Taibbi: Trump the Destroyer

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  • April 12, 2017 at 11:11 am #67322
    Zooey
    Moderator

    I haven’t finished reading this yet, but I am enjoying it immensely, as I always enjoy Taibbi. He is easily my favorite political writer. One linguistic gem after another. Plus…I agree with him all the time which is nice.

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-on-trump-the-destroyer-w473144

    “Some appointees were less terrifying than others. Former ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson at least pays lip service to climate change and probably has enough smarts to complete one side of a Rubik’s Cube. Treasury pick Steven Mnuchin would struggle to make a list of the 30 most loathsome Goldman Sachs veterans. These and a few others were merely worst-case-scenario corporate-influence types, industry foxes sent to man regulatory henhouses.

    But the rest were the most fantastic collection of creeps since the “Thriller” video.”

    April 12, 2017 at 7:08 pm #67341
    wv
    Participant

    “for Trump and his inner circle to name Perry to any Cabinet post at all felt like trolling, like a football team wrapping the mascot in packing tape and mailing him to Canada. But to send someone you’re on record calling an idiot to run the nation’s nuclear arsenal, that doesn’t fit easily in any bucket: mischief, evil, incompetence – it’s even a little extreme for nihilism.

    Trump’s lead adviser, the fast-talking Breitbart Svengali Steve Bannon, would ultimately explain the thinking behind Trump’s appointments in front of the CPAC audience. “If you look at these Cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason,” he said. The mysterious figure described that reason as the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”…..

    April 12, 2017 at 7:11 pm #67342
    wv
    Participant

    “….The early response of the Democratic leadership to Trump’s picks was a shocking strategy of partial accommodation and “picking their battles.”

    “I call it the law of conservation of no’s,” says Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project, which monitors federal appointments. “The Democrats felt they could only say no to Trump so many times, that they had to hoard their political capital for one or two battles.”

    April 12, 2017 at 8:49 pm #67345
    wv
    Participant

    LoL, omg, Taibbi is good. I could post a dozen of these:

    “…DeVos arrives dressed in a blazer of bright purple. (Historians will note this is the same color of the robes worn by Incitatus, the horse Caligula used to troll the Senate.) Over the next three and a half hours, she will prove to be the worst witness since William Jennings Bryan sent himself to the stand in the Scopes Monkey Trial.

    April 12, 2017 at 8:53 pm #67346
    Zooey
    Moderator

    The man is brilliant. Reading his prose is a skip through butterflies in field of daisies.

    April 12, 2017 at 9:58 pm #67349
    wv
    Participant
    Zooey wrote:

    The man is brilliant. Reading his prose is a skip through butterflies in field of daisies.

    ===========

    “….president like Trump can have an impact even if he never manages to get a single law passed, simply by unleashing stupidity as a revolutionary force

    April 12, 2017 at 10:18 pm #67350
    wv
    Participant

    I think this is an important, albeit obvious point:

    “Trump has made being the voice of reason politically dangerous.”

    What does that say about America’s voters ?

    And how did ‘we’ become so ignorant.

    w
    v

    April 12, 2017 at 10:52 pm #67351
    Zooey
    Moderator
    wv wrote:

    I think this is an important, albeit obvious point:

    “Trump has made being the voice of reason politically dangerous.”

    What does that say about America’s voters ?

    And how did ‘we’ become so ignorant.

    w
    v

    Yeah, I do fear what may be the new standard. Trump has made it possible for brazen lying. I mean…flat out obvious lies are now not disqualifying.

    And reasonable arguments seem lightweight next to brash proclamations.

    I don’t know how we recover from that, actually.

    April 12, 2017 at 10:57 pm #67352
    wv
    Participant

    This is one thing thats different about Trump. He just doesnt CARE about a lot of important stuff. And he does care about a lot of personal-ridiculous stuff.

    “…Just a month or so into Trump’s administration, one of the central promises of his campaign – the killing off of the Affordable Care Act – is in trouble. Trump’s inability to hold coalitions together, or really do much of anything beyond generate TV ratings, is already showing. But just as it was last year when the punditocracy told him he’d made himself unelectable, Trump’s ace in the hole may be that he doesn’t care. His history is that when the playing field doesn’t work for him, he moves it. The Framers may have designed the government to withstand bouts of popular madness, but there are no checks and balances against the power of celebrity. A president who is both a tyrant and disinterested in governance would have blown their minds.

    April 12, 2017 at 11:04 pm #67353
    wv
    Participant

    The ‘stupid to evil’ spectrum. I like it. Reminds me of the Rams offense, for some reason.

    “….One reporter tasked with covering the appointments says the staffing issue comes down to the same question we always have about Trump: Is this a scheme to destroy government, or cluelessness? “It’s just so hard to tell,” he says, “where this falls on the stupid-to-evil spectrum.”

    April 12, 2017 at 11:53 pm #67354
    Zooey
    Moderator

    Yep.

    “For Trump and his inner circle to name Perry to any Cabinet post at all felt like trolling, like a football team wrapping the mascot in packing tape and mailing him to Canada. But to send someone you’re on record calling an idiot to run the nation’s nuclear arsenal, that doesn’t fit easily in any bucket: mischief, evil, incompetence – it’s even a little extreme for nihilism.”

    April 14, 2017 at 12:59 am #67388
    Zooey
    Moderator

    “But while we keep looking for his hidden agenda, it’s our growing addiction to the spectacle of his car-wreck presidency that is the real threat. He is already making idiots and accomplices of us all, bringing out the worst in each of us, making us dumber just by watching. Even if Trump never learns to govern, after four years of this we will forget what civilization ever looked like – and it will be programming, not policy, that will have changed the world.”

    That is a scary conclusion, and one I can’t disagree with.

    April 14, 2017 at 6:00 am #67390
    wv
    Participant
    Zooey wrote:

    “But while we keep looking for his hidden agenda, it’s our growing addiction to the spectacle of his car-wreck presidency that is the real threat. He is already making idiots and accomplices of us all, bringing out the worst in each of us, making us dumber just by watching. Even if Trump never learns to govern, after four years of this we will forget what civilization ever looked like – and it will be programming, not policy, that will have changed the world.”

    That is a scary conclusion, and one I can’t disagree with.

    ==================

    Yeah, its a nightmare. But Trump is just a character in the nightmare story.
    The Nightmare itself is the system that spawned him, his Republican buddies, all those NeoLibs and DNC types, the Corporations, the Lobbies, the ‘education’ systems, the media, and the propogandized-ignorant-voters.

    Wonder who will be the next president of this nightmare?

    w
    v

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