"We know that a fish rots from the head down, and this is why people in the Trump White House feel emboldened to take their cues from him and disparage and denigrate others without shame. They are simply following the example of their leader, who lacks any character or shame.' - Jonathan Alter, on 'All In' Friday night
"There's something fundamentally obscene ...about a man who inherited great wealth, then built a business career largely around duping the gullible ...who's determined to snatch food from the truly desperate because he's sure that somehow or other they're getting away with something and having it too easy." Paul Krugman, NY Times, 'Let Them Eat Trump Steaks'
"No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those who are dear to him suffer wrong." Theodore Roosevelt, Nobel Peace Prize lecture
And now, Trump's tweet:
"The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over-exaggeration put out by the fake news media to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!"
Actually, sonny, you will no more find out "who they are" then you'll be able to find your ass from a hole in the ground. So now we have the response from the odious scumbag sitting in our White House. Recall this all began barely four days ago when millions of sane citizens were incensed on learning of White House Aide Kelly Sadler's atrocious excuse for a "joke" when she blabbed - in regard to Sen. John McCain (who expressed opposition to Trump's CIA pick Gina Haspel):
"It doesn't matter, he's dying anyway."
The WH liar's liar mouthpiece, Huckabee Sanders, then expressed more outrage at the "leak" from an "internal meeting" (it wasn't, it was during a meeting with congressional communications staff members) than the actual words spoken. Not surprisingly, this drew even more outrage as no apology was proffered. Sen. McCain, as we know, really is dying from inoperable brain cancer.
The Sadler death "joke" came on the same day another degenerate, a retired Air Force 3 star general named Thomas G. McInerney, rejected Sen. McCain's opposition to torture saying "it worked on him, that's why they call him 'Songbird John". This was on the FOX Business Network. This also prompted the excoriating comment from former VP Joe Biden in regard to Sadler's comment:
"Given this White House's trail of disrespect toward John and others this staffer is not the exception to the rule she is the epitome of it."
And, of course, this is because - as Jonathan Alter put it "the fish rots from the head down". Trump is the de facto head of the Trump White House, and so any derivative bile, toxins or rot that flows therefrom must come from him. His approval, tacit or otherwise, gives permission to others to follow his disgusting lead, emulating his own vile example.
But this should not be surprising, nor that Trump is now taking aim at hollowing out Medicare for oldsters via an $800m gutting, and using a phony baloney approach to make citizens think they're going to get a deal on Pharma drugs. No, they are not, e.g.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/79132/trump-s-drug-pricing-scam
But again, why express surprise? As pointed out by NY Times David Brooks ('Trump's Lizard Wisdom' May 10, p. A27), in regard to why Trump latched onto Michael Cohen as is all purpose "fixer":
"Operating in the New York construction world meant dealing with S&A Concrete, co-owned by 'Fat' Tony Salerno of the Genovese crime family, and John Cody, the notorious head of Teamsters Local 282, who was convicted on tax evasion and racketeering charges. Building casinos in Atlantic City brought Trump into similarly genteel circumstances.... Trump's fixer Michael Cohen emerged from the same galaxy of gray market hustlers."
In other words, we shouldn't be surprised Trump is a grifter, parasite associate and wannabe hood - or as Bill Maher put it in his Friday night Trump riff on HBO: "His first name is even 'Don'"
SO why should anyone believe anything this swine says? Then there is his announcement to go after the SNAP program food stamp recipients via new restrictions and work requirements, which - according to the Congressional Budget Office - would leave an estimated two ,million people with much less nutritional aid. That is mostly families with children. As NY Times' Paul Krugman put, referencing not only Trump's savage austerity but the Right's overall:
"This is a problem that exists only in the Right's imagination. Able -bodied SNAP recipients who should be working but aren't are very hard to find. The vast majority of the program's recipients either are working - but at unstable jobs that pay low wages - or are children, elderly or disabled."
But evidently now, progressives and liberals aren't even allowed via media pieces, or even comedy routines, to display what little power they have left (they hold no branch of government, after all). We are warned, for example, by assorted contrarian asswipes and would be scribes, that if we continue savaging Trump or criticizing those who've enabled him, we are risking his getting re-elected in 2020. Such is the case with a moron "associate professor of politics" named Gerard Alexander, from the Univ. of Virginia. This sophist and dolt penned a piece "Liberals, You're Not As Smart As You Think" in the NY Times Sunday Review in which he carped:
"Many liberals are very smart but they are not as smart or persuasive as they think. And a backlash against liberals - a backlash that most liberals don't seem to realize they're causing - is going to get President Trump re-elected."
Well, here's a newsflash, Sparky: Our current responses to Trump and Trumpies in whatever medium are not about trying to be "smart" but to survive mentally intact in a nation (now asylum) where the inmates have taken over. And if a "backlash" to our survival mechanisms should put the current POS back in the White House you may be sure most of us will be out of this asylum, as in depart. For Janice and moi that would mean moving back to Barbados- or perhaps to Canada. Because in that case, there would be no point in believing anything is left of this already debased and tattered democracy - and further, it will have truly become an Idiocracy, to cite the name of the film.
This turkey then mentions "platforms" in the media or in the public eye, say culture or entertainment, which "makes liberals more powerful than they really are, or more accurately, liberals often don't realize how provocative and inflammatory they can be exercising their power. They not only persuade attract but annoy and repel."
He then cites, for example, the comedy remarks from Michelle Wolf at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and that "people reacted less to her talent and more to the liberal politics that she personified" adding, "for every viewer who loved her Trump bashing there seemed to be at least one put off by the one sidedness of her routine."
Know what, professor? I'll take it! What this knucklehead seems not to grasp is that this kind of biting comedy, see e.g. her performance here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDbx1uArVOM
Is exactly what's needed as a kind of balm for those of us on the side left out of the political equation right now. And as blogger Robert Freeman has aptly put it:
"The contrived uproar over Michelle Wolf’s comedy routine at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner is just that—contrived. It doesn’t merit dignifying as even a tempest in a teapot. In truth, her act was surprisingly tame, muted, even reserved. It didn’t begin to roast the attendees in a manner appropriate to the damage they have inflicted and continue to inflict on our country and world."
Perusing Alexander's junk piece, it appears he's exercised over any and all liberal anti-Trump expressions and opinions, not just Michelle Wolf's jokes. That includes the assorted "liberal" media commentary - say via Paul Krugman in the Times, or Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, which are the only things in the sea of Trumpian depravity and imbecility that we have to hang on to. And yet Alexander expects us to cease and desist? Or to pull punches? To cede our anti-Trump voices out of some unsubstantiated fear that we will get Trump "re-elected"? Well, you've living on another planet in an alternate universe. Further, you are totally misreading the body politic most of which is now in a state of barely contained rage at every derelict Trumpian outrage such as we've beheld the past five days. Want to get a glimpse of that rage? Just Google "Trump pig images" to bring up the hundreds of creative ways the left and anti-Trump bastion has depicted this asshole.
That also betrays the simmering rage welling up which will burst forth - into the streets - say if Trump is dumb enough to fire Rod Rosenstein or get rid of Robert Mueller. It is an explosion pending and only needing the right spark to set it off. It will be unleashed in full fury come this November when it transforms into a blue tsunami to wipe out all the poltroons and empty suit GOP enablers in the House, and perhaps even in the Senate too.
In the meantime, like a volcano for which internal pressures are eased in increments via fissures- as opposed to blowing up all at once- the pressures of frustration are being released via comedy, media or entertainment skits (like on SNL) against Trumpdom. Alexander ought to welcome such gradual release of pressures, as opposed to trying to put a lid on it. But for a political dunce, who lacks the awareness of a somnolent slug, this is about all one can expect. (And not much better from the likes of Arthur C. Brooks, in his 'Let's Stop Rewarding Bullies' (NYT, May 12) who also conflates a hard edged comedy routine (Ms. Wolf's) with bullying - say of the magnitude of the Trump bunch. Thereby showing he hasn't a clue what bullying really is or what it means. Neither does Melania whose "Be Best" campaign ought to begin with her own sorry hubby!)
Besides, I don't accept the onus is on us (left, liberals, progressives) i.e. to try to persuade the Trump followers to come to our side. That is something they will either do via reckoning from their own moral compasses, or not. If they see nothing wrong in Kelly Sadler's disgraceful disparaging of a dying former POW, then that says more about them than about us. Similarly, if they see nothing wrong with Dotard taking the food out of the mouths of millions to appease his GOP House enablers, that is also on them.
If they are more incensed by Michelle Wolf's anti-Trump jokes than about the actual depraved political actions that emanate from this White House, then that tells me we have a monstrous problem of deranged perceptions. And that problem inheres in the moral character of those who find more fault in anti-Trump jokes than in his actual crimes and transgressions on multiple levels. Including treason.
And frankly, to be blunt and honest, if Ms. Wolf is taken to be the real enemy - or those of us who howl with laughter at her routines - then I don't want anyone who inveighs against her (or us) in our camp anyway. Fuck trying to "persuade" them! It's a fool's errand, as the work of Dr. Pat Bannister (based on her theory of mind) shows. To recap, she showed wanton conspiracy confection - such as illustrated in "Pizzagate" - to be of the same generic basis as transmuting one's prejudices into manifestations of special intuition. Hence, the alt-Right conviction that its racial animus is based on being privy to some special internal insight unbeknownst to the "dumb liberals". (See, e.g. Michelle Goldberg's NY Times piece, 'How The Online Left Fuels The Right')
What may also be true is that the Right, alt-Right overreact because of their mental narcissism to what we on the left write, or say. To quote Michelle Goldberg (ibid.):
"But online life creates an illusion of left wing excess and hegemony that barely exists in the real world.."
Which is true, but the key word is "illusion". That dominance doesn't really exist in the wider culture though the Trumpies have been brainwashed to believe it. But at the same time, reining in that voice to suppress the illusion and make righties more comfortable is not an option. Not so long as Donald Trump breathes, tweets and spouts hate. Ms. Goldberg again:
"One of the terrifying things about Trump's victory is that it appeared to put the fundamental assumptions underlying pluralistic liberal democracy up for debate, opening an aperture for poisonous bigotry to seep into the mainstream."
That is precisely why we can't normalize Trump or Trumpism. If that means antagonizing the snowflake righties, so be it. If they don't have enough sense to stay in their own domain they have to take what they get. And, again, we're not - as Ms. Goldberg opines- trying to "suppress" the Right's voices online, but to soundly rebut and even roast their ideas and conspiracies when and where warranted.
For all those infected with such "mental incest" - to use Bannister's words - to the extent they "thrive on transgression" - to quote Ms. Goldberg, there can be no common cause. Period. . If you thrive on transgression, especially the forms exhibited the past five days, or get off on seeing liberals react, then you're no use to the rest of us. Best to stick with Donnie Dotard and see what next piece of coal he is ready to put in your Xmas stockings come December - say as their opioid support gets cut, or their food stamps, or Medicaid.
As for Trump himself, the sooner Mueller can bring his investigation to a close, the better. And especially the sooner we can haul this piece of human garbage out of our White House and into the nearest dumpster.
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/79156/in-bashing-liberalism-a-professor-defends-it
Excerpt:
"University of Virginia politics professor Gerard Alexander has written a rather peculiar op-ed. In his outspoken judgment, liberals are too outspoken and judgmental. With this exquisite logic, Prof. Alexander proceeds to hector liberals for hectoring conservatives and the millions of dimwits who voted for Trump. "Liberals, You’re Not as Smart as You Think You Are" is a tour de force in pots, kettles and blackness."
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