On the one hand, who cares what Joe Scarborough has to say? On the other hand, he was so alarmed and appalled by Trump aide Stephen Miller’s performance on the Sunday morning talk shows that he’s talking about impeachment.
Scarborough said the White House is “embarrassing themselves by putting this guy up,” describing Miller’s “performance” as “horrendous” and “an embarrassment.” “That is the talk of a dictator, not somebody who is president of the United States,” Scarborough said. If Trump’s administration were to actually act based on Miller’s suggestions, “we could have impeachment proceedings within the next six months,” Scarborough warned.
Meanwhile, Univision has tracked down some of Miller’s childhood friends, and the stories are a little unsettling. For example:
Stephen Miller and Jason Islas grew up in sunny southern California in the late 1990s, united by their passion for Star Trek. But Miller stopped talking to his friend as they prepared to jump from Lincoln Middle School to Santa Monica High School.
Miller only returned Islas’ phone calls at the end of the summer, to coldly explain the reason for his estrangement. “I can’t be your friend any more because you are Latino,” Islas remembers him saying.
That’s cold. And it only got worse.
Univision Noticias spoke with several classmates who said Miller had few friends, none of them non-white. They said he used to make fun of the children of Latino and Asian immigrants who did not speak English well.
Early on, Miller began to write opinion columns in conservative blogs, the local press and the high school’s own newspaper, The Samohi. He also contributed at times to the national radio show of Larry Elder, a conservative African American, and once invited him to speak at the school.
Displaying his hostility toward minorities, Miller complained to school administrators about announcements in Spanish and festivals that celebrated diversity.
In his third year at the school, the 16-year-old Miller wrote a letter to The Lookout, a local publication, about his negative impression of Hispanic students and the use of Spanish in the United States.
“When I entered Santa Monica High School in ninth grade, I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills. There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school,” Miller wrote.
“Even so, pursuant to district policy, all announcements are written in both Spanish and English. By providing a crutch now, we are preventing Spanish speakers from standing on their own,” he added. “As politically correct as this may be, it demeans the immigrant population as incompetent, and makes a mockery of the American ideal of personal accomplishment.”
In that article, Miller also complained about his school’s celebration of Cinco de Mayo, the existence of a gay club and a visit by a Muslim leader.
I guess it’s not surprising that Miller wound up working for Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama.
Star Trek is notable for its vision of a future in which people from different countries and racial backgrounds work together harmoniously. It’s a shame that Miller couldn’t embrace that vision or continue his friendship with Jason Islas.
Now he’s the right-hand of the president of the United States and he’s promising us that their “opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”
Is it a surprise that the way Miller and Trump want to protect our country is to keep us safe from Muslims and Latinos?
My guess is that Miller’s attraction to the original Star Trek had more to do with a philosophical kinship with the Klingons than it did to the Starfleet philosophy of Captain Kirk and his crew.
Gene Roddenberry and his team seemed to have bit of prescience concerning today’s rise of Trumpism.
Or else Miller wasn’t bright enough even to catch one of the main themes of the series, since of course the Klingon Empire ultimately becomes a staunch ally of the Federation. Or perhaps he now thinks his liking of Star Trek a youthful indiscretion, haha.
In any event, a disgrace to Trekkies everywhere…
Like Christie’s love for Springsteen.
Yes, bravo, more on this horrible turd!
Another shadow racist hiding under the “conservative” rock. Miller strikes one as an astonishingly mediocre figure, naturally besotted by rightwing conspiracy theories, advanced far beyond his merit, and explainable only in the most baldly ideological terms.
Now co-directing the policy of the executive branch of government. With the useless corporate media acting like they are not even aware he exists.
American “conservatism”: a movement of the vile, by the vile, for the vile.
Maybe he rooted for the Klingon’s.
As of 2000, the City of Santa Monica was 78% white and only 13.4% of Hispanic or Latino. (The school district include Malibu which is even whiter.) Above the median in income and education.
Just another garden variety CPAC jerk that believes he’s cool.
Looks like his high school was somewhere in the mid-30s in terms of pct of Hispanic students back then. And it is located in the southern half of the city around Pico Blvd where the Hispanic population is heaviest.
Many of the higher-income whites living in the northern half of the city seek to enroll their kids in private schools, of which there seem to be plenty. Probably true for Asian families too.
For me, this was the jerkiest thing he did in high school:
Prepping for Exxon CEO. But not smart enough to rise through those ranks; so, he latched onto rightwing politics — right in there with Palin.
Stephen Miller came across as angry and petulant in the interviews yesterday. Like his boss, he’s thin-skinned and unreasonable, and unable to go off script and speak intelligently. He is glued to the teleprompter.
This becomes worrisome because Trump is surrounded by sycophants who provide an echo chamber for racism, bigotry, and hate. The comments made by Miller are all talking points in this new administration and they’re dangerous. Miller’s youth sounds like the stories of young kids who torture animals and grow up to become violent abusers. This is not the stuff of statesmanship and cooperation. It’s the stuff of nightmares.
Every day someone emerges from the hell that is Trump’s team. It didn’t seem possible that it could be this bad. But it seems worse than we imagined.
“A people hire A people, and B people hire C people”
Trump is showing who C people hire – F’s.
I will never forgive some so-called progressives for helping give us Trump. They bashed her as bad or worse than the Right throughout the campaign. And then many either voted 3rd party or didn’t vote at all instead of voting for the only person capable of beating Trump.
It’s the same group that gave us Bush in 2000. Only this time, it’ going to be 1000 times worse. What the hell is wring with these Lefties? Don’t they ever learn?
Look around at some of the commenters here….
No, they will never learn. And there is nothing ‘leftie’ about them.
Thy do love their Putin, though.
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That’s the thing that is so crazy that all I can do is laugh any more. There is a contingent of self-described leftists – some adhering to some form of Marxism (at least so they say) and some who adhere to other allegedly “leftist” parties or ideologies who have it in their heads that if the US is taking any of a number of given actions that it is an example of neoliberal (or neoconservative – these folks often have a hard time deciding which pejorative they wish to use, nor could be bothered to define said pejoratives) imperialism gone too far. But if a right-wing Russian ex-KGB agent turned dictator of a right-wing capitalist regime takes similar actions, it’s perfectly okay.
Made that point to one of the tankies on Tumblr a couple months back that if Marx or Engels were alive today they’d be freaking at what was being advocated in their name. The cognitive dissonance was too much for the poor tankie. I actually got a chapter and verse “justification” for supporting Putin as anti-imperialist and a good friend of Marxists everywhere or some such nonsense. Was like having an exchange with someone in a cult. Not worth the bother.
You just don’t understand the generational part of it……those of us who were around when Kennedy was POTUS realize it started with him. Once he stepped over the line of neoliberalism in Vietnam it removed America’s ability to ever claim a moral superiority. Then LBJ sold out to the southern democrats, making everything that came after that ‘tainted fruit’.
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LOL. That reads like something I might see in Tumblr, or, sadly, too many political blogs right now.
It looks like Flynn has resigned.
Best not use it as a weapon against Trump…it won’t be good optics.
Talk about his taxes instead.
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Just noticed that news about Flynn. Doubt it does anything to alleviate Der Gropenfuhrer’s Putin/national security problems. The rest of these goons strike me as compromised as well. But at least we were spared Clinton. Between emails and Bengazi, she was Satan personified. Couldn’t have that.
Watching the Putinistas repeatedly get their dicks stuck in the ceiling fan WRT the Trump / Russian hacking nexus has been a comedy goldmine.
It didn’t happen! Ok, it happened but it wasn’t Russia! Ok, it was Russia but it had nothing to do with Trump! Ok, it was coordinated with Trump but nobody cares! Ok, people care but it’s still a distraction from the real problems and you just want to start a war with Russia so we need to shut up about it!
Better start a new diary. This circle won’t jerk itself.
Yeah, people who keep trying to drive a wedge in the left are pretty horrible.
Interesting that Miller passed up the opportunity to learn Spanish. Or that the school allowed the Anglophones the crutch of not having to learn a second language so that when they got to high school they were proficient.
The go-to guy used to be Friedrich Hayek.
The current go-to guy appears to be Carl Schmitt.
The schools that educated these guys, including Trump, should start figuring out where they failed. University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Duke University (where he knew Richard Spencer), and Harvard Business School.
And when you discover that Stephen Miller is a protege of David Horowitz, the Red Diaper Baby with parent issues, a lot of the nonsense becomes clear.
I am amazed on this one at how quickly Wikipedia catches up with events with a entry. The research on Miller today is much fuller than two days ago.
What makes you think that those educational institutions view people like this as failures? Graduates that succeed in any endeavor is what they sell today. Otherwise, young people would put their four years and $100,000 to some other use.
Thank you for reminding me of Clark Kerr’s California revolution—the multiversity.
My comment was pointing out that these weren’t exactly Regent University grads or Ole Miss bigots. And that they still seek the authority of European intellectual kulchur with references to folks like Carl Schmitt.
Hayek, Schmitt are more like fetishes — and students don’t actually read what they wrote. The “Chicago Boys” have been a major presence at major universities since at least 1980. They read excerpts from them, but mostly listen to lectures from the promoters of the faith.
There was an apt political cartoon from the mid-1980s (and which I’ve not been able to find). A classroom with a professor at the blackboard (probably with recognizable production or supply/demand curves on it). Two guys in the back of the classroom and one leaned towards the other and said, “He’s talking about making things. I don’t want to make things, I want to make money.”
That’s very good. Hayek, Schmitt, and Rand — and even on the left,Chomsky and Nader, do function for a lot of people like fetishes. Magical truth.
Interesting Gordon Gecko-like cartoon validating the experience of the aficionados of Michael Korda and Robert J. Ringer in the hinge to the 1980s.
I’ve read the term “secular religion” occasionally to describe what you mention here. Hobsbawm, near the latter years of his life, used the term to characterize what became of many Marxist factions, and it is a fair characterization. Would fit with any of the above mentioned authors and public figures as well. Their work is barely read (and to the extent it is read, poorly understood), but rather taken on faith by their respective flocks.
Had a psych professor that once mentioned that Freud “used books” were always in pristine condition. The pages often not even slit. Jung was a much better writer, but I’m not sure even practicing Jungian psychologists read him as many list their typology as “thinking-feeling” which doesn’t exist in Jung’s typology.
A friend carted around “A Brief History of Time” in the back seat of her car for about a year. I finally told her that she wasn’t going to absorb it through osmosis. Better to read it and absorb a smidgen.
Considered including Rand, but people actually read her crap.
Chomsky is great at modeling logical thinking. But Nader probably belongs in that fetish category.
The fetish novel at one time was The Recognitions. I may not be able to read Joyce or Pynchon, but somehow managed to read everything Gaddis wrote.
Saw a meme on social media about this guy that basically said of Miller: “The guy in history class who says, actually the civil war was about agriculture”
Seems to sum up the tip of the ice berg on this guy
Trump surrounds himself with lavish gold kitsch in all his supposedly luxurious residences, but let’s face it, this is the Dollar Store presidency. That sad little butt sniffer Miller is like a tube of bootleg Colgate packed with glycerine in that same bargain store.