A nasty little boy.

While tuning in to see the preening and posturing and howling in Tulsa, ask yourself: "What am I actually looking at?

Tom Nichols - author of The Death of Expertise (what I call the War on all Fact-Professions) - now zeroes in on the achilles heel of the entire Foxite cult: “Why do working-class white men—the most reliable component of Donald Trump’s base—support someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency?”  … 

Nichols: “The question is not whether Trump fails to meet some archaic ideal of masculinity - say Marcus Aurelius or Omar Bradley. Rather, working-class white male voters don’t hold Trump to their own standards of masculinity - supporting a man who behaves more like a little boy.”

This article is devastatingly on-target, recalling the working class men Nichols grew up with, among whom “courage, honesty, respect, an economy of words, a bit of modesty, and a willingness to take responsibility are all virtues prized by… the stand-up guys, among whom I was raised. Yet, many of these same men expect none of those characteristics from Trump, who is a vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard. …He wears bronzer, loves gold and gossip, is obsessed with his physical appearance, whines constantly, can't control his emotions, watches daytime television, enjoys parades and interior decorating, and used to sell perfume.”

“Put another way, as a question I have asked many of the men I know: Is Trump a man your father and grandfather would have respected?” 

(Nichols leaves out a manly trait that may be slightly less noble, but I call just as fundamental - a willingness to back up bold assertions with wager stakes - or at least to let factual refutation have consequences. Indeed, a desperate fear of specific refutation - e.g. via wagers - spans the entire Foxite cult.)

Nichols reaches a conclusion similar to mine. “Trump’s lack of masculinity is about maturity. He is not manly because he is not a man. He is a boy.” 

Nichols asserts that MAGAs are indulgent with him, as “working-class America’s dysfunctional son, and his supporters, male and female alike, have become the worried parent explaining what a good boy he is to terrorized teachers even while he continues to set fires in the hallway right outside.”

Do read the Nichols piece! Every paragraph is a knife into the gut of this madness and you should read enough times to memorize and use these weapons. Use them.

Mind you, it’s time to compare this to the other most-cogent diagnosis, offered by linguistic sociologist George Lakoff (author of Don't Think of An Elephant!), who gave us an underlying difference between how conservatives and liberals view government and leaders, in general. Liberals are said to seek a “nurturing parent” who will soothe the sick, uplift the oppressed and open doors of opportunity with encouragement. Conservatives seek a “Strong Father” who applies the back of his hand to enforce order, discipline and tradition. 

History shows the latter taking power nearly all the time, especially when there's an ambient level of fear... which was most of human history. Significantly, it explains why Strong Father worshippers don’t expect kindness, rationality, equality or even justice. They do admire blustering displays of macho.

At first Nichols and Lakoff seem opposite theories — whiney-vulnerable boy vs. Strong Father — in explaining the same displays of rude-crude-viciously self-centered rage. So let me offer a third metaphor that bridges them both, showing that both Lakoff and Nichols had it mostly right, just barely missing a core point.

By now you’ve all noticed it is futile to argue normally with members of the Foxite cult. MAGAs expect you to try facts and appeals to reason and logic and fairness… and every time you do that, you are feeding their contempt. You are supporting the real reason they like Trump.

In the face of every blaring sign that he is the very opposite of Lincoln or Jesus, they adore him because he enrages the people they hate most. Meaning you and me. And the war he wages - supported by Putin’s KGB, Saudi royals, Rupert Murdoch and inheritance brats - against every fact-using profession - is their lifelong campaign against nerds.

The overlap between Nichols and Lakoff is this. Donald Trump is a playground bully. The way his most-fervent supporters were, back in Junior High.  

Moreover, that points to the cure! We must do the one thing that worked back then. That thing should be obvious to many of you once-bullied nerds, and the rest of you can figure it out.

Just watch how they’ll turn on him, the very month that we stop farting around and decide to actually do that one thing. Showing how bullies lose.

== The Russians are coming... ==

Russian oligarchs have been ramping up their already generous donations to Republicans. “An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen now living in Russia again. With $20 billions he’s one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle… pumping $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.”

“Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.”

The Cold War never ended. Putin simply dropped all the Marxist surface rhetoric and communist symbols that had failed to sucker in the U.S. Rooseveltean left. Whereupon he spun on a dime, switching surface incantations to Czarist-orthodox ‘traditionalism’ and mafia oligarchy… and voila! The American right fell all over themselves to prostrate at Vlad’s feet.

Honestly, I cannot believe this is just about money or class or other whoredoms. Too many in the GOP and periphery have committed too many outright treasons for the explanation to be anything other than … blackmail. It’s the favorite KGB tactic, going back to its predecessor, the czarist Okrahna, and continuing into the neo-czarist FSB and IRA. And it’s easily envisioned when you consider what high fraction of high Republicans have been exposed as grotesque sexual predators and child molesters.

There’s a lot more to be found in another best-seller about a mobbed-up Russian asset linked to a kleptocracy and all of these dark and horrifying people–Trump and Mogilevich and Epstein and Kushner. The whole gang is in Hiding in Plain Sight, by Sarah Kendzior .  Here’s an audio interview (and transcript) in which she lays out how blatant are the Russian mob connections, not just with Trump but today’s entire GOP.

And yes, the foxite media claim to have similar mountains of evidence against the Clintons, Obama and Biden and many Democrats. There is only one difference between the two evidence piles.  

Almost every datum about Republican/Trumpist links to Putin and mobs and turpitude is true and overwhelmingly verifiable. After 25 years of “Clinton investigations” costing taxpayers half a billion dollars, we’ve learned that almost nothing on that pile is true, not even remotely. 

Sure that’s easy to claim! And so, we return to the one tactic that works… and it always works!  Demanding cash wagers over explicitly testable or falsifiable assertions. 

They always writhe and wriggle and squirm and divert! And when you push past all the smoke and demand they put-up and back their hot air with real, manly stakes?  They always… always… flee.

See how to do it in Polemical Judo.

== And finally more ammo ==

Trump golf visits and the $130 million they cost us, vs Obama’s golfings were mostly at Camp David or in DC, costing 1% as much. See Trump Golf Count. And yes, amid a pandemic. 

Evangelical reverend admits he paid 'Jane Roe' (the original ‘Roe v.Wade plaintiff) $450,000 - including handfuls of $100 bills - because she was a 'symbol anti-abortion movement could not afford to lose'. 

Okay, I am going to tune in to the rally, where Trump's desperate preening addiction flies against Putin's and Murdoch's desperately devious pragmatism. If things go very covid-badly, they may decide to find an exit strategy well before an election wrecks their tool against us, the Republican Party. And God bless the United States Secret Service.

Look away! Political distractions and more...

Distract! That’s the GOP ‘strategy,’ ever since it became clear that there was screaming "quid" for every howling "quo."

For example, there are no legal bases for Attorney General Barr’s ‘criminal investigation of the FBI’ for following hearsay leads that led to overwhelming evidence, that led to jury convictions for real crimes. But unleashing the probe will get Trump off Barr’s neck. All of you have RASR cousins etc. who buy into the core Fox line, which boils down to: “Don’t look! There’s nothing under that smoke, so don’t even look! I don’t want to know!” … 

Here are 9 one- or two-sentence answers that demolish their “don’t look!” party line:

1- Rules about hearsay, or ‘bias’ by investigators or witnesses all apply during a TRIAL. Rules of admissibility are far looser during investigations or indictment proceedings, which can hear secret testimony, as happens in a Grand Jury. 

While there might be cause to “confront” all witnesses during a trial, at this stage protecting whistleblower identity is not only fair, it is traditional and paramount.

2- The House is that Grand Jury, deliberating indictments that the Senate would then try.

3- Impeachment is Constitutional, not judicial. Moreover - and dig this well - it’s not even remotely analogous to criminal trial, where life or liberty might be deprived. The closest parallel is that it’s about an employment issue - far more like a company’s board of directors deciding to fire a corrupt CEO.

4- The House can make its own rules on proceedings leading to a vote of impeachment, as when the GOP rammed through impeachment of a husband for fibbing about a 3rd base consensual infidelity. Only here’s a fact conservative Judge Napolitano made clear, discomfiting whining Fox hosts: Pelosi, Schiff etc. are now following - precisely - rules established in 2015 by a Republican House under John Boehner, when Republicans hoped to impeach the utterly stain-free Barack Obama.

5- Having declared an absolute right of Congressional oversight over Clintons and Obama (who handed over everything and prevented no one from testifying, amid 25 years of never-fruitful “investigations”), many of the same men now howl that a GOP president needn’t cooperate at all, may stonewall and declare himself above all law, even for “shooting someone on 5th Avenue.”* (Yes, Trump’s attorney just said exactly that. See the cogent cartoon by Clay Bennett.))

6- Oh, about those evidence-exclusion” rules that sometimes tossed as inadmissible “the fruit of a poisoned tree….” Conservatives long railed against that doctrine! Now, suddenly-hypocritically, it’s their favorite! 

7- Again: 25 years and half a billion dollars of our money spent chasing Clinton-Obama accusations, including Koch/Fox bribes offered to scores of witnesses - (“Bengahzi!”… “Emails!”) - found nothing whatsoever, a result repeated just last week by Pompeo’s State Department when they cleared Hillary Clinton of any serious or deliberate wrongdoing.

8- There are obvious reasons why the rising oligarchy wants secrecy and darkness enshrined in our political processes. From the Panama Papers to a wave of likely blackmail, we see how much they have to fear from light. Take the link below and see Polemical Judo!

9- Every Trumpian defense consists of “Don’t look! The people mustn’t see facts or truth!  Tax returns, financials, Deutsche Bank records of laundering for Russian oligarchs, testimony from administration officials who never spoke a word to the President and hence have no basis for “Executive Privilege…”

… the actual contents of Trump’s private meetings with communist dictators and “ex”communist KGB-agent mafia dons…

…and Trump’s beloved “Great Wall of NDAs” (the best wall ever) keeping scores of past settlements secret. And the contents of David Pecker’s safe. And the blackmail that turned William Barr into a mafia stooge…

…and for all of that, your “ostrich republican” cousin has one desperate response, keeping his head in his Fox-tuned hole, repeating incantations and chant-rationalizations for why he should not know about any of those things. “I don’t wanna know. Nobody should know. Look away… look away!”

== It can be painfully funny ==

And yes…Our Constitution is under attack. Our civil servants will save us, wrote Elijah Cummings.

Che Shows The Way! On Saturday Night Live, last week, Weekend Update host Michael Che voiced (brilliantly) a meme I had been spreading about a new and clever way to deal with the weird-crazed phenomenon of Donald Trump. ““I don't know how to ask this, but are we sure that it's OK to make fun of this guy?” he asked. “Did you ever read Of Mice and Men? Remember how Lenny was really ‘strong?’ What if Trump is really strong? I've got a cousin who is also strong. And he loves alligators too, but we don't make fun of him.”

It got some good laughs and cheers, but I am quite serious in proposing that some mid-level democrat or pundit use this powerful meme weapon.  Imagine if say Mayor Pete were to hold a news conference and — with tongue only barely in cheek — *denounce* fellow Democrats for their unsympathetic pestering of an addled old man! An emotionally and cerebrally challenged senior who clearly qualifies for extra care and kindness. Feigned outrage that liberals and dems are ignoring their obligations to Trump, under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  

Not only would it draw huge attention and seize that day’s news cycle. It would also directly undermine what George Lakoff calls the fundamental basis of Trump’s base-support — his illusion of playground bully “strength.” Envision what a tweetstorm that would rouse from Two Scoops! It would obsess him and possible burst a blood vessel… and so, on second thought, maybe let’s not. The last thing we want is a Trump  martyr!

Can anyone pass this on to Mayor Pete?  

== Where we're headed ==

This Vox article on “9 scenarios for how the Trump-Ukraine impeachment process could end” is a pretty interesting conversation starter. But it leaves out at least half a dozen more. Such as party leaders talking Trump into taking a leave of absence, or several different weird scenarios under the 25th amendment. 

And the scariest of all… the one that makes Bond-villain logic for Putin and McConnell, giving them their only chance at a win win win scenario, eliminating the liability while riling up his supporters to a rabid frenzy… That scenario is martyrdom.  God Bless the United States Secret Service! I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. Good luck guys! (And if anything happens, you fools better not celebrate! You must be enraged at the deliberate-cynical disposal of an addled old man, just because his usefulness to our enemies came to an end.)

I am a fan of AOC and I am glad the Democratic "Roosevelt wing" is very active. Still, it is vital to avoid splitterism and falling for tricks to harm our enlightenment-patriotic coalition against the Putinist Cabal. Especially, all this piling onto Nancy Pelosi is both unfair and intemperate/shortsighted -- an example of 'sumo' politics that always, always falls into Republican traps. The Judo approach requires timing. Those who question Pelosi's courage or determination bear a steep burden of proof. Under what scenario do they even imagine she is shy over combat? Of course she is being strategic! Why assume anythings else? What matters now is not going for formal impeachment, followed by a failed Senate vote. What matters is:

1-  that formal impeachment hearings might corner Chief Justice John Roberts into ruling in favor of Congressional subpoenas, since that is a process specifically described in the the Constitution. This is paramount! Nothing else matters as much, because once the subpoenas and hearings are unleashed, the Trumpists face evisceration. (And we must be prepared with a plan in case Roberts betrays us.)

2- that the impeachment process must not wind up being seen as just "revenge for Clinton," allowing the Red Base to rally around their martyr. If you think it will be enough just to defeat the GOP in 2020, you have ZERO memory of 2010 and 1994 when they came roaring back. They must be crushed for all this criminality and treason, and removing Trump a couple of months early is less urgent.

3- If you want a huge symbolic victory, then time impeachment so that the senate trial is held in the new Senate that takes hold a couple of weeks before inauguration in 2020. Think about that.

4- tune the meaning. A tsunami of corruption revelations during 2020 will win us defections from the confederacy, while a Senate trial that happens before those defections will win us an earthquake of Timothy McVeighs. Above all, our audience is the so called "deep state" - a fictitious, slanderous term for the brave and devoted men and women who have been preserving the republic by adhering to the law, during a lawless regime. If they see us dotting the i’s while revealing crimes, we keep them loyal.

5- Pence. OMG have folks any concept of reality at all? Trump is largely cauterized by his own blithering moronic behavior. Pence gets in and ALL THE DAMAGE TO THE REPUBLICAN BRAND goes away as he smoothly croons about peace and reconciliation, winning large numbers of relieved officers back into the GOP fold... the leaky Trump White House gets replaced by one packed by Pence with devout Book of Revelations Dominionists, utterly disciplined and dedicated to the end of the world. Literally. Absolutely and literally.

Pace yourselves. Radicalize! Fight! By getting your neighbors ready with tumbrels and torches.

== Consider this ==

The National Rifle Association acted as a "foreign asset" for Russia in the period leading up to the 2016 election. Um duh? Today’s traitor U.S. right is absolutely gaga in love with the Putin mob, which has coordinated all out war against all of our institutions and professional castes.

Roughly 500 Soviet commissars were aided by cronies of George H.W. Bush around 1990, in “converting the Russian economy from communist to free enterprise.” Now drop the last two words and replace them with “mafia oligarchy.” All they had to do was replace hammer-sickle emblems with orthodox crosses and wink slyly at the western partners who funded their grab of every USSR state asset.  And that’s just one of two reasons why Bush Senior was – by far – the worst U.S. president of the Twentieth Century.

Finally... Here’s a review article “The Culmination of Republican Decay” - from The New York Review - of the recently released book American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War - and the Rise of President Trump, by Tim Alberta.

And "Trump tries to banish the specter of impeachment with red-state campaign tour." 

And in my new book - Judo Polemics - one of my 100+ tactics - is to make him and his campaign pay ALL costs of such trips, In advance.