This is a first-rate analysis, Roy. It really is a vivid portrait of the hellish lives of these people, and why they have had to excise any sense of shame they ever had. I will note that the women in Trump's administration are particularly well-suited by experience to engage in the contradictory behavior of appearing to fawn in admiration while simultaneously clawing their way upward. Women have been trained from an early age to hide the ball of ambition. By no means am I justifying who they are or what they're doing, just noting I recognize the technique.
By the way, when my late mother's dementia reached the point she was leaving the house wearing her underwear on the outside and carrying a toaster, I suppose she could also have been described as being at her "most enigmatic." Not sure I'd call it expansive, though.
The only thing lacking was my mother didn't accuse anyone of antisemitism. Of course, my mother wasn't jewish, but why let being a gentile stop you? Plenty of rightwing christians say any sympathy for the palestinian people is antisemitism.
Having observed this, your mother's sartorial splendor, how do you reconcile "from an early age" hiding ambition and the final chapter?
A paradigm or theory must account for all cases. The hiding and ambition, where do they go when the knives come out and the underwear is on the outside?
“No sooner do I write about how nuts Trump has gotten that he ups the ante.”
Deranged Donny, now more than ever, cannot be anticipated. He’ll always be worse than even I, likewise a highly defective human being, can anticipate—forget a better person like Roy and everyone else.
***
And now I’m going to go not so much Caen maybe, more Wilson or Winchell… Yet again: Big Media journalism hasn’t been shit but literally harmful to the nation by supporting the Republicans and said media’s owners. This has been going on for pushing fifty years. To be clear, it was always propagandistic but at some point it shifted from misinforming the masses to supporting and promoting harmful stuff. Like ignoring Trump’s complete unfitness for office in 2015-16.
…And why for them and all the rest referenced by Roy, they’re profiting and making yet more big bucks is all that matters to them… As I can’t stop ranting (I blame reality for inciting it), our exceptional leaders, as a group, are sociopathic as in not giving a fuck about harming society or worse… You know, grow irresponsibility, using their power to makes society, nation and world shittier…
…Of course, this is the endgame of capitalism (from which there’ll be no escape) which, at the core, has always promoted the individual over community, for obvious enough reasons… As for the pigs gorging, I should reference Piketty’s take away (paraphrasing): There’s greater wealth in unproductive uses of wealth than in productive ones…
…And on behalf of pigs, I suppose I should stop dissing the common porcine and more correctly refer to scumbags as wild boars…
This is actually pretty common, I think. The Guardian is owned by a foundation, I think its only mission is to keep the lights on and make sure the paper goes out each day. Which is easier when you don't have a bunch of asshole shareholders demanding their take.
Way down deep in that Atlantic piece, past the part where we all learn Pam Bondi Loves Dogs, is a paragraph that elides how she got where she is. She TOOK A BRIBE FROM TRUMP to quash a Florida state investigation of Trump U.
And to think that she now has the power to threaten Democrats with prison for being insufficiently worshipful of Trump.
I seen Lindsay Halligan is finally out the door, no longer impersonating a US Attorney, having failed to prosecute any of the people she was hired to prosecute. So "threaten to prosecute" is the thing. Even a bogus prosecution that falls apart can be hell to go through and take-out-a-second-mortgage expensive, but I have to hope that each failed prosecution shows there's a way through this for those willing to challenge him.
I lost my program; so many players. the self-debasing acts riff reminded me of the woman from Arizona? New Mexico? who would mop/sweep the area around trump's podium before the 'speeches'.
Money? To be that amoral? No way. Threats of physical harm to self and family, that might induce me to bite my tongue and mutter some mildly positive remarks about Il Douche. Bessent, Hassett, Lugnuts, Bondi all want the power that comes with being the auxiliary asshole to the biggest asshole in the world. Alienating yourself from decent people forever seems a small price to pay for a couple of years of being a big cheese, to them. Mike’s Johnson is a special case: he could seize power himself right now and wrangle the House into eliminating Trump, or at least his agenda, but he has the personality of a house slave from the Old South. Disgusting little man.
Mike Johnson is the White House rug. He doesn't want to be President. He doesn't even want to be Speaker. He just wants to be a back-bencher with a guaranteed salary and pension plan, and retire at age 60 after handing off his seat to a nephew of his choice.
Yeah, none of these people would miss a meal or a mortgage payment if they didn't do this. They're true believers, although the "cause" they think they're advancing escapes me, unless it's just cruelty itself.
Two main types, I think. Shadow presidents Miller and Vought are in it for the sadism of their ideologies. Any financial gain of theirs seems relatively modest, compared to the scale in millions/billions being plundered. Miller has some investments in private prisons, and I think Vought does some similar, relatively small self-dealing.
Cruelty may not be the billionaires' primary motive. But they're fine with it, when fascism enables them to keep taking more. I think it has something to do with sociopathy, and not seeing other people as real enough to matter. And the more wealth, the more paranoia about putting down the barbarian masses at the gate (and regulators).
It may not fit the DSM-5, but I see the billionaires and other sycophants as sociopaths, with Miller/Vought as psychopaths.
One thing I've become aware of more recently is just how ideological our billionaires are. They really do have fixed, loony ideas about how things should be that are not necessarily about self-enrichment although I'll admit they often do align with self-enrichment. Imagine a mind set free by great wealth, with no one around to tell them when they're full of shit, so "free" means "free to fall under the influence of whatever crackpot philosopher can get access to them."
Henry Ford/Howard Hughes: "Nobody around me can tell me I'm nuts so I'm free to write and publish a book titled 'The International Jew' while wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes."
Could I? Yeah, probably, if I’m being honest. Heaven knows I’ve eaten more than my share of crap to keep food on the table and a roof over my family’s head. It’s not something I’d seek out, but if it was that or ruin…yeah, probably.
Twice in my life I've been very very close to that edge when offers of money from bad sources appeared. The first was after the magazine I was editing folded and I'd been unemployed for 6 months--that's when The Heartland Institute came calling with an offer to edit their "sportsman" publications. Fabulous money, paid moving expenses, extensive travel . . . but having to write Rightwing bullshit to promote guns, God, and pollution. Desperate as I was, I passed on the opportunity because I just couldn't stomach doing such work that ran against my very soul.
A couple months later, a friend's wife offered me a very large check for ghostwriting her book about how vaccines cause autism. That whole thing was new to me, so I did some research. It only took a day of digging to discover that the vaccine-autism thing was complete crap and that the guy responsible for the one paper that suggested it was a total charlatan (and the paper had already been withdrawn). It would have been very easy to take that check and write that book, but it also would have been completely amoral to do so--indeed, perhaps immoral considering the harm it might have caused. I said no.
You've been tested, and passed the test. Myself, I guess I'll just never know, nobody ever thought to tempt me. I do remember being an out-of-work college graduate eagerly interviewing with every military contractor and oil company that would give me 15 minutes of their time. I have no doubt I would have rushed to say "yes" if any of them had made an offer. God knows what I'd be today if that had happened. Probably living in Houston with a big house denying climate change is real.
I figure since plucky young reporters can no longer afford to live in New York or Washington while they work at getting their plucky young careers going , all the current crop are folks that have some kind of real money available to get them through their internships. It's like all the good museum and big city library jobs that have become cool careers for trust funders. Just another case of wealth supported mediocrity destroying venerable institutions.
And family money provides the insulation you need to write objectively. None of it matters to you, personally, you've got no skin in the game, no risk that any personal feelings may interfere with your stenography.
Thanks for this. Excellently phrased--the Shakesperian word "fleer" is well-picked. Watching this catastrophe, I keep thinking of Hamlet taunting Rosenkranz as a sponge, "First mouthed, to be last swallowed." The old bastard's brain is half gone, but what's sickening are the cabinet supplicants enduring the sound of his demented words and inhaling the death-metal stench of the Dotard. Facebook is deafening with the honks of the red-capped goose--"sky carp," as they say in the midwest. To answer your question--no. I've done some repulsive things for money but betraying my country in the name of access is not one of them. Thanks again--
On top of all that, they have to deal with his infamous odor - Adam Kinzinger described it as "armpits, ketchup, makeup, and a little butt." I wish more people would talk about this as you know it would make him furious.
None of us understand what is going on with our own behavior. All of us are more like a gaggle of geese or a swarm of bees at any given moment than what we, in our hifalutin identity delusion, believe and act upon.
This idea of imagining myself in Trump's cabinet us a case in point. But we are always imagining ourselves as something we are not. Reality like physics in a car accident intrudes on us only occasionally.
Reality for Trump is the Reaper. And for us too far and near from the epicenters of our disorder. Ask Lawrence, riding the whirlwind of self and legend.
But we're all a mixture, ain't we? All around me I see the products of human rationality, of people identifying a problem, thinking about it, coming up with responses to the problem and then following through in a more or less rational manner. For me, human irrationality is so striking because it's exceptional. We're mostly a sensible (and sociable) species.
Yes, that's right: Our behavior seems to make sense to us. But why we are here doing anything makes no greater sense than the sense we make at any time and place. Therefore, if we want to believe in witches, we can go witch hunting.
It may not be factually accurate or scientifically sound, but in its consistency, however foolish, the crazy behavior justifies itself and is therefore rational.
Miller believes doing away with half the population will make lines shorter and things magically better. The Nazi true believers believed eliminating the Jews and then others perpetually would magically fix the world. It makes sense if you believe it, even if it does not fix anything. When one group of victims is gone, you shift blame to another group. The goal is not to fix things but to constantly target new victims in the name of solving problems you made up.
In the olden days I managed a large rural property for a land trust. There were tenant farms and some had housing on site. One of the houses was home to 3 generations of farm hands. The first generation came up from Mexico and had moved above/below the border many times. His son was born on the farm and worked it full time. HIS son was born on the farm and was part of the community movement to keep the housing together and viable for long term. It was a near thing that the farmhouses were allowed to stay (took some wrangling with the county and the farm bureau (and many other folks who thought they should have a say).
Anyway, the grandson went to the college down the coast and got a masters in fine arts.
When I think of Steven Miller I also think of that kid, and his parents and grandparents. Then I try to imagine Miller blowing a gasket about the whole concept. It makes me feel a little better about things every time.
i want to see ralph kramden at the end of the episode, you know, where his "BIG PLAN" ends up liable to send him to the sewers with Norton. His eyes roll around in his head and he babbles gibberish as Alice glares at him. (It's only her 'wonderland' p-o-v with Ralph that keeps him goin' ) & then she makes it all right, straightens his bib and spoons those mashed peas into his pie hole.
i don't wanna see some alien cracking open the husk of the president, and emerging as some greasy, large man with sawtooth teeth who starts snapping at hands and arms anywhere near him and grows more animated and bigger, and then the color fades to black and white, and then fade out black screen, and then only sounds of moans and crunching. You know, "Hobbesian anarchy."
This is a first-rate analysis, Roy. It really is a vivid portrait of the hellish lives of these people, and why they have had to excise any sense of shame they ever had. I will note that the women in Trump's administration are particularly well-suited by experience to engage in the contradictory behavior of appearing to fawn in admiration while simultaneously clawing their way upward. Women have been trained from an early age to hide the ball of ambition. By no means am I justifying who they are or what they're doing, just noting I recognize the technique.
By the way, when my late mother's dementia reached the point she was leaving the house wearing her underwear on the outside and carrying a toaster, I suppose she could also have been described as being at her "most enigmatic." Not sure I'd call it expansive, though.
oof, but gotta gives props fer the toaster...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukr3Y3unFhg&pp=ygUYYmFuYW5hcyB1bmRlcndlYXIgc3BlZWNo
Must be a case of great (lost) minds thinking alike. My mother took marching orders from no one (except maybe the toaster).
I've been thinking about that scene for some time now.
Heterodox, even! In a BariWeissian way.
The only thing lacking was my mother didn't accuse anyone of antisemitism. Of course, my mother wasn't jewish, but why let being a gentile stop you? Plenty of rightwing christians say any sympathy for the palestinian people is antisemitism.
Having observed this, your mother's sartorial splendor, how do you reconcile "from an early age" hiding ambition and the final chapter?
A paradigm or theory must account for all cases. The hiding and ambition, where do they go when the knives come out and the underwear is on the outside?
"An enigmatic little wine, but I think you'll be amused by its expansiveness."
"An enigmatic... whine..."
...in a dirty glass
“No sooner do I write about how nuts Trump has gotten that he ups the ante.”
Deranged Donny, now more than ever, cannot be anticipated. He’ll always be worse than even I, likewise a highly defective human being, can anticipate—forget a better person like Roy and everyone else.
***
And now I’m going to go not so much Caen maybe, more Wilson or Winchell… Yet again: Big Media journalism hasn’t been shit but literally harmful to the nation by supporting the Republicans and said media’s owners. This has been going on for pushing fifty years. To be clear, it was always propagandistic but at some point it shifted from misinforming the masses to supporting and promoting harmful stuff. Like ignoring Trump’s complete unfitness for office in 2015-16.
…And why for them and all the rest referenced by Roy, they’re profiting and making yet more big bucks is all that matters to them… As I can’t stop ranting (I blame reality for inciting it), our exceptional leaders, as a group, are sociopathic as in not giving a fuck about harming society or worse… You know, grow irresponsibility, using their power to makes society, nation and world shittier…
…Of course, this is the endgame of capitalism (from which there’ll be no escape) which, at the core, has always promoted the individual over community, for obvious enough reasons… As for the pigs gorging, I should reference Piketty’s take away (paraphrasing): There’s greater wealth in unproductive uses of wealth than in productive ones…
…And on behalf of pigs, I suppose I should stop dissing the common porcine and more correctly refer to scumbags as wild boars…
***
And now I quit…
Like I keep saying, journalism should never be "profitable". Among so many other things; healthcare, education, housing...
I wouldn’t go that far but an owner with an old timey sense of noblesse oblige would help…
This is actually pretty common, I think. The Guardian is owned by a foundation, I think its only mission is to keep the lights on and make sure the paper goes out each day. Which is easier when you don't have a bunch of asshole shareholders demanding their take.
Way down deep in that Atlantic piece, past the part where we all learn Pam Bondi Loves Dogs, is a paragraph that elides how she got where she is. She TOOK A BRIBE FROM TRUMP to quash a Florida state investigation of Trump U.
And to think that she now has the power to threaten Democrats with prison for being insufficiently worshipful of Trump.
I seen Lindsay Halligan is finally out the door, no longer impersonating a US Attorney, having failed to prosecute any of the people she was hired to prosecute. So "threaten to prosecute" is the thing. Even a bogus prosecution that falls apart can be hell to go through and take-out-a-second-mortgage expensive, but I have to hope that each failed prosecution shows there's a way through this for those willing to challenge him.
Loves dogs. Unlike, say, Kristi Noem.
You know WHO ELSE loved dogs?
Pam Blondi!
Mitt Romney!
I lost my program; so many players. the self-debasing acts riff reminded me of the woman from Arizona? New Mexico? who would mop/sweep the area around trump's podium before the 'speeches'.
help me out here...
Kari Lake
she now 'runs' Radio Free Europe.
The purest Republican pornographic tradwife photo-op: ostentatiously vacuuming the red carpet in front of the podium while in high heels.
Hey, little girl
Comb your hair, fix your make-up
Soon he will open the door
Don't think because
There's a ring on your finger
You needn't try any more
"Time to get ready for love" yikes
Some old pop should be left in the graveyard.
Burt Bacharach is responsible for this shit.
Hey, little man here's your hat what's your hurry
A shame that the lyric is so awful. Jack Jones crooning that thing on 1960 AM radio was EPIC.
Yes.
Money? To be that amoral? No way. Threats of physical harm to self and family, that might induce me to bite my tongue and mutter some mildly positive remarks about Il Douche. Bessent, Hassett, Lugnuts, Bondi all want the power that comes with being the auxiliary asshole to the biggest asshole in the world. Alienating yourself from decent people forever seems a small price to pay for a couple of years of being a big cheese, to them. Mike’s Johnson is a special case: he could seize power himself right now and wrangle the House into eliminating Trump, or at least his agenda, but he has the personality of a house slave from the Old South. Disgusting little man.
Mike Johnson is the White House rug. He doesn't want to be President. He doesn't even want to be Speaker. He just wants to be a back-bencher with a guaranteed salary and pension plan, and retire at age 60 after handing off his seat to a nephew of his choice.
Pursues this plan after gavel hand-off to Jesus.
"Threats of physical harm to self and family, that might induce me" oh, I'm sure they get that too
Yeah, none of these people would miss a meal or a mortgage payment if they didn't do this. They're true believers, although the "cause" they think they're advancing escapes me, unless it's just cruelty itself.
Two main types, I think. Shadow presidents Miller and Vought are in it for the sadism of their ideologies. Any financial gain of theirs seems relatively modest, compared to the scale in millions/billions being plundered. Miller has some investments in private prisons, and I think Vought does some similar, relatively small self-dealing.
Cruelty may not be the billionaires' primary motive. But they're fine with it, when fascism enables them to keep taking more. I think it has something to do with sociopathy, and not seeing other people as real enough to matter. And the more wealth, the more paranoia about putting down the barbarian masses at the gate (and regulators).
It may not fit the DSM-5, but I see the billionaires and other sycophants as sociopaths, with Miller/Vought as psychopaths.
One thing I've become aware of more recently is just how ideological our billionaires are. They really do have fixed, loony ideas about how things should be that are not necessarily about self-enrichment although I'll admit they often do align with self-enrichment. Imagine a mind set free by great wealth, with no one around to tell them when they're full of shit, so "free" means "free to fall under the influence of whatever crackpot philosopher can get access to them."
Teddy Roosevelt had them pegged 120 years ago as "malefactors of great wealth" and that was back when they paid *no* income tax.
Henry Ford/Howard Hughes: "Nobody around me can tell me I'm nuts so I'm free to write and publish a book titled 'The International Jew' while wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes."
Could I? Yeah, probably, if I’m being honest. Heaven knows I’ve eaten more than my share of crap to keep food on the table and a roof over my family’s head. It’s not something I’d seek out, but if it was that or ruin…yeah, probably.
Twice in my life I've been very very close to that edge when offers of money from bad sources appeared. The first was after the magazine I was editing folded and I'd been unemployed for 6 months--that's when The Heartland Institute came calling with an offer to edit their "sportsman" publications. Fabulous money, paid moving expenses, extensive travel . . . but having to write Rightwing bullshit to promote guns, God, and pollution. Desperate as I was, I passed on the opportunity because I just couldn't stomach doing such work that ran against my very soul.
A couple months later, a friend's wife offered me a very large check for ghostwriting her book about how vaccines cause autism. That whole thing was new to me, so I did some research. It only took a day of digging to discover that the vaccine-autism thing was complete crap and that the guy responsible for the one paper that suggested it was a total charlatan (and the paper had already been withdrawn). It would have been very easy to take that check and write that book, but it also would have been completely amoral to do so--indeed, perhaps immoral considering the harm it might have caused. I said no.
"Once I met the Devil
He seemed mighty slick.
Tempted me with worldly goods
Said 'you can have your pick.'"
You've been tested, and passed the test. Myself, I guess I'll just never know, nobody ever thought to tempt me. I do remember being an out-of-work college graduate eagerly interviewing with every military contractor and oil company that would give me 15 minutes of their time. I have no doubt I would have rushed to say "yes" if any of them had made an offer. God knows what I'd be today if that had happened. Probably living in Houston with a big house denying climate change is real.
Houston, we have a problem...nah, it's just this maths guy, makin' noise about lack of zoning and alla them houses in the floodplain...
"Scott Bessent, smarming ditto "
I read that as "Scott Bessent, smarmy dildo"
No glasses.
I figure since plucky young reporters can no longer afford to live in New York or Washington while they work at getting their plucky young careers going , all the current crop are folks that have some kind of real money available to get them through their internships. It's like all the good museum and big city library jobs that have become cool careers for trust funders. Just another case of wealth supported mediocrity destroying venerable institutions.
You should keep those glasses on a chain 'round yer neck. Don't wear 'em over yer eyes – you see clearer without 'em.
And family money provides the insulation you need to write objectively. None of it matters to you, personally, you've got no skin in the game, no risk that any personal feelings may interfere with your stenography.
I'd also describe this morning's deposit in the commode as "enigmatic and expansive"... not that I'm bragging or anything. 🙄
"Enigmatic and expansive": drunk and belligerent but for White people
And worthy of entitlement! Sir Bern!
Never mind – reads stupid. Maybe I'll stick with His Excellency.
Thanks for this. Excellently phrased--the Shakesperian word "fleer" is well-picked. Watching this catastrophe, I keep thinking of Hamlet taunting Rosenkranz as a sponge, "First mouthed, to be last swallowed." The old bastard's brain is half gone, but what's sickening are the cabinet supplicants enduring the sound of his demented words and inhaling the death-metal stench of the Dotard. Facebook is deafening with the honks of the red-capped goose--"sky carp," as they say in the midwest. To answer your question--no. I've done some repulsive things for money but betraying my country in the name of access is not one of them. Thanks again--
2 marks for sky carp.
Misspelled "crap"
On top of all that, they have to deal with his infamous odor - Adam Kinzinger described it as "armpits, ketchup, makeup, and a little butt." I wish more people would talk about this as you know it would make him furious.
Kinzinger is a liar. His butt is not little.
Abase de Base!
None of us understand what is going on with our own behavior. All of us are more like a gaggle of geese or a swarm of bees at any given moment than what we, in our hifalutin identity delusion, believe and act upon.
This idea of imagining myself in Trump's cabinet us a case in point. But we are always imagining ourselves as something we are not. Reality like physics in a car accident intrudes on us only occasionally.
Reality for Trump is the Reaper. And for us too far and near from the epicenters of our disorder. Ask Lawrence, riding the whirlwind of self and legend.
We are all baboons and Fortune's fools.
Objection: I'm coming to understand a lot more of why I do shit, not that it KEEPS me from doing it, though.
But we're all a mixture, ain't we? All around me I see the products of human rationality, of people identifying a problem, thinking about it, coming up with responses to the problem and then following through in a more or less rational manner. For me, human irrationality is so striking because it's exceptional. We're mostly a sensible (and sociable) species.
Yes, that's right: Our behavior seems to make sense to us. But why we are here doing anything makes no greater sense than the sense we make at any time and place. Therefore, if we want to believe in witches, we can go witch hunting.
It may not be factually accurate or scientifically sound, but in its consistency, however foolish, the crazy behavior justifies itself and is therefore rational.
Miller believes doing away with half the population will make lines shorter and things magically better. The Nazi true believers believed eliminating the Jews and then others perpetually would magically fix the world. It makes sense if you believe it, even if it does not fix anything. When one group of victims is gone, you shift blame to another group. The goal is not to fix things but to constantly target new victims in the name of solving problems you made up.
In the olden days I managed a large rural property for a land trust. There were tenant farms and some had housing on site. One of the houses was home to 3 generations of farm hands. The first generation came up from Mexico and had moved above/below the border many times. His son was born on the farm and worked it full time. HIS son was born on the farm and was part of the community movement to keep the housing together and viable for long term. It was a near thing that the farmhouses were allowed to stay (took some wrangling with the county and the farm bureau (and many other folks who thought they should have a say).
Anyway, the grandson went to the college down the coast and got a masters in fine arts.
When I think of Steven Miller I also think of that kid, and his parents and grandparents. Then I try to imagine Miller blowing a gasket about the whole concept. It makes me feel a little better about things every time.
ZEY DID NOT FOLLOW ZE RULEZ! ZEY DID NOT HAVE ZE PROPER PAPERS!
I think they get off on it.
It's part of the authoritarian personality. If they can't be holding the whip themselves they like being under it.
That’s not a weave. It’s a comb-over.
i want to see ralph kramden at the end of the episode, you know, where his "BIG PLAN" ends up liable to send him to the sewers with Norton. His eyes roll around in his head and he babbles gibberish as Alice glares at him. (It's only her 'wonderland' p-o-v with Ralph that keeps him goin' ) & then she makes it all right, straightens his bib and spoons those mashed peas into his pie hole.
i don't wanna see some alien cracking open the husk of the president, and emerging as some greasy, large man with sawtooth teeth who starts snapping at hands and arms anywhere near him and grows more animated and bigger, and then the color fades to black and white, and then fade out black screen, and then only sounds of moans and crunching. You know, "Hobbesian anarchy."
You got this script done yet? 'Cause my people are rarin' ta go into production...
i think script's gonna synthesize da bote a'dem.
like hegel would've wanted.
(T-A-C-O, but, alas, Failsafe)
Brilliant! Let's do lunch!