As I wrote a few days ago, Politico reported last week that somebody – no one knew who – ordered that an executive order be drawn up for the signature of the President commanding the Department of Defense to use active duty, reserve, and National Guard troops to seize voting machines and conduct an “analysis” and “assessment” of voting fraud within 60 days.
Yes, a great piece that really encapsulates the entire comic opera that could have had tragic consequences, Yet the GOP had a chance to do the right thing for the country when he was impeached for the second time, but they didn't and I bet even with this new information they wouldn't have either, That's how bad they are. They didn't even say anything when he recently said he's pardon the insurrectionists if elected again.
Pretty amazing research and analysis there, thank you.
Some questions about America I find very puzzling:
1. Why are there so many mad people in your society? Can whole societies be sociopathic? Only looking for post-modernist, Marxian, Foucaltian, left wing, etc. answers and academic (evidential) references
2. Does Trump have compromising dirt files on all the people he controls?
3. Does being in a heavily militarised society make people easier, or harder to bully and propagandise (i.e. netflix, amazon,, disney etc violent movies)?
Good questions all. No simple answers. This society is toxic, diseased, and how it got that way will be something for historians and dramatists to chew on for centuries to come, assuming there ever are any.
Kathy, Insanity is not contagious; "madness" is. Fox News, our most-watched news channel, is the primary source for much of it. Unprincipled political actors repeat and amplify it. Social media spreads it. (Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.") The Academy Award winning movie "Network" gives a good dramatization of the process. What is happening here has an antecedent - the rise of the Third Reich in Germany.
Kathy: I assume that you're in Greece. I spent quite a bit of time in Greece during the colonels' regime (I'm not especially proud of this, but my time in Greece was the best time of my life and I had friends like Nikos Gatsos to hang out with, so I can't be THAT sorry). the funny thing was that, despite the fact that the rulers were the result of a military coup (which we have known for quite awhile--the Greeks I met knew it then--was engineered by the CIA), it felt much less "militarized" than the U.S. has ALWAYS felt to me. I did get very friendly in Chania (where I lived for six months) with several people who were there under a sort of loose "house arrest" because they were Communists or assumed to be, but mostly things seemed very quiet. much quieter than things were here, but at the time we were in the middle of a pretty insane and pointless war run by the second worst criminal to become president (the WORST criminal awaits his punishment while he gets ready to steal the office for a second time, and this is NOT just my OPINION). there are many reasons for this, and they involve a deeper dive into the history of modern Greece and the Americas than anyone can cover in a post here and you probably know it all better than I do. in response to your question about the former president who name I will not type having "dirt" on everyone he abuses, I don't think he actually does. I think it's much more about his ability to tell lies in order to shift the public focus onto people who can't usually fight back at the time they're attacked, and a lot of the abuse he's hurled has been of the "so when did you stop beating your wife" school of public humiliation, so often it's worse to answer his "Trumped-up charges" than to ignore them. and, as some folks have already answered, this is a culture with a strange and horrifying relationship to guns that seems qualitatively different from any other country I know of and I think that growing up on a diet of westerns (one of my own favorite genres) and police shows probably has something to do with all this, but it's a complicated relationship and not a straight one-to-one causal thing, at least in my opinion. after all, a lot of the world was growing up on the same diet of American movies and television that I grew up on and they don't seem to go around shooting each other at anything like the same rate they do here. so I tried to handle two out of three of your questions and I hope I helped....
Fascinating! Thanks for this post and the first-hand report from beautiful Greece (a country I've always wanted to spend time in and whose history and language and culture I've admired all my life).
Nice answer, thanks so much. No not Greek, nor in Greece but visited in 1968, when the Colonels had made listening to Theodorakis illegal! Needless to say, I became a lifelong Theodorakis devotee.
...a story you'll appreciate: at various tavernas in Athens, I'd be sharing a table with my girlfriend and kids (WE were kids ourselves, at 20) would slowly pass our table when they heard us speak English, lean over and ask "you like Theodorakis?" we'd eagerly answer "yes," and they'd ask if we minded company. we'd say "no" and we'd sit and talk awhile. after awhile (this happened possibly half a dozen times) they'd invite us back to their respective places and the question would inevitably become "you like hashish?" which was pretty much a no-brainer since we both looked like hippies from central casting.
what I've been saying for six years or so is that if you put this stuff into a novel, your editor would send it back for a rewrite because of the many improbabilities in the plot. if it was a script, the money guys would tell you to "dial it back" a little with a comment like "you can't make a movie that opens at eleven" (Spinal Tap allusion there). and of course, the most improbable thing of all is TFF, on every imaginable level.
Setting aside for a moment my anger, fear and depression, sorrow . . .I find all this . . . embarrassing. The most powerful nation on earth overthrown by the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
This entire thing is a ready-made script for a dark comedy. But wait! It's already been written: "Dr. Strangelove or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb". Memo to self: Watch "Strangelove" again tonight.
What amazes and disgusts me is the number of bootlickers and sycophants in thrall to this monster.
It's past time for the DOJ and FBI to start arresting people. None of the ringleaders, or their lackeys for that matter, have been held accountable for anything related to the election or the insurrection. Why wouldn't they keep going and try to steal the next one?
Yes, those whacky lawyers such as Powell. Others quit representing him in those frivolous law suits--an allegation without any evidence. In transcripts I read, the judge's question was: "Is this a fraud case?" and the answer, "No, your honor." Even Rudy admitted in court that it was not a "fraud" case. Why? As one lawyer said, "We don't have evidence at this time." Oh, but file the suit anyway? About as frivolous as you could get. Any decent lawyer who wanted to preserve his reputation and that of his law firm, plus avoid any chance of being disbarred, ran away from Trump as soon and as fast as he could.
It is time for the AG to file charges of sedition against the former President. Trump has clearly admitted he is guilty of attempting to overthrow the election, which is tantamount to overthrowing the rule of law, and in fact says he would do it all over again. He is basically challenging if not taunting our democracy. What more does Merrick Garland neeed???
I really do understand everyone's impatience with DOJ, but bringing a case against TFF has got to be absolutely airtight and I believe that they need to be able to prove his intent. can you imagine how nuts it'd be if he manages to sleaze his way out of whatever charges are brought? I won't do the imagining or it'll keep me from sleeping.
Of course it isn’t, but if we don't have an occasional moment of lightness and fun, we’ll go crazy. Then, back to the serious business of defending democracy. I do appreciate your passion and focus.
well, Oliver Stone DID make a Bush movie when Bush was still president. it sucked, but he made it. I'm sure there were some people who were TEMPTED, but to most of us (I figure), everything just felt too much like an emergency. plus, it would have been the only thing he talked about. if I'd had the idea and the wherewithal, I would surely have feared for my life and decided "not now." but movies there will be. Brendan Gleeson DID play him (as the mob boss he is) in that Comey miniseries with Jeff Daniels.
Mike Pence's Chief of Staff and his assigned legal counsel are spilling their guts to the House Insurrection Investigative Committee. News reports state that they were questioned for nine hours. Rachel Maddow reported that the CoS (I can't recall his name) wrote up a summary of events he personally observed in an email he sent to himself.The guy is apparently a straight shooter, as is the lawyer. So now we have Trump right in the center of things, being observed by live witnesses, and the witnesses are talking to the committee. The next thing I would be wanting to see is Mike Pence confronted with the sworn testimony of his two top aides.
He already did once when he refused Trump's request to overturn the count of the Electoral College vote and send the vote back to the legislatures of the "fraudulent vote" states. And don't forget that hero Dan Quayal (who woulda thunk?), who told Pence he had to count votes as submitted and could not overturn the election, as Trump demanded.
Lucian - thanks again for compiling and summarizing the shit storm so we don't have to wade through it ourselves, I need to dial back on the amount of headspace taken up by the ongoing political meltdown.
Reading this was like watching the Three Stooges on the printed page. Did the Three Stooges ever perform on a printed page? I think I'm getting hysterical. When I read about how the dedicated staff at NARA were taping together the fragments of memos, etc., that TFG had ripped to literal shreds, I started cackling and couldn't stop. Now I'm wondering if some enterprising company could take a few of the reconstructed memos (etc.) and turn them into a jigsaw puzzle. When I get carted away to the funny farm, I'll need something to do.
Unfortunately, there are 43 Republican Senators who are just as staunch as his MAGA faithful, those who wouldn’t impeach. He’s never going to get meaningful penalties for this gross dereliction of duty to the office he held.
You’re right…guardrails inside the beltway resemble a wet noodle but in the end thwarted the coup. Trump has been cultivating his crowd for years and they didn’t disappoint him.
This should be shouted from the housetops, and the GOP should be disbanded for allowing him to even try to start a new campaign.
This was a coup, a failed one, true, but only for the grace of one person or two did we avoid it.
When does he go on trial for it?
When does anyone have the balls to prosecute this failure?
Yes, a great piece that really encapsulates the entire comic opera that could have had tragic consequences, Yet the GOP had a chance to do the right thing for the country when he was impeached for the second time, but they didn't and I bet even with this new information they wouldn't have either, That's how bad they are. They didn't even say anything when he recently said he's pardon the insurrectionists if elected again.
Lindsay Graham spoke out against it. At least this week. Who knows next week?
Lindsay reads tea leaves and the wind accurately.
Why would he feel comfy confronting Former so brazenly? What does he know?
I suspect Miz Linzey will be walking back those words and slinking back up t-Rump's ass any day now.
He’s an asset; ‘and has been, at least since Atlantic City.
The play book will use him as long as possible , set up a diverting scenario and then tag him, ‘as a martyr.
“Nobody ever lost a buck, betting against the intelligence of the American Public.” H.L. Menkin
Or… P.T. Barnum
Or… Rupert Murdoch
Jus’ sayin’
Pretty amazing research and analysis there, thank you.
Some questions about America I find very puzzling:
1. Why are there so many mad people in your society? Can whole societies be sociopathic? Only looking for post-modernist, Marxian, Foucaltian, left wing, etc. answers and academic (evidential) references
2. Does Trump have compromising dirt files on all the people he controls?
3. Does being in a heavily militarised society make people easier, or harder to bully and propagandise (i.e. netflix, amazon,, disney etc violent movies)?
Thanks,
Kathy Stavrou
Sadly, our crazies are armed.
Good questions all. No simple answers. This society is toxic, diseased, and how it got that way will be something for historians and dramatists to chew on for centuries to come, assuming there ever are any.
Kathy, Insanity is not contagious; "madness" is. Fox News, our most-watched news channel, is the primary source for much of it. Unprincipled political actors repeat and amplify it. Social media spreads it. (Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.") The Academy Award winning movie "Network" gives a good dramatization of the process. What is happening here has an antecedent - the rise of the Third Reich in Germany.
Kathy: I assume that you're in Greece. I spent quite a bit of time in Greece during the colonels' regime (I'm not especially proud of this, but my time in Greece was the best time of my life and I had friends like Nikos Gatsos to hang out with, so I can't be THAT sorry). the funny thing was that, despite the fact that the rulers were the result of a military coup (which we have known for quite awhile--the Greeks I met knew it then--was engineered by the CIA), it felt much less "militarized" than the U.S. has ALWAYS felt to me. I did get very friendly in Chania (where I lived for six months) with several people who were there under a sort of loose "house arrest" because they were Communists or assumed to be, but mostly things seemed very quiet. much quieter than things were here, but at the time we were in the middle of a pretty insane and pointless war run by the second worst criminal to become president (the WORST criminal awaits his punishment while he gets ready to steal the office for a second time, and this is NOT just my OPINION). there are many reasons for this, and they involve a deeper dive into the history of modern Greece and the Americas than anyone can cover in a post here and you probably know it all better than I do. in response to your question about the former president who name I will not type having "dirt" on everyone he abuses, I don't think he actually does. I think it's much more about his ability to tell lies in order to shift the public focus onto people who can't usually fight back at the time they're attacked, and a lot of the abuse he's hurled has been of the "so when did you stop beating your wife" school of public humiliation, so often it's worse to answer his "Trumped-up charges" than to ignore them. and, as some folks have already answered, this is a culture with a strange and horrifying relationship to guns that seems qualitatively different from any other country I know of and I think that growing up on a diet of westerns (one of my own favorite genres) and police shows probably has something to do with all this, but it's a complicated relationship and not a straight one-to-one causal thing, at least in my opinion. after all, a lot of the world was growing up on the same diet of American movies and television that I grew up on and they don't seem to go around shooting each other at anything like the same rate they do here. so I tried to handle two out of three of your questions and I hope I helped....
Fascinating! Thanks for this post and the first-hand report from beautiful Greece (a country I've always wanted to spend time in and whose history and language and culture I've admired all my life).
Nice answer, thanks so much. No not Greek, nor in Greece but visited in 1968, when the Colonels had made listening to Theodorakis illegal! Needless to say, I became a lifelong Theodorakis devotee.
...a story you'll appreciate: at various tavernas in Athens, I'd be sharing a table with my girlfriend and kids (WE were kids ourselves, at 20) would slowly pass our table when they heard us speak English, lean over and ask "you like Theodorakis?" we'd eagerly answer "yes," and they'd ask if we minded company. we'd say "no" and we'd sit and talk awhile. after awhile (this happened possibly half a dozen times) they'd invite us back to their respective places and the question would inevitably become "you like hashish?" which was pretty much a no-brainer since we both looked like hippies from central casting.
Our gun culture is the result of childhood repression.
Look at the Gravy Seals...when did those shlubs get laid?
I lived in Europe for most of the 70's...this is not rocket science.
This reads like a cheap novel...what a plot!
what I've been saying for six years or so is that if you put this stuff into a novel, your editor would send it back for a rewrite because of the many improbabilities in the plot. if it was a script, the money guys would tell you to "dial it back" a little with a comment like "you can't make a movie that opens at eleven" (Spinal Tap allusion there). and of course, the most improbable thing of all is TFF, on every imaginable level.
TFF?
The Fat Fuck
Gracias amigo
The Former Guy, The Fat Fool, Total Flim Flam, Twisted Fiendish Fuckhead, take your pick or make up your own, it's fun!
I prefer TTIDFG: The Twice Impeached Defeated Former Guy
Setting aside for a moment my anger, fear and depression, sorrow . . .I find all this . . . embarrassing. The most powerful nation on earth overthrown by the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
This entire thing is a ready-made script for a dark comedy. But wait! It's already been written: "Dr. Strangelove or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb". Memo to self: Watch "Strangelove" again tonight.
it IS pretty amazing that, just in the last month, there's been bullshit about water fluoridation. and BANG! Sterling Hayden, where are you?
A few years ago the new arrivals in the White House reminded me of the Snopes infesting Frenchman's Bend.
any Faulkner guy is a friend of mine.
This is what malignant narcissists do.
What amazes and disgusts me is the number of bootlickers and sycophants in thrall to this monster.
It's past time for the DOJ and FBI to start arresting people. None of the ringleaders, or their lackeys for that matter, have been held accountable for anything related to the election or the insurrection. Why wouldn't they keep going and try to steal the next one?
Son of Big Lie?
Georgia is likely the state that has the strongest case, some on tape with trmp ordering more votes. Patience….
The Georgia phone call, more deadly than the Access America tape that never played on any Right Wing media.
His whacky wawyers are downwite as cwazy as he is.
Yes, those whacky lawyers such as Powell. Others quit representing him in those frivolous law suits--an allegation without any evidence. In transcripts I read, the judge's question was: "Is this a fraud case?" and the answer, "No, your honor." Even Rudy admitted in court that it was not a "fraud" case. Why? As one lawyer said, "We don't have evidence at this time." Oh, but file the suit anyway? About as frivolous as you could get. Any decent lawyer who wanted to preserve his reputation and that of his law firm, plus avoid any chance of being disbarred, ran away from Trump as soon and as fast as he could.
plus there's the thing with stiffing everybody....
Wascally wabbit!!!
It is time for the AG to file charges of sedition against the former President. Trump has clearly admitted he is guilty of attempting to overthrow the election, which is tantamount to overthrowing the rule of law, and in fact says he would do it all over again. He is basically challenging if not taunting our democracy. What more does Merrick Garland neeed???
What Garland needs to do is find his balls. Just another middle of the road "institutionalist, and just like his boss.
Georgia may be the knife in Former's back.
Agreed. My money is not on the DoJ.
I really do understand everyone's impatience with DOJ, but bringing a case against TFF has got to be absolutely airtight and I believe that they need to be able to prove his intent. can you imagine how nuts it'd be if he manages to sleaze his way out of whatever charges are brought? I won't do the imagining or it'll keep me from sleeping.
The scumbag has made it this far in life with no consequences. Maybe Satan is God and the good guys are fucked.
unfortunately, I wouldn't entirely dismiss that possibility.
Great article. This information looks promising, but will his illegal actions be prosecuted?
Can’t wait to see the movie of all this.
This is not a film script, sorry. Hello?
Of course it isn’t, but if we don't have an occasional moment of lightness and fun, we’ll go crazy. Then, back to the serious business of defending democracy. I do appreciate your passion and focus.
Ya think???
well, Oliver Stone DID make a Bush movie when Bush was still president. it sucked, but he made it. I'm sure there were some people who were TEMPTED, but to most of us (I figure), everything just felt too much like an emergency. plus, it would have been the only thing he talked about. if I'd had the idea and the wherewithal, I would surely have feared for my life and decided "not now." but movies there will be. Brendan Gleeson DID play him (as the mob boss he is) in that Comey miniseries with Jeff Daniels.
Oooh, I think Mel Brooks should make the movie. I think he'd be a great Trump. I'm laughing already.
How about South Park with Cartman as Former?
South spark could be appropriately prurient
Park, of course
With autharatea
Mike Pence's Chief of Staff and his assigned legal counsel are spilling their guts to the House Insurrection Investigative Committee. News reports state that they were questioned for nine hours. Rachel Maddow reported that the CoS (I can't recall his name) wrote up a summary of events he personally observed in an email he sent to himself.The guy is apparently a straight shooter, as is the lawyer. So now we have Trump right in the center of things, being observed by live witnesses, and the witnesses are talking to the committee. The next thing I would be wanting to see is Mike Pence confronted with the sworn testimony of his two top aides.
Pence my help save the Republic, Former's screwup...BIGLY!
He already did once when he refused Trump's request to overturn the count of the Electoral College vote and send the vote back to the legislatures of the "fraudulent vote" states. And don't forget that hero Dan Quayal (who woulda thunk?), who told Pence he had to count votes as submitted and could not overturn the election, as Trump demanded.
Lucian - thanks again for compiling and summarizing the shit storm so we don't have to wade through it ourselves, I need to dial back on the amount of headspace taken up by the ongoing political meltdown.
Reading this was like watching the Three Stooges on the printed page. Did the Three Stooges ever perform on a printed page? I think I'm getting hysterical. When I read about how the dedicated staff at NARA were taping together the fragments of memos, etc., that TFG had ripped to literal shreds, I started cackling and couldn't stop. Now I'm wondering if some enterprising company could take a few of the reconstructed memos (etc.) and turn them into a jigsaw puzzle. When I get carted away to the funny farm, I'll need something to do.
you and me both. and my tragedy will be that I HATE jigsaw puzzles....
Unfortunately, there are 43 Republican Senators who are just as staunch as his MAGA faithful, those who wouldn’t impeach. He’s never going to get meaningful penalties for this gross dereliction of duty to the office he held.
You’re right…guardrails inside the beltway resemble a wet noodle but in the end thwarted the coup. Trump has been cultivating his crowd for years and they didn’t disappoint him.
Thanks, Lucian, this really exposes the madness of this toxic person.