This appeared before last night’s shitshow in Phoenix, but it seems a perfect explainer. Underrated sports writer David J. Roth, in The Baffler, on what dogs and Donald Trump have in common. [Probably NSFW, especially if your workplace frowns on employees simultaneously laughing & weeping]:
… It is not quite fair to say that Donald Trump lacks core beliefs, but to the extent that we can take apart these beliefs they amount to Give Donald Trump Your Money and Donald Trump Should Really Be on Television More. The only comprehensible throughline to his politics is that everything Trump says is something he’s said previously, with additional very’s and more-and-more’s appended over time; his worldview amounts to the sum of the dumb shit he saw on the cover of the New York Post in 1985, subjected to a few decades of rancid compounding interest and deteriorating mental aptitude. He watches a lot of cable news, but he struggles to follow even stories that have been custom built for people like him—old, uninformed, amorphously if deeply aggrieved.
There’s a reason for this. Trump doesn’t know anything or really believe anything about any topic beyond himself, because he has no interest in any topic beyond himself; his evident cognitive decline and hyperactive laziness and towering monomania ensure that he will never again learn a new thing in his life. He has no friends and no real allies; his inner circle is divided between ostensibly scandalized cynics and theatrically shameless ones, all of whom hold him in low regard and see him as a potential means to their individuated ends. There is no help on the way; his outer orbit is a rotation of replacement-level rage-grandpas and defective, perpetually clammy operators.…
To understand Trump is also to understand his appeal as an aspirational brand to the worst people in the United States. What his intransigent admirers like most about him—the thing they aspire to, in their online cosplay sessions and their desperately thirsty performances for a media they loathe and to which they are so helplessly addicted—is his freedom to be unconcerned with anything but himself. This is not because he is rich or brave or astute; it’s because he is an asshole, and so authentically unconcerned. The howling and unreflective void at his core will keep him lonely and stupid until the moment a sufficient number of his vital organs finally resign in disgrace, but it liberates him to devote every bit of his being to his pursuit of himself. Actual hate and actual love, as other people feel them, are too complicated to fit into this world. In their place, for Trump and for the people who see in him a way of being that they are too busy or burdened or humane to pursue, are the versions that exist in a lower orbit, around the self. Instead of hate, there is simple resentment—abject and valueless and recursively self-pitying; instead of love, there is the blank sucking nullity of vanity and appetite…
Izabela
At first Roth’s article will make you laugh, then it’ll make you cry realizing the scope and magnitude of having this individual as POTUS.
Remember when we had a president who you felt could read a book and understand it and be intellectually stimulated by its contents? It seems so long ago now, like almost mythological that we might have once had a president capable of reflection and thought.
Florida Frog
That is some beautiful writing. I have apparently underestimated sports writers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
He seems to have insulted dogs.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Per the WaPo, folk seemed to have walked out on Trump last night as he rambled on.
ThresherK
NPR’s lead line was about Trump trying to “recapture the magic”.
Just when ya think they couldn’t be a more useless pile of shit…
debit
@?BillinGlendaleCA: He’s going to experience the Palin Boredom Syndrome eventually. Remember how people used to line up and wait for her white trash party bus to show up so she could yawp at them? Then the crowds stopped showing up, her books didn’t sell, she was kicked off tv, and now no one wants to pay a few measly bucks a month for her crappy podcast. I pray for the time when Trump will sink into a similar obscurity. Or for him to die in jail. Whichever comes first.
schrodingers_cat
If President Obama embodied the best the country has to offer, the current one is the embodiment of the worst of its characteristics, mainly the worship of $$ and celebrity over all else.
Betty Cracker
I think this is my favorite part:
Ha!
JGabriel
David J. Roth via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Trump = Nixon with a low I.Q. and incipient senile dementia.
schrodingers_cat
@JGabriel: And no work ethic.
ETA: Even history’s greatest monster had some actual achievements under his belt like turning around the war weary economy of his country after the Great War.
JGabriel
@schrodingers_cat: Yep.
@Florida Frog:
Hunter Thompson started as a sports writer/editor.
Bostondreams
@Florida Frog:
Check out Drew Magary over at Deadspin sometime. Fantastic.
Iowa Old Lady
I chose not to listen last night and I’m glad. Just reading about it makes me sick.
JGabriel
@ThresherK:
Originally it said “recapture the MAGAts,” but it got auto-changed via spell-correct.
@Iowa Old Lady:
You & me both.
satby
@ThresherK: NPR is the NYT of the airwaves, and pretty much garbage.
A Ghost To Most
I still think that too much attention is paid to the Great Orange Shitstain, and too little attention to the “cancervative” movement that produced him. We need to push the idea that the entire movement is greedy, corrupt, and treasonous.
Peale
@ThresherK: it’s like Disney World, if Disney World went out of its way to publicly humiliate disabled children and trained its employees to shoot photos up the skirts of its customers.
satby
@JGabriel: so did Charlie Pierce.
schrodingers_cat
One heartening story in the sea of awful, is how a group of Muslim women in India overturned one of the most misogynist laws on the books, the triple talaq (instant divorce initiated by the husband by saying divorce thrice) by taking their fight all the way up to the Supreme Court.
ETA:This is their story
msdc
He forgot Brown People are Scary.
Betty Cracker
I chose not to listen last night too, but then I watched it this morning. I’ve been an atheist since I was 13 years old, and all I can think to say after witnessing that spectacle is: God help us.
kindness
Lotta words just to say trump is a nut.
dsc
@Betty Cracker: thanks Betty; my sentiments exactly. and what depresses me most:
it’s hard for me to comprehend this inability to process new and increasingly complex information. it frightens me.
Kay
Sadly, true. They could follow the wall building. Send people down there. Look at the contracts (you know they’ll be crony shit and corrupt as hell). There are already complaints from contractors that Trump’s timeline is unrealistic.
He says he’s a builder! This is his project! And it will be a disaster. It IS a gimmee.
coozledad
@Florida Frog: Yep. I’m thinking that will be the touchstone of the historical consensus. Of course, Maggie Haberman and Phil Rucker will rub off a new spot on his arse to kiss every week or so, but that piece nails him.
Florida Frog
@Bostondreams: Thanks, I will. Balloon Juice – come for the snark, stay for the education.
germy
I don’t know the story behind Roth. Was he recently laid off? He alluded to no longer having a staff job.
Nitwit essayists go on and on at the NYTimes, and a great writer like Roth is out of work?
Anne Laurie
@Florida Frog: Charles P. Pierce. Roy Blount. Damon Runyon…
msdc
@Kay: Complaints about Democratic messaging are almost always bullshit, in that
a) messaging isn’t nearly as important as most pundits think it is
b) inevitably, the Democrats are already pushing the message anyway, and
c) just as inevitably, the media and the True Left will freak the fuck out no matter what they say.
Patricia Kayden
@BillinGlendaleCA: LOL!! He doesn’t mention dogs at all in that excerpt but hopefully he is not comparing them to Dear Leader.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Dog has forsaken us.
Patricia Kayden
@ThresherK: On my way into work this morning, CBS radio was intoning about how Trump was “in his element” at his Nazi rally last night. I quickly turned the station before I could hear anymore such nonsense.
Baud
@Kay:
Dave Weigel would be among the first to call the Dems frivolous if we pulled any kind of stunt to highlight the wall lie.
nonynony
@Kay:
It should be, but I think people don’t realize that his whole “build a wall” rhetoric isn’t about building an actual wall for the folks who voted for him.
I mean, they would like that wall. If he actually got it built he’d be their god-hero for generations to come. But what appealed to them was that he understood the “need” for a wall. Everyone else is telling them that they should just accept that people are people and we should all try to “get along” and here’s a guy who really speaks to their hate for anyone who isn’t like them. He’s telling them that it’s okay to build that wall between them and non-white people, and it’s okay for them to be racist shitbags.
I really do think that’s the core of it. He latched into that group of white people who resent having to live in a pluralistic society and really do wish they could turn the clock back to the 1950s when they could live in a segregated one. This group of people going around wearing “fuck your feelings” T-shirts were all about latching onto the guy who was pandering to their feelings – their feelings of anger and fear of having to share a world with non-white people. And that’s why they continue to love him – because he continues to play to their feelings.
(And frankly, given some that I know, they’d like to build a wall between them and the white non-conservative people too. Honestly I wish I could convince some billionaire racist to buy an island somewhere where he could found a white utopia and they could all move there. All of us would likely be happier – at least in the short run before the island turns to cannibalism I suppose.)
satby
@Baud: yeah, Weigel is a fully paid up member of the church of “both side but Dems are worse”.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He is a monster created in the large part by the media, they fed him and nurtured him.
ETA: By he I mean T, not Weigel, who is a Broderian both siderist.
rikyrah
I have three kinds of voters that I just can’t stand.
1. Those that voted for Dolt45
2. Those that said that there was no difference between Hillary and Dolt45
3. Those that, even after what they’ve seen, will write shyt like they did below.
see…some of us are just Edjumacated Fools.
Who the PHUCK saw Hillary as their SAVIOR-except for the Blackademics who wanted to get their hustle on again.
I can say…without equivocation…
I can say…without equivocation…
That Hillary’s choice for Attorney General would NOT have been the KKKeebler Elf.
That Hillary’s choice for head of Homeland Security would NOT be throwing out people who have lived here peacefully..
That Hillary’s choice for the EPA wouldn’t be trying to dismantle the regulations for..you know…clean air and clean water…
That Hillary would NOT have taken us out of the Paris Accords…
That Hillary would NOT have put in this den of vipers who seem determined to work against the Departments that they head.
That the State Department would NOT be decimated as it has been under the Secretary of Exxon…
That she would NOT be working to undermine Obamacare, and 30 million people
would NEVER HAVE HAD TO WORRY ABOUT THEIR HEALTHCARE BEING TAKEN AWAY
FROM THEM…
That she would NOT be appointing right-wing judges to LIFETIME APPOINTMENTS where they can harm our community for the next 40 YEARS…
NONE of what I’ve written qualifies me as thinking Hillary is some WHITE SAVIOR.
This piece is just insulting.
And, if you, after all these months, are still peddling the swill that there would be no difference between Hillary and Trump..Your degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
msdc
@Baud: My earlier comment got eaten by moderation (too many links?), but long story short, the DNC has already started pushing this message to the media, so naturally the right-wing media, the centrist civility police, and the One True Left are all freaking the fuck out.
Complaints about messaging are almost always bullshit. Complaints about Democratic messaging are guaranteed bullshit.
different-church-lady
I sit here wrangling with the effects of insomnia of three different people (myself, my S.O., an important associate) and hear all the tales of sleeplessness coming thru the internets, and remember that Trump himself never sleeps, and think, “This man really is pure evil, and projects evil out into the world.”
JGabriel
@Kay:
While we’re advocating against, and removing, monuments to hate in the South, I keep thinking NYC should do its part by removing all of Trump’s buildings, logos, and advertising.
satby
@nonynony:
See, I’m a bad person, because if that island existed and they turned to cannibalism, I would be even happier.
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: Same here. I have to admit, that I thought that a military coup might not be so bad.
rikyrah
see…some of us are just Edjumacated Fools.
Who the PHUCK saw Hillary as their SAVIOR-except for the Blackademics who wanted to get their hustle on again.
I can say…without equivocation…
I can say…without equivocation…
That Hillary’s choice for Attorney General would NOT have been the KKKeebler Elf.
That Hillary’s choice for head of Homeland Security would NOT be throwing out people who have lived here peacefully..
That Hillary’s choice for the EPA wouldn’t be trying to dismantle the regulations for..you know…clean air and clean water…
That Hillary would NOT have taken us out of the Paris Accords…
That Hillary would NOT have put in this den of vipers who seem determined to work against the Departments that they head.
That the State Department would NOT be decimated as it has been under the Secretary of Exxon…
That she would NOT be working to undermine Obamacare, and 30 million people
would NEVER HAVE HAD TO WORRY ABOUT THEIR HEALTHCARE BEING TAKEN AWAY
FROM THEM…
That she would NOT be appointing right-wing judges to LIFETIME APPOINTMENTS where they can harm our community for the next 40 YEARS…
NONE of what I’ve written qualifies me as thinking Hillary is some WHITE SAVIOR.
This piece is just insulting.
And, if you, after all these months, are still peddling the swill that there would be no difference between Hillary and Trump..Your degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Wag
@ThresherK:
They didn’t say that he succeeded… if they had said then I’d truely despair. As the quote stands, it is neutral to slightly snarky.
different-church-lady
@Kay: The problem is the one way to get Trump to focus like a laserbeam on getting the wall made is to mock him for not getting the wall made.
Baud
@msdc: Agreed 100 percent.
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: Oh really? You would see all of T’s agenda carried out with competence with some like Kelly in charge. His contradictions and ineptitude is our opportunity.
rikyrah
@debit:
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
nonynony
@satby: By “all of us” I was including the members of the new racist utopia. Of whom likely only the top 10% would be happier after the island turned to cannibalism.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: A military coup is never good, never.
msdc
@satby: Yeah, I’m not seeing the problem here. Hell, they’d be happier, as long as the cannibal next to them had no hunk of human flesh to eat and no stick to roast it on.
nonynony
@different-church-lady:
Eh there are two problems with this.
1) There is no money for a wall. There will never be money for a wall. Republicans won’t raise taxes to pay for it and, while we could go deeper into debt, McConnell is unlikely to kill the filibuster just to get Trump his wall.
2) Trump is incapable of laser-like focus.
schrodingers_cat
@OzarkHillbilly: Thank You. Also, the ridiculous fetishization of the generals in T admin is truly bothersome.
ETA: They are on board with some of the most troublesome policy goals of T’s admin. Their calm demeanor and competence in the service of those goals makes them scary not reassuring.
rikyrah
@Iowa Old Lady:
I feel you.
satby
@nonynony: I was too ?
rikyrah
@Kay:
And, the ads have to have a mocking tone..
Have a guy wandering around at the border, asking random people..
” Where is the wall?”
Betty Cracker
@nonynony: Very insightful comment. I think you’re absolutely right about the importance of the wall as a symbol.
different-church-lady
@nonynony:
Given Trump’s track record of distorting fabric of reality itself, I am not comforted.
Quinerly
Apologies if this has been posted. Best summary of the rally I’ve read. I missed the Jeffrey Lord part and Trump’s definition of clean coal. Wasn’t aware that security took water bottles away from attendees and many left early: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/08/23/as-trump-ranted-and-rambled-in-phoenix-his-crowd-slowly-thinned/?utm_term=.cce80c5edf0e
dmsilev
@ThresherK:
Hey, the Dark Arts are a _kind_ of magic, right?
d58826
Wish he had told us how he REALLY feels. (snark)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Florida Frog:
Sportswriters are the last practitioners of actual journalism.
Immanentize
@rikyrah:
(Just a drive by suggestion….)
rikyrah
@nonynony:
Not just a segregated one, but one where ‘ those people’..
KNEW THEIR PLACE.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
Trumpsomnia is an epidemic.
Peter
@msdc: I don’t think Trump even believes the Brown People Are Scary part. I think he believes that if he says it then people will listen to him.
Quinerly
Am I the only one who missed this little nugget yesterday? McMaster showed Trump a pic of Afghanistan women in mini skirts from the 1970’s as part of his pitch to escalate the war. It is impossible to keep up and have any sort of outside of politics life. I’m already exhausted this AM and want to hide: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_599c6105e4b06a788a2c2026
ThresherK
@Wag: I respectfully disagree.
If NPR ever connoted that Trump lost by 3 million without hinting that every single one of the D’s voters “held their nose and voted for Hillary”, I might give NPR the benefit of the doubt. But fck ’em; they know their framing and they still do it.
clay
@different-church-lady: Even accepting the premise that Trump can focus like a laserbeam on anything, what would this mean? If he wants to get the wall built, he has to go through Congress. I’d say the chances of the House passing funding are about zero (ALL of the border-state Republicans are against it), and the chances in the Senate are less than that. The more he rails against his own party members, the less inclined they’ll be to do any sort of heavy lifting for him.
Now he’s threatening to shut down the government… so what? That wouldn’t get him any closer to the wall, because it wouldn’t change the political reality in Congress. But it’s a hollow threat in the first place — half of the Republicans in the House would love to shut down the government — because they’re idiots — and ALL of the Democrats would love it — because it would almost guarantee Speaker Pelosi in 2018.
So let him ‘focus’ on it. That just means he’s too distracted to focus on things that he might actually accomplish.
germy
A look at the blacks for trump guy who shows up at every rally:
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: I know that, but the thought of Trumps little fingers near a powerful weapon has caused be to become unhinged.
clay
@Peter: No, listen to him talk about the inner city, and Mexicans. He isn’t (just) using racism to whip up the rubes. He’s been a true believer for years, decades even.
clay
@germy:
I like how he switched to the singular tense there. Accidentally revealed just how big his ‘movement’ is.
O. Felix Culpa
The United Nations warns US over “alarming racism.”
debit
@germy: How does this dude get to every rally? Between airfare, hotels and time off work, who could afford to do that?
A Ghost to Not
@Betty Cracker: It’s “god” that put us in this predicament.
FlipYrWhig
@nonynony:
Very well put.
This also helps explain their weird fixation on things like “political correctness” and “cultural relativism,” sometimes rolled up into “cosmopolitan” and “elite.” It all means “people who think they’re better than you keep telling you how you should feel and what you should like and that it will make you a better person, but just go ahead and feel the way you already do, like what you already like, and embrace being the awful person you already are.”
FlipYrWhig
@debit: Isn’t it a crazy religious cult funded by t-shirt sales? If so, getting on TV to hawk merch _is_ his job.
rikyrah
@germy:
I am more than tired of the articles about Trump supporters.
I don’t give two shyts about them. They showed their lack of character when they voted for him.
This guy? Represents NOBODY. Literally NOBODY.
How about articles from those of us not stupid enough to vote for Dolt45.
I don’t need for them to be ‘ explained’. They voted for him. No explanation needed.
I don’t remember any such articles about Obama voters. This level of concern about Obama voters.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby:
Make that two bad people, because I had the same thought.
germy
@debit:
I wonder if he makes his living getting donations. Grifter?
@clay:
The movement he needs is on his shoulders.
Betty Cracker
@A Ghost to Not: I believe assholes are the culprits.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@A Ghost To Most:
This. Trump is just that final symptom that shows up prior to either recovery or death.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: It’s baffling. All I can figure is journalists were as blindsided by the result of the election as most people were, but they either don’t recognize or can’t bear to acknowledge the awful truth: Trump’s white identity shtick prompted the worst people in the country to slither out from under their rocks and make their way to the polls. So they act like it’s some fucking mystery.
germy
@rikyrah:
You’re right. The WaPo and NYTimes won’t rest until every last drumpf supporter is massaged into giving a few quotes.
But I think it’s good to shine a bright light on this particular individual. So that if drumpf tries bragging about his “support” from “the blacks” we can point to this guy: “You mean him?”
Interesting, what made me curious about “blacks for trump” was the older white woman I saw waving a sign. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have noticed.
hedgehog mobile
@rikyrah: This. Thank you!
rikyrah
Will Barack Obama Step in to Lead the Resistance?
by Nancy LeTourneau
August 23, 2017
Not many people have been more articulate than Adam Gopnik in describing the particular threat posed by the presidency of Donald Trump. That’s why I feel the need to at least take him seriously when he proscribes something that he thinks would mitigate the damage, as he did in his most recent column.
I thought of that when I read what Martin wrote recently about how the only thing less credible than Trump is everything else. It’s true that there are no elected Democratic leaders that the majority of the country is willing to embrace as the alternative to Trump. But Gopnik is right, Obama fills that bill. Even as Republicans chose to fight him every step of the way, he managed to show what competence in the White House and federal bureaucracy could look like. Few of us have forgotten all that and the temptation to compare the current administration unfavorably to that record is only growing by the day.
I spent almost the last decade studying Barack Obama. My efforts were not so much about defending him as they were an attempt to try to understand him—something I thought that most pundits failed to do. So when I read what Gopnik wrote, I once again tried to approach it from the standpoint of “what would Obama say in response to that suggestion.” I can’t claim to know, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts.
Daileyink
@Betty Cracker: loved that too
msdc
@Peter: No, he believes it. It may be the only thing he believes in outside his own ego.
Ruckus
@JGabriel:
drumpf is so lacking as a human that you almost got me to defend Nixon. Almost. But you did give Nixon his total due, he was smarter and not falling off the senile cliff.
Steve in the ATL
@Bostondreams:
Drew Magary and “why your team sucks” are great. The rest of the site I can do without.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: It’s like Dantean symbolic retribution. They’re doomed to live out eternity doing “no one _I_ know voted for Nixon.”
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
I think they don’t want to accept THEIR culpability.
Also, they have FAMILY that are Trump supporters, and they’re trying to ‘explain’ them. Trying to find a way to ‘ excuse’ them. Trying to figure out a way for the rest of us to accept these awful people. Because, they don’t want to admit to themselves that their family/friends are awful people who voted for what will be considered the WORST President in U.S. History.
They really believe that if they continue to write these articles, that those of us on our side will do what we usually do…which is ‘ understand’.
They haven’t gotten to fully understand the depth of the anger on our side. They don’t get it.
This isn’t 2000.
This isn’t even 2004, after Shrub had lied us into two wars.
This is on a whole other level. The rage is there. The anger is there. The disgust is there.
We find Dolt45 unacceptable as a HUMAN BEING..let alone, a President.
We do not consider him legitimate…and his voters are disqualified BECAUSE of their vote for him…and, it’s not something that’s going to be forgotten.
A line has been crossed on our side..and, we’re done.
D-O-N-E.
O. Felix Culpa
As s-cat and others keep reminding us, the T maladministration is having real and harmful impact on real people. That’s what makes me crazy when some of my “reasonable, moderate” friends fall back on bromides like the sun continues to shine and tomatoes continue to grow. Tell that to the kids who are traumatized by T’s immigration policies:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/23/us-immigration-children-schools-trump?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=240675&subid=19967256&CMP=GT_US_collection
Chris
@nonynony:
Well that’s assumed, of course. Not much point in driving the N-words out if you’re going to keep the N-word lovers around.
Ruckus
@kindness:
I see a nut as someone who is mostly harmless and wonders around complaining about the end of the world or something. Everyone side steps around him, some drop dimes in his cup and walks on. And no ones life changes.
drumpf is dangerous because there are people who think they can use him to make the world into their vision of hate. And they are right.
rk
@rikyrah:
Well to be fair, where is the story in talking to people who voted for a smart, intelligent, decent charismatic guy with an adorable family? Trump supporters are like a new species of slime. There’s no sign of a functioning brain, yet it somehow coordinates its body functions and is able to successfully reproduce and proliferate. It’s disgusting and fascinating at the same time.
rikyrah
The Only Thing Less Credible Than Trump is Everything Else
by Martin Longman
August 22, 2017
I think Steve Kornacki is on the right track. He’s looking at the polling numbers for Trump and acknowledging that they look bad, but he’s noting that they also looked bad as election day drew near last year. In fact, the numbers then and now don’t really look much different. We all still want to know how Trump managed to win when most people thought he was unfit for the office. But we also need to ask whether he’s as strong today as he was last November when he was elected the president of the United States of America.
Kornacki speculates that one explanation for Trump’s success and the surprise associated with it is that Hillary Clinton was almost equally unpopular. Kornacki also wonders whether the media is so hated that their relentless moral condemnations of Trump only served to make him more popular. And, likewise, maybe the near unanimity with which our celebrity culture condemned Trump and the contemptuous way they talked about him and his supporters made him look good by comparison. Kornacki doesn’t mention it, but it’s also true that Congress is almost unimaginably unpopular, which makes anyone who picks a fight with them the likely winner.
I suspect all of this played a part and can help us understand our political culture a little better. People are simply underestimating how much the American people dislike our politicians, our media, and the Democrats’ message and messengers, which makes us wrongly conclude that these groups have more credibility and appeal than they do.
Ruckus
@dsc:
Many of us will get to this point in life, it’s the evolution of a functioning brain, it fails, like all the other parts.
But we aren’t president when that happens.
O. Felix Culpa
Another piece from The Guardian on the US deportation system verging on lawlessness.
d58826
Ok maybe a bit OT but this has been bugging me for the past few days. From one of many articles on the ‘new’ approach in Afgan.:
By what stretch of the imagination does any one think that the Taliban won’t/can’t wait us out regardless of strategy. THEY LIVE THERE.
rikyrah
Quick Takes: Republican Cold War Heats Up as Trump Travels to Arizona
A roundup of news that caught my eye today.
by Nancy LeTourneau
August 22, 2017
* We already knew that the prospect for Trump and Republicans to pass any of their legislative agenda was slim to none. But then this happened…
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: You are giving them too much credit, they knew and they didn’t care, because they thought incorrectly that it wouldn’t affect them.
schrodingers_cat
@d58826: 4000 added personnel is a drop in the bucket. T’s highhanded policies and his imperialist/ colonist rhetoric is going give his opponents in Af-Pak a major recruiting tool. The end. Those poor soldiers who are being sent into this inferno.
rikyrah
* Greg Sargent says that Trump’s White House has developed an ugly new strategy.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: It has the General’s blessings, the same one who presided over the deportation machine barely a month ago.
Dave
@d58826: A mix of those living in a damned fantasy world and those that realize they have shit for options so publicly hold onto whatever reed they can however thin.
It’s like the photograph that is being mentioned as used to convince Trump to stay in Afghanistan. It’s a real photograph I’ve seen it. It’s been floating around since at least 2011 and while real it nonetheless represents a total fantasy. There is surely a way back to what that photo represents but the sequence of events that would lead to it are vanishingly small. It could happen but it won’t anytime in the near future.
The point of the photograph is to give people that want to believe a framework to give those that want to believe something to hang their hat on. At least some of those pushing it know it’s a fantasy but it’s a useful fantasy for their goals whatever they may be. (Rather it’s containing chaos, kicking the can down the road, personal gain etc… It’s very Straussian).
JPL
@rikyrah: He’ll probably call it reuniting families. I hope that he just shuts down the government, and then ICE won’t be funded. Actually Mnuchin will not send out social security check before they do that.
Kilgore Trout
This x 1000. He has released a deep desire among some/many people to let their asshole flag fly.
I umpire youth baseball, high school in the spring and then select ball into the summer. This season there was a very noticeable change in the behavior of parents and coaches (high school coaches are fine as they are teachers and well-trained in the ball field being an “extension of the classroom” – select coaches are usually frustrated former athletes). The level of assholeishness was directly proportional to the distance of the team’s home area from Seattle – i.e. the more you got into “Trump Country”, the more insufferable these folks became. I actually blocked the last few weeks of the season on our scheduling software because I just didn’t want to deal with it any more, and I’m not sure whether I’m going to want to deal with it next year.
When you hear people complain about “political correctness”,the translation is “I just want to be an asshole without ramifications”.
Kilgore Trout
Can somebody help me with the moderation? I’ve never had a post *not* go into moderation.
A Ghost To Most
The hate wasn’t that bad in Arizona last night, because it’s a dry hate.
schrodingers_cat
@Dave: I have no idea what that photograph is supposed to prove, any country no matter how conservative has a westernized/modern elite. True in India, was true in Iran and true in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over. When I visit India, if I am in South Mumbai, I can wear shorts, jeans etc but I would be foolish to wear those outfits in rural northern India, where many women cover their faces.
ETA: I have seen women/girls wear the skimpiest of outfits where college kids in Mumbai like to hang out, that I would hesitate to wear. So what?
Kay
@different-church-lady:
The wall is already a disaster. He promised a free wall. The building project itself will be a disaster, but he already broke his promise on the wall.
They could make that wall Trump’s Katrina :)
Heavily promote any delay, any crony contract, any incompetence. Look for “special treatment” – we know how much resentment is part of Trump’s appeal- find winners and losers. They’re appropriating property for this wall. Find some pissed off landowners. Find some disgruntled wall-builders and interview them.
You know, treat the wall like they treated the Obama healthcare bill. It’s gold, this wall. It’s a gift to Democrats.
satby
@Betty Cracker: when I feel extra vindictive, I roll on over to my friend the Chicago journalist’s FB page so I can put a “at least it wasn’t delivered in a horrible, unmodulated, schreechy female voice” on whatever critical post he has about a Drumpf speech. Because that fucking shit never gets old.
They will never admit they helped the Nazi in Chief.
sharl
David Roth and everyone else at VICE Sports were let go several weeks ago. I don’t know if that was a manifestation of the troubling pivot-to-video trend a number of online media outfits are undergoing, or whether VICE management just decided to “go in another direction”. The fact that they’d let a supremely talented writer like Roth go does seem to favor the former IMO.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
This is why I think we should be more demanding of the DNC and affiliated orgs. They have to show us what they DO. They can’t ask for donations and not seem to return any value. There’s nothing wrong with demanding they be better at their jobs, not in some “conspiracy way” but just an ordinary good job.
They should have a plan about the wall.
ruemara
@Kay: it’s sadly untrue because the media slavishly regurgitates whatever the republican talking points say and critiquing whatever the democratic message is, as opposed to just reporting which is based on fact like, a reporter.
@Peter: He’s a racist. He’s been one for decades. He most certainly does believe Brown People Are Scary.
Dave
@schrodingers_cat: That’s because you aren’t trying to bullshit yourself or others that it will all work out. That we have a reason to be in Afghanistan that is Noble and so on. I burst out laughing the first time I saw it and it was presented in the context of this can be again and we will make it happen. It’s one of those moments where the amount of play-pretend that was demanded vastly exceeded my capacity for going along.
You’re right it means nothing but by God people can imbue all sorts of meaning into just about anything if they really want to. We may as well have found the sorts of signs and portents that the Romans or Greeks used; it would have had as much to do with reality. It was one of many moments that confirmed that Afghanistan was even more of a shit-show than Iraq. Which at the time floored me since Iraq was an utter shit-show.
rikyrah
Ryan balks at censuring Trump over racially inflammatory rhetoric
08/22/17 12:51 PM
By Steve Benen
At a town-hall forum on CNN last night, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was willing to say Donald Trump was “wrong” when the president failed to fully condemn racist activists in Charlottesville. But a voter at the event pressed the Republican leader on going a step further.
“Speaker Ryan, as the leader of the congressional Republicans, I’d like to ask you what concrete steps that you will take to hold the president accountable when his words and executive actions either implicitly or explicitly condone, if not champion, racism and xenophobia,” the Wisconsin voter said. “For example, will you support the resolution for censure?”
This generated quick applause, though Ryan wouldn’t budge.
Jack the Second
to trump, verb, to end an activity early after prematurely finishing.
“He talked a good game, but trumped and was asleep within two minutes.”
“The rally was scheduled to last 2 hours, but he trumped after 30 minutes.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Dave:
Ironically, that photo was taken when the USSR was enthusiastically participating in Afghan society in a peaceful way, IIRC.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
People like Trump tend to have an extremely one-note view of other societies, so… But you’re right, if it’s true that this photograph is all it took to convince him, that says a lot.
schrodingers_cat
@Jack the Second: We should call him Frump because that’s how he looks with the ill fitting suits, overly long taped tie, outlandish comb over, orange clown makeup and doddering gait.
Thor Heyerdahl
Sorry if this has already been posted (from BBC)
‘Donald Trump-shaped’ ecstasy pills seized by German police
rikyrah
Trump wanted McConnell to ‘protect him’ from Russia scandal probe
08/23/17 08:00 AM—UPDATED 08/23/17 08:28 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump has clashed with Attorney General Jeff Sessions because the president expected the nation’s chief law-enforcement official to shield the White House from the investigation into the Russia scandal. Trump also clashed with former FBI Director James Comey – whom Trump ultimately fired – because the president wanted Comey to protect him from the same probe.
And as Rachel noted on last night’s show, the New York Times reports that Trump has also clashed with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for – you guessed it – not doing more to shield him from the investigation that threatens to derail his presidency.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Everyone is his fucking servant and exists to serve his needs.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I mean, just think about this promise. He has to get the money. He has to get however many states to go along. He has to hire the contractors. The contractors have to secure property rights from private landowners. They have to get permits. There have to be environmental impact studies. Then come the landowner lawsuits. Followed quickly by the environmental org lawsuits and the lawsuits from all the state and local officeholders who will be pissed off that the federal government is stomping all over them.
Donald Trump couldn’t pass a health care bill with a GOP majority. He couldn’t persuade 4 Senators. The wall is HUGE. It’s really difficult. It will be a massive fuck-up.
Remember the insane over the top coverage of the non-functioning Obamacare website? That times 10.
This is a gift.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@schrodingers_cat: Those are awesome women, and three cheers for the Supreme Court for both hearing their case and making the decision.
rikyrah
On immigration, Trump has an offer Dems can easily refuse
08/23/17 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen
At a rally in Phoenix that served no real purpose last night, Donald Trump mentioned his idea for a border wall 17 times. In fact, the president appears convinced that this will happen. “We are building a wall on the southern border,” the Republican said, adding, “Believe me, if we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall…. We’re going to have our wall. We’re going to get our wall…. Believe me, one way or the other, we’re going to get that wall.”
The unpopular president’s confidence, however, cannot create political will where none exists. But the White House apparently has a plan, which McClatchy reported on yesterday:
…………………………..
Except, it’s not really a trade-off in any meaningful sense, since Democrats have what they want: the DACA policy for young Dreamers already exists. Instead, it’s more of a hostage strategy: Trump is saying he’ll destroy DACA unless Congress approves all of the other goodies on his immigration wish list.
Trump’s promises about Mexico paying for the wall are out. Trump looking for ways to force Congress to give him taxpayer dollars is in, even if he has to use hundreds of thousands of kids as leverage.
Is there any chance Democrats would go along with such a scheme?
kd bart
Participated in our yearly mandatory ethics in government briefing online this morning. Really ironic when you know that the Trump White House violates a majority of the 14 Principles on a daily basis.
JPL
@rikyrah: Trump was also upset about the sanctions, which makes me wonder why. hmmm
rikyrah
Trump’s Secretary of State suggests US may not win in Afghanistan
08/23/17 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
When Donald Trump presented his new vision for U.S. policy in Afghanistan, the president frequently used the word “win.” For example, Trump declared when we dispatch American servicemen and women abroad, “we will always win.” He added, “I’m a problem solver and, in the end, we will win…. Our troops will fight to win. We will fight to win.”
Subtle, this wasn’t.
As the Washington Post reported, however, it didn’t take long before a leading voice from the president’s cabinet stepped all over that message.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Any Democrats that support this deal would be crazy.
ruemara
@rikyrah: Then there’s zero hope of not falling into a fascist theocracy for a century because if that’s an acceptable framing, Trump and his family stay in power. I also say that anyone promoting this view is not a POC. Frankly the mood is pretty angry at media, the right and the left, because the choice is pretty clear. If you need excitement, go buy a new Coke.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I’ll be shocked if Trump can pass immigration. Bush really wanted it. He worked for it. Karl Rove ran the effort personally. Bush made lots and lots of concessions to Kennedy to get it and the Left among Democrats and the Right among Republicans still peeled off and it failed. There’s a great documentary on the effort. The filmmakers followed it for 2 years.
I just don’t think he has the skills to do this and Bush tried to pass his BEFORE Republicans ran on demonizing immigrants, before they made “we hate immigrants” one of their spite issues.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: The most defeatist of all are those with the least to lose. I have seen that trend on Balloon Juice and the media at large. I have to wonder why.
glory b
@Bostondreams: I don’t particularly care for sports, but I love Drew Magary.
I also like “Why Your Team Sucks” and the Caucasian guides at Deadspin. Like here, the comments section can be just as good as the articles.
kd bart
@rikyrah: The same for the “Useless Idiots” on the Left who voted for Stein, wrote in Bernie or Someone Else, Left the Ballot Blank or Just Didn’t Vote because they just couldn’t vote for Hillary even though they knew what was at stake if Trump won. They’ll rationalize away their culpability, “If only she’d gone to Traverse City one more time” until the end of time.
d58826
Well if you are a terrorists just be the right (pun intended) kind:
A Nevada jury acquitted four Bundyites yesterday and hung on the rest.
https://twitter.com/JustADCohen/status/900363158740582401
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/22/17
Trump attacked McConnell on Russia investigation: NYT
Rachel Maddow shares a new report from the New York Times about the strained relationship between Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and notes that the intensifying Trump Russia investigation may be wearing on Trump as he risks another obstruction accusation.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: Sometimes it’s not defeatist, it’s depression. There’s a good chance that Roy Moore will be the next Senator of Alabama, and that scares the shit out of me. It’s was bad enough to see
homophobic Handel win in my district, but Moore is at a totally different level. Defeatist is when we don’t fight back, and I have yet to see that.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I know, Kay.
Shrub could lie us into TWO WARS..
But, couldn’t get immigration done.
Captain C
@Quinerly:
in Phoenix, in 107-degee heat, this would probably be grounds for self-defense if the water bottle owner had fought back.
Kay
This is just unfair to younger people. I think it’s so gross how people my age who benefited from publicly-subsided education (and everyone did, one way or another) just pull up the fucking ladder behind them. Good work, assholes! You got yours!
Be ashamed. If the amount of time and thought and energy that was expended whining about millennials had been put toward restoring funding they would have it by now. At the very least ADMIT they have it harder. They do.
sharl
@ruemara: Roth briefly touches on Trump’s particular “flavor” of racism, describing Trump as a racist because that is a default state for stupid (white) people in the U.S. Roth also linked to this recent NYT piece that – despite being the NYT – goes into that issue in pretty good detail IMO. The tl;dr summary of that piece – Trump has interacted with black folk and does so now, but only if and when he thinks he’ll get something out of the interaction. The fact that Trump had a black girlfriend in the late 90s (the model Kara Young) allowed him to publicly brag on Howard Stern’s show about “stealing her” from her previous boyfriend (some famous reporter); that sort of petty thing is clearly something of value to Twitler, as he has shown on other occasions.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah:
No. Democrats have zero reasons to go along with anything Trump wants. Trump is collapsing in front of our very eyes.
Vhh
@Kay: Texas GOP represent landowners on border whose land would be taken for the wall via eminent domain. Those are fightin words, and these folks love guns. Ain’t gonna happen.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: What would a win look like in Afghanistan anyways? I doubt anyone could answer that question including Trump.
tobie
“Complaints about messaging are almost always bullshit. Complaints about Democratic messaging are guaranteed bullshit.”
Add to that the line that the Democrats don’t stand for anything, which I’ve heard intoned by countless conservative pundits after they had the temerity to criticize Trump and now must find something equally critical to say of the Dems. This comes on the heels–spelled with two e’s–of the release of “A Better Deal” that alludes to the proud tradition of the New Deal. MAGA says nothing but that’s become the model of sophisticated messaging evidently.
Steeplejack
@Kilgore Trout:
Send an e-mail to Alain in case he doesn’t see this. Use “Quick Links | Contact a Front Pager” at the top right of this page.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: Short skirts according to McMaster.
Quinerly
@JPL:
?
Shana
@JGabriel: As did Charlie Pierce AIR.
GregB
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Even more interesting is that Jimmy Carter helped to formulate the pushback against the Russians by eliciting support of the relgious folks in the hinterlands and Ronald Reagan doubled down on that support.
Blowback.
Imagine the blowback that this Tang Tyrant is fomenting?
Quinerly
@Captain C:
Here in St. Louis, too, with our “wet heat.”?
O. Felix Culpa
@d58826:
Just be the white kind. Fixt.
ruemara
@sharl: I’m from NYC. I’ve grown up with Trump.
@JPL: well it sure sounds defeatist and frankly, we’re sitting here on the blood and bones of our ancestors, depressed but ready to amp up our fight. We’re looking at you guys exhausted after 6 months and wonder how this allyship is working out.
Steeplejack
@tobie:
If you don’t highlight the block of text you want to blockquote, then it is a two-step process. 1. Put the cursor at the start of the block and press the “quote” button. 2. Then put the cursor at the end of the block and press the “quote” button again.
If you don’t explicitly end the blockquote, it will take up the entire comment, including the Reply button, as happened with your comment here.
Shana
@satby: Kind of like the story of the island overrun by rats in Skyfall.
tobie
@Steeplejack: Sorry…I thought I had done so but I must have messed up. Note to self-drink plenty of coffee before commenting.
d58826
@Kay: As a boomer I have apologized to my 30 something nieces for this this reason. Along with all of the other ‘I GOT MINE’ ‘ stuff that we have done. For a 60’s generation that marched in the streets to change the world we certainly have but not in the way envisioned in the late 60’s.
rikyrah
@Kay:
So true, Kay.
So true.
d58826
@O. Felix Culpa: that’s even better
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Kay: In addition to all those bureaucratic niceties standing in his way, there’s a small problem standing in his way, something that might be invisible to a native New Yorker who is used to dealing with the geography of a place that humans have managed to bend to their will (as far as he knows) since before he was born: Terrain.
Here is a link to an online topographic map site. Select Arizona from the list of states, and then type Coronado Peak into the blank for a place name. This will get you a view of the Huachuca Mountains, and if you move the map south a bit you’ll see the US-Mexico border, if it’s not in view already.
Look at the terrain the map shows, and then imagine putting something like the Great Wall of China, or Hadrian’s Wall over that ground, or even some sort of modernized version. Then consider that every valley or canyon will turn into a waterway when the rains come. Where will the water go? What sort of roads are available to bring in the materials, equipment, and personnel you’ll need to do this kind of construction?.
Not all the terrain along the border there in Arizona is that bad, but nearly all of it is isolated and water-poor.
Paula
Wow that’s a great essay!
sukabi
@satby: as long as they couldn’t get off the island the cannibalism would be fine with me as well.?
Just One More Canuck
@Patricia Kayden: He actually was in his element last night, it’s just that his element is sewage
JPL
@ruemara: Ossoff came close in a district that was drawn in a way that it sent shivers to local republicans. I volunteer to help out in local politics, and they know that his turnout is imperative to a win, even though local politics here are non-partisan. Knocking on doors and talking to sane repubs is not defeatist. I have a close friend that knew our relationship would be over, if she had voted for the orange one. She’s black and left it blank. I told her that was a half vote for him, cuz in a red state it sure didn’t help Hillary. Sorry, some folks misread comments as being defeatist, and they are not.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: We just have fewer illusions so we don’t crumple into a dust heap when they are not met. Also, we have seen this movie before. T is not the first, nor will he be the last to use hate and bigotry as a motivator.
Steeplejack
@tobie:
Not criticizing, just thought maybe you didn’t know exactly how to do it.
glory b
@debit: Maybe the same way the abortion clinic bombers/spinners get around.
The guy I’m thinking of had no visible means of support, but showed up in various places all over the country.
Tom V
@JGabriel: Charlie Pierce also.
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: We need to fight for those who are in an even more precarious situation. If we give up, what hope there is for DACA recipients and scores who are stuck in immigration limbo land.
One of my friends is stuck in an immigration limbo for years, she is pediatric hematologist-oncologist, she completed an extremely coveted residency at Johns Hopkins ten years ago and then a year at NIH. Now works for DC hospital. Her husband is a post-doc in Tennessee, they have a daughter born in the United States, they have lived in this limbo for the last 8 years at least. Yet they soldier on, for how much longer I do not know. If Miller-Cotton-Perdue ever becomes a law, they will not be ever able to immigrate.
MCA1
That’s the best take I’ve yet read on the phenomenon of Drumpf. I feel like David Roth scanned my brain for all the incoherent angst, rage, depression, confusion and horror that have been bouncing around up there the last 9 months and somehow distilled it into something cogent. All the attempts to fit all of this into a recognizable political philosophy or strategy; they’re futile. To try and analyze how the normal workings of the political institutions and unwritten rules we have are supposed to contain this asshole; it’s worthless and completely misses the point.
Roth has not only incisively explained the ramifications of T’s bottomless narcissism on his behavior in the political arena. More importantly, he’s simultaneously tied it to the purely animalistic, psychological appeal it exerts over his base. He doesn’t directly invoke Cleek’s Law, but he’s alluding to its basics. That’s the key to grasping Trumpism, IMHO.
The media keeps trying, over and over and over, to present the equation as: Everyone can see he’s temperamentally unfit and ignorant, but there just must some other thing out there that’s so bad (economic anxiety, but her e-mails, neoliberalism, polarization and political stagnation) that close to half of voters were willing to excuse all that and give him a try. No.
No. They don’t think he’s temperamentally unfit. They LOVE that he’s an asshole. Because deep down we’re all assholes. And evidently a significant portion of us have become so resentful of the social contract, placed on us to keep our assholishness in check, that we feel a great need to howl in resentful anger. Most of us just don’t have the financial freedom, social privilege, and amorality required to act out our assholishness the way he does. So, those people live out their revanchist rage through him. He is their unthinking totem of spite.
Raoul
@debit: Big money charities are abandoning Mar-a-No-no, that Trump building in Toronto paid to de-brand itself, and from what I can tell, people in Chicago f*king hate his towering ego substitute there. Etc.
He has a core of losers who will follow him to the end. But it is far from a majority and will not grow. We just have to hope (and do what we can actively) to minimize his rage-damage as he descends into the madness this Greek Tragedy most likely demands.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Got a mailing from the DCCC today, still banging the health care drum. I did like the “March Into ’18 By The Numbers” insert.
TenguPhule
In other words, we are being ruled by Jabba the Hutt.
Sondra Fabe
This is an outstanding and well written article. It probably comes closer than anything else I’ve read to explain who #45 really is. I am using the term #45 instead of his name as a private act of protest in everything I say and write.
Other people use different words to proceed his name like “popular vote loser” but I feel that accords him too many letters of the alphabet and a certain status which I feel only serves to magnify his name.
I imagine him sitting at home counting the number of times his name is mentioned either in print or over the radio and teevee airwaves every hour of the day and night. I can see him calculating his fame and status in a sort of linguistic equivalence to $ signs or the number of zeros in his bank account.
I picture him as Midas in the old Roman fable. He is there in his counting house drooling over and admiring his loot but always greedy and unsatisfied because it is never enough. He must touch everything within his reach until his world is filled with golden objects.
I’ve often thought that #45 must think he was elected Emperor rather than just merely President because he seems to believe he can rule by fiat and executive tweets. A similar Romanian fable goes on to explain why the Emperor only got his hair cut once a year. It tells of his odd hairy donkey ears which must be kept hidden and secret. Then the tale explains why there has been so much turnover in advisors and the large number of royal barbers who come one morning and are gone the next.
Sounds a lot like #45’s own staff replacements as each one notices and speaks about the forbidden subject of the Emperor’s hair.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Kilgore Trout
@Steeplejack: Thanks!
mapaghimagisik
I’m reminded of Paradise Lost where Satan said:
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrauth and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
J R in WV
I do have to disagree with this part of the article. I think Trump has hate down to a fine art, and enjoys using it on people who don’t truckle to his ego. Fuq that asshole, he says.
But love, now, that’s something Trump will never know anything about, which makes me glad. Love is what makes the world worth living in, and the lack of it is partly what makes Trump so maddened by other folks not paying him respect.
Annie
@nonynony:
More and more I believe that a lot of conservatives think in symbols, and don’t go beyond the symbols. My Trump-supporting uncle once said, “we should close all our borders.” So I pointed out that our borders were not simply doors we could close; that the western and eastern borders and all but the northern border of Florida were water borders; and so how much money did he want to give the Coast Guard to patrol all that area. I also mentioned that adding more people to patrol the border with Mexico would cost money, and asked how much he was willing to spend. His response was “well of course you just want the world to flood into America.” There was no recognition of the work involved or the money it would cost, none.
He’s dead now, but I guess that made him a pretty good match for Trump.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I took note of that sentence, too, and had the thought that you could have written that sentence. Not surprised that you would notice it, too!
StudlyPantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
Dibs on the band name!
It really is a nearly-poetic, succinct summarization.
No One You Know
@schrodingers_cat: Because they’re the least threatened, and therefore the least engaged?