A Wounded Narcissist Leading Us to Ruin

If there's any solid evidence that the United States as a nation, as a global power, as a beacon of political stability is no more, the recent letter from donald trump to Norway's prime minister should be the big fucking clue we've finally gone over the cliffs (via Robbie Griffiths at NPR): 

President Trump says his controversial push for U.S. control of Greenland comes after he failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize last year, adding he no longer feels obliged to think only of peace.

In a message to Norway's prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre on Sunday night, Trump criticized the European country for not giving him the prize.

"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America," Trump said in the message.

"The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland," Trump added. The message was reported by PBS NewsHour, and was later confirmed by Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in a statement.

Gahr Støre said he received the message on Sunday in response to a text he and Finland's President Alexander Stubb had sent to Trump, in which they had conveyed opposition to Trump's proposed tariff increases on eight European countries over the recent Greenland dispute.

There are images floating around of a physical letter, but I fear they are mock-ups instead of the real thing so I'm not going to post it here. But given how too many reputable news outlets have verified the contents of that letter, we should expect the messaging is correct... and clear.

For all of trump's bluster that Greenland is necessary for America's national security, the truth is that trump wants Greenland to satisfy his own broken ego. The truth is that the current occupant of the White House - I refuse to identify him otherwise - is a bratty five-year-old throwing a tantrum and lashing out in anger towards everyone he feels has insulted him.

As Anne Applebaum clarifies at the Atlantic:

One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history. Donald Trump did not end eight wars. Greenland has been Danish territory for centuries. Its residents are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections. There are many “written documents” establishing Danish sovereignty in Greenland, including some signed by the United States. In his second term, Trump has done nothing for NATO—an organization that the U.S. created and theoretically leads, and that has only ever been used in defense of American interests. If the European members of NATO have begun spending more on their own defense (budgets to which the U.S. never contributed), that’s because of the threat they feel from Russia.

Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.

For the past year, American allies around the world have tried very hard to find a theory that explains Trump’s behavior. Isolationism, neo-imperialism, and patrimonialism are all words that have been thrown around. But in the end, the president himself defeats all attempts to describe a “Trump doctrine.” He is locked into a world of his own, determined to “win” every encounter, whether in an imaginary competition for the Nobel Peace Prize or a protest from the mother of small children objecting to his masked, armed paramilitary in Minneapolis. These contests matter more to him than any long-term strategy. And of course, the need to appear victorious matters much more than Americans’ prosperity and well-being...

This is nothing new, by the way. Any rational observer of trump's world-view since 2016 saw this kind of self-serving mania coming. I remember what Adam L. Silverman wrote back then, and how it applies now:

...More than that, however, is that the Trump Doctrine is really the animating force or theme of the entire Trump campaign. The other candidates had better treat Donald Trump fairly, the Republican National Committee better treat Donald Trump fairly, the Republican establishment better treat Donald Trump fairly, the media better treat Donald Trump fairly, the state level parties that handle the primaries and all the delegates chosen better treat Donald Trump fairly. And Donald Trump will make them treat him fairly! And the only candidate, nay the only person in America who can ensure that you are treated fairly is Donald Trump. And if he isn’t treated fairly or the US isn’t treated fairly, then he will get even...!

It's not that America gets treated fairly - by whatever measurement anyone would use - it's that TRUMP gets treated fairly. And trump's idea of fair treatment is "Give me everything you have and worship me like a god."

trump doesn't get a Nobel Peace Prize? he'll force the soccer organization FIFA to create a brand-new Peace Award in order to keep the planned 2026 World Cup in the U.S. going. Even if everyone else on the planet saw it as the ego-boosting it was and mocked the award. Try to get the actual award winner María Corina Machado to gift trump the physical award as though he won it? The Nobel committee will go public with the reminder that the Peace Prize once given cannot be traded away.

We've seen this ever since trump stormed the public stage back in the 1980s: Denied any public display of success, trump had / is / will lash out however he can.

And with the powers of the office at his disposal, lashing out is arguably the only sadistic enjoyment he can feel.

The problem with this kind of absolutist leadership - the sins of tyrants and mad kings - is that it alienates far too many allies our nation relies relied on to remain a superpower. trump and his handlers haven't really thought this through: trump's threats to tariff most of Europe can backlash with those nations pulling out their investments in US Bonds and other financial markers. We're seeing another drop in the value of the dollar. The calls to relocate the World Cup away from the United States are increasing.

Even if trump pulls back on the tariffs threat, if he does follow through on sending US armed forces to seize Greenland any time soon (gods help us, it might be this week depending on where these airborne troops go) it will not only trigger the collapse of NATO - which benefits only Putin - but also turn far too many nations against us at one time. The US had a hard enough time fighting a War on Terror on two fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trigger this kind of war and we're counting at least eight nations - including the bordering Canada - cutting off our overseas bases, shutting down our logistic capabilities, and arguably going toe-to-toe on a battlefield in multiple locations.

The Far Right - and a lot of the Alpha Male wannabes in trump's world drooling at the fantasy of war - may think we have the world's greatest military and we can take all comers, but they're dragging the rest of the nation into a fight that most Americans - even other Republicans - don't want. Our military may be the best-trained, the best-supplied, the best period, but even we have limits on both manpower and resources. Fighting most of NATO - which may drag in Mexico and various South American nations already pissed at trump, and with the likelihood of our Asian allies like Japan and Philippines refusing to side with us - is not going to be easy.

Everything the United States did over the decades to rise to become a global superpower is getting demolished and firebombed into ash all because of one man's demented ego, this hollow man donald trump who struts upon the stage like an unsatisfied fool.

The only way this ends well is if someone in a position to do anything - a cowering Republican Congress, a military command structure wary of pulling a coup that would still harbinger an end to the constitutional order - steps up and forces trump to step down.

The odds of that happening are less than the odds that trump will drive us into a ruinous war.

Stay safe, everyone.

The Downward Spiral of an Unwell Mind

Update: Many thanks to Tengrain for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Stay safe this Thanksgiving season and remember to avoid turkey drops around the Cincinnati metro...

As a follow-up to the earlier observations about the overwhelming Blue Wave election cycle a few weeks back, there's been more stories in a number of Beltway Media outlets about donald trump's overall behavior since then.

None of it looks good. (via Elyse Wanshel at HuffPost)

On Thursday’s episode of Shane Gillis and Matt McCusker’s podcast, the comedians compared the president to his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, while discussing Trump’s cognitive state.

“You think he’s getting dementia?” McCusker asked his co-host Gillis about Trump.

“I mean, I don’t know. He just seems a little slower than usual,” Gillis responded. “There’s speculation that T-Dog might be rocking Biden brains,” McCusker added.

“He’s definitely not at Biden brains yet,” Gillis replied. “But he’s circling the drain...”

The comedians’ remarks about Trump were prompted amid a longer conversation regarding the president telling Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey to be “quiet, piggy” onboard Air Force One earlier this week. Trump said this to Lucey after she asked him a question about the Jeffrey Epstein files...

Regarding trump's insulting behavior last Friday, Rachel Leingang at The Guardian noted how the response outpaced the mainstream media's tepid underplaying of it:

It wasn’t the first time – not even the hundredth time – the US president has attacked the media. And it’s hard for any storyline to break through the administration’s “flood the zone” strategy, much less one like this. Nothing seems to stick. But the “quiet, piggy” clip has taken off, several days after the admonishment occurred on Air Force One last Friday, and without much help from the media itself...

Trump is going through a string of losses: Democrats dominating in off-year elections, having to reverse course on the Epstein files, Republicans refusing to get rid of the filibuster to end the shutdown, a faltering economy. There’s a possibility that he’s losing his air of impenetrability, and his grip on the right could maybe, just maybe, be loosening.

The anger he displayed in the clip could be a sign of someone on the back foot, overreacting to a question Bloomberg correspondent Catherine Lucey was asking about why Trump was fighting against releasing the Epstein files “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”. The files related to the child sexual abuser released so far by Congress show that Epstein communicated regularly, and derogatorily, about women with a host of prominent friends...

It's not so much that trump was losing control of keeping the Epstein scandal under a tighter wrap. It's not so much that trump is walking back some of his beloved tariffs as their impact on goods worsened the economy for most Americans. It's not so much that trump is angry with the legal system pushing back against his deportation agenda, against his eagerness to deploy troops into our own cities, and against his attempts to charge his perceived enemies - such as former FBI Director James Comey - that are falling apart due to prosecutorial screw-ups (serving his whims, no less). 

It's that there's this unsettling realization that everything in TrumpWorld (tm) is falling apart, and breaking into pieces faster than anyone thought it would (via Kyle Cheney at Politico):

But the extraordinary rebukes and headwinds the president is now facing — much of it from within his own party — are revealing a GOP beginning to reckon with a post-Trump future. That dynamic crystallized after voters surged to the polls to support Democratic candidates for statewide races in New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia and Pennsylvania, shattering expectations of close contests and signaling that even Trump can’t defy political gravity forever.

Trump has spent the days since recycling old grievances, berating members of his own party and choosing sides in a burgeoning intra-MAGA debate about antisemitism and bigotry within the GOP coalition...

A year ago, the idea that a Republican-led Congress would vote overwhelmingly in favor of anything Trump opposed would have been fanciful. Enter the Epstein files.

Trump’s coalition has long viewed the FBI’s trove of records related to the late convicted sex offender and disgraced international power broker to be a holy grail of sorts, one that could shed light on a grander sex trafficking conspiracy implicating world leaders and politicians. But Trump, a longtime associate of Epstein’s until they fell out more than a decade ago, spent the summer leaning on congressional Republicans to cease their search for records. Trump has denied wrongdoing and no evidence has suggested he took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation...

The problems with trump's denials are 1) There is too much physical and eyewitness evidence that showed trump and Epstein close enough for trump to be aware of - and revel in - the shocking number of young girls in those circles; 2) trump himself expressed far too often an "appreciation" for young women that included allegations he spied on Miss Teen contestants in their dressing rooms; and 3) the reality now established that Mr. "Grab 'Em By the Pussy" is a court-confirmed sexual predator with dozens of other sexual assault claims still out there.

That trump used the Epstein scandal in the 2024 campaign to attack Democrats was just another brazen Deflection strategy that the Far Right have perfected: Accuse the Democrats of committing those crimes you yourself are committing, and turn that weakness into a strength. But trump promised to "expose the truth" about Epstein's sex trafficking of girls to the one group - his own QAnon conspiracy base - he shouldn't have, and they wanted trump to fulfill that once he got back into the White House. Problem was, trump's solution wasn't to release more documents but rehash the ones already released and pretend that was it... which only made things look worse for him and his lackeys for "covering up".

trump's attempts to control that narrative - one that kept painting him and his Republican allies as "pro-Sex Offender" - kept failing, because once his gaslighting fails he's got nothing else to go by:

What happened next was perhaps the most stinging intra-party rebuke of Trump’s presidency. Trump tried and failed to pressure Republican lawmakers to pull the plug on a vote demanding the Justice Department turn over the full library of Epstein files. An intense pressure campaign against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in particular went nowhere.

The fallout also claimed the relationship of Trump and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose refusal to flinch led Trump to brand her a “traitor” and attempt to turn his coalition against her. Greene has responded by saying Trump’s attacks have endangered her life...

While trump's press people are defending him for "his honesty and transparency" nobody's going to forget how trump fought this for months. And no amount of scrubbing the files before release is going to hide the reality that trump and Epstein were two peas in the same vulgar pod.

Trump’s inability to cajole Congress into his preferred course of action on the Epstein files came at virtually the same time the president and his allies failed to move Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional boundaries to net Republicans another seat in the 2026 midterms.

Trump had been pressing for a Hoosier redistricting measure for months, but state GOP leaders signaled they simply lacked the votes to make it a reality, drawing a threat from Trump to endorse some Republicans’ primary challengers. Countermeasures by Democrats in Virginia and California could make Trump’s nationwide push a wash.

It's not helping trump that the earlier successful attempt to gerrymander Texas - on trump's public orders - is falling apart in the courts as well. trump's inability to win in the courts is hurting him on other key issues like his beloved tariffs policy:

Trump has long proclaimed that wielding tariffs against foreign governments is the key to negotiating favorable trade deals. Never mind that business and Republican orthodoxy has long considered tariffs as a backdoor tax on Americans.

But the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of Trump’s approach, with justices he appointed sharply questioning whether the president can leverage emergency powers to tariff foreign governments at will. By all accounts, the argument was a drubbing for Trump’s side. And the president seemed to discover that reality when he vented at the court in a pair of Truth Social posts last week.

It’s folly to predict how the high court will rule, even when the justices send clear signals during the arguments. But Trump appears to be bracing for defeat that could have devastating consequences for his economic agenda. His administration has repeatedly emphasized the centrality of tariffs to the recent spate of trade deals he’s made around the world.

trump arguably can craft economic / trade deals across the globe without the threat or use of tariffs anyway. What's hurting him is how he worships the idea of tariffs: trump genuinely believes tariffs can work, and that he needs them as tools to bully / enforce his will upon others. Of any potential legal defeats trump is facing in the White House, this could well be the one that angers him the most.

It's that anger - that rage trump carries with a scowl and a sneer, always driven by slights imagined and real, the willingness to lash out in public without concern or civility, the open cruelty towards those he views (Women, Blacks, poor) his lessers - that's troubling. trump's never had much self-control over his Id, his narcissistic drive to humiliate others, even during his first tenure as President National Destroyer of Norms and the Rule of Law. Five years later, he's gotten older and gotten worse (via Tom Nichols at the Atlantic):

Presidents often lose control over their agenda, or the policy process, or pieces of legislation. Sometimes, they even lose control of their party. But Donald Trump seems to have lost control over the one thing every person, and especially those with immense power, should always maintain control over: himself. Yesterday the president called for the arrest and execution of elected American officials for the crime—as he sees it—of fidelity to the Constitution.

It would be easy merely to note, yet again, that the president is a depraved man and a menace to the American system of government. As remarkable as it is to say it, however, the outbursts of this past week are different, and were likely triggered by Trump’s panic over the release of files about his former friend, the dead sex offender Jeffery Epstein. No one should treat this new phase in the president’s aggression against democracy as just another episode in the Trump reality show...

The president was already showing strain before his attack on the legislators. Last Friday, he lashed out at a female journalist who asked about the Epstein files, calling her “piggy.” (Trump seems to revel in getting away with speaking to women as president in ways that would land him on the sidewalk back in Queens.) On Tuesday, as he sat next to the Saudi crown prince, a man credibly accused by U.S. intelligence of murdering an American journalist, he lashed out at yet another female reporter: He called Mary Bruce of ABC “insubordinate”—a rather telling choice of words—and threatened to use the FCC to attack her network. Tuesday, of course, was the day the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House by a vote of 427–1. The next day, it passed the Senate by unanimous consent, and a humiliated Trump signed the bill into law.

Yesterday, Trump seemed to lose the last bit of his grip on his emotions as he fired off a fusillade of Truth Social posts. (“Trump must not have slept well Wednesday night,” Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger of The Bulwark observed today.) “This is really bad,” the president wrote, “and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”

“Lock them up” is a favorite Trump chant, but he did not end with this classic demand. He went on: “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.” The charge, according to the chief executive? “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also reposted a comment that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

Anyone with a basic understanding of U.S. history would remember George Washington never hanged political opponents: when he was rebuffed by the Senate the one time he visited Congress, Washington merely stormed out and swore to never go back. But this is trump raging at us today: Terrible at history, and desperate to lie that other great figures in history would do what he'd want to do.

Trump’s posts risk putting the lives of American lawmakers in danger, and he almost certainly knows it. Many people who have publicly criticized the president have found themselves getting death threats from his most fervid followers. (Like many Trump-critical writers, I started getting them years ago.) As Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former MAGA doyenne from Georgia whom Trump has now marked as a heretic, wrote on X last week, “A hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world.” Senator Elissa Slotkin revealed that she is now traveling with a security detail because of what she called “a huge spike” in threats that came to her office after Trump’s eruption yesterday.

This is the same trump who stirred up MAGA supporters to riot at the Capitol on January 6th, the event that trump and his lackeys would like to erase from history, but an act of violence that trump himself would love to revisit on the nation again and again.

A lot of this turns back on that earlier observation from the podcast bros openly wondering "is trump falling into dementia?" It's a serious concern, and it's one a lot of Biden supporters shouted back at the media when they went after Joe for his slowed delivery of speeches and lapse of memory. trump wasn't that much younger than Biden, and in spite of all the public announcements that trump is the "fittest smartest human being of all time" (uh, no) a lot of people could see by 2024 he'd gotten more unsteady on his feet and more prone to brain farts on stage.

There's been more speculation than usual in the past few months that there's serious health concerns: a questionable MRI exam six months after getting one; a missing weekend where trump came back with odd bruising on his hands; trump wandering away during a visit to Japan; falling asleep during an Oval Office presentation, during which someone else collapsed and trump failed to take notice of it at all.

Far be it to speculate or cast rumors, but there is too much growing evidence that trump's questionable lifelong habits - and time itself - is racing up to claim his ticket. It doesn't help that a number of actions trump is ordering on the hurry - such as bulldozing down the East Wing to build his own ballroom, or the insistence of getting a Peace Prize in spite of his bullying tactics, or the release of a new dollar coin (which historically never worked out for Americans) with HIS face on it - a blatant middle finger to the unwritten rule to avoid putting a living person on American money - are obvious clues that he wants to enjoy all of this - fake symbols of his "greatness" - before he no longer can.

You can feel a sense of panic, of things not going well behind the scenes, with this administration this time around. More than just the level of idiocy and ineptitude from the actions they've taken to break the Constitution and the nation for their own interests.

It doesn't help that as I'm typing this, trump's Defense Dept (fuck the name change, Pete) is staging naval and air maneuvers off the coast of Venezuela. They're making more public calls to strike drug cartel locations - not just Venezuela but also Mexico - as part of an "anti-terrorist" campaign that they can't prove. Like as though trump wants a military victory and another half-assed parade before his mind gives out altogether.

And nobody in a position to do anything about it - not the Democrats because they're out of power, but the Republicans in Congress and in the Cabinet - will lift a finger, because they dare not face the rage of a rabid MAGA base. They're perfectly content to let this farce play out, and carve out whatever they can get in the ensuing chaos.

Stay safe, America. Keep protesting in the streets against trump's war on anyone dark-skinned. But be ready for the craziness to hit DEFCON-1 sooner than expected.

What Republicans Believe In The Dark Of Their Own Making

So it got leaked this weekend that Ginni Thomas, wife to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, texted a number of messages to trump's then Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows about the plan to stage a riot and insurrection on January 6th at Capitol Hill. Via Andrew Prokop at Vox:

Newly revealed text messages show that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas — conservative activist and spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — wanted President Trump to take extreme measures to stay in office in the days following the 2020 election. The messages between her and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were provided to the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attacks and obtained by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

One major takeaway from them is that her alarm was apparently sincere: These seem to be Thomas’s genuine beliefs, expressed in private to Trump’s top aide, when no one was looking.

Thomas shared with Meadows conspiracy theories that Trump had a secret plan to expose election fraud (“I hope this is true”) and to send its perpetrators to Guantanamo Bay, urged that Trump should “not concede” because “it takes time for the army who is gathering for his back,” said the “Left” was “attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” championed the ludicrous claims of Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell (“Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud”), complained about being “disgusted” with Vice President Mike Pence for approving the results, and declared Biden’s win meant “the end of Liberty...”

As Prokop noted, this was what Thomas was saying to a fellow Republican with the belief her messages would never see daylight, what she was openly thinking when no one was looking.

As I tweeted meself:

these are messages she expected would never see the light of day. this is what she thinks, what she believes when the public eye isn't on her. Ginni Thomas is a full-on conspiracy nutcase, and she's a major player in the GOP circles AND has the ear of a SCOTUS Justice. WTF.

— Witty Librarian For Ukraine (@PaulWartenberg) March 25, 2022

Just to point to an example, Thomas wrote a text about Sidney Powell - she of "release the Kraken" infamy - getting a ton of "evidence of fraud." In the real world, Powell never proved any voter fraud happened, did not win a single legal battle to throw the election to trump, and has since faced numerous disbarment matters across the states she tried to sell her accusations. Powell had already lost many of her lawsuits by the time Thomas texted Meadows, and yet there she is still selling that broken lie.

A cynic might think that the Republican/conservative leadership in this country are merely pandering to the less-informed more ignorant voting base, and some - like Mitch McConnell - are. But these Ginni Thomas text messages reveal that the conspiracy rot - the outright gaslighting by trump, the wingnut fearmongering, the lies bought at face value without a shred of provable evidence - has worked its way up to the movers-and-shakers to where they will never act rationally no matter the situation... and who will insist that everyone else among their ranks to be as irrational and destructive as they are.

If character is what you are in the dark, then Ginni Thomas and everyone else like her are at best delusional and irrational, at worst raving lunatics.

And yet, will anyone do anything about it?

There may be a moment where Ginni Thomas could get called to testify before the Congressional hearings into the January 6th Insurrection.

Regarding her husband on the Court, there is a likelihood that Clarence Thomas failed to recuse himself from a legal matter involving the insurrection - he was the only dissenter, by the by - and may have violated a law or three if it's proven his wife was part of that matter brought before the jurists.

It would be nice to think accountability will apply here, but too often the Republican leadership has skated on these matters - and failing to resign over them - and until the hammer drops on both of them we're just speculating.

The larger problem is the rest of the Republican leadership. This "pulling the curtains to see behind the scenes" moment reveals that Ginni's madness did not set off any alarm bells with them, and a number of them have already revealed they are fully supporting that mad narrative of trump's "stolen election" Big Lie.

How the hell can the rest of America deal with a sizable political faction - Conservative Republicans - living among us who cannot be reasoned with?

We're coping with a reality that our fellow Republican neighbors do not live in the Real World. They live in a Fox Not-News Fantasyland where Democrats are Evil, Libruls are Pedophiles, the Others are raiding our sacred borders to steal our jobz and takes our womenz, and only GOD'S CHOSEN GRIFTER donald trump CAN SAVE US ALL. 

And they are perfectly willing to fight in the halls of power and the streets of our cities to make that fantasy real.

You cannot deal with madness like this. You cannot negotiate over something that has no basis in fact. You cannot compromise with those who believe themselves so utterly in the right that they can never betray their absolute beliefs.

The Republicans are wholly committed now to trump's Big Lie, utterly convinced that they should never give power to Democrats or let liberals/progressives have any say in their own lives.

Republicans are at war with everything and everybody they do not believe in. The laws they're passing - to abolish abortion, to cancel out education about racism and sexism, to remove the gay/lesbian/trans people from public sight - is part of that war.

The madness will not end until the rest of us stand up and say ENOUGH, until the rest of us deny these wingnut assholes any power over us. That means fighting them every minute of the day, at the ballot box, in the media op-eds, in our homes and schools and workplaces.

The Republican War On Everybody is upon us whether we liked it or not. We dare not let them win.

The Insanity of Olympics in a Pandemic Year (w/ Update)

Update 7/25/21: So, obviously, the IOC and Japan didn't cancel the Olympics... and there's already a slew of positive cases turning up that are bound to spread. Also, many thanks to Infidel753 for including this article in the Sunday Link Round-Up!

We don't like it, but the COVID pandemic is still going strong because not enough vaccines are out there across the globe, and yet here our governments go forcing an Olympics event - delayed due to 2020 pretty much shut down by the pandemic's beginning - onto an athletic population exposing each other to Gods knows what (via Wynne Davis at NPR):

With less than a week before the opening ceremonies begin at this year's Tokyo games, at least two players on the South African soccer team have tested positive for COVID-19 inside the Olympic Village.

The two players, Thabiso Monyane and Kamohelo Mahlatsi, are the first athletes to test positive for the coronavirus at the site of the Olympic Village in the Japanese capital. A video analyst for the team, Mario Masha, also tested positive.

All three have been isolated, along with those who were in close contact with them...

The announcement of the new cases comes at a moment of deep trepidation inside Japan about the wisdom of holding the games, with Tokyo already under its fourth state of emergency since the pandemic began. With vaccination rates in the country lagging behind those in the United States and much of Europe, there are fears that an influx of thousands from around the world could spark new outbreaks. The state of emergency will mean no spectators during the games inside the capital, but even without international fans, more than 18,000 people are expected to come in for the games.

Though the results announced Sunday are the first cases to appear in athletes, there are growing concerns that others will test positive before competition begins later this week...

COVID can hide in a person between five to fourteen days, meaning the negative tests yesterday won't cover for the positive tests likely to trigger next week at the start of the Olympics itself.

While a majority of the athletes may be vaccinated, and most of the on-site workers as well, that's no guarantee of complete immunity. The vaccines help in reducing the harmful effects, and reduces the likelihood of spreading the virus further, but there's still odds that COVID could spread and affect far too many athletes to effectively hold the sporting events.

Seriously. We are in no current shape to have an Olympics right now. The IOC and the many nations participating in this need to step back, cancel the damn thing.

We've cancelled Olympics before, when world wars condemned us. We've had boycotts between the two sides of the Cold War. Did it break the hopes of athletes of those eras who missed out? Yes, there were many who missed their chances to shine on the global stage. But at least we didn't risk their lives in the process.

There's only one reason the IOC is pushing to get these Olympics done: Money. Television broadcasting rights are in the billions, a lot of advertising revenue at stake, and dammit someone at NBC (and any other overseas networks) will want to get paid for this.

But we're risking the reality that too many athletes intermingle -it's one of the few joys of this international event for them - and they're bound to become vectors of the pandemic towards each other. Even with Tokyo refusing to provide solid beds and condoms to discourage the sex that happens each Olympics, there's other ways of socializing and moments during competition when COVID can spread in an instant. And then you'll have hundreds sick all at once, unable to participate and likely infecting those still unvaccinated.

The Olympics organizers might be praying to every deity in the phone book, and it WILL take divine intervention to make sure most of the Olympians survive this summer.

It is utter madness we are relying on that instead of common goddamn sense. Cancel the Olympics.

Irrational (w/ Updates)

The question with Lucy and the football was always whether, on some level, she believed the things she said.

-- xkcd caption to "Finish Line", Randall Munroe

trump's electoral loss in 2020 did not end the madness.

In some ways - looking back at the last 40 years when the madness began under Reagan - the madness has been getting worse, with the Republicans reacting caustically to Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s and then going full-on obstructionist during Barack Obama's tenure between 2009 to 2016. It's been a downward spiral from Southern Strategy to Newt's Contract On America to the Tea Party to "Stolen Ballots," and it's been getting worse as trump trolls the nation with his Big Lie that ongoing recount "audits" will lead to his "reinstatement" to the Presidency by August. As noted by Maggie Haberman, quoted in this Brendan Morrow article in The Week:

Haberman tweeted on Tuesday, in response to reporting about Flynn's comments about a coup in the United States, that Trump "has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August" — confirming in a subsequent tweet she means reinstated as president.  

"No that isn't how it works," Haberman added, "but simply sharing the information."

"That isn't how it works" refers to the reality that our Constitution spells out via various Articles and Amendments that the person who wins the Electoral College (in 2020 that's Biden) and gets certified by Congress (which happened on January 6 in spite of trump's insurrection) and takes the Oath of Office on January 20 (which Biden did) becomes President at that moment. Anyone previously President loses the office, the powers, the job title, a number of perks, and gets flown out of town while the new President parties on down with everyone he brought with him. If by some chance trump and his people were able to prove there was voter fraud or stolen ballots - which they haven't been able to prove for more than seven months now - there's no do-over vote or recount: The 25th Amendment kicks in and it goes to the next in line (since the voter fraud likely included the Veep count, Harris would be out) and it would go to the Speaker of the House currently Pelosi.

I guarantee you trump won't accept that either.

It seems like madness to those of us outside of trump's epistemic bubble, but that madness stems from one core trumpian belief: The world is made up of "Winners" and "Suckers" and HE, donald trump, must never be a "Sucker". So he always presents himself a "Winner," in spite of the business failings, in spite of the clear evidence he is unpopular to a majority of the world. In trump's mind, there is no way he could have lost, and so he lies to others - and apparently to himself - that the election was stolen and he deserves being the Winner despite the rules, despite the reality.

This wouldn't normally be a problem if it was just trump ranting about this back at one of his mansions (I think he's hiding out in New Jersey at the moment, Mar-A-Lago closed for the summer apparently). He'd be flailing at friends and family up until the point they tire of it and have him Baker Acted for delusions and onset dementia.

The horrifying thing is, trump's madness is infectious. It spread to a group of people already suffering their own delusions among Republicans who have been told for decades to hate and fear minorities, women, college students, and Democrats. trump became the mad king of a political party whose Grand Far Right Narrative was open to the lies trump spewed, and his lies became their madness as well.

And it's a madness with no cure. Once those acidic ideas got into the voter base of the GOP, once the corruption seeped upward into a leadership hungry to stay in power in spite of the real majority, there's no talking them down from that fantasy. How can we convince them otherwise, to accept a real world where they're not the heroes of their Far Right Narrative?

To quote the Rude Pundit:

As I've said before, you can't argue with someone who refuses to accept that reality is real. They are, for lack of a more articulate term, sick. Perhaps even actually mentally ill. I don't say that lightly. What else can you say about people who believe a fantasy to the point that they are willing to commit violence over it? The thing is that one day the most fervent are going to want their belief to be put into action. And I think that the full danger is that Democrats are not just underestimating how much Republicanism is about rigging democracy, but they are not getting just how many legitimately sick people there are.

In other words, we are dealing with a Trump-induced hysteria, one that plays into every fear that conservatives, both the craven opportunists and the true believers, have warned their followers about for years, one that takes all their fears of non-whites and socialists (whatever the fuck they think that means) and abortions and non-Christians (because that fucking sky wizard is always in the mix) and LGBTQ people and wraps it in a big package with QAnon bow that says, "Of course they had to destroy the one man who was going to save us all." And, of course, in the face of that, a coup is horribly logical to keep that fantasy of white Christian supremacy alive...

For all the hope in the media that trump is just spewing nonsense, we have to look at how eager trump's fanbase rose up to trump's commands to storm Congress and stop the Electoral count. We have to consider the eagerness of trump's handlers and advocates who openly call for further coup attempts the way Mike Flynn did when he praised the Myanmar takeover as "something that should happen here".

The United States is still facing a sizable faction of our fellow citizenry consumed with the fantasies of a militia uprising against "the communists and subversives" that they read about in the Turner Diaries and listen to on the Far Right rage shows. It doesn't help us that a number of Republican-controlled states are passing pro-gun laws that are going to make it impossible to hold the gun-nuts responsible for their actions.

We're looking at a hot summer, America, and I'm not talking about climate change (although that's another problem).

Stay safe, and for the Love of GOD turn off the Fox Not-News and every other Far Right ragefest. That hate is making everyone around us insane.

Update 12/26/21: Thanks as always to Batocchio at his Vagabond Scholar website for accepting this article for the annual Jon Swift Blog Roundup for 2021!

Update 7/20/22: As one of the five articles I submitted this year to the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards, this has passed the Semifinalist stage and is now under consideration for Finalist! Yes! And I am liking the new Semifinalist logo shield:

Update 8/12/22: I am a bit surprised given the partisan nature of it, but this article survived the Finalist round! Now, from what I learned the first time I reached this spot, this does not guarantee a top three finish. There can be 5 other blog articles that reached this level, there could be 10 or 20. But there is still a good chance this could win first, second, or third prize in the Nonfiction - Blog category. So now I have to show up at the banquet... Also I get this FWA Finalist logo.

Update 10/29/22: In a personal stunner, this article won the Silver award for Nonfiction - Blogging or Article category at this year's Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards! And here's the badge to promote the honor!

One Sentence Explanation Why Republicans Are Still Pandering to trump's Coup Attempts to Subvert the 2020 Elections (w/ Update)

It is not that Republicans really believe Democrats stole millions of ballots, and it is not that Republicans can PROVE Democrats stole millions of ballots: It is that Republicans have to demonstrate to each other their absolute fealty to the GRAND FAR RIGHT NARRATIVE that Democrats/Liberals are all evil Commies, and so the Republicans must top each other with a kind of escalating madness to prove their loyalty to the cause even at the expense of making fellow Republicans look bad, which has the added benefit of forcing those other Republicans into acquiescing to that madness to keep the rest of the Republican Party in that downward spiral of "No, *I* can be crazier than thou!"

And there is nothing - outside of the courts just collectively going "fuck it, Contempt of Court for every one of these bastards for wasting our time" - that can compel them to stop that downward spiral.

Okay, that's two sentences, but it all needs to be said even with this third sentence.

(Updated 12/31/20): This is adding to the blog entry, but I saw this on The Atlantic by Peter Wehner and thought of placing it on a separate blog article but then realized it fits here better: 

Hawley knows this effort will fail, just as every other effort to undo the results of the lawful presidential election will fail... Every single attempt to prove that the election was marked by fraud or that President-elect Biden’s win is illegitimate—an effort that now includes about 60 lawsuits—has flopped. In fact, what we’ve discovered since the November 3 election is that it was “the most secure in American history,” as election experts in Trump’s own administration have declared. But this immutable, eminently provable fact doesn’t deter Trump and many of his allies from trying to overturn the election; perversely, it seems to embolden them...

It is one thing for Hawley to position himself as a populist, something he had done even before he was elected in 2018; it is quite another for him to knowingly engage in civic vandalism and, in ostentatiously unpatriotic ways, undermine established norms and safeguards. This is precisely what Senator Hawley is now doing—and he is doing so in the aftermath of Trump’s loss, when some political observers might have hoped that the conspiracy mindset and general insanity of the Trump modus operandi would begin to lose their salience...

What is happening in the GOP is that figures such as Hawley, along with many of his Senate and House colleagues, and important Republican players, including the former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, are all trying to position themselves as the heirs of Trump. None of them possesses the same sociopathic qualities as Trump, and their efforts will be less impulsive and presumably less clownish, more calculated and probably less conspiracy-minded. It may be that not all of them support Hawley’s stunt; perhaps some are even embarrassed by it. But these figures are seismographers; they are determined to act in ways that win the approval of the Republican Party’s base. And this goes to the heart of the danger...

The problem with the Republican “establishment” and with elected officials such as Josh Hawley is not that they are crazy, or that they don’t know any better; it is that they are cowards, and that they are weak. They are far more ambitious than they are principled, and they are willing to damage American politics and society rather than be criticized by their own tribe...

The weakness is how they abandoned their duties as party leaders to actually lead: The people in charge are supposed to correct possible errors, guide others to enlightened paths, set examples, and make sure things are done right. That may sometimes require getting into the pit of madness, sorting out the troublemakers to prevent them from making things worse, and getting back up on that horse to charge into battle.

The modern Republican Party does not want to correct their lies because that would kill the Narrative they've built this failing structure upon. The GOP leadership would rather pander and succumb to the followers who've gotten addicted to the Fox Not-News lies that feed their rage and foolishness.

Like I keep saying about the Republicans, it's now trumps all the way down. And they're dragging the rest of the nation down with them.

You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Work for trump... But It Sure As Hell Explains A Whole Lot

So under the categories of "Florida Man," "Republicans Are Insane," and "Baker Acted," we have this report coming out of Ft. Lauderdale (via the Sun-Sentinel):

President Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale was taken from his Fort Lauderdale home by police Sunday afternoon after his wife reported that he was armed and threatening suicide.

The police, called by his wife, went to the house in the Seven Isles community, an affluent area in which houses have access to the water. They made contact, “developed a rapport” and negotiated his exit from the house, the police said in a statement. He was taken to Broward Health Medical Center under the Baker Act, which provides for temporary involuntary commitment.

My dad worked as a legal guardian and I studied for it as a profession for a bit (didn't go anywhere, wasn't any good at it) when I was unemployed, and let me tell you the Baker Act is a huge step, if the doctors find out he's got serious issues Parscale is going to get wrapped up in a whole slew of legal issues and intense treatment that will take him out of circulation for a good while (for example, he will likely - for his own safety as well as everyone else's - lose his rights to own or keep any firearms if this happens).

The thing you gotta remember about Parscale was how... intense he was regarding his work as trump's campaign manager this 2020 election cycle. Right up to the point where all of Parscale's financial mismanagement - and self-indulgence - got out in the open. Along with a disastrous attempt to host a campaign stop at the height of the COVID pandemic in Tulsa - poorly set up, rife with flaws that were exploited by Korean boy band followers for God's sake - Parscale quickly lost favor with his boss and quickly lost his campaigning top job.

Everything since then was probably not a fun ride for Mr. Parscale. A public object of ridicule, likely not finding many allies, and also facing the possibilities of investigations into how he managed the 2020 campaign, he had to have been under massive emotional pressure.

But don't expect me - as a fellow half-mad Florida Man - to offer any sympathy to Parscale, who willingly signed up for this job with all the warning signs about trump. I only wish well to his wife, friends and/or family members in case Parscale's madness doesn't go away.

This is what you get with trump, when you think about it. Given trump's history of being a demanding bad boss with his own obsessions, narcissism, and paranoia, you'd have to be as crazy as Parscale to willingly work for that Shitgibbon in the first place. The question is how much sanity you'd still have once you get kicked to the curb.

(Glances at half of trump's ex-employees showing up on Dancing With the Stars) Well, maybe that question's been answered anyway...

And to think: This isn't even the most embarrassing story coming out of trump's world tonight.

Overwhelmed February 2020 Edition

I have to apologize for not blogging as often as I want to.

There's an article I want to write, but it's so depressing and hard to think through that I'm not finding the time to even START it.

And it doesn't help that the constant rush of bad, crazy news - oh Lord, trump's mishandling of the incoming pandemic would require three separate articles of wailing by itself - makes it that difficult to focus.

All I want to do at the moment is beg my seven readers' patience, pray for our salvation from the violence and madness consuming us all, and let you know that sooner or later I'll get my head straight enough to write what I need to say.

Good luck, and GODS HELP US.

Oh Jesus. 2020 Just Escalated Quickly

(Update: with a big thanks to Tengrain for including this article on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! I'd wish you all a Happy New Year but Christ this year already is a trumpster fire... Please leave a comment)

This has been breaking news for the past hour or so. This is via Libby Nelson at Vox.com:

A US airstrike killed a top Iranian military official, along with four others, at the Baghdad airport early Friday morning, according to a Pentagon statement. The attack represents a major escalation of simmering hostilities between the US and Iran.

The death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, who led Iranian covert operations and intelligence and one of the country’s most revered military leaders, was reported by Iraqi state television early Friday morning local time, according to multiple US media sources, and confirmed in a statement from the Pentagon.

“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”

The statement concluded: “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”

Iran has not issued an official response to the attack, but has criticized the US for its involvement in the region in recent days.

The attack comes after days of escalating tensions. An American contractor was killed near Kirkuk, Iraq, last week and 4 military members were injured in an attack by Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah. A retaliatory strike by the US killed 25 members of the militia and injured more than 50. Then, on New Year’s Eve on Tuesday, militia members attacked the US embassy in Baghdad...

While this looks on its face like a great moment for the United States - woohoo, we took out a terrorist, an Iranian bigwig woohoo! Team America FUCK Yeah! - this is in fact scaring the hell out of every foreign policy and Middle East expert across the Intertubes and for good reason. To refer to Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice:

...This strike will also enrage the Iranians and provide the Iranian government with an internal opening for influence and propaganda to rally support for the Iranian state among a domestic Iranian population that may be wavering. So it will likely retard reform in general and attempts at democratization in specific in the short to medium term. Especially if there is immediate Iranian response and/or escalation to today’s attack and a US response to Iran’s actions that can be used by the Iranian government to reinforce its standing with the Iranian people.

Finally, I don’t see why anyone in the Iranian government would talk to anyone in the US government at this point while the current administration is in place. The President, his senior officials, and surrogates have made it clear that they really aren’t interested in talking. Last week Putin announced  that he’s not going to go along with the sanctions regime against Iran any longer, which further reinforces to Iran that they don’t need to talk to us as they have Putin to leverage as a patron. I also expect that Iran will sell their oil to the Chinese because Xi could care less about our sanctions. There is no way to squeeze the Iranians economically as the government is impervious to the pain and has ways to sell its oil to ease that pain. You can find my take on why making war in Iran would be strategic malpractice unless we were prepared for total war and even then it isn’t a good idea at West Point’s Modern War Institute.

My take: This is essentially one step away from honest-to-GOD war with Iran.

This isn't like the strike Obama called on Bin Laden back in 2011. Bin Laden by then was a pariah figure among most Muslim power brokers and nations with few allies to defend or mourn him. The backlash against his death was meager (and in some ways welcomed) across the Middle East. This is different. Soleimani was a high-ranking figure within the Iranian government itself, a major player with ally Syria, and someone well-connected among the Shi'a militia forces threatening much of Iraq and Kurdish areas not yet flattened by Turkey/Russia.

This is like Iran calling an airstrike on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The kind of thing that would trigger a major political and military response from us. The kind of thing where a declaration of war would be a rational response.

And yet it wouldn't surprise me if trump and his remaining foreign policy/military advisors would welcome this move. trump thinks war is a game and probably thinks this is the kind of thing that will win him more support and silence his Democratic critics.

But war for political gain is no longer a smart move. War for conquest and resources ends up squandering both.

And like I blogged before, going to war against Iran is NOT a good idea.

We are being led into another quagmire - much like the 2003 Iraqi invasion and occupation - only this time against a stronger opponent in harsher terrain with fewer allies, and led by a Shitgibbon who doesn't know the first thing of winning at Risk let alone winning a war against another nation.

We are so very fucking royally fucked.

The Spiral of Madness Speeds Up

Christ, this day (via Fred Imbert at CNBC):

Stocks plunged on Friday after President Donald Trump ordered that U.S. manufacturers find alternatives to their operations in China. Apple led the way lower.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 623.34 points lower, or 2.4% at 25,628.90. The S&P 500 slid 2.6% to close at 2,847.11. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 3% to end the day at 7,751.77. The losses brought the Dow’s decline for August to more than 4%.

The major indexes also posted weekly losses for the fourth straight time. The Dow dropped about 1% this week while the S&P 500 pulled back 1.4%. The Nasdaq lost 1.8%.

Trump tweeted on Friday: “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” However, it is not clear how much authority the president has on this front...

trump doesn't really have any authority to tell companies what to do. A President can hold companies accountable through the law, to prevent fraud and monopolistic practices, to keep the industries honest, but dictate actual corporate policies? If anyone else ever did this - especially Obama, but also Dubya or Clinton or Bush the Elder or Reagan or any other in the White House - the media outrage would have been immediate and Congress reacting with fury. If it was a Democratic President doing this, Congressional Republicans would have filed impeachment proceedings within an hour.

Here? Not a goddamn peep. Even as trump delves into behavior and statements that rational people would think ought to trigger 25th Amendment shutdowns, the rest of the government is just treading water while the ship of state sinks faster.

The madness of trump - his obsessions, his failure to comprehend basic rules of trade (hint: trade wars ARE NOT GOOD AND EASY TO WIN), his blinkered belief he's beloved and worshiped - is getting worse... and the signs are growing daily.

James Fallows at the Atlantic documented this yesterday, before the economic disasters of today:

But now we’ve had something we didn’t see so clearly during the campaign. These are episodes of what would be called outright lunacy, if they occurred in any other setting: An actually consequential rift with a small but important NATO ally, arising from the idea that the U.S. would “buy Greenland.” Trump’s self-description as “the Chosen One,” and his embrace of a supporter’s description of him as the “second coming of God” and the “King of Israel.” His logorrhea, drift, and fantastical claims in public rallies, and his flashes of belligerence at the slightest challenge in question sessions on the White House lawn. His utter lack of affect or empathy when personally meeting the most recent shooting victims, in Dayton and El Paso. His reduction of any event, whatsoever, into what people are saying about him.

Obviously I have no standing to say what medical pattern we are seeing, and where exactly it might lead. But just from life I know this:

If an airline learned that a pilot was talking publicly about being “the Chosen One” or “the King of Israel” (or Scotland or whatever), the airline would be looking carefully into whether this person should be in the cockpit...

If Donald Trump were in virtually any other position of responsibility, action would already be under way to remove him from that role. The board at a public company would have replaced him outright or arranged a discreet shift out of power. (Of course, he would never have gotten this far in a large public corporation.) The chain-of-command in the Navy or at an airline or in the hospital would at least call a time-out, and check his fitness, before putting him back on the bridge, or in the cockpit, or in the operating room. (Of course, he would never have gotten this far as a military officer, or a pilot, or a doctor.)

There are two exceptions. One is a purely family-run business, like the firm in which Trump spent his entire previous career. And the other is the U.S. presidency, where he will remain, despite more and more-manifest Queeg-like unfitness, as long as the GOP Senate stands with him...

And the Senate are cowards. They already sold out their self-respect for self-interest, they've already sold off this nation to every crook able to put them on payroll.

This was me, early on before the rest of the day just into the rubber-padded walls of trumpland:

I wrote this later on Facebook, recognizing the madness of trump for a darker, twisted version of a man's madness from the 19th Century:

trump goes onto Twitter and rants about China, then issues a "I Hereby Order" to U.S. companies to stop doing business with China. Which immediately triggers YET ANOTHER stock market meltdown (there have been FIVE this year caused by trump tweets already).

Other than the reality that Presidents do not directly control what businesses do - outside of enforcing laws to prevent acts of fraud and other such duties - these statements by trump reflect an imperial mindset that you do not want to see in elected officials. I cannot recall any President in my lifetime - not Obama (Fox would have thrown the most epic conniption of all time if he had), not Dubya (MSNBC would have dedicated an hour each night to it), not Clinton (see Fox), not Bush the Elder, not Reagan, not Carter (I would have been too young to have noticed Ford or Nixon).

The only historical figure I ever saw who even wrote/talked like that was Joshua Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States, who issued decrees from San Francisco in the 1860s through 1880s dealing with everything from the then Civil War to overseas trade, religious freedom, investing in railroad patents, and building bridges (one of them actually got built).

Thing is, nearly every decree Norton I issued as emperor was rational, at least within reason, and were grounded in practical necessities. Even his edict barring political parties make sense.

In short, Norton I Emperor of the United States was *sane* compared to the current rantings and decision-making of donald trump.

The biggest difference between Emperor Norton and Emperor Shitgibbon is that Norton's decrees were sane. trump's decrees are about feeding his ego, destroying his enemies, ruling over an empire of ash.

This disaster of a theme park ride is spiraling faster. It won't stop until the rails collapse from the stress.

We are so very royally fucking screwed.

Brexit Madness Overdrive

I had a boss once who kept warning me "Madness is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result." I have to admit I didn't even see what it was I was doing wrong and what I needed to change, but I understand what she was talking about.

That noted, I look at the United Kingdom right now and (via Joshua Alvarez at the Washington Monthly):

(Prime Minister Theresa) May is expected to put her negotiated deal up for a third vote this week. But even that faces its own legal hurdle. On Monday, House of Commons Speaker John Bercow ruled out a third vote on May’s deal, citing a procedural rule prohibiting the same question from being repeatedly brought forward during the same parliamentary session. No word yet on how May will overcome that, but let’s assume that the vote will happen. Almost certainly, the deal will be rejected again.

On March 13, Parliament twice voted (in a non-binding way) that the UK should not leave the EU without an agreement. Amid the din of Parliament’s Hamlet-like indecisiveness, Donald Tusk’s January tweet has a ghostly echo: “If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?”

What we're seeing is a Conservative Party that has spent decades hating being a part of the EU but had really no plan on how to reasonably exit that economic cooperative, but they HATE the EU so much they can't admit they've painted themselves into a corner and are stuck in Suicide Over The White Cliffs Of Dover Mode. They want Brexit but they can't deal.

This is what blind partisanship looks like, by the way. A more pragmatic leadership would have had something in fucking place for all this shit before they voted for the damn thing.

But now the British Parliament is stuck with an April 12th deadline - they were able to deal for an extension from March 29, but the EU wants England to make up its damn mind before their own membership elections - and they are down to two options. Take May's terrible Brexit deal that the hardliners see as too Soft and the Remainers see as too Hard, or settle for a No-Deal Brexit that pretty much blows up every aspect of the UK economy, kills the peace deal between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and essentially ships off more than ONE TRILLION British Pounds off-shore permanently.

Meanwhile, the streets of London filled up with a million (maybe two mill) residents protesting the Tories' effort to Leave, demanding a second referendum - because 1) they were lied to by Farage and the other Leave advocates 2) no one realized what the real consequences would be until it started happening and most Brits don't like it now - and for Parliament to just cancel the Article 50 altogether.

Check out the crowds:

I have no seen comparable marchers demanding the UK continue its Leave course. I found this, from a planned march a week ago for a "Leave Means Leave" movement but look at it, there are more cops than marchers at one point:

May might not even last until April 12 (via Dan Sabbagh at the Guardian):

With the prime minister preparing to meet a group of senior Tory rebels at her Chequers country retreat, the chancellor told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday that Conservative colleagues were “very frustrated” and “desperate to find a way forward.”

But as two ministers who had been named as possible interim successors, Michael Gove and David Lidington, played down speculation about the prime minister’s future, Hammond said that talk of pushing May out was “frankly self-indulgent at this time.”

The chancellor – who had been named as one of a group plotting to force her out in a crunch cabinet meeting on Monday – refused to be drawn on whether his colleagues had approached him asking him to intervene...

Cabinet anxieties about May and her ability to maintain control of the stalled Brexit process remain acute, with few in Westminster believing she can get a revised version of her deal through the Commons in the coming days.

Duncan Smith said the idea of a coup “would be unacceptable to my colleagues” and accused cabinet members of breaching collective responsibility by briefing against May...

At this point, let's be honest Tories. YOU dug this hole for yourselves. Your leadership in Cameron recklessly put up an ill-thought referendum without putting any safeguards in place should it pass, and now you're all in cleanup mode... but instead of cleaning up you're digging deeper. There's your sign of madness, Britons.

Blowing up Parliament - no, not like Fawkes! - is the only sane move to make right now. Either admit Brexit is a bad idea and cancel it and deal with the wrath of your (shrinking) Leave constituency, or plunge your whole island kingdom into chaos and economic failure.

Either way, you're fucked Tories. At least take the hit so your people won't have to.

Short Answer: Too Late, Already Gone Mad

Just saw this title on Slate.com, an article by Dahlia Lithwick that says

How to Survive Trump’s Presidency Without Losing Your Mind

My response?

Too late.

When the Electoral College broke down and the haters kept crawling out of the woodwork, I sank into a deep and terrible and angry depression.

BUT I'M MUCH HAPPIER NOW BHWHAHAAHAHAHAAHAAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHA (drinks tea) HAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHHAAHAAAHHEHEHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Ahem.

Just buy my books, especially the upcoming Strangely Funny V anthology published by Mystery & Horror LLC due out later this month!

MADNESS!!!!!