I can never hear the clip of Herschmann telling Eastman he should “get a good f’ing criminal defense lawyer because he’s going to need it” too many times.
I really hope that’s true because I want to see the minions jailed as much or more than Trump himself.
Herschmann's testimony ( whether true or not) lacks one vital piece,, he never told Federal law enforcement of an active plan that he knew was illegal to overturn the election. That goes to every single attorney from the acting AG Rosen, his assistant, and to the WH Counsel's office. So, to me see Herschmann's testimony to be self-serving and to be dodging his duty. Same goes to the then-acting AG Rosen for doing the same in the face of the autocoup by claiming scores of USA would resign, rather than straight-up warning if y'all attempt this I am going order the FBI to open an investigation.
Keep in mind most of the so-called heroes of 6Jan fought DOJ subpoenas adding months of delay to what has come to be known as the Election Interference case. Point being, am tired of those who falsely claim it's all AG Garland's fault allowing those with actual knowledge and at a minimum passive participation to be hailed as heroes, most of all acting AG Rosen. WTF! All those 6 Jan text exchanges reveal the so-called heroes were more interested in being right rather than doing what was right and at the right time.
Eastman is the insipid clown’s clown, he’s not going to need to worry about billable hours when he’s mopping the floors in our penitentiary at Reidsville, which is truly a shithole prison. The look on all of their faces will be priceless, when they realize that is where they are going to be spending the last years of their miserable lives, I don’t drink anymore, but I think a bottle of really fine vintage champagne 🍾 will be in order to celebrate 🎊 that look. 🙏
To the end of my days I will never understand how seemingly rational people can drink Trump’s vile KoolAid. Eastman is a despicable fool, but he is presumably rational, ie, not clinically insane. He presumably knows 2 + 2 = 4, though under Trump’s toxic spell 2 + 2 would equal whatever Trump said it should be. Or Giuliani, the Mayor of New York “Fitty.” America’s mayor, he was called, post 9/11. That was his finest hour. What happened to him? He became a paid liar, and his career is in ruins, as is Eastman’s. Sidney Powell. Mark Meadows. On and on it goes… it’s a nearly endless list of people who have been taken in and destroyed by their association with Trump. I have long believed that Trump cultists — for it is a cult— all have a giant invisible hole in their psyches that Trump somehow fills—- a gaping hole in their constitutions, a need for a big boss, a hero of some sort, someone who gives voice to their resentments. It’s the “belonger and believer” mentality. Two ex-friends of mine fit this to a T. I wonder if any of them will reach the sad and shocking conclusion, like Michael Cohen and many others, that they’ve been lied to, extorted, double crossed, and grifted by a soulless psychopath who doesn’t give a shit for any one of them.
I am going through this with a lifelong friend. I'm struggling to understand how a person I thought was bright and rational, and good and kind, can't see through Trump. I feel the cultish-ness of it - the canned arguments (Hunter Biden!) and phrases (the people who are destroying this country!). It seems important to him that I "convert".
My best explanation is he is disappointed with life - he was the great high school athlete, and I was his geeky friend but somehow things didn't pan out as he expected. He talks a lot about the fun we had in the old days, when we were young. Actually, I think, with a different perspective, he could look back at his life with gratitude. But there is too much anger, it has to be someone's fault (those people) and there has to be a simple answer (Trump!).
After the last argument, when I just stood my ground (no, the truth is) we weren't talking, and I reached out to chat about something else. I'm relieved that he responded. The door is still open. But I've made it clear, if he's going down that road, I'm not going with him. And I hope it doesn't do him any harm or causes him to do harm to others or anything he forever regrets. Many of us are going through this. It reflects the poison that Trump has injected into our lives.
ca queens, that is an eloquent reply. It takes a swag at why an otherwise rational person and friend goes down that dirty, rutted road that ends in a bridge with a trap door. The friend you described pretty much matches the two I mentioned. Both were athletic and smart and they whine for a world (white, male dominated, though they don’t explicitly say so) that is crumbling before their eyes. I’ve known one since kindergarten, the other since 10th grade, and I’ve terminated the friendships… not without regret. I am puzzled and saddened by their allegiance to an ignorant, lying, amoral, cowardly sexist grifter and traitor.
My own sister is in the wind. When covid first arrived I called her and I asked her if she was vaxed. Her reply was straight out of Facebook. It took every fibre of my being not to go off on her. It took 2 deaths in her husbands side of her family to get vaxed.
I read a wonderful book decades ago called "Is There Life After High School?" that, among other subjects, describes your friend - the people who peaked in high school. I recommend it.
The president of my class of 488 was a mild-mannered star quarterback already engaged to a high-profile overachiever. He was prevented from attending the 10th reunion by being incarcerated for armed robbery.
My experience with a large number of my old high school friends mirrors yours. Half of us left for college the other half stayed behind and went about their lives as best they could. At reunions and when I receive email updates on the recent passing the divide is noticable. It started most noticeably when Obama was running and a couple in the class started sending/resending those vile mails about him, his parentage and citizenship and has continued with a lot of them parroting Fox and MAGA themes. At first, I tried to reason with them but to no avail. A lot of them are simply G-O-N-E down the rabbit hole.
And to think that he was once Dean of Chapman University School of Law. This is what happens when you become a member of Trump’s cult. You’ll do anything for the Orange Jesus. And what did he get for his plotting? Invoices Trump refused to pay and now loss of his law license.
Do a little digging into Chapman University. Not very long in the clear thinking departments. Very Orange County and not far (physically and POV) From Biola (Baptist Institute of Los Angeles) University. Besides a divinity degree, one might also do graduate work in Christian Nationalism.
My best guess. It would not surprise me, knowing several grads of Biola. The Baptists are the ones behind the far right plotting, and have been for decades. Right wing cristyun gun nuts.
I was just on my way to search Chapman College, suspecting what you report. Thanks for saving me the trouble. Perhaps the college will rename its law school for Thomas and Alito as George Mason University renamed its law school for Scalia (I believe in exchange for big-bucks donations). When you see a name like that, at least you know up-frront what to expect..My brilliant but wingnut friend sends stuff from (male-supremicist) Claremont institutions and (Hilton Kramer's) art magazine, the New Centurian. (Oddly big on C names, these people—Chapman, Claremont, Centurian.)
Right you are. Superficial observation suggests that Hillsdale wants most to shape malleable young minds where the Cs aspire to dominate adult discourse. The pieces my friend sends from the arts magazine are laughable anachronisms.
Let us hope. I have not researched Chapman, but hearing about issues from time to time makes it sound prety low brow. Biola, on the otherhand seems to come straight out of William Jennings Bryan's arguments in the Scopes trial.
Or as depth psychology with some added vernacular invective would immediately suggest: the blurred lines between a depraved, masochistic, self-hating projection of fears onto The Other and an excited state of anger these clueless stumble-bum mooks can't disambiguate from healthy pleasures and consensual satisfaction, has become ritualized, in short, it's bats in the attic time 24/7, yikes!
There's more, there's always more, I would have to drag in totems and taboos, but you get the drift, correct?
Oh no, it's so predictable that Nietzsche described it in depth, endlessly warned about it - and he was building off of Dostoyevsky (and further back, who else but Shakespeare) as well as his own meditations - nihilism produces these crackpot fascist cults (and the far left versions) ----
Nihilism
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. In the 20th century, nihilistic themes–epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness–have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference, often associated with antifoundationalism.
It has been over a century now since Nietzsche explored nihilism and its implications for civilization. As he predicted, nihilism’s impact on the culture and values of the 20th century has been pervasive, its apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror. Interestingly, Nietzsche himself, a radical skeptic preoccupied with language, knowledge, and truth, anticipated many of the themes of postmodernity. It’s helpful to note, then, that he believed we could–at a terrible price–eventually work through nihilism. If we survived the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind. ***** The article continues...Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and crucially, "A peer-reviewed academic resource," so jump in, the water's freezing and oh so bracing!
^^^^^ This last is a brilliant PhD dissertation, I am fifty pages in and it is a definitive takedown of a bogus "Nietzsche myth, " with some long understood facts culled from a capacious study of Nietzsche's entire published output in context, as opposed to the often unaccountably tendentious framing of Nietzsche as an arch-enemy of women.
Forget Not the Whip! Nietzsche, Perspectivism, and Feminism: A
Non-Apologist Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Polemical Axiology
^^^^^ This is a book review / essay, equally lucid and devastates a myth that NEVER made textual sense, but still very much worth refuting again and again.
And I disagree with Nietzsche on all sorts of philosophical issues - that's not the point! You can learn so much from him irrespective of strong agreement or caveats about every last idea he sketches out, that's simply beyond reasonable dispute.
He's also incredibly funny, another caricature shattered if you actually read him in much depth.
She brings together a huge array of primary and secondary sources, has relevant, lucid, cogent arguments and considerations to counter and even demolish some of the hapless critics, it's original as all philosophy doctoral theses are required to be, in fact highly original, and the "Nietzsche Myth" connected to it is a live issue.
"I will never understand how seemingly rational people can drink Trump’s vile KoolAid"
1) Greed, either financial or social. Regardless of potential social or legal repercussions, they'll believe, say, swallow, regurgitate, and do anything that might make them a buck and/or get them noticed. ie: Alex Jones, Jordan, Hawley, Green, Thomas, Cannon, Kochs, Fox, Musk and the like. It's a long list and worth keeping in case the Dems sweep in and want to clean house with a bit of a fascist swing or two on day one, as they say.
2). Repub do or die, still fondly deluded by Reaganomics. Not realizing that Repubs and Dems have flip flopped cultural and economic paths throughout our history and that the only worthy path is the one that benefits the most of us, this group prefers to blindly pull the same old lever even if the outcome is all but guaranteed to be the opposite of their financial or security goals. Though consistently prospering more under Dems, they believe with all their fooled hearts that no matter the issue Repubs must be right. Dems must be wrong. More military spending happens under Repubs, even if it doesn't.
Repub is it while Fox feeds their fears and warms their bellies with sugared lies for a buck. Here in the mensa-land of Florida it's called "voting southern".
As to the rest that are trumpian, but might not clear the "rational" bar while being crucially necessary for any respectable fascist movement:
3) Fundamentalists: Who are in such desperate revivalistic need that the world bend to their inbred cold blooded delusional fear that they will flock to the devil if need be for reassurance and assistance in their most evil minded of causes. Turns out their particularly vile goals are seeping to the top of the scum pile in this particularly insidious path towards fascism.
4) The Great Unwashed as my farm mom used to put it. Thanks to the decades of dismantling our educational system ignorance has become rampant. Critic thinking skills are now considered a sure sign of "wokeness" by about 20% of the population.
5) Stupidity. There's at least some proof that the human race is devolving; as exampled by the hapless hosers gleefully strutting around in the latest in Trump couture while waiting for those gold high tops to arrive, someday. They are the brain addled coal for the fascist furnace.
6) The Boys. They don't actually believe anything, so they really don't count on this list. Calendars of babes hanging in the shop. Chauvinistic fuckheads. The asshole(s) in the bar. Weak to deranged minds. Just in it for the fun. Never voted before Trump. Voted in '16 just to break balls. Probably missed '20 cause he doesn't like being told to do shit.
7) Trumpettes: Two levels. 7a) Gated: Full of fear and not too comfortable out in the real world. Blindly and with fingers crossed behind their back, they're betting their starter castle that Trump will keep them and their social class and status safe and prospering on top. 7b) Gals: Middle classish. Seemingly pragmatic thinkers with or without cash. Enduring an ever chauvinistic world that has molded them into a wary survival mentality that is a bit reactive. Snippy. Ge to the point. Here and now counts. The big picture is not their concern. Get off their porch.
Both levels "believe" the bullshit by default due to their ramped up amygdalas. If they seem mellow, they're on something.
Good list, Ralph! There certainly are identifiable clusters and groups, but within all of them… well, not all… a flicker of rational thought must poke through the bs now and then. I agree 100% with your comment about our education system, and stupidly. Look what happened in this great land of opportunity: a very stupid man was elected president!
You left out Toby Keith, Lee Greenwood and half the good old boys in Nashvllle singing aboug pick up trucks, Daisy Dukes and red cups and long necks on a Friday Night. MAGA paradise disguised and often wearing sheets and hoods instead of cowboy boots.
" To the end of my days I will never understand how seemingly rational people can drink Trump’s vile KoolAid..."
In hooman history there's an existing list of names longer than my arm that can be subbed for Trump's and one longer than both my arms and legs for seemingly rational people. who followed them. Although harboring an aversion to "boiling things done" there are exceptions. This being one. Think of the confluence of t(a) he cult of personality (b) the appeal to dark souls (c) twilight's last gleaming.
Yes, there have always been demagogues and men (generally) with a toxic gift for persuasion. Nero and Caligula. David Koresh, Charles Manson, and Jim Jones in recent years. Hitler, of course—Trump’s similarities to Hitler could fill a book—grandiosity, a sort of soulless swagger, a raging inner fire of hate and resentment against (name your group). And a toxic gift for persuading people of a certain (resentful, needy, pliable) mindset. Not all Germans fell for Hitler. The Oberdorfers, our neighbors in Belmont, Massachusetts, left Germany in 1936 because they thought Hitler would destroy Germany. QED. They were damned near right. THE question of this year, in my mind, is simply this: is our republic and our system of laws strong enough to punish and cast aside a vile, tawdry traitor like Trump?
"THE question of this year, in my mind, is simply this: is our republic and our system of laws strong enough to punish and cast aside a vile, tawdry traitor like Trump? <Great?, Authur>
Am of the mind the 2024 election will answer only one aspect, the election's outcome another, (a Trump loss w/its fallout, a Trump win with its impact), and if Trump loses, the ensuing criminal trials and their fallout. So, we are in for more turmoil for the foreseeable future. Whether or not the fabric of this nation can hold up without fraying and tearing to some degree and of some kind as it has previously in history is doubtful.
This nation's history from before its founding and framing through the present is pockmarked by violence including political violence and by never learning from it nor unlearning the reasons violence came to be. Said another way, ~never again~ is only achievable when preceded by ~never forget~.
Shadowcloud: All good points, and I agree— our country is and always has been steeped in violence. But if Trump loses … May it please god he does… his inevitable whining and claims of yet another rigged election will begin to sound tiresome and transparent. He will then have been a four-time loser: of the popular vote in 2016 and again in 2020; the terrible performance of MAGA candidates in 2022; and (hopefully) again in 2024.
It’s important to remember that ANY election he loses is “rigged.” Years ago his vile TV show failed to receive an Emmy and, wonder of wonders, he claimed the election was rigged. Nothing changes with this disgusting pathological liar.
Agree upon losing Trump will whine* about everything under the sun. met by a large chunk of his supporters will have had enough. The remainder will likely include some troublemakers.
*whine; Trump is one of the few people demonstrating both the victimhood complex and the martyr complex, all in addition to his other psychological issues.
How dafuq R US Senators, House Members along with local and state officials continue to support a madman is beyond me.
The Authoritarian Personality is a 1950 sociology book by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, researchers working at the University of California, Berkeley, during and shortly after World War II.
The Authoritarian Personality "invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the 'F scale' (F for fascist)."[1] The personality type Adorno et al. identified can be defined by nine traits that were believed to cluster together as the result of childhood experiences. These traits include conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sex.[2][need quotation to verify][3]
Though criticized at the time for bias and methodology,[4][5] the book was highly influential in American social sciences, particularly in the first decade after its publication: "No volume published since the war in the field of social psychology has had a greater impact on the direction of the actual empirical work being carried on in the universities today."[6]
****** The Wiki account continues, including various criticisms of this foundational text.
Execrable - a perfect word to describe Eastman. My thesaurus lists 25 synonyms that suit him and his lying, cheating, treasonous cronies. Lucian, when you have a moment, perhaps you could compile a thesaurus of all the words to describe Trump and his execrable, lying, cheating, treasonous cronies.
Lucian, you are one of my favorite political philosophers. Thank you for your wonderful newsletter!
In 2016, Trump barely got elected by a coalition of MAGA, regular Republicans, and independents (and a few Democrats) who had been subjected to decades of lies about Hillary Clinton. Most voters have never lived or worked in Atlantic City, so few understood the threat he posed.
In 2020, enough of that coalition voted for Biden, or stayed home, to defeat Trump.
In 2024, the ongoing wave of pro-choice voters, combined with independent votes Trump will lose due to his words and actions since the 2020 election, should be enough to re-elect Biden, take the House, and maybe even hold onto the Senate:
IF we all show up and vote...
IF the Democrats don't Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory...
IF the media stops portraying Trump as a normal, sane politician...
IF the insurrectionist House majority doesn't find a way to stop certification...
Whole lotta IFs there. I'm not despondent, nor am I all that optimistic.
"Trump refused to pay him." What a swell guy. I have worked in the construction industry for a long time. Back in 2016 I used to drive up to job sites and see pickups with Trump bumper stickers. Sometimes I would ask the truck owner, "Are you aware that there are 1000s of contractors and subcontractors who have sued Trump for failing to pay for work he ordered? How can anyone in the construction industry vote for a guy who doesn't pay his bills?" They would look at me as though I were speaking Greek, our Farsi, or Swahili".
Trump didn't pay Eastman not only because he is a deadbeat. He did it so that when Eastman testifies against him Trump's lawyers can claim he is lying to get revenge. This is straight out of the Roy Cohn playbook which he recited to Trump while bouncing him on his knee.
You are dead on right. Trump was schooled by Roy Cohn, a hideous, calculating, devious little man who, if such measurements are possible, was even more vile than Trump. His mantra: “ If you are sued, for any reason whatsoever, countersue. Always, always countersue.” When he was posing as POTUS, Trump once lamented, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” when the DOJ (yes, even under Bill Barr, who generally was a Trump toady) balked at something Trump wanted to do. Among fifty other things that could be said, Trump had ZERO understanding of the job and ZERO knowledge of the limitations placed on a president. The orange blockhead honest-to-god thought he could rule like a king!
Thank you for this important summary of the judgement against Eastman. tRuMp is a problem. A big one. With his rabid malignant narcissism he has no "normal" human limits on his behavior. But it's ratfinks like Eastman, willing to carry buckets of "stuff" for him, that make tRuMp really dangerous. May they all enjoy time in prison.
everything tRump touches dies...when is that going to come home to roost on the perpetrator of all the lies, violence, insurrection, grift, racism? It can't come soon enough.
Concomitant article along with this post I found late today in the Times about attorney Michael J, Gotttlieb going after lawyers through the use of defamation laws to go after lying lawyers through defamation lawsuits and winning huge awards. He represented Ruby Moss and.her daughter for free. and the the pizza gate owner again huge settlement.and represented for free. He has many other clients waiting for their turn. Former member of the Obama administration.
Delicious. I half-heard something on the news, a daughter whining that Eastman is being crucified kind of thing. Lev Parnas made the point that the only way to deprogram MAGAts is to hurt them—to wit, to lock them up. Disgrace hasn't been enough to cure Giuliani, and big liar pardons and favors complicate the jail theory. Worked for Parnas anyway if not Allen Weisselberg.
Take everything away from these people. You'll find they're mostly in love with fame and money. Make them infamous and broke, then they'll have their "Come to Jesus" moment and wake the hell up out of their coma.
Break them all down until they finally hit bottom. I don't feel sorry for any of them. Play stupid games, get stupid prizes.
What continues to boggle my mind is that all these people bent, flouted, ignored, and/or outright broke laws *to keep Donald J. Trump in office.* To adapt a famous phrase, they pledged their Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honour not only to undermine the Constitution but to extend the reign of hands-down the worst president the country has ever had.
All Copies of Trump's Bible Recalled After It Was Found to Contain Nuclear Codes
PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s ambition to become the nation’s leading Bible salesman hit a snag when the entire first printing of his $60 Holy Book was found to include stolen nuclear codes.
The error reportedly turned up in the Book of Genesis, a source familiar with the publication said, when “Noah is loading the animals onto the Ark and just starts shouting random numbers for no reason.”
The source struggled to explain how the classified codes wound up in Trump’s edition of the Scriptures, but added, “Generally when there’s a screwup this massive, Jared’s involved.”
“They were down at Mar-a-Lago, mashing up the Bible, the Pledge of Allegiance, Lee Greenwood lyrics, and other things that were lying around,” the source said. “Mistakes were made.”
According to the source, the recall of the Trump Bible is expected to “totally wipe out” the gains the indicted businessman made in the stock market last week and has rendered him “ketchup-throwing mad.”
“He’s furious that he has to take the nuclear codes out of the Bible,” the source said. “It’s the only part he’s read.”
I can never hear the clip of Herschmann telling Eastman he should “get a good f’ing criminal defense lawyer because he’s going to need it” too many times.
I really hope that’s true because I want to see the minions jailed as much or more than Trump himself.
Herschmann's testimony ( whether true or not) lacks one vital piece,, he never told Federal law enforcement of an active plan that he knew was illegal to overturn the election. That goes to every single attorney from the acting AG Rosen, his assistant, and to the WH Counsel's office. So, to me see Herschmann's testimony to be self-serving and to be dodging his duty. Same goes to the then-acting AG Rosen for doing the same in the face of the autocoup by claiming scores of USA would resign, rather than straight-up warning if y'all attempt this I am going order the FBI to open an investigation.
Keep in mind most of the so-called heroes of 6Jan fought DOJ subpoenas adding months of delay to what has come to be known as the Election Interference case. Point being, am tired of those who falsely claim it's all AG Garland's fault allowing those with actual knowledge and at a minimum passive participation to be hailed as heroes, most of all acting AG Rosen. WTF! All those 6 Jan text exchanges reveal the so-called heroes were more interested in being right rather than doing what was right and at the right time.
Oh, and say “orderly transition,” too.
Eastman is the insipid clown’s clown, he’s not going to need to worry about billable hours when he’s mopping the floors in our penitentiary at Reidsville, which is truly a shithole prison. The look on all of their faces will be priceless, when they realize that is where they are going to be spending the last years of their miserable lives, I don’t drink anymore, but I think a bottle of really fine vintage champagne 🍾 will be in order to celebrate 🎊 that look. 🙏
Me too!
Once I started thinking about it I had to go to YouTube and watch it again.
LOL
To the end of my days I will never understand how seemingly rational people can drink Trump’s vile KoolAid. Eastman is a despicable fool, but he is presumably rational, ie, not clinically insane. He presumably knows 2 + 2 = 4, though under Trump’s toxic spell 2 + 2 would equal whatever Trump said it should be. Or Giuliani, the Mayor of New York “Fitty.” America’s mayor, he was called, post 9/11. That was his finest hour. What happened to him? He became a paid liar, and his career is in ruins, as is Eastman’s. Sidney Powell. Mark Meadows. On and on it goes… it’s a nearly endless list of people who have been taken in and destroyed by their association with Trump. I have long believed that Trump cultists — for it is a cult— all have a giant invisible hole in their psyches that Trump somehow fills—- a gaping hole in their constitutions, a need for a big boss, a hero of some sort, someone who gives voice to their resentments. It’s the “belonger and believer” mentality. Two ex-friends of mine fit this to a T. I wonder if any of them will reach the sad and shocking conclusion, like Michael Cohen and many others, that they’ve been lied to, extorted, double crossed, and grifted by a soulless psychopath who doesn’t give a shit for any one of them.
I am going through this with a lifelong friend. I'm struggling to understand how a person I thought was bright and rational, and good and kind, can't see through Trump. I feel the cultish-ness of it - the canned arguments (Hunter Biden!) and phrases (the people who are destroying this country!). It seems important to him that I "convert".
My best explanation is he is disappointed with life - he was the great high school athlete, and I was his geeky friend but somehow things didn't pan out as he expected. He talks a lot about the fun we had in the old days, when we were young. Actually, I think, with a different perspective, he could look back at his life with gratitude. But there is too much anger, it has to be someone's fault (those people) and there has to be a simple answer (Trump!).
After the last argument, when I just stood my ground (no, the truth is) we weren't talking, and I reached out to chat about something else. I'm relieved that he responded. The door is still open. But I've made it clear, if he's going down that road, I'm not going with him. And I hope it doesn't do him any harm or causes him to do harm to others or anything he forever regrets. Many of us are going through this. It reflects the poison that Trump has injected into our lives.
ca queens, that is an eloquent reply. It takes a swag at why an otherwise rational person and friend goes down that dirty, rutted road that ends in a bridge with a trap door. The friend you described pretty much matches the two I mentioned. Both were athletic and smart and they whine for a world (white, male dominated, though they don’t explicitly say so) that is crumbling before their eyes. I’ve known one since kindergarten, the other since 10th grade, and I’ve terminated the friendships… not without regret. I am puzzled and saddened by their allegiance to an ignorant, lying, amoral, cowardly sexist grifter and traitor.
My own sister is in the wind. When covid first arrived I called her and I asked her if she was vaxed. Her reply was straight out of Facebook. It took every fibre of my being not to go off on her. It took 2 deaths in her husbands side of her family to get vaxed.
I read a wonderful book decades ago called "Is There Life After High School?" that, among other subjects, describes your friend - the people who peaked in high school. I recommend it.
The president of my class of 488 was a mild-mannered star quarterback already engaged to a high-profile overachiever. He was prevented from attending the 10th reunion by being incarcerated for armed robbery.
My experience with a large number of my old high school friends mirrors yours. Half of us left for college the other half stayed behind and went about their lives as best they could. At reunions and when I receive email updates on the recent passing the divide is noticable. It started most noticeably when Obama was running and a couple in the class started sending/resending those vile mails about him, his parentage and citizenship and has continued with a lot of them parroting Fox and MAGA themes. At first, I tried to reason with them but to no avail. A lot of them are simply G-O-N-E down the rabbit hole.
They don't want to come back.
https://youtu.be/6vQpW9XRiyM?si=n9sf9ckwuqoBuvz9
They are stuck in their glory days….
And to think that he was once Dean of Chapman University School of Law. This is what happens when you become a member of Trump’s cult. You’ll do anything for the Orange Jesus. And what did he get for his plotting? Invoices Trump refused to pay and now loss of his law license.
Do a little digging into Chapman University. Not very long in the clear thinking departments. Very Orange County and not far (physically and POV) From Biola (Baptist Institute of Los Angeles) University. Besides a divinity degree, one might also do graduate work in Christian Nationalism.
Graduate work in Christian Nationalism? Now that’s scary!
My best guess. It would not surprise me, knowing several grads of Biola. The Baptists are the ones behind the far right plotting, and have been for decades. Right wing cristyun gun nuts.
I was just on my way to search Chapman College, suspecting what you report. Thanks for saving me the trouble. Perhaps the college will rename its law school for Thomas and Alito as George Mason University renamed its law school for Scalia (I believe in exchange for big-bucks donations). When you see a name like that, at least you know up-frront what to expect..My brilliant but wingnut friend sends stuff from (male-supremicist) Claremont institutions and (Hilton Kramer's) art magazine, the New Centurian. (Oddly big on C names, these people—Chapman, Claremont, Centurian.)
Don't forget Hillsdale College.
Right you are. Superficial observation suggests that Hillsdale wants most to shape malleable young minds where the Cs aspire to dominate adult discourse. The pieces my friend sends from the arts magazine are laughable anachronisms.
Let us hope. I have not researched Chapman, but hearing about issues from time to time makes it sound prety low brow. Biola, on the otherhand seems to come straight out of William Jennings Bryan's arguments in the Scopes trial.
It must be so painful to even think about recognizing what they have done to themselves that they’d rather just keep doing it!
Or as depth psychology with some added vernacular invective would immediately suggest: the blurred lines between a depraved, masochistic, self-hating projection of fears onto The Other and an excited state of anger these clueless stumble-bum mooks can't disambiguate from healthy pleasures and consensual satisfaction, has become ritualized, in short, it's bats in the attic time 24/7, yikes!
There's more, there's always more, I would have to drag in totems and taboos, but you get the drift, correct?
That is the mystery of our times.
Oh no, it's so predictable that Nietzsche described it in depth, endlessly warned about it - and he was building off of Dostoyevsky (and further back, who else but Shakespeare) as well as his own meditations - nihilism produces these crackpot fascist cults (and the far left versions) ----
Nihilism
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. In the 20th century, nihilistic themes–epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness–have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference, often associated with antifoundationalism.
It has been over a century now since Nietzsche explored nihilism and its implications for civilization. As he predicted, nihilism’s impact on the culture and values of the 20th century has been pervasive, its apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror. Interestingly, Nietzsche himself, a radical skeptic preoccupied with language, knowledge, and truth, anticipated many of the themes of postmodernity. It’s helpful to note, then, that he believed we could–at a terrible price–eventually work through nihilism. If we survived the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind. ***** The article continues...Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and crucially, "A peer-reviewed academic resource," so jump in, the water's freezing and oh so bracing!
https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=philosophy_etds
^^^^^ This last is a brilliant PhD dissertation, I am fifty pages in and it is a definitive takedown of a bogus "Nietzsche myth, " with some long understood facts culled from a capacious study of Nietzsche's entire published output in context, as opposed to the often unaccountably tendentious framing of Nietzsche as an arch-enemy of women.
Forget Not the Whip! Nietzsche, Perspectivism, and Feminism: A
Non-Apologist Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Polemical Axiology
Jennifer L. Hudgens
University of Kentucky, jenniferlhudgens@uky.edu
https://newramblerreview.com/book-reviews/philosophy/nietzsche-s-hatred-of-jew-hatred
^^^^^ This is a book review / essay, equally lucid and devastates a myth that NEVER made textual sense, but still very much worth refuting again and again.
And I disagree with Nietzsche on all sorts of philosophical issues - that's not the point! You can learn so much from him irrespective of strong agreement or caveats about every last idea he sketches out, that's simply beyond reasonable dispute.
He's also incredibly funny, another caricature shattered if you actually read him in much depth.
She brings together a huge array of primary and secondary sources, has relevant, lucid, cogent arguments and considerations to counter and even demolish some of the hapless critics, it's original as all philosophy doctoral theses are required to be, in fact highly original, and the "Nietzsche Myth" connected to it is a live issue.
"I will never understand how seemingly rational people can drink Trump’s vile KoolAid"
1) Greed, either financial or social. Regardless of potential social or legal repercussions, they'll believe, say, swallow, regurgitate, and do anything that might make them a buck and/or get them noticed. ie: Alex Jones, Jordan, Hawley, Green, Thomas, Cannon, Kochs, Fox, Musk and the like. It's a long list and worth keeping in case the Dems sweep in and want to clean house with a bit of a fascist swing or two on day one, as they say.
2). Repub do or die, still fondly deluded by Reaganomics. Not realizing that Repubs and Dems have flip flopped cultural and economic paths throughout our history and that the only worthy path is the one that benefits the most of us, this group prefers to blindly pull the same old lever even if the outcome is all but guaranteed to be the opposite of their financial or security goals. Though consistently prospering more under Dems, they believe with all their fooled hearts that no matter the issue Repubs must be right. Dems must be wrong. More military spending happens under Repubs, even if it doesn't.
Repub is it while Fox feeds their fears and warms their bellies with sugared lies for a buck. Here in the mensa-land of Florida it's called "voting southern".
As to the rest that are trumpian, but might not clear the "rational" bar while being crucially necessary for any respectable fascist movement:
3) Fundamentalists: Who are in such desperate revivalistic need that the world bend to their inbred cold blooded delusional fear that they will flock to the devil if need be for reassurance and assistance in their most evil minded of causes. Turns out their particularly vile goals are seeping to the top of the scum pile in this particularly insidious path towards fascism.
4) The Great Unwashed as my farm mom used to put it. Thanks to the decades of dismantling our educational system ignorance has become rampant. Critic thinking skills are now considered a sure sign of "wokeness" by about 20% of the population.
5) Stupidity. There's at least some proof that the human race is devolving; as exampled by the hapless hosers gleefully strutting around in the latest in Trump couture while waiting for those gold high tops to arrive, someday. They are the brain addled coal for the fascist furnace.
6) The Boys. They don't actually believe anything, so they really don't count on this list. Calendars of babes hanging in the shop. Chauvinistic fuckheads. The asshole(s) in the bar. Weak to deranged minds. Just in it for the fun. Never voted before Trump. Voted in '16 just to break balls. Probably missed '20 cause he doesn't like being told to do shit.
7) Trumpettes: Two levels. 7a) Gated: Full of fear and not too comfortable out in the real world. Blindly and with fingers crossed behind their back, they're betting their starter castle that Trump will keep them and their social class and status safe and prospering on top. 7b) Gals: Middle classish. Seemingly pragmatic thinkers with or without cash. Enduring an ever chauvinistic world that has molded them into a wary survival mentality that is a bit reactive. Snippy. Ge to the point. Here and now counts. The big picture is not their concern. Get off their porch.
Both levels "believe" the bullshit by default due to their ramped up amygdalas. If they seem mellow, they're on something.
It's a rowdy bunch, that's for sure.
R
I had to share this on my FB page. It's the best coverage of the great mystery of "the gullibles among us" I've read thus far.
Aren't you nice? Thanks for that. :)
Good list, Ralph! There certainly are identifiable clusters and groups, but within all of them… well, not all… a flicker of rational thought must poke through the bs now and then. I agree 100% with your comment about our education system, and stupidly. Look what happened in this great land of opportunity: a very stupid man was elected president!
You left out Toby Keith, Lee Greenwood and half the good old boys in Nashvllle singing aboug pick up trucks, Daisy Dukes and red cups and long necks on a Friday Night. MAGA paradise disguised and often wearing sheets and hoods instead of cowboy boots.
True enough, but anyone hawking trump turds for a buck pretty well qualifies in the #1 crowd, whether they believe the crap or not.
" To the end of my days I will never understand how seemingly rational people can drink Trump’s vile KoolAid..."
In hooman history there's an existing list of names longer than my arm that can be subbed for Trump's and one longer than both my arms and legs for seemingly rational people. who followed them. Although harboring an aversion to "boiling things done" there are exceptions. This being one. Think of the confluence of t(a) he cult of personality (b) the appeal to dark souls (c) twilight's last gleaming.
Yes, there have always been demagogues and men (generally) with a toxic gift for persuasion. Nero and Caligula. David Koresh, Charles Manson, and Jim Jones in recent years. Hitler, of course—Trump’s similarities to Hitler could fill a book—grandiosity, a sort of soulless swagger, a raging inner fire of hate and resentment against (name your group). And a toxic gift for persuading people of a certain (resentful, needy, pliable) mindset. Not all Germans fell for Hitler. The Oberdorfers, our neighbors in Belmont, Massachusetts, left Germany in 1936 because they thought Hitler would destroy Germany. QED. They were damned near right. THE question of this year, in my mind, is simply this: is our republic and our system of laws strong enough to punish and cast aside a vile, tawdry traitor like Trump?
"THE question of this year, in my mind, is simply this: is our republic and our system of laws strong enough to punish and cast aside a vile, tawdry traitor like Trump? <Great?, Authur>
Am of the mind the 2024 election will answer only one aspect, the election's outcome another, (a Trump loss w/its fallout, a Trump win with its impact), and if Trump loses, the ensuing criminal trials and their fallout. So, we are in for more turmoil for the foreseeable future. Whether or not the fabric of this nation can hold up without fraying and tearing to some degree and of some kind as it has previously in history is doubtful.
This nation's history from before its founding and framing through the present is pockmarked by violence including political violence and by never learning from it nor unlearning the reasons violence came to be. Said another way, ~never again~ is only achievable when preceded by ~never forget~.
Am grateful for the question, Authur.
Shadowcloud: All good points, and I agree— our country is and always has been steeped in violence. But if Trump loses … May it please god he does… his inevitable whining and claims of yet another rigged election will begin to sound tiresome and transparent. He will then have been a four-time loser: of the popular vote in 2016 and again in 2020; the terrible performance of MAGA candidates in 2022; and (hopefully) again in 2024.
It’s important to remember that ANY election he loses is “rigged.” Years ago his vile TV show failed to receive an Emmy and, wonder of wonders, he claimed the election was rigged. Nothing changes with this disgusting pathological liar.
Well-said.
Agree upon losing Trump will whine* about everything under the sun. met by a large chunk of his supporters will have had enough. The remainder will likely include some troublemakers.
*whine; Trump is one of the few people demonstrating both the victimhood complex and the martyr complex, all in addition to his other psychological issues.
How dafuq R US Senators, House Members along with local and state officials continue to support a madman is beyond me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality
The Authoritarian Personality is a 1950 sociology book by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, researchers working at the University of California, Berkeley, during and shortly after World War II.
The Authoritarian Personality "invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the 'F scale' (F for fascist)."[1] The personality type Adorno et al. identified can be defined by nine traits that were believed to cluster together as the result of childhood experiences. These traits include conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sex.[2][need quotation to verify][3]
Though criticized at the time for bias and methodology,[4][5] the book was highly influential in American social sciences, particularly in the first decade after its publication: "No volume published since the war in the field of social psychology has had a greater impact on the direction of the actual empirical work being carried on in the universities today."[6]
****** The Wiki account continues, including various criticisms of this foundational text.
Execrable - a perfect word to describe Eastman. My thesaurus lists 25 synonyms that suit him and his lying, cheating, treasonous cronies. Lucian, when you have a moment, perhaps you could compile a thesaurus of all the words to describe Trump and his execrable, lying, cheating, treasonous cronies.
Lucian, you are one of my favorite political philosophers. Thank you for your wonderful newsletter!
A thesaurus is great, but then Lucian would have TWO full-time jobs!
In 2016, Trump barely got elected by a coalition of MAGA, regular Republicans, and independents (and a few Democrats) who had been subjected to decades of lies about Hillary Clinton. Most voters have never lived or worked in Atlantic City, so few understood the threat he posed.
In 2020, enough of that coalition voted for Biden, or stayed home, to defeat Trump.
In 2024, the ongoing wave of pro-choice voters, combined with independent votes Trump will lose due to his words and actions since the 2020 election, should be enough to re-elect Biden, take the House, and maybe even hold onto the Senate:
IF we all show up and vote...
IF the Democrats don't Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory...
IF the media stops portraying Trump as a normal, sane politician...
IF the insurrectionist House majority doesn't find a way to stop certification...
Whole lotta IFs there. I'm not despondent, nor am I all that optimistic.
If Robert F. Kennedy, Jr drops out of the race...
"Trump refused to pay him." What a swell guy. I have worked in the construction industry for a long time. Back in 2016 I used to drive up to job sites and see pickups with Trump bumper stickers. Sometimes I would ask the truck owner, "Are you aware that there are 1000s of contractors and subcontractors who have sued Trump for failing to pay for work he ordered? How can anyone in the construction industry vote for a guy who doesn't pay his bills?" They would look at me as though I were speaking Greek, our Farsi, or Swahili".
Trump didn't pay Eastman not only because he is a deadbeat. He did it so that when Eastman testifies against him Trump's lawyers can claim he is lying to get revenge. This is straight out of the Roy Cohn playbook which he recited to Trump while bouncing him on his knee.
$10,000 fine? Oh my! That's Dr Evil money.
You are dead on right. Trump was schooled by Roy Cohn, a hideous, calculating, devious little man who, if such measurements are possible, was even more vile than Trump. His mantra: “ If you are sued, for any reason whatsoever, countersue. Always, always countersue.” When he was posing as POTUS, Trump once lamented, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” when the DOJ (yes, even under Bill Barr, who generally was a Trump toady) balked at something Trump wanted to do. Among fifty other things that could be said, Trump had ZERO understanding of the job and ZERO knowledge of the limitations placed on a president. The orange blockhead honest-to-god thought he could rule like a king!
Evil genius Cohn..
The big liar is Roy Cohn's immoral clone. Clone Cohn.
Crohns disease.
Eastman has also lost his teaching positions at Claremont College and the University of Colorado. Play stupid games . . .
Thank you for this important summary of the judgement against Eastman. tRuMp is a problem. A big one. With his rabid malignant narcissism he has no "normal" human limits on his behavior. But it's ratfinks like Eastman, willing to carry buckets of "stuff" for him, that make tRuMp really dangerous. May they all enjoy time in prison.
everything tRump touches dies...when is that going to come home to roost on the perpetrator of all the lies, violence, insurrection, grift, racism? It can't come soon enough.
Une touche de merde, oui?
Concomitant article along with this post I found late today in the Times about attorney Michael J, Gotttlieb going after lawyers through the use of defamation laws to go after lying lawyers through defamation lawsuits and winning huge awards. He represented Ruby Moss and.her daughter for free. and the the pizza gate owner again huge settlement.and represented for free. He has many other clients waiting for their turn. Former member of the Obama administration.
"Do you want fries with that?"
Please sweet baby Jesus, let this long national nightmare come to an end before we’re all numb and buried in, well, excrement.
Delicious. I half-heard something on the news, a daughter whining that Eastman is being crucified kind of thing. Lev Parnas made the point that the only way to deprogram MAGAts is to hurt them—to wit, to lock them up. Disgrace hasn't been enough to cure Giuliani, and big liar pardons and favors complicate the jail theory. Worked for Parnas anyway if not Allen Weisselberg.
Take everything away from these people. You'll find they're mostly in love with fame and money. Make them infamous and broke, then they'll have their "Come to Jesus" moment and wake the hell up out of their coma.
Break them all down until they finally hit bottom. I don't feel sorry for any of them. Play stupid games, get stupid prizes.
Couldn’t agree more, Mary H. Exactly right.
FAFO
Giuliani being the exception. Bankruptcy and infamy just feed his delusions of martyrdom.
What continues to boggle my mind is that all these people bent, flouted, ignored, and/or outright broke laws *to keep Donald J. Trump in office.* To adapt a famous phrase, they pledged their Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honour not only to undermine the Constitution but to extend the reign of hands-down the worst president the country has ever had.
Bad news for Trump's Bible pitch!
All Copies of Trump's Bible Recalled After It Was Found to Contain Nuclear Codes
PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s ambition to become the nation’s leading Bible salesman hit a snag when the entire first printing of his $60 Holy Book was found to include stolen nuclear codes.
The error reportedly turned up in the Book of Genesis, a source familiar with the publication said, when “Noah is loading the animals onto the Ark and just starts shouting random numbers for no reason.”
The source struggled to explain how the classified codes wound up in Trump’s edition of the Scriptures, but added, “Generally when there’s a screwup this massive, Jared’s involved.”
“They were down at Mar-a-Lago, mashing up the Bible, the Pledge of Allegiance, Lee Greenwood lyrics, and other things that were lying around,” the source said. “Mistakes were made.”
According to the source, the recall of the Trump Bible is expected to “totally wipe out” the gains the indicted businessman made in the stock market last week and has rendered him “ketchup-throwing mad.”
“He’s furious that he has to take the nuclear codes out of the Bible,” the source said. “It’s the only part he’s read.”
Hilarious
There's no doubt all these criminals are guilty of multiple crimes.
The insurance to keep them locked up is Trump loses the election.