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comment by mk
mk  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Kellyanne Conway cites non-existent 'massacre' defending ban

We aren't going to endure four years without irreparable damage. The aggressiveness of the breaking of norms and the lack of regard for justification is what suggests to me that this is a process.





steve  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    lack of regard for justification

lack of regard for truth or basic actual facts...

It's a whole new low for a presidency.

Put a temporary ban on immigration? ok.. so this administration isn't the first.

Put a temporary ban on immigration without checking with Legal first? New feature.

Put a temporary ban on immigration and fire the Attorney General for questioning its legality? New feature.

Put a temporary ban on immigration and then throw a talking head in front of some cameras to make shit up as justification? SO... maybe this administration isn't the first... but they probably could have picked something a little less completely-bull-shitty to use as justification.

kleinbl00  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Everything you list is a first for a sitting president, and it's ugly, no doubt. I think nearly all thinking people would rather not watch this stuff go down. But the government is several million professionals who all work together and nobody wants to unthinkingly, unfeelingly flush it down the toilet.

Last weekend, DHS and ICE could have rolled over and gone "awright! Let's crack skulls, boys!" and the shit would have been neck-deep instead of waist-deep. Their implementation of Trump's muslim ban was half-hearted at best, however, and there was a great deal of outrage expressed by the entire world.

The argument I see from pessimists is "he's going to keep doing this shit until we stop objecting to his insanity." I rarely see "he's going to keep doing this shit until we stop taking him seriously." Governance is either by consent or by force and the Trump administration lacks force. There comes a time when even the playground bully learns not to make threats with his mouth that his ass can't keep. So far, Mexico and Australia have both basically hung up on Trump. Both of them have billions/trillions of dollars worth of entanglements and that shit ain't gonna stop. So. Do you take the president at face value when he says he's going to invade your country if you can't stop the "bad hombres?" Or do you deal directly with the lower-level adminstrators you've always dealt with, less efficiently, with less mandate, but with a great deal less crazyness and bloviation?

The world can't take the presidency seriously. They have to take the United States seriously. Between that rock and hard place lies compromise and improvisation, both of which are the hallmarks of government.

What we're watching is the process of everyone finding the "new normal" while we all learn to work around the Madness of King Donald.

b_b  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think it's worth noting the the Supreme Court has never actually officially overturned Korematsu v. United States (the ruling that said interning Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry was legal). Perhaps President Trump (stop and puke in my mouth a little every time I write or say that) will finally give them an opportunity to do so.

steve  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

shhh... don't say that too loudly... one of Bannon's bots will pick it up on a web crawler and give the bastard an idea...

b_b  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What the supreme Court says is the law of the land. Nobody seems to realize or care that despite the fact that we all talk about how wrong that episode was, it was then and remains today perfectly legal. I would hope that the court would reverse course if they were given an opportunity, but they've had opportunities (e.g. Guantanamo cases) and have opted to rule narrowly.

kleinbl00  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm unconvinced.

The world isn't going to stop in its orbit. We have a robust bureaucracy. The business of government clearly needs to keep happening, and this administration has amply demonstrated that it lacks the competence or interest to do so.

Reagan's administration basically excised him from the process for the last three years. Granted, he didn't start by firing everybody, but there's a whole lotta government that still exists. I still think we're going to muddle through. It's gonna be heinously fuckin' ugly and there will be bodies but "irreparable damage" to me vastly underestimates the world's desire for stability.

mk  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I wish I shared your optimism, if that's what it can be called. I'm of the opinion that even robust bureaucracies can be dismantled in short order by the right combination of fear, lies, and power. We are two weeks in. Can you imagine if a 9-11 happens on Trump's watch?

I think if our desire for stability were strong, Hillary would have won in a landslide.

kleinbl00  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I'm of the opinion that even robust bureaucracies can be dismantled in short order by the right combination of fear, lies, and power.

I would be curious as to the basis for this opinion. The Beer Hall Putsch was 1923. The burning of the Reichstag was 1933. In between were ten years of Hitler doing everything he could to rise to power while preying on a millenia-old distrust of Jews. Meanwhile, the Arab Spring led to exactly zero democratic governments in the Middle East. Iceland effectively went bankrupt in 2008 and were back on their feet six months later.

    Can you imagine if a 9-11 happens on Trump's watch?

I'll be astonished if we don't have a significant terrorist event in the United States within 12 months. Bannon is praying for it - he's a crazy-ass Strauss-Howe 4th Turning end-times mutherfucker who thinks Strauss and Howe underestimated the impact of this coming bit of astrology since WWII was greater than the Civil War was greater than the Revolutionary War therefore this coming clusterfuck is going to be the Crusades or something. Steve Bannon is eager to get the Battle For All Time started so that we can move on to the Brighter Things Ahead. Anything Bannon can do to jumpstart this, he'll do.

But we've had crazies before.

Thing is, when September 11 happened Bush had been in the seat for 9 months. He'd been undistinguished and disappointing but most of the challenges and criticisms he faced were due to typical partisan beefing - of course a neoconservative Republican isn't going to do much about Enron, duh. But we were all ready to rally around our leader in our time of trouble and the goodwill he had moved mountains.

The Trump administration is doing everything they can to give everyone reasonable doubt about their approach to crisis, considering they're generating it by talking to Australia, ffs.

I suspect that if Bannon et. al. decided to ban muslims after a terrorist attack the Democrats would effectively roll over and take it. Cancel the visas of 100,000 vetted, approved immigrants and foreign travelers because you feel like it? It doesn't improve your credibility much. The longer this sort of thing goes on the less likely the country will be to look to Donald "I use the prayer breakfast to snark on Arnold Schwartzenegger" Trump.

People followed bush off a cliff not because he was president, but because he was presidential. The calculus is going to be different this time.

    I think if our desire for stability were strong, Hillary would have won in a landslide.

I think the Republicans have been spending 40 years discrediting Hillary Clinton, and 50 years discouraging their voters from thinking. When they told them that Trump would be an adequate president, everybody believed them.

I'm guilty of listening to the DNC - "the country will hold their noses enough to vote for a woman reviled by every Republican representative since 1985 despite the fact that they lost their shit over a black man." The other side is guilty of listening to the RNC - "despite all appearances to the contrary, this man will not turn the White House into a carnival sideshow while making you wistful for George W. Bush."

There were a lot of losers in this election. "Credibility of the major parties" was one of the bigger ones.

OftenBen  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    "Credibility of the major parties" was one of the bigger ones.

Taken in isolation, isn't this good for our political system as a whole? Maybe Joe the Plumber SHOULDN'T have such high confidence in the Red Team and the Blue Team. Maybe JtP should be skeptical of them, and have alternatives to them?

Yes to everything else, but a scattered and disorganized DNC and RNC hardly sounds like a bad thing to me.

kleinbl00  ·  2609 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I worry as to the cost.