The American electorate made a pretty bad mistake on November 8th, as becomes more and more obvious everyday. In fairness, most of the people who showed up to vote expressed a preference for the person who didn’t win, but that doesn’t change the outcome. And I have to agree with Jonathan Chait that the most troubling aspect here is that a lot of people are going to die, and that a likely source for the bloodshed is forming around Michael Flynn and his national security staff.
Simply put, the outlook doesn’t seem good:
It is almost impossible to overstate the danger to American national security posed by the combination of Flynn and his staff. Because his appointment is not subject to Senate confirmation, and also because it has been overshadowed by the Rex Tillerson nomination and its connection to the fast-moving Russia story, Flynn has receded from the front pages. His appointment is unprecedented, like so many other other things Trump has done — indeed, the endless violations of precedent are what make Trump’s election so surreal, and its dangers difficult to order.
But it is the specific, mutually reinforcing characteristics of Flynn and his staff that invite the most alarm. He is a conspiracy theorist averse to any challenge to his suspicions, surrounding himself with a staff of fellow conspiracy theorists seemingly designed to shut out any challenge to his biases, providing advice to a novice president who is himself a conspiracy theorist. It’s under-informed, overconfident crackpots all the way down. As a comedic script, it would defy plausibility. Except there’s a terrifying chance that a lot of innocent people will die as a result.
If I have any qualm at all about Chait’s piece, it’s that he doesn’t mention that at one time in the relatively recent past Flynn was considered a gifted and visionary intelligence officer. His star was high enough that President Obama made him the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It’s not hard to dig up glowing praise of the guy that dates from before his gig there.
Unfortunately, the record since then is clear, and the guy is a full-on nutter who is staffing up with fellow tinfoil hat travelers. When I saw her name mentioned on Twitter, I thought maybe Trump had offered the job of Press Secretary to Monica Crowley, which was a bad enough thought for me to have. When I realized that she’d been hired to serve as senior director of strategic communications of the National Security Council, I immediately loaded up a relevant video starring Bert the Turtle.
As for Joseph “Keith” Kellogg Jr. serving as the chief of staff for the National Security Council, ask yourself how well he did during the five months he spent in Iraq trying to stand up the Coalition Provisional Authority. If that’s any indication of how well he’ll manage our foreign policy, we might as well move to Mosul or Aleppo.
It’s true that monkeying with Obamacare has the potential to kill thousands of people who would otherwise live. I wouldn’t want to be an asthmatic in Trump’s America, either, and it’s a safe bet that our water and foodstuffs are going to get a major carcinogenic turbo boost.
But the potential for staggering loss of life, both here and abroad, comes from a staff of birther lunatics and incompetents forming around Flynn and not subject to Senate confirmation.
The Electoral College should really pay attention to this situation, because Duck and Cover was no kind of solution in 1952 and it’s no kind of solution now.
And they’re going to see The Big Board.
I have to admit at this point I’m willing to risk the violent reaction to an EC denial of Trump. I’m hopeful that all this talk of Russian subterfuge has undermined the determination of those who would actually take up arms, but I don’t know how much the mainstream media reaches them any more, nor whether they put any store in it. I think it’s true that most Trump voters were anti-Hillary voters or just- shake-things-up-voters, and those won’t be willing to die for the man. It’s difficult for me to imagine someone silly enough to lay down his life for Donald Trump. It’s like sacrificing babies to Bozo the clown. But I know they would not be laying down their lives for Trump, so much as laying them down for their own conception of revolution.
An EC that elected not-Trump is the ultimate confirmation of their existing world view so there is a powerful argument that it’s now or never to fight. Besides, they are far more experienced with guns than the left as a whole. Historically leftist rebellions usually lose and rightwing ones usually win. That and Republicans view of Putin has done nothing but gone up since the election.
But even if it wasn’t fighting you still have chaos. Imagine constant jury nullification of any number of crimes like with Bundy only the FBI is divided openly this time. Imagine 40 million people refusing to pay taxes. Imagine a third of state/federal employees quitting either because they support trump or they think democracy is subverted. In that situation you’d have a system collapse most likely which would probably do a lot of damage too.
I got to say I am sort of reminded of John Titor legend. An internet poster claimed to be a time traveler from a future where a growing urban/rural divide erupted into civil war that only ended when Russia sided with the rurals and some nukes flew. (The poster was a rural so he said that from his point of view Russia was on “their” side.) Of course, in his worldline it began late in the first decade of the century.
Im still not convinced we wouldn’t be better off with a non-traitor and a rebellion than with the traitor.
Was rising oceans driving the city fellers out into the hinterlands?
Yeah, I know. Damned either way. I’ve been one of the ones on this site cautioning against going this route because I can see the potential for chaos. Someone on the right said Trump was like a bad left-wing parody of the right, and he does seem to be trying to live up to that – his ideological lodestar seems to be whatever will piss the liberals off. Which aside from pissing me off is going to lead to some deeply unstable and dangerous governance. Today, Krugman pointed out that Trump would really benefit from another 9/11, and this produces some interesting incentives. I know it’s verboten on the left to think that way, but I’m glad Krugman put it out there.
right now:
We’ve traded in a thoughtful, responsible adult, careful about the ramifications of his words, for a Reality-Denying, all-id, narcissistic, egomaniacal, Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief-elect.
God/FSM help us!
I confess I remained confused by this obsession with being “adult.”
Then imagine 4-y-o (or, equivalently, Trump) performing the task Obama’s engaged in right now.
We desperately needed Obama in 2008, and were lucky to have him as our President these past 8 years. But we needed something different from him these past few months. Maybe we’d still have president-elect Trump, we’ll never know for sure. But I think being above partisan politics in a time of obvious existential threats has put us all in danger.
If Comrade Donny isn’t screaming insults, he’ll simply refuse a conference and hide in the Oval Office, or more likely Trump Tower.
And look what being an adult got us. Dems have total control of 6 states and that is it. Everything Obama did in his 8 years is going to be undone or worse. His entire presidency is going to be a footnote.
To whatever extent that proves correct, . . .
. . . shame on “us”.
This. Any time we start laying all the responsibility on one hero figure and take none of it for ourselves, that’s when we’re ripening ourselves for fascism.
We were hoping for another FDR. We got no where near that. HAMP didn’t have to be a disaster. And no bankers went to jail. And then there is the state of the Democratic Party itself. Did someone hold a gun to Obama’s head and force him to appoint DWS as head of the DNC?
The ones with leverage in 2008 were Hillary and Bill Clinton. Pretty nice campaign you’ve got going there. A pity if you lost it.
Other commenters correct me if I’m wrong, Obama put a lot into his two presidential campaigns, and they were masterful. However, I recall nothing being done on the state level to help maintain and build the state parties or presence in state legislatures/governorships. He got rid of Howard Dean right away, letting go an effective DNC chair for several in a row (Kaine, DWS) who did nothing for the party. Hence critical congressional losses in 2010 and 2014.
He also essentially turned it over to Hillary for her 2016 run. Party apparatchiks were campaigning for her well after she had a primary challenger and long before the primaries and caucuses took place.
concentration camps, attempted to stack the Supreme Court, and kept the military segregated.
See how easy this silly and counter-productive game is, with its utter lack of: historical/political/contextual perspective, sense of proportion, recognition of constraints and available alternative options, realistic expectations re: fallible (i.e., all) humans, etc., etc., etc.?
There is a reason I have the quote I use in my signature. There is a level of individual agency that each of us needs to acknowledge. There are no innocent bystanders, really. There are some whose hands are dirtier than others. And no – there are no heroes who are coming by at the last minute to save us. We must do that on our own. How we choose to save ourselves remains to be seen.
Very true. I definitely see Obama as more responsible. He has more power for good or ill, mistake or success. If the party ends up in a ditch after 8 years of his leadership it beggars imagination to excuse him from it. Is he the only one? No. I share some blame though less than DWS or Kaine or anyone named Clinton.
I’m sure whatever role Obama may have played in the decline of the Democratic Party will be examined by historians and political scientists for years and decades to come. He always struck me as a moderate person both ideologically and temperamentally. The latter I have no quarrel with. The former led to some mistakes when it came to pushing economic stimulus early on. Of course there is also the responsibility of the GOP leadership to refuse to govern nationally for the entire 8 years, as well as the race baiting that went on during his entire administration. And let us not forget that there is a broader context of right-wing propaganda (some of which was dressed up as anti-war) that had been on-going well before Obama was even mentioned as a candidate. Each of us made choices about what party and candidates to support at the time. Each of us will be making those choices again in two years and again in four years. Each of us will also have some choices more immediately to make at a local level. I plan on making quite a few choices that I hope at least have some progressive impact on my sometimes hopeless corner of this aching planet. I will also watch to see what comes of the DNC leadership and what candidates get fielded going forward. I hope Sanders does not run again largely because of age – but do hope that some Sanders inspired candidates get some serious consideration. I do hope that the Democratic Party leadership remembers not to normalize Comrade Donny and do hope that the party remembers to renew its commitment to both social and economic justice, and delivers the goods where it still has pull to show proof of concept nationally. I want to be able to make calls, put out signs, and so on again with some real gusto.
I don’t disagree with that but you go vote with the electorate and the species you have. Not the one you should have.
I am no fan of Islam but keeping 1 billion people on the sidelines instead of against you is just common fucking sense. That is completely worth not saying “radical Islam.” Even Bush understood this.
While I can understand there not being anyone within Trump’s inner circle with the ability to see the danger of Flynn as NSC director, its unnerving that the GOP as a party is not concerned enough about the dangers to put the brakes on and demand that Flynn not be put in this role.
I believe the republicans have entered into a Faustian bargain with Trump: yes, we know you’re crazy and unfit, but we’ll tolerate it as long as you sign off on our long held far right wet dreams — dismantle the ACA, medicare and social security, destroy the departments of Education, Energy and the EPA, and let us complete the destruction of the economy and environment as we tax the hell out of the middle class and deliver every remaining last cent of government revenue we can cull to the wealthy.
The problem here is not so much Trump as it is a GOP that is so cold blooded ideological and power mad that it has no interest in checking Trump, even as he poses a clear and present danger to the nation.
And what the electors of the EC will have to ask themselves is, do we find the courage to do what is incumbent upon us as an institution, or be prepared as individuals to accept responsibility if the worst happens?
Love the Faustian Bargain theme.
In a literate nation, one with a strong opposition party, it would be an excellent rhetorical device by which to flog Trumper the Unqualified, as well as every elected Repub who sold his soul. Instead we have to hear babble that one is “keeping an open mind!”—about Mephistopheles!
That is the theme of Trump’s whole administration, and explains his otherwise inexplicable appointments. Everyone is a grifter, everyone gets a piece of the pie. Nobody talks.
The republicans in congress are in on the grift. They finally get to gut the laws they hate. The republicans on the Supreme Court get to over turn what they hate. That’s their pay off.
Everyone becomes invested.
See No Evil
Hear No Evil
Speak No Evil
.
It’s even simpler than that. If you’re a sociopath with an ideological mission to destroy all faith in government, having a raving incompetent in charge of it all is a win-win. The survivors – and you’ll survive, of course, or at least you think you will, because you’re inherently good, not like Them – the survivors will never trust government again.
If there is ever a coordinated terrorist attack at multiple Trump properties across the globe, (and I pray to the FSM this never happens); I expect a staid and thoughtful response to all Muslim’s in this country from the incoming administration.
Xmas dinner tonight with a bunch of acquaintances who think Trump is the bees knees. Wife is already yelling at me to watch my manners. To date, dealing with Trump fans who have long known me to be a libtard – they puff up, have exaggerated grins, and shout at me – things like, “say Hello to President Trump”, and related smart stuff, over and over. Just the way I got in their faces when Obama won twice. (Course not.) I hate my life and my country right now.
Cultivate new friends and acquaintances. I’m serious. We have to preserve our own mental health and surround ourselves with people who don’t raise our blood pressure or trigger depression.
Heart of the Rockies has it right. I don’t know your situation any more than you would know mine. But I do know that to any extent that it is feasible, there is no crime in cutting acquaintances out of your life who are toxic to you. It is as simple as deciding that they are dead to you. If you have to see them at work, well, that happens. We can always count our lucky stars that once the shift ends, our contact to the assholes in our lives can also end. Are there people in your community who share your values? Are there events that they go to? Are you willing to give those events a try? I really do think you’ll find the experience of doing so very freeing. I know I have.
I can understand that impulse. For most of my life I worked in a very red state with very conservative people and I tended to keep my distance to preserve my sanity and job. But in the end that is just duck and cover and it won’t save us. The future will not get any better by ignoring the assholes.
What one does in his/her personal life is different than one’s approach in the wider, more public world. We have to protect our own state of mind and health to be effective.
That was really my point. We can’t avoid nor ignore what is going on when we are out in public. We do have to work, go shopping, travel, and so on and those activities will bring us into contact with many. But we do need to have some place or set of places where we can find commonality. In my community, I meet regularly with a group of atheists, providing a sense of fellowship as well as periodic opportunities to engage in charitable activities. I am fortunate that for the most part I and my relatives are on a similar wavelength politically. I have cultivated a set of friends who are generally decent people and who share a few common interests outside of the internet tubes (which is something I would highly recommend – turning off the computer and cultivating friendships with people who might truly matter). That is something that makes life considerably more bearable for me. Each person’s mileage will differ.
Guessing you are a relatively newer member to the pond. Someone should say welcome aboard. Wish I could say this was a friendly place. Right now, not so much. If you look around though, I think you’ll find some folks who empathize. And do keep in mind what a couple of us are saying as far as how to navigate the next few years. Hang in there.
I don’t plan to ever vote again. It is a pointless exercise.
I hope you’ll reconsider.
Remember, reprehensible though you may find them, they vote.
Not, at the very minimum, canceling one of them out, is surrender. Surrender to very bad stuff.
Also too, leaves you without standing to bitch about the outcome.
I’ll uprate this on general principle. You expressed a statement of frustration, and as far as I can tell that does not really violate the blog’s rules or norms. Since I am not familiar with you nor have I interacted with you before, I will make no assumptions about your age, life experience and so on. I can speak of mine. There have been plenty of times, primarily when I was a good two or three decades younger, where an election or an action did not go as hoped for, and I wanted to just pack it in and say “fuck it.” Thankfully, I had a few wiser mentors who persuaded me to rethink that perspective. I’d invite you to do the same, after taking some time to reflect. We all can use that.
In the meantime, I do hope you are doing something to benefit your local community. There are always elections held – sometimes during off years or off months (depending on where one lives) – for seats on school boards, city or town council, county commissioners, as well as seats on quorum courts, and so on. Those elected offices have a great deal of immediate impact on our lives, and can serve as a good starting point for grooming progressive candidates who could run for higher offices later. The gratification might not be immediate, but if you think about the long game, that’s the way to do it. And one thing to look at – does your county have an active Democratic Party headquarters? If not, is there a way to get in touch with the state DP and get one set up? In many of the deep red states in the South (with which I am most familiar), many counties have not had a DP headquarters in ages. Before term limits, it seemed not to matter much. But, when it became obvious that there was no young up and coming talent when the old guard were term limited out of office, the DP fell like a house of cards. Rebuilding in my state will likely be a decades long process – and it will start by getting those county offices going, and getting people elected to quorum court, school boards, and so on.
I know – a lot to chew on. Give it some thought. It’s okay to be frustrated. Chances are you are not alone.
Flynn may be the craziest of a bad lot, but it would be exceptionally surprising if even 5% of Rube Nation ever learns who he is. He also demonstrates that thinking the generals (and ex-generals) will save us from the American Madman is a pipe dream. A nuclear strike is a distinct possibility in the looming Age of Incompetence.
Nutjob Flynn is largely innoculated from criticism because of Obama’s mysterious error in appointing him to head DIA, and it’s not like this is the kind of story the useless corporate media would ever cover, let alone delve into. Maybe the NYT will have a long story, to be read by no one.
Presumably the names, addresses and votes of electors are memorialized in some official US archive. I guess I always presumed so. I wonder if websites will be created with names, photos, state represented and who each elector voted for in 2016, so that there is an easy way to find evidence of their official actions on the internet?
This time around, with the American Madman as the projected winner, the “honor” of the position of elector may have to take a backseat to a very public record of accountability for having personally brought on the coming calamities of TrumpAmerica—since under our failed constitution electors alone had the right to say “no way”…
Putin’s orders are to launch the New Crusade.
I agree with you totally. The GOP would be crying 2nd Amendment rights about now if it had been Hillary that won via all of the Russian assistance. But Democratic Party Members are suppose to just allow all of this to blow by.
I am glad that my father a POW of the Japanese from WW2 and my brother that served in the 101st Airborne Division are dead. They would feel like I do that my service was wasted. But I will wait until the US Constitution is violated and then I will honor my oath to protect it, if and when called upon to do so. There are many more just like me that swore the oath to Protect the U S Constitution from enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC.
I don’t see how Trump’s foreign policy team makes a decision on anything. Trump is preserving so much freedom of decision between the likes of Tillerson, Flynn, and Mattis that he will be unpredictable. It is this unpredictability more than aggression that will make him dangerous. Nations will not know whether they can trust him ever as an ally.
And when they look at worst case scenarios and the the military capabilities of the wanna-be-again sole superpower, we are in a wholly different international system in which institutions cannot brake runaway bad relationships.
Herman Kahn tried to shake up reality about nuclear war being more big boom-boom by rhetorically asking, “Will the survivors envy the dead?”
I wonder how many of the chest-beaters have wondered that.
I seriously doubt it has crossed their addled minds.
Lots of people are dying today and have been dying for the last 15 years… and longer.
I suppose trump cound do worse than than the body count accumulated by Obama and Bush… time will tell. Clinton was telling us she was willing to wrack up some impressive numbers too.
Someone should do a chart.
So certain liberal pundits argue for overturning the will of the people on the grounds that Trump constitutes a unique and present danger. And spare me the popular vote argument – it is not like both campaigns were somehow ignorant about how Presidents are elected.
The same pundits who talked about Nixon like landslides, and who wrote with great certainty that Trump would never win.
As if this was not enough to signify how little they actually understand the state of politics, they now indulge in absurd fantasies which mostly show the contempt they have for the judgement of the citizenry.
Ironically it was the failure to hear the pain in the working class that brought about this catastrophic result to begin with.
There was a time to fight. It was before November 8th. Those of us who did, who did the work aren’t inclined to indulge the fantasy. Neither Clinton nor Obama will indulge it.
And for the rest – who write angry rants on the web but didn’t help one bit – what are you complaining about?
Where the fuck were you before November 8th.
I can’t let “will of the people” slide by pretending an Electoral College win with a 3% deficit in the popular vote constitutes a mandate. It doesn’t.
What our cleverly-crafted safety-rigged Constitutional provisions got us in fact is a split decision.
It doesn’t matter what the campaigns knew; it doesn’t matter who “won” or who “lost” in terms of the conventional operation of the electoral college.
The electoral college throwing the decision to the House of Representatives is hardly unusual. To do so because some electors pledged to states that went for Trump after all sorts of voter suppression shenanigans is not disrupting democracy.
That is a wholly different issue from the fact that the donkey is dead and the same old gang will not do anything other than prop him up like taxidermy.
There might be some Republicans stirring this shit too, you know.
Trump does pose a unique and present danger because he is indecisive, unserious, and thin-skinned. And self-aggrandizing. And the GOP at the moment think they finally have the permanent Republican majority juggernaut. Just look at what those thoughts did in North Carolina.
I believe a state governor and a state attorney general in the wipeout that most Trump states experienced is a relatively modest showing for four years of organizing work by a movement outside the Democratic Party of North Carolina. My anger has to do with where was the North Carolina Democratic Party, which according to the Clinton campaign was running an all 100-county unity campaign. Was it they failed to actually do that campaign intensely in 100 counties, or that the did the campaign intensely and got dragged down by Clinton being toxic? Cooper and Stein both had their own campaigns as well and got independent support that did not go through the unity campaign.
I hope I never have to listen to a Democrat parading “practicality” when it is a fundamental failure to persuade the people whose interest the candidate is actually championing. Or to think that half-measures are easier to get a mandate for than full measures.