Defiant, Now Infected: Trump Is a Morality Tale
“It is time, at long last, to learn. To be smarter. To be safer. To be more responsible, to others as well as to ourselves. We cannot erase the mistakes made in America’s response to the coronavirus but we can vow not to continue making them. The way to treat President Trump’s diagnosis is as a turning point and a new start. This is when we woke up.”
Stole that title from a Ben Mathis-Lilley piece on Slate titled, “Eight Things That Were Somehow Not Takeaways From the Debate Because Everything Else Was So Deranged”.
Who the hell believes that?
Mathis-Lilley:
“On the subject of protests and accompanying violence—a pet theme of the Trump reelection campaign—Wallace set out to press Biden on whether he was reluctant to call out the National Guard. When Biden argued that Trump’s federal interventions in Portland, Oregon, had made things worse, Trump jumped in to boast about his performance: “I sent in the U.S. Marshals to get the killer of a young man in the middle of the street, and they shot him. For three days, Portland didn’t do anything. I sent in the U.S. Marshals, they took care of business.” The “business” the president was referring to was the killing of Michael Forest Reinoehl, a suspect in the shooting of a far-right protester in Portland. After initial reports that Reinoehl had died in a gun battle with the authorities, one witness told reporters he was “clutching a cellphone and eating a gummy worm” when the marshals opened fire on him without warning.”
You probably don’t give a shit about Reinoehl. A petty criminal, he drag raced his 17 year old son on an Oregon road recklessly endangering other drivers. His family didn’t want anything to do with him. Then he was caught on film shooting someone at point blank in downtown Portland. A heinous crime for which he deserved a severe punishment.
The right used Reinoehl to say “See BLM stands for ‘bad liberals metastasizing'”. They certainly didn’t care that he was gunned down by Trump’s Marshalls.
What about the left? There was nothing redeeming about Reinoehl, but every U.S. citizen who doesn’t demand a full accounting of his death is contributing to an environment where a President can kill a citizen like Duterte killing a drug dealer. Maybe even in broad daylight, in some place like Lacey, Washington, about 7-8 miles from where I’m sitting.
PLEASE tell me some documentary film makers are going to build on Tim Elfrink’s Washington Post story about Reinoehl’s murder. Maybe you don’t give a shit. Maybe you prefer the way they do things in the Philippines. If no one cares about the details of Reinoehl’s final minutes, we will be the Philippines in short order.
I’m only halfway through the New York Times 10,000 word investigative report on Trump’s taxes.
So far, my favorite part is these seemingly innocuous paragraphs:
“To see what a successful business looks like, depreciation or not, look no further than one in Mr. Trump’s portfolio that he does not manage.
After plans for a Trump-branded mini-city on the Far West Side of Manhattan stalled in the 1990s, Mr. Trump’s stake was sold by his partner to Vornado Realty Trust. Mr. Trump objected to the sale in court, saying he had not been consulted, but he ended up with a 30 percent share of two valuable office buildings owned and operated by Vornado.
His share of the profits through the end of 2018 totaled $176.5 million, with depreciation factored in. He has never had to invest more money in the partnership, tax records show.”
One of Trump’s only successful business ventures was successful because he lost ownership of it. But the joke of course is on us because he’s doing to our country exactly what he’s done to the vast majority of his businesses.
Not normally a fan of Friedmans, but this is very good. “Trump’s Motto: Your Money or Your Life“. Still in a post-Warren funk, maybe I’m not fully appreciating Byedon. My enthusiasm for his candidacy has been based on one overarching thing. He’s not Trump.
“Imagine that your child is sick with a disease and you decide to take her to 100 different doctors to get multiple opinions — and 99 doctors give you the same diagnosis and prescribed treatment and one tells you that there’s nothing to worry about, that your child’s disease will ‘disappear … like a miracle, it will disappear.’
What parents in their right minds would follow the advice of the doctor with the one-out-of-100 diagnosis?
This, alas, is no hypothetical. This, alas, is actually the most important question facing voters in choosing our next president. Are you ready to trust your own child’s and the country’s health to the guy who holds the one-out-of-100 view on both climate change and Covid-19? He being Dr. Donald Trump, founder of Trump University, where he apparently earned a B.S. in B.S.
It is stunning to me how many conservatives want to go with the doctor with the one-out-of-100 diagnosis, since doing so is anything but conservative.”
As one part of my history major, I studied Central and Latin American history in college. And there was one thing I could never figure out. Until this weekend.
I didn’t understand why, whenever a populist, land-reform promising political party gained control of political power, they never managed to follow through on their promises to upset the status quo, distribute power more fairly, and improve ordinary people’s lives.
Forty years later*, I realize it’s because the idealists’ hatred for their predecessors became so all encompassing it distracted them from the day-to-day work of building a brighter future.
The common good took a backseat to getting even with the bastards in the other party for the sometimes decades-long laundry list of political grievances including massive corruption, and in some cases, government sponsored death squads.
The political class in the (dis)United States thinks the (dis)United States is superior to any country to the south, so my reference is irrelevant. But it’s dead wrong, human nature doesn’t respect political boundaries. We are prone to the exact same desire to get revenge. I know that because I feel it in a more visceral way this weekend than ever before. Others do too, no doubt.
Consequently, we are on the precipice of a very similar downward spiral that’s seemingly inevitable when every political party assumes the worst of the other.
Listening to the Senate Majority Leader, the President, and other Republicans unprecedented, unapologetic politicizing of the Supreme Court convinces me that they care way more about their party’s interests than the country’s.
The Democrat’s refrain this week will be, “Never forget.” Democrats risk being overwhelmed by anger at the Republican’s historic hypocrisy. When they gain power, which they inevitably will sooner or later, they are likely to seek revenge. And when the Republicans regain it, which they inevitably will sooner or later, they will do the exact same.
Just like that, if it hasn’t already, the organizing principle of our politics will become revenge. Instead of looking to the future, we’ll be mired in the past. And our national debt will grow large; our natural environment will grow more inhospitable; our infrastructure will erode further; racial justice will remain more illusive; and more people will struggle to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing.
And I will take zero joy in being right.
*better late than never
In the richest country in the world. Subtitle. . . What You’ll Never Hear The President Talk About.
“The 4 richest men in America have now amassed $542 billion in wealth. That’s more than the bottom half of all Americans combined.”
Robert Reich
In the (dis)United States, politics has become an intense, zero-sum competition. No one is ever changing their mind again. Neighbors signal their team affiliation with signage like TikTok’s Tony and Ezekiel.
We’ve become way too competitive for our own good, and yet, to differing degrees, we’re wired for competition. So what are we to do?
There are lots of different non-political ways to get our competition fix. We should turn our attention to them.
Professional soccer is alive and kicking. As is professional basketball and golf. Maybe we should argue about the Lakers and Clippers chances of winning it all. Or Milwaukee’s? Or be like the young dude on Harrison who when he saw Blanca and me ride up to him Tuesday morn, dug down and rode especially hard to make sure we knew he was faster. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. That’s the spirit.
Psychologists refer to it as displacement.
Or compete with those closest to you. Who does more of the household work or runs more of the errands or listens better? That always ends well. Or see if you can choose the fastest check-out line at the grocery store like me. Or be the driver who gets the most miles per gallon for your model of car like me. Or see who can save the most money in a month by not eating out and other self-imposed austerity measures. Or see who can collect the most masks. Or see who knows the most people at the farmer’s market.
If we just turn off the cable news and unplug from our devices, the possibilities are endless.
I’ll start. No more politics for me. For at least a few hours.
From the same Perry Bacon Jr. article on FiveThirty Eight.
You can take this to the bank.
“. . . in the 2020 election, expect Trump and his campaign, who have had a hard time casting Biden as an extremist or a radical, to make attacks on Harris with sexist and racist undertones, cast her as an ultra-liberal Californian out of touch with Middle American values and suggest that voting for Biden in November means that Harris will be running the country for 12 years.”
This too.
“The biggest unknowns are around Harris herself and her electoral skills. Harris is a good politician based on these facts alone: She was elected senator in the nation’s most populous state and in a country with a lot of race and gender discrimination, Harris is the second Black woman ever elected to the Senate, and arguably the first to be a serious presidential candidate. That said, it’s still not clear if she is a particularly strong politician on the national stage, and therefore if she will be that helpful for Democrats in the No. 2 slot in 2020 or as the main candidate in a future presidential election.”
Here’s hoping she surprises on the upside.
Pressing Pause 