The Resistance is alive and well and swinging. Not saying anything is going to be easy for the next two years. No, it will be hard. Excruciating, in fact. MAGAs believe that they’ve done something wonderful here. They have their cult leader back in power. Good. Let them see what real inflation looks like. Let them see what it’s like when they find out what a tariff really is and how it actually works, and no, it is not a foreign country writing yuge checks to the treasury. Let them see what happens when the school lunches are gone, Medicaid is gone and food stamps are gone. A slim majority of this country want anarchy over sanity, let’s let them have the fruit of their labors. Meanwhile, here’s something to comfort the rest of us.
Everyone knows who is running this show. pic.twitter.com/9azESXwTYO
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) November 19, 2024
Elon is swiftly wearing out his welcome at Mar-a-Lago. I would give this relationship maybe until December to tank. And yes, Elon and Vivek are going to have their “advisory” department and use it to push DOGE bitcoin and anarchy. A lot of dictators get into power because they vow to make the trains run on time. The trains may not run at all with this klown show at the helm. And MAGAs will be at the effect of this. We are one nation, indivisible, and we may be two cultures, but those cultures are commingled and contiguous. What affects one segment of the population affects us all. MAGA will soon find out the Pandora’s box it has opened and what will fly out.
Maybe this is the way it has to happen. Anti-Trumpers are said to be the lunatics, the ones who don’t see how wonderful the Mango Messiah is. So now the Messiah is back in power and let’s see what he does with it. Last time he was in power a global pandemic wiped out 1.1 million Americans and the rest of us were panic buying and wiping our butts with coffee filters. Let’s see what happens in the next two years.
Because it is entirely possible, realistic in fact, that the pendulum of government will swing back and the second Trump administration can be stonewalled as of 2026. So have at it, Donald and cohorts, take the wrecking ball and swing away. You’ve got two years to destroy our way of life, burn it all down.
Unfortunately, it is an axiom that it’s easier and faster to destroy than to build. So I cringe anticipatorily in advance of the coming onslaught of chaos. And make no mistake, Trump’s nominees are agents of chaos and that’s by design.
Matt Gaetz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard – they are not simply “combative loyalists” or even “firebrands”. They are chaos agents, wildly unqualified, wholly unfit. They are entirely off the scale of previous cabinet appointees. Two of them are full-blown conspiracy theorists. None have management experience. Three of them are sexual predators.
What they are is intentionally norm-shattering picks intended to destabilize the government and pave the way for Donald Trump to seek retribution against his enemies. They are a wrecking crew.
The best shorthand phrase was coined by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an expert in authoritarianism, in a recent interview on MSNBC.
It’s not just that these people are not qualified enough. It’s not just that they’re totally unqualified. It’s that they are anti-qualified. They are qualified to do the opposite of the thing that they are supposed to do.
That these nominees are anti-qualified is what reporters need to explain every time they are mentioned – even if they don’t use that specific term.
What any shorthand description of these nominees needs to include is something reporters often try to avoid: an explanation of intent. These are not simply egregious and extremist choices, they are specifically intended to stop their agencies from doing what they’re supposed to do and instead bend them to Trump’s will.
And although the ongoing confirmation battles will make great horserace stories, political reporters must not let the day-to-day drama distract from how spectacularly dangerous these nominees are, and how Trump intends to use them to destroy their agencies.
Some of the reporting has been horrible. For instance, in a New York Times article headlined “Trump Takes On the Pillars of the ‘Deep State’,” star reporter Peter Baker grotesquely normalized Trump’s outrageous nominations as “taking on” institutions “that most frustrated his political ambition.” He euphemized the nominees as “firebrand allies with unconventional résumés”. Insufficient!
Washington Post reporter Colby Itkowitz lamely described the nominees as “polarizing figures,” including “Gaetz, an inflammatory Trump loyalist.” Insufficient!
And headlines really matter. A news analysis in the New York Times by Katie Rogers got a flattering headline — “Gaetz, Gabbard and Hegseth: Trump’s Picks Are a Show of Force” — when it should have better reflected the conclusion Rogers drew in the text, namely that Trump’s “promise to build a presidential administration fueled by retribution quickly came into view.”
Associated Press coverage of the nominees has been generally poor, as exemplified by this overview by Thomas Beaumont. Gaetz is simply described as “a loyalist”; Gabbard as “another example of Trump prizing loyalty over experience”. Hegseth “lacks senior military and national security experience.” The negative characterizations of Kennedy are attributed to “people who are concerned about his record of spreading unfounded fears about vaccines.” Insufficient!
The abnormal is being reported as normal by the legacy media. Right-wing media is churning out propaganda. I can only hope that truth can filter out via left-wing blogs and podcasts, and via the courage of some mainstream reporters. We did see courage in the last few days of the campaign when journalists opposed owners’ desires to not publish a Harris endorsement. Although, granted, the endorsement might not have changed a single vote, at least the gesture of allowing an editorial board to speak the truth is a necessary exercise of free political speech.
Again, the only solution we have is to get back the chambers of Congress, one or both, in 2026. All efforts need to be tailored to that goal. We have been here before. We can fight our way out of it again. Evil never dies, it just reinvents itself.
Never use all caps. I didn’t read Trump crap and don’t like the method.
Then start your own site and use the methods that you want to use.
To the best of my recall, this site has ALWAYS put block-quote material in all-caps. Certain quoted material is subject to copyright regulation as opposed to unlimited fair-use and even though most writers on PZ do offer links to the original material, using all-caps is an easier way to show what’s been quoted as opposed to original material for the article. And having to follow strict “quotation mark” guidelines with extensively-quoted material is a pain (mainly, you have to apply “open” quotation marks at the start of each new “paragraph”) and is VERY easy to forget. But, forget at even one point, and the PZ writer can find themselves on the business end of a copyright violation.
I’ve cancelled all my subscriptions to all MSM I had. Shame on you NYT ,Wapo and CBS..Margret. You are the absolute cause of the hell we must endure. Shame,shame,shame.
For the same washing of a tyrant.
Give me liberty or give me death.