My thing is, yes a lot of the older Bond films have problemsābut thatās us framing the old films with modern norms. Back when, say, From Russia you love was made, it was perfectly acceptable to pinch a womanās backside and wink at her in the office.
This movie was my childhood, I had the VHS and watched it so many times. It's gotten to the point where I don't even know where to start on what I enjoy about it. But basically all of it. Later when I realised it was an homage to the pulp genre it had new dimensions. When I was trying to write a historical adventure novel, Pulp was very much. The style I wanted to invoke. So there is Indiana Jones and also The Mummy running through the veins of my story. The sense that there's still things to
be discovered, powers we don't understand and evil to be vanquished in the world that proclaims it's a modern age of reason is such a powerful idea.
And let's also give them a round of applause for making a female character that also punched Nazis, out drank everyone and generally never waited around and expected to be rescued
The best explanation of Nazism that Drucker had ever encountered came from a Nazi agitator 'whom, many years ago, I heard proclaim to a wildly cheering peasants' meeting: "We don't want lower bread prices, we don't want higher bread prices, we don't want unchanged bread prices -- we want National Socialist bread prices."' [...] Higher bread prices, lower bread prices, and unchanged bread prices 'have all failed. The only hope lies in a kind of bread price which is none of these, which nobody has ever seen before, and which belies the evidence of one's reason.'"
Benjamin Hett, "The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic"
Musk's grandparents were literal Nazis who emigrated from Canada to South Africa (the most pro-Nazi country outside of Europe), where they joined the local Nazi party.
Yeah, heāll call himself āJewish by associationā, but he wonāt get shot by some Nazi asshole yelling āJEWS WILL NOT REPLACE USā or get beaten up by some Nazi asshole yelling āFROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!ā
DEI hire Kash Patel has no sexual assaults or rapes that we know of. So why are the leftists against his nomination? Are they the real racists? Checkmate libs!
Wind chill of 1 F. In just the last 10 minutes, I've watched the street outside turn into a white sheet of ice. I don't know how you people who live in climes like this do it.
Fuck salt. As an old Minnesotan who moved to Northern Michigan, salt is one of the worst and costliest things to put on our roads. It rots the bridges and cars, allows people to drive too fast and turns into blue ice when it eventually fails. Sand is the only thing you should put on roads. People drive a little slower on it, and are safer...
Out here in the Sierra we use volcanic cinders because it's plentiful. When I was plowing, I resisted salting even when I was told to do it. It's an environmental nightmare.
When I lived in upstate New York for several months but left before winter set in, I had a roommate who bought used cars from places like California and sold them at a good profit since all the ones in upstate New York were corroded by salt.
It's awful stuff I know. It does horrible things to the finish on an automobile as well as the road but prior to far better de-icers now available when I was short it was what the county HAD. It also remains the too-convenient term for substances engaged today and that needs to be corrected.
Well the snow on Thanksgiving was quite lovely. And I quite enjoyed my sunset walk in 12 degree weather yesterday, at least until my gloved hands fell off.
We got all our chores done yesterday, so today we're Goofing Off.
It's 58 degrees Down Here, which is DAMN cold for us. There's a fire going in the fireplace and I'm reading in front of it. I feel like I should be in a wing-chair, wearing an ascot and sipping port, but instead I'm lying on the floor in front of the fire, covered in cats.
A narrow majority of our fellow citizens effectively voted to end democracy, consciously or unconsciously. That's just the bottom line. If it survives, a fair amount of luck will have to be involved.
Where are the resistance organizations? People here were talking about Indivisible and I've tried contacting several supposed groups in my area and the main organization, and no one has contacted me back yet.
Unconsciously for many of them, I think. On this mommy-blog, we are marinating in political knowledge. The average voter is browsing the snack chips aisle, trying to decide if spicy and cheesy are a good combination.
I think there was fuckery but look at all the demonstrations and strong statements from democrats, the civil unrest. Oh yeah, thereās absolutely none of that.
I find comfort in reading Rachel Maddow's "Prequel," where she documents how America was *this close* to joining the Nazis, and was stopped by a small and committed group of activists and public servants.
We've had darker days before, and we survived. We'll survive this as well. I know I'd rather we have something better than mere survival, but it'll have to do in these, our fallen times.
I read this before making the covfefe oatmilk latte power-smoothie. Wish me good luck doing so, now. BUT. I'll quote his last words of advice first, because it helps:
"Both inside and outside Congress, there will have to be simple defiance, joined with a rhetoric of a better America. And, at moments at least, there will also have to be alliances among Americans who, though they differ on other matters, would like to see their country endure."
(Note to readers: I wrote this two weeks ago, on 15 November. This update accounts for things I have learned since, and for Trumpās further appointments, who confirm the thesis.)
Each of Trump's proposed appointments is a surprise. It is comforting to think that he is simply a vengeful old man, lashing out this way and that. This is unlikely. He and Musk and Putin have been talking for years. And the whole idea of his campaign was that this time he had a plan.We should be wary of shock, which excuses inaction. Who could have known? What could I have done? If there is a plan, shock is part of the plan. We have to get through the surprise and the shock to see the design and the risk. We don't have much time. Nor is outrage the point. Of course we are outraged. But our own reactions can distract is from the larger pattern.
The newspapers address the surprise and the shock by investigating each proposed appointment individually. And we need this. With detail comes leverage and power. But clarity must also come, and quickly. Each appointment is part of a larger picture. Taken together, Trumpās candidates constitute an attempt to wreck the American government.
In historical context we can see this. There is a history of the modern democratic state. There is also a history of engineered regime change and deliberate state destruction. In both histories, five key zones are health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. These people, with power over these areas of life, can make America impossible to sustain.
The foundation of modern democratic state is a healthy, long-lived population. We lived longer in the twentieth century because of hygiene and vaccinations, pioneered by scientists and physicians and then institutionalized by governments. We treat one another better when we know we have longer lives to lose. Health is not only the central human good; it enables the peaceful interactions we associate with the rule of law and democracy. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the proposed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, would undo all of this. On his watch, were his ideas implemented, millions of us would die. Knowing that our lives will be shorter, we become nasty and brutish.
A modern democratic state depends upon the rule of law. Before anything else is possible, we have to endorse the principle that we are all governed by law, and that our institutions are grounded in law. This enables a functional government of a specific sort, in which leaders can be regularly replaced by elections. It allows us to live as free individuals, within a set of rules that we can alter together. The rule of law depends on people who believe in the spirit of law. Matt Gaetz, Trumpās first proposed attorney general, is the opposite of such a person. It is not just that he flouts law himself, spectacularly and disgustingly. It is that he embodies lawlessness, and can be counted upon to abuse law to pursue Trump's political opponents. The end of the rule of law is an essential component of a regime change. He has been replaced by Pam Bondi, who will evade the sex-crime allegations that seem to have brought Gaetz down. But Bondi is someone who dropped an investigation against Trump when he made an illegal donation to one of her foundations. She also led ālock her upā chants against Hillary Clinton, who had committed no crime. And she participated in a central injustice of contemporary American history, Donald Trumpās Big Lie that he won the election of 2020. She can be expected to lead prosecutions based upon alternative reality.
In a class by himself is Kash Patel, whom Trump would like to see as director of the FBI. This, of course, requires Trump to fire Christopher Wray, whom he himself appointed, and who has three years left to serve. Firing Wray for no reason would be unprecedented and would itself have been an outrage in a more sane time. Giving Patel authority over the national police force is nothing less than a promise of authoritarian rule.
Patel is a narcissistic zealot with zero qualification for such a post, as even hard-right Trump insiders such as Bill Barr have said (āover my dead bodyā were his words when Trump proposed Patel for a lesser position of authority in 2020). Patel got Trumpās attention for his efforts to denounce the entirely correct proposition that Trump was supported by Russian in 2016. Patel was then one of the most active and outspoken participants in Trumpās coup attempt of 2020-2021. Patel has since become a pitchman for a clothing line as well as pills that, he claims, will detox your body from the harmful effects of vaccinations. Patel said both that he would shut down the FBI and that he would use it to prosecute journalists and people who deny the untrue conspiracy theories in which he believes, and to prosecute people who say true things, such as that Russia supports Donald Trump when he runs for office. Russian trolls have been, understandably, very excited in their support of Patel.
A pattern is emerging: the federal government is to be used only as an instrument of revenge, which means that the law will be subverted as such. Laws that were passed to improve the laws of citizens, meanwhile, will simply not be implemented.
The United States of America exists not only because laws are passed, but because we can expect that these laws will be implemented by civil servants. We might find bureaucracy annoying; its absence, though, is deadly. We cannot take the pollution out of the air ourselves, or build the highways ourselves, our write our Social Security checks ourselves. Without a civil service, the law becomes mere paper, and all that works is the personal connection to the government, which the oligarchs will have, and which the rest of us will not. This is the engineered helplessness promised by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are to head a black hole named after a cryptocurrency. There are already oversight instruments in government. DOGE is something entirely different: an agency of destruction, run by people who believe that government should exist for the wealthy or not at all.
The understandable jokes are that DOGE just adds unelected bureaucrats when it is supposed to replace them, and that DOGE is itself a model of inefficiency, since it has two incompetent directors. But the humor distracts from the basic truth: DOGE is there to make the government fail, and then to divide the profitable bits among regime-proximate oligarchs.
DOGE = Den of Oligarchs Gets Everything.
In a modern democratic state, the armed forces are meant to preserve a healthy, long-lived people from external threats. This principal has been much abused in American practice. But never before Donald Trump have we had a president who has presented the purpose of the armed forces as the oppression of Americans. Trump says that Russia and China are less of a threat than "internal enemies." In American tradition, members of the armed forces swear an oath to the Constitution. Trump has indicated that we would prefer "Hitler's generals," which means a personal oath to himself. Pete Hegseth, Trump's proposed secretary of defense, defends war criminals and displays tattoos associated with white nationalism and Christian nationalism. He is a fundraiser and television personality, with a complicated sexual past and zero experience running an organization. Like Trump, he has no coherent account of how foreign powers might threaten America; if anything, he praises them for sharing his misogyny. His own obsessions with gender lead him to believe that American high officers should be politically purged ā a proposition that Americaās actual enemies would of course welcome. Hegseth makes perfect sense as the person who would direct American armed forces against American citizens.In a world of hostile powers, an intelligence service is indispensable. Intelligence can be abused, and certainly has been abused. Yet it is necessary to consider military threats: consider the Biden administration's correct call the Russia was about to invade Ukraine. It is also necessary to counter the attempts by foreign intelligence agencies, which are constant, to harm American society. This often involves disinformation.
Tulsi Gabbard, insofar as she is known at all, is known as a spreader of Syrian and Russian disinformation. She visited Syria, where here remarks could only be understood as an endorsement of the atrocities of Assad. She suggested to burn victims that they had not suffered because of Assad and his ally Russia, which was in fact the case. Gabbard has no relevant experience. Were she to become director of national intelligence, as Trump proposes, we would lose the trust of our allies, and lose contact with much of what is happening in the world -- just for starters. We would be vulnerable to all of those who wish to cause us harm. Unsurprisingly, Gabbard is regarded in Russia as āgirlfriend,ā āsuperwomanā and a āPutinās agent.ā
In the Soviet theory of regime change, one crucial aspect was control of the power ministries: those associated with defense, the police, and intelligence. Patel, Gabbard, and Hegseth are such shocking suggestions as custodians of American power and law that it is easy to overlook Kristi Noem as Trumpās proposed director of Homeland Security.
Noem is regarded positively in Trumpās circles because of a publicity stunt in which she, as governor of South Dakota, effectively privatized her statesās National Guard by accepting a big private donation to send a few of its members to the border with Mexico. The border is, of course, a serious matter, Noemās combination of spectacle, privatization, and incompetence is more than concerning.
Imagine that you are a foreign leader who wishes to destroy the United States. How could you do so? The easiest way would be to get Americans to do the work themselves, to somehow induce Americans to undo their own health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. From this perspective, Trump's proposed appointments -- Kennedy, Jr.; Bondi; Musk; Ramaswamy; Hegseth; Gabbard; Noem -- are perfect instruments. They combine narcissism, incompetence, corruption, sexual incontinence, personal vulnerability, dangerous convictions, and foreign influence as no group before them has done. These proposed appointments look like a decapitation strike: destroying the American government from the top, leaving the body politic to rot, and the rest of us to suffer.
I do not defend the status quo. I have no doubt whatsoever that the Department of Defense and the Food and Drug Administration require reform. But such a reform, of these or other agencies, would have to be guided by people with knowledge and experience, who cared about their country, and who had a vision of improvement. That is simply not what is happening here. We are confronted instead with a group of people who, were they to hold the positions they have been assigned, could bring an end to the United States of America.
It is a mistake to think of these people as flawed. It is not they will do a bad job in their assigned posts. It is that they will do a good job using those assigned posts to destroy our country.However and by whomever this was organized, the intention of these appointments is clear: to create American horror. Elected officials should see this for what it is. Senators, regardless of party, should understand that the United States Senate will not outlast the United States, insist on voting, and vote accordingly. The Supreme Court of the United States will likely be called upon. Although it is a faint hope, one must venture it anyway: that its justices will understand that the Constitution was not in fact written as the cover story for state destruction. The Supreme Court will also not outlast the United States.
And citizens, regardless of how they voted, need now to check their attitudes. This is no longer a post-electoral moment. It is a pre-catastrophic moment. Trump voters are caught in the notion that Trump must be doing the right thing if Harris voters are upset. But Harris voters are upset now because they love their country. And Harris voters will have to get past the idea that Trump voters should reap what they have sown. Yes, some of them did vote to burn it all down. But if it all burns down, we burn too. It is not easy to speak right now; but if some Republicans wish to, please listen.
Both inside and outside Congress, there will have to be simple defiance, joined with a rhetoric of a better America. And, at moments at least, there will also have to be alliances among Americans who, though they differ on other matters, would like to see their country endure.
(Please share this post with people who might benefit from reading it.)
The average American is laughable. The average American is a drone and doesn't give a shit about anything that happens more than a foot away from their own rotten navel.
The average American reads at a sixth grade level. The average American is porn-addled and consumes a ridiculous amount of media and never picks up a book and reads it.
The average American cannot critically reason at a decent level.
The average American is only interested in their own meanness, idiocy, inanity and superficiality. I'm tired of being held hostage to the average American who doesn't know shit about shit.
The engagement level of the average American has declined drastically in my lifetime. Self-absorbed, little concern for their neighbors, their community, the very things that make their own prosperity possible. No knowledge of this as well. No ability to critically think. No ability to see the underlying infrastructure that makes it all possible.
I am still so angry about the election. I see no path towards justice, only an imbalance where one lunatic can bend the rules to his liking. It is depressing for a Virgo like me.
Thanks everyone for a really fun evening! Next week is šš¢š¬š¬ ššš«šš š«š¢š§š'š¬ ššØš¦š š šØš« šššš®š„š¢šš« šš”š¢š„šš«šš§. I actually found a free version on YouTube, fingers crossed it stays up till next week! https://open.substack.com/pub/ziggywiggy/p/wonkette-movie-night-dec-7-miss-peregrines?r=2knfuc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Oooooh! Love the books and movie! šš
Iām so looking forward to it.
My thing is, yes a lot of the older Bond films have problemsābut thatās us framing the old films with modern norms. Back when, say, From Russia you love was made, it was perfectly acceptable to pinch a womanās backside and wink at her in the office.
That final shot! Drooling. Yum!
Oops wrong thread. This was for Cakeswelike
This movie was my childhood, I had the VHS and watched it so many times. It's gotten to the point where I don't even know where to start on what I enjoy about it. But basically all of it. Later when I realised it was an homage to the pulp genre it had new dimensions. When I was trying to write a historical adventure novel, Pulp was very much. The style I wanted to invoke. So there is Indiana Jones and also The Mummy running through the veins of my story. The sense that there's still things to
be discovered, powers we don't understand and evil to be vanquished in the world that proclaims it's a modern age of reason is such a powerful idea.
And let's also give them a round of applause for making a female character that also punched Nazis, out drank everyone and generally never waited around and expected to be rescued
Next year weāre going to see it was never about inflation. The media wonāt give two shits about tariffs inflating prices.
Just like they stopped caring about age once Biden was out of the race theylāll stop caring about high prices because Trump is in office.
Truth is, the American people only care about whatever the media fucking tells them to care about.
Once again:
The best explanation of Nazism that Drucker had ever encountered came from a Nazi agitator 'whom, many years ago, I heard proclaim to a wildly cheering peasants' meeting: "We don't want lower bread prices, we don't want higher bread prices, we don't want unchanged bread prices -- we want National Socialist bread prices."' [...] Higher bread prices, lower bread prices, and unchanged bread prices 'have all failed. The only hope lies in a kind of bread price which is none of these, which nobody has ever seen before, and which belies the evidence of one's reason.'"
Benjamin Hett, "The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic"
Just like they only cared about Afghanistan once Biden took office.
Power & Greed
Today is the birthday of the Divine Miss Bette Midler. Here she is singing Marshall Crenshaw's "Favorite Waste of Time":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=575FmasN4Bs
https://xcancel.com/HeuRol6727/status/1863243575539953977#m
Musk's grandparents were literal Nazis who emigrated from Canada to South Africa (the most pro-Nazi country outside of Europe), where they joined the local Nazi party.
If that post is accurate, how does that square with his family (father's? both?) being Jewish?
AFAIK, thereās no Jewish background there (thank HaShem).
Ah.
So he is quoted as feeling "JEWISH BY ASSOCIATION", G-d help us.
Okay, dude. Just another Boer, after all. And I don't say it lightly; we've been there. Makes all the sense, now.
*glowers*
Yeah, heāll call himself āJewish by associationā, but he wonāt get shot by some Nazi asshole yelling āJEWS WILL NOT REPLACE USā or get beaten up by some Nazi asshole yelling āFROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!ā
Fascism in a Husk congenital trait.
The shit doesnāt fall far from the butthole.
Rotten fruit never falls far from the diseased tree.
Piss off a MAGA christian.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:6atndoisyyyqwmqz6bxcdesm/bafkreifj337cxhl7rceacb5uj76t7ul4f3ooaxxw7w4jtr3slzqucjf6q4@jpeg
Pissing ON them is also enthusiastically applauded.
Careful. An awful lot of them are self-loathing cuckoldry fetishists. I'd be hesitant about doing anything that might indulge one of their kinks.
If the Russian Pee-Pee tapes are ever released, the MAGATs will turn into a Tik-Tok challenge.
DEI hire Kash Patel has no sexual assaults or rapes that we know of. So why are the leftists against his nomination? Are they the real racists? Checkmate libs!
Toilet Paper USA
I guarantee that creep has molested some mammal somewhere.
Well, if so, the FBI will suss it out. And, maybe, keep it in a special drawer somewhere, that he knows about and can never find...
Didnāt he date Anne Culter?
That was Dinesh D'ouchebagza.
Wind chill of 1 F. In just the last 10 minutes, I've watched the street outside turn into a white sheet of ice. I don't know how you people who live in climes like this do it.
When it's where you were born and raised you're accustomed to it and have adapted.
You learn to profoundly respect salt and studded tires.
Fuck salt. As an old Minnesotan who moved to Northern Michigan, salt is one of the worst and costliest things to put on our roads. It rots the bridges and cars, allows people to drive too fast and turns into blue ice when it eventually fails. Sand is the only thing you should put on roads. People drive a little slower on it, and are safer...
Out here in the Sierra we use volcanic cinders because it's plentiful. When I was plowing, I resisted salting even when I was told to do it. It's an environmental nightmare.
Around here they use soil. It works.
When I lived in upstate New York for several months but left before winter set in, I had a roommate who bought used cars from places like California and sold them at a good profit since all the ones in upstate New York were corroded by salt.
It's awful stuff I know. It does horrible things to the finish on an automobile as well as the road but prior to far better de-icers now available when I was short it was what the county HAD. It also remains the too-convenient term for substances engaged today and that needs to be corrected.
These new de-icers are pretty rude chemicals, too. Sand works. It's cheap, not toxic and doesn't get into the water supply, either...
Well the snow on Thanksgiving was quite lovely. And I quite enjoyed my sunset walk in 12 degree weather yesterday, at least until my gloved hands fell off.
We got all our chores done yesterday, so today we're Goofing Off.
It's 58 degrees Down Here, which is DAMN cold for us. There's a fire going in the fireplace and I'm reading in front of it. I feel like I should be in a wing-chair, wearing an ascot and sipping port, but instead I'm lying on the floor in front of the fire, covered in cats.
A narrow majority of our fellow citizens effectively voted to end democracy, consciously or unconsciously. That's just the bottom line. If it survives, a fair amount of luck will have to be involved.
Where are the resistance organizations? People here were talking about Indivisible and I've tried contacting several supposed groups in my area and the main organization, and no one has contacted me back yet.
Depending on luck or āinstitutionsā arenāt going to cut it.
And voting won't do it.
Unconsciously for many of them, I think. On this mommy-blog, we are marinating in political knowledge. The average voter is browsing the snack chips aisle, trying to decide if spicy and cheesy are a good combination.
That's obviously an excellent combination! What's the hold up?
Vikings play today!...
I will never believe those numbers. The Republicans said they'd steal the election and they did.
I think there was fuckery but look at all the demonstrations and strong statements from democrats, the civil unrest. Oh yeah, thereās absolutely none of that.
Nor on the other side, for which I am grateful.
Sheep get shorn and slaughtered.
I find comfort in reading Rachel Maddow's "Prequel," where she documents how America was *this close* to joining the Nazis, and was stopped by a small and committed group of activists and public servants.
We've had darker days before, and we survived. We'll survive this as well. I know I'd rather we have something better than mere survival, but it'll have to do in these, our fallen times.
I've been watching the Mr. McMahon series on Netflix. This is how we got here...
Ignorance is strength! War is peace! Freedom is slavery!
GOP Senator Raves About Kash Patel After Getting Pressed By NBCās Kristen Welker: Heāll Turn Around āCompletely Corruptedā FBI
https://www.mediaite.com/news/gop-senator-raves-about-kash-patel-after-getting-pressed-by-nbcs-kristen-welker-hell-turn-around-completely-corrupted-fbi/
"Notable" Republican senator? You mean the junior senator from Tennessee whose senior senator is Marsha Blackburn? Notable in what way, exactly?
Haggerty is a sack of shit, as are all Rethugs.
The Republicans are the enemies within greasepainted Hitler is always barking about.
Prof. Snyder, this morning.
I read this before making the covfefe oatmilk latte power-smoothie. Wish me good luck doing so, now. BUT. I'll quote his last words of advice first, because it helps:
"Both inside and outside Congress, there will have to be simple defiance, joined with a rhetoric of a better America. And, at moments at least, there will also have to be alliances among Americans who, though they differ on other matters, would like to see their country endure."
(Note to readers: I wrote this two weeks ago, on 15 November. This update accounts for things I have learned since, and for Trumpās further appointments, who confirm the thesis.)
Each of Trump's proposed appointments is a surprise. It is comforting to think that he is simply a vengeful old man, lashing out this way and that. This is unlikely. He and Musk and Putin have been talking for years. And the whole idea of his campaign was that this time he had a plan.We should be wary of shock, which excuses inaction. Who could have known? What could I have done? If there is a plan, shock is part of the plan. We have to get through the surprise and the shock to see the design and the risk. We don't have much time. Nor is outrage the point. Of course we are outraged. But our own reactions can distract is from the larger pattern.
The newspapers address the surprise and the shock by investigating each proposed appointment individually. And we need this. With detail comes leverage and power. But clarity must also come, and quickly. Each appointment is part of a larger picture. Taken together, Trumpās candidates constitute an attempt to wreck the American government.
In historical context we can see this. There is a history of the modern democratic state. There is also a history of engineered regime change and deliberate state destruction. In both histories, five key zones are health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. These people, with power over these areas of life, can make America impossible to sustain.
The foundation of modern democratic state is a healthy, long-lived population. We lived longer in the twentieth century because of hygiene and vaccinations, pioneered by scientists and physicians and then institutionalized by governments. We treat one another better when we know we have longer lives to lose. Health is not only the central human good; it enables the peaceful interactions we associate with the rule of law and democracy. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the proposed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, would undo all of this. On his watch, were his ideas implemented, millions of us would die. Knowing that our lives will be shorter, we become nasty and brutish.
A modern democratic state depends upon the rule of law. Before anything else is possible, we have to endorse the principle that we are all governed by law, and that our institutions are grounded in law. This enables a functional government of a specific sort, in which leaders can be regularly replaced by elections. It allows us to live as free individuals, within a set of rules that we can alter together. The rule of law depends on people who believe in the spirit of law. Matt Gaetz, Trumpās first proposed attorney general, is the opposite of such a person. It is not just that he flouts law himself, spectacularly and disgustingly. It is that he embodies lawlessness, and can be counted upon to abuse law to pursue Trump's political opponents. The end of the rule of law is an essential component of a regime change. He has been replaced by Pam Bondi, who will evade the sex-crime allegations that seem to have brought Gaetz down. But Bondi is someone who dropped an investigation against Trump when he made an illegal donation to one of her foundations. She also led ālock her upā chants against Hillary Clinton, who had committed no crime. And she participated in a central injustice of contemporary American history, Donald Trumpās Big Lie that he won the election of 2020. She can be expected to lead prosecutions based upon alternative reality.
In a class by himself is Kash Patel, whom Trump would like to see as director of the FBI. This, of course, requires Trump to fire Christopher Wray, whom he himself appointed, and who has three years left to serve. Firing Wray for no reason would be unprecedented and would itself have been an outrage in a more sane time. Giving Patel authority over the national police force is nothing less than a promise of authoritarian rule.
Patel is a narcissistic zealot with zero qualification for such a post, as even hard-right Trump insiders such as Bill Barr have said (āover my dead bodyā were his words when Trump proposed Patel for a lesser position of authority in 2020). Patel got Trumpās attention for his efforts to denounce the entirely correct proposition that Trump was supported by Russian in 2016. Patel was then one of the most active and outspoken participants in Trumpās coup attempt of 2020-2021. Patel has since become a pitchman for a clothing line as well as pills that, he claims, will detox your body from the harmful effects of vaccinations. Patel said both that he would shut down the FBI and that he would use it to prosecute journalists and people who deny the untrue conspiracy theories in which he believes, and to prosecute people who say true things, such as that Russia supports Donald Trump when he runs for office. Russian trolls have been, understandably, very excited in their support of Patel.
A pattern is emerging: the federal government is to be used only as an instrument of revenge, which means that the law will be subverted as such. Laws that were passed to improve the laws of citizens, meanwhile, will simply not be implemented.
The United States of America exists not only because laws are passed, but because we can expect that these laws will be implemented by civil servants. We might find bureaucracy annoying; its absence, though, is deadly. We cannot take the pollution out of the air ourselves, or build the highways ourselves, our write our Social Security checks ourselves. Without a civil service, the law becomes mere paper, and all that works is the personal connection to the government, which the oligarchs will have, and which the rest of us will not. This is the engineered helplessness promised by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are to head a black hole named after a cryptocurrency. There are already oversight instruments in government. DOGE is something entirely different: an agency of destruction, run by people who believe that government should exist for the wealthy or not at all.
The understandable jokes are that DOGE just adds unelected bureaucrats when it is supposed to replace them, and that DOGE is itself a model of inefficiency, since it has two incompetent directors. But the humor distracts from the basic truth: DOGE is there to make the government fail, and then to divide the profitable bits among regime-proximate oligarchs.
DOGE = Den of Oligarchs Gets Everything.
In a modern democratic state, the armed forces are meant to preserve a healthy, long-lived people from external threats. This principal has been much abused in American practice. But never before Donald Trump have we had a president who has presented the purpose of the armed forces as the oppression of Americans. Trump says that Russia and China are less of a threat than "internal enemies." In American tradition, members of the armed forces swear an oath to the Constitution. Trump has indicated that we would prefer "Hitler's generals," which means a personal oath to himself. Pete Hegseth, Trump's proposed secretary of defense, defends war criminals and displays tattoos associated with white nationalism and Christian nationalism. He is a fundraiser and television personality, with a complicated sexual past and zero experience running an organization. Like Trump, he has no coherent account of how foreign powers might threaten America; if anything, he praises them for sharing his misogyny. His own obsessions with gender lead him to believe that American high officers should be politically purged ā a proposition that Americaās actual enemies would of course welcome. Hegseth makes perfect sense as the person who would direct American armed forces against American citizens.In a world of hostile powers, an intelligence service is indispensable. Intelligence can be abused, and certainly has been abused. Yet it is necessary to consider military threats: consider the Biden administration's correct call the Russia was about to invade Ukraine. It is also necessary to counter the attempts by foreign intelligence agencies, which are constant, to harm American society. This often involves disinformation.
Tulsi Gabbard, insofar as she is known at all, is known as a spreader of Syrian and Russian disinformation. She visited Syria, where here remarks could only be understood as an endorsement of the atrocities of Assad. She suggested to burn victims that they had not suffered because of Assad and his ally Russia, which was in fact the case. Gabbard has no relevant experience. Were she to become director of national intelligence, as Trump proposes, we would lose the trust of our allies, and lose contact with much of what is happening in the world -- just for starters. We would be vulnerable to all of those who wish to cause us harm. Unsurprisingly, Gabbard is regarded in Russia as āgirlfriend,ā āsuperwomanā and a āPutinās agent.ā
In the Soviet theory of regime change, one crucial aspect was control of the power ministries: those associated with defense, the police, and intelligence. Patel, Gabbard, and Hegseth are such shocking suggestions as custodians of American power and law that it is easy to overlook Kristi Noem as Trumpās proposed director of Homeland Security.
You lost me at "newspapers investigating."
Not my words; it's Tiimothy Snyder.
CONT'D
Noem is regarded positively in Trumpās circles because of a publicity stunt in which she, as governor of South Dakota, effectively privatized her statesās National Guard by accepting a big private donation to send a few of its members to the border with Mexico. The border is, of course, a serious matter, Noemās combination of spectacle, privatization, and incompetence is more than concerning.
Imagine that you are a foreign leader who wishes to destroy the United States. How could you do so? The easiest way would be to get Americans to do the work themselves, to somehow induce Americans to undo their own health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. From this perspective, Trump's proposed appointments -- Kennedy, Jr.; Bondi; Musk; Ramaswamy; Hegseth; Gabbard; Noem -- are perfect instruments. They combine narcissism, incompetence, corruption, sexual incontinence, personal vulnerability, dangerous convictions, and foreign influence as no group before them has done. These proposed appointments look like a decapitation strike: destroying the American government from the top, leaving the body politic to rot, and the rest of us to suffer.
I do not defend the status quo. I have no doubt whatsoever that the Department of Defense and the Food and Drug Administration require reform. But such a reform, of these or other agencies, would have to be guided by people with knowledge and experience, who cared about their country, and who had a vision of improvement. That is simply not what is happening here. We are confronted instead with a group of people who, were they to hold the positions they have been assigned, could bring an end to the United States of America.
It is a mistake to think of these people as flawed. It is not they will do a bad job in their assigned posts. It is that they will do a good job using those assigned posts to destroy our country.However and by whomever this was organized, the intention of these appointments is clear: to create American horror. Elected officials should see this for what it is. Senators, regardless of party, should understand that the United States Senate will not outlast the United States, insist on voting, and vote accordingly. The Supreme Court of the United States will likely be called upon. Although it is a faint hope, one must venture it anyway: that its justices will understand that the Constitution was not in fact written as the cover story for state destruction. The Supreme Court will also not outlast the United States.
And citizens, regardless of how they voted, need now to check their attitudes. This is no longer a post-electoral moment. It is a pre-catastrophic moment. Trump voters are caught in the notion that Trump must be doing the right thing if Harris voters are upset. But Harris voters are upset now because they love their country. And Harris voters will have to get past the idea that Trump voters should reap what they have sown. Yes, some of them did vote to burn it all down. But if it all burns down, we burn too. It is not easy to speak right now; but if some Republicans wish to, please listen.
Both inside and outside Congress, there will have to be simple defiance, joined with a rhetoric of a better America. And, at moments at least, there will also have to be alliances among Americans who, though they differ on other matters, would like to see their country endure.
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And yet, they will all be appointed during congressional recess and any court case about it will go to SCOTUS, and just guess how that'll go down.
We had our chance, but ovaries and eggs, y'all.
Americans canāt be bothered, it seems.
The entire piece is now pasted.
I understand your sentiment, but there was more to read then when you commented.
The average American is laughable. The average American is a drone and doesn't give a shit about anything that happens more than a foot away from their own rotten navel.
The average American reads at a sixth grade level. The average American is porn-addled and consumes a ridiculous amount of media and never picks up a book and reads it.
The average American cannot critically reason at a decent level.
The average American is only interested in their own meanness, idiocy, inanity and superficiality. I'm tired of being held hostage to the average American who doesn't know shit about shit.
The engagement level of the average American has declined drastically in my lifetime. Self-absorbed, little concern for their neighbors, their community, the very things that make their own prosperity possible. No knowledge of this as well. No ability to critically think. No ability to see the underlying infrastructure that makes it all possible.
I am still so angry about the election. I see no path towards justice, only an imbalance where one lunatic can bend the rules to his liking. It is depressing for a Virgo like me.
That's because Americans have shown that without a doubt they prefer the absence of tension to the presence of justice.
Our job now it to make sure America has buyers remorse.