I’ve been thinking about Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) lately. He came to my attention right after the 2024 general election, as Nehls accepted Trump as the leader of the Republican Party.
“So now he’s got a mission statement. His mission, his goals and objectives, whatever that is — we need to embrace it. All of it, every single word,” Nehls told Capitol Hill reporters in a clip that aired on MSNBC.
“If Donald Trump says, ‘Jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads. That’s it,” he added.
Yeah, the heck with representing your constituents and protecting the Constitution. But seriously, why even bother with a Congress?
This morning I read a post at Public Notice by Tom Schaller call The Vanity Presidency. Trump is “turning the whole country into a tacky branded property,” Schaller says. It begins this way —
Following the failed attempt on President Trump’s life at the White House Correspondents Dinner, lapdog Republicans and their media allies rushed to capitalize by arguing that the episode proves his very unpopular White House ballroom project has always been about presidential safety, not a self-glorifying tribute to himself.
“Everyone thought this was Trump making a monument to Trump. This is a vanity project,” the reliably smarmy Sen. Lindsey Graham snorted at Trump’s critics. (Graham wants to spend taxpayer dollars on the ballroom project, which he describes as “very national security-centric.
At this point Trump is little but a walking freak show, albiet one with a big military. His power comes from the fact that so many others prop him up and protect him. And in a lot of ways that’s the real story here.
The social psychologists tell us that political conservatives tend to value loyalty much more than liberals. You can find groupthink all along the political spectrum, but righties are more likely to assume all goodness emanates from the Right and the Left is just evil and possibly insane. Political lefties tend to be more willing to criticize their own and can give credit to conservatives who appear to be rational.
Some of this is baked into the emotional and psychological impulses that tilt people toward conservatism or liberalism. And I’m not saying there have never been political conservatives who are capable of critical thinking. Of course there have been, but where are they now? MAGA has zero tolerance for independent critical thinking. Instead we get variations of Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas).
Do see Historical Roots and Psychology of Liberals, Conservatives by Gina Simmons Schneider, Ph.D., at Psychology Today. Liberals and conservatives really are wired differently. Liberalism is aspirational; conservatism is defensive. Studies have shown that conservatives tend to be far less tolerant of ambiguity than liberals, and more likely to be fearful of change or unfamiliar circumstances. They like certainly and consistency. And this is why conservatism, taken to extremes, becomes reactionary.
I tend to think that admitting to not-knowing is the beginning of wisdom. If you know you don’t know, you can learn. If you can’t recognize not knowing, you automatically fill in the blank spots with whatever is available at the time. Humans are wired to connect mental dots to understand the world, but if we aren’t careful we often connect the wrong dots. The truly wise are people who can refrain from dot-connecting without sufficient knowledge.
So in a lot of ways political liberals and conservatives are approaching politics and issues from very different perspectives. But the knee-jerk conformity and denial of reality on today’s Right is giving Trump room to function, and screw up, and hurt people. And while there’s always been some of that, it’s worse now.
I can remember the Republican party fifty years ago. There was a spectrum, everything from the patrician, anti-progressive Old Right to Rockefeller Republicans to the segregationist Dixiecrats. Now they’re more like the Borg Collective. Nearly the entire party is prepared to jump three feet and scratch their heads on command.
And I believe this assimilation to the Borg predates MAGA. I think it’s something that’s been happening for a while. Back in the 1950s there was McCarthyism and the House Committee on Un-American Activities and a lot of craziness generally. But there was also Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican. I didn’t agree with everything he did, but he was psychologically normal and not a fearful sort of person. So while that tendency has been on the Right possibly since there has been a Right, the Republican party (which used to be the more liberal party, remember) had a big enough mix of people to be able to function as a party. Now it’s just Borg.
Trump is not going to last forever. A lot depends on the midterms, but I question whether he’s going to stay in office for the entire second term. But how can the current Republican party move on? Back when Nixon resigned there were several strong personalities in the party who had not been Nixon yes-men. These included Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater (I didn’t say I liked them), and John Anderson. Ronald Reagan was governor of California by then, I believe. Gerald Ford wasn’t necessarily a Nixon guy in spite of being his veep, briefly.
But — just speculating here — if Trump were removed from office next year, taking whatever Trumpism is with him, who among the spineless sycophants in the Republican party will be able to reconstitute a viable political party out of the wreckage of the GOP?
One of my most irritating habits is my compulsion to speculate. IMO, Trump will go into complete panic mode after the midterms if the GOP loses the House and Senate. I think it's likely the House will go big 'D'. I am encouraged by the polls in Texas and Maine Senate races. Every week the war drags on, the worse the situation is for the GOP in Nov.
The Houtse will open up investigations. That's a nightmare for Trump, and it portends impeachment and future criminal charges to him. IMO, Trump will decide to run again despite the Constitution and even if the USSC says he can't. He will be (potentially) the most unpopular incumbent ever to run. Much of the MAGA cult will back it. The few who contest Trump in the primary will fail. When Trump is crushed in the general, he will attempt a coup. Which will also fail.
There's a flip side to that. If Trump declares a campaign that he can't win, the GOP may see impeachment as the only way to remove Trump and give the GOP a chance. That's assuming the midterms are a blowout.
Here's another sweet thought. Powell is packing to leave as chair of the Fed. If Trump's pick is able to follow Trump orders (There is a board and Powell is staying on.), the prime will be slashed, not by quarter points but by full percentages, back-to-back Krugman will warn that in times of inflation, that may bring on hyperinflation. For Trump's last two years. Yeah, it will be a mess on a par with the economy FDR had to fix. If progressives get the word out, it needs to be 'Tax the rich to fix the country."
"… if Trump were removed from office next year, taking whatever Trumpism is with him, who among the spineless sycophants in the Republican party will be able to reconstitute a viable political party out of the wreckage of the GOP?"
IMO, there's nobody. For MAGA, the goals remain, even if Trump commits suicide in a jail cell. They want a white, male-dominated society willing to serve the tech bros plutocracy that will put everyone else in their place. The GOP politicians can do the math – there's no path to a majority there. They have to make up the MAGA voters they can't attract by going to the conservative-leaning moderates. That's women and conservative-leaning Catholics, including a bunch of Hispanics. Voters who will never love Democrats but are nauseated by what MAGA did. And a moderate GOP gives progressives a lot of room to go further left.
It won't be the spineless sycophants who succeed Trump. The GOP is going down, bigly. So are the Schumer / Pelosi Democrats, but this is because they're aging out. The country is waking up from the GOP kool-aide.
The Ds are coming in a big blue wave. I really believe the GOP is going to be a hated minority party for awhile, with attempted comebacks under much more moderate leadership, but even this is a few years into the future.
It's the yin and yang of the universe. Extremes don't last, especially in a relatively dynamic country like the US.
Another prediction: Fox News will become more moderate, only because of declining viewership. This one is several years in the future.
We know one truth to be completely undeniable. Gravity only acts as a force if and when you look down. Being totally unsupported only becomes a problem when you look down and see you are unsupported. Your perception of being unsupported turns gravity on as a working force. Then and only then do you begin to fall. Any ardent watcher of Wily Coyote or republican can tell you that. No evidence or education can or will cast doubt, sufficient enough, for a member of either group to think otherwise.
I am not sure we even got them to accept that Santa, The Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy are but characters of fiction. Some, for sure, still consider what is called Professional Wrestling, a real sport. This begs the question about Banana Ball. Will those player cards maintain value or suffer the fate of your collection of the legends of Roller Derby. Some still hold the currency of the Confederate Sates of America, but the number of believers dwindles. Some people just fail by clinging on to fantasy when reality is just too hard to accept. Lost in the land of the La-La. The land of the fanciful, a world of dreams.
This loser of a leader who cannot get even a toe hold on reality merits only a fleeting legacy as a permanent escapee to La-La Land. He who has never even lost even a single flip of the coin. A level of self-concept fragility that would make a snowflake look like Hercules.
What future can be made from remnants like that.
"This begs the question about Banana Ball"
As a lifelong baseball devotee that stupid fucking clown show infuriates me. Taking America's past time, the only sport that matters and running it through the pro-wrestling reality tee-vee game show grinder. The backers and participants of that farce should be rounded up and incarcerated!
Technically, it is very much "sport;" what it isn't is "competitive sport." I'm being pedantic, obviously :-). Still: sport refers to "having fun" and being a "good sport" means playing the game so people see the best possible action in the game. Don't cheat – that ruins some of the entertainment value, we don't see who "really" won!
So if you see it as "people pretending to fight, and trying to put on a hell of a show, as entertainment," you can call it "sport." But it's not like competitive sports, e.g. baseball and football.
Um. I know, this wasn't really important, but, I'm bored and in a lot of pain, so, meh, I'll pet my favorite peeve tonight :-).
But it's not like competitive sports, e.g. baseball and football.
Football? not really a sport just a bunch of meatheads knocking each other down, and the so called "fans" dressed up like halloween, screaming for blood like zombies. Baseball is the only game that matters!
Sure, it could and should fit into the sport category that way. A golf buddy once explained that professional wrestling was soap opera for men. I use that definition. So, for me, more the theater category than the sports category, fits it best. I am sure some would prefer it not pigeonholed there.
I do not think "…reconstitute a viable political party out of the wreckage of the GOP?" is the question, I think that the question is whether we can reconstitute a viable country out of the wreckage caused by Donald J. Trump. Can we reconstitute a viable country out of the wreckage of the Roberts Court? When Grandpa Pudding Brains leaves office, most likely in a box, the GOP principals will suck up to the money people and get their propaganda machine optimized to blame someone else and the the culture-war blackmailers will always fight their scorched earth lost cause until the end of times… with gusto. Don't worry, the Fascists will be fine whether or not there is a GOP because they know how to capitalize on catastrophe using destruction as a political tool.
Did we rebuild this country after the Great Depression? Statistically to, the best time for the new middle class that the US ever saw.
The tide of the New Deal lifted many boats with a new governmental paradigm, but the problem here is that we are prisoners of the parasitic Amazon and Walmarts backed by a surveillance state funded by old-fashioned bonds that are secured by you and me (weird taxation blackmail). The criminality and self-dealing of this new GOP crew would make any Gilded Age robber baron blush. The Maga zombies will never be ashamed again and go to their graves rather than admit to the embarrassment of simple kindness to the "other". Plus, we still have to recover from the failure of Reconstruction and now claw back our rights and all of the resources that were stolen.
I am not hopeful we can escape white christian nationalism. Perhaps some will be lucky, but the dilapidated mining town I live in will always be a sh*t hole dominated by local oligarchs paying fealty up to Zuck, Elon, and their crew instead of rebuilding the public resources. Show me any sign that the new money masters have any incentive to trouble-shoot, let alone try to solve, the catastrophes facing the planet.
Kat wrote this comment today in the NYT in response to an article about China's future looking energy policy. Kat with a K sees the future with China as promising well beyond that small scope. Kat has gone also with the evermore popular lowercase trump.
Might I add China seems to outpace politically, with only one political party. One that can it seems accept it can error and learn from its own mistakes.
That it will be China's century seems a given. It could well be China's millennium. They seem to have obtained mastery of the win in many ironic areas while lowercase trump seeks mastery at defeat denial. Does that skill deserve a nation's priority? Kat wrote:
Defeat Denial, so far, is not looking like even a qualified contender. We are so outstripped in so many ways and still exposing poor skills at every turn. It takes so little to leapfrog that.
I've been spending way too much time over at Breitbart. I finally figured out how to argue with the maggys without getting banned, not yet anyway. But it's an interesting place. They get thousands of comments sometimes on a single story so that's alot of traffic, but I have found that it's really only about 30 or so regular maggys and about 10 or so of us trolls. The maggys spew the same nonsense over and over and over and over and us trolls do our best to refute the gibberish. It's kind of like the maha blog would be if maha was a clown and us regulars were complete morons and instead of just one or two comments on each story we just kept posting the same thing over and over twenty four hours a day, a real waste of time? So if the breitbart maggys are the future of the GOP then our long national nightmare may be over before we know it.
Been watching Iran and how they
play the game. IMO, the insurance companies why underwrite the ships are the key. And it looks like Iran knows it. So when Trump announes Hormuz open, they sacrifice a few boats and soldiers. They don't have to sink anything, just show they're willing to and could. I doubt if anyone will raise anchor to run the gauntlet. Result: the Straight stays closed.
Hogsbteath is saying the US will turn over babysitting the Straight to 'allies' who I don't see lining up for the job. They might if the US withdraws the armada. But I don't see it happening before gas hits $5 per gal.
Stump ended the babysitting job less than 8 hours after Whiskey Pete announced it. Me thinks somebody is headed back to the weekend curvy couch at FAUX!
I'm reading that the Saudis were not apprised of the plan in advance. It made them targets because the US bases in SA and their airspace were in the plan. They were in the process of pulling permission for the US military to fly when Trump 86d the plan.
DJT is threatening to resume bombing with no mention of electrical plants and bridges. So he's not mentioned civilian infrastructure. Which may suggest he's got the word on what war crimes are and that the US military may refuse to commit them. Not because of moral scruples perhaps but because it may be bad for their careers to be unconnected from the obligation to refuse an illegal order.
France moves carrier group toward Red Sea for Hormuz mission prep
This is the first I'm reading of this. It says the UK is in on it. IMO, they will not put thier military under Trump's command or in the vicinity of the US armada. Which means either we are leaving or they are not coming.