There are four lights.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard,
refusing to let his Cardassian torturer define reality
This week's featured post is Week One.
This week everybody was talking about Trump
If you're sick of hearing about him, forgive me, because it's Week One of his new administration. The featured post is all Trump, and so is most of this weekly summary.
I continue not to take seriously his threats against Greenland and Denmark (or Canada). But Trump himself does seem to take his threats seriously. Saturday, the Financial Times reported on a pre-inauguration call between Trump and Danish Prime Minister Marie Frederiksen. The Guardian (not behind a paywall) summarizes:
Trump, then still president-elect, spoke with Frederiksen for 45 minutes last week, during which he was described to be aggressive and confrontational about Frederiksen’s refusal to sell Greenland to the US.
The Financial Times reports that according to five current and former senior European officials who were briefed on the call, the conversation “was horrendous”. One person said: “He was very firm. It was a cold shower. Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But I do think it is serious and potentially very dangerous.”
He threatened tariffs targeted against Danish imports, which likely would result in reprisals from the entire European Union. The EU undoubtedly wants to avoid a trade war with the US, but a territorial threat against a member nation is bound to galvanize the whole union.
Also from The Guardian:
Speaking onboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said: “I think we’re going to have it,” and claimed that the Arctic island’s 57,000 residents “want to be with us”.
But Greenland's Prime Minister Múte Egede says:
We are Greenlanders. We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danish either. Greenland’s future will be decided by Greenland.
And why would they want to be Americans? Unlike the US, Denmark at least offers the full services of a prosperous socialist nation, like free health care. The whole Greenland situation raises an important question: Does the second Trump administration include anyone willing to tell the boss that he's out of his mind?
and the bishop's rebuke
The MAGA movement depends on a couple of head-scratching beliefs:
- The richest man in the world (and a bunch of other multi-billionaires) is on the side of ordinary working people.
- Christianity requires political positions that are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus.
The second problem got exposed Tuesday when Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, whose home church is the National Cathedral, led the traditional post-inaugural church service. Her sermon, which was grounded across-the-board in the teachings of Jesus, called for honoring the dignity of all people, being honest, and practicing humility. Speaking directly to Trump, she asked for mercy on those who are frightened, including LGBTQ people and refugees. She reminded him that
[T]he vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.
Trump was furious, and repeated a bunch of easily debunked lies. (My links in the quote below.)
The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology! t
Of course Trump's yes-men had to join in.
Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) said Budde, born in New Jersey, “should be added to the deportation list.”
Others’ attacks were more personal.
Fox News’s Sean Hannity said Budde, whom he described as a “so-called bishop,” “made the service about her very own deranged political beliefs with a disgraceful prayer full of fearmongering and division.” Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, said Budde is a “fake bishop” and mocked her appearance.
“Who knew Satan wore granny glasses and stole his haircut from John Denver?” Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld said.
This is what happens when MAGA World is confronted with actual Christianity, rather than the corrupted version Trump's followers preach.
and Musk's Nazi salute
In the post-inauguration rally at the Capitol One Arena in DC, Elon Musk gave a speech, during which he offered the crowd a Nazi salute, pictured above. (It's not any better in the context of the full video.)
Of course, Musk and his fellow Trumpers deny that he did any such thing. The idea that Musk's gesture is a Nazi salute is "legacy media propaganda" and a "dirty tricks campaign" by liberals. (Because who among us hasn't accidentally done a Sieg Heil in a moment of exuberance? Happens all the time.)
Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.
A lot has been made of the fact that Trump's people have learned from his first administration and will be more focused and effective this time around. But Trump's opponents have learned too. Here's Josh Marshall's response:
Back in the first Trump presidency, Trump’s critics spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get Trumpers to admit they’d done this or that, to apologize, whatever. This was always a mistake. I don’t need anyone to validate what I saw. I saw it. I don’t care what the explanation is.
This is the right reaction. Don't be trolled. Don't be gaslit. Of course Elon, Trump, and his various minions are going to send increasingly blatant signals of support to their fascist allies. Of course they're going to deny doing so. They will acknowledge no shame and make no apologies.
The point of asking for an acknowledgment and/or apology is to support a notion of shared reality: This is what we require before we're willing to admit someone back into the consensus. But as we saw in Trump's first term, that ship has sailed. The Trumpers have no interest in sharing our reality. They want to overwhelm us with their claims until we don't know what is true any more. Asking them to acknowledge truth simply puts the ball in their court; it gives them the power to say "no".
Given that consensus is no longer a possibility, the important thing is to hold onto our own sense of reality. We saw what we saw, and we're not going to let an authoritarian political movement push us into a mindset where maybe we didn't see what we saw.
and you also might be interested in ...
Remember when egg prices were too high and Biden was to blame? Well, they're even higher now, and the problem is a public health issue: Bird flu is killing chickens, and entire flocks are being sacrificed to stop the spread of the disease. The lesson here is that presidents, even a chosen-by-God president like Trump, don't have magic wands to wave over such problems. There's a real world out there, with real cause-and-effect mechanisms.
The accusations against author Neil Gaiman have gotten very detailed and compelling.
Friday night, Trump fired inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies. Inspectors general are supposed to provide oversight, and to be Congress' eyes and ears in the executive branch, so if you wanted your underlings to break the law, getting rid of the IGs is a good first move. However, firing them without warning or justification is illegal.
The WaPo covered this in a typically Trump-normalizing way, saying only that the firing "appeared" to be illegal. The sun appears bright this morning and the sky appears to be blue, but who can really say?
Trump's attempt to eliminate all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs from the government added a McCarthyite touch. A memo went out to all government employees -- I have a friend who got one -- instructing them to report any DEI programs that might have changed their names lately or otherwise attempted to fly under the radar. Failure to rat out your colleagues could result in "adverse consequences".
and let's close with a rationalization
I can stop buying books any time I want. Cartoonist Tom Gauld understands me.
No comments:
Post a Comment