White House staffer: “Moral in the White House has never been lower. It’s like a revolving door here, except most aides who leave aren’t being replaced. I’m sick of all the chaos & really concerned about how this will affect my career & my family. I didn’t sign on for this shit.”
— Jon Cooper ? (@joncoopertweets) August 30, 2018
Any political appointee that either accepted their position after the first week of February 2017 and everyone who has not resigned has signed on for this shit.
Duane
Sign up for this shit? Hell you voted for it. Enjoy your pay raise jackass.
Elizabelle
Morale and morals are lacking in the White House. So is decency, and spelling. Those dweebs made their beds. No sympathy. Wake up, morons.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So much winning and infrastructure.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
How fucking brain dead are these people? Anybody who looked at this yooge, bigly, titanic, colossal loser and saw anything other than a yooge, bigly, titanic, colossal loser shouldn’t even get to drive a car. They’re dangers to themselves and others.
MisterForkbeard
Everyone who wanted to even work on the Trump campaign signed up for it. Trump’s chaos, inability to manage, lack of loyalty and backing biting was entirely known during the campaign, even if the media would rather have covered a rumor that Hillary might have been sick once or whether her campaign manager had emailed a risotto recipe.
Elizabelle
@Duane: Yes. I laughed when I heard Trump is interfering with the federal pay raise. Go right ahead. More votes for Democrats, and maybe some waking up.
Trump thinks he is Henry VIII. You know he’d be good w beheading.
MisterForkbeard
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I had a conversation with my brother in 2016 (he was a Bernie fan but liked Hillary too), and he told me in his work he encounters a lot of people. And that there’s huge amounts of people who either can’t sense bullshit artists at all, or who look at someone who’s mean, venal, lying, and isn’t in jail and say… “Man, that guy must be really smart! He’s great!”
It sounds about right. There are huge swaths of people who listen to Trump speak and don’t think “He’s lying and made up everything in that speech”, they think “It’s so great that this guy says mean stuff!” and that’s in addition to the racists and sexists.
jharp
“I’m concerned about how this will affect my career & my family. I didn’t sign on for this shit.””
Yes you did sign up for this shit and my hope is it ruins your career.
And I’m fairly certain it will.
debit
All I have it yet another Nelson Muntz “Hah hah!” Eat it, you miserable lick-spittle, EAT IT ALL.
Gemina13
They not only signed on for it, they campaigned for it, voted for it, and wore kneepads to the interview.
Forget the tiny violins. Karma has been blooming in all her magnificence for these venal little jackals. Their whines are all the music she needs.
debbie
Before they leave, I hope they hide all of the remotes in the building.
Major Major Major Major
Yeah I…. don’t care.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
BTW – I have noted the “Trump’s not a true Republican” more and more on things like You Tube. Of course it’s not official until Fox shows a picture of Trump with the caption “Donald Trump – D”
Mary G
Where did I put my microscopic violin?
George
What is the explanatory variable that controls people who think that working for Trump would not lead to personal and/or professional disaster?
Seriously–what fairly sane, moderately rational person who is able to put on socks and shoes every morning, as well as feed him/herself, bathe, and so forth, could not see this coming? Are there some people who simply are unable to process reality and come to reasonable conclusions about how A leads to B which leads to C?
Do societies always have an endemic level of these sorts of people, and occasionally something happens and basic dumbness becomes epidemic?
We need more tigers running free in America. They would eat the slothful and the unaware.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
This hits the mark here.
MattF
Can’t help but wonder what the qualifications are now for a WH job, besides watching Fox news full-time. “Can you work a dogwhistle?””Can you lick spittle?”
Doug R
He was racist in his announcement. He got into a fight with a gold star family. He body shamed a beauty contestant.
Anybody wants to work with that, f*ck’em.
John Revolta
@MisterForkbeard: Your brother…………does he have these peoples’ phone numbers and addresses and stuff?
Just wonderin’.
Gin & Tonic
I’m waiting for when it’s more acceptable for those people to explain the blank spot on their resume from January 2017 to November of 2018 by saying “Oh, I was in prison for assault” than saying “I was a functionary in the Trump WH.”
geg6
I really don’t care. Do u?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Doug R:
Yeah, anybody who gets in a fucking fight with people who lost their son fighting for our country is a bad bet. You’d think anybody could see that. How out of it are these people that they missed that class? This is just basic decency 101 here.
MisterForkbeard
@John Revolta: Nope. He’s a nurse, used to work in psychiatry. Can’t give out those names and addresses – HIPAA. you know.
zhena gogolia
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Great! I love Tom Servo’s corn-cob pipe.
zhena gogolia
@Doug R:
You forgot mimicked a disabled reporter.
George
@MisterForkbeard: I agree with you and your brother. It does seem that there are people who lack basic critical thinking skills and who can’t sniff out the charlatans. These people aren’t all idiots, and yet they touch the stove, get burned, wonder why, then touch the stove again, get burned, wonder why, and so forth.
MisterForkbeard
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): @Doug R: This is exactly what I was thinking when the media was aghast that Trump wasn’t being appropriately laudatory of McCain. He smeared a Gold Star family and their son. Of course he’s a gigantic asshole with no respect for anything.
Duane
@Elizabelle: So much for that populism appeal. What kind of politician doesn’t give out money when they have the opportunity. Those are votes dummy.
TenguPhule
Morals in the White House have indeed never been lower.
And Fucking Dick Cheney used to jizz in there.
MisterForkbeard
@George: My brother’s theory is that a large amount of those people are heavily religious – his evangelical or fundamentalist patients seemed to have this problem much more than others. The theory is that they’re all inducted/raised in an environment which actively discourages critical thinking and following ‘leaders’ as having the literal voice of God. And frequently those leaders are just there grifting.
These marks have been explicitly trained to fall for people like Trump, essentially. Digby just highlighted some interesting research showing that Evangelicals were the big factor behind Trump’s election. He basically failed or reached parity with every other group, but Evangelicals supported him by a 60-percent margin.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Sticking it to federal employees is popular with dumb Americans. Alas.
Martin
@George: This is the Dunning-Kruger administration. It’s perfectly tuned to filter out those people that are utterly unaware of their own shortcomings and elevate them into positions of authority, where they can reveal to Politico that they are utterly unaware of their own shortcomings.
TenguPhule
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
The dead soldier was the wrong color. QED.
/I wish this was a joke.
MattF
@MisterForkbeard: Like the time he ‘comforted’ the widow of soldier by saying “he knew what he signed up for.”
TenguPhule
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Infrastructure week again? Dangnamit!
Brachiator
I never expected “moral” from this Trump bunch.
“Morale,” neither.
Nor literacy, as it turns out.
TenguPhule
Once more.
“WHY ARE THESE LEOPARDS EATING MY FACE!?” Screams proud member of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
John Revolta
@MisterForkbeard: Oh Sure. Big Med keepin’ all the marks fer themselves.
Jay
The digby link:
https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2018/08/its-conservative-evangelicals-stupid.html?m=1
California Stars
Duncan Hunter was a bright star in the GOP constellation, so can you imagine the moral/intellectual caliber of a mere WH aide? I’m thinking this is probably representative.
Jeffro
@George: or leopards
Eating people’s faces
A Ghost To Most
All the way to 40 without a “womp womp”?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@John Revolta: And you thought HIPPA was to protect patient privacy. It’s how nurses can afford to drive new Lexus’.
Van Buren
This will actually get plenty of support in the rural south, where they are convinced that everyone who works for the feds is a communist, and everyone who lives in a metropolitan area is not a real American.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@A Ghost To Most: We were saving it for 50, ya know like Cole’s dad.
Villago Delenda Est
As countless before me (well, OK, less than 40, but whatever) have said, you did sign up for this shit, asshole.
Now suffer for your lack of vision.
Frankensteinbeck
@George:
Assholes demand to be praised for being assholes. This is important. They literally have no idea they’re not God’s gift to the Earth. They see Trump being a corrupt, sadistic, racist shit and think that’s great and sure to succeed, because it’s what they want to do and they know they’re always right. The apotheosis of this process was that the White House was not ready for push back on separating children from their parents at the border because they honestly thought no one would mind. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing Mexicans suffer? This applies to a vast swathe of voters. At least a third of this country are mean shits who wear a mask of niceness because they have to.
@MisterForkbeard:
This has very little to do with gullibility or authoritarianism. There is no deeper, more vile concentration of hate in the US than evangelical Christianity. They don’t love trump because they fall for his lies, they champion his lies because they love Trump.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Well played.
TenguPhule
@Villago Delenda Est:
Dark Side Lightning to commence?
dmsilev
I thought conservatives were all about personal responsibility and making people pay for their poor decisions.
Or is that offer only good for Other People?
dmsilev
@Brachiator: You do have to admit, that when the Trump administration took over, the moral(s) in the White House have never been lower.
Schlemazel
@jharp:
I am not at all certain it will hurt their career. Working for Nixon didn’t, working for Reagan didn’t, working for Boy Blunder didn’t. Why would this be any different?
We will see these people in conservative welfare jobs ready and willing the next time a Republican infests the White House
Frankensteinbeck
@dmsilev:
More than that. It means ‘blacks are lazy’. That’s all it has ever meant. Reinterpret all politics from the base assumption that blacks are lazy criminals, and the things Republicans say will make one Hell of a lot more sense.
Mike in NC
White House staffers spend their days walking around and stepping on rakes. Film at 11.
Martin
@MisterForkbeard:
I think it’s a bit deeper than that. It’s virtually impossible to distinguish white supremacists from white evangelicals. White evangelicals might only be delivering a diluted form of white supremacy, but it’s still white supremacy. When they proclaim the US to be a christian nation, they sure as fuck wouldn’t be happy with a nation of latino Catholics and they’re openly disdainful of black Baptists.
Evangelicals could care less about Trump. They’re all cool with Gods imperfect vessel, after all, and after decades of steady erosion of the culture war they know their time is about up. Obama made that clear enough. Trump is the last gasp. Subtle efforts to maintain that permanent
Republicanwhite Christian majority have failed, and only unsubtle efforts remain, but politicians weren’t willing to go all Lee Atwater until Trump. I assure you that they despise Trump as a person, but he’s the vehicle that they believe will deliver the national changes that will leave them in power.And Congress is going along with this. They’re doing so because even though they know that they’re fucked electorally (that was going to happen either way) at least they can jam through a shit-ton of lifetime appointment judges that will keep ruling in their favor long after the voting public is willing to support their positions. They just need to hold this shit heap together long enough to get confirmations complete, and that time too is just about up. Once they lose the ability to confirm judges, they’ll turn hard on Trump in an effort to salvage some sort of reputation from this wreckage.
TenguPhule
Democratic lawmakers call for hearings into denial of passports to Americans
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m supposed to feel sorry for these people? They’re collaborators.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: That’s only for other people; womp, womp.
jl
Remember that in a Baud 2020! administration, the chaos would the worse, but the mood would be wonderful.
I think the plan is to contract actual executive branch to the Swiss, or Dutch or some other small fairly well-run country that is willing to submit regular reports.
gorram
They just wanted to deport millions of people in peace and decorum, waaaah.
TenguPhule
@Martin:
No they won’t.
Their fortunes are tied to Trump now. For better or worse.
PaulWartenberg
Anyone who paid attention to trump AT ALL – his bad-boss betrayals of staff, his chaotic management style, his bankrupt casinos, fraud cases like trump U., an entire FOOTBALL LEAGUE HE KILLED OFF IN THE 80S – knew not to take a fucking job with him. I have no sympathy for ANYBODY who said YES to a job serving trump.
FelonyGovt
This is a president* who is disinvited to weddings and funerals. Who winning sports teams don’t want to meet. Who can’t show at the Kennedy Center awards because honorees threaten to boycott if he appears. What would make anyone think serving in this administration would be a good career move?
Yutsano
Womp womp.
I did that right yeah?
California Stars
@Schlemazel: Sadly, excellent point. I keep discovering that yet another one of the current batch of yokels turns out to have cut their teeth alongside GWB/Nixon/et al.
Wilson Heath
Poor little fascists didn’t think the “Downfall” bunker scene would have come this early?
A Ghost To Most
@FelonyGovt:
And yet, they persist.
Fuckem.
Jay
@FelonyGovt:
The thieves thought they could steal stuff,
The Nazi’s thought they could hurt people,
The Warmongers thought they get their war-on,
The Corporatists thought they could kill regulations,
The Narccisist’s thought they could become famous,
Used to be a well paying Market for these talents and Associations for people who could say the quiet parts quietly.
FlipYrWhig
@MisterForkbeard: They’re hateful, stupid people who congregate with one another. Liking Donald Trump, going to a ridiculous non-doctrinal church that tells them they’re special, these are two sides of the same coin. They’re not patsies, they actively want it all. They are horrible human beings. I don’t care what happens to them.
A Ghost To Most
@Jay: And the Christian fascists thought they could get their theocracy.
Brachiator
@Elizabelle: I just saw this thing about Trump wanting to freeze federal pay raises.
Because the rich really need their tax cuts.
And i guess there are no white federal employees, just nonwhite free loaders. And besides, we don’t really need no federal government.
More jobs for wannabe coal miners, I guess.
Oddly enough, I think that Trump supporters will still be okay with this, even applaud Trump’s audacity.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: 30% of the civilian civil service work force is made up of veterans.
Donald fucks over his superiors in every way once again.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: It’s a bizarre, creepy cult. They’ll be OK with everything forever.
AThornton
Everyone needs to attend an Evangelical service. Just to experience up close & personal how batshit loony-crazy mentally defective they are.
Kathleen
@Frankensteinbeck: I hereby deem you “The Thug Whisperer”. You always articulate the subtext perfectly.
Kathleen
@Kathleen: Fuck I meant to type “I hereby declare you…”
Kathleen
@FelonyGovt: Meet The Press, The HandMag’s Tale, CBS, ABC, CNN, NPR, etc etc etc. None of this phases them at all.
hueyplong
“I’m sick of all the chaos & really concerned about how this will affect my career & my family. I didn’t sign on for this shit.”
My heart soars like a hawk.
Platonailedit
Even at this stage, they don’t do mea culpa, it’s only me, me, me. Fuck’em.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est: I guess that Trump will give active military a pay raise, and lie that he is the only president to have done so in 500 years. But otherwise, nothing for them but empty thanks.
He is amazingly despicable.
Ladyraxterinok
@MisterForkbeard: SBC before right wing takeover in the 70s and 80s (eg 40s and 50s when I attended SBC churches in OK and TX) did not teach blind accepatance of leaders’ words. As little kids we heard in Sunday School the phrase ‘the priesthood of all believers.’ And were taught ‘I don’t need a pope or priest to tell me what to believe. There’s just God, the Bible, and me!’
From what I’ve read in comments from former and ‘barely hanging on’ SBCers at the blog thewartburgwatch.com, this explicitly changed in 2000. Tbere was a new statement adopted at the convention that year that dropped the ‘priesthood of all believers’ statement. IIRC, it also said that ministers were to teach the congregation. AND all ministers, missionaries, heads of boards, and faculty at convention colleges and seminaries had to formally agree to this statement. From then on the SBC had a creed, the denomination whose proud motto had always been ‘no creed but the Bible.’
It was in 2000 that Jimmy Carter and his wife left the SBC with a formal statement nationally publicized. He explicitly took issue with the codification of the claim that wives were to be subordinate to their husbands.
Villago Delenda Est
@AThornton: An Amway (or whatever they’re calling themselves this week) meeting is just as good. The Mammon worship is open and unashamed.
J R in WV
@MattF:
This is Nobel Prize quality shade..!!! Thanks so much, I will be stealing this ASAP!!!!!
Ruckus
@George:
To answer your question in one word, YES.
There are a few reasons why this happens, in our case there are 3 or 4 biggies.
First, MONEY. Any society that shovels money to the top of the heap, taking a lot of it from the bottom 70-80% is going to end up there because some of that money comes from schools, some of it is spread to whatever communications outlets there are so that they can tell everyone that’s getting fucked that they aren’t.
Second, half the people are below the median of stupid/smart. Education can help raise that – see the first reason. Propaganda can help kill that – see the first reason.
Third, our political system is a two party republic system. This pits basically two sides against the other. When they are somewhat in balance numerically there will always be issues if one of the sides is completely unethical – see the republican party.
J R in WV
I visited the Wartburg site after it was mentioned here the other day.
Dayum, even those folks just hanging around the SBC and other Baptists more right wing than the SBC, they’re all demented.
They’ve decided it’s OK to slice every verse of the Bible off and separate it from every other verse, and write a book about every verse and how it makes the preachers head of their congregation, and of all the people in the congregation, and if they want to beat little babies and rape teens of every sex, that is all good with jesus and gawd. No, I’m not blowing the faith out of proportion, that’s what it is.
They go to court, where ministers are being convicted of criminal abuse, both sexual and physical brutal beating little kids, and shouting in favor of the convicted criminal abusers, rapers, and beaters. Really, they are. Sick making monsters leading people too stupid to know any better.
And these are the people working in the White House, too stupid to quit back about February or March after Trump took office. Working for the monster!!
Ruckus
@MisterForkbeard:
If they are trained by the evangelicals, how did they get involved with them in the first place?
It goes a lot deeper than that. And evangelicals have been around since the country was founded. They found a big new country that was going to let them be, because there was no official religion.
Evangelicals are not the reason they are so gullible, they are gullible first and are easy marks for the evangelicals and the political versions of bible thumpers.
Ruckus
@PaulWartenberg:
It goes back farther in time than that but at least your list goes back far enough that it should have been enough for anyone.
Mel
@TenguPhule: Beat me to it!