"The Death of Outrage"

 William Bennett wrote that book, the Death of Outrage, back in 1999. In it, he lamented about how Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky affair was an "assault on the American ideals", and how most Americans were willing to look away as long as they were doing alright economically.   

 I saw  William Bennett on a political talk show recently and he was making excuses for Donald Trump's behavior and encouraging him to keep pushing his agenda. The same William Bennett who wrote that the moral failings of Bill Clinton was disqualifying, was now encouraging republicans and those on the right to keep supporting Mr. Trump. 

This, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with America. And it's why no matter what Donald Trump does, he will have half of the country behind him. 

To his credit, Donald Trump has figured it out: Lean in on white nationalism and white pride to let white folks believe that rolling back progress in the area of civil rights does not affect them. Trampling the concept of due process and ignoring the rule of law is fine, as long as it does not affect those in the majority. Bullying and threatening large law firms who have the clout and the money to fight injustice is cool, because they won't be fighting for causes that affect  "red blooded American" white people.   

He is already doing all of these things, and there is no outrage. Not from William Bennett, not from  the elected politicians (in either party), not from the press, and certainly not from the majority of white Americans.  I watched in horror as those ICE agents snatched that doctorial student off the street in Boston because of her political views, and I thought to myself, this is it, this has to be the breaking point. Certainly, I thought,  this has to be where Americans open their eyes and say,  this could happen to me. But it wasn't. Sure it was a news story, and we all watched the video on various news programs. But most of  you just watched and  chalked it up to the Trump administration doing what they promised. 

We watched those undocumented immigrants being shipped off to one of the world's most notorious prisons without any due process, and we shrugged that off as well.  Trump promised that he would round up all the gang members and trouble makers and ship them out of our country. And we thought, looking at those images, that they all fit the profile:  Young,  brown, and male.  So no harm no foul. Just Trump doing what he promised. Outrage is not even on life support at this point. It's dead. 

This past week there was Signalgate. I won't get into it because  if you read this blog you're pretty plugged in politically. This story seems to have legs, not because we are shocked by the conduct of the uniquely unqualified sycophants that Donald Trump has placed in positions of power, but because of their hubris and total disregard for the safety of the country. 

The folks who are saying that planning a military strike and revealing war plans while on a public email chat is no big deal, are the same ones who were clutching their pearls until they choked over Hillary Clinton's email server being used to conduct State Department business. This is no big deal they say, because the mission was a success. (There are questions about that as well.) This is like saying don't prosecute the bank robber because he  didn't get away with any money.  Whether the mission was a success or not is beside the point. Imagine what could have happened in the alternative because of the incompetence and conduct of these people? 

I suspect, though, that this too well pass. There is no outrage from the right, because they are  in a cult, and they can't speak against Dear Leader no mater what. There is outrage from the left, but they feel hopeless  because no one else seems to care. The folks in the middle watch and stay disengaged because they do not believe that all of this affects them. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump keeps issuing executive order after order. He is skirting the rule of law, and daring the courts to stop him. His Attorney General has threatened to go after the very Judges who must interpret the law. And his agenda for his second term is to go after his perceived  enemies, and those who are not showing fealty towards him.  Sadly, at least for now,  those of us who fall into the latter category are in the minority. 

   

"State of the Union causes State of Confusion"

 

The state of this fragile American union is not good. It's not good because the leader is intentionally trying to divide us and destroy it. I am not one to dabble in conspiracy theories, but I am really starting to believe this one about the Russians having something very incriminating on Donald J. trump. 

  How else do you explain his latest move to isolate Ukraine and allow Russia to take some of the land they took from that country? How else do you explain his appointment of Tulsi Gabbard, a known Assad and Putin sympathizer, as Director of National Intelligence? For years many folks believed that she was a Russian asset, and she still very well might be. Donald trump disparages every world leader, including the Prime Minister of Canada, but he is afraid to say a bad word about Putin.  Why?  

What's scary is that he now has most of his followers (the MAGA cult members) believing that the Russians are the good guys, and all the other countries in Europe are bad. The same Russians who kill  their political enemies,  bomb hospitals,  and slaughter innocent  children. This is  what MAGA is embracing, because their leader told them that it's alright to do so. 

Those videos of trump and his bully friends ganging up on Zelenskyy in the White House was painful to watch and has been seared in my memory. The poor guy didn't have a chance. In Russia they were celebrating, in America we were wondering, what the f**K just happened?  And then, to top it off, some clown in a clown suit asked him, Zelenskyy, why HE wasn't wearing a suit? Imagine that. Your country is under siege, and you are fighting a war for your very survival, and some MAGA clown admonishes you for not wearing a suit to meet the most cowardly man to ever sit in the White House. A man who lied his way out of having to serve in battle for his own country. Here is another thing, I have seen Zelenskyy in a suit, and he wears one better than all the men who were sitting in that room with him. Apparently trump likes Baroni suits, bur the company should tell him to stop wearing them. On any given day he looks like Alfred Hitchcock in a bathrobe. And if they are bespoken, shame on Baroni for not telling the emperor how f****d up he looks. But I digress. The point is, the MAGA journalist was way out of line, and so was the president and JD Vance for the way they ambushed the poor man. 

But this is where we are in America.  Trump's address to congress was nothing but a plethora of lies, double speak, and misdirection. Nothing, and I mean nothing he said many any sense. "Eight million dollars to experiment on transgendered mice"? No! That is TRANSGENERIC mice. These mice are genetically modified with foreign DNA introduced into their genomes "to study the function of specific genes, model human diseases, or to test potential treatment." I know that science is hard for the MAGA crowd, but without this and other types of research, we would never be able to make advances in medicine.  So either trump can't read or he just flat out lied. It drew a few laughs from the GOP sycophants in congress, but there was nothing funny about what he was doing: Gaslighting the American people.   

We are now almost two months into Mr. trump's administration, and the price of eggs keep going up, gas prices are not going down, and the stock marker is going up and down like a Six Flags rollercoaster. Sadly, I suspect that trump is purposely trying to manipulate the markets for some pump and dump scheme with his buddies, but I obviously can't prove it. It would take a real journalist to look into it, but sadly, there are none of those left in America.   

On the foreign policy front, our traditional adversaries like Russia are now our allies, and our allies (See Canada) are now our enemies.  Trump wants to pull out of NATO, and we are no longer sharing intelligence with Ukraine. And, more importantly, our allies in Europe are going to be sharing less intel with us.  I don't feel safer, and neither should you. 

Shout out to Al Green for walking out of that lieathon to congress and heckling trump. Shame on the ten democrats who voted to censure him. You are what's wrong with the democratic party, not Al Green.

 At some point you will all have to stand up and say enough, before it's too late for the rest of us.