It’s been clear for quite some time that Trump hates America. He hates democracy. He hates dissent. He hates the different, the other. He hates women. When he looks out the window, he sees only himself. In order to rebuild America in his own image, he has to destroy it first.
You're giving Trump far too much "credit." He didn't become President twice by himself, the second time after disasterously advocating against the most basic defenses against a pandemic, masking and social distancing! People in Tudor era England knew those things worked, they just didn't precisely know why.
The problem is far deeper than merely Trump, and it's a mistake to simply focus on him. He doesn't actually hold any values, everything is transactional with him. For example, used to be a Democrat, and is only tepidly pro-birth/anti-choice because it got him votes twice. His 2015-16 election campaign was pretty clearly a publicity stunt/attempted graft/con that went much further than even Trump, Eric and Don Jr. believed it would. The 2023-24 campaign was about stopping Jack Smith, Wallis and staying out of jail. Trump is probably the laziest President we've ever had. He essentially delegated most of the presidency to Mitch McConnell the first time around, only signing the tax cut when and where McConnell told him to sign. This term, he's delegated the presidency to Musk.
MAGA/Trumpism isn't going away in 2028 (Pam Bondi recently stated she believes Trump will actually be "done" after this term.) Someone just as bad, if not worse, is Vice President, and thus the likely "heir" to MAGA, JD Vance. The problem is the voters. As Dr. Krugman wrote, we have a societal divide between Americans who believe in facts reason, and the value of expertise, and Americans who are led by feelings (and IMO, the increasingly destructive influence of religion, particularly Christian nationalism.) Unless the majority of Americans who believe in facts, reason and the value of experts prevail in this conflict, Trump could take a dirt nap tomorrow and we're still not getting out of this mess.
Clearly the crisis we are confronting is larger than Donald Trump and goes further back than his entry into politics, at least as far back as Ronald Reagan and Lee Atwater. It has been carefully planned by the far right for decades. Trump also has a cadre of zealots and opportunists propping him up and guiding him. And those who voted for him and those who didn’t vote at all bear a heavy responsibility for the current state of affairs. But Trump is the face of the regime and his rage resonates with his MAGA supporters. He is not simply a passive figurehead. And his cabal is finding out that he can’t always be easily controlled.
I used to be a Republican activist until I discovered who they really were by joining a breakfast club including many local politicians. I changed my voter registration to Democrat so I could still vote in primaries, and because at least here in New Mexico, as Will Rogers once said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."
The modern GOP still retains its' core mission: cutting taxes for the very wealthy and corporations. It serves the .01%; with lesser but still substantial service for the top 1% and 5%. And, of course provides special perks for Evangelicals, Big Oil, real estate development, Big Ag, and a few other GOP-loyal businesses.
👆🎯That has always been so obvious to me. They had anti-abortion and Anti-gay planks in their party since I was old enough to vote, there is nothing for women, in that party.
Carefully planned? No, but certainly in their genetics pool of fear, hate, stupidity, blaming, feckless, tax cuts, budget deficits…think for a moment what very little these deficits bought, other than massive income inequity…and now they run on the pain this causes, as they bought rich people people and screwed over the working class! Look at the trillions in students loans! When ‘Raygun’ was Gov. college tuition in California was zero! I paid students body fees and got stuff for these. $108 dollars/semester at a very good state college. UC was $108/Quarter, so still a pretty good deal
You might not be surprised how much he hated higher education!
These very rich were, and are, guided by political Eugenics…only the strongest (people like the PayPals, Donny’s children, etc.) will survive on their islands…while we beg.
That’s the whole point of the tariffs, make us all (the entire fucking world!) beg, ‘please, can I have more?’ Are we Stormy! Are We Joe?
Swatting his ugly fat ass! With a New York Times! That’ll sting!
"It has been carefully planned by the far right for decades." Have you read "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer? It's was written about 10 years ago, but it explains a LOT about where America is today and why. I thought I knew a lot about right-wing US politics before I read this, but I didn't realize the half of it.
Like Hitler? The oligarchs of that time and place were so sure they could control their useful idiot. Rich and powerful people think history has nothing to teach them. And then they are SO surprised.
The problem is the voters, yes, but that has a "why" as well. How do voters (and non-voters too -- let's not leave them out) get their information? Citizens United has something to do with that. How do they/we evaluate that information? The dwindling of civics education and media in general over the decades has something to do with that. Finally, the "Christian" in "Christian nationalism" obscures something important: that these Christians are overwhelmingly white, and the teachings attributed to Jesus are far less important in their worldview than their whiteness.
I am hoping we get a big pendulum swing by 2026 and 2028, where enough former MAGA Americans realize how Trump has screwed over the country that Republicans can hardly get elected. I am also hoping that there won't be Venezuela style fraud for the GOP to steal these upcoming elections and maintain their tyranny.
I've said this before (with risk of sounding like a wacko): It makes sense if Trump is a Russian asset whose job is to weaken American and the West. He's doing a superb job.
After the Saturday high of being with a bazillion like minded folks in Boston, it's doubly difficult to come back to reality.
Yes there have been people who have his ear and work for Russia, but China and the Saudi’s as well…they love him, he’s so easy to fuck around, willing and able. The winners of these trade wars. Chaos they were well prepared for…we are 4% and have 25%. Maybe not for much longer…India will want their share too.
We did the above because we were smart, yet now we’re dumb.
This post is just a bit of the destruction of our country and our values. No mention of National Security being led by incompetents who have loyalty to a man rather than the constitution and no mention of the arrests and jailing in foreign countries where we may never reach them again. No mention of the degradation of our education from k- post graduate research. No mention of attacks on judiciary. No mention of anti-DEI to make this a male white supremacy. No mention of the attacks on journalism. No mention of our alliances being destroyed and the expansionist sword rattling. No mention of the solution to the Middle East being the eviction of the Palestinians and the threat of war with Iran.
The stock market can be manipulated so if we depend on regular Americans getting fed up with what’s happening because of the stock market, we will lose them when it goes up.
MAKE AMERICA SECURE AGAIN.
Take what we saw with the Signal text group as a clear warning we are in grave danger of military conflicts that we may well lose.
Oh, and the military parade on the king’s birthday, that is as big a sign as any that this isn’t the country it used to be.
It is one big coherent picture and even posts that focus on one aspect need to make it clear, otherwise as soon as the single issue is dealt with everyone who cared about it will go back to not caring. That is my point. Today the market is going up, but though many will have a big sigh of relief and Trump will declare a victory. the attack on America and its values hasn’t been ended. Those who joined the protests because of this issue will be told we were crying wolf.
We are being played with while the real threat is ongoing.
So try..and they do all stem from similar values—hate, fear, racism, eugenics, anti-science neo-fascist theologians. We have museums where children go on field trips to see the arc and learn about Noah. This is the sickness…this is school choice! This indoctrination is the disease! RFK- anti-science, tariffs, anti-evidence, immigration, Eugenics and racism, and this too is anti-science.
Puritans and evangelicals…no sex, no science, no love, all fear all the time!
Trump is the revenge of the racists for Obama. The country having a black president is all the proof they ever needed that wokeness had gone too far. They are burning the house down with all of us inside it because they'd rather destroy the country than quit being racist. Honestly, this is pathetic. The nation deserves so much better than to be governed by the most corrupt and idiotic administration in world history. Fuck conservatives, their ideology is garbage and their hypocrisy and lack of morals is repulsive. We have indulged these idiots for too long, something has to be done.
Racism is part of it, but mostly it's years of pent up anger by a group which feels abandoned, and has bought into disinformation and scalegoating, expertly
manipulated by (Hitler II) Trump, who does all of this for self-glorification, and, lately, in order to protect himself from getting the justice he deserves.
Says something that the people who ideologically loathe everything about the American project the most are American xenophobic ideologues themselves. Most of them still pretend on some level to be patriots, but if you look at the Dark Enlightenment techbros popular in Silicon Valley elites or the Catholic integralists like Adrian Vermeule, it's not hard to find people who are literally ready to terminate the United States as a nation.
Fox News to the contrary, Osama Bin Laden never "hated our freedoms," at least no more than he hated those of any other free country like, say, Taiwan or Norway or Chile. He just wanted us out of the region. Our movement conservatives genuinely loathe everything about America that makes it a place worth living (much of it going back to the original founding fathers), and aren't going to rest until it's been burned to a cinder.
If America is democracy, then Donald Trump hates America. If America is the rule of law, then Donald Trump hates America. If America is the Constitution, then Donald Trump hates America. I could go on.
America isn't any of them, in that they aren't unique to the USA. They're simply ideals and fragile and potentially transitory guardrails that have been adopted by America in the past, and which are now barriers to Trump in his immediate vicinity. What's perhaps most surprising is how low they actually are to Trump, and how pretty much half of the country isn't interested in defending any of them. It's laughable how the NRA is apparently asleep as the first and only occurrence of the one scenario that they've been using like a hammer to justify their entire existence rapidly unfolds all around them.
Agreed. I think most of us knew that about him. What astounds me, even more, is the fact that people voted for him and voted us all into this horrific mess.
Yes indeed, when you hate yourself you take it out on everyone else and want them to suffer. It makes him an easy mark for others to use to carry out their agenda. Wish more people could see this.
It is due to his role as Putin's acolyte. His business acumen must be close to zero, considering the number of businesses he started and then went bankrupt.
Actually- I think his acts are symptomatic of a weak mind that feels threatened by all that it does not understand. He is the classic teacher-hater attempting to take control of the coursework he can’t comprehend.
I do suspect that Trump voters are more influenced by THE APPRENTICE than by the NY newspapers. Where else could the idea that Trump is a business genius and knows how to fix the economy have come from?
Fuax must fail to get things right, or even better, become a center/left beacon of light! Imagine how good they would be as their audiences swing back to the middle…join in the wide verdant valley, out the running colors back in their flags, and find out who and how they were ‘Royally Screwed!”
When they see light shinning on the fools, MTG and Looney Loomer, maybe they will also feel better, use less Fentanyl, and rejoin the legal economy.
And yet the voting age population of USA freely elected Trump. Ok only 30% of voting age pop. voted for him. The 40+% who failed to vote deserve what they got?
Clearly, some of us did. Many others did not. They also hate women and the "other.: They also hate dissent and democracy. They vote or they sit on their hands when it's time to vote.
If we get a chance to rebuild the things that Trump and his associates are destroying, we must install new safeguards. For a start, abolition of the electoral college and reforms to the appointment system for supreme court judges.
Also term as well as age limits for SCOTUS as well as Congress.There should be NO ONE still running for office at age 70! They should be finished by age 65. No ifs, ands or buts.
I'm in the process of writing a Substack about this very matter. It's no longer the oligarchs who'll benefit, but drumpf himself, as emperor of the world, demanding and (in too many instances) receiving the fealty of those who beg to be given exceptions and exemptions from his mad fury. He's bolstering the military by huge amounts so that he and his drunken traitor "Defense Secretary" can enforce the emperor's will.
ER doc here. I have a colleague being sued for not giving Ivermectin to a patient with COVID during the pandemic. Reading about the second recent measles death in Texas, it appears that anti-vaxxers are already blaming the medical professionals for mistakes in care instead of the lack of vaccination as the reason the child died. It's sad to see the expertise and knowledge of my profession being discredited by a bunch of hacks selling supplements. I fear the day when I will be dragged into court to defend care that, while scientifically sound, won't align with what my MAGA neighbors 'feel' they should be getting.
Retired Internist here. It is not like we don't know how to implement a high-quality, fair, and equitable system. It works in all the Industrial Democracies. We have left that group for a Kleptocracy/Kakistocracy. We seem to value entrenched special interests over peoples' lives. Wait until Private Equity owns every healthcare facility in the Land...
I worry that even major academic medical centers may opt to privatize and covert to a profit model in order to deal with the financial implications of the loss of Medicaid payments by enlisting private equity support. But what are their alternatives if they are abandoned by the government ?
Attorney here. Ask your colleague to speak about filing a motion in whichever court the suit is in, asking for attorneys fees to be paid by the other side's attorneys for the filing and maintenance of an unjustified proceeding. Ask, also, to consider filing against those same attorneys in the local Bar Association, asking for them to be disciplined for the same.
My mother went to college in 1946-50, and back then, if you majored in any science, you had to learn to read German. But Germany destroyed its universities under the Nazis so completely that by the time I went to college in 1974, none of the students even knew that such a requirement ever existed; everything you needed to read was published in English.
My point is simply that the world of scientific research can change pretty quickly. Trump is cutting research funding deeply, yes, and is trashing the NIH and NSF. He's also abusing foreign students, who provide a lot of funding for universities. What student would come here to study, knowing that the USG might revoke their visa or detain them indefinitely?
Our research universities are key to our prosperity, but Trump and apparently Republicans writ large see them only as targets to be destroyed. In the long run, this will be a disaster to America.
Thanks Mike, I knew that German used to be the dominant language of science but I hadn't really appreciated how quickly things had changed. Obvious when you think about it.
I can't believe that the legacy of the Enlightenment, the fundamental underpinning of our modern world, is under threat from a bunch of ne'er-do-wells, anti-intellectuals and assorted religious fundamentalists but there you are. Unfortunately, progress isn't as linear as I had assumed.
Some Germans also ‘invented childhood and Kindergarten.’ Child labor laws…please don’t forget they too fought for what is right, in some cases long before we did!
The NYT had a good, in-depth piece on this recently. Due to all the DOGE cuts, gifted scientists and researchers will be forced to go to other countries to continue their work, including finding cures for chronic diseases that impact many Americans. You're so right. This will be a disaster to America.
"My mother went to college in 1946-50, and back then, if you majored in any science, you had to learn to read German. But Germany destroyed its universities under the Nazis so completely that by the time I went to college in 1974, none of the students even knew that such a requirement ever existed; everything you needed to read was published in English."
The myth of Fascist Efficiency is one of the worst things about the way fascism is remembered in pop memory. Fascism came to power in one of the most modern and well-run societies in the world and spent twelve years turning everything they touched in it to shit.
Yes the chemical revolution, nitrogen, engineering, death camps…lots of American and their companies profited. These insecticides killed very effectively. WW I trench warfare lead to WWII death camps.
That is why Dr. Krugman is right - this is a war that is being waged against our Nation. Deliberately and with the determination to destroy the US we have known. 'Make Gonorrhea great again'? There are well entrenched strains of it which are all but untreatable with current antibiotics. There are still people who monthly have to decide whether to buy their medications - or food, rent, utilities. They don't care how many poor people die, because they aren't successful, like the Oligarchs. This is just the early days of the same kinds of depredations implemented by Stalin and Mao.
Yes, RISE AND RESIST! But not just against Tesla and Musk. We need to address this regime's war on women, on children, on the elderly, on veterans, on the LGBTQ+ community, on the disabled, all the immigrants regardless of legal status (does that leave out anyone? That's what we need to emphasize).
With millions of us taking to the streets all at once, there's plenty of room for everyone to address the individual issues that are most important to them. Ultimately, it all comes down to combating this authoritarian/oligarchic regime.
The rich and privileged will continue to get vaccines and healthcare, so perhaps they do not care about the rest of us. However, the advances in healthcare that might benefit that upper class will now no longer happen, so they are unwittingly destroying themselves.
It wasn't quick. We're talking about a movement that, at least in its modern incarnation, goes all the way back to the fifties when William F. Buckley's National Review crowd on the intellectual side and the McCarthyists on the popular side created movement conservatism, and it's spent the eighty years since growing stronger and undermining the United States. Trump comes into the picture relatively late, but he's pretty much giving one last kick to an edifice that's been hollowed out for decades.
So much of what's happening right now would be impossible without all the groundwork laid for it. If the Supreme Court wasn't controlled by a far-right supermajority, or if just two of these people were justices first and Republicans second instead of the other way around, this would've been stopped cold. If there was even a single-digit number of senators or congressmen willing to stand up and stop their legislative power from being usurped, this would've been over before it started. If we didn't have a decade and a half of voter suppression laws behind us purging more and more Democrats at the margins, Trump would probably not be President right now. If we didn't have fifty years of tax cuts and deregulation behind us creating a superwealthy class of oligarchs who've spent all that time buying up as much of society as humanly possible, we wouldn't have all of these institutions in lockstep. Etc.
When the history books are written, the conclusion will be "they had fifty years of warning signs and off-ramps and they just kept refusing to take them."
Resistance builds on itself. The attack on the US is calculated and malicious. Hard to comprehend even though predictable. I just have to believe we can defeat these intemperate, ignorant, individuals.
It's confirmation that the system was all ready teetering. Both parties are responsible. Democrats failed to hold Republicans to account time and time again. The institutionalists failed to understand (?) that our institutions were corrupt and have been for some time now. This is basically the Confederacy, but this time almost no opposition existed.
Meanwhile, the (R)egressives have their smooth-brained, mouth-breathing MAGAttes' panties in a wad over our teeny, tiny number of Trans citizens who simply want to live their (difficult) lives as they feel compelled to do - while harming nobody else.
The right wing media had to trade in their political football, abortion for the trans issue. Trump has been on record saying that when he wants to rile the base they bring up the trans issue. It is catnip for the MAGA crowd.
God I love the wonderous rants! Thanks! It’s all so silly!
Makes me laugh at how easy trans became a thing, but we helped because we too carry these fundamentalist genes. Cis/trans is wrong…it’s MISO, the middle, the center, not binary, unless that’s how you see things, about everything, the knife edge rather then the wide wonderful middle of diversity. It’s not cut and dried! It’s flexible, resiliency, changes over time, loves, learns…the left’s l ideas of gender are sometimes as bad as the right’s..really! We are all conceived and develop as female…it’s the default. Some have the little ‘Y’ switch, they get that version…and there’s actually less difference than we are told. Look at the common structures! We all have breasts, scrotum is labia…really truly. Fun stuff!
Reading the news this morning I'm seeing several sources claiming that Bessent said that the fired federal workers can fill "factory jobs".
Just wow.
As if those factory jobs would pay anywhere near as much as the federal jobs. As if those factory jobs exist already (Note that there have already been a lot of layoffs in factory jobs in response to the tariffs.) It may take years to open new factories in the US. With the stock market wildly fluctuating, there is no sane company investing in opening new factories here in the US.
It’s also a gross misallocation of resources, which is the opposite of what a sound economy is supposed to do. Federal civil service minimum qualifications have exceeded those of general employment, meaning the laid off federal workers have advanced skills that would be wasted “screwing in tiny screws” on iPhones. Lutnick and Bessent have revealed Trump is the American Mao leading an American Cultural Revolution.
I don't understand why no one has been explaining "comparative advantage," something Ricardo wrote about 200 years ago, based on what Adam Smith wrote 250 years ago.
It already is too late with so much science research and expertise destroyed. I realize it is a fantasy to imagine there is somewhere a group planning to successfully stop Trump now. Relying on "facts and reason," as do those above average in intelligence, rather than "feelings," as do the others, I fear we are stuck in this downward spiral. I cannot suppress, however, the "feeling" that someone must do something now.
Canada is actively recruiting NIH and other US government health researchers to increase the R&D system in Canada and maintain the knowledge gained and the forward progress of medical/health knowledge.
There is also a surge in immigration applications from US physicians to practice in Canada - primarily in reproductive health areas so as to avoid the MAGA government litigation for advising women on their reproductive rights.
At the expense of sounding extremist, I think DT is trying to gut the US government, killing as many poor people as possible and obliterating the middle class, in an attempt to turn it into a country like Belarus or Romania c1965.
And I'm agreeing with you. We're on the same page.
However, with that said, it actually doesn't really matter whether or not there's rhyme or reason - the path to putting a stop to it is the same either way. April 19 is the next scheduled nationwide rally, be there or be square!
“Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I-I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence.”
It's a nice reminder that even if they weren't in complete control like they are now, we've been allowing people like that to rise to high positions of power in the government since basically forever, that they have absolutely no business being there, and that we refuse to remove them at our peril.
(It's not completely clear which real-life general Ripper was based on, but that's only because being a full-blown believer in the 1950s and 1960s version of QAnon was utterly standard behavior for the U.S. military high command in this era).
>>Even if research funding is restored, even if NIH and other agencies try to rebuild, U.S. science will have suffered huge long-term damage.<<
Right. The particular, roller coaster-style pattern of governance in American over the last decade+ in America—a competent administration (Obama) followed by an incompetent administration (Trump), followed by a competent administration (Biden), followed by an incompetent administration (Trump)—will not fail to be noticed by a lot of non-Americans. In other words, whether you're a South Korean biomedical researcher considering a position in Cambridge, MA, or an EU official contemplating a new trade agreement with Washington, or a defense ministry in Asia mulling a mutual defense agreement with the Pentagon—you have to be painfully aware that the "Annex Greenland/Gulf of America/Vaccines are a Communist plot" party may be returning to power in a few short years. So it's hard to have faith in the US these days, and it's thus folly to make any longer term plans that rely on sanity on the Potomac.
Only big defeats for the GOP in multiple electoral cycles followed by its destruction/breakup (or complete purging of MAGA) will constitute an effective reset. Until then, humans outside the US will be looking elsewhere for stability. And Xi Jinping is happy to take their calls.
We need to have an overwhelming Democratic majority in both chambers. Once we have that, then we need a slew of amendments to strengthen guardrails around the Constitution - no more relying on the "honor" system and "norms". If we can pull that off, then maybe, just maybe, we can restore our place in this world. I almost wish I could live long enough to see it happen, but I'll have to settle for just seeing the end of this ruinous "administration".
Using those majorities to get a reasonable Supreme Court is a FAR easier lift than going the amendment process. A simple majority in both chambers (and getting rid of the filibuster) could do a lot (ie, it could expand the court; it could greenlight DC ad Puerto Rico statehood, get rid of the debt ceiling, remove tariff authority from the White House, etc). One example: common sense gun control of the kind operated by many high income countries (and even Massachusetts, to an extent) is eminently consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the constitution. But we can't have that, because our courts are NOT reasonable.
My point is, amendments not only need super majorities in both chambers of Congress but 3/4ths of the state legislatures. That just doesn't seem remotely plausible.
Democrats just need to win some damn trifectas and then not shy away from using their power for deep reforms enacted by Congress.
Actually, to ratify an amendment requires either a 2/3 majority in both chambers >or< 3/4 of state legislatures, so there is some latitude there.
And you're right, we need to do something about this non-credible SCOTUS. Gorsuch shouldn't even be there, he's in Garland's seat. And Coney-Barrett shouldn't be there either, she's holding the seat of whoever Biden would have nominated. This is one of the major things that makes Bitch McConnell the most disgusting thing to ever set foot in the Capitol building.
"Actually, to ratify an amendment requires either a 2/3 majority in both chambers >or< 3/4 of state legislatures, so there is some latitude there."
Not so; both are required. Amending the constitution requires passage by 2/3rds of both chambers of Congress AND ratification by 38 states (3/4ths). The 27th amendment, for example, was passed by a 2/3rds vote in Congress in 1789 and wasn't ratified by the 38th state, Michigan (thus becoming part of the constitution), until 1992!
It's a highly arduous process, perhaps not seen as such by the framers: as I understand it they thought the republic would engage in frequent constitutional modification and experimentation, which suggests they didn't realize politics would render constitutional amendments very rare events.
You may be thinking of the alternative amendment proposal process, by which a congressional vote can be bypassed: if 2/3rds of the state legislatures call for it, a constitutional convention is held to propose amendments. But the ensuing amendments must still be passed by 38 states.
"We need to have an overwhelming Democratic majority in both chambers."
Pretty much. Last time the country had to be unfucked this thoroughly, it took twenty years of uninterrupted control at the White House level and nearly-uninterrupted control at the Congressional level.
The voting public's insistence on swinging like a pendulum every two years, in its own way, has done as much damage to the government as the rightward march of the GOP.
An end goal of a Constitutional Convention to allow idiots like Boebert, Burchett, and Greene to "fix" what was created by Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton explains much of what is happening now.
Would they need a new constitution after demonstrating their contempt for our current constitution? Republicans have shown you don’t need to adhere to a constitution, so why bother creating a new one.
It's certainly not encouraging retired academics, even those with sufficient funds not to fall on their safety nets, from going north. I feel bereft, but I can't blame them.
It’s been clear for quite some time that Trump hates America. He hates democracy. He hates dissent. He hates the different, the other. He hates women. When he looks out the window, he sees only himself. In order to rebuild America in his own image, he has to destroy it first.
You're giving Trump far too much "credit." He didn't become President twice by himself, the second time after disasterously advocating against the most basic defenses against a pandemic, masking and social distancing! People in Tudor era England knew those things worked, they just didn't precisely know why.
The problem is far deeper than merely Trump, and it's a mistake to simply focus on him. He doesn't actually hold any values, everything is transactional with him. For example, used to be a Democrat, and is only tepidly pro-birth/anti-choice because it got him votes twice. His 2015-16 election campaign was pretty clearly a publicity stunt/attempted graft/con that went much further than even Trump, Eric and Don Jr. believed it would. The 2023-24 campaign was about stopping Jack Smith, Wallis and staying out of jail. Trump is probably the laziest President we've ever had. He essentially delegated most of the presidency to Mitch McConnell the first time around, only signing the tax cut when and where McConnell told him to sign. This term, he's delegated the presidency to Musk.
MAGA/Trumpism isn't going away in 2028 (Pam Bondi recently stated she believes Trump will actually be "done" after this term.) Someone just as bad, if not worse, is Vice President, and thus the likely "heir" to MAGA, JD Vance. The problem is the voters. As Dr. Krugman wrote, we have a societal divide between Americans who believe in facts reason, and the value of expertise, and Americans who are led by feelings (and IMO, the increasingly destructive influence of religion, particularly Christian nationalism.) Unless the majority of Americans who believe in facts, reason and the value of experts prevail in this conflict, Trump could take a dirt nap tomorrow and we're still not getting out of this mess.
Clearly the crisis we are confronting is larger than Donald Trump and goes further back than his entry into politics, at least as far back as Ronald Reagan and Lee Atwater. It has been carefully planned by the far right for decades. Trump also has a cadre of zealots and opportunists propping him up and guiding him. And those who voted for him and those who didn’t vote at all bear a heavy responsibility for the current state of affairs. But Trump is the face of the regime and his rage resonates with his MAGA supporters. He is not simply a passive figurehead. And his cabal is finding out that he can’t always be easily controlled.
It has been stated that trump did not destroy the Republican party, he revealed it.
I used to be a Republican activist until I discovered who they really were by joining a breakfast club including many local politicians. I changed my voter registration to Democrat so I could still vote in primaries, and because at least here in New Mexico, as Will Rogers once said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."
The modern GOP still retains its' core mission: cutting taxes for the very wealthy and corporations. It serves the .01%; with lesser but still substantial service for the top 1% and 5%. And, of course provides special perks for Evangelicals, Big Oil, real estate development, Big Ag, and a few other GOP-loyal businesses.
👆🎯That has always been so obvious to me. They had anti-abortion and Anti-gay planks in their party since I was old enough to vote, there is nothing for women, in that party.
Exactly!
Carefully planned? No, but certainly in their genetics pool of fear, hate, stupidity, blaming, feckless, tax cuts, budget deficits…think for a moment what very little these deficits bought, other than massive income inequity…and now they run on the pain this causes, as they bought rich people people and screwed over the working class! Look at the trillions in students loans! When ‘Raygun’ was Gov. college tuition in California was zero! I paid students body fees and got stuff for these. $108 dollars/semester at a very good state college. UC was $108/Quarter, so still a pretty good deal
You might not be surprised how much he hated higher education!
These very rich were, and are, guided by political Eugenics…only the strongest (people like the PayPals, Donny’s children, etc.) will survive on their islands…while we beg.
That’s the whole point of the tariffs, make us all (the entire fucking world!) beg, ‘please, can I have more?’ Are we Stormy! Are We Joe?
Swatting his ugly fat ass! With a New York Times! That’ll sting!
Bad Boy! Down!
"It has been carefully planned by the far right for decades." Have you read "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer? It's was written about 10 years ago, but it explains a LOT about where America is today and why. I thought I knew a lot about right-wing US politics before I read this, but I didn't realize the half of it.
Mayer is a must-read, she exposed the Koch machine for being the behind the scenes funders of the Tea party. Organic grass-roots movement my derriere!
Like Hitler? The oligarchs of that time and place were so sure they could control their useful idiot. Rich and powerful people think history has nothing to teach them. And then they are SO surprised.
The problem is the voters, yes, but that has a "why" as well. How do voters (and non-voters too -- let's not leave them out) get their information? Citizens United has something to do with that. How do they/we evaluate that information? The dwindling of civics education and media in general over the decades has something to do with that. Finally, the "Christian" in "Christian nationalism" obscures something important: that these Christians are overwhelmingly white, and the teachings attributed to Jesus are far less important in their worldview than their whiteness.
Talk radio in rural areas has been the biggest problem until at least recently
Now it's right wing podcasts and online videos promoting disinformation.
Sometimes, truth hurts. Your post hurt me. /s/ a tiny blue dot in a sea of Florida red
Good analysis and tragic !
I'm not convinced that the majority of Americans believe in facts, reason and the value of experts. That is the problem.
I am hoping we get a big pendulum swing by 2026 and 2028, where enough former MAGA Americans realize how Trump has screwed over the country that Republicans can hardly get elected. I am also hoping that there won't be Venezuela style fraud for the GOP to steal these upcoming elections and maintain their tyranny.
I've said this before (with risk of sounding like a wacko): It makes sense if Trump is a Russian asset whose job is to weaken American and the West. He's doing a superb job.
After the Saturday high of being with a bazillion like minded folks in Boston, it's doubly difficult to come back to reality.
Yes there have been people who have his ear and work for Russia, but China and the Saudi’s as well…they love him, he’s so easy to fuck around, willing and able. The winners of these trade wars. Chaos they were well prepared for…we are 4% and have 25%. Maybe not for much longer…India will want their share too.
We did the above because we were smart, yet now we’re dumb.
This post is just a bit of the destruction of our country and our values. No mention of National Security being led by incompetents who have loyalty to a man rather than the constitution and no mention of the arrests and jailing in foreign countries where we may never reach them again. No mention of the degradation of our education from k- post graduate research. No mention of attacks on judiciary. No mention of anti-DEI to make this a male white supremacy. No mention of the attacks on journalism. No mention of our alliances being destroyed and the expansionist sword rattling. No mention of the solution to the Middle East being the eviction of the Palestinians and the threat of war with Iran.
The stock market can be manipulated so if we depend on regular Americans getting fed up with what’s happening because of the stock market, we will lose them when it goes up.
MAKE AMERICA SECURE AGAIN.
Take what we saw with the Signal text group as a clear warning we are in grave danger of military conflicts that we may well lose.
Oh, and the military parade on the king’s birthday, that is as big a sign as any that this isn’t the country it used to be.
Of course, no one post, or comment for that matter, can address the manifest evils we are facing. They are at best works in progress.
It is one big coherent picture and even posts that focus on one aspect need to make it clear, otherwise as soon as the single issue is dealt with everyone who cared about it will go back to not caring. That is my point. Today the market is going up, but though many will have a big sigh of relief and Trump will declare a victory. the attack on America and its values hasn’t been ended. Those who joined the protests because of this issue will be told we were crying wolf.
We are being played with while the real threat is ongoing.
So try..and they do all stem from similar values—hate, fear, racism, eugenics, anti-science neo-fascist theologians. We have museums where children go on field trips to see the arc and learn about Noah. This is the sickness…this is school choice! This indoctrination is the disease! RFK- anti-science, tariffs, anti-evidence, immigration, Eugenics and racism, and this too is anti-science.
Puritans and evangelicals…no sex, no science, no love, all fear all the time!
I liked your post and hated it.
Trump is the revenge of the racists for Obama. The country having a black president is all the proof they ever needed that wokeness had gone too far. They are burning the house down with all of us inside it because they'd rather destroy the country than quit being racist. Honestly, this is pathetic. The nation deserves so much better than to be governed by the most corrupt and idiotic administration in world history. Fuck conservatives, their ideology is garbage and their hypocrisy and lack of morals is repulsive. We have indulged these idiots for too long, something has to be done.
Racism is part of it, but mostly it's years of pent up anger by a group which feels abandoned, and has bought into disinformation and scalegoating, expertly
manipulated by (Hitler II) Trump, who does all of this for self-glorification, and, lately, in order to protect himself from getting the justice he deserves.
Says something that the people who ideologically loathe everything about the American project the most are American xenophobic ideologues themselves. Most of them still pretend on some level to be patriots, but if you look at the Dark Enlightenment techbros popular in Silicon Valley elites or the Catholic integralists like Adrian Vermeule, it's not hard to find people who are literally ready to terminate the United States as a nation.
Fox News to the contrary, Osama Bin Laden never "hated our freedoms," at least no more than he hated those of any other free country like, say, Taiwan or Norway or Chile. He just wanted us out of the region. Our movement conservatives genuinely loathe everything about America that makes it a place worth living (much of it going back to the original founding fathers), and aren't going to rest until it's been burned to a cinder.
I don't know if he hates America, per se. I'd say he looks at America as the biggest opportunity for a long con in the world.
What is crystal clear, though, is that Donald Trump definitely hates almost all Americans.
And those he doesnt hate he views as useful, and tolerates them as long as they remain so.
If America is democracy, then Donald Trump hates America. If America is the rule of law, then Donald Trump hates America. If America is the Constitution, then Donald Trump hates America. I could go on.
America isn't any of them, in that they aren't unique to the USA. They're simply ideals and fragile and potentially transitory guardrails that have been adopted by America in the past, and which are now barriers to Trump in his immediate vicinity. What's perhaps most surprising is how low they actually are to Trump, and how pretty much half of the country isn't interested in defending any of them. It's laughable how the NRA is apparently asleep as the first and only occurrence of the one scenario that they've been using like a hammer to justify their entire existence rapidly unfolds all around them.
Agreed. I think most of us knew that about him. What astounds me, even more, is the fact that people voted for him and voted us all into this horrific mess.
Dare I add Trump is filled with self-hatred.
Absolutely. I was going to say that, but then I thought it would be overkill.
Yes indeed, when you hate yourself you take it out on everyone else and want them to suffer. It makes him an easy mark for others to use to carry out their agenda. Wish more people could see this.
He doesn't intend to build America in his image. He intends to build it in Putin's image.
It is due to his role as Putin's acolyte. His business acumen must be close to zero, considering the number of businesses he started and then went bankrupt.
I quoted this a number of times lately, but it seems very relevant these days. Consider it a sign of the times.
“Man is a paranoid animal, for it gives him just as clear an understanding of the innards of the universe as physics or religion." — Peter S. Beagle
Actually- I think his acts are symptomatic of a weak mind that feels threatened by all that it does not understand. He is the classic teacher-hater attempting to take control of the coursework he can’t comprehend.
He hates himself.
The view is moronic. The entire MAGA
Solipsism
“Quite some time” extends at least as far back as 2015. I’m a New Yorker and Trump’s toxicity has been apparent for decades.
I blame the NY newspapers for not pinpointing this a million times, but it was “But her emails!"
I do suspect that Trump voters are more influenced by THE APPRENTICE than by the NY newspapers. Where else could the idea that Trump is a business genius and knows how to fix the economy have come from?
BINGO!
Yes, exactly!
YES! Being from NYC originally, I have known about tRump since the 70's and his sleazo, racist father before then.
clearly not 'everybody' ... since tens of millions of people have voted for him, three times. Everybody paying attention (and not to Fox)...
Ironically it’s those rubes Trump hates the most.
I doubt it. He simply erases them. He hates knowledge and those who possess it.
Fuax must fail to get things right, or even better, become a center/left beacon of light! Imagine how good they would be as their audiences swing back to the middle…join in the wide verdant valley, out the running colors back in their flags, and find out who and how they were ‘Royally Screwed!”
When they see light shinning on the fools, MTG and Looney Loomer, maybe they will also feel better, use less Fentanyl, and rejoin the legal economy.
Which Murdoch should we root for!
And yet the voting age population of USA freely elected Trump. Ok only 30% of voting age pop. voted for him. The 40+% who failed to vote deserve what they got?
Clearly, some of us did. Many others did not. They also hate women and the "other.: They also hate dissent and democracy. They vote or they sit on their hands when it's time to vote.
80 years of successive bi-partisan build-up of US ”Global Soft Power” and global supply chains - destroyed in less than a Quarter.
In whose interest?
If we get a chance to rebuild the things that Trump and his associates are destroying, we must install new safeguards. For a start, abolition of the electoral college and reforms to the appointment system for supreme court judges.
I should live so long!
Also term as well as age limits for SCOTUS as well as Congress.There should be NO ONE still running for office at age 70! They should be finished by age 65. No ifs, ands or buts.
The oligarchs'.
I'm in the process of writing a Substack about this very matter. It's no longer the oligarchs who'll benefit, but drumpf himself, as emperor of the world, demanding and (in too many instances) receiving the fealty of those who beg to be given exceptions and exemptions from his mad fury. He's bolstering the military by huge amounts so that he and his drunken traitor "Defense Secretary" can enforce the emperor's will.
It isn't rational except to the Christian Nationalists who are waiting for the collapse so they can swoop in and save us. She says sarcastically.
Loki!
Really!
ER doc here. I have a colleague being sued for not giving Ivermectin to a patient with COVID during the pandemic. Reading about the second recent measles death in Texas, it appears that anti-vaxxers are already blaming the medical professionals for mistakes in care instead of the lack of vaccination as the reason the child died. It's sad to see the expertise and knowledge of my profession being discredited by a bunch of hacks selling supplements. I fear the day when I will be dragged into court to defend care that, while scientifically sound, won't align with what my MAGA neighbors 'feel' they should be getting.
Retired Internist here. It is not like we don't know how to implement a high-quality, fair, and equitable system. It works in all the Industrial Democracies. We have left that group for a Kleptocracy/Kakistocracy. We seem to value entrenched special interests over peoples' lives. Wait until Private Equity owns every healthcare facility in the Land...
We're seeing a great deal of that already, to the detriment of healthcare and the reputation of the U.S.
" Wait until Private Equity owns every healthcare facility in the Land." Stephen, they're working on it. They are parasites!
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
For profit hospitals are an oxymoron.
I worry that even major academic medical centers may opt to privatize and covert to a profit model in order to deal with the financial implications of the loss of Medicaid payments by enlisting private equity support. But what are their alternatives if they are abandoned by the government ?
Attorney here. Ask your colleague to speak about filing a motion in whichever court the suit is in, asking for attorneys fees to be paid by the other side's attorneys for the filing and maintenance of an unjustified proceeding. Ask, also, to consider filing against those same attorneys in the local Bar Association, asking for them to be disciplined for the same.
And children are now showing up with toxic levels of Vitamin A because their parents are listening to RFK, Jr.
J in CA: that is the most heartbreaking thing I’ve read yet. And I know it’s true.
Not to mention the forced-birther idiots, who are killing women with their bans. Their medical ignorance is astounding!
My mother went to college in 1946-50, and back then, if you majored in any science, you had to learn to read German. But Germany destroyed its universities under the Nazis so completely that by the time I went to college in 1974, none of the students even knew that such a requirement ever existed; everything you needed to read was published in English.
My point is simply that the world of scientific research can change pretty quickly. Trump is cutting research funding deeply, yes, and is trashing the NIH and NSF. He's also abusing foreign students, who provide a lot of funding for universities. What student would come here to study, knowing that the USG might revoke their visa or detain them indefinitely?
Our research universities are key to our prosperity, but Trump and apparently Republicans writ large see them only as targets to be destroyed. In the long run, this will be a disaster to America.
Thanks Mike, I knew that German used to be the dominant language of science but I hadn't really appreciated how quickly things had changed. Obvious when you think about it.
I can't believe that the legacy of the Enlightenment, the fundamental underpinning of our modern world, is under threat from a bunch of ne'er-do-wells, anti-intellectuals and assorted religious fundamentalists but there you are. Unfortunately, progress isn't as linear as I had assumed.
Some Germans also ‘invented childhood and Kindergarten.’ Child labor laws…please don’t forget they too fought for what is right, in some cases long before we did!
And were pioneers in research on sexuality including about gay people, also immediately trashed by the Nazis. Among rather a lot of things.
The NYT had a good, in-depth piece on this recently. Due to all the DOGE cuts, gifted scientists and researchers will be forced to go to other countries to continue their work, including finding cures for chronic diseases that impact many Americans. You're so right. This will be a disaster to America.
"My mother went to college in 1946-50, and back then, if you majored in any science, you had to learn to read German. But Germany destroyed its universities under the Nazis so completely that by the time I went to college in 1974, none of the students even knew that such a requirement ever existed; everything you needed to read was published in English."
The myth of Fascist Efficiency is one of the worst things about the way fascism is remembered in pop memory. Fascism came to power in one of the most modern and well-run societies in the world and spent twelve years turning everything they touched in it to shit.
Yes the chemical revolution, nitrogen, engineering, death camps…lots of American and their companies profited. These insecticides killed very effectively. WW I trench warfare lead to WWII death camps.
Just because you didn't grasp it doesn't mean it wasn't there.
Troll alert
Heisenberg rules:-)
Schrodinger rules (or not - you have to look).
Here kitty kitty
The US broke so quickly and so thoroughly— I didn’t expect it to be so vulnerable. Despair is rational even as we/I attempt to resist.
That's because it was planned in advance. They were ready to hit the ground running.
That is why Dr. Krugman is right - this is a war that is being waged against our Nation. Deliberately and with the determination to destroy the US we have known. 'Make Gonorrhea great again'? There are well entrenched strains of it which are all but untreatable with current antibiotics. There are still people who monthly have to decide whether to buy their medications - or food, rent, utilities. They don't care how many poor people die, because they aren't successful, like the Oligarchs. This is just the early days of the same kinds of depredations implemented by Stalin and Mao.
That's why it's imperative that we Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
April 19 is the next nationwide rally, be there or be square!
//
Don't let up folks, it's working:
Boycott TE卐LA! Boycott Swastikar!
Short TE卐LA! Short Swastikar!
Boycott 卐tarlink!
Boycott 卐/Twitter!
Curb your DOGE!
https://generalstrikeus.com/strikecard
Yes, RISE AND RESIST! But not just against Tesla and Musk. We need to address this regime's war on women, on children, on the elderly, on veterans, on the LGBTQ+ community, on the disabled, all the immigrants regardless of legal status (does that leave out anyone? That's what we need to emphasize).
With millions of us taking to the streets all at once, there's plenty of room for everyone to address the individual issues that are most important to them. Ultimately, it all comes down to combating this authoritarian/oligarchic regime.
The rich and privileged will continue to get vaccines and healthcare, so perhaps they do not care about the rest of us. However, the advances in healthcare that might benefit that upper class will now no longer happen, so they are unwittingly destroying themselves.
It wasn't quick. We're talking about a movement that, at least in its modern incarnation, goes all the way back to the fifties when William F. Buckley's National Review crowd on the intellectual side and the McCarthyists on the popular side created movement conservatism, and it's spent the eighty years since growing stronger and undermining the United States. Trump comes into the picture relatively late, but he's pretty much giving one last kick to an edifice that's been hollowed out for decades.
So much of what's happening right now would be impossible without all the groundwork laid for it. If the Supreme Court wasn't controlled by a far-right supermajority, or if just two of these people were justices first and Republicans second instead of the other way around, this would've been stopped cold. If there was even a single-digit number of senators or congressmen willing to stand up and stop their legislative power from being usurped, this would've been over before it started. If we didn't have a decade and a half of voter suppression laws behind us purging more and more Democrats at the margins, Trump would probably not be President right now. If we didn't have fifty years of tax cuts and deregulation behind us creating a superwealthy class of oligarchs who've spent all that time buying up as much of society as humanly possible, we wouldn't have all of these institutions in lockstep. Etc.
When the history books are written, the conclusion will be "they had fifty years of warning signs and off-ramps and they just kept refusing to take them."
Except that unless something radically changes very soon, there won’t be any history books.
Resistance builds on itself. The attack on the US is calculated and malicious. Hard to comprehend even though predictable. I just have to believe we can defeat these intemperate, ignorant, individuals.
It's confirmation that the system was all ready teetering. Both parties are responsible. Democrats failed to hold Republicans to account time and time again. The institutionalists failed to understand (?) that our institutions were corrupt and have been for some time now. This is basically the Confederacy, but this time almost no opposition existed.
Meanwhile, the (R)egressives have their smooth-brained, mouth-breathing MAGAttes' panties in a wad over our teeny, tiny number of Trans citizens who simply want to live their (difficult) lives as they feel compelled to do - while harming nobody else.
The right wing media had to trade in their political football, abortion for the trans issue. Trump has been on record saying that when he wants to rile the base they bring up the trans issue. It is catnip for the MAGA crowd.
God I love the wonderous rants! Thanks! It’s all so silly!
Makes me laugh at how easy trans became a thing, but we helped because we too carry these fundamentalist genes. Cis/trans is wrong…it’s MISO, the middle, the center, not binary, unless that’s how you see things, about everything, the knife edge rather then the wide wonderful middle of diversity. It’s not cut and dried! It’s flexible, resiliency, changes over time, loves, learns…the left’s l ideas of gender are sometimes as bad as the right’s..really! We are all conceived and develop as female…it’s the default. Some have the little ‘Y’ switch, they get that version…and there’s actually less difference than we are told. Look at the common structures! We all have breasts, scrotum is labia…really truly. Fun stuff!
During covid trump had the best medical care that kept him alive and he recovered. His hubris today is monstrous. Still waiting to see that obituary.
DT fired the Dr. that actually saved his life when he had covid.
Is that true? If so, then Trumpkopf has outdone himself in the appalling department.
Dr. David Kessler said Peter Stein approved the use of monoclonal antibodies in the treatment of DT's covid-19. Peter Stein was cut.
Wow. Sickening, just sickening.
Literally as well as figuratively.
Trump wants to proclaim that it was HIS personal strength that got him through Covid, not medical intervention.
Aphorism that applies to trump “Fake it till you make it” , but he never advanced beyond the “fake it” stage.
Yes he did, and it's exactly what will happen to anyone he perceives can contradict his authority in any way.
It happens after every coup; much eating of surprised faces.
Wow. Sickening, just sickening.
🙏
Reading the news this morning I'm seeing several sources claiming that Bessent said that the fired federal workers can fill "factory jobs".
Just wow.
As if those factory jobs would pay anywhere near as much as the federal jobs. As if those factory jobs exist already (Note that there have already been a lot of layoffs in factory jobs in response to the tariffs.) It may take years to open new factories in the US. With the stock market wildly fluctuating, there is no sane company investing in opening new factories here in the US.
The disconnect still stuns me.
It’s also a gross misallocation of resources, which is the opposite of what a sound economy is supposed to do. Federal civil service minimum qualifications have exceeded those of general employment, meaning the laid off federal workers have advanced skills that would be wasted “screwing in tiny screws” on iPhones. Lutnick and Bessent have revealed Trump is the American Mao leading an American Cultural Revolution.
I don't understand why no one has been explaining "comparative advantage," something Ricardo wrote about 200 years ago, based on what Adam Smith wrote 250 years ago.
Bessent is a tool. Like all who work UNDER drumpf, he checked out his expertise and integrity at the door before entering the palace of madness.
He is also a multimillionaire. The last numbers I was said he is worth at least $500,000,000.
Recently, I saw reports that he is actually a billionaire.
"The disconnect still stuns me."
That might actually be the objective. We've already heard about the "shock and awe", or at least just plain shock. They want us to feel unbalanced.
Your institutions have been under assault for decades by Republican extremists
Since FDR.
Since Teddy, actually.
Yes, but not with the same utter focus, perhaps.
Plus the very negative impact of climate science and pollution denial.
It already is too late with so much science research and expertise destroyed. I realize it is a fantasy to imagine there is somewhere a group planning to successfully stop Trump now. Relying on "facts and reason," as do those above average in intelligence, rather than "feelings," as do the others, I fear we are stuck in this downward spiral. I cannot suppress, however, the "feeling" that someone must do something now.
We're working on it. Join us. April 19 is the next nationwide rally.
HandsOff
Indivisible
50501
ThirdAct
TeslaTakedown
RiseAndResist
Be the change, she whispers gently. Find a group
Canada is actively recruiting NIH and other US government health researchers to increase the R&D system in Canada and maintain the knowledge gained and the forward progress of medical/health knowledge.
There is also a surge in immigration applications from US physicians to practice in Canada - primarily in reproductive health areas so as to avoid the MAGA government litigation for advising women on their reproductive rights.
At the expense of sounding extremist, I think DT is trying to gut the US government, killing as many poor people as possible and obliterating the middle class, in an attempt to turn it into a country like Belarus or Romania c1965.
Perhaps he will meet the same fate as the Ceausescus.
Anything ignominious would be marvelous.
Or better still, Marie Antoinette.
He so richly deserved it, seeing those orphanages of unwanted forced-birthed babies warehoused like an industrial human farm.
That doesn't sound extremist at all. It is in fact an accurate description of what TrumPox is doing.
What I'm saying is that there IS a reason to the madness, which this author, who I respect very much, doubted in an article from last week.
And I'm agreeing with you. We're on the same page.
However, with that said, it actually doesn't really matter whether or not there's rhyme or reason - the path to putting a stop to it is the same either way. April 19 is the next scheduled nationwide rally, be there or be square!
Thanks for the reference to Jack D. Ripper. Truly, a man (and film) for our times.
from Jack:
“Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I-I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence.”
Shoot... You kin have a purty good weekend in Vegas with this stuff
It's a nice reminder that even if they weren't in complete control like they are now, we've been allowing people like that to rise to high positions of power in the government since basically forever, that they have absolutely no business being there, and that we refuse to remove them at our peril.
(It's not completely clear which real-life general Ripper was based on, but that's only because being a full-blown believer in the 1950s and 1960s version of QAnon was utterly standard behavior for the U.S. military high command in this era).
The general consensus is that he was based on Curtis LeMay, then the head of the Air Force.
>>Even if research funding is restored, even if NIH and other agencies try to rebuild, U.S. science will have suffered huge long-term damage.<<
Right. The particular, roller coaster-style pattern of governance in American over the last decade+ in America—a competent administration (Obama) followed by an incompetent administration (Trump), followed by a competent administration (Biden), followed by an incompetent administration (Trump)—will not fail to be noticed by a lot of non-Americans. In other words, whether you're a South Korean biomedical researcher considering a position in Cambridge, MA, or an EU official contemplating a new trade agreement with Washington, or a defense ministry in Asia mulling a mutual defense agreement with the Pentagon—you have to be painfully aware that the "Annex Greenland/Gulf of America/Vaccines are a Communist plot" party may be returning to power in a few short years. So it's hard to have faith in the US these days, and it's thus folly to make any longer term plans that rely on sanity on the Potomac.
Only big defeats for the GOP in multiple electoral cycles followed by its destruction/breakup (or complete purging of MAGA) will constitute an effective reset. Until then, humans outside the US will be looking elsewhere for stability. And Xi Jinping is happy to take their calls.
We need to have an overwhelming Democratic majority in both chambers. Once we have that, then we need a slew of amendments to strengthen guardrails around the Constitution - no more relying on the "honor" system and "norms". If we can pull that off, then maybe, just maybe, we can restore our place in this world. I almost wish I could live long enough to see it happen, but I'll have to settle for just seeing the end of this ruinous "administration".
Using those majorities to get a reasonable Supreme Court is a FAR easier lift than going the amendment process. A simple majority in both chambers (and getting rid of the filibuster) could do a lot (ie, it could expand the court; it could greenlight DC ad Puerto Rico statehood, get rid of the debt ceiling, remove tariff authority from the White House, etc). One example: common sense gun control of the kind operated by many high income countries (and even Massachusetts, to an extent) is eminently consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the constitution. But we can't have that, because our courts are NOT reasonable.
My point is, amendments not only need super majorities in both chambers of Congress but 3/4ths of the state legislatures. That just doesn't seem remotely plausible.
Democrats just need to win some damn trifectas and then not shy away from using their power for deep reforms enacted by Congress.
Actually, to ratify an amendment requires either a 2/3 majority in both chambers >or< 3/4 of state legislatures, so there is some latitude there.
And you're right, we need to do something about this non-credible SCOTUS. Gorsuch shouldn't even be there, he's in Garland's seat. And Coney-Barrett shouldn't be there either, she's holding the seat of whoever Biden would have nominated. This is one of the major things that makes Bitch McConnell the most disgusting thing to ever set foot in the Capitol building.
"Actually, to ratify an amendment requires either a 2/3 majority in both chambers >or< 3/4 of state legislatures, so there is some latitude there."
Not so; both are required. Amending the constitution requires passage by 2/3rds of both chambers of Congress AND ratification by 38 states (3/4ths). The 27th amendment, for example, was passed by a 2/3rds vote in Congress in 1789 and wasn't ratified by the 38th state, Michigan (thus becoming part of the constitution), until 1992!
It's a highly arduous process, perhaps not seen as such by the framers: as I understand it they thought the republic would engage in frequent constitutional modification and experimentation, which suggests they didn't realize politics would render constitutional amendments very rare events.
You may be thinking of the alternative amendment proposal process, by which a congressional vote can be bypassed: if 2/3rds of the state legislatures call for it, a constitutional convention is held to propose amendments. But the ensuing amendments must still be passed by 38 states.
Apparently I was mistaken. I stand corrected.
"We need to have an overwhelming Democratic majority in both chambers."
Pretty much. Last time the country had to be unfucked this thoroughly, it took twenty years of uninterrupted control at the White House level and nearly-uninterrupted control at the Congressional level.
The voting public's insistence on swinging like a pendulum every two years, in its own way, has done as much damage to the government as the rightward march of the GOP.
That too is part of the damage done by the "Reagan Revolution". It all ties back to St. Reagan.
An end goal of a Constitutional Convention to allow idiots like Boebert, Burchett, and Greene to "fix" what was created by Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton explains much of what is happening now.
Would they need a new constitution after demonstrating their contempt for our current constitution? Republicans have shown you don’t need to adhere to a constitution, so why bother creating a new one.
Good point about extant disregard (even disdain) for current law.
That pro-bono legal work won't last forever. Operating under new law is cheaper than defending against the current one.
Gilead approaches.
I can only hope that Canada is putting policies in place, asap, to welcome and encourage scientists, academics and businesses to relocate to Canada.
It's certainly not encouraging retired academics, even those with sufficient funds not to fall on their safety nets, from going north. I feel bereft, but I can't blame them.