Suggested by Shaker AmeliaEve: "What is your favorite navigation tool? Paper maps? Sat nav in your car? An app on your phone?"
I love Google Maps. Having not so long ago relocated to an area with which we weren't familiar at all, Iain and I constantly wonder aloud to one another how it was ever possible for people to do that before widely available GPS.
Question of the Day
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by the sound of lawnmowers.
Recommended Reading:
Sarah Kendzior: What the Trump Campaign's Potential Collusion with Russia Really Means—and Why It's So Scary
Kate Horowitz: [Content Note: Gaslighting; disablism; misogyny] Performance of a Lifetime: On Invisible Illness, Gender, and Disbelief
Megan M. Draheim: [CN: Animal harm] Few Americans Know Their Tax Dollars Paid to Kill 76,859 Coyotes Last Year
Shay Stewart-Bouley: [CN: White supremacy] On Words and Silence in a Racialized World
Transgender Law Center: Groundbreaking 7th Circuit Ruling in Favor of Ash Whitaker, Transgender Student Seeking Access to Correct Bathroom
Rae Paoletta: Why Prairie Voles Cuddle the Shit out of Their Partners
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
My (Imaginary) Dinner with Mike Pence
I arrive at Number One Observatory Circle, the residence of the vice-president, where I am escorted into a dining room by a buttoned-up fellow whose valiant attempts at professional detachment cannot conceal his hatred of the job. He doesn't want to be here, and neither do I, but when the vice-president inexplicably invites you to dinner, you go, if for no other reason than morbid curiosity.
I am seated at a table impressively appointed with formal settings undoubtedly selected by the wife of some long-gone executive second. The glasses are cut crystal, the edges of the pattern as sharp as the vice-president's features.
While I am left waiting, I go over the words I have been preparing for weeks. The things I want to say to my former governor and possibly future president. I scroll through the list of indignities he wrought upon Hoosiers, the people he harmed — this one man, who has affected so many lives; who has been elevated to affect even more.
I go through my list of questions, the various accountabilities I will seek when he arrives. The demands I will make, as gently as possible, over whatever suitably Midwestern food we are served. I imagine him trying to charm me away from my determined charge by telling me the corn is from Indiana.
The longer am I left with my thoughts, as he takes his time to arrive, the more doubt creeps in. It's not myself I doubt; I am shy by nature but equally tenacious. It's him. I have continually banished the insistent thought that he has not invited me to listen, but to lecture. He does not want to be persuaded, but to convince me.
I cannot hold this thought at bay any longer. I have not been invited as a guest, but as an adversary. And suddenly I am overwhelmed with the feeling that there is no point to this meeting. Not for me.
I see the entire evening laying itself out before me, and it will be no different than a million interactions with common online trolls. No matter how much good faith I extend, it will be abused.
He will lie. He will tell me lie after lie, weaving in between each dishonest phrase reminders of his moral superiority, his mendacity and sanctimony twisting into a blanket that threatens to smother me. He will say things that are demonstrably false, and reject out of hand any attempt to acknowledge the truth.
Because this is who he is. The King Cobra of all conservative snakes. A myth-teller and fantasy-spinner, who conjures tales of imminent threats and the strawpeople who pose them.
There is no conversation to be had here, and not because I don't want one. Because he doesn't.
It does not matter that he is the vice-president of the United States. My appetite — for the meal, and for whatever would accompany it — is gone.
I stand to leave just as Mike Pence enters the room. Naturally, he is accompanied by his wife, as he is never alone with a woman other than her. He introduces her to me as "Mother," and extends his hand to me in greeting.
I do not take it. I look at his face, holding his gaze in silence. He is smiling — at least, his face has done all the things that faces do when a person smiles: His lips curl up at the edges, his skin creases, his teeth bare slightly. But there is no mirth in his eyes. They are icy and cruel.
I tell him I cannot join him for dinner after all. I wait for him to ask me why, but he holds his fixed expression; his eyes flicker with something he struggles to contain. So I volunteer. I tell him that I have already spent far too much of my time and energy with men who don't want to listen, and I haven't a moment more to spare.
Before I turn to leave, I ask him if he will please have whatever food was prepared for us sent to a local shelter. He promises at my back that he will.
And it is the only lie that I am obliged to hear.
Comey Will Testify About Trump's Obstruction
BREAKING: James Comey plans to testify that Trump pushed him to end FBI probe into aide’s Russia ties, a source says https://t.co/V6AskneABk pic.twitter.com/RV2GkY1Dr1
— CNN (@CNN) May 31, 2017
WOLF BLITZER: We begin with breaking news. We now have new details about efforts to get the fired FBI Director James Comey to testify at a U.S. Senate hearing. The plans to testify were up in the air after it was announced that the investigation into Russian meddling was being turned over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Our Washington investigative editor Eric Lichtblau is joining us right now with new information. You've been doing a lot of reporting on this. First of all, Eric, tell our viewers what you're learning.So, this is indeed big news. But I want to caution against getting too excited about this, for two reasons.
ERIC LICHTBLAU: Well, what we're told by our sources is that in fact Comey will testify; he will testify publicly, maybe as soon as next week, before the Senate Intelligence Committee; and that he is ready and eager to discuss these tense confrontations, that we've heard about over the last few weeks, with the president over the Russia investigation.
BLITZER: So you've got two bombshells: One, he's agreed to testify in public before the Senate Intelligence Committee, maybe as early as next Wednesday evening—Wednesday morning, is that right?
LICHTBLAU: That's in the mix, yes.
BLITZER: That's one, that he will testify in public, maybe as early as Wednesday morning, before the Senate Intelligence Committee; and two, that he is ready and even eager to speak about his conversations with [Donald] Trump about the entire investigation.
LICHTBLAU: Correct. He and Bob Mueller, the Special Counsel, have been discussing the parameters. They don't want to mess up the criminal investigation that Mueller is now embarked on, with the public testimony. It's unlikely that Comey will be willing to discuss the Russian investigation itself. He'll stay away from that. But what we're hearing is that he is willing and Mueller is willing as well to have him testify about these run-ins where the president allegedly told him to let go of the investigation, for instance, into Michael Flynn; where he wanted his loyalty to keep him on as FBI Director; that he is ready and prepared to talk about those tense confrontations with the president.
1. Republicans are still the majority in the Senate, and thus control what will happen, if anything, as a result of Comey's testimony. They haven't yet begun to demonstrate any inclination to hold Trump accountable for anything, or give two shits about the integrity of the nation's democracy, and I don't expect that Comey's testimony will change that. Unfortunately.
2. Comey will almost certainly be typically underwhelming. I expect he'll be so circumspect and cautious in his testimony that any actual obstruction of justice won't even sound definitive. It will probably be far less explosive than anyone is expecting. Which could potentially defeat the resistance and empower the right.
Don't me wrong: Public testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, especially if Democratic members ask the right questions, is a good thing and could be important. But it also might end up being nothing more than another news cycle with no meaningful consequence in the long run. So set your expectations accordingly.
Mueller's investigation is more likely to be the game-changer than the Senate investigation. Fingers crossed that at least one of them will be.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 132
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things in the news today:
Earlier today by me: Donald Trump Is the Final Boss of Toxic Masculinity.
[Content Note: White supremacist violence; video may autoplay at link] Tom Porter at Newsweek: California Man Arrested for Hate Crime After Machete Attack.
The victim [who is a Black man] told officers that a man [who is white] had been yelling racial slurs at people in the parking lot of the complex before going inside the building and returning armed with a machete. He allegedly struck the victim on the shoulder with the blade several times while shouting racial slurs, causing serious injuries, Police Sergeant Travis Lenz said.And the week before that, Richard Collins III was fatally stabbed by a white supremacist at the University of Maryland.
Police have identified the alleged attacker as Anthony Robert Hammond, 34. He is being held in Lake County Jail on $1 million bail on felony charges including battery with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, and hate crime.
...After a standoff lasting several hours, police persuaded Hammond to leave the apartment and placed him under arrest. ...On the way to the police station, Hammond allegedly threatened to kill the transporting officer and his family on his release from jail.
The incident comes amid a spike in hate crimes in the U.S., with passions inflamed during the 2016 presidential fueling a 20 percent in offenses last year, according to a leading researcher.
On Friday, two men were killed on a commuter train in Oregon. A man subsequently identified as white nationalist Jeremy Christian allegedly stabbed them when they attempted to defend a woman he was subjecting to Islamophobic abuse.
I will say again: Donald Trump did not invent white supremacy, but he sure as fuck is doing everything he can to empower it. And that has consequences.
Also: All of these white supremacist murderers/attackers have been taken into custody alive, this latest asshole even despite evading and threatening officers. Noted.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting they should have been harmed by police. I'm arguing that Black people suspected of far lesser crimes should not end up dead.
* * *
Three really terrific long reads:
[Content Note: Discussion of structural racism; white supremacist violence] Reni Eddo-Lodge at the Guardian: Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. "We tell ourselves that good people can't be racist. We seem to think that true racism only exists in the hearts of evil people. We tell ourselves that racism is about moral values, when instead it is about the survival strategy of systemic power. When a large proportion of the population votes for politicians and political efforts that explicitly use racism as a campaigning tool, we tell ourselves that such huge sections of the electorate simply cannot be racist, as that would render them heartless monsters. But this isn't about good and bad people. The covert nature of structural racism is difficult to hold to account. It slips out of your hands."
Rebecca Gordon at Moyers & Company: Trump Is Throwing Reality Down the Memory Hole. "The Trump administration seems intent on tossing recent history down the memory hole. Admittedly, Americans have never been known for their strong grasp of facts about their past. Still, as we struggle to keep up with the constantly shifting explanations and pronouncements of the new administration, it becomes ever harder to remember the events of yesterday, let alone last week or last month. ...If the age of Trump doesn't end relatively soon, the daily effort to sort out what happened from what didn't may eventually become too much for many of us. Memory fatigue may set in, and the whole project of keeping the past in focus shelved."
Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump. "The child who became the most powerful man in the world, or at least occupied the real estate occupied by a series of those men, had run a family business and then starred in an unreality show based on the fiction that he was a stately emperor of enterprise, rather than a buffoon barging along anyhow, and each was a hall of mirrors made to flatter his sense of self, the self that was his one edifice he kept raising higher and higher and never abandoned."
* * *
In other news...
BREAKING: President Trump has been urging world leaders to call him on his cellphone, raising security and secrecy concerns.
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) May 31, 2017
NEW: House Intel Cmte wants to hear from former Trump campaign senior adviser Boris Epshteyn in relation to Russia probe, CBS News learns
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 30, 2017
Tierney Sneed at TPM: Draft Trump Rule Shows Broad Opt-Out to Obamacare Birth Control Mandate. "The draft rule, dated May 23 and posted by Vox on Wednesday morning, would allow any employer—from small mom-and-pop shops to publicly-traded corporations—to opt out of the mandate on religious or moral grounds. It would also let insurers refrain from covering contraceptives for religious or moral reasons. The draft rule would allow individuals with religious or moral objections to refrain from participating in plans covering contraceptives."
Kenrya Rankin at Colorlines: These Three Federal Civil Rights Offices Are in Trouble. "'They can call it a course correction, but there's little question that it's a rollback of civil rights across the board,' Vanita Gupta, who ran the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division under former president Barack Obama, told The Washington Post. When asked for comment, White House spokesperson Kelly Love told The Washington Post that, 'the Trump Administration has an unwavering commitment to the civil rights of all Americans.'"
[CN: Discussion of authoritarian violence] Brian Klaas at USA Today: Donald Trump's Business Ties Explain a Lot of His Dictator Worship. "Trump makes more money when he embraces regimes that violate human rights. From the Philippines to China and Turkey to Saudi Arabia, the president's adoration for authoritarian abusers is bad for those being oppressed but good for his wallet. Staggering conflicts of interest that directly link Trump's bank account to despots around the world are already transforming U.S. foreign policy. Trump is selling America's moral authority to make more money by slapping TRUMP on shimmering new buildings."
Benjamin Haas at the Guardian: Activists Investigating Ivanka Trump's China Shoe Factory Detained or Missing. "A labour activist working undercover investigating abuses at a Chinese factory that makes Ivanka Trump shoes has been detained by police and two others are missing, raising concerns the company's ties to the US president's family may have led to harsher treatment. Hua Haifeng was being held by police on suspicion of illegal surveillance, his wife Deng Guilian said. Hua had worked for labour rights organisations for more than a decade and was investigating a factory in southern Guangdong province for New York-based rights group China Labor Watch."
Andy Towle at Towleroad: Trump Tweet Hitches Himself to Carter Page, Pits Page's Credibility Against That of Comey, Brennan. "Tweeted Trump: 'So now it is reported that the Democrats, who have excoriated Carter Page about Russia, don't want him to testify. He blows away their……case against him & now wants to clear his name by showing 'the false or misleading testimony by James Comey, John Brennan…' Witch Hunt!'"
[CN: Nativism; death; video may autoplay at link] WCCO News: Sheriff: Woman from Ghana Died Likely Trying to Reach Canada. "Officials in extreme northwestern Minnesota say a woman from Ghana died last week while likely trying to walk across the border into Canada. The Kittson County Sheriff's Office says the body of 57-year-old Mavis Otuteye was found Friday near Noyes. Otuteye was reported missing in the area earlier last week. The sheriff's office says Otuteye likely died of hypothermia. Temperatures in the area Friday dipped down into the low 40s. ...Officials say they believe Otuteye was trying to cross the border to Canada at the time of her death. ...Earlier this year, Canadian officials reported a sharp increase in border crossings in Emerson following the announcement of [Donald] Trump's plans to limit immigration and set up deportations."
[CN: Nativism] Esther Yu Hsi Lee at ThinkProgress: Immigrant Grandmother Becomes First in North Carolina to Take Sanctuary. "For the past six years, Juana Ortega has had to check in with ICE and each time received a stay of removal, or a temporary postponement that delays her deportation. But when Ortega went to check in with ICE in April, she was given a final deportation order and told that she would be deported at the end of May. Instead of getting on a plane to Guatemala, Ortega formally took shelter at the St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Greensboro, North Carolina on Wednesday."
Michael Calderone at the Huffington Post: The New York Times Is Eliminating the Public Editor Role. "The New York Times is eliminating the position of public editor, an accountability role the paper created in 2003 in the wake of the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal, according to sources familiar with the decision. Elizabeth Spayd, a former Washington Post managing editor who was named the paper's sixth public editor last year, was expected to remain in the position until summer 2018. Spayd did not respond to requests for comment. A Times spokesperson declined to comment."
READERS: New York Times should publicly account for its 2016 coverage.
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) May 31, 2017
NYT: Instead, we’ll eliminate the public editor, because fuck you.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
The Politics of Personal Destruction
"The politics of personal destruction" is a phrase that dates back nearly to this nation's origins, but became part of the modern lexicon after then-President Bill Clinton used the phrase during his '92 campaign and again during Republican investigations into his personal behavior.
It's a phrase that certainly had pointed meaning to him, and perhaps even greater meaning to Hillary Clinton, whose entire public career, particularly the last presidential campaign, has been largely defined by the politics of personal destruction.
The Republican Party is adept, to put it mildly, in the politics of personal destruction. When you haven't had a new policy idea in decades, it's the only way to win.
And, so, looking forward to 2020, and the possibility that Senator Elizabeth Warren might be a contender to oppose Donald Trump (or whichever loathsome specimen in the line of succession has assumed the presidency), the Republicans are already plotting her personal destruction, euphemistically described in McClatchy's headline as an "anti-Clinton strategy."
Republicans are getting a jump on Elizabeth Warren's 2020 presidential campaign.That's an interesting way of saying that it takes time to create "truth" with the cynical repetition of lies.
The Massachusetts Democrat is preparing to run for re-election to the Senate in 2018 and hasn't said yet whether she'll challenge [Donald] Trump for the White House. But in-state and national Republican officials have decided to target the liberal icon anyway, saying they will try to inflict enough damage during the Senate race to harm any future presidential effort — and perhaps dissuade her from running altogether.
...The goal is more about weakening Warren than defeating her: Republicans doubt that any of their party's likely candidates could topple her next year. But even with the next presidential election more than three years away, they say exposing her weaknesses now — or making sure her race is closer than expected — could do lasting damage.
"We learned from our experience with Secretary (Hillary) Clinton that when you start earlier, the narratives have more time to sink in and resonate with the electorate," said Colin Reed, executive director at the Republican outside group America Rising.
There isn't even any attempt made by Republican strategists to pretend that they will challenge Warren on policy grounds. To the contrary, they are explicit about their desire (and need) to critically damage her reputation—hopefully so severely that she will be dissuaded from seeking higher office at all.
Ryan Williams, a former aide to Mitt Romney, explains: "There's an interest in taking her down a peg before she puts together even an exploratory effort for 2020." He adds that the resistance to Trump "increases the chance that a radical liberal like Elizabeth Warren could win the nomination in 2020. It's best to start putting points on the board now."
Take her down a peg. Put points on the board.
It's all a game, and the way Republicans win the game is personal destruction.
[Related Reading: Gee, This Seems Familiar.]
This Presidency Is Terrible
Exhibits 1,204,983 and 1,204,984:
Trump is reportedly expected to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement on climate change. Of course he is, b/c that is the worst decision.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 31, 2017
Trump, who once said "Nobody respects women more than I do," prepares to take away the contraception coverage mandate.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 31, 2017
Neither is definite yet. But I have no faith we will not get the worst possible outcomes in both cases. I don't know what else to say that I haven't already said dozens of time before. This presidency is terrible. Trump is cruel, and cruelty is a central feature of his presidency. It is difficult to bear.
Donald Trump Is the Final Boss of Toxic Masculinity
There are men of extraordinary privilege who walk through the world as if this spinning rock were put here in time and space just for them. They stand astride the earth with splayed feet and folded arms, wielding like weapons their maleness, their whiteness, their straightness, their cisgenderedness, their able-bodiedness, their wealth — believing everything they survey is theirs to own.
They are terrible boys who become terrible men, giving themselves names like alpha and Type A and man's man, declaring themselves the Real Men, from which all other men deviate in lesser variations. Women register only as things to be possessed, or destroyed.
The rest of us who have the unavoidable misfortune of encountering these men learn their culture as its subjects and victims. The best outcome is neglect, because all the other outcomes are various degrees of harm.
They are our bad fathers, our bad brothers, our bad peers, our bad coaches, our bad bosses, our bad neighbors, our bad boyfriends and husbands. They are bad police officers and bad priests and bad prime ministers. They are bad friends we once mistook for good.
Most of these men are not undilutedly bad, but are contradictions as are we all. The manager who bellows at his employees, but is a gentle father to his children. The father who humiliates his sons, but is a regular and reliable volunteer for a local charity. As though they only have so much decency to muster, and the rest of their orbit is obliged to suffer the consequences of their limitations.
And then there is Donald Trump.
Trump embodies every archetype of toxic masculinity, wearing them proudly like merit badges he's collected in a lifetime of disservice. There are no holidays; no breaks in the paint where the brush didn't quite meet the wall. There is only relentless harm.
He is the bully who picks on weaker boys and pulls girls' pigtails and shoves world leaders out of the way to get to the front of a crowd for a photo.
He is the spoiled child of an indulgent father who imagines that what he achieved via nepotism is rather attributable to his own superior qualities.
He is the employee who applies for a job he doesn't know to do, his aggressive incompetence no match for his sense of entitlement. He is the ineffective manager who fails upward, creating chaos and frustrating for the underlings forced to work harder to offset his failures, because if the wheels come off the bus, he'll throw them under the next bus that happens along.
He is every shitty boss. The boss who is catastrophically inept. The boss who is never as present as he needs to be. The boss who is a mean, petty, vengeful fuck. The boss who is capricious and erratic and reckless — and still expects his employees to read his mind and predict his every need. The boss who never takes personal responsibility and always takes all the credit. The boss who prioritizes loyalty above competence. The boss who hires his unqualified kids. The boss who undermines his employees' work. The boss who will fire you because he has made your job impossible. The boss who sexually harasses his female employees, and tells his male employees they look like garbage. The boss who will never get his own damn coffee, but is never happy with the way anyone makes it for him. The boss who spends money on installing a gold toilet in his private bathroom, and tells his employees there's no money for bonuses this year.
He is the husband whose future divorce is a guest at his every wedding. The husband who treats his wives like an extension of himself, a trophy, a prize, a possession. The husband who resents that he isn't loved by a woman who only married him for his money, even though he never wanted the bother of making himself a person anyone would want to marry for any other reason. The husband who takes out that resentment on his wife, even though he doesn't love her for who she is, either. He doesn't even know who she is; he never cared.
He is the father who won't change a diaper. The narcissistic father, whose love is conditional; whose children must earn his affections by subsuming all traces of their own personalities and modeling their lives after his precisely, speaking exactly like him using the same affected phrasing, and speaking about him only ever in superlatives: The best father who gave them the best childhoods with the best experiences. The father whose every interaction with his children is on his playing field, focused on his interests alone. His work; his favorite hobby. Which become his children's work; his children's hobbies. Because if they want his love and attention, they have to meet him on his turf. They have to reflect him back to himself at all times. The father who sees his children, like their mothers, as extensions of himself; as part of his brand. The father who sexualizes his daughters, and prefers their husbands over his sons.
He is the brother who gives painful noogies, because he can. The brother who ensures it's never just fun and games, and someone will always start crying, and it will never be him.
He is the sex predator who brags and jokes about abusing women, then denounces the women whom he abused as liars. He is the sex predator who reframes his arrogant confession as "locker room talk," and the sort of man who makes locker rooms uncomfortable and unsafe for other men.
He is an inveterate projectionist who hates what he sees in the mirror, and accuses everyone else of having the traits he despises in himself. He sees his flaws clearly enough to hate them, but never cares to fix them. He expects the rest of the world to accommodate those flaws, and to withhold criticism and even regard them as attributes, so that he might feel settled within his own thin skin.
He is the kind of man for whom masculinized prefixes must be affixed, lest anyone mistake that he's engaging in some sort of feminine activity. Manwich. Man cave. Mancation. Man-bun. Bromance. He is the kind of man who, if he would ever deign to wear a pink tie or shirt, would call it "salmon."
He is the man who talks too loud with unaccountable confidence, with nothing to back it up. The man at the gym who doesn't wipe his sweat off the machines and the man who drinks every round but never buys one. The man who demands inordinate amounts of a waitstaff's time and attention, then leaves a terrible tip.
He is simultaneously an insecure teenage boy, a middle-aged man stuck in the throes of a midlife crisis, and the aging man who gets meaner with every ounce of strength he loses.
He is the man who insists he is a Christian, but never goes to church. The man who shouts at strangers speaking a language other than English in public. The man who is stuck, forever, inside a breathing stereotype of a 1980's master of the universe who thought Gordon Gecko was intended as a role model. The man who insists on being team captain, then doesn't lead and blames his teammates for losing.
He is the man who mocks disabled people. Who takes advantage of poor people. Who behaves consistently like a monster and claims that everyone loves and admires him, but privately whines that no one likes him; that he is a victim of unfair gossip.
He is the man who hurts you and then says you made him do it. The man who rationalizes his depravity as common sense; his insults as truth-telling. He is the man who boasts and never listens. The man who doesn't know how to be a friend, but reflexively calls people who hate him his good friends. The man who mistakes fearful tolerance of his vainglorious preening for respect.
He is the man who has neither the courage nor curiosity to leave his hometown, and says it's because nowhere else is as good, anyway.
He is the creep who brags about his sexual conquests, but wouldn't know what to do with a woman who outmatched him — except harm her, swiftly and decisively.
He is a gaslighter, a mansplainer, a Monday morning quarterback, a manspreader, a snake oil salesman. A fisherman who bores with obvious lies about the one that got away. A user, an abuser, a bigot, a louse. He is jack of no trades, and master of nothing — least of all himself.
Donald Trump is the epitome of toxic masculinity, a final boss of the patriarchy, expressing its every grotesquery. He possesses every ugly trait that unexamined and unfettered privilege entrains and abets. He is a man without constraints on his endless well of vile urges.
We speak, often and urgently, about the checks and balances that he needs as a president. We must speak also of the checks and balances he needs as a human being, who has slid through his life without any of the arresting impediments that restrain us from becoming our worst selves.
He needs them, though he is unlikely to ever get them, having arranged his life to exclude such censure, surrounding himself with sycophants and fools.
I don't know if it's fair to say that Donald Trump is objectively the worst man, but I know that the office of the United States presidency has conferred upon him the enormous power to be the worst man if he should so choose.
And I see no reason why he wouldn't.
Question of the Day
Suggested via private message by Shaker GoldFishy: "What memento reminds you of somebody you love(d)?"
Sometimes people who have visited our home have commented on the lack of photographs on the walls. You won't find a photo of Iain and me hanging anywhere (except in our bedroom). But our walls and shelves are full of art—prints, paintings, drawings, framed postcards, sculptures, and other items. Because one of the ways that I've made our house feel like our home is by decorating it with things given to us by people we love.
Anywhere and everywhere you look, in every room, is something that reminds me of someone I love. Things that Iain and I have given each other. A painting Deeks did for me. A print GoldFishy gave to me. A figurine and trays that Paul the Spud gave to me. A second-hand loveseat we inherited from my friend Miller. An antique canister from Eastsidekate and Westsidebecca. A framed photo from my friend Cam. A magnet from Catvoncat. An Uncle Sam bank that was my grandparents'. The list is long.
My home is full of mementos that remind me of people I love—and who love me. I couldn't imagine it any other way. ♥
Recommended Viewing: The Assets
Last week in comments, Shaker DesertRose recommended a miniseries, available on Netflix, called The Assets, which is about the CIA agents—primarily two women, who later wrote a book on which the series is based—who ferreted out their colleague Aldrich Ames, one of the U.S.'s most damaging traitors who sold secrets to Russia.
It is an excellent series—and timely, too, for obvious reasons.
It's also an extraordinary document about how a white man was able to do incredible harm to the nation, because people refused to listen to women.
Anyway. My profound thanks to DesertRose for the heads-up, and I strongly recommend it to those who are able to watch it.
Tweet of the Day
When the Nordic prime ministers are openly mocking #PresidentTrump and the #Saudis .. pic.twitter.com/6G1iOlf2qK
— Steffen (@TVMaury) May 29, 2017
If you can't view the photo embedded in the tweet, it's an image of the five Nordic PMs standing in a semi-circle with their hands on a soccer ball, trolling Trump for his "orb photo" during his trip abroad.
Well played, PMs. Well played.
A Thought
I'm really enjoying (I am not enjoying) reading all the hot takes about how Democrats have to fundamentally remake the party, and all the coverage of Democrats who are inventing cool new strategies to do precisely that.
A particularly terrific (ahem) headline today described some Democrats strategizing to "un-Pelosi the party."
Sure.
Here's a thought: If the Democrats want their base to believe their votes matter, Steps One, Two, and Three should be protecting (and expanding) voting rights, addressing gerrymandering, and eliminating the electoral college.
(And, while they're at it, making Election Day a national holiday, too.)
Let's see if the Democratic message "resonates" more once everyone can vote and the popular vote wins. Just a fucking thought.
Spicer Is Back, with a Stunning Lie
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held his first press briefing in a couple of weeks, which ended with Spicer bickering with the press corps about "fake news" and then storming out of the room.
Obviously, I don't need to tell you that everything before that was the usual litany of mendacious swill, but even by Spicer's rock bottom standards, this was incredible.
Sean Spicer describes President Trump’s relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel as “fairly unbelievable” https://t.co/0bpHTxddac
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 30, 2017
I think the relationship that the president has had with Merkel, he would describe as fairly unbelievable. They get along very well. He has a lot of respect for her. They continue to grow the bond that they had during their talks at the G7. And he views not just Germany but the rest of Europe as an important American ally, um— [long pause] During his conversations at NATO and at the G7, the president reaffirmed the need to deepen and improve our transatlantic relationship.What Spicer is saying here is worse than a lie: It is substituting Donald Trump's twisted version of reality—that he and Merkel are getting along great specifically because he bullies her—for what is actually real: That Trump's profound disrespect of Merkel, and leaders of other key allied nations, combined with his evident ignorance about foreign affairs and reckless indiscretion with foreign intelligence, has alienated the United States from the global community.
We are less safe because of the increasing isolation as a result of Trump's arrogance and incompetence.
That the White House Press Secretary tells the American people instead that everything is swell, and that the president is committed to alliances he's actively undermining, is a lie of unfathomable proportions.
And, yes, telling breathtakingly irresponsible lies in order to abet Trump's dangerous disloyalty to this nation is Spicer's job. But that doesn't absolve him of the responsibility for continuing to do it, day after day, the most visible minion of an authoritarian who campaigned to "make great again" a country he endeavors to weaken in every possible way.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
We Resist: Day 131
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things in the news today:
Earlier today by me: Trump Has Delivered for Putin and "It's Just a Question of Time."
And on Twitter: Republicans Think People Aren't Entitled to Food. On the Republican Congressman who couldn't answer "yes" to a question about whether people in this country are entitled to food, and how I've been writing about that ever since Mitt Romney took the position five years ago that people aren't entitled to food.
In other news...
Ju-min Park and Jack Kim at Reuters: North Korea Warns of 'Bigger Gift Package' for U.S. After Latest Test. "The North's test launch of a short-range ballistic missile landed in the sea off its east coast and was the latest in a fast-paced series of missile tests defying international pressure and threats of more sanctions. Kim said the reclusive state would develop more powerful weapons in multiple phases in accordance with its timetable to defend North Korea against the United States. 'He expressed the conviction that it would make a greater leap forward in this spirit to send a bigger 'gift package' to the Yankees' in retaliation for American military provocation, KCNA quoted Kim as saying."
North Korea has long been belligerent as hell, and Kim Jong Un, as his father before him, is disposed toward provocative statements. But it's obviously a different dynamic now that we've got a president who doesn't know WTF he's doing and is busily alienating our global allies. Very worrisome, to say the least.
Juliet Eilperin, Emma Brown, and Darryl Fears at the Washington Post: Trump Administration Plans to Minimize Civil Rights Efforts in Agencies. "The Trump administration is planning to disband the Labor Department division that has policed discrimination among federal contractors for four decades, according to the White House's newly proposed budget, part of wider efforts to rein in government programs that promote civil rights. ...The proposal to dismantle the compliance office comes at a time when the Trump administration is reducing the role of the federal government in fighting discrimination and protecting minorities by cutting budgets, dissolving programs, and appointing officials unsympathetic to previous practices." Rein in government programs that promote civil rights. Fucking hell. This is indescribably appalling.
Robert Pear at the New York Times: White House Acts to Roll Back Birth-Control Mandate for Religious Employers. "Federal officials, following through on a pledge by [Donald] Trump, have drafted a rule to roll back a federal requirement that many religious employers provide birth control coverage in health insurance plans. The mandate for free contraceptive coverage was one of the most hotly contested Obama administration policies adopted under the Affordable Care Act, and it generated scores of lawsuits by employers that had religious objections to it. On its website, the White House Office of Management and Budget said it is reviewing an 'interim final rule' to relax the requirement, a step that would all but ensure a court challenge by women's rights groups." Goddammit. Every moment with this administration is just more hostile, toxic garbage.
And chaos. Mike Allen at Axios: Trump's Comms Director Leaving White House. "Mike Dubke, [Donald] Trump's communications director, is leaving the White House—the start of a wave of changes as the West Wing struggles to cope with burgeoning scandals and a stalled agenda. ...Trump is considering much broader changes, including the possibility of bringing in David Urban, a prominent GOP lobbyist who was a senior adviser on the campaign, as chief of staff."
Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker at the Washington Post: How [Donald] Trump Consumes—or Does Not Consume—Top-Secret Intelligence.
Trump consumes classified intelligence like he does most everything else in life: ravenously and impatiently, eager to ingest glinting nuggets but often indifferent to subtleties.Hahahahahahaha ya think? *jumps into Christmas tree*
Most mornings, often at 10:30, sometimes earlier, Trump sits behind the historic Resolute desk and, with a fresh Diet Coke fizzing and papers piled high, receives top-secret updates on the world's hot spots. The president interrupts his briefers with questions but also with random asides. He asks that the top brass of the intelligence community be present, and he demands brevity.
As they huddle around the desk, Trump likes to pore over visuals — maps, charts, pictures, and videos, as well as "killer graphics," as CIA Director Mike Pompeo phrased it.
"That's our task, right? To deliver the material in a way that he can best understand the information we're trying to communicate," said Pompeo, adding that he, too, prefers to "get to the core of the issue quickly."
Yet there are signs that the president may not be retaining all the intelligence he is presented, fully absorbing its nuance, or respecting the sensitivities of the information and how it was gathered.
Margaret Hartmann at New York Mag teases out this bit from the same WaPo story: Jared Kushner Gets His Own Daily Intelligence Briefing. Of course he does, because the actual president isn't paying attention. And: "The article does not explain why Kushner needs separate intelligence briefings, but it probably has something to do with his role as 'shadow Secretary of State,' as Axios described it." A shadow SoS who's under federal investigation for possible treason. Everything is fine.
Speaking of Russia...
@realDonaldTrump << account has gained over 5 million followers in less than 3 days. Mostly bots. He's getting ready for something.
— JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³Âº¹ (@th3j35t3r) May 30, 2017
Concur w/ @th3j35t3r Russian Cyber warfare support ramping up for @POTUS? Key intelligence indicator of impending major political activity. https://t.co/87dpvdw7LB
— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) May 30, 2017
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Brian Ross and Matthew Mosk at ABC News: Russia Investigation Expands to Include Donald Trump's Personal Attorney. "One of [Donald] Trump's closest confidants, his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, has now become a focus of the expanding congressional investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 campaign. Cohen confirmed to ABC News that House and Senate investigators have asked him 'to provide information and testimony' about any contacts he had with people connected to the Russian government, but he said he has turned down the invitation. 'I declined the invitation to participate, as the request was poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered,' Cohen told ABC News in an email Tuesday." Oh.
Congressional aide tells @KenDilanianNBC it's the same request for info on Russian contacts/comms that was sent to Flynn/Manafort/Stone/Page https://t.co/omffcinHbM
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 30, 2017
Allegra Kirkland at TPM: Russians Discussed 'Derogatory' Info They Had on Trump During Campaign. "The U.S. intelligence community intercepted conversations between Kremlin officials who boasted of having potentially 'derogatory' information about Donald Trump and his advisers during the 2016 campaign, CNN reported Tuesday. CNN's report cited two unnamed former intelligence officials and a congressional source, one of whom indicated that the 'derogatory' information was financial. The sources noted it was unclear if the Russians' claims were legitimate or if, knowing their communications were monitored, they had intentionally tried to mislead U.S. officials. Trump campaign associates' financial dealings have become a part of both the federal and congressional investigations into Russia's interference in the U.S. election."
Gabrielle Paluch, Kevin G. Hall, and Ben Wieder at McClatchy: A Kazakh Dirty-Money Suit Threatens to Reach Trump's Business World. "In a complicated case with potential implications for [Donald] Trump's business empire and associates of the real-estate-developer-turned-president, Switzerland has revealed it is considering an extradition request from Ukraine to hand over the son of a former Kazakh energy minister—and both men are facing money-laundering allegations in the United States and charges in Kazakhstan. It's the latest development in a saga that is reaching into Bayrock Group, an international real estate and investment company that paid the Trump Organization a license fee for the use of its name and an 18 percent ownership stake in the New York hotel and condo project."
There is so, so much more news today; I haven't even begun to get to Congressional Republicans or state legislatures yet. But I've just got to draw a line under it somewhere, or I'd never have published today's thread. With so much to cover, please keep crowdsourcing this thread by sharing what I've missed in comments!
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
"It's Just a Question of Time."
As Donald Trump keeps us waiting to hear his decision on the Paris accord, and whether we'll be [Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] only the third country out of 197 not to sign onto the climate change agreement, scientists are raising the alarm that U.S. coral reefs "are on course to largely disappear within just a few decades because of global warming."
New research has shown that strict conservation measures in Hawaii have not spared corals from a warming ocean in one of its most prized bays, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicting yet more bleaching is likely off Hawaii and Florida this summer.Most of the people reading this will be alive in 20 or 30 years. The idea that a severely compromised environment as a result of global warming is something with which future generations will have to reckon is a fantasy.
...A global coral bleaching event has shifted between the northern and southern hemispheres since 2014, affecting around 70% of the world's reefs. The "terminal" condition of Australia's sprawling Great Barrier Reef, which suffered bleaching along two-thirds of its 1,400 mile length in 2016 and 2017, has provoked the greatest alarm.
But scientists have pointed out that America's main reefs, found off Hawaii, Florida, Guam, and Puerto Rico, are facing a largely unheralded disaster.
"The idea we will sustain reefs in the US 100 years from now is pure imagination, at the current rate it will be just 20 or 30 years, it's just a question of time," said Kim Cobb, an oceanographer at Georgia Tech. "The overall health of reefs will be severely compromised by the mid point of the century and we are already seeing the first steps in that process."
..."This is another data point on the staggering breadth of damage across the global oceans," Cobb said. "You can run but you can't hide from the train wreck that is coming. The recent bleaching has been a brush with death and shows that this fatal stress is upon us."
I'm sure I've said this before, but: One thing I will never understand is how members of the press who bent over backwards to create a false equivalency between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and voters who promulgated narratives about how there was "no difference" between the two candidates, could have been so aggressively indifferent to the issue of climate change.
Even if the only difference between them had been that Clinton didn't think climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, that should have been enough. That is enormous.
I haven't written about this much—in fact, I believe I've written about it only once, ten years ago—but a major part of the reason I supported Bill Clinton's ticket in 1992 was because Al Gore was his running mate, and I was a huge fan of this Senator from Tennessee who was talking about "the environment," way back when this issue wasn't widely called "climate change," or even "global warming," but was mostly about "the ozone layer" and "greenhouse gases."
I was very hopeful, then, that we might have leadership that cared about protecting the environment. I am much more pessimistic now, because 25 years have been passed, most of them entirely wasted in terms of meaningful policy. So I don't write very much about climate change, but it is always on my mind.
I desperately hope Trump will do the right thing, and I fear that he won't. I fear that, even if he does, it's too little too late.
Just a question of time. And less time than we might like to think.
Meanwhile on Twitter: Hillary Clinton Edition
Over the weekend, I did three threads on Twitter about Hillary Clinton, for each of which I created a Moment for easy reading, in case you missed them.
1. This Hillary Clinton.
2. Woman of the People.
3. Debunking the "Hillary Was Uninspiring" Narrative.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Trump Has Delivered for Putin
There was a lot of Trump-related news over the weekend, as usual, but none so important as this: Following Donald Trump's meetings with NATO and G7 leaders in Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the U.S. is no longer the reliable ally it once was.
Merkel on Sunday declared a new chapter in U.S.-European relations after contentious meetings with [Donald] Trump last week, saying that Europe "really must take our fate into our own hands."Wherever that works. After Trump made it abundantly clear that it would not work with the U.S. as long as he is in office: "On Thursday, Trump had harsh words for German trade behind closed doors. Hours later, he blasted European leaders at NATO for failing to spend enough on defense, while holding back from offering an unconditional guarantee for European security. Then, at the Group of Seven summit of leaders of major world economies on Friday and Saturday, he refused to endorse the Paris agreement on combating climate change, punting a decision until this week."
It was the toughest review yet of Trump's trip to Europe, which inflamed tensions rather than healed them after the U.S. president sparred with the leaders of Washington's closest and oldest allies on trade, defense, and climate change.
Merkel, Europe's de facto leader, told a packed beer hall rally in Munich that the days when her continent could rely on others was "over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days."
...Merkel said that Europe's move toward self-reliance should be carried out "of course in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbors wherever that works."
And also just generally behaved like a jackass.
Following his belligerent comments on Germany and trade, which White House adviser Gary Cohn [Content Note: Video may autoplay] tried to walk back, Trump doubled down with a tweet this morning, which he quickly followed with a tweet defending Russia.
Fresh off his failed overseas trip, Trump starts the week by attacking our ally in Germany and defending our adversary in Russia. pic.twitter.com/EhdbtBQ61J
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) May 30, 2017
As I noted on Friday: "Since the end of WWII, Russia has had an explicit objective of busting up the U.S.-German alliance, because the combined strength of the U.S. and Germany, in both military might and democratic cultural influence, provided a check on the empiric aspirations of the Soviet Union, now Russia. Trump's subversion of the U.S-Germany relationship is providing a dangerous opening to Putin, who has already made abundantly clear his intent to rebuild Russia's reach with his annexation of Crimea and moves in Ukraine."
For seventy years, Russia's central foreign policy objective has been busting up the alliance between the United States and Germany—and Trump has done precisely that in 130 days in office.
For someone who keeps telling us he is no way compromised by Russia, it sure is curious that he's made their longest and biggest dream come true, to the detriment of the nation he leads and is supposed to protect.
