The Trump presidency

[brogdale]

The criticisms made of the book at the time - , the main one being abandonment of historical detail in favour of ever more abstract model building - stand up very well today. I don't think the book offers anything useful today whatsoever - not in analysing a generic fascism and certainly not in examining what's happening with the US state and capital relationships.. I remember reading it in the 8os and thinking to myself this, this is what they're all going on about as the height of historical-theoretical sophistication. That original intro is crazy. In fact, verso trying to make a point by using it today is crazy - and it's a mis-selling.

On reflection, this sort of discussion probably belongs over in the Theory thread. FWIW, I don't see the blog post as mis-selling; I'd have thought that the discussion of material relating to the rise of fascism, however flawed, is timely as many of the commentariat are using the term loosely, if not wildly.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Lawfare Why is the White House Characterizing the Political Opinions of Career CIA Employees?

...
Let's leave aside certain factual, uh, issues in Spicer's claims—like the bald-faced lie that there was a five-minute standing ovation at the end of Trump's speech. (As you can see from the video, the agency's brass is clapping politely, and relatively briefly, and with butts firmly planted in chairs). I want to focus here on the bizarre decision, more characteristic of totalitarian dictators with cults of personality than of the White House press office, to describe the emotional state of government workers on meeting their fearless leader. I simply cannot remember a time when the White House declared that a group of civil servants were "ecstatic" to be graced by the presence of the president, were "grateful" for what he said, much less that they went through the ceremony of hosting him in a display of "enthusiasm for his presidency."

Remember that CIA employees are career civil servants (the agency has very few political appointees) barred by the Hatch Act from engaging in partisan political activity. I doubt very much that the White House did any polling of the agency workforce about its enthusiasm level for Trump (I don't recommend it if presidential ego preservation is a goal) or their level of gratitude for his visit. Indeed, while Trump, in his speech at the agency, declared that "We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military and probably almost everybody in this room voted for me," even he showed a certain minimal respect for the apolitical nature of the workforce when he said immediately thereafter: "but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did."
...

I've watched that video and Trump was using his considerable chatty charm and playing to the crowd. He was certainly received cordially at Langley. I'm sure a lot of folks their wise him the best. Many will have voted for him. But not many visiting CEOs get booed off stage and he's the boss. Resorting to citing this as evidence of popularity is as Trump would Tweet: sad!

This is a a very, very touchy Whitehouse under a huge puffed up ego in terror of rapid deflation. Which is understandable his new job is a terrifying responsibility in which major public fuck ups are inevitable. I'd predict Trump spends a lot of time at huge rallies needed to prop up his self image. It's is going to be subject to the sort of campaign of low blows Bill Clinton endured.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Better Donald, better.

Now just don't catch up on SNL.

 

[Mation]

OK, now I'm disbelieving a little. If there was comment to be made, someone would have made it.

If you say; but I've not heard of that automatic association.

How on earth do you two ever manage to learn anything if, when someone brings you new information, you just say "Nope! I hadn't heard of it."

Johnny explained why you might not have been aware of it. It's ok to just say you hadn't heard about it.

 

[2hats]

 

[Raheem]

How on earth do you two ever manage to learn anything if, when someone brings you new information, you just say "Nope! I hadn't heard of it."

Johnny explained why you might not have been aware of it. It's ok to just say you hadn't heard about it.

Johnny didn't so much bring new information as present an interpretation which he claimed would be shared by large numbers of Americans. That there's an absence of evidence that they do share it is, I think, reason to be sceptical.

 

[J Ed]

Terrible.

Bill Maher: Trump Voters are ‘Pillbillies’ and ‘F*cking Drug Addicts’

Let's say you live in a place afflicted by this problem, you voted for Trump because he said he would drain the swamp and rescue you and yours after decades of being left behind. You see the appointments, horrified, wonder whether or not you have made a mistake and perhaps think that the Democrats might actually be starting to sort themselves out. You like what Sanders has been saying now that he seems to be getting a bit more media time.

Then you remember, these people fucking hate you.

 

[Pickman's model]

Terrible.

Bill Maher: Trump Voters are ‘Pillbillies’ and ‘F*cking Drug Addicts’

yeh, we're above all that and would never say rude things about e.g. tory or ukip voters.

 

[J Ed]

yeh, we're above all that and would never say rude things about e.g. tory or ukip voters.

Who is we?

 

[Pickman's model]

Who is we?

us here.

 

[2hats]

Bonus image doing the rounds:

 

[littlebabyjesus]

As you say, on one level...but the timing of that tweet, including reference to pussy, was clearly deliberate and obvious.

But the pussy double-meaning bit was simply luck on Palin's part - as pointed out, this phrase has been her phrase of choice ever since the day she endorsed Trump. And she chose it, as she's chosen many other things in her political speeches, under considerable influence and inspiration of George Wallace. Her rhetoric stinks of Wallace, so any benefit of the doubt that this might be an unfortunate coincidence disappears. It isn't a coincidence. It's a good spot from jc3.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Johnny didn't so much bring new information as present an interpretation which he claimed would be shared by large numbers of Americans.

That is new information.

There are loads of culturally specific dogwhistles that others would miss. That's the nature of them. So you wouldn't expect an American to get that 'North London intellectual' is dogwhistle for 'Jew', for instance.

 

[CrabbedOne]

That is new information.

There are loads of culturally specific dogwhistles that others would miss. That's the nature of them. So you wouldn't expect an American to get that 'North London intellectual' is dogwhistle for 'Jew', for instance.

Who knew? Here was me thinking the code for that was "liberal elite" like in the US. Sometimes with "Hollywood" affixed with a snarl if you really don't get it.

No doubt it will soon all be replaced with phrases in the original German as seems to be trending in the US.

 

[Raheem]

That is new information.

There are loads of culturally specific dogwhistles that others would miss. That's the nature of them. So you wouldn't expect an American to get that 'North London intellectual' is dogwhistle for 'Jew', for instance.

But if, say, John Redwood made a reference to "North London intellectuals" in a speech, you wouldn't expect it to pass without comment. But no-one at all in the US media seems to have noticed this supposed evocation of Wallace.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

But if, say, John Redwood made a reference to "North London intellectuals" in a speech, you wouldn't expect it to pass without comment. But no-one at all in the US media seems to have noticed this supposed evocation of Wallace.

Have a little look for how many times Ed Milliband was mentioned with the reference 'North London'. Then see if the BBC and other mainstream media outlets picked up on it. Hell, the BBC, in the shape of Jeremy Paxman, used it.

btw you're factually wrong that nobody in the US media has picked up on Palin's evocations of Wallace. My quick google search last night found quite a few dating back to 2008. But google isn't always your friend here - and in this instance, your argument that absence of evidence is evidence of absence is particularly weak.

 

[Pickman's model]

But if, say, John Redwood made a reference to "North London intellectuals" in a speech, you wouldn't expect it to pass without comment. But no-one at all in the US media seems to have noticed this supposed evocation of Wallace.

do you mean the us liberal media or the us conservative media or the us media as a whole regardless of political tenor?

 

[CrabbedOne]

In TDB McCain, Graham Voting for Rex Tillerson

GOP establishment big dogs still worried about his Russki connection. At least they are confident Rex is not going to sell US national interests down the river in favour of Big Oil. Well he's no longer employed by ExxonMobil so there's no danger of that, nope, none at all.

 

[Raheem]

btw you're factually wrong that nobody in the US media has picked up on Palin's evocations of Wallace. My quick google search last night found quite a few dating back to 2008.

Link and I'll be happy to reassess.

 

[CrabbedOne]

In The Guardian Pope Francis to 'wait and see' before forming opinion on Trump

...
“I think that we must wait and see. I don’t like to get ahead of myself nor judge people prematurely,” the pope told Spanish newspaper El País in an interview.

“We will see how he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion. But being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting calamities,” he said.

...

Fence sitter!

I was expecting at least a verse or two of Revelation: red dragons, harlots, Babylon is fallen, wormwood, rivers of blood etc, etc. Maybe by Easter then.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Speaking of being divided by a common language.

On Tonk's Tale Thursday Trivia: Pussyfooting Around

...
It all goes back to Indian Territory Oklahoma in the early 1900’s – and a man by the name of William E. Johnson. Johnson, a renowned teetotaler, was apparently known for his silent walk.

Newspapers in Muskogee, Oklahoma branded him as “the gent with the panther tread” and began
calling him “Pussyfoot” Johnson.

(Apparently he admitted to wearing rubber heels on his shoes…?)

Johnson made his way over the pond in 1916 to broaden the reach of his prohibitionist message. And it was there that “pussyfooting” came to be known as supporting the ban of alcohol.

Word Origins tells us,

“The English took the nickname and applied it as a derisive term for a prohibitionist or teetotaler.

A 23 July 1919 cartoon in Punch had this caption:

Gloomy Policeman. ‘You’ve had enough. Better go home.’
Reveller. ...’Shurr-up—Pussy-foot!’”​

And here was me thinking it was a sexual practice that you might request from FSB assets on a visit to Moscow.

 

[Raheem]

“We will see how he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion. But being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting calamities,” he said

This seems like a bit of weird thing for a Pope to say. Is he characterising prophets of doom such as Daniel, Ezekiel and Jeremiah as "quite unwise"?

 

[camouflage]

If you marry this cancer, it's only right to be referred to as Melanoma.

Good day, sir.

I don't agree, by that logic many women that have dwelt in palaces through the ages, the wives of this bloke for example...

deserved all they got. I don't know her story or her reasons, but they are irrelevant anyway as she's not the POTUS. The women that find themselves married to rich or powerful men don't all get to be Michelle Obama. I mean... do you even watch Game of Thrones? Fuck knows what sort of tale of golden-caged woe her biopic might turn out to be, every time I see Melania Trump I think "that poor woman, she looks like some sort of hostage".

 

[2hats]

Apparently fabricated and unsubstantiated, self-contradictory statements, are henceforth to be known as 'alternative facts' - from a NBC News interview with Kellyanne Conway:

Asked on "Meet the Press" why Spicer used his first appearance before the press to dispute a minimal issue like the inauguration crowd size, and why he used falsehoods to do so, Conway pushed back.

"You're saying it's a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that," she told NBC's Chuck Todd.

She then went on to echo Spicer's claim on Saturday that it wasn't possible to count the crowd, despite Trump's team's accompanying insistence that it was the "largest audience."

"I don't think you can prove those numbers one way or another. There's no way to quantify crowd numbers," Conway said.

 

[Lord Camomile]

But, let us not forget, they're straight talkers who say what they mean, different to the politicians that have come before and that's why people trust them.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Politico Trump doling out plum adviser jobs to rich friends

Swamp is too small a word; Trump is creating a potential Sargasso Sea of nepotistic corruption in DC.

It's like Moscow's siloviki without the thick necks or worse Yeltsin and the oligarchs that came before them.

 

[Celyn]

... Fuck knows what sort of tale of golden-caged woe her biopic might turn out to be, every time I see Melania Trump I think "that poor woman, she looks like some sort of hostage".

She has a choice and she seems to choose Trump. She *might* be a really wonderful and good person, but being on Donald Trumps's side would seem to indicate otherwise.

 

[camouflage]

She has a choice and she seems to choose Trump. She *might* be a really wonderful and good person, but being on Donald Trumps's side would seem to indicate otherwise.

Not really about niceness, rather it's about power, billionaires and models. Why waste scorn on bystanders.

 

[Celyn]

Not really about niceness, rather it's about power, billionaires and models. Why waste scorn on bystanders.

Well, I have checked, and I do have enough scorn in the cupboard, so I can afford to use some. Yes, it's about power and money. Not really about models. I imagine she likes money.

Also, I have *never* got the hang of this odd business of the USA people regarding the spouse of the President as an important position in its own right. "First Lady", FFS.

 

[The39thStep]

Terrible.

Bill Maher: Trump Voters are ‘Pillbillies’ and ‘F*cking Drug Addicts’

Let's say you live in a place afflicted by this problem, you voted for Trump because he said he would drain the swamp and rescue you and yours after decades of being left behind. You see the appointments, horrified, wonder whether or not you have made a mistake and perhaps think that the Democrats might actually be starting to sort themselves out. You like what Sanders has been saying now that he seems to be getting a bit more media time.

Then you remember, these people fucking hate you.

I am sure I read somewhere that the American SWP sold their paper Militant at Trump rallies on the grounds that some of his supporters also liked what Saunders said.