rogerwmbennett
Home
Archives
Search
Feed
I ran across this dystopian sentence in the New York Times: “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”
…
Is the White House destroying people’s lives due to incompetence or because it’s overly eager to manufacture a public consensus that the president should be able to do anything he likes so long as he utters the magic words “Tren de Aragua”?
Another Trumpian hallmark of the missile strike is the proposition it stands for, that there’s no national problem that can’t be solved with more ruthlessness. The uniparty may have been content to have the Coast Guard interdict drug smugglers, arrest them, and confiscate their cargo, but that obviously wasn’t enough to cure America’s drug addiction. What else can the president do, then, except start summarily executing people who may or may not be guilty and trust that other drug dealers will recalculate the risk of trafficking to the U.S. accordingly?
Deterrence through terror has always been Trump’s answer to major social ills. In his first months as a candidate in 2015 he recommended killing jihadis’ families to make them think twice. As president he reportedly fantasized about building a moat along the border stocked with alligators, electrifying the wall, and shooting immigrants in the legs whenever they’re caught in the act of crossing over. He allegedly once congratulated Rodrigo Duterte on his notoriously bloody campaign against drug-dealing in the Philippines and told an audience on the campaign trail last year that America’s crime problem could be solved by letting police have one “real rough” hour with suspects.
“The word will get out” after the bloodletting is over, the president imagined, and the crime wave “will end immediately.” Deterrence through terror: That’s his approach to domestic politics and to immigration, so why wouldn’t it be his approach to drug-trafficking too?
On Wednesday Rubio went as far as to admit that the U.S. could have intercepted the Venezuelan ship instead of incinerating it but that doing so wouldn’t have packed the same deterrent punch, which I suppose is true in the same way that Trump’s “one rough hour” scenario is true. If you want to discourage crime, letting cops shoot suspects in the head in lieu of arresting them would do the job more efficiently.
Bootstrapping in the Trump administration’s handling of deportations:
Earlier this year, progressive Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar told Business Insider that she had been victim to a “coordinated right-wing disinformation campaign” alleging that she’s worth millions of dollars. But this week, The Washington Free Beacon reported that she and her husband, Tim Mynett, are worth between $6–$30 million.
Broadcast network Newsmax filed an antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Fox News and Fox Corporation, accusing the conservative media giant of illegally monopolizing the right-leaning pay-TV news market. The lawsuit alleges Fox uses exclusionary contracts with distributors to suppress competitors and seeks damages under federal antitrust law, though the complaint did not specify an amount for damages. Newsmax claims Fox imposes penalties on distributors who carry competing right-wing channels and has engaged in intimidation tactics against the company. “Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” a Fox News spokesperson said in response.
“Trump’s second election was confirmation to the world that the American people can no longer be relied upon,” [Jonathan] Last argues. “We are too—well, you can fill in your own descriptor. Vapid? Decadent? Unserious? Inconstant? Whatever word you choose, the idea is the same: America as it existed from World War II to 2016 is a spent force. That age is over.” I’ve said as much myself, more than once.
For that reason, the president shouldn’t take it personally when Narendra Modi and other leaders descend on Beijing to kiss Xi Jinping’s ring. They’re not snubbing him, they’re simply shifting their bets on global leadership as a declining America goes about committing national suicide. A figure as infamously transactional as Trump should understand better than most that a “conspiracy” is just another transaction. He—or, rather, his voters—gave China and its allies an opportunity to transact. Why wouldn’t they take it?
To gauge the speed of America’s third-world-ization, economist Noah Smith pointed out, consider just the past few weeks. Generalissimo Trump deployed troops to the capital, moved to seize power over setting interest rates, partially nationalized another American corporation, purged a few more high-ranking military and intelligence officials, issued a decree purporting to ban flag burning (sort of), and watched the FBI he commands search the home of one of his political nemeses for reasons that may or may not turn out to be justified.
He also put a henchman on the federal bench, instigated an irregular redistricting push to weaken the opposition’s chances of reclaiming power, and fired the federal bureaucrat in charge of calculating employment numbers because the July data made him look bad. His choice to replace her is exactly the type of person you’d expect.
Those are things that happen routinely in “sh-thole countries,” to borrow the president’s preferred terminology. Draw your own conclusion about America in 2025 from the fact that they’re happening here.
Last fall’s electorate can be divided into three groups.
The first hoped Donald Trump would turn America into a third-world country. We call them populists.
The second feared he would turn America into a third-world country. We call them liberals.
The third doubted he would turn America into a third-world country. We call them imbeciles.
The imbeciles were the swing group.
Where two or three gather in Trump’s name, there he is to bask in their obsequiousness, as if he’s extending his legs for a pedicure and each of them is calling dibs on a different toe. No checks and no balance there.
It’s the law
| Name | Law | Examples/Explanations |
|---|---|---|
| Betteridge’s Law of Headlines | Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no.” | If the journalist had proof, they wouldn’t need to ask. |
| Brandolini’s Law | The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. | Gish Gallop; Steve Bannon “flooding the zone with shit”; Tucker Carlson |
| Conquest’s Third Law | The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. | |
| Cunningham’s Law | The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer. | People love correcting others more than helping them. |
| The Dilbert Principle | Companies promote their least competent employees to management to minimize the damage they can do. | Unlike the Peter Principle, this suggests incompetence is rewarded with power. |
| Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect | You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see it’s wildly wrong on facts or issues. But you read the rest of the paper as if it were accurate. | Do you really need an example? |
| Givens’ Observation | If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole. | Agencies, Military leaders, etc. who disagree with Trump are all “losers” |
| Godwin’s Law | As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1. | Bonus points if someone declares the conversation over once Hitler is mentioned. |
| Godwin’s Law Corollary | The first person to mention Hitler automatically loses the argument, regardless of context. | … because they’ve obviously run out of actual arguments. |
| Hanlon’s Razor | Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. | Most screw-ups are just incompetence, not conspiracy. (Like the time I was an Orderly and didn’t notice at the end of a shift that a patient had soiled himself and needed a cleanup.) |
| Hofstadter’s Law | It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law. | |
| Iron Law of Institutions | Those in control of institutions prioritize maintaining their power within the institution above all else, even the institution’s success. | From political blogger Jon Schwarz |
| Iron Law of Oligarchy | Any organization, regardless of its formal structure, ends up being run by a small elite. | |
| Murphy’s Law | Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. | And it’ll happen at the worst possible moment. |
| Occam’s Razor | The simplest explanation is usually correct. | But humans love complicated conspiracy theories instead. |
| O’Sullivan’s Law | All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. | Ivy League Universities |
| The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) | 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. 80% of your problems come from 20% of your customers, 80% of your work gets done in 20% of your time, etc. | |
| Parkinson’s Law | Work expands to fill the time available. | Give someone a week to do a task, and they’ll somehow need the full week. |
| Poe’s Law | Without clear indicators like emoticons, it’s impossible to distinguish extreme views from parodies of those views in online text. | |
| Rule 34 | If something exists, there’s inappropriate internet content about it. | |
| The Streisand Effect | Attempting to hide or censor information only makes it spread more widely. | Named after Barbra Streisand’s failed attempt to suppress photos of her house. |
| Sturgeon’s Law | Ninety percent of everything is crap. | Named after science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who was defending his genre against critics. |
| Wadsworth Constant | The actual content of any YouTube video begins at the 30% mark. | Everything before that is fluff. |
Iranian Christians Should Not Be Detained While Seeking Asylum. But they are being detained, likely will be killed if sent back to Iran — and Trump doesn’t care because he pulled the number “a million” out of his ass and promised to deport that many this year.
Keeping that promise means:
As he inches (“foots”? “yards”?) us toward fascism, Trump regularly pauses to throw the booboisie some red (or red, white and blue) meat:
Yesterday President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on the “burning of the American flag.” As usual, the president decided to freelance a bit while signing the executive order in front of the cameras and declared that “you burn a flag, you get one year in jail.” Now that would be an interesting executive order! But fortunately, the order he signed does not actually say that. In fact, it is so hemmed in by legal qualifications that it does not do much of anything at all. Other than, of course, provide the president with the opportunity to hold a press conference and excite his fans with some patriotic bluster.
FBI agents searched the Maryland home and Washington, D.C., office of former national security adviser John Bolton on Friday morning, reportedly as part of an investigation into his potential mishandling of classified documents. Bolton was not charged or detained during the operation. President Donald Trump—who revoked Bolton’s security clearance and Secret Service protection days into his second term—told reporters he had no prior knowledge of the searches but described Bolton, who has been a sharp critic of Trump in recent years, as “a real sort of a low life” and “not a smart guy.”
Congratulations, Mr. Bolton! Being described by Donald Trump as “a real sort of a low life” and “not a smart guy” is like winning a Nobel Prize for Integrity and Rectitude.
On August 18, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would sign another executive order, following one issued in March, to “help bring honesty” to elections and to the 2026 mid-term elections in particular. According to Trump, its aims are to end to mail-in voting and to replace voting machines in favor of “watermark paper” ballots. Trump claims the legal authority to do this because it is “good for the country.”
Bob Bauer, Donald Trump’s Plan for “Honest” Mid-Term Elections
He has no authority to do this. It’s not a close call. But he’s so convinced of god-knows-what that he’s going to try to make it a matter of party loyalty in the states, which do have authority over elections, or maybe in Congress (which has some little-used power). Will this issue be the bridge too far?
For there is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved.
Acts 4:12. That name, apparently, is “Alfred Nobel.”
There’s a bipartisan Russia-sanctions bill sitting there in the Senate—with 81 co-sponsors—waiting for Sen. John Thune to let it advance. What is Thune waiting for? Trump.
And what is Trump waiting for? Who knows? Christmas, maybe. Or maybe a visit from the Testicles Fairy. He is about to turn 80—his balls may get lower, but they aren’t going to get bigger without supernatural intervention.
Here is an idea: How about somebody trot on over to Thune’s office and remind him that he is a rather big cheese in the branch of the federal government that actually makes the goddamned laws, and he could, if he liked, go ahead and get that bill passed irrespective of whether the president’s delicate sensibilities are ready for it. With 81 co-sponsors, he could even override a presidential veto.
…
Thune’s branch is right there in Article I, not lurking down in the penumbras. There was a time when Congress—and Americans at large!—were operating under the quaint notion that Congress, the elected lawmakers and representatives, was there to, you know, govern the country, while the president was there to “faithfully execute the laws” instead of ignoring them (I believe this morning marks the 211th day of TikTok operating illegally in the United States because Trump refuses to enforce a law that inconveniences one of his financial benefactors) or illegally trying to supplant Congress’ role in making them.
Kevin D. Williamson, Tacos Kiev: ‘Trump Always Chickens Out,’ Alaska edition.
Alaska clarified what was unclear only to the obtuse: Putin wants to win the war, Trump wants to end it, and as George Orwell said, the quickest way to end a war is to lose it. … Alaska was not just another drop in our overflowing bucket of mortifications. It was proof that for the next 41 months, no interlocutor can believe a word the U.S. president says.
The problem is not that he is endlessly cynical, which would be an improvement. Rather, he seems promiscuously sincere, believing everything equally, no matter how discordant his beliefs today are with yesterday’s. It has been well said that our most important ideas are those that contradict our feelings. Does Trump have any such?
George Will, Now it is the Old World’s turn to rescue the United States
Much of the commentary surrounding President Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles and now Washington, D.C., has centered on its impact on American democracy. Do we want to live in a republic that puts military boots on city streets at the whim of a politician, rather than in response to an extraordinary need?
Yet I’m just as concerned about the effect of Trump’s deployments on the military itself. He isn’t just deploying America’s military into the streets; he’s deploying it into the American culture war. And he’s threatening to expand his campaign into blue cities in blue states where homicide rates are actually far lower than in many cities in red states ….
David French, Trump’s Domestic Deployments Are Dangerous. For the Military.
View the archives