Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch, September 27, 2019:
Do we need to consult a sabermatrician [sic] to determine whether Trump or Biden makes more errors ... while reading from a prepared text?
I must admit: Reading
David Roth on Trump is a singular pleasure. Those first two paragraphs are, in addition to being accurate, pure gold. ... And since I despise both parties equally, I'll add that running Biden in 2020 would make the Democrats' decision to go with Clinton in 2016 look inspired and well-reasoned.
Trump is a special case, but that has a lot to do with his personality. He has a remarkable inability to refrain from publicly displaying (trumpeting!) his exceptional thin skin. Other presidents may have been similarly hyper-sensitive to criticism and felt the need to childish lash out, but they knew they should do it behind closed doors.
ReplyDeleteTrump is a disgusting person, but he also is not in charge of much (except maybe ordering soggy, cold fast food for championship sports teams). Even though he goes through staff like Steinbrenner used to go through managers, the people that do the dirty work in his name in anonymity share his outlook. Much of Trump's act (and everyone has her own idea about what percentage of his schtick is truly real) masks the actual damage (on myriad fronts) his administration is causing behind the scenes while everyone is distracted by the day's latest "outrage(s)". It was the same situation with George W. Bush. people laughed at his inability to speak while Cheney et al. were doing criminal shit in the shadows.
Make no mistake. What Trump Co is doing is completely inhumane. Anyone doing these things rightfully should spend the rest of their life in an actual jail. But what is going on in the US is not new - Trump did not invent any of this. It's not all that different from what came before. Trump is simply building off the base built by Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan - a criminal political structure that works only for its own ends and has been steadily getting worse (less democratic, more fascist) for 40 years. If an open-minded person looked closely at all aspects of American life since 1980 (and could consider those aspects while not knowing which party was in the White House), that open-minded person would conclude that things have been growing steadily more conservative, pretty much in a direct line. Sometimes quicker, sometimes slower, but going, with a purpose, in one direction. Before Trump took office, the parties split the 36 years since 1980 as closely as possible (Republicans 20 years, Democrats 16 years).
In every case since 1980, each succeeding president has been demonstratively worse (in many ways) than the president before him. Bill Clinton* was worse than George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush was worse than Clinton, Barack Obama was worse than Bush, and Donald Trump is on his way to being worse than Obama. I do not see how anyone could argue with this.
ReplyDelete* Clinton wiped out the federal guarantee of aid to the poor (after 60+ years), limited lifetime benefits to 5 years, and denied aid to all immigrants, legal or otherwise, a bucket list item Reagan could only dream about, and he accelerated and expanded the mass incarceration of black people (see The New Jim Crow).
Trump wants a wall and he's building concentration camps on the border? Yes. But before that, Obama deported more people than any president in history. Trump talks about using nukes to settle petty grievances? Yes. But before that, Obama rebuilt the US's nuclear bomb supply, raising it to unprecedented heights (while giving speeches saying the exact opposite).
Obama was the first US president to be at war for two entire terms. When Obama took office, the US was at war with 2 countries. That quickly became 7. Obama dropped a bomb on innocent people somewhere in the world every 20 minutes during his time in office, hour after hour, day and night, week in and week out, month after month, for eight straight years. In 2011, Obama quipped: "Turns out I'm really good at killing people. Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine." (A) That's the sort of comment one might expect from Dick Cheney. (B) He probably knew it would be a strong suit, what with having the biggest, most powerful, and technologically advanced military in the history of the universe at his beck and call (and the unquestioning support of all the "liberals" who stopped protesting the US's wars the very minute he was sworn in).
Obama would get together with his staff every week ("Terror Tuesdays") and decide who they wanted to assassinate and the military would carry it out. Obama gift-wrapped $700 trillion to the banking industry after the industry had, among other things, intentionally ruined millions of lives by wiping out their life savings. When I hear anyone on the left talk about how they miss the Obama years, I wonder what the fuck is wrong with their brains.
The Republicans and Democrats are two heads of the same political monster. Call them Good Cop and Bad Cop. The Good Cop comes in and talks nice and acts like he wants what's best for you, but his goal is exactly the same as the angry, demanding, insulting Bad Cop. When it comes to foreign policy, the two parties are absolutely identical. You cannot tell them apart. The domestic differences are simply a matter of degree. The end game remains the same for both parties - they are equally bought and owned by big business and have no concern for voters (and why should they, since every election can be easily rigged electronically) - but the Democrats are willing to take a little longer to get there - because someone has to play that role.
ReplyDeleteAnd the continuation of this utterly-broken, utterly-unfixable system is reinforced by the public hatred heaped upon anyone who even slightly suggests a third party might be a good idea. This is going to go into overdrive in this election, with the mantra that everything must be done to stop Trump and anyone who does not vote for the Democratic candidate is basically voting for Trump. That view is complete nonsense (just like it's a lie that voting for Nader gave us Bush and staying home versus voting for Hillary gave us Trump), but it's going to be a deafening refrain all the same.
The Republicans act like assholes. We expect them to be assholes. They are assholes. The Democrats are supposed to be different. They talk a good game (especially as elections gets closer), but they invariably do something else, many times exactly what the Assholes want (or some watered-down version thereof).
There are many times I hate the people who pretend to be my friend but are really Assholes more than the people who openly act like Assholes.