Looking Forward: Prematurity, Misadventure, and the Wreck of a Presidency

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Tiassa, Aug 1, 2017.

  1. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    ".. and as with all fraudsters and confidence tricksters the greatest victim is them selves..." ~anon
     
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  3. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    Apologies in advance for going in this direction, but the passage above brought to mind two particular sermons of Meister Eckhart: one being on the story of Mary and Martha, the other being on the camel--eye of a needle/rich man--kingdom of heaven passage (Luke?)

    As to the former, something about notion of living and acting "without why." But with the latter, there's the idea of literal, material impoverishment, as well as "poverty of spirit." Without rambling, I suppose I'm simply suggesting that when the nature of the "stupidity" in question is that of being myopic and having petty goals, it becomes damn near impossible to parse "stupid" and "malicious."
     
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  5. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Two brief notes:

    • In the eternal question of sinister or stupid, I cannot account for an aspect of the simplistic outlooks shown by the Trump family, campaign, and administration. In trying to figure out how they keep managing to implicitly beg society to end this White House nightmare so they can get back to the wheeling-dealing life they much prefer, I can't figure out what their relationship is to the idea that because it's the presidency, they'll get away with everything else and just go back to their lives as if this horrible episode never really happened. The rollout of the Russia emails from Donald the Younger, for instance. It's like he said, "Here, have the evidence and finish this so we can get back to Bayrock and Baku and groping the talent!" without realizing that this is the sort of stuff they can actually go to prison for. I don't get it; the spectacle is rather quite unexpectedly slapstick; I really expected these people would be better at their own game.

    Lysander Spooner↱, in an astounding tantrum about alcohol prohibition, circa 1875:

    In the first place, the great crimes committed in the world are mostly prompted by avarice and ambition.

    The greatest of all crimes are the wars that are carried on by governments, to plunder, enslave, and destroy mankind.

    The next greatest crimes committed in the world are equally prompted by avarice and ambition; and are committed, not on sudden passion, but by men of calculation, who keep their heads cool and clear, and who have no thought whatever of going to prison for them. They are committed, not so much by men who violate the laws, as by men who, either by themselves or by their instruments, make the laws; by men who have combined to usurp arbitrary power, and to maintain it by force and fraud, and whose purpose in usurping and maintaining it is by unjust and unequal legislation, to secure to themselves such advantages and monopolies as will enable them to control and extort the labor and properties of other men, and thus impoverish them, in order to minister to their own wealth and aggrandizement. The robberies and wrongs thus committed by these men, in conformity with the laws,―that is, their own laws―are as mountains to molehills, compared with the crimes committed by all other criminals, in violation of the laws.

    I don't know; this is what comes to mind in the moment.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Spooner, Lysander. Vices Are Not Crimes. 1875. LysanderSpooner.org. 4 August 2017. http://bit.ly/1n5GIIJ
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    In the World Series, play as you did to get there.
    In negotiating, come in high and hard.

    If we assume this is a con, the key for the Donald is setting his walkaway price as high as possible. Part of that would be making the cost of not buying him off as high as possible. That would mean evaluating these obvious crimes and guilty behaviors from the other side of the mirror - how much would it cost the US (as represented by the competent and honest people in the appropriate offices, and those whose interests coincide with the country's for whatever reason) to have this in the White House for four, possibly eight, years? That's what it's going to cost to buy him out. The longer he digs in, the higher that price becomes.

    If we assume a straight con, nothing in it for Trump except the payoff.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2017
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    #winning | #WhatTheyVotedFor

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    Psychologist Barbod Salimi's↱ sketch of what we might dangerously presume inevitable, that is to say, President Trump's early departure from the White House, is not exactly groundbreaking:

    For starters, the obvious should be stated: Trump indeed won the seat in the White House and, as such, must be counted as a winner. I'm sure he'd like (nay, love) my saying that. After all, the man is consumed by the binary (winning-losing) itself. He employed the concept in an almost Charlie Sheen-like fashion during his campaign. He recently referred to terrorists as "losers" rather than rightly categorizing them as murderers. In short, he's obsessed with notions of winning and losing. Most narcissists are. They see interpersonal encounters as games to be manipulated in order to emerge feeling victorious and empowered. They uphold self-images that have been constructed to guard vulnerabilities and uncomfortable truths resting beneath the surface. They perceive others as threats and potential exposers of these truths. And so they name-call, they point at everyone but themselves, and they create chaos and whirlwinds in order to avoid stillness and honest introspection. Put bluntly, they rarely change, they tend not to mature, and, as such, they do everything they can to win. Sound familiar?

    Impeachment, however, would count as a loss. If that prospect lies in the future, we can be sure Trump won't stick around for it. We already know well that he's in the business of saying "you're fired" rather than hearing it. My prediction is that a Trump resignation from the office of presidency is imminent. Why? Because he can't win, he hasn't been winning, and in the mind of someone who sees the world through concrete binaries, the default option, in the absence of winning, is losing. And since impeachment, or some other form of leveraged removal, would constitute losing, we can expect the President to "win" in a different way—by preemptively walking away.

    We can expect Trump to do this loudly, with his chest out, and with his head held high. A hunched over, humbled, head hung in shame look just wouldn't bode well for "winning." What's more, we can also expect some narcissistic icing on the cake as he makes his exit. He'll invoke themes of victimization along the lines of blaming others for not allowing him to do his job effectively. He'll emphatically motion toward those who constrained him, rather than admitting to or acknowledging his own rigidity. And he'll make allusions to virtues like honor and nobility by attributing his decision to resign to a desire to spare the country of further turbulence and to protect his family from the political firestorm that has engulfed the Trump name. Self-image remains firmly intact.

    More directly, even the armchair wannabe psychologists can manage this basic read and sketch.

    But we also need to consider in particular that, valid as this projection might seeem, it hinges on the conventional wisdom that Republicans will eventually break and threaten impeachment for the sake of protecting their midterm interests. That would be the same conventional wisdom that has in the Trump ascendancy failed absolutely.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Salimi, Barbod. "Trump Can't Win, So He’ll Quit". The Huffington Post. 3 August 2017. HuffingtonPost.com. 5 August 2017. http://bit.ly/2fhBITj
     
  9. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    So what happens if he is charged with a serious criminal offense... such as insider trading, espionage, treason, extortion, etc...?
    A general question from an Aussie:
    Say for example a sitting POTUS is charged with culpable homicide. ( he killed his housekeeper and buried her body under the shed 7 years ago)
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You have to impeach him first.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...e-prosecuted-probably/?utm_term=.d3d74d45f29e
     
  11. Truck Captain Stumpy The Right Honourable Reverend Truck Captain Valued Senior Member

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    so where are the mass movements or petitions from the people attempting to elicit change on behalf of the countries best interest?
    a SEN/REP can be recalled*... even though it hasn't happened.
    if it's change that is needed, we really should consider the lessons of Colorado.
    (or the '60's, etc)
    it's not like there isn't grounds for a recall of the REP if they're not acting in the interest of the people; a similar argument can be made for the SEN
    so what is the idiot POTUS doing that is keeping them from impeachment ?

    what are the major factors that keep him from being impeached?

    perhaps the way to force the change in the gov't is to start by recalling the SEN/REP's

    .

    * though the author admits the likelihood of success of a recall is questionable at present, he presents a final point that is relevant:


    Ice-trump
    fanaticism and projection

    it appears that you need to keep repeating it so that maybe you might actually believe it one day

    the problem is: he got elected because of people like you who fanatically advocate without consideration for others opinions or experiences
    not because of people like me attempting to show others that there were more than 2 candidates to choose from

    in your mind, and as you've demonstrated in this thread, it's the fault of everyone else because they didn't like who you're advocating for
    you want to blame someone and you can't accept your own culpability
    you can't live with the result of your actions so you attack anyone who has an opinion that isn't the same as yours
    since the dictionary didn't help, nor did the examples in your own words, then perhaps this will : http://www.readingbear.org/
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    After accusing me of pretending to psychic powers, you post that beauty.
    Who was I advocating for, again? I missed that part.
    I hate to break it to you, but you and yours are far, far, from "everyone else".
    You aren't "anyone with a different opinion", either.
    You can't hide behind the skirts of some vague population of fog people who have some sort of opinion or another we all should respect - not after Trump. You've chosen a side - and a lot of folks are not on it, and never were.
    Advocate what? Dude: You still haven't come up with the cause I'm supposed to have. (Tip: there isn't one. You're full of shit).
    Poor little misunderstood "rock and a hard place" manure spreader - your fe-fes hurt?
    Give up: you will never be able to excuse the Hillaryhate, the pretending Clinton and Trump were somehow comparably bad, that "rock and a hard place" you doubled down on, etc. And pretending you weren't helping Trump by traducing Clinton, because there were other candidates to vote for or your "intentions" were good or some such stupid bs, is not going to get you off the hook. Thirty years of "bothsides" crapola is what got us Trump. And Pence. And this horrible Republican Party Congress.

    The "outsider" who rode down the escalator into a public discourse and political media full of "both sides" and the "corrupt duopoly" and all rest, all set up for him to picnic on - he's your baby. So's the Congress. You own this American government, because you backed your mouth and your meanness, instead of your knowledge of this world. And your mouth isn't going to absolve you of this one.

    Wiggle all you want, you're on the hook. You betrayed your country, beggared your neighbors, badmouthed your betters, and the bill is coming due.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2017
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Click because there's no more fun in the world, or something like that.

    It might sound a little snarky, but ... er ... ah ... I mean, you're aware there's a lot going on, right?

    There are a lot of marches, protests, and demonstrations. You might have noticed elevated activism pertaining to health care and human rights. Those folks are pretty busy. Others are learning how to get involved. Others still are feeling a bit hopeless. But here's the tricky part:

    You know how sometimes people make wisecracks about civics, or suggest mean things about another's intelligence or lack thereof? Okay, okay, okay ... ah ... so, you know how sometimes people get all pissed off at liberals for being all elitist and stuff? Yeah ... uh ... every once in a while, I feel like I'm about to insult someone no matter how hard I try not to, because, like, for instance, I'm about to give you three really simplistic answers, with elevated potential for perception of insult because they are simplistic.

    (1) There is nothing overt President Trump can do to prevent impeachment; anything effective and covert or occulted is fundamentlaly dubious. In other words, nothing, because the question of what he is doing to keep them from impeaching him is virtually irrelevant.

    (2) Articles of Impeachment are drafted in the House of Representatives, and voted on by the full House. Once approved, they are forwarded to the Senate, where the trial is conducted. The major factors preventing Donald Trump's impeachment are:

    Process: We're just not there, yet; the investigation isn't finished. This point, however, ties into the next.

    House Leadership: We already know crimes have been committed. To wit, why is Mike Flynn not yet charged? Why is Jared Kushner not charged? Why is Paul Manafort not charged? We already know each one of them has broken the law in multiple ways. The answer is that there is more at stake, and prosecutors want it—i.e., investigative process. In the end, there is too much botchery of disclosure forms for Kushner to plead an accident; Manafort and Flynn bear serious exposure for their foreign agency. As the process moves forward, House Leadership will decide when it is time to move forward with Articles of Impeachment. The evidence so far has not convinced House Republicans to do anything other than flip out and then hunker down and try to figure out how to turn the tables by attacking Hillary Clinton.​

    (3) The problem with recall is pretty straightforward: There's no point in recalling Senators for failing to impeach if they have no Articles to act on. As it is, yes, a few nervous senators could easily move if Articles came up. But House Republicans do not face the same fear; their biggest threat comes from their right flank. That is to say, Democratic voters aren't going to recall Democrats from office for failing to move Articles of Impeachment through the House because Democrats cannot move Articles of Impeachment through the House. On the Republican side, voters don't want to impeach, so who will recall the Representatives? A losing Democratic minority?​

    I haven't a good workaround when that's just where the questions land us, though. I mean, yeah, I get that the answer sounds kind of like, "Er ... ah ... well, duh!" But, yeah, that's kind of where the question goes.

    The thing is that the Constitutional standard of impeachment comes down to whatever anyone feels like impeaching a president for. If you can get 218 votes in the House, and then 67 in the Senate, you can impeach and convict a president for anything, even make-believe. In the world of "treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors", wordplay in an irregular deposition forced by an apparent one-time judiciary carve-out is sufficient to impeach a president. And we see why that effort failed: No Senator wanted to set that standard. Ordinarily, basic honor and integrity have sufficed to keep this part of the system in check. What our system is not prepared for is the potential deviation we face, which is members of Congress refusing to impeach a president of their own party.

    It is easy enough to imagine the Founders deliberately left this one path to guaranteed revolution in the country they founded; it is also easy enough to imagine they had basic expectations about how low a person, group of people, or society could sink.

    A nation divided cannot stand. The people who say government does not, cannot, and should not work have a pathway, now, to do the job. Rhetoric involving threats to the existence of the Republic itself ought to be reserved to Star Wars knockoffs, and not trespass in the discourse of American function. It ought to be precisely absurd to suggest Republicans would take it so far just to give a smarmy grin and remind how they told us so, but this is within their legal and fundamental power at this time.

    What happened? See, my quiet potsherd in this is to wonder who else Putin or other interests have hooks in. And, you know, honestly, that would be too easy, wouldn't it? But what the hell happened with Rep. Nunes (R-CA22)? Oh, yeah, the National Security Council hand who played a role in that was fired last week, just for the record. But Nunes would seem like just that, except, well, the thing is that Rep. Chaffetz (R-UT03) finally agreed to issue some document requests, and it was by coincidence that he started receiving those documents and decided to retire from Congress. Seriously, what the hell happened? Honestly, I can imagine that Nunes panicked and didn't think it through, and it's easy enough to think that Chaffetz, on Oversight, saw what was coming and just didn't want to be associated with it. There is a bunch of this we don't know yet, but is already known, and it's going to be agonizing. It's like the leaks; it's not just that people are leaking, but they're leaking perfect material to tack Donald Trump to the shed, and the part where I actually stand shocked and appalled is this bit with the phone call transcripts. Trying to wrap my head around the idea of White House staff who would do that to their president is ... almost unthinkable. But he lies, and he lies so damn much that, honestly, if you're looking for people trying to elicit change, think of the White House staffers who listened to him lying about the phone calls, and decided to leak the transcripts. Beltway custom is not quite prepared to cope with that. The thing is that conventional wisdom is shattered, but if there is any left functioning, that leak is significant of how bad the situation is.

    Yet, where are House Republicans? Digging in to protect the president.

    When the People have their proverbial smoking gun, their board game whodunit clues all lined up and they know precisely how it is supposed to go, then the streets will start to echo with the mass movement you're looking for. Until the People have something to politically bludgeon House Republicans with, filling the streets ranges between pointless and counterproductive; a vital factor to consider in this is that the identity politic most driving Donald Trump's support at present is the rejection of Trump opponents.

    Until then, yeah, it all kind of comes down to the question of when House Republicans are ready. I expect the political situation to be scorching hot this time next year, but there are massive, looming potentials shadowing that outlook. On the short side, this could break and something could emerge convincing House Republicans that "now" is far too late, or make clear to President Trump that it's time to get the hell out. To the long, well, that in itself sounds nearly conspiracist; I would like to think an impeachment threat as feint is as stupid a joke as it sounds, but these are House Republicans were talking about, so more fool me either way, I suppose, or something like that.
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Delegitimized

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    New York magazine's Jonathan Chait↱ puts it this way:

    After half a year of comic internal disarray, even in the face of broad public dismay, Trump's administration had, through most of July, managed to hold together some basic level of partisan cohesion with a still-enthusiastic base and supportive partners in Congress. This has quickly collapsed.

    Signs of the disintegration have popped up everywhere. The usual staff turmoil came to a boil in the course of ten days, during which the following occurred: The president denounced his own attorney general in public, the press secretary quit, a new communications director came aboard, the chief of staff was fired, the communications director accused the chief strategist of auto-fellatio in an interview, then he was himself fired. Meanwhile, the secretary of State and national-security adviser were both reported to be eyeing the exits. (Against this colorful backdrop, the ominous news that Robert Mueller had convened a grand jury barely registered.)

    More disturbingly for Trump, Republicans in Congress have openly broken ranks. When the Senate voted down the latest (and weakest) proposal to repeal Obamacare, Trump demanded the chamber resume the effort, as he has before. This time, Republican leaders defied him and declared the question settled for the year. When the president threatened to withhold promised payments to insurers in retribution, Republicans in Congress proposed to continue making them. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley, responding to the president's threat to sack Jeff Sessions, announced he had no time to confirm a new attorney general. Many Republican senators have endorsed bills to block the president from firing the special counsel.

    The most humiliating rebuke came in the form of a bill to lock in sanctions on Russia, passed by Congress without the president's consent. The premise of the sanctions law is that Congress cannot trust the president to safeguard the national interest, treating him as a potential Russian dupe. It passed through both chambers almost unanimously. Trump delayed signing the bill for days, then submitted to its passage in the most begrudging fashion possible, releasing a statement that reads less like something a president would publish to commemorate the signing of a law than a petulant handwritten note a grounded teen might tape to the bedroom door. “Congress could not even negotiate a health-care bill after seven years of talking,” wrote the president of the United States. “I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected.”

    During his very brief tenure as communications director, Anthony Scaramucci blurted out something very telling: “There are people inside the administration that think it is their job to save America from this president.” The conviction that Trump is dangerously unfit to hold office is indeed shared widely within his own administration ....

    Furthermore, "the insurrection appears to be creeping outward", Chait continues: "The federal government has flipped on its chief executive."

    Yet those who fret and palpitate about some shadowy "deep state" should probably take a moment to think it through: When a president challenges and denounces and then openly betrays his own intelligence and law enforcement services, betrays his military, betrays his allies, betrays and deliberately damages his foreign service, and puts whoever else is left afterward in greater danger by triggering diplomatic crises around the world in apparent acts of revenge because his son in law didn't like the terms of a loan intended to rescue a business run into the ground, what do we expect to happen? The accused "deep state" in this chapter is simply the bureaucracy doing its job and, in the face of danger, attending extraordinary duty to country.

    If President Trump was merely an asshole, that would be one thing. He is, however, presenting what can reasonably be perceived and asserted danger. And if you are his staff, how do you protect him? Look what he did to his communications team, going out of his way to implicate them in obstruction of justice while incriminating himself on camera apparently for the sake of his egotism.

    When we view this through a partisan lens, of course the Trump core will feel sleighted and abused. When viewed through a functional lens, however, these are human beings, and what in the world are they supposed to think when their boss behaves this way? Once upon a time, the effort the communications team put into covering the president's six on firing Jim Comey would have been an embarrassingly awful pitch to buy the executive more time. Trump's White House staff were already harming themselves trying to cover the president's botchery. And when he drove the knife he also gave it a hard twist. When he incriminated his staff, including a cabinet official and his first assistant, Donald Trump recontextualized everyone in his White House: They now must cover for themselves against the president in order to accomplish their daily duties. And as Trump lies and works to bury his White House even deeper, sttaffers now have at least three really good reasons to leak:

    • Correct the record

    • Cover exposure bared by the president's willful behavior

    • They're human, so, yeah, part of them wants a piece of the asshole putting them in this position​

    Any professional is expected to attend that last. Actually, the preceding sentence is false for a number of reasons that come down to partisan bickering, but, sure, there is a question everything notion in effect that would disregard professionalism until its merit—a subjective opinion, we might note—is somehow proven. Setting that aside, though—since the most demonstrable aspect of this history is one-sided and only evident within a permeating context in isolated and constricted institutions—the thing about being professional is that when a reasonable perception and assertion of duty, e.g., correcting the record and assignation as exposure, coincides with personal human desire, one tends to act in some manner responsive to the lust itself and their professional awareness thereof.

    There are certain leaks that seem nearly extraneous, and these come from the people close enough to Trump that they should have such access; to wit, there was one about President Trump wandering the White House, dazed, in a bathrobe, tweeting and hollering at television sets. That one seemingly aimed simply to discredit the president. But the extraordinary leaks about his phone calls? Okay, so, yeah, if you are a career professional in the federal bureaucracy, and have such sufficient position to know, access, and thereby leak such information, then yes, the President of the United States betraying his United States Navy to an overseas strongman is the sort of thing you very much would consider leaking. And the transcripts from the Mexico and Australia calls? Those phone calls were part of an undying trope in White House politicking, and there are myriad reasons why staffers high and low need that bullshit to stop. Much similar to an earlier question↱ about how much does our mysterious collective we actually already know about what happened and what is presently happening, so also is there a question about what our mysterious collective we is seeing up close.

    So here is an important aspect about the leaks: How close can one get to President Trump and still be leaking this information? How far can one be from President Trump and still have the information to leak?

    Rumors out of the agencies come from well down the chain, in other buildings; some of these leaks about the Trump White House, though, require extraordinary proximity to the president. And if people that close to Donald Trump are sending signals, it behooves us to wonder why. A Priebus staffer? Clearly there is some personal motivation, but it's not just fidelity to the Party; something they're seeing has them near to panic, and it's not simply their own egotism and ambition.

    Try this one on: You don't fuck your president like that without a reason, not even if you are that president.

    Between Donald the Younger and John Barron, we actually can't rule it out. But other than that, no, really, McMaster will have people who would be terrified of a president behaving like the public Donald Trump, speak nothing of the rumors we've heard and especially those we haven't. Priebus had people like that. This is what President Trump and Steve Bannon know, and neither at this point can we omit Mr. Scaramucci: There comes a point at which any intersection with the traditional institutions of American politics will show stress if tried and tested hard and repeatedly enough. That is to say, any point at which the Trump Administration has contact with the rest of the American political structure, there is potential for leak. The closer these intersections are to the president, the more dramatic and politically dangerous become the potential effects of a leak.

    For the rest of us: What is the reason? Okay, if Trump is doing this to himself in order to ... er ... ah ... okay, right, whatever. There's your Amendment Twenty-Five right there.

    ―End Part I―
     
  15. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    (Part the Second)

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    Let us try that again. What is the reason? We might try what seems a simple juxtaposition, either that one is being really, really petty in leaking, to a farcical degree akin to what Republicans often accuse of their opponents in various aspects; or that one is leaking for a really good reason. Certes, there are some shades of gray, but not many, and their effects are limited: That this really is corrupt insanity would be one of the American-existential justifications for leaks, for instance, but as an article of faith for those on the outside it must necessarily be eyteball-bleeding obvious to the people inside who decide such leaks are necessary.

    And the insurrection appears to be creeping outward. When Trump tweeted that he would ban transgender Americans from military service, the Defense Department announced there had been "no modifications to the current policy" and that, "in the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect." When Trump gave a speech to police urging them to rough up suspects, several police chiefs and even the head of his own Drug Enforcement Agency registered their public objections. The accretion of these acts of defiance is significant. The federal government has flipped on its chief executive.

    Barring resignation or removal from office—which would require the vote of a House majority plus two-thirds of the Senate—we are stuck with a delegitimized president serving out the remaining seven-eighths of his term.
    Politically gridlocked presidencies have become normal, but for the office to be occupied by a man whose own party elites doubt his functional competence and even loyalty is, to borrow a term, unpresidented. Trump's obsession with humiliation and dominance has left him ill-prepared to cope with high-profile failure. He seems unlikely to content himself with quiet, incremental bureaucratic reform.


    (Chait↱; boldface and bold-italic accents added)

    There is, of course, in the rest of the New York magazine analysis, the familiar warning of presidencies and crisis and the prospects for war. We are wise to attend the fact that we are aware of such potentials; part of the problem, though, is that the opposition, and probably sufficient numbers among his supporters that we can safely add up a majority, and thus, well, right—most of us seemed to expect we were going to war somewhere for some stupid reason at some point in the near future, anyway, from the moemnt we realized he was going to win the presidency.

    In the domestic war for hearts and minds, the Trump narrative does not help the Trump White House. When, say, the quarter-century history of Donald Trump's presidency is written, one of the questions likely to be in exceptionally hot play will be trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with us that we dragged our feet for so long. Part of the answer will be that in addition to the unbelievably asymmetrical polarization of the discourse, it really was unbelievable that people were seeing and hearing what they were seeing and hearing, so it took a while for them to shake off and start dealing with the real dimensions of what they witnessed.

    The problem with the prospect that Americans can be counted on to do the right thing eventually, when we've run out of other options, is that we're dancing in a suicide pact. The existential security of the Republic is a fine plot point for epic-scale fiction, but not some cheap trope to be hammered and twisted and manipulated for the sake of a presidency askew and awry. "Trump's political decline has not occurred in so linear a fashion," suggests Chait. "It has happened, as Ernest Hemingway wrote about bankruptcy, gradually and then suddenly."

    There are courses we can follow by which we have a limited number of opportunities before obliged to countenance the same of the Republic itself. It seems fair enough to suggest our nation and world, and the human beings who compose the same, are all better off if we eschew those ventures.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Chait, Jonathan. "Trump’s Fledgling Presidency Has Already Collapsed". Daily Intelligencer. 4 August 2017. NYMag.com. 6 August 2017. http://nym.ag/2udVGRF


    ―fin―
     
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  16. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps if Trump didn't give reason for leaks there wouldn't be any.
    They are after all not leaking how good his decisions are and how eloquent and wise and honest he is being.
    Perhaps you are right Trump is solely responsible for the leaks simply by virtue of his inability to....uhm...
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    They re-elected W, and Reagan, with larger majorities not smaller.
    Political "decline"? His one third base holds steady as she goes. Chair positions on the Titanic, ranks and offices of the Reich, are suddenly shifted, maybe; perhaps an alteration is visible in the discussion terms among the soldiers given life jackets for burning their uniforms and money for saluting the new flag on camera.

    "Suddenly"? Not so with the Republican Party - beginning with Nixon, ending in the muddle of Clinton's impeachment, increasingly septic horror since, a descent into sludge and settlement therein of fifty years duration.

    The question becomes: is the new flag of a government in exile? Has the Confederacy captured the flag?
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2017
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    You have to understand, people like him have one thing in common - they will never, never take any kind of responsibility for what they do. Ever.

    They accomplish their goal? Then they win; you lose. You guys lost - deal with it! They are the champions, and they won the day.

    Their accomplishment blows up in their faces? Hey, it's your fault for being fanatic! You MADE THEM do what they did!
     

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