Just in case you thought Trump's laziness was delaying activation of the dictator playbook: Get ready for the parades! pic.twitter.com/1gP210VEBI
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 18, 2017
Ours or Russia's? https://t.co/HkzsaW4nQb
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 18, 2017
If only it were as lazy easy as trademarking someone else’s slogan!
… The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used “Let’s Make America Great Again” in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year ago.
“But he didn’t trademark it,” Trump said of Reagan…
The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using it for the purposes spelled out in his [2012] application…
“It actually inspired me,” Trump said, “because to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much.”…
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
“Are you ready?” he said. “ ‘Keep America Great,’ exclamation point.”
“Get me my lawyer!” the president-elect shouted…
“I never thought I’d be giving [you] my expression for four years [from now],” he said. “But I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be so amazing. It’s the only reason I give it to you. If I was, like, ambiguous about it, if I wasn’t sure about what is going to happen — the country is going to be great.”…
Or at least that’s what Trump’s personal media will tell us! Remember Jeff Gannon?
Except the prostitutes will be female and Russian.https://t.co/vv9naTDzbv
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 18, 2017
… Other journalists would be grilling [[press secretary] McClellan over the Bush administration’s activities. McClellan would call on Gannon for a question. And Gannon would bail McClellan out, frequently with a leading question laden with false assumptions.
In August 2004, for example, after taking several questions from a reporter about whether American forces had killed any innocent people in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and another seeking President Bush’s opinion of the disgraced Ahmad Chalabi, McClellen turned to Gannon. And Gannon came through: He asked McClellan about a new “piece of evidence showing the direct terror ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda” and followed up by asking “how damaging” a New York Times story had been “to our war on terror.”…
Trump has already deployed the Gannon strategy as president-elect. During his press conference last week, he pivoted away from a series of questions about the intelligence community’s fears about his interactions with Russia to take one from Matt Boyle from Breitbart, the conservative website previously run by his chief strategist and that spent the election pushing his candidacy. Boyle’s softball sought Trump’s opinion of what “reforms” the media industry should undertake to avoid the “problems” of its election coverage. We should expect Trump to continue to use his platform to lift up such supportive outlets…
As always, @TheOnion predicted this first https://t.co/0x3lTRLlcM pic.twitter.com/cPmMNfQDm4
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) January 18, 2017
Trentrunner
I understand the impulse and the relief valve it provides, but somehow all the “The Onion scooped reality!” and “What will Veep do now that Trump has out-Selinaed Selina?” trivialize our true fuckedness.
And we are so very deeply, deeply fucked.
Major Major Major Major
I like Schooley’s follow-up to the parades one:
terben
Nuremberg on the Potomac!
Mnemosyne
Get ready, America. Pussyhat Nation is coming for you.
Mary and Tracy, your hats are in the mail and you should get them on Friday. Send pictures!
JordanRules
@Mnemosyne: I just love this for so many reasons!
The care and labor put into the hats. It’s a sustained effort not just a quick moment, like a Twitter quip. The utility of them providing warmth and comfort for a winter march. The flyness! I’d rock one any winter. Collaborative and cool!
Major Major Major Major
I don’t know if it’s right to say Trump “employed the Gannon strategy” since “the Gannon strategy” was designed to be subtle, a secret. Trump just said fuck you, I hate you, I’m taking a question from the blog my main advisor owns, now cheer my pretties, cheer.
Mnemosyne
@JordanRules:
And, as far as I can tell, it was started by one (1) woman who got everyone else excited about it. It didn’t hurt that the pattern is dead simple.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I’m usually not a hat person, but if they’re handing them out at the march, I’ll wear one.
Eljai
@Trentrunner: I guess for me, the jokes and the satire actually help me feel like he’s beatable. I went into a fear spiral after the election. But I realized that it was hard for me to take action, or even to know what to do in the moment when I was paralyzed with terror. And yet we do have to go on with our lives as best we can. We can’t give up. I don’t minimize the danger at all. Nor do I advocate pulling the wool over our eyes. Making fun of the tiny fingered shitgibbon reminds me that he is not infallible. Humor is an act of bravery.
ThresherK (tablet)
The decontexted photos of Gannon’s bald head, upside down, initially looked like they fit his description of his genitalia, wearing a suit
When I recognised what it was it didn’t make me feel much better.
–
Also, the Conservative News Service has gone on record with “If that’s anyone else but Steve Allen, they’re stealing our bit!”
Aleta
Star Tribune
Aleta
@Mnemosyne:
You’re good people.
TriassicSands
Yow! Trump’s going to have May Day parades with our military goose-stepping around DC (or NYC) followed by tanks and mobile missiles.
Oh, the pomp. Oh, the circumstance. I can hardly wait.
At some point, Trump simply has to have a faux-military uniform tailored for himself. Something in gold, perhaps.
James Powell
@Trentrunner:
I agree with you. And with all due respect have the same feeling when I read about how a Democratic senator sliced and diced a cabinet nominee. It’s all very entertaining I suppose, but the corrupt, incompetent, and evil nominees are going to be confirmed no matter how well our senators expose their unfitness. Who could be more unfit than Trump? And there he is. And here we are. Screwed, blued, and tattooed.
Betty Cracker
@James Powell: Yeah, it’s pretty hard to make an “unqualified” label stick on anyone with a clueless buffoon like Trump in the White House. Is a complete collapse of standards the next step in the decline and fall process? Not just in politics, but everywhere? Hmmm. Maybe I should buy some scrubs, head on down to the hospital and see if anyone needs brain surgery. True, I was an English major in college, am utterly clueless about neurology, anatomy, etc. But I’ve used light power tools.
Aleta
@TriassicSands: So easy to picture that. I think he’s had this dream for years and the centerpiece of the fantasy is the salutes.
I say that because T has reminded me of a relative with a mental illness who in his teens, then for years, was serious about this life plan: first become rich, have beautiful women, marry a beautiful woman, be elected US president, then invited to be and elected world president. (Many years w/therapy later, he’s aware that those kind of delusions are part of his illness and doesn’t believe that now.)
Mary G
@Mnemosyne: Thanks, Mnem! I will wear it with pride.
TriassicSands
@Aleta:
If only Trump would get the help he needs. Sadly, I don’t think they have much luck with people who have Trumpian type personality disorders. Alas, the best treatment would be to lock him away and keep him from having any contact with real human beings.
Aleta
Why did the giant gator cross the road?
To get to the other swamp.
Aleta
@TriassicSands: He’d have to have bad breakdowns and then want to avoid that. Instead he’s protected enough and apparently functional enough that his dream came true. Thanks to a lot of helpers + people afraid to talk.
TriassicSands
@Aleta:
If the congressional Republicans had a shred of integrity, I’d be surprised if Trump finished his 4-year term. But they don’t.
aimai
@Mnemosyne: Man, I wish I’d known there was a hat give away! I am going to the boston women’s march but no hat!
p.a.
Draining the swamp was just to make it easier to recruit the rats and snakes.
Manyakitty
@Mnemosyne: I’ll have six done by tonight. Five are going to DC and one might be in Cleveland.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
So the guy who spent the entire campaign running the country down thinks the President needs to be the nations biggest cheerleader? I don’t think he gets the whole cheerleading thing.
Bobby Thomson
Keep America Great is stolen from The Purge.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Look around when you get there — the majority of the hats are going to DC, but there have been a LOT of ad hoc local efforts as well, so there may be local groups handing them out.
Or call a local yarn store (one of the fancy ones, not, like, Michael’s) and ask if they have any.
Wapiti
As a old soldier, I’ll say that I despised marching in parades. As a officer, I really hated parades because every parade required 2-3 days of prep, which ate into the meager time we had available for everything else on our plate. Like maintenance and training.
I imagine Trump likes parades because they are big flashy displays, even if they have little to do with modern warfare. Since he went to a military reform school, I imagine he knows how to march – so he thinks it’s important.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
“Make America Great Again” was also the slogan of a demagogue in Octavia E. Butler’s prescient dystopian novel, Parable of the Talents, 1998 or thereabouts.
Stan
“I’d like to have two armies: one for display with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, staffs, distinguished and doddering Generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their General’s bowel movements or their Colonel’s piles, an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country. The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage uniforms, who would not be put on display, but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the army in which I should like to fight.”
– Jean Larteguy, French commando veteran of WW2 and Korea
JAFD
Old cliche, may or may not be true, that the biggest US government ‘subsidy’ for art and artists is the Pentagon’s budget for military bands.