Hard to predict how low can trump.2.0 sink, but this newly redesigned “Presidential Walk of Fame” sets a (temporary) record, with plaques (written in his appalling social-media style or lack thereof) by the Agent Orange himself that demean his predecessors and self-agrandizes his own actions, while rewriting history. Hard to find a precedent, except in the most sinister dictatures!
[Extracts from DT’s unhinged declarations on 19 Feb about Ukraine:]
“But today I heard: ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine. Well, we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% approval rating and where a country has been blown to smithereens. You got most of the cities are laying on their sides.”
“Russia does not intend to destroy Kyiv, if they had wanted to, they would have done it. Russia is capable of wiping out Ukrainian cities 100%, including Kyiv, but right now, they are only attacking at 20%.”
“Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism [sic].”
[And more during the joint session with Emmanuel Macron, on 24 Feb.]
“I don’t use those words lightly [when asked whether or not Putin is a dictator], we’ll see how it all works out.”
“The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it.”
[With the newspeak winner about the January 6 rioters’ pardon]
“I pardoned J6 people who were assaulted by our government. They didn’t assault. They were assaulted, and what I did was a great thing for humanity.”
[All these quotes were recorded before the 28 Feb deliberate ambush of President Zelenskyy set by the boned spurred Agent Orange and his hillbilly Iago, reaching the all-times nadir of US international relations…]
“The stream of transparently lawless executive orders — to make it easier to fire federal officials, to freeze spending that the president cannot freeze, to take away a right to citizenship that is written into the Constitution, to name just three — tell us in no uncertain terms that this administration has no intention of respecting the law or the Constitution.” NYT Feb 07
The frantic and unhindered pace at which the Trump regime is drifting away from democratic principles is both shocking despite the low expectations attached to the elected President, and terrifying. The demolition of the rules of law and of the Federal Government services seems to proceed like a bread-knife through butter.
“But it is important to understand that the anti-democratic movement is not monolithic. In fact, it isn’t even coherent. One part of the program answers to the oligarchs (…) Another part of the program is the work of fanatics (…) The Christian nationalist ideologues who supply much of the rest of the ideology of the movement are no less extreme.” NYT Feb 07
Every aspect of society and most of the planet are impacted, from the disengagement from international institutions and treaties, to the utter disregard for nation sovereignty (beside the USA!, of course) and the right of people to choose their own way. Making the Orange Menace turning more and more into the past and current fascist leaders he admires so much. By cancelling one way or another legal counter-powers, sapping all levels of federal administrations and agencies, buying out media or threatening them by a flurry and fury of frivolous suits, releasing and pardoning rioters, forcing entry into and sometimes deleting crucial or confidential data, turning the army into an auxiliary police force, in scapegoating more and more categories.
“The executive order is meant to reverse what it calls an `egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses’ under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It cited the convictions of anti-abortion demonstrators for blocking access to abortion clinics.” NYT Feb 07
The most recent attempt at specifically “protecting” Christian activists (announced during the National Prayer Breakfast!) is yet another illustration of the Trumpian multi-tiered vision of the society, where different groups get different rights, some being “more equal than others”, under the pretence of protecting those groups. This is very similar to the argument used by Modi and the BJP in India.
 | David on Bayesian workflow [book review… |
 | Ewan on Tidy up, Claude! |
 | xi'an on Tidy up, Claude! |
| Ewan on Tidy up, Claude! |
| Ewan on Já við viðræðum. Já við Evrópu… |
