Cromwell

Trump and the MSM are in what amounts to a co-dependent relationship.  On the one hand, Trump craves adulation, and the MSM profit financially from the unusual public interest he creates;  on the other hand, Trump can’t tolerate criticism, and the MSM want to avoid being used to chip away at our liberal democratic system.  The two parties consequently both need and despise each other.

If Trump were a conventional politician, he would try to curry favor with the MSM in order to win support from moderate elements of both parties. Unfortunately, he views himself as being the leader of his base, not the entire nation, and his base considers the MSM to be, in his words, the “enemy of the people.”  If you start from that obviously flawed premise, it makes perfect sense him to treat the MSM as the real opposition.

And so, if you thought the relationship between Nixon and the media was the worst one imaginable, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

 

The thing about Trump’s dystopian imagery is that it has a sell-by date;  if in 2019, for example, he is still saying that crime is out of control, it will be perceived as his fault.  Anyone who is foolish enough to buy into the imagery should logically be looking for a better Batman at that point.

One potential exception is  foreign terrorism, since its origins, by definition, lie outside our boundaries;  Trump can, therefore, plausibly disclaim responsibility for any events that occur between now and the end of his term and argue that only he is tough enough to deal with our adversaries.  Keep your eye on this issue;  it may represent the key to his re-election prospects in 2020.

There were, of course, flashes of Trumpian weirdness:  particularly the parts about illegal immigrants rampaging around the country committing crimes.  The calls for unity and attempts at uplift sounded forced and fake.  He lied about saving jobs and increased defense appropriations from NATO members.  His “bipartisan” infrastructure plan was the same old proposal that only an oligarch could love.  He didn’t give any guidance to Congress on the critical issues in the Obamacare replacement bill.  The threat to stop supporting our allies was there–it was just implicit.  In short, it was a collection of his greatest hits.

And yet, when he uses a teleprompter and a speechwriter, he sounds almost, well, normal.  His narcissism and Dark Knight imagery remained in check.  He didn’t offend any of our allies.  Large portions of the speech could have been delivered by George W. Bush.

In a word, it was boring.  Think of “The Celebrity Apprentice” hosted by the Arnold rather than the Donald.  Sad!

The woman named Betsy DeVos.

She’s got billions, but Trump’s now her boss.

Her penchant for gaffes

Always good for a laugh.

She was born soaking in stupid sauce.

 

The human gaffe machine strikes again!  And just think:  it was counted a “victory” when her nomination was jammed through the Senate.  It’s right up there with “winning at trade.”

In his developer days, Trump used to leak details of his personal and business dealings to the press using personas such as “John Barron” and “John Miller.”  As a candidate for President, he profited mightily from disclosures from WikiLeaks. As President, however, he is outraged by leaks within his administration, and he is determined to stamp them out.  Will he succeed?

Leaks are inevitable when:  (a) you run as a chaos candidate, but have no idea how to bring about change; (b) you don’t fill the positions within your government; (c) your administration is ideologically incoherent; and (d) no one knows who is in charge on a day-to-day basis.  And so, the leaks are likely to continue regardless of his efforts to stamp them out unless or until (probably the latter) the new administration develops a sense of direction.

There is no doubt about it:  the movie of which “La La Land” reminds me the most is “An American in Paris.”  I’m sure the concept behind the film was to find an undiscovered niche by creating an unfashionably retro vision of American life–think of a Beach Boys records made in 2016.  The result of the election, however, put the movie in a completely new, and more compelling, context.

Everything about “La La Land” is a counterpoint to Trump’s “American carnage” speech.  Set in a carefully edited and timeless version of the bluest of blue states (no crime or skyscrapers allowed), the movie practically screams that the American dream is, if difficult to attain, most definitely alive and well.  It is bright, sunny, and soulful–not the ash heap of Trump’s fevered imagination.

Ironies in this exist at several levels.  Hollywood movies are made by “rootless cosmopolitans,” but they are loved no less by red Americans.  There is no red American Hollywood any more than there is a red American Broadway. Intellectual property is one of our greatest exports, so protecting it has for years been one of the principal objectives of our trade negotiators;  the Trump Administration, regardless of its opinions of Hollywood, will be driven to do the same if it really wants to “win at trade”.  And what is one of our other principal exports?  Agricultural products from red America.  It all fits together; red and blue culture have common elements, and both sides lose from a trade war.

OSCARS SO CHAOTIC!  THANK GOD I DON’T RUN MY GOVERNMENT THAT WAY!

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, West Bank blues.

You have to be aware of it; it’s all over the news.

Sometimes you think you’re winning, but it turns out that you lose.

The Trumpster’s made an offer I don’t think I can refuse.

 

Obama’s crowd is dead to me; I’m glad to see them go.

But the right is jumping on my back to annex land, you know.

I made my name by balancing–by lurching to and fro.

Jerusalem’s a powder keg; it won’t take much to blow.

 

I’ve got the blues.

The annexation blues.

I used to blame Obama

Now I don’t have an excuse.

It seems that things are going well.

The future’s very bright.

But it only takes a single spark

And we’ll all say good night.

The EPA head named Scott Pruitt.

In picking him, Trump really blew it.

He’ll turn the air black.

And clean water we’ll lack.

The left will then claim that they knew it.

While, as noted in a previous post, Israel resembles South Africa in several respects, it also shares similarities with a more familiar country:  the US.  We, too, are a nation of settlers who overwhelmed the indigenous population.  The essential differences between the US and the other two countries are demographics (unlike Israel and South Africa, the indigenous population was too small to resist the settlers in the long run) and timing (international norms regarding ethnic cleansing didn’t exist in the 18th and 19th centuries).

The evolving Israeli vision for the Palestinians looks a lot like a South African homeland under apartheid, but it looks like a reservation, too.  And if that analogy makes people feel uncomfortable, well, if the shoe fits . . .

CROOKED MEDIA SELL FAKE NEWS AND ARE ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE. FORTUNATELY, I’M WAY TOO PRESIDENTIAL TO LET THEM GET UNDER MY SKIN!

The head diplomat known as Rex.

The national muscles he’ll flex.

He’ll clean up the mess

But with just mixed success

Who knows what the Don will do next?

And so the clean-up crew has arrived south of the border.  The job was onerous enough in Europe, but imagine trying to persuade the Mexican public that Trump’s statements over the last two years about illegal immigrants and the wall should be taken seriously, but not literally, when all of the recent evidence is to the contrary.

I wasn’t kidding when I said he had the worst job in America.

The case for a “Christian” Declaration of Independence revolves around the reference to a “Creator” who is the source of our natural rights.  Without the “Creator,” it wouldn’t make sense to identify a natural condition as a “right.”  And so, as the story goes, the drafters of the Declaration must have been Christians.

Well, not really.  The use of the term”Creator” rather than just “God” is important here.  It would have been the most obvious thing in the world to say “God” rather than “Creator,” so the choice of wording was intended to be meaningful.

“Creator” is completely consistent with Deism, and there is plenty of collateral evidence to show that many of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, Deists, not orthodox Christians.  It is, therefore, a clear mistake to attribute an orthodox Christian slant to the Declaration.

 

Paul Krugman once made the observation that Democrats were ambivalent about immigration, but Republicans were schizophrenic;  the reactionary base hated it, but the business community depended on it and supported it.  He was right.

So, consider the position of the American farmer on the Trump Administration. On the one hand, he looks forward to less regulation, fewer taxes, and protection for Christians;  on the other, he would be the big loser in any trade war, and Trump’s crusade against illegal immigrants may well deprive him of his workforce.

Trump won the agricultural states, which of course suggests that his views on trade and immigration were taken “seriously but not literally” by farmers.  What will they do now that he is actually turning his views into policy?  It will be very interesting to watch.