I'll slip in some interesting misc. items below that you won't see elsewhere... but first there's the most obvious potential failure mode for our entire civilization, that's being pushed hard by vile men...
Pay attention when Kremlin-lackey traitors like Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon rave about violence being the next step, if they don't win it all.
The closer we come to ending this madness at the ballot box, the more desperate will be those who see this as their only way out.
== Better late than never? ==
Gen. John Kelly, former chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors, attacking U.S. service members and veterans.
“A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
Kelly continues: “A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
“There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”
It isn't just Trump dismissing those heroes buried at a D-Day/Normandy cemetrery as "suckers and losers of course. In fact, the entire modern Republican Party now wages all-out war vs ALL fact-using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
Still, thanks, Gen. Kelly. Better late than never, I guess. But is it all that helpful?
Nah. Our gone-brownshirt neighbors will shrug off any one... or two, or ten... such fellows as traitors. As Defectors from righteousness who fooled their saintly former casino mafioso boss and betrayed him.
So? Then make that the issue! How easily he was fooled.
Show your MAGA the long, long list of appointees - each of whom Trump formerly called "a great, terrific guy!!" - who later joined the long list of those denouncing him. At least a hundred former 'great guys,' who DT now call "terrible!"
It's a list far longer than ALL previous U.S. presidents... combined. He himself says so "No one was ever betrayed as much as me!"
Agree with that!. Then follow up with this killer:
"Completely aside from all policies and party loyalties, and all the rest...
...doesn't that long list of those he appointed and later denounced prove one thing with absolute perfection?
"That Donald Trump is a lousy judge of character?"
== Reid Hoffman dishes on Rich Fools ==
Some rich dopes recently raised millions of dollars in support of Donald Trump, helping a known monster under the theory that somehow it will work out for them personally. Tech maven and brilliant investor/speaker Reid Hoffman wrote a by-invitation essay in The Economist explaining their error.
“American business should not empower a criminal, says Reid Hoffman: No rational CEO would want a capricious strongman in the White House, argues the entrepreneur.”
Reid’s denunciation of such rich fools is cogent, incisive and worth your time! It is also far more polite than I would be.
In fact, I have observed that fanatics of the entire Mad Right (and the loopy farthest Left) are all effectively immunized against mere argument. They are immune because the trend in lobotomizing modern cultism is to dismiss ALL assertions as equivalent. All assertions are just battling incantations that bear no relationship to objective reality.
In other words:
“You assert something and I assert something… and those incantation assertions cancel each other out! I believe you are delusional… and you think that of me.
"Hence we are left undisturbed – both of us – in our beloved smug assurance, while nothing at all can ever be disproved.”
Read that again. It is exactly the deal, the arrangement between left and right, screaming at each other, while leaving in place a tacit arrangement of reciprocal sanctimony addiction.
Alas, we can’t afford this deal, anymore. Especially since allowing political polemic to be left in that condition gives the Putinist/fascist/commie/confederate cult an advantage that they should be denied. (And also the far smaller and less harmful, but still-noxious loopies of the very-far-left.)
There must be a way to FORCE comparison of the factual verifiability/falsifiability of assertions!
== One method works... and no one will try it ==
Of course… you all know that I have pushed (in utter futility) just such a technique, one that worked well for our ancestors, for centuries. Anchoring fact-checkability in actual CONSEQUENCES that blowhards fear most. And here I am referring specifically to the aristocratic fools addressed by Reid Hoffman.
What'd work, making them flee in shame, is to demand actual cash wagers over explicitly verifiable/falsifiable facts! Truly explicit true-or-false assertions, like:
Which party has better economic outcomes across the last 40 years of administrations.
Which party has a record of being far more fiscally responsible re debt.
Which party supports US science.
Which party has forty times the rate of high officials indicted and convicted for felonies, including child predation.
Which party wages all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
This list goes on and on... assertions that are absolutely fact-checkable with utter explicitness. (In 1st comment, below, I will append a further list of fact verifiable wager demands.)
Moreover, the cash wager aspect is crucial! Because it focuses on actual consequences, instead of blowhard incantations.
Of course there’s another thing Reid could demand of his delusionally GOP-supporting peers. Have them watch the last 5 minutes of the movie CABARET and then ask the following question (uttered by Michael York in the film) about today's aristocratic fools, supporting brownshirt MAGAS:
"So, you still think you can control them?"
== What happens if the masters grow desperate? ==
And finally... Vladimir Putin appears eager to rewrite the past. Recently, he... signed a decree rendering the sale of Alaska to the U.S. illegal!
Like declaring void all treaties guaranteeing Ukrainian independence... or merging Soviet flags and emblems with the Czarist escutcheons that his younger self ritualistically spat on, back when he was an 'idealistic' Leninist KGB agent. Only now he and his fellow 5000 "ex" commissars wear different lapel pins and raise statues to Nicholas II, whom Lenin 'righteously' murdered.
And you wonder where Orwell got his ideas for the Ministry of Truth?
It's all very chuckle-worthy. Till tou wonder... what happens when Vlad starts getting desperate? Faced with astonishing and devastating losses at the battlefront and plummeting morale. he speaks often and with passion about the Soldier's Revolt of 1917 that toppled the Czar and brought Lenin to power. And he speaks of that event with a rising sense of dread, now frantic to evade the same fate.
He has one great hope.... the November US election. Hence, it must be with horror and dismay that he sees his favorite tool, Donald Trump, rapidly deteriorate, before the world's eyes.
No one is talking about what the secret masters of the gone-undead Republican Party might do about Donald Trump, if it looks like their asset is dragging down down their prospects in 2024. But we must consider what they might do, in order to salvage their situation... by eliminating the liability in such a way that advances their central goal. Their core goal of dissolving the United States into chaos and self-immolation.
One approach would be the "Howard Beale Option"... referring to the last 5 minutes of another great film... NETWORK. In other words, martyrdom... get rid of your asset-turned-liability and blame the dems, inciting a volcano of McVeighs, burning and destroying across the land. A win-win for Putin and the casino mafiosi and others in that anti-enlightenment Cabal.
Hence I recite this mantra, again and again:
“God bless the United States Secret Service. Stay on your toes, guys.
"Keep him safe.”
