Quote of the Day -- Self-involved, Narcissist Edition

Trump looked so small today from inside the cocoon of his armored Presidential limo. Yesterday, the WH gaslighted America with two photo ops taken moments apart and with Trumps dramatic live signing of blank paper. Today, though, America witnessed the “Ride to Nowhere." It was an exquisite metaphor for the end of Trump’s Presidency.

Slow moving and pointless, the motorcade enthralled the Q-Anon conspiracy nuts who gathered outside the hospital hoping Trump would give them another clue about his smashing the Pedophile ring that is running America.

Inside the limo were agents of the Secret Service who would jump in front of a bullet for the President and his family but weren’t worthy of any consideration by Trump. It was a parade of one for an audience of one. It was a slow rolling celebration of selfishness and malfeasance.

Trump couldn’t be bothered to make any comment about the 200,000th dead American but today, because he has become infected, he decided to give the nation a Presidential funeral procession. It took the purposeless form of a slow rolling meander around Walter Reed.

Trump waved at the gathered Q-Anon conspiracy loons and demonstrated through his clinical neediness his profound unfitness for command. Trump’s recklessness is responsible for his infection and many others. Trump’s lying has killed over 150,000 Americans who would not have died otherwise.

Hundreds of thousands more will die. Why did it happen? How did it happen? Watch the video of the malignant buffoon in the back seat of the Presidential Suburban. It will explain a lot.

--Steve Schmidt @SteveSchmidtSES

Vote, folks. And vote blue.

#BlueWave2020

86 45

BYEDON

Link:

Trump Jeopardized Lives of Secret Service Agents in Drive-by Stunt, Medical Experts Say

Trump Risked Lives Because He Was Bored

What a real President, a real leader should and would do.

Biden on participating in next debate: 'I'll do whatever the experts say'

Incredible Article On President Trump and This Pandemic, No. 2

The second incredible on this President, the pandemic and our nation just this moment is from The Atlantic magazine by George Packer, one of their staff writers.

We Are Living in a Failed State

A bit of the article:

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.

Donald Trump saw the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms. Fearing for his reelection, he declared the coronavirus pandemic a war, and himself a wartime president. But the leader he brings to mind is Marshal Philippe Pétain, the French general who, in 1940, signed an armistice with Germany after its rout of French defenses, then formed the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Like Pétain, Trump collaborated with the invader and abandoned his country to a prolonged disaster. And, like France in 1940, America in 2020 has stunned itself with a collapse that’s larger and deeper than one miserable leader. Some future autopsy of the pandemic might be called Strange Defeat, after the historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch’s contemporaneous study of the fall of France. Despite countless examples around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national. And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?

...The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also should have been a great leveler. You don’t have to be in the military or in debt to be a target—you just have to be human. But from the start, its effects have been skewed by the inequality that we’ve tolerated for so long. When tests for the virus were almost impossible to find, the wealthy and connected—the model and reality-TV host Heidi Klum, the entire roster of the Brooklyn Nets, the president’s conservative allies—were somehow able to get tested, despite many showing no symptoms. The smattering of individual results did nothing to protect public health. Meanwhile, ordinary people with fevers and chills had to wait in long and possibly infectious lines, only to be turned away because they weren’t actually suffocating. An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich person’s face...

The author goes on about President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

...To watch this pale, slim-suited dilettante breeze into the middle of a deadly crisis, dispensing business-school jargon to cloud the massive failure of his father-in-law’s administration, is to see the collapse of a whole approach to governing. It turns out that scientific experts and other civil servants are not traitorous members of a “deep state”—they’re essential workers, and marginalizing them in favor of ideologues and sycophants is a threat to the nation’s health. It turns out that “nimble” companies can’t prepare for a catastrophe or distribute lifesaving goods—only a competent federal government can do that. It turns out that everything has a cost, and years of attacking government, squeezing it dry and draining its morale, inflict a heavy cost that the public has to pay in lives. All the programs defunded, stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we had become a second-rate nation...

Again, I can't recommend both articles enough.

Read these two full articles, folks. They're quite an education.

God help us all.

Incredible Article On This President and Pandemic, No. 1

I ran across two articles that I think are so good, they're downright important.

The first is from CNN and written by Gary Kasparov, Russian chess grandmaster, former world chess champion, writer, and political activist.

Trump is weakening America's immune system

A small bit of the article:

Trump has spent his time in office weakening the nation's systemic immune system -- or institutions that hold him in check -- and setting the US up for a disaster when those institutions are needed more than ever. All autocrats and would-be autocrats have the narcissistic superpower of thinking only of themselves. While normal people are worried about the cost in human lives or the economic impact of a crisis, an autocrat races to exploit it to his personal advantage.

This ability to focus only on power, to consider actions that shock everyone else, is how would-be autocrats become actual autocrats. Russians, myself included, underestimated the extremes Vladimir Putin would go to retain power. By the time we began ringing the alarm bells, the levers to stop him had been removed from the political machine. The Russian opposition and the international community had wasted precious time fretting over Putin's power grabs, surprised at every turn by his ruthlessness. We said, "Surely he would never...," and "Doesn't he realize how bad it looks?" But people like Putin don't care about traditions or what others have never done before. They don't care how it looks. They only care if it works -- for them. They don't ask why; they only ask why not.

This is how emergency powers become permanent and unsavory alliances of convenience become the new status quo. A crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic is a deadly example of how this process works and it has plenty of predecessors, including the war on terror. There is a rising number of democratically elected leaders in the world transforming themselves into authoritarians -- just look at Hungary's Viktor Orban.

These abuses can happen in democracies far more robust than Russia's, or even Hungary's. In the US, Republicans are coming out against voting by mail in the 2020 presidential election because they see voter turnout as a threat. This is a battle that has gone on in state legislatures and courts for years, usually via baseless allegations of fraud. But an autocratic mentality would instead look at the direct method of shutting down or sabotaging the US Postal Service.
Why not? An autocrat's only calculation is how it would impact his election chances, not who gets harmed in the process.

And if you're hoping members of the GOP will push back against Trump's tyrannical illusions, look only at their spinelessness as he claimed "total authority" last Monday, before saying state governors were responsible for reopening the economy.

Trump covets authority without responsibility, the creed of every strongman. To use the golfing language he understands, such contradictions are par for Trump's course, as when he now claims that he always knew about the pandemic when in fact he spent weeks saying no one could have seen it coming. Well, which is it? Did Trump know and do almost nothing, or was he oblivious despite the experts' many warnings?

Who would know better tendencies of autocrats than someone from Russia?

I can't recommend the entire article enough, to all adult Americans.

This afternoon--important article number 2.

Link:

Garry Kasparov

Loving a Local Protest

This couple stands, regularly, on the corner of 63rd and Ward Parkway, as I found them Tuesday evening.

Anyone who knows me, anyone who reads here, anyone who watches and follows this President would know I stand with and behind them 100%. Fortunately, as I was there, they get plenty, plenty of supporting horn honks, at minimum.

God help us.

And thanks, Republicans!

We Are, As a Nation, Normalizing the Insanity and Irresponsibility That Is Donald J Trump

Lots of us swore we would not, could not let this happen. That is, we swore we would and could not possibly let the normalization of Donald J. Trump and all his petulance and non-logic and emotionalism and rantings and ravings and tweets and self-centeredness and narcissism. We were sure we wouldn't all "go there."

But it's happening. Sure as he's called President, to this day, it's happening.

An example?

This past week.

Donald Trump's last 7 days are just 

mind-bogglingly bad

And then, today, there's this.

Trump calls negotiations with North Korea a waste of time, says U.S. will ‘do what has to be done’

He has no idea, I expect, that he's flirting with some sort of nuclear disaster, at minimum, if not out and out nuclear war.

Bravado is one thing when you're in the locker room and disrespecting women. God knows that's bad enough. But as President of the most ridiculously powerful nation on the planet to, again, flirt with nuclear warheads being rained down on some part of the planet--anywhere, really--is just outrageously stupid, even childish but certainly irresponsible.

We, the United States, can't allow, hell, exist with this, again, irresponsible dolt as leader.

The planet can't, either.

No exaggeration.

What We're Getting With and From This President

Columnist Leonard Pitts puts it very well today.

So here we are, six months later. How time has trudged.

But the calendar does not lie. On Thursday, we will be half a year through the Trump Era. And, contrary to his signature promise, America seems less great by the day. Nor are his other promises faring particularly well.

There is no sign of progress on that border wall, much less any idea how he is going to make Mexico pay for the thing. His promise to preserve Medicaid and provide healthcare for everyone has dissolved into a GOP bill that would gut Medicaid and rob millions of their access to healthcare.

Meantime, the guy who once said he would be working so hard he would seldom leave the White House spends more time on golf courses than a groundskeeper.

But for all that Trump has not achieved, there is, I think, one thing he indisputably has. He has taught us to live in a state of perpetual chaos and continuous crisis. Six months later, the White House commands the same horrified attention as a car wreck or a house fire.

In that sense, last week’s revelation that the Trump campaign, in the person of Donald Trump Jr., did in fact collude with a hostile foreign power to influence the 2016 election was just another Tuesday. Sure, it might have been shocking from the Bush or Obama campaigns. But under Trump, we live in a state of routine calamity.

Besides which, a few days from now, there will be something else. With Trump, there inevitably is. Things can always get worse — and usually do.

And when they can do, we can count on the GOP, that inexhaustible fount of righteous outrage, to stand tall and courageously look the other way. For almost 20 years,the party has never seen a minor episode (“Travelgate”), a sheer nothing (Whitewater) or even an international tragedy (Benghazi) it could not turn into Watergate II. Yet, as credible accusations of treason, obstruction, collusion, and corruption swirl about this White House, the GOP has been conspicuous in its acquiescent silence. It seems the elephant has laryngitis.

But the rest of us can’t stop talking.

Indeed, from the studios of CNN to the bar stools of your neighborhood watering hole, amateur psychoanalysis has become America’s favorite pastime in the last six months. Dozens of theories have been floated, all aimed at answering one question:

What is wrong with him?

But I have come to believe that question misses the point. Sixty-three million people voted for this. And make no mistake, they knew what they were getting. It was always obvious that Trump was a not-ready-for-prime-time candidate, but they chose him anyway. And the rest of us need to finally come to grips with the reason why.

It wasn’t economic anxiety. As a study co-sponsored by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic reported in May, people who were worried for their jobs voted for Hillary Clinton. But people who dislike Mexicans and Muslims, people who oppose same-sex marriage, people mortally offended at a White House occupied by a black guy with a funny name, they voted for Trump.

That’s the reality, and it’s time we quit dancing around it.

This has been said a million times: Donald Trump is a lying, narcissistic, manifestly incompetent child man who is as dumb as a sack of mackerel. But he is the president of the United States because 63 million people preferred that to facing inevitable cultural change. So I am done asking — or caring — what’s wrong with him. Six months in, it’s time we grappled a far more important question.

What in the world is wrong with us?


Links to more of Mr. Pitts columns:

Republican Party has ‘flat out lost its mind’

Mr. President: ‘Just who the hell do you think you are?’

No, Donald Trump isn’t crazy, but he’s not very smart, either

President Trump is an 'F' student

Quote of the Day/Week/Month/Year/Four Years

More Michael Gerson on The Orange One.

And here it is:

"A faith that makes losing a sin will make cheating a sacrament."

From the article:

An administration without a conscience

And another from the same article:

"Putting a future president in the debt of a foreign power — and subject, presumably, to blackmail by that power — is the height of sleazy stupidity. It is not a mistake born of greenness; it is evidence of a vacant conscience."

I say again, God help us.

The Most Insightful Writing On This President?

I do believe, personally, that Michael Gerson may well be writing the most lucid, insightful and intelligent, relevant, nearly important pieces about this current President.

MICHAEL GERSON: Trump's twilight zone

It is sometimes argued that the media should spend less time on President Trump’s transgressive tweets in order to devote more attention to real issues such as North Korea. In fact, it is necessary to focus on Trump’s tweets precisely because they shed light on the mind that is doing the deciding on North Korea. It is a distasteful exercise. But we cannot look away. We need to know the state of mind we’re dealing with.

Trump’s tweets reveal a leader who is compulsive, abusive and easily triggered. Trump describes all this as “modern day presidential.”

What we are witnessing is not a new age in presidential communications. It is an ongoing, public breakdown. And the question naturally arises: Is this the result of mental dysfunction?

Most psychiatrists are (understandably) uncomfortable with diagnosis from a distance. And the particular diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder requires significant impairment – which is a hard case to make of a figure at the pinnacle of American politics.

And yet. There are judgments that must be made about the fitness of the leaders. Citizens are under no ethical obligation to be silent when they see serious dysfunction. The challenge here is not merely the trashing of political norms. The main problem is the possibility that America has an unbalanced president during a period of high-stakes global testing. This is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a civic and political judgment, made necessary by the president’s own words and acts. Trump holds a job that requires, above all else, the ability to unite and steady the nation in a time of crisis. There is no reason to believe he can play that role.

Much of the prudence and courage required to confront this problem will need to come from Republicans and conservatives. Where to start? How about refusing to downplay revolting lunacy?

It is not merely an “occasional ad hominem” for a president to employ the tremendous power of his office to target individual American citizens who oppose him. It is an abuse of power.

It is not merely “uncouth” for a president to tolerate, even to hint support for, violence against political opponents (“I’d like to punch him in the face”). It creates an atmosphere of intimidation.

It is not merely “exaggeration” for a president to issue a series of eye-stretching lies, including that his predecessor spied on him and that a popular vote victory was denied to him by widespread electoral fraud. It indicates either a deep cynicism or a tenuous connection to reality.

It is not being “coarse” for a president to engage in consistent misogyny. It is a sign of a disturbing and deep-seated dehumanization of women.

Many conservatives would respond to this critique by saying, “At least he fights!” The question is: For what? Trump evinces no strong or consistent policy views. He fights for himself – for admiration and adulation – which is the only cause his extreme narcissism allows.

Many conservatives would also respond by saying, “At least he does conservative things!” But if health care is any indication, Trump lacks conviction, knowledge and the ability to persuade.

House and Senate Republicans should be prepared to aggressively challenge unbalanced or unhinged presidential language and decisions, rather than trying to dismiss them as simply a “distraction.”

No one really knows how to deal with this situation, which still feels more like an unnerving political novel than our political reality. Trump has led our country into unexplored territory. If this is “modern day presidential,” all progress moves toward the past.

--Michael Gerson served as President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001-2006 and is a columnist for the Washington Post

Quote of the Day -- On This President

"Are Republicans dismayed that they have put a loathsome, deranged, misogynistic, racist, psychopathic, uninformed, self-promoting, corrupt, insulting, genital-grabbing, conspiracy-theory-peddling, Jew-baiting, narcissistic-behaving, country-destroying, Putin-loving, generally disgusting, fascist, loofa-faced sh*t-gibbon into power in our White House?

No, they are not."

From this article at Common Dreams:

This Isn’t Just Trump. 

This Is Who the Republicans Are

More from the article:

This is not just Trump. What we are seeing happening to our government is the end result of a decades-long effort by the corporate-and-billionaire-funded “conservative movement” to capture the Republican party, and through them to capture the country — for profit. And here we are.

Grover Norquist, one of the key leaders and strategists of the conservative movement, worded it clearly and succinctly, “We just need a President to sign this stuff.” “Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become President of the United States.”

When people ask financial advisers and brokers for retirement advice they get sold high-priced “products” that do not benefit them, but benefit the financial advisers and brokers a lot. (For more on this phenomenon, read Motley Fool’s Where are all the customer’s yachts?)

These scams siphon an estimated $17 billion a year from the retirement accounts of working people.

It's a terrific article and there is more yet at it, showing what these Republicans want to do and are, in fact, doing.

Link:

Common Dreams - Official Site

And just to give us hope, there is this breaking today. Seems not even the Fox Network can believe this guy in the White House, the one who is supposed to be their own.

'Fox News Sunday' Stuns America & 

Formally Denounces Donald Trump

Hope yet, after all, for us. Knock me over with a feather.

Emotionalism, Narcissism, Irrationality and Xenophobia Abound

Tom Tomorrow has it right. Still. Some more.

Quote of the Day -- On Donald Trump

From a Right Winger, a staunch Conservative, a Republican himself.

And he's right, of course.

God help us.  

God help us all.