Trump doesn’t really fight crime. He takes revenge on his adversaries. (H/T David French)
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Trump doesn’t really fight crime. He takes revenge on his adversaries. (H/T David French)
For a while, I sorta tried to save news items about Trump’s major corrupt enterprises, but in light of my realization that my countrymen quite knowingly elected a corrupt and autocrat narcissist, I no longer see the point.
An American Melodrama: More than a dozen Border Patrol agents turned up in downtown Los Angeles on yesterday at a rally and news conference that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was holding on congressional redistricting. The governor’s event had nothing to do with immigration, and local elected officials expressed outrage that the federal agents decided to stand there in a brazen show of force outside a museum where Mr. Newsom and other leaders were speaking. As the governor was preparing to speak inside the Japanese American National Museum in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, the agents assembled outside, many of them masked and armed, and some wearing tactical helmets and carrying rifles. (Source: nytimes.com)
Donald Trump has the National Guard rolling into the streets of the nation’s capital city, but—angels and ministers of grace, defend us!—there’s a maniac with cold-cuts on the loose.
(Six Inches of Home Run Ham was not, tragically, the name of one of those softcore porn movies Trump appeared in before the thrice-married game show host became the tribune of American evangelicals.)
…
There are terrorists and human traffickers and cartels and old-fashioned mobsters and gangsters out there, all across the fruited plain, and, in our nation’s hideous capital, there are little platoons of madness, schizophrenic onanists on the sidewalk manhandling the ham candle, having a hallucinatory ménage à moi right there on all the best commercial real estate in town, and Pam Bondi is pointing to the guy committing flagrant hoagie assault (Flagrant Hoagie Assault also is not the name of one of those softcore porn movies Trump was in) and crying out to the weary republic: “See? See? This—THIS!—is what we are up against!”
…
Sandwich guy apparently believes that the bread machine over at Subway has the same slogan on the side as Woody Guthrie’s guitar: “This machine kills fascists.” And poor feckless Pam Bondi, being as clever as a sausage, has to wait around for someone to tell her what to think about that.
Pete Hegseth, who’s forever wheezing about warfighting and “lethality,” now presides over a force whose duties increasingly involve standing around next to cops as human props in what will end up as B-roll footage for the GOP’s eventual midterm ads.
Nick Catoggio, Looking for Excuses
Trump intends to use the 250th celebration next year as a Putin-style glorification of his reign.
Andrew Sullivan, The Permanent Stain
I remember the 1976 bicentennial fairly vividly, watching the tall ships sailing into New York on our newlywed’s black & white TV. I anticipate taking zero percent of that pleasure over what already is, and will remain, America’s corpse in 2026. Cage fighting at the White House will fit the occasion all too well.
[O]nly in police states do governments deploy masked anonymous armed men — now with no age limits! — patrolling the streets with the power to arrest and detain.
Andrew Sullivan, The Permanent Stain
[W]hat were only a few years ago obviously impeachable offenses are now simply known as the Trump administration.
Andrew Sullivan, The Permanent Stain
There remains a blind hope that Americans still don’t understand; if we raise our voices louder and dial up the urgency to 11, at last they’ll be roused.
They won’t be, though. They do understand. They don’t care. “The forces we are up against are far beyond Trump,” Sullivan acknowledged in his piece. “They’re called the cycles of history and a critical mass of the American people, who no longer want to govern themselves, who are sick of this republic and no longer want to keep it if it means sharing power with those they despise.” That’s a nice précis of the conclusions I’ve drawn in dozens of editions of this newsletter. Americans will not be roused. All indications are that they’re going to ride this rocket into the ground.
Nick Catoggio, Looking for Excuses
I’ve made the point before that, by presidential standards, Trump is unusually averse to deploying troops abroad and unusually eager to deploy them here at home. It’s tempting to call that a quirk, but it isn’t. It’s sound postliberal logic. If your true enemy is liberalism, why would you waste military power fighting other postliberals abroad? Focus on the threat here at home.
Nick Catoggio, Looking for Excuses
Via Andrew Sullivan. His lead essay is a real stemwinder, too.
I read this a month or more ago, and have reflected on it frequently. It is unsurpassed as a summary of Trumpism:
Trumpism can be seen as a giant attempt to amputate the highest aspirations of the human spirit and to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies.
You can take this to the bank: If the New York Times notices the Buddha, the enlightened one has already left town.
Ted Gioia, The Ten Warning Signs
| Aspect | Details | Implications |
|---|---|---|
| Historical Comparisons | Previous administrations had corruption but less brazen/varied than current Trump era | Trump’s era marks a new high in political graft and foreign influence |
| Foreign Deals & Gifts | Qatar’s $400M jet; new Trump projects in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Vietnam; crypto deals with Pakistan | Foreign regimes capitalize on Trump’s presidency for economic and political favors |
| Domestic Legal Maneuvers | Settlements with media companies ($16M from Paramount; $15M from ABC) over weak claims | Legal threats used as financial leverage to enrich Trump family and fund future ambitions |
| Presidential Privilege | Supreme Court ruling grants immunity; loyal AG; dismantling watchdogs and regulations | Weakens checks on corruption; shields Trump and associates from prosecution |
| Global Political Effects | Countries compete to gain Trump’s favor through investments and bribes | Destabilizes international norms; promotes kleptocracy worldwide |
| Future Outlook | Corruption expected to intensify; foreign influence to deepen | Potential for worsening governance crises and compromised U.S. sovereignty |
(Casey Michel, Trump’s Corruption and Foreign Influence)
Misconception about Authoritarianism Many assume that democracy is safe as long as elections occur and criticism isn’t outright banned. However, political scientists define a process called democratic backsliding, where authoritarian tendencies gradually erode democratic norms without fully abolishing elections. This can lead to competitive authoritarianism, where elections exist but the ruling party heavily suppresses opposition through institutional control.
Examples of Trump’s Authoritarian Moves (July 2):
Actions Beyond Words:
Broader Implications:
Explanation of Concepts
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Democratic Backsliding | Gradual erosion of democratic norms and institutions without outright abolition of democracy. |
| Competitive Authoritarianism | Elections are held but are heavily skewed by ruling party control of institutions and laws. |
Conclusion
The described behaviors indicate a shift toward authoritarian practices within a system that still outwardly appears democratic. The presence of elections alone does not guarantee democracy if the ruling party uses state power to intimidate opponents, control institutions, and undermine independent oversight.
Solurce: Jonathan Chait in the Atlantic, with a little summarizing help from AI.
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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. |
| 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. |
I plan to update this from time-to-time as more wry observations come to my attention again.
The facts show Vance Boelter was a Trump-supporting far-right individual. Attempts by far-right figures and conspiracy theorists to claim otherwise are baseless and part of ongoing disinformation tactics common in politically motivated violence cases.
Summary of Thomas B. Edsall, Trump Is Daring Us to Impeach Him Again
We may not be able to communicate that meaning to a world gone insane, but as Orwell knew, simply by staying sane when everyone else is mad, we may hope to convey the human heritage.
Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies
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