in the New York Times, its false.
Oh, I don't underestimate it at all, Lewis. I simply people that these people want to be lied to because that way, they're not responsible for their choices. Keep in mind that Trump's more egregious public moments -- like calling for Mark Milley's execution, or the termination of the Constitution -- happened on Truth Social and is part of the public record. Has he lost any support for those comments amongst the base?
Trumpler and media allies think American people are stupid - information-challenged, prone to conspiracy theories, easily manipulated, having cultish behavior.
Hmm, what to do about it as reach the edge of cliff, after watching our democracy slip away one day at a time for 8+ years...?
And remember: The Economist is a BRITISH "newspaper" in magazine form that appears weekly. Their "Leader" (editorial) this week is also much more detailed than either TFG or any of his lemmings could read or understand. It is written for those who think about things.
And, I think that because all they know/have experienced is America as a democracy/republic/whatever, because it appears to be stable, they think it is a feature of nature and can not change. And even if tRump gets back in, with all the attendant slime and freaks, that everything will just keep merrily going along.
People who are conditioned to follow faith instead of facts, are dangerous to any democracy. That’s why the wolves are so suddenly fond of Christianity as a weapon.
I have felt for a long time that the more fundamentally religious you are, the less you are on the side of democracy. For democracy requires compromise, a willingness to listen to other views, and admitting that you don’t have all the answers. None of those things describe people who are steeped in fundamentalist religions. Their views boil down to these two things: (1) they believe they know what the rules are, and (2) they don’t believe they are allowed to change the rules.
My brother has stopped talking to me since he became a fundamentalist. Not at first. He tried for years to get me and my husband and kids on board his totally fundamentalist train. Finally gave up and won't speak to us anymore. His wife occasionally calls from a pay phone.
One thing I wonder; why is religiosity causing so much division now, here? Especially as we have become more secular as a nation, according to polling data. I can only assume it’s something about Trumpism which is so counterintuitive considering what an ungodly specimen he is, not even attempting to mask his hateful thoughts. It must be a fluke convergence of forces I don’t understand.
I’ll give you my (probably overly simplified) two cents. I think what we are seeing today is simply a culmination of what has been brewing for awhile. For many years, those in the (Protestant) religious establishment were first among equals. They kind of got what they wanted. I’m old enough to remember Blue Laws for example (only stores selling fundamental needs like food and medicine were allowed to be open on Sunday). No one who didn’t claim a religious belief could possibly rise to national political prominence. And religion had to be the right kind of religion. JFK being a Catholic was a big deal at the time. He even had to basically pledge not to listen to the Pope if he were elected.
That started to change forty or fifty years ago as the nation became more secular. Now the religious establishment didn’t get to call all of the shots. People started objecting to religious symbols and practices in public life. First it was the Supreme Court outlawing prayer in public schools. The reaction to that decision was similar to Mike Johnson’s reaction to the teaching of evolution. Lots of bad things are going to happen if we take God out of the classroom.
And most of all, people started taking seriously the separation of church and state enshrined in the Constitution (despite what folks like MTG and Boebert say I can’t see any possibility of interpreting the Constitution any other way). And that, I believe, is the root of the problem. For all the good that religious folks do (and they certainly do a lot of good), many just can’t accept the idea that their religious beliefs don’t allow them to do whatever they want to do (like in the past). For example, they feel that if they want to discriminate against gays, they should be allowed to.
So this has been going on for some time. Just think how long we have heard about the phony “War on Christmas”.
I think the biggest thing that has happened in recent years to antagonize the Religious Right has been the rise of gay rights and, more recently, transgender rights. They fought gay marriage long and hard with all kinds of disingenuous arguments. But they lost. But they refused to completely back down so they came up with various “religious liberty” arguments to, in their minds, limit the damage.
I can only assume that they felt that, if they can’t win the gay marriage battle, what battles can they win? And in their minds the trend wasn’t positive. So they went looking for a champion for their side, someone who would push back against the secular tide flooding our country. And they didn’t much care who it was as long as they said the right things. It’s something of a move born of desperation.
There are two reasons for the divisiveness now. One, of course, is Trump. He turns the temperature up on everything and gives his followers license to do the same (every issue starts at “9” before being turned up to “11”). The second is a confluence that you mentioned. It is the confluence between the GOP power structure (who want to win elections) and the Religious Right (who believe that the other side is pure evil and must be kept out of power by any means necessary).
The common thread here is this: democracy is important, but not as important as winning elections.
Just ask Bill Barr who said he would vote for Trump in 2024 (despite calling him unqualified) because “the progressive Left and the Secular Humanists are the biggest threats to this country”. That doesn’t sound like someone all that worried about American democracy.
We are of a similar age; I remember the Sunday Blue Laws too. And all the liberating legal rulings that followed. I suspect gay rights was the straw that broke their tolerance, as you mention. And my assessment is they knew it was too late to go after gay Americans because it was already at mainstream acceptance - so they went after transgender rights instead. Most Americans don’t personally have a transgender relative, friend, or acquaintance so it was a “safe” group to attack. But I now see that tide turning. A few years ago comments in the NYT were very negative on transgender rights, but that’s changed, probably in response to the right wing meanness. Liberals didn’t want to make common cause with MAGAs. In a paradox the cause of transgender rights has benefited from the viciousness of the right wing attacks.
We sure have lost ground on separation of church and state! With more on the way, if we can’t stop this tide.
Trump changed everything with his reptilian skill at using any wedge issue. But I will always be negative on religion and its adherents, for gleefully accepting and advancing such an evil person. Talk about strange bedfellows. And rank hypocrisy, for all to see. This Supreme Court is playing a big role in allowing religion into government and protecting religion above individual freedom.
Thanks for your answer; it’s such an interesting, important topic, worthy of discussion.
Two further comments (and thanks for your response):
1) I could write pages on the religious liberty issue, but the bottom line is this: it’s clear to me that the Religious Right wants to be able to use their religious beliefs as a reason not to have to obey duly passed laws. For example, businesses can’t refuse services to anyone based on their sex, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin (and probably some others in this list). But they can if they claim that it violates their religious beliefs. So their religious beliefs not only “trump” the legislatures, but it also “trumps” any other belief that someone might use (try saying that you don’t want to serve a Black customer in your restaurant because you don’t believe that the races should mix and see how far you get). They simply want special treatment.
2) Trump’s support from the Evangelicals is probably the most amazing about-face that I have seen in a long time (second place would go to the anti-abortion rights groups who, pre-Dobbs, said that abortion policy is a state issue and then immediately post-Dobbs wanted a national ban) and would have severely damaged their credibility in a saner world. For years, their message was basically “the means justifies the ends”. In an instant, it became “the ends justifies the means”.
MAGAs have always said that critics are swallowing "media narratives" about Trump -- even when people can play the videos that show him displaying his wretched character all by himself,
Trump voters are obviously not much offended by the manifest awfulness. Trump fans clearly love the awfulness.
There's no better example of this than Trump's Evangelical supporters. It was only a few years ago that the "moral character" of the President was paramount. Lack of "moral character" was almost an impeachable offense. Now, they view "moral character" as so 1998.
If Kelly had character, he wouldn’t have taken the chief-of-staff job. He and we all knew very well at that point what the Orange Pustule was all about.
Right? Kelly et al just sound bitter and whiny. Now that they've been kicked off the gravy train, they want to "tell all" that happened on said train. The "half day bounce" was the shelf life of his book.
They love it because they are narrow minded suckers that hope he will hurt the people they hate. They don't really care about the troops, only that if they fight, they must win, to make us feel like winners. The wounded and dead ARE losers because they aren't Rambo or GIJoe.
Exactly. All the Republican insiders who have privately (or not so privately) trashed Trump must come out publicly and in some coordinated fashion to say loud and clear: 1) how bad he is and the threat that he poses and 2) state that everyone who loves their country and reveres the Constitution should vote for any non-Trumpy Republican in the primary and for Biden if in fact the choice in the general is Trump v Biden.
That we are in an emergency situation, desperate times etc.
Elaborate that preserving our stability, prosperity, and peace as a nation in the short-term requires this, after which rebuilding the Republican party and working to identify a non-fascist candidate who respects the Constitution to compete in 2028 can commence.
This will not move most of the base, but will give the Republican voters who don't like Trump but despise Dems enough doubts along with the permission structure to at least stay home. It could very well make the difference.
Yes it's time for him to get out there and spill the beans, all of them. I am sure he has been witness to much more depravity, treason and illegality than he's said so far. That would truly fulfill his oath to serve his country.
"Every time a dog I love dies, they take a piece of my heart with them. And every time a new dog comes into my life, they give me a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the pieces of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are."
Sko, thank you for your lovely words. We cat people feel devastated, too, when our feline family members have to leave us. Pieces of my heart will be cat.
Cats, too. Though I am honored I got to spend years with many wonderful cats & dogs (& hamsters & guinea pigs). My cats are approaching 15 and I appreciate them every day except when Christian wakes me up at 5am.
One day, 2 guys from the AC company arrived to install my new ACs in NYC. Christian sat in front of me with his tail wrapped all the way around my ankles. I knew one of them was bad news. He’s never done that before or since.
I lost my (most recent) dog in February of this year. She was 15. I still wake up every morning thinking about her.
The short lifespans of our best friends are indeed the curse of dog lovers. They're with us long enough that we learn to love them like children, then they're gone.
Mine was a retriever/lab mix, and she was absolutely bonkers in the best way. Just crazy, with a jealous streak to match. But she was also exceptional around children and quite protective of them. We don't deserve dogs, NLTownie.
I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time? The misery of keeping a dog is his dying so soon. But, to be sure, if he lived for fifty years and then died, what would become of me?” – Sir Walter Scott
Those folks who built up Candace Owens should’ve read the book instead of just watching the movies. In the book, Dr. Frankenstein ends up in the frozen north trying to track down his creation to kill it. Good luck to them with all the monsters they’ve made.
The strange part is that they started their critique of her with her "Israel is an apartheid state" position, which was discussed in Foreign Policy magazine earlier this year. The article came down on the side of Israel having all the attributes of an apartheid state. Foreign Policy isn't known for craziness.
“I came out and told people the awful things he said about wounded soldiers, and it didn’t have half a day’s bounce. You had his attorney general Bill Barr come out, and not a half a day’s bounce."
With all due respect, general, you came out and told people those thing IN A BOOK, YEARS AFTER THE FACT. You were in a better position to observe Trump's behavior and warn the nation than just about any other person on the planet. And you remained silent. When the chips were down, you stayed silent until you could make a buck on a book deal. Your words now aren't totally worthless, but they're a hell of a lot less valuable now than they could have been.
So much this. "The Warning", "The Room Where It Happened" - whatever. No one will take you seriously because the orange one is too far entrenched now. Now it just sounds like courage born of too much alcohol. They were full of hubris, they thought they could handle him, keep their powerful positions and their party.
Those guys should've shouted Wolf! when it mattered.
Charlie, the Fortune 500 executives are too busy criticizing the junior year liberal arts major at Columbia protesting the Israel-Hamas war to criticize the richest man on the planet! If only all of the people that are worried about speech on campus had the same amount of attention for a large recipient of American tax dollars pushing baseless anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. I’m glad we all kept things in perspective over the last month.
“It’s beyond my comprehension he has the support he has.”…
Here' an answer from this podunk, hicksville Trumptown I live in. With snowmobiles, four-wheelers, jacked up pickups, and fifty inch flat panels in households galore, it is not about the economy. It is not about planet threatening futures of their children. It's about grievance. Essentially, it's about their soul soothing sheer loathing of all but themselves. It's collective narcissism, founded on sheer
I have a theory that many believe there is something besides the government that helps them - “keep the government out of my Medicare” - so it kinda doesn’t matter if the candidates they elect want to burn it all down. The mysterious “they” will make sure FEMA checks go out, their Social Security cost of living updates are implemented correctly, passport requests get processed, etc. Because they don’t understand how the government really works, they think it’s great for Trump to destroy the deep state without the slightest idea what that would mean.
We have clean air and water because companies want to treat factory waste out of the goodness of their hearts, right? Food labels say what’s actually inside the package because companies are super honest, aren’t they? It couldn’t be government regulations forcing them, could it?
I agree with this ^. Situational ignorance. Not to make excuses, but understanding how the world works is sometimes beyond the intellectual capacity of a portion of the electorate. That's why parts of the electorate are so easily manipulated. I never take for granted my own intelligence, drive and curiosity with a --but for the grace of God, there go I--mantra.
My goodness, Charlie, you have a beautiful dog. I hope Auggie has a long, healthy, happy life.
As for the news, I'm so tired of adults acting like 5 year olds. From the article on Owens you quoted: "For example, she has falsely compared Israel to the “segregated South.” This is the sort of ignorant ‘Apartheid State” slander that we expect from Black Lives Matter – and the Jew-killers of the Middle East."
For the love of God, people, why the drive-by shooting to Black Lives Matter? We know the only thing they "expect" is that they can keep using the phrase to scare White bigots because it has the word Black in it. I'm so tired of being treated like a thug because I'm not a bigot. So tired of hearing that Trump is going to end democracy but he's going to win because Biden is old and nobody cares about democracy. It's wrong and I'm tired of the propaganda today.
Thank you, Charlie, for noticing that when students hang their bare asses out, the news media gleefully reports it for weeks, but when Musk, a billionaire, hangs his bare ass out the same exact way, he gets praise and imitators. Funny how that happens.
Isn’t it odd that a mainstream publication like Foreign Policy even concluded that Israel shares many traits of an apartheid state? Truth is an absolute defense against slander and it’s disappointing that Charlie gave credence to such a line.
That's because roughly 30% of the electorate are shit-tier human beings. They are comfortable with Trump being awful because they themselves are awful. And they should be treated accordingly.
I'm glad to hear Auggie's on the mend. He's a good boy.
Perhaps citizens would take better notice if Kelly & Barr say they would vote for a democtat instead of Trump, this is the line they don't want to cross. But Trump love will not decline unless GOPers say Biden is not the evil we portray him to be.
Oh, I totally agree. I think Barr is particularly shameful on this. He has acknowledged in many interviews on Trump's unfitness for office yet will support Trump against Joe Biden. For once, I'd like one of these interviewers to say, "Mr. Barr, while I respect your government service, you are completely and utterly full of shit and by not supporting Joe Biden for president, you are complicit in the destruction of our country. So, fuck right off with that."
I just read Jeff Tiedrich's free substack newsletter and this is today's topic - he always cuts through the BS.
I don't care if they give 10 caveats about how Democrats spend too much and are too in-your-face about accepting "weird" LGBTQ stuff, they need to end with their own truth. "I never imaged voting for a Democrat for President, but democracy requires it if the other choice is Trump."
And we have always, since the revolution until now, that 30%. Every now and then they get permission to show their true selves. TFG has amplified them and co-opted others that just want power. This is our showdown. And it will probably last for more than one more election cycle. They are not going to go quietly into the night.
We sure better have our big boy pants on, every single one of us.
Hillary would have been a truly great President. I am sad to say, I think it will be a very long time before the United States has a woman for President. To many, being a woman is even more of a disqualifier than being Black.
David Horowitz Freedom Center on Candace Owens: "Her comments about Israel and her promotion of people like Andrew Tate are part of a pattern."
Oh? People like Andrew Tate? Can you think of anyone else as odious as Andrew Tate that she might have been eager to promote six years ago? Something that might have served as a clue to her character? Here's a hint: she wasn't the only one! Here's another hint. This is from the ... *checks notes* ... David Horowitz Freedom Center:
"Candace Owens has become obsessed with her own fame, stirring up drama to compensate for a lack of real achievement."
Remind you of anyone? Come on, you're close, I can feel it! Here's another, same source:
"Candace tackles a subject she knows nothing about, never bothers to learn anything about it, and then rides the backlash by playing the victim to generate more fame and money."
C'mon, I've practically told you their name at this point. What's that? You know a lot of people like that? Oh. Right. Of course.
Are people like that born, or made? Not an original question but it comes to mind almost everyday, because I marvel at the manipulative skills these people possess. I lack both the desire and the necessary skills to control other people, so it fascinates me. Why? How?
Normally made. Someone I once knew very well (or so I thought) turned out to be a pathological liar. It appears to have been nurtured as a survival skill from a youth of shitty parenting. This clearly applies to Trump.
I read Mary Trump’s book about her uncle. It did seem like a cold, aloof family. I’m often fascinated by people who emerge from those unfortunate upbringings with a reasonably healthy personality. That clearly doesn’t apply to Trump.
I guess I’m surprised how widespread the evil power of manipulation is practiced with skill; all the Trump sycophants have it, it’s not just him. Scott Atlas, the radiologist who commandeered the Covid strategy is but one example. There’s another irritating figure whose name I can’t recall; lied all the time with great aggression. So many!
So, there's actually a few different types here. The pathological liars have to be smart enough to keep their stories straight. Trump isn't, so he's a pathological bullshitter, which makes him trickier to deal with.
The bullshitters are the carnival barkers. They make great talk radio hosts as long as they have a good call screener. These people are usually having one-way conversations with friendly crowds, and limit their one-on-one dialogs to sympathetic ears. They say whatever they want because they can expect not to be called out on it. Once in a while Trump gets the itch to prove himself in front of real journalists (without an audience) and it never goes well. He can't handle the confrontation and generally looks like a fool.
People like Atlas are different. They're the contrarians. The people so convinced they're right when everyone else in their knowledge field disagrees with them – in fact, even moreso *because* everyone disagrees with them. They have a chip on their shoulder and think they're the Albert Einstein of their field – because they think other physicists thought Einstein was crazy (they didn't). They believe what they're saying, though.
As far as the manipulation goes, I hate to say this, but I think most of us would probably be better at it than we'd like to believe, if we really felt we needed to. Just think about all of the thoughts and impulses we suppress, the little white lies we tell in order to maintain a general aura of civility. And it all requires people skills: the ability to read a room, to understand what motivates people, what triggers them, what they respond well to, etc. Which is fine.
But if you abandon honestly as a general virtue, you lose a sense of guilt and shame about being deceptive, and you can use those skills for outright manipulation. That's why people say Trump's superpower is his shamelessness – that's the difference between persuading and manipulating. Any politician could do what he does if they lacked a conscience. Most of us could, I imagine.
It helps if you view yourself as smart and everyone else as a sucker. Because if you are willing to lie, cheat and steal to get what you want, you can always find people who will believe you. Just like some of the right wing nut cases who make money telling gullible people it's okay to be racist and anti feminist and ant gay. There are folks eager for someone to give them permission to hate and they will swallow any lie and will also give the huckster their hard earned money.
Oh, I think I maybe heard of this guy! He should understand Owens then; as I understand she basically took the same route to her crazy. Classic extremophiles. A sensible person who becomes disenchanted with the extremities of their political persuasion becomes some kind of moderate. The people with the worst judgement do a 180° flip.
Wow. Yeah, I have gathered he went a bit off the rails there. It reminds me of how much I admired Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, and was totally off put when she seemed to go “a bit do-lally”, as the British say, at the last there. Or Elon, who impressed me so much I invested $1,000 in Tesla on Day One of IPO, before getting out 3 years later when he seemed to go sideways too. It’s sad to see people you respected behave in such a way as to lose that respect.
Kelly was an anon source for a book after trump left office; he didn't really "speak out" until recently --- and then expects people to someone listen to his opinion and change there own??? All these people coming out of the word work to speak is just really appalling.
Kelly and the other generals need to cut a testimonial ad to support Biden. I doubt they will though, that would take some stones.
On another note --- I was a student at Kansas when they were filming The Day After and was actually in a couple of scenes in the background. It was an interesting few weeks. They just put out to students and people in the community to show up in various places around town to be in the movie.
I was not in the film (that must have been fun! and also boring, from what I know of being an extra). But I did see it with my friends, broadcast in one of our college eateries. It was grim.
I knew someone who was in the grocery store grabbing all the meat out of the counter she was there most of the day for only about seconds on the screen.
My car at the time (1970 Duster) would have been in scene of all the cars leaving town but I also had a test on the same day
They need to do more than cut an ad. They need to go on a campaign trail type of tour, each and every one of them. Let local news report it and write it up. A grassroots type of thing. Do they really want tRump to go down, or are they simply hoping and praying?
Thank you for sharing about your dog. I totally relate. Dogs are the most wonderful companions and yet their life spans are so short, so we live through their whole life with the joy, and then the loss. I love my dog so much. All of us dog lovers understand.
I've had my heart broken by both, but as I've matured--gotten old--I've had cats. My daughter the dog lover, calls me daily to find out what my 'owners' have put the slave through today.
John Kelly has long been a mystery to me. His military career was stellar. His dedication to the United States cannot possibly be questioned. He's made sacrifices none of us should have to make.
He was interviewed back in 2019 on the Naval Institute Proceedings Podcast. It's very much worth the listen:
His work in Latin America on combatting the drug trade is particularly interesting in light of his service in the Trump Administration. John Kelly knows the truth about what's going on in Central and South America. He knows the sacrifices the militaries and police forces in those countries are dealing with, the risks they taken when they burn a field or mess with the cartels. He understands these things on a level most of us don't. Yet he stood by as Trump did what he did, ignorant of even the most basic facts.
I'm sure he was in the "if not me, then the next guy will be worse" camp and he was probably right about that. He's also, at his heart a US Marine, which means something, including when the President of the United States asks you to do something, you do it.
But now ... how? I don't know what the right answer is, but it seems to me John Kelly's got one more mission to complete and it's waking the MAGA horde up to the truth of what Donald Trump really is.
I suspect a lot of Cassandras told John Kelly not to take the job because Trump is a sucking black hole of character, but he didn't listen to them. And now he's a Cassandra himself. He could talk to the people who warned him and figure out where he went wrong, but I'll place a $100 bet he's not going to do that. Better to let the country detonate than admit liberals were correct about one thing.
It’s galling. Patriotism only goes so far. But you’d think someone who sacrificed a son to the country would feel standing up to Trump to be insignificant by comparison. And yet.
"I was silent.Then they came for me" This quote is very shortened.I don't remember who said it.But it is chilling(regarding WW2) It kind of sums up today, doesn't it!
It does sum up today’s political environment. The people who know that quote aren’t the ones who need to know it, as usual. If Trump gets voted in again, there will be some very unhappy Trump voters once the sh*t hits the fan and they get fouled along with everyone else. Sarah’s recent Focus Group with Bill Kristol and a gaggle of Jewish Trump voters comes to mind, as but one small example among a big pool of stooges.
Steven Colbert interviewed Jonathan Karl not long ago.Karl said Trump has been a total failure.Why Colbert asked? Because everybody who comes in contact with Trump has had their life up ended or ruined.(but not Trump) Trump succeeds while all others fail. Thats really sums up Trump perfectly.And his view of success.
The failure of Trump sycophants to notice this obvious trend line is baffling. Still they persist. If we make it out of this, future social psychologists will be studying the Trump phenomenon for decades. Eons even.
I have trouble understanding the Kelly reaction too. The best I can come up with is that deep down in most every senior military officer's DNA is a complete dedication to serving the chain of command even when you may not agree with it. Of course, there are many other factors regarding them being a bit insulated from the outside world (i.e. not really knowing what it looks like for the ordinary citizen), plenty of their own problems to do deal with (i.e. day-to-day stuff), not sure how you would address it successfully and finally...the specter of the shix-storm created by revealing the truth and how that would play out for him personally, professionally and for the country.
Not saying any of that's right...but that's my take on why Kelly, like Frank Sinatra, did it his way...
"....but they're not going to do that to Elon, because power is comfortable with power… When it comes to their paycheck, elites learn to be quiet about things they say matter to them.”
This quote from Kara Swisher is key and it represents one of the great weaknesses of unrestricted capitalism: money is power, and power seeks to maintain the status quo, regardless of how immoral the status quo is. That's why you won't see other corporate CEOs gunning for Elon over his anti-Semitism. They're too comfortable making decadent levels of income and wealth to be bothered to make the world any better than it is. That's why we're never going to curb climate change. That's why we're never going to address wealth and income inequality. That's why worker productivity and wage growth are never going to go back to being on the same upward path together. That's why we're never going to address any problem that requires government to raise the kind of revenues needed to fix it. It's just a long race to the economic bottom now for a bifurcated economy where the decadent elites get wealthier and live cushier lifestyles at everyone else's expense--all while those same decadent elites living their best lives continue to complain about how shitty the country is.
The GOP House is going to do one thing and one thing only this coming year: try to repeal Social Security. They're already seeding newspapers with anti-Social Security editorials. Companies used Social Security to take away pensions, so when SS goes, we'll be worse off than we were in the 1920s. Oh, they may also impeach Biden, but that's just for vibes. The real meat and potatoes will be moving our entire tax burden to the vanishing middle class. Look for the middle class to be reclassified as elites. The work of convincing the Boomers that the younger generations are evil and deserve nothing continues on schedule, and now that the Boomers believe it, it's the work of a moment to convince the younger people that the Boomers are evil and deserve nothing.
And here I was promising myself to be thankful this week! I am thankful that you all let me post my worries and fears. I'm thankful for everyone working for, and caring about, democracy. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
The Boomers gave us this economy and federal debt + deficit. They're the ones who let runaway wealth inequality and climate change go unchecked while government revenues got depleted via lowering taxes on the rich. Now they might have to pay the price for it by getting SS axed. They wanted small government so bad, now they just might get it. My retirement plans are set up to be prepared for SS to not be there anymore when I retire. Thanks Boomers. This is the price of bootlicking the rich and supporting the GOP's small government plans. If we're not going to tax the rich to fund SS then maybe we shouldn't be shelling out federal debt for the generation that got us here in the first place. They can thank themselves for this mess.
Seriously, fuck Boomers. They're sitting on top of the largest share of the national wealth while making us foot their SS bills via adding to the national debt (see link below), and all the while they're buying up multiple properties and doing NIMBYism to prevent the building of more and causing the housing inventory to be at the lowest level its been in over 60 years (see other link).
Hi Travis, I wanted to counter you with something I read this weekend, which I think was on your recommendation. I'm reading They Thought They Were Free by Milton Meyer. In fact, I'm struggling to stop reading it and do something else. I can't get it out of my head. Anyway, here is one of Meyer's masterful quotes:
There were two truths, and they were not contradictory: the truth that Nazis
were happy and the truth that anti-Nazis were unhappy. And in the America of the
1950’s—I do not mean to suggest that the two situations are parallel or even more
than very tenuously comparable—those who did not dissent or associate with dis-
senters saw no mistrust or suspicion beyond the great community’s mistrust and
suspicion of dissenters, while those who dissented or believed in the right to dis-
sent saw nothing but mistrust and suspicion and felt its devastation. As there were
two Americas, so, in a much more sharply drawn division, there were two Ger-
manys. And so, just as there is when one man dreads the policeman on the beat
and another waves “Hello” to him, there are two countries in every country.
I would say there are 2 generations to every generation, also. There are Boomers who agitated and Boomers who shut down agitators. The Boomers got farther and made more progress on a lot of subjects than their parents ever did. We let the phrase "Greatest Generation" cover up a lot of sins.
They made a lot of progress on *some* subjects, and they inflamed others. They got women's liberation done. They passed the voting rights act (being gelded as we speak though). They ended the war in Vietnam. They got civil rights legislature passed.
Then they bootlicked the rich and gave us the status quo of extreme wealth inequality and an economy run by the shareholder class. They let the unions get gelded in favor of corporatism. They ran up the bill on college tuitions and made the Ivy League a pay-to-play system that advantaged rich kids. They got rid of the draft and forced all future wars to be shouldered by a smaller and smaller cohort of contracted service members who got turned into recyclable cannon fodder for a 20-year war that wasn't going to be won. They bought up all the housing and did NIMBYism to cut down on new developments and crunched the housing supply so hard that it's unaffordable to a large chunk of the urban and suburban working class. They cut government revenues by giving away tax breaks to the people who needed it the least (the rich). They had the power to reduce carbon emissions and not cook the planet over the course of 50 years, and instead they made up conspiracy theories about how climate change was a hoax and kept giving the oil companies billions in government subsidies. And now they want to make the younger generations foot their social security lifestyle subsidies via debt-spending while they collectively sit on top of the largest share of the national wealth.
I'd say on balance, the Boomers did WAY more harm than good. They might even just be the Worst Generation. Fuck their social security, they can take out reverse mortgages on their way off of this mortal coil.
So get off your ass and join the campaign, Kelly. Bring Mattis and the others with you.
The great barrier with Kelly being effective is that the electorate can't tell the difference between the character of a John Kelly and, say, the character of Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
I think a simpler explanation is the electorate doesn't care about character. If it did, Trump wouldn't have been elected in 2016.
What would Trump supporters do with the cognitive dissonance produced when the leader of a flag waving political movement is revealed to have called our war dead "losers" and "suckers?" They will simply refuse to believe it, and the mental gymnastics will involve believing that John Kelly is somehow corrupt.
Yes, everyone is corrupt *except* Trump, who has been chosen by The Divine to "save" America. I wouldn't trust these people to operate a crayon, let alone vote.
That made me spit out my coffee! You nailed it!
I don't think they feel the cognitive dissonance. To them war produces guys with a chest full of medals. But thinking about the dead, the maimed, and those whose PTSD is very obvious makes them feel all icky inside, so they avoid thinking about that part entirely. Sort of like WW II movies...heroes. The only one that dealt with the aftermath in any accurate way was The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946. They skip over the Vietnam War movies as too icky.
You got that right.
MAGAs will always find a way to justify it, while the finest Trumpite thinkers say "Pay no attention to what he says! .... judges! .... woke tyranny! .... the Democrats are Marxists! .... This is our last chance to save America from the left!"
I once got into a discussion about the stolen election and was told that "2000 Mules" proved that it was stolen. As part of my response, I noted that even Bill Barr thought it was "unimpressive". That's when I found out that Barr is a member of the Deep State. If it can happen to Bill Barr, it can certainly happen to John Kelly.
My retired military officer family members love him. They hate their former congresswoman, Liz Cheney.
That is so weird. My formerly Navy son regards TFG as a traitor to the oath to the Constitution which he also swore to, and still feels bound by.
Why??
Cognitive dissonance…
Many don’t know or don’t believe the true reports of his character defects. They’ve been conditioned to believe the attacks and reports are exaggerations and lies.
That doesn't mean they're off the hook, Stephen. We have 50+ years of documentation that shows Trump is a wretched piece of filth. If these people are ignorant to those facts, that's because they're choosing to be so. My own theory is they support Trump just to piss people off and they don't care about the danger that he poses to our national and global security.
In my opinion, you're underestimating how effective Trump and his media allies have been at discrediting what they call the mainstream media. If its in the New York Times, its false.
Oh, I don't underestimate it at all, Lewis. I simply people that these people want to be lied to because that way, they're not responsible for their choices. Keep in mind that Trump's more egregious public moments -- like calling for Mark Milley's execution, or the termination of the Constitution -- happened on Truth Social and is part of the public record. Has he lost any support for those comments amongst the base?
No,and too many other people.
Also,"you gonna believe your lying eyes or me". Trump 2020
Trumpler and media allies think American people are stupid - information-challenged, prone to conspiracy theories, easily manipulated, having cultish behavior.
Hmm, what to do about it as reach the edge of cliff, after watching our democracy slip away one day at a time for 8+ years...?
And remember: The Economist is a BRITISH "newspaper" in magazine form that appears weekly. Their "Leader" (editorial) this week is also much more detailed than either TFG or any of his lemmings could read or understand. It is written for those who think about things.
That sure is a lot of people, communist,marxist,fascists, liberals, vermin,rinos.
And, I think that because all they know/have experienced is America as a democracy/republic/whatever, because it appears to be stable, they think it is a feature of nature and can not change. And even if tRump gets back in, with all the attendant slime and freaks, that everything will just keep merrily going along.
Even of Trump gets the US to fight along side Russia to capture all of Eastern Europe.
Sometimes I feel like we're living in an episode of The Twilight Zone.
I am stealing "their complete loserness" from you.
Just so you know=:-)
Omg, truth is so hard to bear.
Going over a cliff in a slow motion...😱
People who are conditioned to follow faith instead of facts, are dangerous to any democracy. That’s why the wolves are so suddenly fond of Christianity as a weapon.
One word ;cult.
Once again, right on GG.
Evidenced by unending trouble in Middle East.
Religion, religious extremism, amplifies ignorance, controls & divides people, causes wars…
I have felt for a long time that the more fundamentally religious you are, the less you are on the side of democracy. For democracy requires compromise, a willingness to listen to other views, and admitting that you don’t have all the answers. None of those things describe people who are steeped in fundamentalist religions. Their views boil down to these two things: (1) they believe they know what the rules are, and (2) they don’t believe they are allowed to change the rules.
My brother has stopped talking to me since he became a fundamentalist. Not at first. He tried for years to get me and my husband and kids on board his totally fundamentalist train. Finally gave up and won't speak to us anymore. His wife occasionally calls from a pay phone.
One thing I wonder; why is religiosity causing so much division now, here? Especially as we have become more secular as a nation, according to polling data. I can only assume it’s something about Trumpism which is so counterintuitive considering what an ungodly specimen he is, not even attempting to mask his hateful thoughts. It must be a fluke convergence of forces I don’t understand.
I’ll give you my (probably overly simplified) two cents. I think what we are seeing today is simply a culmination of what has been brewing for awhile. For many years, those in the (Protestant) religious establishment were first among equals. They kind of got what they wanted. I’m old enough to remember Blue Laws for example (only stores selling fundamental needs like food and medicine were allowed to be open on Sunday). No one who didn’t claim a religious belief could possibly rise to national political prominence. And religion had to be the right kind of religion. JFK being a Catholic was a big deal at the time. He even had to basically pledge not to listen to the Pope if he were elected.
That started to change forty or fifty years ago as the nation became more secular. Now the religious establishment didn’t get to call all of the shots. People started objecting to religious symbols and practices in public life. First it was the Supreme Court outlawing prayer in public schools. The reaction to that decision was similar to Mike Johnson’s reaction to the teaching of evolution. Lots of bad things are going to happen if we take God out of the classroom.
And most of all, people started taking seriously the separation of church and state enshrined in the Constitution (despite what folks like MTG and Boebert say I can’t see any possibility of interpreting the Constitution any other way). And that, I believe, is the root of the problem. For all the good that religious folks do (and they certainly do a lot of good), many just can’t accept the idea that their religious beliefs don’t allow them to do whatever they want to do (like in the past). For example, they feel that if they want to discriminate against gays, they should be allowed to.
So this has been going on for some time. Just think how long we have heard about the phony “War on Christmas”.
I think the biggest thing that has happened in recent years to antagonize the Religious Right has been the rise of gay rights and, more recently, transgender rights. They fought gay marriage long and hard with all kinds of disingenuous arguments. But they lost. But they refused to completely back down so they came up with various “religious liberty” arguments to, in their minds, limit the damage.
I can only assume that they felt that, if they can’t win the gay marriage battle, what battles can they win? And in their minds the trend wasn’t positive. So they went looking for a champion for their side, someone who would push back against the secular tide flooding our country. And they didn’t much care who it was as long as they said the right things. It’s something of a move born of desperation.
There are two reasons for the divisiveness now. One, of course, is Trump. He turns the temperature up on everything and gives his followers license to do the same (every issue starts at “9” before being turned up to “11”). The second is a confluence that you mentioned. It is the confluence between the GOP power structure (who want to win elections) and the Religious Right (who believe that the other side is pure evil and must be kept out of power by any means necessary).
The common thread here is this: democracy is important, but not as important as winning elections.
Just ask Bill Barr who said he would vote for Trump in 2024 (despite calling him unqualified) because “the progressive Left and the Secular Humanists are the biggest threats to this country”. That doesn’t sound like someone all that worried about American democracy.
We are of a similar age; I remember the Sunday Blue Laws too. And all the liberating legal rulings that followed. I suspect gay rights was the straw that broke their tolerance, as you mention. And my assessment is they knew it was too late to go after gay Americans because it was already at mainstream acceptance - so they went after transgender rights instead. Most Americans don’t personally have a transgender relative, friend, or acquaintance so it was a “safe” group to attack. But I now see that tide turning. A few years ago comments in the NYT were very negative on transgender rights, but that’s changed, probably in response to the right wing meanness. Liberals didn’t want to make common cause with MAGAs. In a paradox the cause of transgender rights has benefited from the viciousness of the right wing attacks.
We sure have lost ground on separation of church and state! With more on the way, if we can’t stop this tide.
Trump changed everything with his reptilian skill at using any wedge issue. But I will always be negative on religion and its adherents, for gleefully accepting and advancing such an evil person. Talk about strange bedfellows. And rank hypocrisy, for all to see. This Supreme Court is playing a big role in allowing religion into government and protecting religion above individual freedom.
Thanks for your answer; it’s such an interesting, important topic, worthy of discussion.
Two further comments (and thanks for your response):
1) I could write pages on the religious liberty issue, but the bottom line is this: it’s clear to me that the Religious Right wants to be able to use their religious beliefs as a reason not to have to obey duly passed laws. For example, businesses can’t refuse services to anyone based on their sex, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin (and probably some others in this list). But they can if they claim that it violates their religious beliefs. So their religious beliefs not only “trump” the legislatures, but it also “trumps” any other belief that someone might use (try saying that you don’t want to serve a Black customer in your restaurant because you don’t believe that the races should mix and see how far you get). They simply want special treatment.
2) Trump’s support from the Evangelicals is probably the most amazing about-face that I have seen in a long time (second place would go to the anti-abortion rights groups who, pre-Dobbs, said that abortion policy is a state issue and then immediately post-Dobbs wanted a national ban) and would have severely damaged their credibility in a saner world. For years, their message was basically “the means justifies the ends”. In an instant, it became “the ends justifies the means”.
MAGAs have always said that critics are swallowing "media narratives" about Trump -- even when people can play the videos that show him displaying his wretched character all by himself,
Trump voters are obviously not much offended by the manifest awfulness. Trump fans clearly love the awfulness.
Amplifying and harnessing grievance, resentment, anger, hate. Just like Hitler…
There's no better example of this than Trump's Evangelical supporters. It was only a few years ago that the "moral character" of the President was paramount. Lack of "moral character" was almost an impeachable offense. Now, they view "moral character" as so 1998.
If Kelly had character, he wouldn’t have taken the chief-of-staff job. He and we all knew very well at that point what the Orange Pustule was all about.
Right? Kelly et al just sound bitter and whiny. Now that they've been kicked off the gravy train, they want to "tell all" that happened on said train. The "half day bounce" was the shelf life of his book.
They love it because they are narrow minded suckers that hope he will hurt the people they hate. They don't really care about the troops, only that if they fight, they must win, to make us feel like winners. The wounded and dead ARE losers because they aren't Rambo or GIJoe.
To be fair, I don't think there is a lot of daylight in the character of those two. Both are just appalling.
Exactly. All the Republican insiders who have privately (or not so privately) trashed Trump must come out publicly and in some coordinated fashion to say loud and clear: 1) how bad he is and the threat that he poses and 2) state that everyone who loves their country and reveres the Constitution should vote for any non-Trumpy Republican in the primary and for Biden if in fact the choice in the general is Trump v Biden.
That we are in an emergency situation, desperate times etc.
Elaborate that preserving our stability, prosperity, and peace as a nation in the short-term requires this, after which rebuilding the Republican party and working to identify a non-fascist candidate who respects the Constitution to compete in 2028 can commence.
This will not move most of the base, but will give the Republican voters who don't like Trump but despise Dems enough doubts along with the permission structure to at least stay home. It could very well make the difference.
Yes it's time for him to get out there and spill the beans, all of them. I am sure he has been witness to much more depravity, treason and illegality than he's said so far. That would truly fulfill his oath to serve his country.
That's coming in his follow up memoir
You aren't suggesting he spills the beans for free are you? /s lol
Charlie, regarding Auggie. One of the truest lines I ever read, “The crulest trick God ever played on man is making dogs’ lives so short.”
My pinned tweet:
"Every time a dog I love dies, they take a piece of my heart with them. And every time a new dog comes into my life, they give me a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the pieces of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are."
We should all aspire to be the kind of person our dogs think we are.
I wonder what dogs think of Trump?
Remember the reaction of that bald eagle (a few years ago) when Trump was holding him.Priceless.
Or at least back away and growl.
I totally trust my dogs' intuition about people. They instinctively know evil.
I totally trust my dog. If, on a walk, he spots a person or people in the distance and refuses to move forward, we turn around and go the other way.
Dogs know.
We don't deserve dogs but im glad they think we do.
Sko, thank you for your lovely words. We cat people feel devastated, too, when our feline family members have to leave us. Pieces of my heart will be cat.
Nancy, mine too
Thank you for this…
I've never heard that before, it's lovely.
One of those gems you find on the internet, by an unknown author.
I love it (probably not surprising given my avatar :-P). However, I'm afraid if I try to say it to anyone, I'll cry right then and there!
well put
I found it one day years ago on one of those sites with tons of quotes about dogs.
Another favorite: "A door is something a dog is always on the wrong side of." :)
I have that sign in my kitchen, but instead of the dog, there's a pig!
(I worked with pigs over 30 years, so everyone in my family gave me everything with a pig on it for literal decades until I begged them to stop!)
Cats, too. Though I am honored I got to spend years with many wonderful cats & dogs (& hamsters & guinea pigs). My cats are approaching 15 and I appreciate them every day except when Christian wakes me up at 5am.
I can add dutch bunnies to that collection.
One day, 2 guys from the AC company arrived to install my new ACs in NYC. Christian sat in front of me with his tail wrapped all the way around my ankles. I knew one of them was bad news. He’s never done that before or since.
I lost my (most recent) dog in February of this year. She was 15. I still wake up every morning thinking about her.
The short lifespans of our best friends are indeed the curse of dog lovers. They're with us long enough that we learn to love them like children, then they're gone.
I know, right? They break your heart in the end.
Kind of like life.
I know, right? My dog's been gone for 30 years and I still miss her.
They do, but they also leave you stronger and more open to love.
Oh, I know. I still miss my dog after 30 years. I miss one of my best friend's dog, and one of my sister-in-law's dog. It's just tough to say goodbye.
I still miss my Rottie. He was the most compassionate being I have ever known with gentle brown eyes so full of love.
Mine was a retriever/lab mix, and she was absolutely bonkers in the best way. Just crazy, with a jealous streak to match. But she was also exceptional around children and quite protective of them. We don't deserve dogs, NLTownie.
True, true!
Great quote!
Checkov wrote an excellent short story about that.
Thank you!! I can't find the story now; it was in a high school Norton Anthology. The man was amazing; a physician and such a prolific author!
I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time? The misery of keeping a dog is his dying so soon. But, to be sure, if he lived for fifty years and then died, what would become of me?” – Sir Walter Scott
They become family.
So very true 😥
Those folks who built up Candace Owens should’ve read the book instead of just watching the movies. In the book, Dr. Frankenstein ends up in the frozen north trying to track down his creation to kill it. Good luck to them with all the monsters they’ve made.
The strange part is that they started their critique of her with her "Israel is an apartheid state" position, which was discussed in Foreign Policy magazine earlier this year. The article came down on the side of Israel having all the attributes of an apartheid state. Foreign Policy isn't known for craziness.
I was going to make a similar point.
"If only they were warned". " Leopards eating faces" party
"Beware of riding the tiger, lest you be eaten by him"
“I came out and told people the awful things he said about wounded soldiers, and it didn’t have half a day’s bounce. You had his attorney general Bill Barr come out, and not a half a day’s bounce."
With all due respect, general, you came out and told people those thing IN A BOOK, YEARS AFTER THE FACT. You were in a better position to observe Trump's behavior and warn the nation than just about any other person on the planet. And you remained silent. When the chips were down, you stayed silent until you could make a buck on a book deal. Your words now aren't totally worthless, but they're a hell of a lot less valuable now than they could have been.
So much this. "The Warning", "The Room Where It Happened" - whatever. No one will take you seriously because the orange one is too far entrenched now. Now it just sounds like courage born of too much alcohol. They were full of hubris, they thought they could handle him, keep their powerful positions and their party.
Those guys should've shouted Wolf! when it mattered.
"Beware of riding the tiger, lest you be eaten by him"
Wow. I hope someone close to him says this to him. Maybe then he will actually do more.
I think, “with all do respect” is more than he deserves, but I understand the impulse.
I have 2 nephews currently serving, one would probably speak up and one wouldn’t. It is a challenge to understand. :(
Charlie, the Fortune 500 executives are too busy criticizing the junior year liberal arts major at Columbia protesting the Israel-Hamas war to criticize the richest man on the planet! If only all of the people that are worried about speech on campus had the same amount of attention for a large recipient of American tax dollars pushing baseless anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. I’m glad we all kept things in perspective over the last month.
“It’s beyond my comprehension he has the support he has.”…
Here' an answer from this podunk, hicksville Trumptown I live in. With snowmobiles, four-wheelers, jacked up pickups, and fifty inch flat panels in households galore, it is not about the economy. It is not about planet threatening futures of their children. It's about grievance. Essentially, it's about their soul soothing sheer loathing of all but themselves. It's collective narcissism, founded on sheer
Hate.
I have a theory that many believe there is something besides the government that helps them - “keep the government out of my Medicare” - so it kinda doesn’t matter if the candidates they elect want to burn it all down. The mysterious “they” will make sure FEMA checks go out, their Social Security cost of living updates are implemented correctly, passport requests get processed, etc. Because they don’t understand how the government really works, they think it’s great for Trump to destroy the deep state without the slightest idea what that would mean.
We have clean air and water because companies want to treat factory waste out of the goodness of their hearts, right? Food labels say what’s actually inside the package because companies are super honest, aren’t they? It couldn’t be government regulations forcing them, could it?
I agree with this ^. Situational ignorance. Not to make excuses, but understanding how the world works is sometimes beyond the intellectual capacity of a portion of the electorate. That's why parts of the electorate are so easily manipulated. I never take for granted my own intelligence, drive and curiosity with a --but for the grace of God, there go I--mantra.
It's their turn to be oppressed, be a victim.
*eyeroll*
You are 100% right. No one but them and people like them have the right to live and breath.
Some of them. Some learned stuff and are well off and still hate everyone not like them.
........this column has me almost as depressed as a JVL column..........=:-o
My goodness, Charlie, you have a beautiful dog. I hope Auggie has a long, healthy, happy life.
As for the news, I'm so tired of adults acting like 5 year olds. From the article on Owens you quoted: "For example, she has falsely compared Israel to the “segregated South.” This is the sort of ignorant ‘Apartheid State” slander that we expect from Black Lives Matter – and the Jew-killers of the Middle East."
For the love of God, people, why the drive-by shooting to Black Lives Matter? We know the only thing they "expect" is that they can keep using the phrase to scare White bigots because it has the word Black in it. I'm so tired of being treated like a thug because I'm not a bigot. So tired of hearing that Trump is going to end democracy but he's going to win because Biden is old and nobody cares about democracy. It's wrong and I'm tired of the propaganda today.
Thank you, Charlie, for noticing that when students hang their bare asses out, the news media gleefully reports it for weeks, but when Musk, a billionaire, hangs his bare ass out the same exact way, he gets praise and imitators. Funny how that happens.
If the big money people didn't dump all over college kids the next thing you know those kids might be agitating to unionize Starbucks or Tesla.
Unionizing Tesla.What would Elon think of that? Probably a lawsuit.
Bingo
I should hope charlie noticed considering he's guilty of the spending weeks dumping on college students charge.
Isn’t it odd that a mainstream publication like Foreign Policy even concluded that Israel shares many traits of an apartheid state? Truth is an absolute defense against slander and it’s disappointing that Charlie gave credence to such a line.
General Kelly: "If anything, his numbers go up."
That's because roughly 30% of the electorate are shit-tier human beings. They are comfortable with Trump being awful because they themselves are awful. And they should be treated accordingly.
I'm glad to hear Auggie's on the mend. He's a good boy.
Perhaps citizens would take better notice if Kelly & Barr say they would vote for a democtat instead of Trump, this is the line they don't want to cross. But Trump love will not decline unless GOPers say Biden is not the evil we portray him to be.
Oh, I totally agree. I think Barr is particularly shameful on this. He has acknowledged in many interviews on Trump's unfitness for office yet will support Trump against Joe Biden. For once, I'd like one of these interviewers to say, "Mr. Barr, while I respect your government service, you are completely and utterly full of shit and by not supporting Joe Biden for president, you are complicit in the destruction of our country. So, fuck right off with that."
Of course, that'll never happen.
I just read Jeff Tiedrich's free substack newsletter and this is today's topic - he always cuts through the BS.
I don't care if they give 10 caveats about how Democrats spend too much and are too in-your-face about accepting "weird" LGBTQ stuff, they need to end with their own truth. "I never imaged voting for a Democrat for President, but democracy requires it if the other choice is Trump."
And we have always, since the revolution until now, that 30%. Every now and then they get permission to show their true selves. TFG has amplified them and co-opted others that just want power. This is our showdown. And it will probably last for more than one more election cycle. They are not going to go quietly into the night.
We sure better have our big boy pants on, every single one of us.
“Shit-tier human beings” —that hits the nail squarely on the head.
Hillary understated it, if anything.
Hillary would have been a truly great President. I am sad to say, I think it will be a very long time before the United States has a woman for President. To many, being a woman is even more of a disqualifier than being Black.
David Horowitz Freedom Center on Candace Owens: "Her comments about Israel and her promotion of people like Andrew Tate are part of a pattern."
Oh? People like Andrew Tate? Can you think of anyone else as odious as Andrew Tate that she might have been eager to promote six years ago? Something that might have served as a clue to her character? Here's a hint: she wasn't the only one! Here's another hint. This is from the ... *checks notes* ... David Horowitz Freedom Center:
"Candace Owens has become obsessed with her own fame, stirring up drama to compensate for a lack of real achievement."
Remind you of anyone? Come on, you're close, I can feel it! Here's another, same source:
"Candace tackles a subject she knows nothing about, never bothers to learn anything about it, and then rides the backlash by playing the victim to generate more fame and money."
C'mon, I've practically told you their name at this point. What's that? You know a lot of people like that? Oh. Right. Of course.
Never mind.
Are people like that born, or made? Not an original question but it comes to mind almost everyday, because I marvel at the manipulative skills these people possess. I lack both the desire and the necessary skills to control other people, so it fascinates me. Why? How?
Normally made. Someone I once knew very well (or so I thought) turned out to be a pathological liar. It appears to have been nurtured as a survival skill from a youth of shitty parenting. This clearly applies to Trump.
I read Mary Trump’s book about her uncle. It did seem like a cold, aloof family. I’m often fascinated by people who emerge from those unfortunate upbringings with a reasonably healthy personality. That clearly doesn’t apply to Trump.
I guess I’m surprised how widespread the evil power of manipulation is practiced with skill; all the Trump sycophants have it, it’s not just him. Scott Atlas, the radiologist who commandeered the Covid strategy is but one example. There’s another irritating figure whose name I can’t recall; lied all the time with great aggression. So many!
So, there's actually a few different types here. The pathological liars have to be smart enough to keep their stories straight. Trump isn't, so he's a pathological bullshitter, which makes him trickier to deal with.
The bullshitters are the carnival barkers. They make great talk radio hosts as long as they have a good call screener. These people are usually having one-way conversations with friendly crowds, and limit their one-on-one dialogs to sympathetic ears. They say whatever they want because they can expect not to be called out on it. Once in a while Trump gets the itch to prove himself in front of real journalists (without an audience) and it never goes well. He can't handle the confrontation and generally looks like a fool.
People like Atlas are different. They're the contrarians. The people so convinced they're right when everyone else in their knowledge field disagrees with them – in fact, even moreso *because* everyone disagrees with them. They have a chip on their shoulder and think they're the Albert Einstein of their field – because they think other physicists thought Einstein was crazy (they didn't). They believe what they're saying, though.
As far as the manipulation goes, I hate to say this, but I think most of us would probably be better at it than we'd like to believe, if we really felt we needed to. Just think about all of the thoughts and impulses we suppress, the little white lies we tell in order to maintain a general aura of civility. And it all requires people skills: the ability to read a room, to understand what motivates people, what triggers them, what they respond well to, etc. Which is fine.
But if you abandon honestly as a general virtue, you lose a sense of guilt and shame about being deceptive, and you can use those skills for outright manipulation. That's why people say Trump's superpower is his shamelessness – that's the difference between persuading and manipulating. Any politician could do what he does if they lacked a conscience. Most of us could, I imagine.
It helps if you view yourself as smart and everyone else as a sucker. Because if you are willing to lie, cheat and steal to get what you want, you can always find people who will believe you. Just like some of the right wing nut cases who make money telling gullible people it's okay to be racist and anti feminist and ant gay. There are folks eager for someone to give them permission to hate and they will swallow any lie and will also give the huckster their hard earned money.
Nature or Nurture? In Trump s case?
Glib answer: In Trump's case, Nature and Nurture.
In Trump’s case I’d say nature and nurture have been inextricably fused in the matter transporter from the Fly.
Long live David Cronenberg!
TRUMP.Do I win something now?
How about the clarity of mind to know what's happening and how little you can do to stop it as you watch your country fall apart of its own accord?
Oh, I think I maybe heard of this guy! He should understand Owens then; as I understand she basically took the same route to her crazy. Classic extremophiles. A sensible person who becomes disenchanted with the extremities of their political persuasion becomes some kind of moderate. The people with the worst judgement do a 180° flip.
I heard of Ramparts thanks to Mort Sahl’s show in LA, but never got it. Did you read Harlan Ellison’s column in the Freep? He was great.
Wow. Yeah, I have gathered he went a bit off the rails there. It reminds me of how much I admired Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, and was totally off put when she seemed to go “a bit do-lally”, as the British say, at the last there. Or Elon, who impressed me so much I invested $1,000 in Tesla on Day One of IPO, before getting out 3 years later when he seemed to go sideways too. It’s sad to see people you respected behave in such a way as to lose that respect.
Interesting. I read a lot of Ellison back in the 80's.
John Kelly knows from his military experience how to launch a sustained campaign.
He should try it with Trump.
Kelly was an anon source for a book after trump left office; he didn't really "speak out" until recently --- and then expects people to someone listen to his opinion and change there own??? All these people coming out of the word work to speak is just really appalling.
Kelly and the other generals need to cut a testimonial ad to support Biden. I doubt they will though, that would take some stones.
On another note --- I was a student at Kansas when they were filming The Day After and was actually in a couple of scenes in the background. It was an interesting few weeks. They just put out to students and people in the community to show up in various places around town to be in the movie.
I was not in the film (that must have been fun! and also boring, from what I know of being an extra). But I did see it with my friends, broadcast in one of our college eateries. It was grim.
An online friend mentioned that he was supposed to be an extra on the film one day, but had to work in the Science Library at Malott Hall.
The twitter profile of Malott Hall is hilarious: I'm a movie star and fallout shelter, and you're not.
I knew someone who was in the grocery store grabbing all the meat out of the counter she was there most of the day for only about seconds on the screen.
My car at the time (1970 Duster) would have been in scene of all the cars leaving town but I also had a test on the same day
They need to do more than cut an ad. They need to go on a campaign trail type of tour, each and every one of them. Let local news report it and write it up. A grassroots type of thing. Do they really want tRump to go down, or are they simply hoping and praying?
They are really looking to re-write the history of their own complicity.
Thank you for sharing about your dog. I totally relate. Dogs are the most wonderful companions and yet their life spans are so short, so we live through their whole life with the joy, and then the loss. I love my dog so much. All of us dog lovers understand.
So happy for the Sykes family and Auggie!
Cat lovers are no less sentimental and bonded beyond reason to these furry masters.
I've had my heart broken by both, but as I've matured--gotten old--I've had cats. My daughter the dog lover, calls me daily to find out what my 'owners' have put the slave through today.
John Kelly has long been a mystery to me. His military career was stellar. His dedication to the United States cannot possibly be questioned. He's made sacrifices none of us should have to make.
He was interviewed back in 2019 on the Naval Institute Proceedings Podcast. It's very much worth the listen:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/the-proceedings-podcast/episode-108-gen-john-kelly-looks-back
His work in Latin America on combatting the drug trade is particularly interesting in light of his service in the Trump Administration. John Kelly knows the truth about what's going on in Central and South America. He knows the sacrifices the militaries and police forces in those countries are dealing with, the risks they taken when they burn a field or mess with the cartels. He understands these things on a level most of us don't. Yet he stood by as Trump did what he did, ignorant of even the most basic facts.
I'm sure he was in the "if not me, then the next guy will be worse" camp and he was probably right about that. He's also, at his heart a US Marine, which means something, including when the President of the United States asks you to do something, you do it.
But now ... how? I don't know what the right answer is, but it seems to me John Kelly's got one more mission to complete and it's waking the MAGA horde up to the truth of what Donald Trump really is.
I suspect a lot of Cassandras told John Kelly not to take the job because Trump is a sucking black hole of character, but he didn't listen to them. And now he's a Cassandra himself. He could talk to the people who warned him and figure out where he went wrong, but I'll place a $100 bet he's not going to do that. Better to let the country detonate than admit liberals were correct about one thing.
It’s galling. Patriotism only goes so far. But you’d think someone who sacrificed a son to the country would feel standing up to Trump to be insignificant by comparison. And yet.
Its galling that anyone thinks that those who sacrificed their lives in every war are "saps and suckers".
That alone should have given Kelley the spine he needed to speak out. His “honor” is mysteriously MIA.
"I was silent.Then they came for me" This quote is very shortened.I don't remember who said it.But it is chilling(regarding WW2) It kind of sums up today, doesn't it!
It does sum up today’s political environment. The people who know that quote aren’t the ones who need to know it, as usual. If Trump gets voted in again, there will be some very unhappy Trump voters once the sh*t hits the fan and they get fouled along with everyone else. Sarah’s recent Focus Group with Bill Kristol and a gaggle of Jewish Trump voters comes to mind, as but one small example among a big pool of stooges.
Steven Colbert interviewed Jonathan Karl not long ago.Karl said Trump has been a total failure.Why Colbert asked? Because everybody who comes in contact with Trump has had their life up ended or ruined.(but not Trump) Trump succeeds while all others fail. Thats really sums up Trump perfectly.And his view of success.
The failure of Trump sycophants to notice this obvious trend line is baffling. Still they persist. If we make it out of this, future social psychologists will be studying the Trump phenomenon for decades. Eons even.
In the history books this could parallel the 1850 s
I have trouble understanding the Kelly reaction too. The best I can come up with is that deep down in most every senior military officer's DNA is a complete dedication to serving the chain of command even when you may not agree with it. Of course, there are many other factors regarding them being a bit insulated from the outside world (i.e. not really knowing what it looks like for the ordinary citizen), plenty of their own problems to do deal with (i.e. day-to-day stuff), not sure how you would address it successfully and finally...the specter of the shix-storm created by revealing the truth and how that would play out for him personally, professionally and for the country.
Not saying any of that's right...but that's my take on why Kelly, like Frank Sinatra, did it his way...
For all the doom out there, it was nice to get an update on Auggie. Glad he’s on the mend.
Love that handsome pup. And his gigantic baby brother. Thanks for sharing this happy news.
"....but they're not going to do that to Elon, because power is comfortable with power… When it comes to their paycheck, elites learn to be quiet about things they say matter to them.”
This quote from Kara Swisher is key and it represents one of the great weaknesses of unrestricted capitalism: money is power, and power seeks to maintain the status quo, regardless of how immoral the status quo is. That's why you won't see other corporate CEOs gunning for Elon over his anti-Semitism. They're too comfortable making decadent levels of income and wealth to be bothered to make the world any better than it is. That's why we're never going to curb climate change. That's why we're never going to address wealth and income inequality. That's why worker productivity and wage growth are never going to go back to being on the same upward path together. That's why we're never going to address any problem that requires government to raise the kind of revenues needed to fix it. It's just a long race to the economic bottom now for a bifurcated economy where the decadent elites get wealthier and live cushier lifestyles at everyone else's expense--all while those same decadent elites living their best lives continue to complain about how shitty the country is.
The GOP House is going to do one thing and one thing only this coming year: try to repeal Social Security. They're already seeding newspapers with anti-Social Security editorials. Companies used Social Security to take away pensions, so when SS goes, we'll be worse off than we were in the 1920s. Oh, they may also impeach Biden, but that's just for vibes. The real meat and potatoes will be moving our entire tax burden to the vanishing middle class. Look for the middle class to be reclassified as elites. The work of convincing the Boomers that the younger generations are evil and deserve nothing continues on schedule, and now that the Boomers believe it, it's the work of a moment to convince the younger people that the Boomers are evil and deserve nothing.
And here I was promising myself to be thankful this week! I am thankful that you all let me post my worries and fears. I'm thankful for everyone working for, and caring about, democracy. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
The Boomers gave us this economy and federal debt + deficit. They're the ones who let runaway wealth inequality and climate change go unchecked while government revenues got depleted via lowering taxes on the rich. Now they might have to pay the price for it by getting SS axed. They wanted small government so bad, now they just might get it. My retirement plans are set up to be prepared for SS to not be there anymore when I retire. Thanks Boomers. This is the price of bootlicking the rich and supporting the GOP's small government plans. If we're not going to tax the rich to fund SS then maybe we shouldn't be shelling out federal debt for the generation that got us here in the first place. They can thank themselves for this mess.
Seriously, fuck Boomers. They're sitting on top of the largest share of the national wealth while making us foot their SS bills via adding to the national debt (see link below), and all the while they're buying up multiple properties and doing NIMBYism to prevent the building of more and causing the housing inventory to be at the lowest level its been in over 60 years (see other link).
Boomer wealth: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/11/14/millennials-baby-boomers-differences-university-cambridge-study/71574991007/
Housing inventory: https://www.axios.com/2023/11/21/housing-shortage-vacancies
Hi Travis, I wanted to counter you with something I read this weekend, which I think was on your recommendation. I'm reading They Thought They Were Free by Milton Meyer. In fact, I'm struggling to stop reading it and do something else. I can't get it out of my head. Anyway, here is one of Meyer's masterful quotes:
There were two truths, and they were not contradictory: the truth that Nazis
were happy and the truth that anti-Nazis were unhappy. And in the America of the
1950’s—I do not mean to suggest that the two situations are parallel or even more
than very tenuously comparable—those who did not dissent or associate with dis-
senters saw no mistrust or suspicion beyond the great community’s mistrust and
suspicion of dissenters, while those who dissented or believed in the right to dis-
sent saw nothing but mistrust and suspicion and felt its devastation. As there were
two Americas, so, in a much more sharply drawn division, there were two Ger-
manys. And so, just as there is when one man dreads the policeman on the beat
and another waves “Hello” to him, there are two countries in every country.
I would say there are 2 generations to every generation, also. There are Boomers who agitated and Boomers who shut down agitators. The Boomers got farther and made more progress on a lot of subjects than their parents ever did. We let the phrase "Greatest Generation" cover up a lot of sins.
They made a lot of progress on *some* subjects, and they inflamed others. They got women's liberation done. They passed the voting rights act (being gelded as we speak though). They ended the war in Vietnam. They got civil rights legislature passed.
Then they bootlicked the rich and gave us the status quo of extreme wealth inequality and an economy run by the shareholder class. They let the unions get gelded in favor of corporatism. They ran up the bill on college tuitions and made the Ivy League a pay-to-play system that advantaged rich kids. They got rid of the draft and forced all future wars to be shouldered by a smaller and smaller cohort of contracted service members who got turned into recyclable cannon fodder for a 20-year war that wasn't going to be won. They bought up all the housing and did NIMBYism to cut down on new developments and crunched the housing supply so hard that it's unaffordable to a large chunk of the urban and suburban working class. They cut government revenues by giving away tax breaks to the people who needed it the least (the rich). They had the power to reduce carbon emissions and not cook the planet over the course of 50 years, and instead they made up conspiracy theories about how climate change was a hoax and kept giving the oil companies billions in government subsidies. And now they want to make the younger generations foot their social security lifestyle subsidies via debt-spending while they collectively sit on top of the largest share of the national wealth.
I'd say on balance, the Boomers did WAY more harm than good. They might even just be the Worst Generation. Fuck their social security, they can take out reverse mortgages on their way off of this mortal coil.
Man, my only quibble is that--once again--the silent generation is let off the hook unscathed.
Nah, fuck those guys too.