#and not enough into deconstructing why getting with the white man is the goal here esp if it's not the character's goal

[noirineverysense]

imo I get that people often don't ship black women bc they don't care about them. But I also feel we put too much emphasis on romance and desirability when it comes to talking about black female characters.

#I think this goes especially for black female characters with white male main characters #I think there's so much energy being put into seeing black women as desirable enough for the white man #and not enough into deconstructing why getting with the white man is the goal here esp if it's not the character's goal #this is about carmy and sydney but it's about a bunch of other black female characters too #saying you like platonic relationships isn't just a way to say you don't care about the character #I care very much about both the character and the relationship #platonic relationships aren't below romantic ones #sydney adamu #the bear #fandom racism

[gunmetal-magnus]

And what if I can’t?  What if I’m not worthy of my ideals?

As I stare out my apartment window and watch the drizzling sky, I’m drawn to the subtle gradient of yellow.  Clouds coasting through the sky, gray yet without dismay.  And the sun?  The sun will live to break another day, that I am confident in.  I only wish I were so confident in myself.

....

Life is strange.  Mine in particular looks like it might be going in a good direction.  I’ve been getting interviews for jobs and as someone who’s spent their fair share of time hopelessly unemployed and depressed, not knowing what to do with themselves (besides salsaing with suicide ideation), I should be elated about any progress.  I wish I could say that I am or even that I was but that wouldn’t be accurate.  The truth is that I’m a harrowing hailstorm of things - surprisedsleepybusycuriousthankfuloptimisticexposedhorrifiedcriticalnervousanxiousinsecurepressuredtired - it’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?

Knocking on the looming doors of success, I find myself feeling the crushing weight of my expectations.  The walls are a deafening white with not a texture or pattern in sight.  If you try to touch them they ripple like water.  There are no windows for me to peer through.  Fog creeps around me like a cheetah stalking its prey.  It’s so thick you could choke on it.  Success is...scary.

I know I know, that sounds a ridiculous thing to say, shouldn’t I be more afraid of failing?  Welllll...no.  You see, the weight I mentioned earlier was not merely crushing, it was also comforting.  Over time failure became familiar and eventually, my friend.  I got used to failure as the status quo, smothered in its cosy embrace and the threat of change, of combing out of this embrace into the chilling embrace of uncertainty, of becoming someone worthy of their success - it’s unfamiliar, it’s scary.  But just what is so comforting about not achieving your goals - about not getting what you really want?  For me it’s because of one paralyzing question: And what if I can’t?  What if I’m not worthy of my ideals?

“But…I’m…I’m just a soldier, I-I’m not worthy.”

It’s a terrifying prospect that I could give something my all and find that I just couldn’t do it.  I don’t want to be saying “I did my best and it wasn’t good enough,” because what I may mean is “I wasn’t good enough.  I don’t have the power.”  But that’s exactly the point!  I do have the power and if that is true then I have to come to terms with my responsibility to that power - that it’s up to me to use that power because when you can do the things that you can do...and then the bad things happen...they happen because of you.  I don’t want that burden so it’s easier to cast it off and reinvent the narrative by claiming powerlessness.  It’s easier to identify as a fraud and be done with it, to say to myself “men like me should’ve never dared to believe.”

Haha…paradoxically in our journey to discover our own power we discover just how little power we hold, that our only power is in ourselves.  Time and how bound we are to what we know at present, our surrounding circumstances, and the fact that we’re only people who can only do people things - these serve to remind us that the power of what we control and free will are only so vast.  It’s strange - you are responsible for how you use your power but not the outcome because you’re not omnipotent.  Bad things don’t always happen because of you.  Sometimes they just happen.  Sometimes things in general...just happen.

Let’s say I achieve success, what then?  The pressure to maintain is immense and to exceed - it’s even more so.  Who perpetuates this pressure?  For many of us it’s society but the greater threat lies within the darkness of our own hearts.  The societal gaze is nothing without validation and that validation comes from our self-worth and how grossly entangely that is with achieving success.  There is an expectation of linearity and escalation in progress, if you get good grades you’re expected to keep getting good grades and then some, so it’s shocking and disappointing when you don't.  People wonder how that could’ve happened, you wonder how it could’ve happened, you start to doubt yourself...should you though?  Writer and retired athlete Christopher Bergland challenges the expectation of linearity in success and explained in a conversation with his daughter, “I learned as an athlete that in order to succeed and become the best that I could be, I had to fail again and again—but always keep trying. Inevitably, every time I raised the bar, and took on a new athletic challenge, I would have to fail first in order to ultimately succeed and break a record." He embraced failure as part of the ebb and flow, it was part of success.  To him, failure was no reason for doubt.  So why should it be for me?  I don’t know, because life’s not that simple I suppose?  Identifying as unworthy and fraudulent, these are not easy to shake.  Negative self-identity manifests itself in habitual self-sabotage.  Worrying about how we align with our perceptions of ourselves, procrastination via instant gratification distractions like Instagram scrolling and going back on our promises such as taking that drink we know we shouldn’t become commonplace - habitual and they will take habitual work to undo them.

Even so, is this really just about the burden of ideals?  Perhaps not.  Susanne Babbel writes in her article “Fear of Success'' that the physiological reactions to trauma and excitement over success are similar - too similar. “When we experience a traumatic event — such as a car accident or a school bullying incident — our body associates the fear we experience with the same physiological feelings we get while excited.”  Heart tensions, shortness of breath, quivering and more - they are triggered in me by both stimuli and my body cares not for the messenger, only the message and that message is “be afraid.”  

if I’m responding to excitement as if it were trauma, the question is what is my trauma?  

…

Babbel mentions that throughout our lives, we may be made to feel less than, “many of us — especially if we've been subject to verbal abuse — have been told we were losers our whole lives, in one way or another. We have internalized that feedback and feel that we don't deserve success.”  I knew someone who made me feel like this, I called her my mum.  I spent a lifetime being told by her in one way or another that I wasn’t good enough.  I remember being dragged into the unlit attic by her for losing a crayon as a child, I remember being shouted at for getting some mediocre grades in junior high school - being told that I better do better, I remember being told that she had given up hope on me - I remember, all of it.  We don’t talk anymore - except we do.  I internalised her voice and I made it my own, I began to identify with failure.  I have an excerpt from an old journal entry that illustrates this identity crisis all too well.

                                                                                                                               5.11.20

“Sometimes I really wonder

If it’s better

To be a 

Fuckup

Than a Success

Without

The Interesting Mess.

...Why do I have to compromise the things that make me who I am to be happy?...Why can’t I have my misery?...I hate doing the right thing...Maybe I like being a failure, a mess, a no man’s man.”

By this time I had long since left home but you can’t outrun your demons, only challenge them.  I have only begun to unravel this voice due the therapy I have recently completed and am fighting this battle every day.  Sometimes I lose and they gain territory.  Other times I manage to reclaim it and even add more.  It’s an endless battle.

And yet, the voice of Failure clings to me like some foul smog.  Since he doesn’t want to let me try and fall, he’ll say, “It’s comfortable here.  Flounder into the fondue of failure, it’s what you know - it suits you.  What precisely is so wrong with failure in the first place?”

…

It’s a good question.  In an ideal world, the answer may be, “nothing in particular,” because I don’t need to succeed to be valid - do the people you love need to be successful for you to love them?  I should hope not.  However, it is not so simple for me to love myself.  Failure will cost me something more than money and a career.  The price of failure is stagnation, embracing the non-linearity of progress and I hate that.  I’m grossly impatient and want to move forward with my life, not wallow in the depths of Misery Mires.  I’ve been stuck here all my life and I’ve just begun the journey out of here.  Failure, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t suit me as well as you think.  I must change sometime because I don’t want to die in the claws of the demons from which I was born.

I can’t stay in my comfort zone.  Yet I can - I’d even quite like to.  Why?  Because...because...deep down I’m still reconciling with the idea that I’m worthy, that I’m worthy of living a life worth living, that I can be what I say I am without fear that it’s all a lie and always will be.  The only way for me to challenge such a belief is to fly in the face of it - to say that “I am worthy” and to act like I mean it, whatever that means - I don’t quite know yet.  My therapist and I agreed that this would be a long road and that ideals are nothing without practice.  I guess all I can do now is drive…

“If you aren’t worthy, you’ll keep trying until you are.”   In order for me to be worthy of my ideals, I first need to believe that I even have a shot.  Beyond that, I need to believe that I deserve to take it. Being worthy means recognising my power to change and the responsibility to act that  comes with that.  Simultaneously, my power is not all-controlling as I am only a person.  Success isn’t linear and failure is a part of that.  However the burden of trauma is heavy.  The self-sabatory habits I picked up from that will require me to reinvent my self-identity and in turn deconstruct those habits.   Lastly and perhaps most importantly, I need to be willing to give the process time.  Can I?  Haha! - s-sure, why not?

Perhaps one day I will find myself staring out into the sky - maybe it’s drizzling, maybe it’s not.  Maybe through an apartment window, maybe in a lush field as the gentle breeze brushes by.  The clouds are coasting by as they always have, slowly but surely.  What colour are they?  Who cares, I don’t even know what colour the sky will be.  Maybe it’s illuminated with a lovely peach pink that reaches out and touches the heart of my inner romantic.   Maybe it’s an apocalyptic red that leaves you weak in the knees - the possibilities are endless but it doesn’t matter - it doesn’t matter what may be.  What matters is what will be and 

I will be watching.

I’ll say I’m worthy and

I will mean it.

I don’t know yet know how

But I will

Because that’s what I’ve decided.

#self worth #fear of failure #fear of success #trauma

[lionheart49er]

My Thoughts on The Boys Season 2 Finale

*This Post Contains Spoilers for “The Boys” Season 2 Finale*

First off, before I get into spoilers, I just want to saw how much I love what “The Boys” have been doing. I loved Season 1 and I feel Season 2 is just as fun and crazy with more in-depth social commentary, especially with the character of Stormfront and her satirizing of alt-right conservative media. Overall, I love how the show combines dark humor with poignant satire of superhero media, celebrity culture, and large corporate conglomerates. And in many ways, the finale was just as good.

The show takes its imperfect social material and elevates it. Turning the macho grim-dark superhero parody that only barely deconstructs superheroes and never deconstructs the just-as-toxic macho characters like Billy Butcher into a show that is just as willing to deconstruct Billy’s toxic masculinity as Homelander’s fascist superhero antics. I think the show does a good handling these serious topics with sprinkles of anti-capitalist ideology. And yeah, the irony of an show with anti-capitalist themes being streamed on Amazon Prime does not escape me. 

However, I read The AV Club’s review of the finale and it raised some points that I simply did not agree with. And I’m going to argue them here. 

The AV Club had a big issue with the reveal that Victoria Neuman was the head-exploder who was working for Vought. They came out with it the belief that this was somehow the show attacking “both-sides” and conflating progressive politicians like AOC with literal nazis. To be frank, I am just not agree with this take. 

First off, I don’t the show did a good job showing how wrong Nazism and fascism is through the characters of Homelander and especially Stormfront. In particular, Stormfront was a character I was initially worried about. There is a risk in portraying Nazi characters where they came off as likable enough to where they can appeal directly to white supremacist and real-life Nazis. And Stormfront’s goofy portrayal as a Tiktok-using millenial-type was certainly running that risk initially. But the show cleverly pulled the covers to show the dangerous ideology that was powering the seemingly innocent meme-exploiting superhero to show how real-life white supremacists and alt-right groups use playful memes and social media to spread hateful ideology. And the show never condones Stormfront’s hateful ideology and always portrays her as in the wrong. Hell, even Homelander is weirded out by her blatantly racist beliefs. 

I say all of this to show how Stormfront is portrayed in the show is way different from how Neuman is and probably will be portrayed. Obviously the fact she is based on progressive  AOC and Iihan Omar, so we immediately are on her side, especially when it comes to the matter of regulating superheroes since we’ve seen how messed-up superheroes like Homelander and A-Train abuse their powers without consequence. Then, it comes the twist that Neuman was secretly working with Vought the whole time. Now, the AV Club believes this means that Neuman is going to be presented as just as bad as Stormfront. Which I simply don’t agree. I don’t see this as the show implying that progressive politicians are worse or even just as bad as Nazis. And I believe the reveal makes sense when looking at Vought and how Stan Edgar runs his business.

I think the reason why Neuman works for Vought is explained in the dining scene between Billy Butcher and Stan Edgar. In that scene, Stan explains why he is willing to work with an awful white-supremacist like Stormfront. Obviously, Stan Edgar as a black man hates the living hell out of her but the man is business-minded as hell. He sees how useful Stormfront is in causing divisions in society. And those kind of divisions are profitable as hell as we know in real-life how much media can prey on said divisions. Even though Stan personally hates Stormfront’s blatant racism, he is willing to tolerate it because her endeavors ends up aligning directly with Vought’s goals to simply make as much money as possible. The scene really shows Edgar’s thinking and reasoning when it comes to how he runs Vought. And it’s a great scene in general especially when Edgar calls out Butcher for his own white privilege. But this scene also shows why Edgar would want someone like Neuman on his side.

The fact is we don’t know yet how genuine Neuman is or was for her progressive superhero-reform goals before joining Vought. We don’t really have a handle on her backstory yet. So whether she is a genuine progressive who is forced to work for Vought or simply a Vought double-agent is not known. However, either way I don’t think it implies Neuman is worse than Stormfront. In fact, more so this is just a brilliant move on Stan Edgar and Vought’s part to curb the superhero narrative in their favor. Just like how Vought benefits from Stormfront’s racist beliefs, they could equally benefit from Neuman’s progressive beliefs. In fact, Vought has already been doing shady stuff under the guise of progressive ideology this entire seasoning (the blatantly pandering “Girls get it done” campaign, the co-opting of Queen Maeve’s gay status for LGBT+ brownie points, etc.) In many ways, it is a reflection of pink capitalism and how much corporations want to appear “woke” while still benefiting from a corrupt capitalist systematic status quo. Essentially, Edgar knows he’s going to get backlash for Vought’s attempts to take-over the world by distributing Compound V. So he wants to control the narrative by having someone on his side pretending to be working against the man but really working for it. This also parallels a lot of brands who claim to be fighting against a capitalist system but is merely paying lip-services to such changes and just another extension of a major corporation’s capitalist endeavors. Just look at all the Che Guevara and Karl Marx merchandise you can buy online. I believe Edgar is working that exact angle with Victoria Neuman.

And there was genuine foreshadowing for this too. This twist did not come out of nowhere despite what some people like the AV Club would have you believe. The fact that Stan Edgar is constantly watching news coverage of Victoria Neuman on TV. During the head-exploding courtroom scene, you can see every person Victoria stares at explodes soon after. After the first time we see someone’s head explode in the beginning of the season, it immediately cuts to Victoria Neuman. So this wasn’t just some twist the writers pulled out of their ass in the last minute. This was clearly planned. Besides, it is entirely possible that Neuman is or at least was a genuinely progressive before being forced to work for Vought against her will. She does mention her daughter multiple times in the season. It is almost a cliche how much sympathy the show pulls from its asshole characters by giving them a kid (just check the Honest Trailers video). But that could very well be the case. Regardless, I do think we will get some understanding as to why Neuman is working for Vought in the next season for whatever reason. And I am genuinely looking forward to it. Besides, this doesn’t even ruin her character and we could see her human side explored in the next season. One of the things I praise this show for is going in-depth into even its worst scumbaggy characters (Homelander, The Deep, A-Train, etc.) to explore their human sides while still presenting them as awful people.

Also, I think the reason why Neuman takes longer to explode the Scientology guy’s head in the last scene while she easily explodes heads quickly in the courtroom scene is just to show to the audience that Neuman is the head exploder. Besides, there is no reason Neuman has to be quick to explode his head since there is no threat that she’ll be exposed for it. I’m sure she can explode heads much quicker when Season 3 comes around.   

So really that was all my thoughts on the whole Victoria Neuman reveal. I just wanted to give some more praise for The Boy’s awesome finale. The episode was full of fun, awesome moments that were super satisfying. The three female superheroes kicking the shit out of the Nazi, Homelander being rendered completely impotent by the end, Billy Butcher deciding to do the selfless thing to protect the child for once (right after nearly trying to murder him), Edgar pointing out as a black man how little he can lash out, The Deep getting cucked out of The Seven, etc. I loved what the Season 2 finale did. I am looking forward to Season 3. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear your thoughts.         

#the boys #the boys season 2 #the boys season 2 finale #victoria neuman #the av club #stormfront #the boys theory #the boys spoilers #the boys season 2 spoilers

[socialjusticeartshare]

THE TRUMP CHILD ABUSE SCANDAL

IT’S BEEN TWO years since the peak of public outcry over the Trump administration’s decision to begin separating the children of unauthorized migrant families from their parents at the Mexican border, yet the massive crisis that policy spawned remains arguably the darkest chapter in Donald Trump’s very dark presidency.

MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff has been back and forth from the border and Central America covering the family separation saga since it began, a story he chronicles in his new book “Separated”.

Jacob Soboroff: I think it’s a slow-motion, ongoing, decades-long American tragedy.

[Musical interlude.]

Mehdi Hasan: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Mehdi Hasan. 

Whatever happened to all those kids who were stolen from their parents at the border? Why did we just forget about perhaps the biggest scandal, the worst crime, of the Trump presidency?

JS: It was not thought through. There was no plan. And today, we’re still picking up the pieces in the aftermath.

MH: That’s my guest today Jacob Soboroff, NBC News and MSNBC correspondent, and author of the new book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.” He’s been covering this crisis, this scandal, at the border from the very beginning. 

So, on today’s show, the war on migrants and, especially, the theft of migrant children from their parents: How and why did it happen, and is it even truly over?

Do you remember this?

[Audio clip from ProPublica of children crying at the border.]

MH: That was a recording of 10 Central American children, sobbing desperately after being separated from their parents in June of 2018, here in the United States. That was a recording obtained by ProPublica and which promptly went viral and grabbed newsheadlines — it was even played in the White House briefing room. 

That recording helped make ordinary Americans aware of the abuses that were being perpetrated at their southern border, in their name, by the federal government, by the Trump administration — specifically, and shamefully, the deliberate, systematic separation of thousands of brown-skinned migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border on the orders of President Donald J. Trump. 

And, for a few months in 2018, what was called “child separation” was the biggest story in America, if not the world:

Newscaster: Families are being torn apart. Thousands of them. 

Anderson Cooper: Kids taken hundreds, even thousands, of miles away from their parents. Young children — toddlers, even — housed in so-called “tender-age facilities.”

Jeff Sessions: If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring him across the border illegally. 

Prime Minister Theresa May: The pictures of children being held in what appeared to be cages are deeply disturbing. 

Newscaster: The Pope labelling it “immoral.”

MH: Two years later, though, we have kinda moved on, as a media industry, and as a nation. To be fair, so many other Trump scandals have sucked up so much oxygen since — whether it was the government shutdown, the Mueller inquiry, Ukraine and the whole impeachment saga, the attacks on protesters in recent weeks, and, of course, the ongoing catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. There’s so much to keep track of — and to keep us outraged.

Still, for me personally, it stands as the biggest, most outrageous, most shocking, most inexcusable scandal of the Trump presidency so far. What’s blandly called “child separation” was, in fact, racism, kidnapping, and child abuse all rolled into one. 

In fact, Physicians for Human Rights in a report earlier this year said the Trump family separation policy constituted “torture.” Torture! On American soil. The torture of kids. Kids!

It is difficult to overstate the sheer inhumanity of it all: children were forcibly removed from the arms of their parents; babies were ripped from the breasts of their mothers. And the border agents who did all this somehow went home to their families, to their own kids, and slept fine at night. 

Meanwhile, the people in Washington who gave them those orders, who made the cruel and inhumane policies, they’re either still in government, having never faced any real consequences for their part in these crimes; or, in the case of former Trump Chief-of-Staff General John Kelly, or former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, they’re making money in the private sector. In fact, Kelly is on the board of a company called Caliburn International which operates shelters for migrant children! You cannot make this shit up.

These people are vile. They have no shame. Many current and former members of this administration — including the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions — claim to be evangelical Christians. And, yet, they have defended — excused — the torture and abuse of not just refugees but refugee children. They’re not following in the footsteps of Christ; they’re a moral disgrace.

Since the summer of 2017, the Trump administration is believed to have taken at least 5,500 kids from their parents at the border — although the real number could be even higher than that. No one knows for sure. In February of this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said, “it is unclear the extent to which Border Patrol has accurate records of separated [families] in its data system.” And as reporter Jacob Soboroff writes in his new book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy”: “There are families who were quickly put back together, and children who were, as predicted, permanently orphaned.”

As I pointed out on this show back in 2018, that was not a side effect of having a tough immigration policy; that was their tough immigration policy. That was the goal, the prime objective — of an administration filled with white nationalists and apologists for white nationalists; an administration whose immigration policies are drawn up by a man, Stephen Miller, who late last year was revealed to have sent white nationalist literature and racist stories about immigrants in internal emails. No discussion, in fact, about the immigration policies of this administration can be complete without mentioning the racism, and white nationalism, and just pure cruelty that motivates and drives those policies. 

So yes, this administration has used kids, targeted kids, migrant kids, refugee kids, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, the most powerless of the powerless, to achieve their policy goals at the border: to crack down on immigration, to placate their far right base, and keep brown people out of the U.S. by any means necessary.

And here’s what’s so important to remember as we sit here, overwhelmed by news and scandal, in the crazy, chaotic summer of 2020 — it never really ended. Hundreds of migrant children continued to be detained in facilities across the country this year, even as the coronavirus spread inside of those facilities, and infected guards and detainees alike. 

Last month, a federal judge in LA ordered the release of those kids by the middle of this month. And guess how the Trump administration responded on Tuesday? By telling the court that if they’re forced to release the kids, they won’t release any of the parents who they might be detained with. Got that? Family separation, all over again. 

Imagine being the parents of those kids. Keep your kids with you and risk the coronavirus, or have them taken from you and sent out into the world, and who knows if you’ll ever see them again? 

What’s called “child separation” is still with us, is still a policy dream of the Trump administration, and yet a total nightmare for the thousands of refugees and asylum seeker families who arrive in this country from Central America every year, seeking protection from war, from violence, from rape. 

[Musical interlude.]

MH: My guest today is one of the tenacious, and I should add, deeply compassionate journalists who helped uncover the Trump administration’s vile policy of child torture at the border back in 2018, and who not only contextualized the story for us on our TV screens, but also humanized it. 

Jacob Soboroff, of NBC News and MSNBC, was, in fact, one of the first reporters to gain access to the notorious child detention facilities in Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. Here he is, reporting live on MSNBC from outside one of them in the summer of 2018, and not holding back:

JS: There’s a big mess going on right now, and even the Border Patrol inside this building says they’re overstaffed, they don’t have enough resources; the system is just getting stressed out because the Trump administration decided to put this into place, and the consequences really haven’t been worked out, and the biggest consequence of all is thousands of young children, in a way that has never been done before, taken from their parents. And when you hear the Trump administration saying: This has been done before, this is Democrat policy, this is not unusual — that’s B.S., frankly.

MH: Jacob’s reporting earned him the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism and, with his colleagues, the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism.

Now he’s written a powerful and, at times, heartbreaking new book about the entire saga, called “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy” — and he joins me now from Yuma, Arizona, just yards from the southern border with Mexico.

Jacob, thanks for joining me on Deconstructed.

JS: Thanks, Mehdi.

MH: You’ve written this new book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy,” having covered the 2018 crisis at the border with those kids in cages, with those children taken from their parents, almost exactly two years ago. Is this book, Jacob, about a chapter in recent American history? Or is this a book about what’s still happening right now — ongoing American tragedy?

JS: I think it’s a slow motion ongoing, decades-long American tragedy, Mehdi, and this is the first time I’ve ever done a podcast sitting 20 to 30 yards away from a 30-foot tall border wall installed by President Trump, which is exactly where I’m sitting right now, in Yuma, as I wait for him to arrive here. 

You know, the wall, and Donald Trump, have become a symbol of United States immigration policy. This is an immigration policy, however, that has, as I said, spanned decades, and Democratic, and Republican administrations. And since an official Border Patrol doctrine in 1994, called “Prevention Through Deterrence,” the goal of which was to deter migrants from coming to the United States to make them go on a dangerous and deadly journey, where they very well could die trying to get into the United States. Deterrence, pain, and suffering has been a part of U.S. immigration policy and family separations, which I had the misfortune of seeing with my own eyes, was Donald Trump’s extreme extension of that policy.

MH: Yes, the extreme extension, as you say. You’re right to say that this started on previous presidents’ watches — you know, Bill Clinton in the 90s, George Bush, Barack Obama, “the Deporter-in-Chief,” and then you have Trump escalating in this grotesque way. A total of around 4,300 children I believe, “separated from their parents at the border.” This all came to a head in May/June 2018. 

So a question that I think a lot of listeners will want to know the answer to — I know I do — do we know for sure, Jacob, if all of those children were eventually reunited with their families?

JS: We don’t. And if it weren’t for the ACLU and a federal judge in San Diego, the vast majority of them may never have been. It was a negligent, dangerous approach at putting this policy into place — sloppy. And the mechanism by which the separations were tracked, I think it actually would be even generous to call it a mechanism: It was not thought through, there was no plan. And today, we’re still picking up the pieces in the aftermath. 

And you mentioned a number in the 4,000 range. I think the most recent number according to the ACLU, and this is a constantly evolving number, is over 5,000 children, including children separated after the policy had nominally ended, when Donald Trump signed the executive order on June 20, 2018, ending a policy that days earlier, he said, didn’t even exist.

MH: Yes. First it didn’t exist, and then when they stopped it, it still carried on, as you point out, even after the judicial and executive order fallout. 

Um, let me ask you this: One thing that bothers me, and I don’t want to knock the title of your excellent book, because I know how hard it is to come up with a title, and I know that separated is the word that’s been used by everyone — even by me, on occasion, as shorthand — to describe this zero-tolerance policy at the border, and what the Trump administration did to migrant families back in 2018. 

But, for me, “separated” always feels like an understatement. It feels too clinical, an empty word. Because what happened was child theft; it was child kidnapping. It was, in many ways, child abuse by the U.S. government. And I worry sometimes that our journalistic shorthand often ends up underplaying how bad things are on the ground; they sanitize things too much. Am I being unfair?

JS: No, I think your point is well taken. And the reason I chose “separated,” as well, is that for me, it doesn’t just describe torture, frankly. And that’s the word that Physicians for Human Rights, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization has used subsequently to describe what these children went through: It meant the clinical definition of torture. But it also described most Americans’ mental separation from how we got to this point; inability to understand and comprehend —

MH: Yeah. Good point. 

JS: — how the government did this to children and, in some cases, babies. And that also includes me! I was covering the border even before Donald Trump became president, when Barack Obama was president and was dubbed the “Deporter-in-Chief,” as you mentioned, by immigration activists. I, you know, I was on what I thought was the front lines of immigration reporting, and frankly, I completely missed it myself until it slapped me in the face. 

And that’s what I wanted to make clear in the book, is that separated is not just the physical act of what happened to these parents and children, but it really also is a mental state of most Americans about the way that we deal with immigration in this country. So, you know, again, your point is well taken. I think that it’s much more vile what happened to these children than the simple word or simple act of being taken from their parents, but I think that the word also applies to many of us in our everyday lives.

MH: No, that’s a very fair point. And I would urge everyone to read Jacob’s book. It’s an excellent book. You tell the story of José in the book, a young boy from Northern Guatemala, that story is a central thread throughout your book. He fled with his father Juan to the United States in order to escape drug traffickers who were threatening his family. Can you tell us a little bit more about José? Why did you choose his story?

JS: Well, the truth of the matter is, and this is a bit of a spoiler, but I ultimately met his father Juan, and Juan and José are pseudonyms that they picked themselves to protect their own identity and the identity of their family that they left behind in Guatemala. But they come from the northern state of Petén. And Petén, which is actually a place I haven’t been to, and they asked me not to go to — I’ve been to Guatemala on several occasions, but I didn’t go to their home because they were worried about what might happen to their wife they left behind. 

They were threatened with violence. Juan was the owner of a small convenience store, and basically got into trouble after a vehicle that he sold was sold to someone else, and fell into the hands of what he tells me, and told the United States government in his asylum application, were narco traffickers, he suspected. And until he would turn over the rights, the documentation, which he no longer had to his car, they were going to put a threat on his life. 

And so he decided to pick up and leave with José, come to the United States, go to Arizona, where he had crossed twice successfully before to come and work earlier in his life when his son was was younger, but, for the first time, decided to pick up and leave with his boy to protect him.

MH: Yeah.

JS: And once they got to the United States, to the place where they thought represented safety and security, I’m actually sitting probably 10 miles away from that exact spot right now — and the president will visit almost that exact spot, as I speak to you today, as we record this — they were taken from each other in a way that nobody could have ever anticipated, even though it was going on by the time they left Guatemala and started their journey to the United States in May of 2018.

MH: So, it’s interesting, you mentioned in the context of Juan, that he had crossed twice before, for work, this time he came to protect his child. We have this great debate, of course, as you know better than me, about are these people refugees and asylum seekers or are they all economic migrants coming to work? In your anecdotal experience, having interviewed so many of these people, having covered their stories, what were they? Especially back in 2018, when it kind of hit the headlines in that huge way, when everyone in the country is talking about: Why have they brought children with them, etc, etc? 

How many people you were talking to, were, in your, you know, the story you just tell of Juan, that sounds like a genuine asylum application?

JS: And I have no reason to doubt them. 

MH: Yeah. 

JS: You know, and I think the vast majority of people I came into contact with were coming to the United States from Central America — from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador — in order to seek asylum. 

You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. And when I was writing the book, I was thinking a lot about this, that nobody’s perfect. And actually, when I heard the Reverend Al Sharpton deliver the eulogy for George Floyd and use the biblical example of a rejected stone becoming the cornerstone, you know, in our conversation about race, and about police brutality, and violence, it made me think of covering immigration at the border. 

Nobody is perfect. Nobody comes here with a sparkling clean record or the perfect story that you want to hold up and make an example to change the entire country’s imagination on immigration. 

MH: Yes.

JS: He had come here before, twice, illegally. He freely admitted it to me. And he laughed and smiled when he said: They didn’t catch me previously. And I think it’s not mutually exclusive; you can be an economic migrant and also, later in your life, become a refugee from violence. And I think, too often, we boil it down to: it’s one or the other. 

MH: Yes. 

JS: But these stories often intersect. And I think we do a disservice, or the general public does a disservice, when we try to distill it to one or another because, oftentimes, that really isn’t the case. 

MH: And it’s not just Latin American families that we’re talking about, of course. You describe a Congolese mother and her daughter who was separated trying to enter the U.S.; you say “the mother was taken to an adult immigration jail in San Diego, and her daughter was sent to a shelter in Chicago.” You also say that when she was told her daughter was in Chicago, she did not know what the word meant. 

How do people like that woman and her daughter a) end up at the southern border? And how is their story different to some of the more familiar Latin American stories that you tell in your reporting?

JS: Well, I think that the southern border has become an entry point for people from around the world looking to seek refuge in the United States and seek asylum. And if it wasn’t for that Congolese woman and her daughter, who later became known as Ms. L., none of these 5,000-plus families would have been reunited, because she became the plaintiff, the original plaintiff, in the ACLU case — 

MH: Yes. 

JS: — against the government. And so what happened to her, and her story, was slightly different. She presented legally at the San Ysidro port of entry in between San Diego and Tijuana, where you can legally walk up and declare asylum as part of an internationally recognized legal process. And the United States government told her they didn’t believe her, took her away from her daughter, and not until a DNA test confirmed it, were they placed back together. But that wasn’t soon enough to stop the thousands of separations, you know, from happening. 

And that’s another example, Mehdi, of it’s never a perfect story. You know, she thought she was doing it the right way, but the United States government challenged her on that, and it set off, you know, this whole chain of events. 

MH: I think we’ve learned over the last four years that, for this administration, there is no right way of claiming asylum or coming into the country.

JS: Sure. That’s right. That’s right.

MH: They just don’t want people coming into the country.

You describe in the book the moment in June 2018, when then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen infamously tweeted, “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” 

You say, in the book: “My eyes widened when I saw it. You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. Come on.” 

Where were you at that moment? And why did that tweet from her so stun you?

JS: Because earlier that week, I was inside the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center — they call it Ursula in the Border Patrol, and that’s in McAllen, South Texas, where they let us in. 

Katie Waldman, who later became Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, and now the Vice President’s communications director, was, at the time, a spokesperson for Kirstjen Nielsen. She invited me and another group of journalists into that center to see with our own eyes what family separations look like, because I think they believed that with outrage from the general public based on media attention, Congress would do what the Trump administration wanted, which was pass more restrictive order regulations. Of course, that backfired. 

And the reason that I was was so flabbergasted by what Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted is that days earlier, if not hours earlier, I had been inside the center where I saw, with my own eyes, separated children sitting on concrete floors, covered by those silver blankets, under a security contractor in a watchtower. It makes me sick every time I talk about it. It gives me the chills every time I talk about it, as — then — the father of a two-year-old boy. 

It was — and I don’t know —I really don’t know another way to describe it other than disgusting, to see social workers standing around Border Patrol agents, not allowed to touch the children, all because of official government policy when many of the families in there didn’t know what they were about to experience themselves, you know, to this day leaves me speechless. And to hear the Secretary of Homeland Security, who I didn’t know at the time, but I now know in writing the book, had signed the policy into place — it is just wrong. There’s no other way to say it.

MH: I mean, this is an administration that says openly: Don’t believe the evidence in front of your eyes, don’t believe what you see with your own eyes, and don’t believe what you hear with your own ears. It’s the gaslighters-in-chief. 

You say, early in the book, you sum things up this way, you say: “What I have now unequivocally learned is that the Trump administration’s family separation policy was an avoidable catastrophe, made worse by people who could have made it better at multiple inflection points.”

In what sense, Jacob, was it avoidable, given that we already had a president clearly bent on implementing harsh border policies? Who or what around him could have stopped it?

JS: Well, in particular, you know, Scott Lloyd, who was the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was warned on multiple occasions about the damage — the long-lasting trauma — that family separations would do to children. And, ostensibly, this was the man who was the custodian of the thousands of migrant children in the custody of the United States government. And, in particular, Jonathan White, commander in the U.S. Public Health Commissioned Corps, under Health and Human Services, has testified publicly to this — that he warned Scott Lloyd about the long-lasting damage that separations would do to these children. (Scott Lloyd, of course, is the same official who tried to ban abortions in HHS custody for young migrant girls.)

And the bottom line is when you look at the actions of Scott Lloyd, he did anything but stop family separations from happening. One official later told me that he believed that this was the greatest human rights catastrophe of his lifetime, in seeing this take place under the leadership of Scott Lloyd. And had the career officials in HHS, child welfare professionals, whose motto is not only to do no harm, like in the medical profession, but to put the best interest of the clients first — and that’s the children — this never would have happened. The best interests of the children were very obviously not put first here. 

MH: Yeah. 

JS: The officials of HHS and the professionals were certainly pushing for that all along.

MH: And there were a lot of people involved in this process, none of whom resigned on principle, none of whom came out and became a whistleblower at that time, which says a lot about how certain people’s morals are corrupted working in this administration. 

Just to go back to an earlier point you made about this being a decades-long tragedy, a lot of Trump officials and Trump supporters — and some on the left — say it’s unfair to pin what you call “an American tragedy” wholly on Trump, because it was the Obama administration that built many of the cages that were used in 2018; it was the Obama administration that put unaccompanied minors from Central America in detention. There was a big overlap between a lot of their policies and practices at the southern border, between those two administrations. What do you say to them?

JS: Well, in some measure, they’re right. I mean, the Obama administration did build the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center where I saw the children in cages. Those cages were built by the Obama administration. And they believe that that was the best option at the time. Certainly activists and immigration rights lawyers and such didn’t believe that, and were extremely vocal in voicing their opposition at the time.

The Trump administration had the opportunity to go in a different direction. They never signaled that that was their intention. In fact, they always signaled a harsher immigration policy than the Obama administration. But they didn’t have to institute the family separation policy; the Obama administration considered implementing the family separation policy. Some of the same officials within the Department of Homeland Security brought it up. And in the book I talk about how on Valentine’s Day, 2017, less than a month into the Trump administration, some of the officials that overlapped from the Obama administration into the Trump administration, basically revived — resuscitated — a policy, a rejected, discarded policy, that even the Obama administration, which was was not beloved by immigration activists, put the side. 

MH: Yes. 

JS: And this was a conscious, deliberate decision by the Trump administration to move forward with something that they knew all along was a deterrence policy, that was so bad, it would try to scare people away from coming to the United States. And John Kelly, when he was the secretary of homeland security in March of 2017, admitted freely on CNN.

MH: So, just to be clear, what Trump did in 2018 at the border with these “separations” is much worse than anything Obama, or, for that matter, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton did at the border; that is fair to say based on your own reporting and research in this book?

JS: Well, the reason I say that this was unprecedented was that it was “systematic child abuse,” in the words of Physicians for Human Rights or American Academy [of] Pediatrics, at the hands of the Trump administration — deliberate, systematic child abuse or torture. 

The Obama administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration all had their own very harsh deterrence policies; I’m sitting in Arizona now where hundreds of people have died trying to cross in the desert because of border infrastructure walls, like the ones I’m looking at in front of my face as I talk to you. But never was the policy directed specifically at children for the purpose of hurting parents and children. And therein is the difference.

MH: Good point.

JS: I mean, that’s where the Trump administration took it to a level that had never been seen before. It doesn’t mean that, for a long time, there haven’t been cruel, harsh, and deadly immigration policies.

MH: But, in this case, it was a stated policy to cause harm in order to stop people from coming.

JS: That’s for sure. And they would never admit that, that the purpose was to hurt children. But when you say deterrence, you have to be deterred by something — and the something, here, was trauma.

MH: So, you paint a picture in the book of a president who — shock! horror! — is, you know, over his head. You know, he’s out of control, but he also doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s a huge culture of fear around him, you say, in the White House. You talk about the chaos surrounding this policy; obviously, we know very much about the Trump administration’s incompetence when it comes to any area of public policy. 

But in my view, there’s also not enough discussion in our industry, Jacob, in the ‘liberal media,’ about the ideology that drives a lot of Trump’s immigration policy. This is not just them trying to look tough or messing up. You have a White House that openly plays footsie with white nationalists. 

JS: Mhmm. 

MH: And a top Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, who leads on this issue, and who is at best, an apologist for white nationalism, at worst, a card carrying white nationalist himself; this is a guy who the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC, has thoroughly documented by his own leaked emails, has promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories, obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols. And yet, we just don’t talk about it as much as we should. It’s like we’re too polite to mention the open white nationalism from this White House when we talk about immigration and border controls.

JS: Another way to put it is that the target of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies are more often than not brown people —

MH: Yes. 

JS: — who come to the southern border where the majority of people who enter this country illegally, or ultimately stay in this country illegally, come via airplane from countries other than Central America or Latin America by overstaying visas. 

And the Trump administration has not — or did not, at that time — target visa overstays as their primary concern, when that was, by definition, by numbers, where most people who were in the United States ‘illegally’ were coming from. The policy has always been, the ire has always been targeting people with a different skin color coming from the southern border, and not at the majority of people who are entering the country and staying in the country illegally. 

And, you said it. I mean, that’s why this policy is, or was — I guess you could still say is, family separations are still happening — racist. I mean, this is not a policy that is being targeted at people who are flying here and staying here after going to school or getting a job or some other form of immigration to the United States. He’s targeting people who come through the southern border, period.

MH: Just to clarify for our listeners, you say family separation is still happening. Just briefly, how is it still happening?

JS: Well, the Trump administration is giving families an option: either separate, or be deported, or held indefinitely in family detention. That’s called binary choice. It’s the type of policy that’s being put forward. 

You won’t be surprised to learn, Mehdi, that nobody is selecting family separation as an option when they’re presented with it. 

MH: Yeah. 

JS: But it is still an option that the Trump administration is giving migrants in custody. It’s a catch-22 situation, you know? Either get kicked out of the country and your child stays here, and be in indefinite family detention with your child, or separate from your child, let your child go free, but you won’t see your child, because you’ll, you know, you’ll continue to be detained. It’s just family separation with a different mechanism.

MH: The ‘family separation crisis of 2018,’ I think we would agree, Jacob, was one of the biggest crises, one of the most horrifying episodes of the Trump presidency. And given how many big crises and horrific episodes there have been over the past four years, that’s a pretty high bar that it met. And even by the standard of awful Trump scandals, this one stood out.

And yet he survived. The people around him survived. A lot of people just forgot about it. Washington, the media, largely moved on. If we hadn’t moved on, if there had been consequences — for the lies, the law-breaking, the racism, the child abuse — do you think we might have avoided or even been better prepared for many of the other Trump crises that have since followed it?

JS: It’s such a good question. I would like to think so, but that goes back to the separation from the American public about what’s happening and why. 

And so often, I find, that too many of us are disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in our country. It’s too easy to look around in our own neighborhood —

MH: Yep. 

JS: — to talk about our own concerns versus what’s happening at the border. 

I’ll give you one example. I went to Tornillo, where they had that tent city in the wake of the separation crisis and all the migrant boys housed there. And I write about this in the book, I asked a local farmer growing pomegranates what his main concern was, and he said the production of food. And this was a man that was a stone’s throw away from thousands of kids being locked up in a tent in 100-degree heat in the middle of the South Texas desert. 

And, you know —

MH: Wow. 

JS: — I’ll never forget that. Because, you know, if, if he’s gonna forget about it, or if it’s not going to be top of mind for him, it isn’t going to be for people in suburban America either. And which is why, I think, you know, just it was so important to me to write this book, not just to remind people of this, but to answer those questions for myself: How could this possibly have happened? How could we possibly have moved on? You know, and what is it gonna take for this to not happen again?

MH: Well, I’m so glad you wrote the book and one of the issues that really bothers me is that there’s been very little accountability for the main players in this saga. 

Former Trump Chief-of-Staff, former DHS Secretary General John Kelly went off to work in the private sector. He even joined the board of Caliburn International, a company that operates the largest shelter for unaccompanied migrant children —oh, the irony. His successor as DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was invited as recently as October last year to speak at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women’s Summit in Washington, D.C.. There doesn’t seem to have been much accountability.

JS: Not just no accountability, many but some of these people have been put in charge of the response or at least on the team to the coronavirus outbreak that’s killed over 100,000 people in this country. In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, I remember sitting at home on lockdown like everybody else, watching, up on the podium, Chad Wolf, now the acting secretary of homeland security — then, a top deputy to Kirstjen Nielsen — who, as my colleague Julia Ainsley first reported, was involved in the drafting of the initial family separation policy to be presented to her. 

Katie Waldman, as I mentioned, was the spokeswoman for Kirstjen Nielsen and is now the spokeswoman for the Vice President of the United States. It seems as though the people that were involved in the family separation policy have not been disciplined, or reprimanded, or faced accountability; on the contrary, they’ve been elevated to new positions. And you mentioned John Kelly, who’s started working with Caliburn, this company that is profiting off of the detention of child migrants in multiple facilities now, along the southwest border. 

I would say that it’s baffling and stupefying, but, again, it’s just like you said — it’s another one of these consequence-less actions of the Trump administration that, you know, they seem to benefit from when, you know, common sense would say they should be punished.

MH: By the way, at that Fortune summit, my good friend Amna Nawaz of PBS News asked Kirstjen Nielsen if he regretted the so-called family separation policy.

Amna Nawaz: I’m asking you if you regret making that decision. 

Kirstjen Nielsen: I don’t regret enforcing the law, because I took an oath to do that, as did everybody at the Department of Homeland Security. We don’t make the laws; we asked Congress to change the law, Congress reviewed the law in 2006 and decided to continue to make it illegal to cross in that manner.

MH: When you hear Nielsen saying that, Jacob, what’s your reaction?

JS: The same bewilderment that I felt when I saw her tweet that: “There is no family separation policy. Period.” I thought that that interview, by the way, was spectacular. 

MH: Yeah. 

JS: And the line of questioning was perfect, because Kirstjen Nielsen is an expert in slipping away from questions about the family separation policy. If anyone should face accountability for the policy, it is her. 

She had to sign, and I outline it in the book, a decision memo that sat on her desk with three options to implement the end of what was known as catch-and-release: the idea that migrants who come to the southern border would be released to the interior, with their families, until their immigration case would be adjudicated in the courts, until they had to show up for court. And by the way, many migrants — most migrants — do show up for that process, because they want to attain asylum in this country. 

She chose of the three options, the most severe, the most punitive of family separations. It was a deliberate and clear decision by her; she had to sign her name — literally on the dotted line — for the policy. And the idea that she doesn’t face any responsibility for this, that it wasn’t something that she ultimately would come to regret, I just don’t believe it. I don’t — knowing what I know about her, having sat face-to-face with her at the start of this policy — I do not believe that that is truly the way that she feels. And I know, certainly, that she knows the responsibility that she bears for it.

JS: And like every ex-Trump official, especially once he leaves office, everyone’s going to be spinning how they were actually resisting inside the administration — they were the good guys pushing back against awful policies from the top. 

And we focus a lot on Trump, and we should focus also on these ex-Trump officials who are trying to rehabilitate themselves; they should really be shunned by polite society. But sadly, we know Washington, D.C.: they won’t be, they aren’t being shunned. And that’s depressing. 

One last question for you, Jacob. Given what you saw with your own eyes, what you heard in terms of testimony from some of these parents and children — the trauma of it, as you put it — how hard a book was this for you to write.

JS: Well, certainly not as hard as being separated from your child, indefinitely, in the minds of a lot of these parents. It was — it was difficult to revisit. But covering family separations is something that will have changed me, forever, for my entire life. I think there’s a lot of people out there who, having watched the story — not just from my coverage, but from the wonderful journalism that was done, you know, during and after this policy — you know, it’s changed a lot of people. 

And, for me, this was something that I wanted to do to answer questions that I didn’t know the answer to in real time. And it’s also something that I wanted to do for Juan and José, because the reason that they decided to participate in this story with me was so that it never happens again. And I really mean that. You know, I don’t know if it’s kosher to say that as a journalist, that covering this, and writing this book, you know, for me has a specific and — what I hope — is a positive outcome. But that’s really what this was about for me. 

And to revisit it was, was difficult. But it’s nothing compared to what Juan and José and 5,000 other children went through. 

MH: Jacob, congratulations on an important book. Thank you so much for joining me on Deconstructed. 

JS: Thank you, Mehdi. Appreciate it.

[Musical interlude.]

MH: That was Jacob Soboroff, author of the new book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.”

And that’s our show! And we’re going to be on a little bit of a summer break, here on Deconstructed. The show will be back in August. Hope you’re all able to have a break too. Stay safe while we’re gone!

Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.

And I’m Mehdi Hasan. You can follow me on Twitter @mehdirhasan. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice: iPhone, Android, whatever. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review — it helps people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at [email protected]. Thanks so much!

See you next month.

Article Source

#child abuse #trump scandal #separated families #separated kids #humanitarian crisis #human rights

[kootenaygoon]

So,

Lady Celista Spencer was in mourning.

All her life she’d imagined crossing the Atlantic with her aeroplane, and now it’s twisted wreckage lay half-buried like a statue of a mighty king that had been wrenched off its pedestal and left to sink back into the earth. She was heartbroken. As soothing winds whispered off the ocean, the waves crashing relentlessly behind her, she sat down in the dirt and began to cry. First it was just a quiet murmur, but within a few moments her child-like wails could be heard from miles around. She was the type of person who felt things more deeply than other people, whose emotions could overwhelm her without warning. She sprawled on her back and screamed her lament at the afternoon white. Eventually her sadness turned to anger.

When Big Sal arrived on the scene, Lady Celista had donkey-kicked a hole in the fuselage of her beloved plane. Her black hair swept around her face like the tentacles of a drunken squid. When she spun to inspect the intruder she found herself faced with a gargantuan Nova Scotian wearing stained overalls. At least 50 years old, she had black-stained fingers and close-cropped grey hair that stuck up like porcupine bristles. The two of them stood gazing at each other for a long time before either spoke. 

“I heard you were a feisty one,” Big Sal said. “You left ol’ Jim with a pretty mean shiner there. Not that he didn’t deserve it.”

Celista frowned. “And who are you to decide what people deserve?”

This made Big Sal laugh. “Well, I’ve been around long enough to figure out who has a functioning soul, and who doesn’t. It’s the type of thing you can see in somebody’s eyes the moment you meet them. And I’ve been around a lot longer than you, little lady.”

“Don’t call me little.”

“I take it back. I’m sorry. The fact is, it looks like you need some assistance. That’s why I’m here.”

“Unless you’re an expert at fixing planes we have nothing to talk about.”

Sal smiled. “As it happens, I do know a thing or two about fixing vehicles. I run an automotive shop up in Lunenburg that could use an extra hand or two. Plenty of scrap metal laying around. The type of metal that might be put to good use plugging holes like that one right there.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

She sighed. “Girl, there ain’t anybody you can trust in this world. Not if you’re smart. But it seems to me like you don’t have many options left here. Now I’m ready to throw you a life preserver, the only question is whether you’re ready to catch it.”

Celista had calmed down by this point. She bit her lip, weighing her options, as this giant woman stood stoic. Growing up she’d always been suspicious of men, but that didn’t mean she liked women either. Nobody had shown her true kindness her entire life, so she didn’t understand why Sal would even bother to offer help. She was a stranger, right? A foreigner? She studied the deep wrinkles of Sal’s forehead, the kind blue tint of her eyes. This was a woman with a hard face, but an honest one. 

“What are you proposing exactly?” Celista asked.

“Well, if you’re willing to put in some work around my shop I can pay you in room and board. Then, with your earnings, we can work together to get this thing back into flying shape.”

“Do you think it’s possible?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think is possible. The only thing that matters is what you do, and how well you do it. I’m not looking for dead weight. If you come work for me I’ll expect you to put your back into it. Do you think you can do that?”

That afternoon they transported the plane, which had broken into three pieces, down the winding highway to Sal’s shop. Celista rode shotgun with her window wide open, sucking back deep nostril shots of the ocean air. She loved the windswept lighthouses, the battered-looking historical churches and brightly coloured shanties. The yards she passed were full of fishing nets and lobster traps, old schooners up on blocks and deconstructed boats that yearned to return to the sea. Canada was nothing like the country she’d left behind. She was still far from her destination, but a hesitant hope was birthed deep in her soul. She could do this.

Big Sal’s shop became Celista’s home. Week in and week out she would labour away in the garage, rolling under malfunctioning cars to examine their undercarriages or change their oil. She began to learn all the different makes and models, quickly becoming Sal’s most efficient and trusted mechanic. And little by little she began to earn the cash she needed to repair her dreams. As one Christmas passed, and then another, she watched her aeroplane begin to take shape again. By the time she’d been in Lunenburg for four years it was sparkling and pristine, ready for the next leg of the journey. She didn’t want to stop until she reached British Columbia. She was 20 years old now, and had been reading book after book about the Shuswap. Her goals had crystallized around one particular body of water: the magic and meandering Adams River. 

“If there was a way to keep you here, I would try it,” Sal said, sinking down at a table across from Celista the night before she was scheduled to leave. “But I have a feeling like nothing could come between you and your goals.”

Celista didn’t say anything.

“Do you know how hard it is to find good help in in Maritimes? What am I supposed to do without you, girl?”

She shook her head. “I’m not a girl anymore. I’m a woman.”

“I suppose you’re right about that, aren’t you?”

Then Sal produced a rotund brown bottle with XXX inscribed on the side. She pulled the cork and poured two healthy shots. Celista could smell the stink of alcohol, and it reminded her of the disinfectant wash they used in the shop. She examined it with trepidation, thinking of all the stupid drunks she’d encountered during her years in Nova Scotia. Alcohol made people stupid, she knew that much, and Celista did not want to be stupid. 

“When I heard you were bound for the Shuswap, I decided to get you a special present. This here was brewed right in Salmon Creek. They call it Shuscotch.”

“Shuscotch?”

“It’s Scotch that was made in the Shuswap. They say they’ve got a distillery hidden off in the forest, and they smuggle the barrels down Salmon Creek to Shuswap Lake. This stuff is world famous. I thought you might like to taste it ahead of time. So you’ll know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Sal lifted her glass for a toast, and after a moment of trepidation Celista lifted hers too. They clinked, then each took their shot. Immediately she felt the fiery burrowing down her throat, like she’d swallowed an electric worm. She coughed into her elbow, tears in her eyes, then felt a magic warmth growing in her chest. She liked Shuscotch.

An hour later, as Celista stumbled drunk back to her lodging, her mind began to swirl above her into the purple heavens. She gaped with wonder as the clouds parted like theatre curtains to reveal a man’s rugged visage. Her vision filled with this man’s face, with his tri-coloured beard. He looked like a lumberjack of some sort, in red flannel, and as she watched he sprinted through gunfire. Flames licked into the air behind him as he jumped into a barrel and rode it bobbing down Salmon Creek. She gasped as the night sky exploded, beautiful orange flames overwhelming her and ascending hungrily. With that she doubled over, retching, and vomited until there was nothing left inside her to throw up.

The next day, nursing a vengeful hangover, Celista packed her belongings into the plane. As she prepared for her journey, she wondered about the figure from her vision. In all her life she’d never been attracted to a man before, finding them slovenly and entitled, but there was something different about him. He seemed more alive than most people, more magic, like his eyes were dancing with fire. She wondered if it was a dream or a prophecy of things to come. She’d never been religious and she didn’t believe in anything supernatural, but he seemed like the sort of person that could change her mind.

“I don’t suppose you’ll ever be returning this way, so I guess this is goodbye,” said Sal, reaching out her hand. “You were the best mechanic I’ve ever hired. I mean that. You’re going to do just fine in British Columbia, I believe that.”

Celista fought back tears. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you, Sal. I’m never going to forget you. I promise. And I’ll write you postcards once I get there, once I land in the Shuswap.”

Sal produced the jug of Shuscotch. “Why don’t you take this with you? As a token of my friendship. And if you ever track down the men who make it, let them know they’ve got a fan in Nova Scotia.”

Celista took it, then threw her arms around Sal. Throughout her childhood she’d always wanted a mother, and now that she found one she was leaving her behind. For a moment she doubted herself. She didn’t want to let go.

“Okay, Lady Celista,” Sal said. “It’s time for you to fly.”

The Kootenay Goon

[corbie]

Words I Have Enjoyed, 2018

Books

J.G. Ballard, The Day of Creation

Jodorowsky, The Incal

Charles Stross, Toast and Other Stories

Richard Feynman, QED: the strange theory of light and matter

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

Douglas Adams, Dirk Gentry’s Holistic Detective Agency

Iain M. Banks, The State of The Art

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Iain M. Banks, Excession

Italo Calvino, If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Frank Herbert, Dune

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Longer Reads

Assorted Alan Kay Emails

“After more than 50 years of doing edge of art research, my conclusion is that "it is delicate". An important part of any art is for the artists to escape the "part of the present that is the past", and for most artists, this is delicate because the present is so everywhere and loud and interruptive. For individual contributors, a good ploy is to disappear for a while. What was wonderful about the big creative projects of the golden age was that they had to be conducted out in the open by lots of people, but the processes and pressures were such that the delicate parts were not done in.”

Are We Awake Under Anesthesia?

What happens to the mind and consciousness under anesthesia?

Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

“A gene for…“, “Brain region X lights up”, “Chemical imbalance”, “Closure”, “Fetish”, and friends.

The Female Price Of Male Pleasure

“Once you've absorbed how horrifying this is, you might reasonably conclude that our "reckoning" over sexual assault and harassment has suffered because men and women have entirely different rating scales. An 8 on a man's Bad Sex scale is like a 1 on a woman's. This tendency for men and women to use the same term — bad sex — to describe experiences an objective observer would characterize as vastly different is the flip side of a known psychological phenomenon called "relative deprivation," by which disenfranchised groups, having been trained to expect little, tend paradoxically to report the same levels of satisfaction as their better-treated, more privileged peers.”

DNA Through The Eyes Of A Coder

“DNA is not like C source but more like byte-compiled code for a virtual machine called 'the nucleus'. It is very doubtful that there is a source to this byte compilation - what you see is all you get.”

A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

“That is the sorry reality of the bazaar Raymond praised in his book: a pile of old festering hacks, endlessly copied and pasted by a clueless generation of IT "professionals" who wouldn't recognize sound IT architecture if you hit them over the head with it. It is hard to believe today, but under this embarrassing mess lies the ruins of the beautiful cathedral of Unix, deservedly famous for its simplicity of design, its economy of features, and its elegance of execution.”

The Recurse Center User’s Manual

I wish every technical working group I’ve been on for the past fifteen years had something one-tenth as thoughtful as this.

The White Darkness: A Journey Across Antarctica

The trial of crossing the Southern continent on foot, alone.

Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks

“One interesting consequence of this process is that the competition between cultures is becoming defunctionalized. The institutions of modern bureaucratic capitalism solve many of the traditional problems of social integration in an almost mechanical way. As a result, when considering the modern “hypercultures” – e.g. American, Japanese, European – there is little to choose from a functional point of view. None are particularly better or worse, from the standpoint of constructing a successful society. And so what is there left to compete on? All that is left are the memetic properties of the culture, which is to say, the pure capacity to reproduce itself.”

Programmer as wizard, programmer as engineer

“I think one of the overarching goals of compute science is to make more programming like wizarding. We want our computers to be human-amplifiers.”

The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks

“Philosophically, the Culture accepts, generally, that questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” are themselves meaningless....In summary, we make our own meanings, whether we like it or not.”

Computing is Everywhere: A conversation with Bret Victor, Creator of Dynamicland

“That was the plan, yeah. I had um I just built up a . . . a set of things I wanted to think about that could not be thought at Apple. It was kind of this — um I had a bulletin board in my room and had like all these little pieces of paper that I had stuck to that board. And so when I went on my trip, I kind of scooped all those papers into like three little plastic baggies, and then at some random public library somewhere in the middle of the country, I spread out those papers on a big desk and tried to figure out what — what is it? Like what — what is the abstraction here? What — what does all these little ideas add — What are the categories here? What does it add up to?”

Lessons from Optics, The Other Deep Learning

“If anything, I wanted to reply that maybe her engineers should be scared.”

How To Be A Systems Thinker: A Conversation With Mary Catherine Bateson

“The tragedy of the cybernetic revolution, which had two phases, the computer science side and the systems theory side, has been the neglect of the systems theory side of it. We chose marketable gadgets in preference to a deeper understanding of the world we live in.”

Deconstructing the Unix Philosophy

Lots of good bits here.

A Basic Lack of Understanding

“This article is about what AI is, but it’s also about why learning what AI is is important in the first place. It’s about how AI is marketed as a commodity today, and what impact that has on people whose work and social lives are touched and shaped by AI on a daily basis. And it’s about how the future of resistance against AI-backed exploitation may not just be technological in nature, but social and cultural.”

One day I'm going to do a survey of the early-21st century AI skepticist essay landscape.

Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power

“To protest that some fairly improbable people, some people who could not possibly respect themselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to miss the point entirely, as surely as those people miss it who think that self-respect has necessarily to do with not having safety pins in one's underwear. There is a common superstition that "self-respect" is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.”

Carbon Ironies

“Most likely, you are a hard, angry person. . . . Beset by floods, droughts, diseases and insect plagues . . . fearing for your children in the face of multiplying perils, how can you feel anything better than impatient contempt for my daughter and me, who lived so wastefully for our own pleasure?”

Utopia and Work

“The utopianism of full employment is so entrenched, as a seemingly uncontested common sense, it’s difficult to imagine a different utopian horizon.”

Disposable America

“As it turns out, all three companies’ histories intersect with each other, as well as with structural changes to the American economy. But first, we have to talk about McDonald’s.”

What can a technologist do about climate change?

No clear answers, but thoughtful and insightful.

Survival of the Richest

Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern. Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

Bourdain Confidential

“As much as I look at houses sometimes and think wow, that would be really nice, if that were my house, I know that I would be miserable. It would be… cleaning out the… the gutters, and you know, what about the pipes freezing, and if you own a home it means you have to vacation in the same place every year. I’m a renter by nature. I like the freedom to change my mind about where I want to be in six months, or a year. Because I’ve also found you might have to make that decision… you can’t always make that decision for yourself, you know… shit happens.”

How to write a good software design document

“A design doc is the most useful tool for making sure the right work gets done.”

The Bullshit Web

“There is a cumulative effect of bullshit; its depth and breadth is especially profound. In isolation, the few seconds that it takes to load some extra piece of surveillance JavaScript isn’t much. Neither is the time it takes for a user to hide an email subscription box, or pause an autoplaying video. But these actions compound on a single webpage, and then again across multiple websites, and those seemingly-small time increments become a swirling miasma of frustration and pain.”

On Production Minimalism

“Do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

“Omakase”

Just read it.

See No Evil

“What if we take these companies at their word? What if it is truly impossible to get a handle on the entirety of a supply chain?”

Estrangement and Cognition

“SF is, then, a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment.”

Layering

“This is good advice, and with a bit of adaptation it can apply to many things in life. Any sort of improvisation must arise from a basic technique. And just as important, the advice understands that there’s nothing more intimidating than a pristine kitchen, a blank canvas, an empty screen.”

The Heart of the Problem

“But consider this for a moment. Perhaps once we are adequately fed, diet becomes far less significant in determining how healthy we are. Maybe almost insignificant. Could it be that when our bodies have enough macro and micro nutrients available most of the time, other determinants of health kick in. The houses we live in. The stress we are under. The pressure of financial and social inequalities. Stigma, abuse and mental illness. Social isolation. And a million other factors with the capacity to make us sick.”

Mass Authentic

“Authenticity seems to stand for the truth behind the curtain, but it is really just the curtain. The presumption that only some feelings in some situations are real, and other feelings, though felt, are somehow false, is authenticity’s main ruse.”

Stickeen: The Story of a Dog

“However great his troubles he never asked help or made any complaint, as if, like a philosopher, he had learned that without hard work and suffering there could be no pleasure worth having.”

The Early History of Smalltalk

Far more here than I could find suitable excerpts for.

The Radical Implications of Luck in Human Life

“The less credit/responsibility you believe we are due, the more you believe our trajectories are shaped by forces outside our control (and sheer chance), the more compassionate you will be toward failure and the more you will expect back from the fortunate. When luck is recognized, softening its harsh effects becomes the basic moral project.”

It’s Harder Than It Looks To Write Clearly

“Everything we write is, in a sense, translated from another language, from the chatter we hear inside our head, translated from that interior babble (more or less comprehensible to us) into (what we hope will be) the clearer, more articulate language on the page. But during the process of that translation, basic clarity often suffers—sometimes fatally!—when, for whatever reason, we feel that we are translating our natural speech into a foreign language: in other words, when we are writing.”

It Isn’t About The Technology

“Yet the decentralized Web advocates persist in believing that the answer is new technologies, which suffer from the same economic problems as the existing decentralized technologies underlying the "centralized" Web we have. A decentralized technology infrastructure is necessary for a decentralized Web but it isn't sufficient. Absent an understanding of how the rest of the solution is going to work, designing the infrastructure is an academic exercise.”

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction

“For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant feature of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical but rooted in the phenomenon of watching.”

If the Point of Capitalism is to Escape Capitalism, Then What’s the Point of Capitalism?

“Freedom from exploitation. Freedom from control and domination. Freedom to find, develop, and realize ourselves. The freedom to live lives which really sear us with meaning, purpose, and fulfillment — instead of being crushed with anxiety, bruised by competitiveness, and suffused with fear. So here is the real question. If these are things we are really after — why don’t we just give them to one another?”

The Lax Habits of the Free Imagination

“The lax habits of the free imagination exhibit an appealing open-door policy. But to counterbalance this extreme permissiveness, the celestial process had better employ some sort of disciplinarian, an enforcer, to maintain order. Where else does the famous restraint and brevity of the short story come from? In other words, there must be a plan, an outline. Mustn't there?“

Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

“It's fun to think about, interesting, and completely inaccessible to experiment given our current technology. You can build crystal palaces of thought, working from first principles, then climb up inside them and pull the ladder up behind you. People who can reach preposterous conclusions from a long chain of abstract reasoning, and feel confident in their truth, are the wrong people to be running a culture.”

I’m Broke and Friendless and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life

“When you’re curious about your shame instead of afraid of it, you can see the true texture of the day and the richness of the moment, with all of its flaws. You can run your hands along your own self-defeating edges until you get a splinter, and you can pull the splinter out and stare at it and consider it.”

Mistakes About The Meaning Of Life

“Noting this close relationship between meaningfulness and value is important, since it allows us to draw many implications that can be helpful for people who consider their lives insufficiently meaningful.”

[thelanternlight]

5.20.2020 Wednesday Morning

Last night I had a very vivid and intense dream about the apocalypse. Corona virus had swept the world much more severely than anyone had anticipated. It was about a year or so into the future and the majority of people all over the planet were already dead. I remember the dream opened with me and some other people wading through swampy water on a cloudy, dismal day. The water slowly kept rising and I and the others had come here to drown ourselves (or allow the alligators in the water to eat us) in order to die more quickly. Every human being was expected to die and as a result people were either committing suicide or killing each other. Society had long since collapsed totally. And this was our fate, to either allow the virus to kill us slowly or to get on with it.

I and the others were in the swamp for a good while. When it was already too deep to stand in we decided that our basic self-preservation instincts were making it all the harder to kill ourselves so some of us started talking, right there out in the swamp on this tedious and heart-wrenchingly dull day, that we would choose to prolong our lives and leave the water. It was a long discussion and the decision was not important. It was simply "even this is taking too long, why not just continue to go about our lives?" our lives of course having been reduced by that point to merely awaiting death. I remember clearly thinking "so this is how the world ends... this is the end of the world. I lived to see it. And instead of some major catastrophe it ends slowly and quietly."

The dream bounced around through various scenes. I realized that Myrtle Snow was there and for the rest of the saga I alternated between actually being her and just watching her from outside myself. She was exactly as she was in AHS, especially Coven. She was smart and ambitious and her natural goal was to preserve life and find a way to fix everything. And impeccably dressed. She went around to various groups looking for people to help her save the world. Some joined but by and large everyone - and I mean everyone - had given up hope and were just waiting to die. People were hoarding as much medicine and food as they could but even their minuscule stockpiles were uselessly paltry. Those who had retained their sanity could only pretend that there was enough to do even one person any good, purely out of pity.

I remember being in some side alley in London. I feel like the Supreme was there (Cordelia) but she wasn't the prominent figure in the dream. It was mostly following Myrtle/myself. I remember being in a bank, all dilapidated and crumbling from the riots and looting that had taken place months before. The manager was there, an older gentleman who was probably very kind and happy before everything went to hell. Anyways he pushed a check into my hand for all the money the bank was worth. Some obscene amount that he made me promise to keep safe and use wisely if ever I had the chance. I agreed, because again that's what you did with crazy people, but secretly scoffed mentally at the sheer absurdity of thinking this piece of paper had any value left. And then moments later, I looked up and the people around me (there was a small crowd in the bank seeking refuge) began to duck because someone had stood up with a bomb and had thrown it at us. Instantly I realized it was the bank manager and he was now dead. I covered my head as it went off killing some but sparing most (it wasn't a very sophisticated bomb). And just when we all thought the explosion was over another man stood up and detonated a second bomb. I survived this one as well but a few others did not. As debris rained down on us I (as myself) and Myrtle and some of the others hurriedly left.

I next remember being in a car with my sister on my right and a few others squeezed in. The driver was a woman I didn't recognize. She was handing me a wad of cash, a somewhat sizeable amount but cash all the same (and therefore useless). She asked someone to keep it hidden on their person. I was already carrying the check so I volunteered to do it but my sister said she'd hold on to it instead (I remember looking at her and saying "Ok, you're gonna play banker?" as we always did when we were kids playing Monopoly). She did not reappear in the dream again. And suddenly I was at a train station somewhere that was in ruins. There was a dugout of sorts where I and others were hiding out, still contemplating how to kill ourselves so as to escape the tedium of life punctuated only by brief hysteria. Someone threw down a box of human eyeballs in front of me. The box was cardboard and wet and disgusting. I had no idea what it meant but it also didn't matter. It was implied that this might be food if it came to it.

The next few scenes are a blur. But they involved Myrtle/myself finally getting some traction on her quest to save the world. She/I didn't have any real plan but we knew the virus had to contained and that it was being spread by people, or even some sort of demonic type of person. She used her magic to do various things such as opening doors and all that, and I recall being in some basement in some random house where she was going to conjure water, as in create water right on the floor of the basement - I think the intention may have been to create a makeshift reservoir of clean potable water that could also be kept hidden, protected, and controlled. She/I was trying to think of the best spell to do it with a few obvious methods but before "we" could settle on something the dream shifted again.

We were in some airport because one of the planes was still operational. Cordelia was there and Myrtle, me, and I think one other person who had joined us. Suddenly though Myrtle disappeared, and then I was her having suddenly been transported against my will to another place I didn't recognize. There was a woman looking at me and talking to me. I knew she was enchanted to appear normal and was really one of the demon-people who was spreading the virus. I watched from outside myself (as neither Myrtle nor myself) as the woman shrunk Myrtle to a height of just a few inches. "She's going to be so pissed off," I heard Cordelia say out of nowhere, "she hated this the first time it happened too." And as Cordelia's voice said this I saw broken ground as though a meteor had hit it with a large, round planet earth nested inside the hole, and Myrtle's tiny form was thrown at it. As this was done she shrank even more and was sort of "transported" to wherever it is she "landed".

Next I remember Cordelia and I back in the real world. We were meeting with some man but I don't recall the details of the meeting at all. Only that as we approached there was a small doll on a shelf and Cordelia sort of did a second take to look at it. She said quietly to me that we should be on the lookout for any signs from Myrtle that show she's making progress toward "getting back".

Meanwhile in whatever alternate dimension Myrtle was in, I was her again and sometimes outside of her watching. She was in a parking lot of hills. There was a young man walking. I was sitting in a limo watching him. The driver got out and casually went over near him but not close enough to draw the young man's attention. Another woman and what was likely her daughter appeared off to the side walking the same way as the young man. These two were important somehow and so Myrtle sent a message to the driver to "stand down" regarding the young man because he posed no threat. The driver returned to the limo and drove slowly toward the mother and daughter. I realized that the limo was stuffed with fresh food and water and everything someone could possibly need during an apocalypse. As we met them the dream changed and I don't know what became of that meeting but it was implied that it had gone well.

Next I was in a chair as Myrtle talking to two new young men. One was a very light skinned black guy who was handsome with bright eyes. The other was his best friend, a white young man who was perhaps less attractive and intelligent but still kind. I knew that they were innocent and that they held the key to me (as Myrtle) returning to the real world although neither of them knew it. As we were talking the black guy mentioned that my arm was bleeding. I glanced down at it, and saw my left arm did appear to have a little blood on it. I wasn't exactly bleeding so much as manifesting the blood. It was somehow linked to a "real body" elsewhere and as I "synced up" with it I took on small injuries it had sustained. It was a good sign. But it also sort of freaked out the boys and I had to reassure them that everything was fine. And then I (again, as Myrtle) sort of faded out of that world and returned to the real world.

At this point I/Myrtle was well on the way to making real progress toward saving the world. There was a lot of work to do still but I had reached a few milestones and momentum had started pushing me and Cordelia and whoever else had joined us towards our goal of righting the world and stopping the virus. Unfortunately my alarm went off at 5:45 am and I was unable to complete the dream. But in summation, what stands out about this dream was its consistency and its vivid realism. What it felt like to resign yourself so completely to death. What it was like to contemplate the end of the world. Especially being in the swamp initially... the rising water. The threat of unseen dangers... It was like the natural world itself was deconstructing into more simplified elements. The environment was un-making itself and that alone was horrifying and threatening. Yet even so it was all so incredibly boring. Scary beyond belief but quiet and tedious and dull. Waiting for death. Having to choose between suicide or scraping by to live an empty existence purely for the sake of pursuing whatever small amount of life was still possible. But then the absolute lightning rod of Myrtle's presence, like a spark of divine fire that grew and grew, gave me such hope. There was purpose and meaning again because of her, and reaching for a solution when literally no one else on earth thought one was possible Myrtle Snow (and Cordelia when she was there) galvanized a way.

Myrtle Snow is of course a hero of mine, but more than that perhaps the dream was a metaphor for fears surrounding the actual corona virus. Or else merely an over-exaggerated dread of having to go back into the office and the dismal gray world of my job. Or maybe it's even fears of the economy and the politics of today's world, or of capitalism itself with all its shortcomings, failures, and brokenness. To me Myrtle is someone who is fiercely and purely good. And her nature, the nature of good, is to never give up hope and to always reach towards life and what is right. To find a way through anything, even the actual end of the world. So whatever's going on in my subconscious, I hope this dream helped resolve some of it...

[musical-chick-13]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Is Back!!! And you know what that means...

Weekly episode review time!!

-I have to say, this is probably the first time I didn’t love an episode.

-Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of great stuff in here. But I feel…conflicted.

-I don’t know why they had to break White Josh and Darryl up. Like, I get that the kids thing isn’t always reconcilable. And good on them for actually showing Darryl taking steps to have another kid instead of just using it as a contrived excuse for drama (lookin’ at you, Supergirl). But we…kind of need examples of healthy LGBT+ relationships. And this was one of the few we had. And if either or both of them move on to another healthy relationship, maybe I’ll make peace with it. Maybe they’ll work it out and get back together. But even if they do, I’m tired of this “We have to break them up at least once” thing that almost every show seems to do with every couple on it. I was promised a deconstruction of rom-com cliches. Breaking them up before putting them back together is a rom-com cliche. Can we just have a couple that gets together and stays together? Please???

-The side-plot with Paula interfering with Darryl’s egg donor? One of the best things on the show I’ve ever seen. I don’t talk about Paula enough. She’s growing, too. She still has a lot of personal discovery left, and I’m not sure how I feel about Darryl just forgiving her, but the man is a bit oblivious and extremely dedicated to being her friend, so I felt like that was in character. And good on Paula for admitting she has a problem and being honest with Darryl about her antics.

-Like I’ve said before: they made me like Nathaniel?? I still don’t know how that happened.

-Wow, Josh was relatable in this episode. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at all of the garbage I’ve hoarded in my room while stressing about my future before breaking down into off-key karaoke. God bless him.

-I understood why Darryl’s song was in this episode, and I actually thought it was very cleverly written. Still made me feel really weird. Maybe if Darryl had seemed more genuinely into it I would have…not felt that way. Because it kind of seemed like he felt awkward while performing it, and not intentionally so.

-Lmao at Lourdes. Also, poor Josh. Someone please help him. (Also, like…I get it, Josh is in his 30s and should have actual life goals and not rely on other people so much…but it rubs me the wrong way that Lourdes isn’t listening to him and is just kicking him out of the house.)

-I AM. SO HAPPY. REBECCA. REALIZED. HER OBSESSION. SHIFTING. TO NATHANIEL. THANK. FUCKING. GOD. (Also, the monologue about wanting to get to know him better before using the “glitter exploding” analogy and then abruptly going “Oh no.” Comedy gold. I was worried they would pair them together seriously as a Standard Reward for Rebecca Getting Better. But Rebecca realizing her issues herself and being the one to break it off? I’d put up with an entire season of her dating Nathaniel (or even Josh, for that matter) for that.)

-And also, thank you Dr. Shin for clarifying that mentally ill people (specifically people with BPD) can still have healthy and fulfilling romantic relationships. Rebecca, though relatable, is not a universal example.

-And here’s the part we come to that I have the most issue with that made me not love this episode. Josh…thanked? Rebecca?? I understand that his point of divergence was Rebecca’s appearance in West Covina. But the guy has been stalked and manipulated and gaslighted by this woman. He told her he never wanted to see her again and to stay away from his family. I will admit, yeah, he has grown at lot as a person, and that might not have happened if Rebecca hadn’t been there. But he doesn’t owe her anything. And the narrative presents him doing this as “doing the right thing,” when the fact is that abuse or problematic behavior shouldn’t be seen as a catalyst for personal growth. It should be seen as abuse or problematic behavior. The show has done a really good job of not justifying or condoning Rebecca’s problematic behavior, and for Josh to, in spite of everything he’s dealt with regarding said behavior, thank her in spite of all that-in a way that is meant to be portrayed as sweet, a sign of maturity, and the “right thing” to me feels like condoning/justifying her actions is exactly what the show is doing. I really, really hope that Rebecca’s mistakes aren’t going to get swept under the rug as “no big deal” or “for the best” or “unintentionally what everyone needed” because problematic behavior is problematic behavior regardless of who you are. 

-I’ll see what happens next week. I really, really want to trust the writers, but…well, I’ve been burned by works of fiction before.

-MC13 out.

#crazy ex-girlfriend s3 #crazy ex-girlfriend spoilers #rebecca bunch #paula proctor #josh chan #darryl whitefeather #white josh #nathaniel plimpton #i type on the internet #cxgf talk #crazy ex girlfriend

[armeniaitn]

Armenia Economy News Digest for Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Here is the Daily Digest of economics and business news for Armenia for Wednesday, August 19, 2020. The notable articles are the following:

ADB approves $2m grant to help Armenia fight against Covid-19

August 18, 2020 – 18:12 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $2 million grant from its Asia Pacific Disaster Response Fund (APDRF) to support Armenia in its fight against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, the bank said in a statement Monday, August 17.

The grant, which is financed by the Government of Japan, will be used to upgrade laboratory diagnostic and testing capacity. The funds will also help finance the purchase of urgently needed medical equipment and supplies to improve treatment capacity including in critical care units.

“ADB is fully committed to helping Armenia through this difficult period. This assistance will help to meet the needs for appropriate medical services and supplies where required, and is in line with the government’s national response plan,” said ADB Country Director for Armenia Paolo Spantigati. “We will continue to work closely with the government and other development partners to combat the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic.”

The Government of Armenia declared a state of emergency on March 16 and implemented a range of measures to restrict the spread of the disease, including quarantine measures.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Armenia grew by 145 to reach 41,846 on Tuesday, August 18. So far, 34,982 people have recovered, 832 have died from the coronavirus in the country, while 245 others carrying the virus have died from other causes.

Read original article here

The Armenian Model for Belarus

STOCKHOLM – With Belarusians taking to the streets in unprecedented numbers and refusing to be cowed by state violence, it is obvious that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has failed in his bid to steal another election and prolong his time in power. By all standards, his days in power are now numbered.

Deconstructing Donald PS OnPoint

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Elizabeth Drew

Although it is difficult at this point to say anything new about Donald Trump, it is never too early to start reckoning with the implications of his presidency. The only thing more disturbing is the possibility of what may lie ahead in – and after – November’s election.

reviews six recent books on the Trump presidency and the incalculable damage it has already done.

13 Add to Bookmarks

The Master and the Prodigy PS OnPoint

Tim Gidal/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

William H. Janeway reviews recent books on Frank Ramsey, John Maynard Keynes, and a highly consequential meeting of minds.

4 Add to Bookmarks

How to Prevent the Looming Sovereign-Debt Crisis

Teradat Santivivut/Getty Images

Joseph E. Stiglitz & Hamid Rashid

From Latin America’s lost decade in the 1980s to the more recent Greek crisis, there are plenty of painful reminders of what happens when countries cannot service their debts. A global debt crisis today would likely push millions of people into unemployment and fuel instability and violence around the world.

propose a multilateral facility for buying back low- and middle-income countries’ bonds.

11 Add to Bookmarks

Many commentators are comparing the situation in Belarus to Ukraine’s Orange and Maidan revolutions in 2004-05 and 2014, respectively. But Belarus is not Ukraine, and nor is it particularly helpful to apply the Maidan model to the scene playing out in Minsk and other Belarusian cities and towns.

Although domestic issues of corruption and mismanagement have undoubtedly played a role in Ukraine’s post-Cold War political developments, the main determining factor has been the wish to bring the country into the European fold. The Maidan movement was a direct response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich’s attempt to abandon the cause of European integration and reform. The revolutionaries openly mobilized under the banner of the European Union.

The uprising in Belarus is different. Domestic concerns are clearly playing the more salient role, and questions about the country’s orientation vis-à-vis Europe or Russia are almost totally absent. Belarusians are simply fed up with the 26-year reign of a man who is increasingly out of touch with society. The banner of the revolution is the forbidden white-red-white Belarusian national flag, which is likely soon to become the country’s official flag (as it was in 1918 and 1991-95). Indeed, no other banners have even made an appearance.

Still, while every political revolution must forge its own path, there are models available to help outside observers understand what may lie ahead. In Belarus’s case, I would offer an analogy not to Ukraine, but rather to Armenia in the spring of 2018, when mass demonstrations led to the resignation of longtime President Serzh Sargsyan and inaugurated a new democratic era for the country.

Armenia, too, has always had a close relationship with Russia, for both historical and strategic reasons. In 2013, the country abstained from joining Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine in entering into a Deep and Comprehensive Free-Trade Agreement with the EU, opting instead to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

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During the events of 2018, there were justifiable fears that Russia would intervene in some way in order to forestall another “color revolution” in a former Soviet republic. But, because Armenia’s geopolitical orientation wasn’t poised to change, the Kremlin seems to have restrained itself.

Under the best of circumstances, the Armenian revolution could provide a template for Belarus. The immediate goal is for a transitional administration to pave the way for a new presidential election under international monitoring. To ensure a smooth process, Belarus’s external orientation should be kept off the table. The election and broader struggle must be solely about democracy within the country, and nothing else.

To create the conditions for the “Armenia model,” the EU must craft its coming sanctions carefully, targeting only the individuals who are responsible for and involved in the obvious falsification of the election and the ensuing violent crackdown on protesters. Any action that imposes costs on Belarusian society and the economy more broadly would be counterproductive.

Moreover, Europe and other Western powers will need to accept that a newly democratic Belarus will still be dependent economically on Russia, at least for now. Long-needed reforms to modernize the Belarusian economy will, one hopes, gradually make that relationship more balanced within the framework of the EEU.

Similarly, because a Ukraine-style association agreement with the EU won’t be an option, the priority should be to bring Belarus into the World Trade Organization, and to support it through the International Monetary Fund. Both of these processes would introduce conditions for domestic economic reforms, and the hope is that a democratic regime would quickly adopt them.

After its democratic revolution, Armenia continued to host a Russian military base outside of its capital, Yerevan. While Russia doesn’t have a comparable military presence in Belarus, it does have obvious security interests, with a small air force unit and two strategic facilities. On this and similar defense issues that do not represent a threat to anyone else, there is no reason why existing arrangements shouldn’t remain in place.

Whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would accept an Armenian-style political transition in Belarus is, of course, an open question. There are bound to be some in his inner circle issuing paranoid warnings about a slippery slope leading to NATO taking over. To head off those calling for a brutal crackdown to prevent any kind of democratic breakthrough, the West will have to be proactive in its diplomacy, making clear that it will support a democratic Belarus that still chooses to have close links to Russia.

The situation in Belarus is not a geopolitical struggle. It is a domestic matter, concerning the Belarusian people and a regime that has lost legitimacy and outlived its usefulness. Western diplomacy can help the Belarusian people arrive at a democratic outcome, but only if it is conducted wisely.

Read original article here.

GIZ to help Armenian winemakers overcome COVID-19 challenge

The German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) continues to support Armenian winemakers in overcoming the challenges posed by COVID-19, the German Embassy in Armenia reports.

In particular, it will provide assistance to nine micro-enterprises not covered by any government support program and the Vayots Dzor Regional State College.

As a result, the winemakers will have their brand and label to produce and bottle wines in accordance with local and international standards and be represented in wine bars, shops and online platforms.

The funding program for the winemakers involved in the home industry is brought into being by the GIZ project “Development of the private sector and vocational training in the South Caucasus” in cooperation with the Fund for Vine and Wine Foundation of Armenia and the UNDP.

Read original article here.

Today on Twitter

These are some of the tweets about Armenia from some of the Twitter accounts we follow. Get in touch with us via Twitter if you want to be part of this Twitter list. We retweet occasionally.

Armenia @armenia·

20h

Things you can watch #forever...Btw the #water in #Pambak river is pure enough to drink . #NaturePhotography : Vahe Aghamyan

MFA of Armenia@MFAofArmenia·

17 Aug

Warm congratulations to the people of the Republic of #Indonesia on #IndependenceDay. Ready to reinvigorate our historic ties.

Armenia Mission to UN@ArmeniaUN·

13 Aug

Permanent Representative of Armenia sends a letter to the UN Secretary-General condemning instigation of inter-ethnic clashes and violence against the Armenian communities in various parts of the world. Addressing #hatespeech is crucial for advancing the #prevention agenda.

JAMnews@JAMnewsCaucasus·

17h

The series of firings, dismissals and imprisonments of officials continues in #Azerbaijan: https://ift.tt/3230vPP

MoD of Armenia @ArmeniaMODTeam·

10 Aug

The #Armenian contingent carrying out a #peacekeeping_mission in #Kosovo, fulfilling it's tasks, handed over the shift to the new group of Armenian #peacekeepers.The superior command assessed the Armenian peacekeepers' professional abilities and service. #ArmenianArmy #Security

4

Artsakh Parliament@Artsakh_Parl·

12 Aug

The law «On Making Amendments to the Law “On the State Budget '20 of the #Artsakh Republic"» was adopted with 26 votes in favor & 6 against. The SB revenues will make 126bln 49mln 399.2th AMD, expenditures-135bln 650mln 717.7th AMD, the deficit-9bln 601mln 318.5th.

4

AOMF@AOMFrancophonie·

7 Aug

[Arménie ] @OmbudsArmenia a reçu 794 plaintes concernant les actions relatives à l’impact économique de #Covid_19 https://ift.tt/34eRHt4

USC Armenian Studies@ArmenianStudies·

7h

Following the developments in Lebanon? Tune in tomorrow morning for this illuminating panel organized by @ArmenStudies & @NAASR1955. Zoom registration details: https://bit.ly/lebanonwebinar

ArtsakhPress Agency@ArtsakhPress·

12 Aug

Number of Divorces Reduced in #Artsakh https://ift.tt/3hbuj3c

Artsakh MFA@mfankr·

17 Aug

The President of the Republic of #Artsakh Arayik Harutyunian (@Pres_Artsakh) has signed a decree on coordinating the activities of the state administration bodies of the Republic in conducting a common foreign policy. Read the full text here: https://bit.ly/3aw5Bb7

Published February 15, 2020 at 01:34PM. Read full article at Stem Cells in the News Portal.

#Economy Digests

[pat78701]

Why 'Trump Administration' Is An Oxymoron

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump took the oath of office two months ago, but is not yet running a real presidency. His administration, thus far, largely is playing like a junta that surprised the royal guards and seized the palace ― while still remaining unable to pacify the capital city, let alone inspire the countryside.

The White House is as stately as ever, but there aren’t enough friends outside the (porous) iron fence to make the inhabitants as comfortable as they should be in the first months of a new regime.

Rather, Trump is under siege from pretty much all sides.

Federal courts again are slapping down Trump’s first, signature move: a temporary travel ban on citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that he says harbor “radical Islamic terrorists.”

The joint Trump-GOP effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare ― another key first promise and response ― is bogged down in multiple internal Republican divisions over everything from spending numbers to philosophy to legislative strategy.

With growing sharpness and specificity, GOP leaders are joining Democrats in dismissing as flat-out false the president’s repeatedly tweeted charge that former President Barack Obama “tapped” ― or surveilled in any way ― Trump Tower or its owner.

Trump’s new guns-and-no-butter first budget, which would literally take food from the poor and the elderly to give more money to Pentagon contractors, has been greeted with derision by many Republicans, who regard it as less of a blueprint than a political statement too harsh even for the tea party.

The nonpartisan polling “job approval” numbers for Trump have been in the 40s consistently in the first few months, and are the lowest launch average on record for a new president.

Trump has had his successes. They include the assembly, after some fits and starts, of a good ― or at least credible ― national security team of respected current and former members of the military or Congress. As a result, there is a solid chain of command for Trump in his role as commander in chief.

He nominated a man to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, to whom the American Bar Association gave a sterling endorsement.

Trump has issued some executive orders that make good on other campaign promises ― such as the gutting of EPA regulations on the use of coal, building pipelines, getting out of multilateral trade treaties and instituting tougher domestic rules on the apprehension and repatriation of undocumented immigrants.

His tweets and campaign-style speeches, vowing tax cuts and the twisting of corporate arms to “buy and build American,” have had an effect: The stock market has been on a wild run. 

But these successful measures ― the exception to the general pattern ― were comparatively amenable to direct White House control.

Everything else is harder to control or even withstand. And the dangers of drift are real. He elicited a new sense of hope from white working-class voters; their cynicism will deepen if he doesn’t deliver the jobs ― especially since his proposed new budget cuts are aimed at programs in rural counties.

Trump could well be tempted by the slow pace of change to ignore the law, especially since his aides, led by Steven Bannon, are telling him that the so-called “deep state” is itself a lawless force and is out to get him to preserve its own status.

He could use military confrontation ― such as the one brewing now with North Korea ― to emphasize the broad powers of a commander-in-chief who can’t be easily countermanded by institutions that constrain him now. Another terrorist attack on the “homeland” would give him a rationale ― if not justification ― for sweeping new executive actions in the United States.  

Leaders around the world, already confused and unsure of American leadership, could distance themselves further from U.S. aims and interests ― no matter how much more money Trump spends on modernizing the military and putting boots on the ground.

Why does a man who claims such great success as a business manager seem so overwhelmed?

Democrats have taken their time filling his Cabinet, arguing, with much justification, that Trump had presented them with a roster of conflict-laden billionaires and ideologues antagonistic to the goals of the departments they had been nominated to lead. But there a host of in-house reasons for the first months’ mess. Here they are:

He only wants to talk to people who have no choice but to agree with him, or who are glad to tell him why his enemies are scum. 

I know poll-takers who shied away from doing polls for Trump because they knew that the numbers would not be favorable ― and that Trump therefore would never hire them. “I turned down lots of jobs with him for that reason,” one of them told me. “You never give Trump bad news.” Which means that he is constantly infuriated when his yes men are forced to tell him the world says “no.”

He has to lash out somewhere, and that place is still Twitter. 

The Trump administration has been annoyed and distracted for a week ― a crucial week on the budget and on health care, among other things ― by the president’s false accusation of Obama’s purported “tapping.” He never should have said it. But he almost always does.

D.C. is not New York; politics is not real estate.

Trump’s tactical principle is that if someone “hits” you, you “hit back twice as hard.” I have heard him say it in private as well as in public, and it is a method he has used since he came to Manhattan decades ago with a million bucks from his dad. But the paradox of the presidency is this: You are the most powerful person in the world, but in dealing with the rest of government and all of politics, it’s better not to make threats, and certainly not threats in public. Everything Trump thought he knew about how to get things done in the midst of controversy is wrong now.

This is not a parliamentary system, it just looks like one. 

The Founding Fathers knew that parliaments could be dictatorial, which is why they chose not to have one. They dispersed and divided power. Even when one American party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, a president’s clout is limited by the size of the majorities, legislative rules and the courts. Trump can almost be forgiven for thinking that he had parliamentary power: Politics in America has been drifting in the one-party-rules direction for years. Obama passed his health care bill with only Democratic votes; Trump figured he could pass his with only the GOP. That already has been proven to be a faulty assumption.

The GOP doesn’t really like him, and the feeling is mutual. 

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Trump did not build from the ground up a new party and a new movement that he then led in the White House. Trump essentially carried out a hostile takeover of the rundown hulk of the GOP, battered by the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and the rebellious internal assaults of the tea party. Virtually every key figure in the House and Senate was for someone other than Trump, and some of them ran against him. Trump swept the primaries with money and jingoistic salesmanship, but he remains widely distrusted ideologically and personally on all sides.

Trump & Co. were elected because they’d had nothing to do with government ― and it shows. 

The “transition planning” cobbled together by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a joke, and even that work was ignored by the coup plotters who burst into the White House. Almost no one in Trump’s inner circle had any executive experience in government. The list of rank amateurs in the highest places includes son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, policy strategist Stephen Miller and counselor Kellyanne Conway. They are big into concepts and messages ― sales, Trump style ― but so far not the blocking and tackling of running things.

Benign neglect. 

If they want, the amateurs can console themselves with a semi-philosophical excuse: The government, which they regard as too big and too intrusive, can use a little neglect. And so we see unfilled sub-Cabinet posts, catch-as-catch-can administrative oversight, rule by fiat that demoralizes the denizens of what White House Big Thinker Steve Bannon calls “the administrative state.” Misusing a fancy academic word, he says he’s for “deconstructing” it ― and why not do it by not filling positions or following procedure?

Worse: a contempt for the process of government. 

Republicans have joined Democrats in marveling at the sophomoric crafting of something as valuable to Trump ― allegedly ― as his moratoria on travel to the U.S. by citizens of six (originally seven) Muslim-majority countries. But the sloppiness is a sign of the contempt with which Team Trump views government itself. Yes, the Obama Nerds went over the line ― for example, some of what they did on drones is outrageous, many argue. But perhaps because they were Democrats (and lawyers for the most part, let by Obama himself), they showed enough respect for procedure to get things done. 

What goes around comes around. 

Team Trump seems shocked and outraged that so many forces in public life seemed arrayed against him, almost by instinct. What did he expect? He attacked the press at every turn, and at his rallies he all but sicced rabble-rousers on them. He attacked a federal judge as biased because he was of Mexican heritage. He called his rivals for the GOP nomination by crude nicknames, and reveled publicly in their humiliation. He hired and fired at will, dismissing aides but pulling them back in (because they could cause trouble for him in one way or another) with flattering phone calls.

The Senate alone is a monument to possible payback. Do “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “One-Percent” Lindsey Graham, “Crazy” Rand Paul and “He’s No Hero” John McCain want to help the president out in a pinch? Trump tried to have House Speaker Paul Ryan defeated in his local GOP primary in Wisconsin. Yes, Rubio and Cruz accepted dinner invitations at the White House. They said they had fun, but revenge is a meal best served cold.

Money isn’t everything in D.C. 

With his proud contempt for ethics ― or even the need to appear ethical ― Trump and his family are making a mockery of the notion that public service is a selfless exercise in patriotism. Trump has turned the presidency, at least in part, into a commercial enterprise that is enriching his family wealth. But as cool as that might seem in at least in some avaricious circles in Manhattan and Palm Beach, it doesn’t impress anyone in Washington, a city that needs money, but that doesn’t really value it per se. Money can buy you the White House, as Trump proved, but it can’t buy you D.C. Trump has yet to understand that people in the city care about the law, or at least procedure, because it is power.

Bannonism. 

A master of cunning, apocalyptic, xenophobic narrative, Steve Bannon has given Trump a grander mission ― that of saving the Christian West from Islam, materialism, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ivy League and the “Mainstream Media.” Reared and educated in a blue-collar, conservative Catholic family in Virginia, Bannon’s radical medievalism fits Trump’s royal conception of himself. But the risk is that the president will remain oblivious to what is going on outside the reality TV show Bannon has designed for him to live in, or that Trump will think that he has the kind of kingly authority that allows him to ignore the best parts of the Founders’ vision of a pluralistic, secular and welcoming America.

Too many cooks. 

Bannon is not the only power center, despite having placed himself on the National Security Council and having created a new “Strategic Initiative Group” inside the White House with himself as head. Other power centers (for now) include Vice President Mike Pence, Priebus and Kushner, not to mention Hill leaders. So who controls the message in these crucial days and weeks? No one, except perhaps the person who has created the most trouble for the White House: Donald J. Trump.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2naqy4K

#DIYS

[realestate63141]

Why 'Trump Administration' Is An Oxymoron

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump took the oath of office two months ago, but is not yet running a real presidency. His administration, thus far, largely is playing like a junta that surprised the royal guards and seized the palace ― while still remaining unable to pacify the capital city, let alone inspire the countryside.

The White House is as stately as ever, but there aren’t enough friends outside the (porous) iron fence to make the inhabitants as comfortable as they should be in the first months of a new regime.

Rather, Trump is under siege from pretty much all sides.

Federal courts again are slapping down Trump’s first, signature move: a temporary travel ban on citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that he says harbor “radical Islamic terrorists.”

The joint Trump-GOP effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare ― another key first promise and response ― is bogged down in multiple internal Republican divisions over everything from spending numbers to philosophy to legislative strategy.

With growing sharpness and specificity, GOP leaders are joining Democrats in dismissing as flat-out false the president’s repeatedly tweeted charge that former President Barack Obama “tapped” ― or surveilled in any way ― Trump Tower or its owner.

Trump’s new guns-and-no-butter first budget, which would literally take food from the poor and the elderly to give more money to Pentagon contractors, has been greeted with derision by many Republicans, who regard it as less of a blueprint than a political statement too harsh even for the tea party.

The nonpartisan polling “job approval” numbers for Trump have been in the 40s consistently in the first few months, and are the lowest launch average on record for a new president.

Trump has had his successes. They include the assembly, after some fits and starts, of a good ― or at least credible ― national security team of respected current and former members of the military or Congress. As a result, there is a solid chain of command for Trump in his role as commander in chief.

He nominated a man to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, to whom the American Bar Association gave a sterling endorsement.

Trump has issued some executive orders that make good on other campaign promises ― such as the gutting of EPA regulations on the use of coal, building pipelines, getting out of multilateral trade treaties and instituting tougher domestic rules on the apprehension and repatriation of undocumented immigrants.

His tweets and campaign-style speeches, vowing tax cuts and the twisting of corporate arms to “buy and build American,” have had an effect: The stock market has been on a wild run. 

But these successful measures ― the exception to the general pattern ― were comparatively amenable to direct White House control.

Everything else is harder to control or even withstand. And the dangers of drift are real. He elicited a new sense of hope from white working-class voters; their cynicism will deepen if he doesn’t deliver the jobs ― especially since his proposed new budget cuts are aimed at programs in rural counties.

Trump could well be tempted by the slow pace of change to ignore the law, especially since his aides, led by Steven Bannon, are telling him that the so-called “deep state” is itself a lawless force and is out to get him to preserve its own status.

He could use military confrontation ― such as the one brewing now with North Korea ― to emphasize the broad powers of a commander-in-chief who can’t be easily countermanded by institutions that constrain him now. Another terrorist attack on the “homeland” would give him a rationale ― if not justification ― for sweeping new executive actions in the United States.  

Leaders around the world, already confused and unsure of American leadership, could distance themselves further from U.S. aims and interests ― no matter how much more money Trump spends on modernizing the military and putting boots on the ground.

Why does a man who claims such great success as a business manager seem so overwhelmed?

Democrats have taken their time filling his Cabinet, arguing, with much justification, that Trump had presented them with a roster of conflict-laden billionaires and ideologues antagonistic to the goals of the departments they had been nominated to lead. But there a host of in-house reasons for the first months’ mess. Here they are:

He only wants to talk to people who have no choice but to agree with him, or who are glad to tell him why his enemies are scum. 

I know poll-takers who shied away from doing polls for Trump because they knew that the numbers would not be favorable ― and that Trump therefore would never hire them. “I turned down lots of jobs with him for that reason,” one of them told me. “You never give Trump bad news.” Which means that he is constantly infuriated when his yes men are forced to tell him the world says “no.”

He has to lash out somewhere, and that place is still Twitter. 

The Trump administration has been annoyed and distracted for a week ― a crucial week on the budget and on health care, among other things ― by the president’s false accusation of Obama’s purported “tapping.” He never should have said it. But he almost always does.

D.C. is not New York; politics is not real estate.

Trump’s tactical principle is that if someone “hits” you, you “hit back twice as hard.” I have heard him say it in private as well as in public, and it is a method he has used since he came to Manhattan decades ago with a million bucks from his dad. But the paradox of the presidency is this: You are the most powerful person in the world, but in dealing with the rest of government and all of politics, it’s better not to make threats, and certainly not threats in public. Everything Trump thought he knew about how to get things done in the midst of controversy is wrong now.

This is not a parliamentary system, it just looks like one. 

The Founding Fathers knew that parliaments could be dictatorial, which is why they chose not to have one. They dispersed and divided power. Even when one American party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, a president’s clout is limited by the size of the majorities, legislative rules and the courts. Trump can almost be forgiven for thinking that he had parliamentary power: Politics in America has been drifting in the one-party-rules direction for years. Obama passed his health care bill with only Democratic votes; Trump figured he could pass his with only the GOP. That already has been proven to be a faulty assumption.

The GOP doesn’t really like him, and the feeling is mutual. 

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Trump did not build from the ground up a new party and a new movement that he then led in the White House. Trump essentially carried out a hostile takeover of the rundown hulk of the GOP, battered by the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and the rebellious internal assaults of the tea party. Virtually every key figure in the House and Senate was for someone other than Trump, and some of them ran against him. Trump swept the primaries with money and jingoistic salesmanship, but he remains widely distrusted ideologically and personally on all sides.

Trump & Co. were elected because they’d had nothing to do with government ― and it shows. 

The “transition planning” cobbled together by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a joke, and even that work was ignored by the coup plotters who burst into the White House. Almost no one in Trump’s inner circle had any executive experience in government. The list of rank amateurs in the highest places includes son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, policy strategist Stephen Miller and counselor Kellyanne Conway. They are big into concepts and messages ― sales, Trump style ― but so far not the blocking and tackling of running things.

Benign neglect. 

If they want, the amateurs can console themselves with a semi-philosophical excuse: The government, which they regard as too big and too intrusive, can use a little neglect. And so we see unfilled sub-Cabinet posts, catch-as-catch-can administrative oversight, rule by fiat that demoralizes the denizens of what White House Big Thinker Steve Bannon calls “the administrative state.” Misusing a fancy academic word, he says he’s for “deconstructing” it ― and why not do it by not filling positions or following procedure?

Worse: a contempt for the process of government. 

Republicans have joined Democrats in marveling at the sophomoric crafting of something as valuable to Trump ― allegedly ― as his moratoria on travel to the U.S. by citizens of six (originally seven) Muslim-majority countries. But the sloppiness is a sign of the contempt with which Team Trump views government itself. Yes, the Obama Nerds went over the line ― for example, some of what they did on drones is outrageous, many argue. But perhaps because they were Democrats (and lawyers for the most part, let by Obama himself), they showed enough respect for procedure to get things done. 

What goes around comes around. 

Team Trump seems shocked and outraged that so many forces in public life seemed arrayed against him, almost by instinct. What did he expect? He attacked the press at every turn, and at his rallies he all but sicced rabble-rousers on them. He attacked a federal judge as biased because he was of Mexican heritage. He called his rivals for the GOP nomination by crude nicknames, and reveled publicly in their humiliation. He hired and fired at will, dismissing aides but pulling them back in (because they could cause trouble for him in one way or another) with flattering phone calls.

The Senate alone is a monument to possible payback. Do “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “One-Percent” Lindsey Graham, “Crazy” Rand Paul and “He’s No Hero” John McCain want to help the president out in a pinch? Trump tried to have House Speaker Paul Ryan defeated in his local GOP primary in Wisconsin. Yes, Rubio and Cruz accepted dinner invitations at the White House. They said they had fun, but revenge is a meal best served cold.

Money isn’t everything in D.C. 

With his proud contempt for ethics ― or even the need to appear ethical ― Trump and his family are making a mockery of the notion that public service is a selfless exercise in patriotism. Trump has turned the presidency, at least in part, into a commercial enterprise that is enriching his family wealth. But as cool as that might seem in at least in some avaricious circles in Manhattan and Palm Beach, it doesn’t impress anyone in Washington, a city that needs money, but that doesn’t really value it per se. Money can buy you the White House, as Trump proved, but it can’t buy you D.C. Trump has yet to understand that people in the city care about the law, or at least procedure, because it is power.

Bannonism. 

A master of cunning, apocalyptic, xenophobic narrative, Steve Bannon has given Trump a grander mission ― that of saving the Christian West from Islam, materialism, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ivy League and the “Mainstream Media.” Reared and educated in a blue-collar, conservative Catholic family in Virginia, Bannon’s radical medievalism fits Trump’s royal conception of himself. But the risk is that the president will remain oblivious to what is going on outside the reality TV show Bannon has designed for him to live in, or that Trump will think that he has the kind of kingly authority that allows him to ignore the best parts of the Founders’ vision of a pluralistic, secular and welcoming America.

Too many cooks. 

Bannon is not the only power center, despite having placed himself on the National Security Council and having created a new “Strategic Initiative Group” inside the White House with himself as head. Other power centers (for now) include Vice President Mike Pence, Priebus and Kushner, not to mention Hill leaders. So who controls the message in these crucial days and weeks? No one, except perhaps the person who has created the most trouble for the White House: Donald J. Trump.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2naqy4K

#DIYS

[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

Why 'Trump Administration' Is An Oxymoron

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump took the oath of office two months ago, but is not yet running a real presidency. His administration, thus far, largely is playing like a junta that surprised the royal guards and seized the palace ― while still remaining unable to pacify the capital city, let alone inspire the countryside.

The White House is as stately as ever, but there aren’t enough friends outside the (porous) iron fence to make the inhabitants as comfortable as they should be in the first months of a new regime.

Rather, Trump is under siege from pretty much all sides.

Federal courts again are slapping down Trump’s first, signature move: a temporary travel ban on citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that he says harbor “radical Islamic terrorists.”

The joint Trump-GOP effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare ― another key first promise and response ― is bogged down in multiple internal Republican divisions over everything from spending numbers to philosophy to legislative strategy.

With growing sharpness and specificity, GOP leaders are joining Democrats in dismissing as flat-out false the president’s repeatedly tweeted charge that former President Barack Obama “tapped” ― or surveilled in any way ― Trump Tower or its owner.

Trump’s new guns-and-no-butter first budget, which would literally take food from the poor and the elderly to give more money to Pentagon contractors, has been greeted with derision by many Republicans, who regard it as less of a blueprint than a political statement too harsh even for the tea party.

The nonpartisan polling “job approval” numbers for Trump have been in the 40s consistently in the first few months, and are the lowest launch average on record for a new president.

Trump has had his successes. They include the assembly, after some fits and starts, of a good ― or at least credible ― national security team of respected current and former members of the military or Congress. As a result, there is a solid chain of command for Trump in his role as commander in chief.

He nominated a man to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, to whom the American Bar Association gave a sterling endorsement.

Trump has issued some executive orders that make good on other campaign promises ― such as the gutting of EPA regulations on the use of coal, building pipelines, getting out of multilateral trade treaties and instituting tougher domestic rules on the apprehension and repatriation of undocumented immigrants.

His tweets and campaign-style speeches, vowing tax cuts and the twisting of corporate arms to “buy and build American,” have had an effect: The stock market has been on a wild run. 

But these successful measures ― the exception to the general pattern ― were comparatively amenable to direct White House control.

Everything else is harder to control or even withstand. And the dangers of drift are real. He elicited a new sense of hope from white working-class voters; their cynicism will deepen if he doesn’t deliver the jobs ― especially since his proposed new budget cuts are aimed at programs in rural counties.

Trump could well be tempted by the slow pace of change to ignore the law, especially since his aides, led by Steven Bannon, are telling him that the so-called “deep state” is itself a lawless force and is out to get him to preserve its own status.

He could use military confrontation ― such as the one brewing now with North Korea ― to emphasize the broad powers of a commander-in-chief who can’t be easily countermanded by institutions that constrain him now. Another terrorist attack on the “homeland” would give him a rationale ― if not justification ― for sweeping new executive actions in the United States.  

Leaders around the world, already confused and unsure of American leadership, could distance themselves further from U.S. aims and interests ― no matter how much more money Trump spends on modernizing the military and putting boots on the ground.

Why does a man who claims such great success as a business manager seem so overwhelmed?

Democrats have taken their time filling his Cabinet, arguing, with much justification, that Trump had presented them with a roster of conflict-laden billionaires and ideologues antagonistic to the goals of the departments they had been nominated to lead. But there a host of in-house reasons for the first months’ mess. Here they are:

He only wants to talk to people who have no choice but to agree with him, or who are glad to tell him why his enemies are scum. 

I know poll-takers who shied away from doing polls for Trump because they knew that the numbers would not be favorable ― and that Trump therefore would never hire them. “I turned down lots of jobs with him for that reason,” one of them told me. “You never give Trump bad news.” Which means that he is constantly infuriated when his yes men are forced to tell him the world says “no.”

He has to lash out somewhere, and that place is still Twitter. 

The Trump administration has been annoyed and distracted for a week ― a crucial week on the budget and on health care, among other things ― by the president’s false accusation of Obama’s purported “tapping.” He never should have said it. But he almost always does.

D.C. is not New York; politics is not real estate.

Trump’s tactical principle is that if someone “hits” you, you “hit back twice as hard.” I have heard him say it in private as well as in public, and it is a method he has used since he came to Manhattan decades ago with a million bucks from his dad. But the paradox of the presidency is this: You are the most powerful person in the world, but in dealing with the rest of government and all of politics, it’s better not to make threats, and certainly not threats in public. Everything Trump thought he knew about how to get things done in the midst of controversy is wrong now.

This is not a parliamentary system, it just looks like one. 

The Founding Fathers knew that parliaments could be dictatorial, which is why they chose not to have one. They dispersed and divided power. Even when one American party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, a president’s clout is limited by the size of the majorities, legislative rules and the courts. Trump can almost be forgiven for thinking that he had parliamentary power: Politics in America has been drifting in the one-party-rules direction for years. Obama passed his health care bill with only Democratic votes; Trump figured he could pass his with only the GOP. That already has been proven to be a faulty assumption.

The GOP doesn’t really like him, and the feeling is mutual. 

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Trump did not build from the ground up a new party and a new movement that he then led in the White House. Trump essentially carried out a hostile takeover of the rundown hulk of the GOP, battered by the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and the rebellious internal assaults of the tea party. Virtually every key figure in the House and Senate was for someone other than Trump, and some of them ran against him. Trump swept the primaries with money and jingoistic salesmanship, but he remains widely distrusted ideologically and personally on all sides.

Trump & Co. were elected because they’d had nothing to do with government ― and it shows. 

The “transition planning” cobbled together by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a joke, and even that work was ignored by the coup plotters who burst into the White House. Almost no one in Trump’s inner circle had any executive experience in government. The list of rank amateurs in the highest places includes son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, policy strategist Stephen Miller and counselor Kellyanne Conway. They are big into concepts and messages ― sales, Trump style ― but so far not the blocking and tackling of running things.

Benign neglect. 

If they want, the amateurs can console themselves with a semi-philosophical excuse: The government, which they regard as too big and too intrusive, can use a little neglect. And so we see unfilled sub-Cabinet posts, catch-as-catch-can administrative oversight, rule by fiat that demoralizes the denizens of what White House Big Thinker Steve Bannon calls “the administrative state.” Misusing a fancy academic word, he says he’s for “deconstructing” it ― and why not do it by not filling positions or following procedure?

Worse: a contempt for the process of government. 

Republicans have joined Democrats in marveling at the sophomoric crafting of something as valuable to Trump ― allegedly ― as his moratoria on travel to the U.S. by citizens of six (originally seven) Muslim-majority countries. But the sloppiness is a sign of the contempt with which Team Trump views government itself. Yes, the Obama Nerds went over the line ― for example, some of what they did on drones is outrageous, many argue. But perhaps because they were Democrats (and lawyers for the most part, let by Obama himself), they showed enough respect for procedure to get things done. 

What goes around comes around. 

Team Trump seems shocked and outraged that so many forces in public life seemed arrayed against him, almost by instinct. What did he expect? He attacked the press at every turn, and at his rallies he all but sicced rabble-rousers on them. He attacked a federal judge as biased because he was of Mexican heritage. He called his rivals for the GOP nomination by crude nicknames, and reveled publicly in their humiliation. He hired and fired at will, dismissing aides but pulling them back in (because they could cause trouble for him in one way or another) with flattering phone calls.

The Senate alone is a monument to possible payback. Do “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “One-Percent” Lindsey Graham, “Crazy” Rand Paul and “He’s No Hero” John McCain want to help the president out in a pinch? Trump tried to have House Speaker Paul Ryan defeated in his local GOP primary in Wisconsin. Yes, Rubio and Cruz accepted dinner invitations at the White House. They said they had fun, but revenge is a meal best served cold.

Money isn’t everything in D.C. 

With his proud contempt for ethics ― or even the need to appear ethical ― Trump and his family are making a mockery of the notion that public service is a selfless exercise in patriotism. Trump has turned the presidency, at least in part, into a commercial enterprise that is enriching his family wealth. But as cool as that might seem in at least in some avaricious circles in Manhattan and Palm Beach, it doesn’t impress anyone in Washington, a city that needs money, but that doesn’t really value it per se. Money can buy you the White House, as Trump proved, but it can’t buy you D.C. Trump has yet to understand that people in the city care about the law, or at least procedure, because it is power.

Bannonism. 

A master of cunning, apocalyptic, xenophobic narrative, Steve Bannon has given Trump a grander mission ― that of saving the Christian West from Islam, materialism, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ivy League and the “Mainstream Media.” Reared and educated in a blue-collar, conservative Catholic family in Virginia, Bannon’s radical medievalism fits Trump’s royal conception of himself. But the risk is that the president will remain oblivious to what is going on outside the reality TV show Bannon has designed for him to live in, or that Trump will think that he has the kind of kingly authority that allows him to ignore the best parts of the Founders’ vision of a pluralistic, secular and welcoming America.

Too many cooks. 

Bannon is not the only power center, despite having placed himself on the National Security Council and having created a new “Strategic Initiative Group” inside the White House with himself as head. Other power centers (for now) include Vice President Mike Pence, Priebus and Kushner, not to mention Hill leaders. So who controls the message in these crucial days and weeks? No one, except perhaps the person who has created the most trouble for the White House: Donald J. Trump.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2naqy4K

#DIYS

[repwincoml4a0a5]

Why 'Trump Administration' Is An Oxymoron

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump took the oath of office two months ago, but is not yet running a real presidency. His administration, thus far, largely is playing like a junta that surprised the royal guards and seized the palace ― while still remaining unable to pacify the capital city, let alone inspire the countryside.

The White House is as stately as ever, but there aren’t enough friends outside the (porous) iron fence to make the inhabitants as comfortable as they should be in the first months of a new regime.

Rather, Trump is under siege from pretty much all sides.

Federal courts again are slapping down Trump’s first, signature move: a temporary travel ban on citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that he says harbor “radical Islamic terrorists.”

The joint Trump-GOP effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare ― another key first promise and response ― is bogged down in multiple internal Republican divisions over everything from spending numbers to philosophy to legislative strategy.

With growing sharpness and specificity, GOP leaders are joining Democrats in dismissing as flat-out false the president’s repeatedly tweeted charge that former President Barack Obama “tapped” ― or surveilled in any way ― Trump Tower or its owner.

Trump’s new guns-and-no-butter first budget, which would literally take food from the poor and the elderly to give more money to Pentagon contractors, has been greeted with derision by many Republicans, who regard it as less of a blueprint than a political statement too harsh even for the tea party.

The nonpartisan polling “job approval” numbers for Trump have been in the 40s consistently in the first few months, and are the lowest launch average on record for a new president.

Trump has had his successes. They include the assembly, after some fits and starts, of a good ― or at least credible ― national security team of respected current and former members of the military or Congress. As a result, there is a solid chain of command for Trump in his role as commander in chief.

He nominated a man to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, to whom the American Bar Association gave a sterling endorsement.

Trump has issued some executive orders that make good on other campaign promises ― such as the gutting of EPA regulations on the use of coal, building pipelines, getting out of multilateral trade treaties and instituting tougher domestic rules on the apprehension and repatriation of undocumented immigrants.

His tweets and campaign-style speeches, vowing tax cuts and the twisting of corporate arms to “buy and build American,” have had an effect: The stock market has been on a wild run. 

But these successful measures ― the exception to the general pattern ― were comparatively amenable to direct White House control.

Everything else is harder to control or even withstand. And the dangers of drift are real. He elicited a new sense of hope from white working-class voters; their cynicism will deepen if he doesn’t deliver the jobs ― especially since his proposed new budget cuts are aimed at programs in rural counties.

Trump could well be tempted by the slow pace of change to ignore the law, especially since his aides, led by Steven Bannon, are telling him that the so-called “deep state” is itself a lawless force and is out to get him to preserve its own status.

He could use military confrontation ― such as the one brewing now with North Korea ― to emphasize the broad powers of a commander-in-chief who can’t be easily countermanded by institutions that constrain him now. Another terrorist attack on the “homeland” would give him a rationale ― if not justification ― for sweeping new executive actions in the United States.  

Leaders around the world, already confused and unsure of American leadership, could distance themselves further from U.S. aims and interests ― no matter how much more money Trump spends on modernizing the military and putting boots on the ground.

Why does a man who claims such great success as a business manager seem so overwhelmed?

Democrats have taken their time filling his Cabinet, arguing, with much justification, that Trump had presented them with a roster of conflict-laden billionaires and ideologues antagonistic to the goals of the departments they had been nominated to lead. But there a host of in-house reasons for the first months’ mess. Here they are:

He only wants to talk to people who have no choice but to agree with him, or who are glad to tell him why his enemies are scum. 

I know poll-takers who shied away from doing polls for Trump because they knew that the numbers would not be favorable ― and that Trump therefore would never hire them. “I turned down lots of jobs with him for that reason,” one of them told me. “You never give Trump bad news.” Which means that he is constantly infuriated when his yes men are forced to tell him the world says “no.”

He has to lash out somewhere, and that place is still Twitter. 

The Trump administration has been annoyed and distracted for a week ― a crucial week on the budget and on health care, among other things ― by the president’s false accusation of Obama’s purported “tapping.” He never should have said it. But he almost always does.

D.C. is not New York; politics is not real estate.

Trump’s tactical principle is that if someone “hits” you, you “hit back twice as hard.” I have heard him say it in private as well as in public, and it is a method he has used since he came to Manhattan decades ago with a million bucks from his dad. But the paradox of the presidency is this: You are the most powerful person in the world, but in dealing with the rest of government and all of politics, it’s better not to make threats, and certainly not threats in public. Everything Trump thought he knew about how to get things done in the midst of controversy is wrong now.

This is not a parliamentary system, it just looks like one. 

The Founding Fathers knew that parliaments could be dictatorial, which is why they chose not to have one. They dispersed and divided power. Even when one American party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, a president’s clout is limited by the size of the majorities, legislative rules and the courts. Trump can almost be forgiven for thinking that he had parliamentary power: Politics in America has been drifting in the one-party-rules direction for years. Obama passed his health care bill with only Democratic votes; Trump figured he could pass his with only the GOP. That already has been proven to be a faulty assumption.

The GOP doesn’t really like him, and the feeling is mutual. 

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Trump did not build from the ground up a new party and a new movement that he then led in the White House. Trump essentially carried out a hostile takeover of the rundown hulk of the GOP, battered by the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and the rebellious internal assaults of the tea party. Virtually every key figure in the House and Senate was for someone other than Trump, and some of them ran against him. Trump swept the primaries with money and jingoistic salesmanship, but he remains widely distrusted ideologically and personally on all sides.

Trump & Co. were elected because they’d had nothing to do with government ― and it shows. 

The “transition planning” cobbled together by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a joke, and even that work was ignored by the coup plotters who burst into the White House. Almost no one in Trump’s inner circle had any executive experience in government. The list of rank amateurs in the highest places includes son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, policy strategist Stephen Miller and counselor Kellyanne Conway. They are big into concepts and messages ― sales, Trump style ― but so far not the blocking and tackling of running things.

Benign neglect. 

If they want, the amateurs can console themselves with a semi-philosophical excuse: The government, which they regard as too big and too intrusive, can use a little neglect. And so we see unfilled sub-Cabinet posts, catch-as-catch-can administrative oversight, rule by fiat that demoralizes the denizens of what White House Big Thinker Steve Bannon calls “the administrative state.” Misusing a fancy academic word, he says he’s for “deconstructing” it ― and why not do it by not filling positions or following procedure?

Worse: a contempt for the process of government. 

Republicans have joined Democrats in marveling at the sophomoric crafting of something as valuable to Trump ― allegedly ― as his moratoria on travel to the U.S. by citizens of six (originally seven) Muslim-majority countries. But the sloppiness is a sign of the contempt with which Team Trump views government itself. Yes, the Obama Nerds went over the line ― for example, some of what they did on drones is outrageous, many argue. But perhaps because they were Democrats (and lawyers for the most part, let by Obama himself), they showed enough respect for procedure to get things done. 

What goes around comes around. 

Team Trump seems shocked and outraged that so many forces in public life seemed arrayed against him, almost by instinct. What did he expect? He attacked the press at every turn, and at his rallies he all but sicced rabble-rousers on them. He attacked a federal judge as biased because he was of Mexican heritage. He called his rivals for the GOP nomination by crude nicknames, and reveled publicly in their humiliation. He hired and fired at will, dismissing aides but pulling them back in (because they could cause trouble for him in one way or another) with flattering phone calls.

The Senate alone is a monument to possible payback. Do “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “One-Percent” Lindsey Graham, “Crazy” Rand Paul and “He’s No Hero” John McCain want to help the president out in a pinch? Trump tried to have House Speaker Paul Ryan defeated in his local GOP primary in Wisconsin. Yes, Rubio and Cruz accepted dinner invitations at the White House. They said they had fun, but revenge is a meal best served cold.

Money isn’t everything in D.C. 

With his proud contempt for ethics ― or even the need to appear ethical ― Trump and his family are making a mockery of the notion that public service is a selfless exercise in patriotism. Trump has turned the presidency, at least in part, into a commercial enterprise that is enriching his family wealth. But as cool as that might seem in at least in some avaricious circles in Manhattan and Palm Beach, it doesn’t impress anyone in Washington, a city that needs money, but that doesn’t really value it per se. Money can buy you the White House, as Trump proved, but it can’t buy you D.C. Trump has yet to understand that people in the city care about the law, or at least procedure, because it is power.

Bannonism. 

A master of cunning, apocalyptic, xenophobic narrative, Steve Bannon has given Trump a grander mission ― that of saving the Christian West from Islam, materialism, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ivy League and the “Mainstream Media.” Reared and educated in a blue-collar, conservative Catholic family in Virginia, Bannon’s radical medievalism fits Trump’s royal conception of himself. But the risk is that the president will remain oblivious to what is going on outside the reality TV show Bannon has designed for him to live in, or that Trump will think that he has the kind of kingly authority that allows him to ignore the best parts of the Founders’ vision of a pluralistic, secular and welcoming America.

Too many cooks. 

Bannon is not the only power center, despite having placed himself on the National Security Council and having created a new “Strategic Initiative Group” inside the White House with himself as head. Other power centers (for now) include Vice President Mike Pence, Priebus and Kushner, not to mention Hill leaders. So who controls the message in these crucial days and weeks? No one, except perhaps the person who has created the most trouble for the White House: Donald J. Trump.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2naqy4K

#DIYS

[chpatdoorsl3z0a1]

Why 'Trump Administration' Is An Oxymoron

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump took the oath of office two months ago, but is not yet running a real presidency. His administration, thus far, largely is playing like a junta that surprised the royal guards and seized the palace ― while still remaining unable to pacify the capital city, let alone inspire the countryside.

The White House is as stately as ever, but there aren’t enough friends outside the (porous) iron fence to make the inhabitants as comfortable as they should be in the first months of a new regime.

Rather, Trump is under siege from pretty much all sides.

Federal courts again are slapping down Trump’s first, signature move: a temporary travel ban on citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that he says harbor “radical Islamic terrorists.”

The joint Trump-GOP effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare ― another key first promise and response ― is bogged down in multiple internal Republican divisions over everything from spending numbers to philosophy to legislative strategy.

With growing sharpness and specificity, GOP leaders are joining Democrats in dismissing as flat-out false the president’s repeatedly tweeted charge that former President Barack Obama “tapped” ― or surveilled in any way ― Trump Tower or its owner.

Trump’s new guns-and-no-butter first budget, which would literally take food from the poor and the elderly to give more money to Pentagon contractors, has been greeted with derision by many Republicans, who regard it as less of a blueprint than a political statement too harsh even for the tea party.

The nonpartisan polling “job approval” numbers for Trump have been in the 40s consistently in the first few months, and are the lowest launch average on record for a new president.

Trump has had his successes. They include the assembly, after some fits and starts, of a good ― or at least credible ― national security team of respected current and former members of the military or Congress. As a result, there is a solid chain of command for Trump in his role as commander in chief.

He nominated a man to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, to whom the American Bar Association gave a sterling endorsement.

Trump has issued some executive orders that make good on other campaign promises ― such as the gutting of EPA regulations on the use of coal, building pipelines, getting out of multilateral trade treaties and instituting tougher domestic rules on the apprehension and repatriation of undocumented immigrants.

His tweets and campaign-style speeches, vowing tax cuts and the twisting of corporate arms to “buy and build American,” have had an effect: The stock market has been on a wild run. 

But these successful measures ― the exception to the general pattern ― were comparatively amenable to direct White House control.

Everything else is harder to control or even withstand. And the dangers of drift are real. He elicited a new sense of hope from white working-class voters; their cynicism will deepen if he doesn’t deliver the jobs ― especially since his proposed new budget cuts are aimed at programs in rural counties.

Trump could well be tempted by the slow pace of change to ignore the law, especially since his aides, led by Steven Bannon, are telling him that the so-called “deep state” is itself a lawless force and is out to get him to preserve its own status.

He could use military confrontation ― such as the one brewing now with North Korea ― to emphasize the broad powers of a commander-in-chief who can’t be easily countermanded by institutions that constrain him now. Another terrorist attack on the “homeland” would give him a rationale ― if not justification ― for sweeping new executive actions in the United States.  

Leaders around the world, already confused and unsure of American leadership, could distance themselves further from U.S. aims and interests ― no matter how much more money Trump spends on modernizing the military and putting boots on the ground.

Why does a man who claims such great success as a business manager seem so overwhelmed?

Democrats have taken their time filling his Cabinet, arguing, with much justification, that Trump had presented them with a roster of conflict-laden billionaires and ideologues antagonistic to the goals of the departments they had been nominated to lead. But there a host of in-house reasons for the first months’ mess. Here they are:

He only wants to talk to people who have no choice but to agree with him, or who are glad to tell him why his enemies are scum. 

I know poll-takers who shied away from doing polls for Trump because they knew that the numbers would not be favorable ― and that Trump therefore would never hire them. “I turned down lots of jobs with him for that reason,” one of them told me. “You never give Trump bad news.” Which means that he is constantly infuriated when his yes men are forced to tell him the world says “no.”

He has to lash out somewhere, and that place is still Twitter. 

The Trump administration has been annoyed and distracted for a week ― a crucial week on the budget and on health care, among other things ― by the president’s false accusation of Obama’s purported “tapping.” He never should have said it. But he almost always does.

D.C. is not New York; politics is not real estate.

Trump’s tactical principle is that if someone “hits” you, you “hit back twice as hard.” I have heard him say it in private as well as in public, and it is a method he has used since he came to Manhattan decades ago with a million bucks from his dad. But the paradox of the presidency is this: You are the most powerful person in the world, but in dealing with the rest of government and all of politics, it’s better not to make threats, and certainly not threats in public. Everything Trump thought he knew about how to get things done in the midst of controversy is wrong now.

This is not a parliamentary system, it just looks like one. 

The Founding Fathers knew that parliaments could be dictatorial, which is why they chose not to have one. They dispersed and divided power. Even when one American party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, a president’s clout is limited by the size of the majorities, legislative rules and the courts. Trump can almost be forgiven for thinking that he had parliamentary power: Politics in America has been drifting in the one-party-rules direction for years. Obama passed his health care bill with only Democratic votes; Trump figured he could pass his with only the GOP. That already has been proven to be a faulty assumption.

The GOP doesn’t really like him, and the feeling is mutual. 

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Trump did not build from the ground up a new party and a new movement that he then led in the White House. Trump essentially carried out a hostile takeover of the rundown hulk of the GOP, battered by the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and the rebellious internal assaults of the tea party. Virtually every key figure in the House and Senate was for someone other than Trump, and some of them ran against him. Trump swept the primaries with money and jingoistic salesmanship, but he remains widely distrusted ideologically and personally on all sides.

Trump & Co. were elected because they’d had nothing to do with government ― and it shows. 

The “transition planning” cobbled together by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a joke, and even that work was ignored by the coup plotters who burst into the White House. Almost no one in Trump’s inner circle had any executive experience in government. The list of rank amateurs in the highest places includes son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, policy strategist Stephen Miller and counselor Kellyanne Conway. They are big into concepts and messages ― sales, Trump style ― but so far not the blocking and tackling of running things.

Benign neglect. 

If they want, the amateurs can console themselves with a semi-philosophical excuse: The government, which they regard as too big and too intrusive, can use a little neglect. And so we see unfilled sub-Cabinet posts, catch-as-catch-can administrative oversight, rule by fiat that demoralizes the denizens of what White House Big Thinker Steve Bannon calls “the administrative state.” Misusing a fancy academic word, he says he’s for “deconstructing” it ― and why not do it by not filling positions or following procedure?

Worse: a contempt for the process of government. 

Republicans have joined Democrats in marveling at the sophomoric crafting of something as valuable to Trump ― allegedly ― as his moratoria on travel to the U.S. by citizens of six (originally seven) Muslim-majority countries. But the sloppiness is a sign of the contempt with which Team Trump views government itself. Yes, the Obama Nerds went over the line ― for example, some of what they did on drones is outrageous, many argue. But perhaps because they were Democrats (and lawyers for the most part, let by Obama himself), they showed enough respect for procedure to get things done. 

What goes around comes around. 

Team Trump seems shocked and outraged that so many forces in public life seemed arrayed against him, almost by instinct. What did he expect? He attacked the press at every turn, and at his rallies he all but sicced rabble-rousers on them. He attacked a federal judge as biased because he was of Mexican heritage. He called his rivals for the GOP nomination by crude nicknames, and reveled publicly in their humiliation. He hired and fired at will, dismissing aides but pulling them back in (because they could cause trouble for him in one way or another) with flattering phone calls.

The Senate alone is a monument to possible payback. Do “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “One-Percent” Lindsey Graham, “Crazy” Rand Paul and “He’s No Hero” John McCain want to help the president out in a pinch? Trump tried to have House Speaker Paul Ryan defeated in his local GOP primary in Wisconsin. Yes, Rubio and Cruz accepted dinner invitations at the White House. They said they had fun, but revenge is a meal best served cold.

Money isn’t everything in D.C. 

With his proud contempt for ethics ― or even the need to appear ethical ― Trump and his family are making a mockery of the notion that public service is a selfless exercise in patriotism. Trump has turned the presidency, at least in part, into a commercial enterprise that is enriching his family wealth. But as cool as that might seem in at least in some avaricious circles in Manhattan and Palm Beach, it doesn’t impress anyone in Washington, a city that needs money, but that doesn’t really value it per se. Money can buy you the White House, as Trump proved, but it can’t buy you D.C. Trump has yet to understand that people in the city care about the law, or at least procedure, because it is power.

Bannonism. 

A master of cunning, apocalyptic, xenophobic narrative, Steve Bannon has given Trump a grander mission ― that of saving the Christian West from Islam, materialism, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ivy League and the “Mainstream Media.” Reared and educated in a blue-collar, conservative Catholic family in Virginia, Bannon’s radical medievalism fits Trump’s royal conception of himself. But the risk is that the president will remain oblivious to what is going on outside the reality TV show Bannon has designed for him to live in, or that Trump will think that he has the kind of kingly authority that allows him to ignore the best parts of the Founders’ vision of a pluralistic, secular and welcoming America.

Too many cooks. 

Bannon is not the only power center, despite having placed himself on the National Security Council and having created a new “Strategic Initiative Group” inside the White House with himself as head. Other power centers (for now) include Vice President Mike Pence, Priebus and Kushner, not to mention Hill leaders. So who controls the message in these crucial days and weeks? No one, except perhaps the person who has created the most trouble for the White House: Donald J. Trump.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2naqy4K

#DIYS

[grgedoors02142]

Why 'Trump Administration' Is An Oxymoron

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump took the oath of office two months ago, but is not yet running a real presidency. His administration, thus far, largely is playing like a junta that surprised the royal guards and seized the palace ― while still remaining unable to pacify the capital city, let alone inspire the countryside.

The White House is as stately as ever, but there aren’t enough friends outside the (porous) iron fence to make the inhabitants as comfortable as they should be in the first months of a new regime.

Rather, Trump is under siege from pretty much all sides.

Federal courts again are slapping down Trump’s first, signature move: a temporary travel ban on citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that he says harbor “radical Islamic terrorists.”

The joint Trump-GOP effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare ― another key first promise and response ― is bogged down in multiple internal Republican divisions over everything from spending numbers to philosophy to legislative strategy.

With growing sharpness and specificity, GOP leaders are joining Democrats in dismissing as flat-out false the president’s repeatedly tweeted charge that former President Barack Obama “tapped” ― or surveilled in any way ― Trump Tower or its owner.

Trump’s new guns-and-no-butter first budget, which would literally take food from the poor and the elderly to give more money to Pentagon contractors, has been greeted with derision by many Republicans, who regard it as less of a blueprint than a political statement too harsh even for the tea party.

The nonpartisan polling “job approval” numbers for Trump have been in the 40s consistently in the first few months, and are the lowest launch average on record for a new president.

Trump has had his successes. They include the assembly, after some fits and starts, of a good ― or at least credible ― national security team of respected current and former members of the military or Congress. As a result, there is a solid chain of command for Trump in his role as commander in chief.

He nominated a man to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, to whom the American Bar Association gave a sterling endorsement.

Trump has issued some executive orders that make good on other campaign promises ― such as the gutting of EPA regulations on the use of coal, building pipelines, getting out of multilateral trade treaties and instituting tougher domestic rules on the apprehension and repatriation of undocumented immigrants.

His tweets and campaign-style speeches, vowing tax cuts and the twisting of corporate arms to “buy and build American,” have had an effect: The stock market has been on a wild run. 

But these successful measures ― the exception to the general pattern ― were comparatively amenable to direct White House control.

Everything else is harder to control or even withstand. And the dangers of drift are real. He elicited a new sense of hope from white working-class voters; their cynicism will deepen if he doesn’t deliver the jobs ― especially since his proposed new budget cuts are aimed at programs in rural counties.

Trump could well be tempted by the slow pace of change to ignore the law, especially since his aides, led by Steven Bannon, are telling him that the so-called “deep state” is itself a lawless force and is out to get him to preserve its own status.

He could use military confrontation ― such as the one brewing now with North Korea ― to emphasize the broad powers of a commander-in-chief who can’t be easily countermanded by institutions that constrain him now. Another terrorist attack on the “homeland” would give him a rationale ― if not justification ― for sweeping new executive actions in the United States.  

Leaders around the world, already confused and unsure of American leadership, could distance themselves further from U.S. aims and interests ― no matter how much more money Trump spends on modernizing the military and putting boots on the ground.

Why does a man who claims such great success as a business manager seem so overwhelmed?

Democrats have taken their time filling his Cabinet, arguing, with much justification, that Trump had presented them with a roster of conflict-laden billionaires and ideologues antagonistic to the goals of the departments they had been nominated to lead. But there a host of in-house reasons for the first months’ mess. Here they are:

He only wants to talk to people who have no choice but to agree with him, or who are glad to tell him why his enemies are scum. 

I know poll-takers who shied away from doing polls for Trump because they knew that the numbers would not be favorable ― and that Trump therefore would never hire them. “I turned down lots of jobs with him for that reason,” one of them told me. “You never give Trump bad news.” Which means that he is constantly infuriated when his yes men are forced to tell him the world says “no.”

He has to lash out somewhere, and that place is still Twitter. 

The Trump administration has been annoyed and distracted for a week ― a crucial week on the budget and on health care, among other things ― by the president’s false accusation of Obama’s purported “tapping.” He never should have said it. But he almost always does.

D.C. is not New York; politics is not real estate.

Trump’s tactical principle is that if someone “hits” you, you “hit back twice as hard.” I have heard him say it in private as well as in public, and it is a method he has used since he came to Manhattan decades ago with a million bucks from his dad. But the paradox of the presidency is this: You are the most powerful person in the world, but in dealing with the rest of government and all of politics, it’s better not to make threats, and certainly not threats in public. Everything Trump thought he knew about how to get things done in the midst of controversy is wrong now.

This is not a parliamentary system, it just looks like one. 

The Founding Fathers knew that parliaments could be dictatorial, which is why they chose not to have one. They dispersed and divided power. Even when one American party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, a president’s clout is limited by the size of the majorities, legislative rules and the courts. Trump can almost be forgiven for thinking that he had parliamentary power: Politics in America has been drifting in the one-party-rules direction for years. Obama passed his health care bill with only Democratic votes; Trump figured he could pass his with only the GOP. That already has been proven to be a faulty assumption.

The GOP doesn’t really like him, and the feeling is mutual. 

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Trump did not build from the ground up a new party and a new movement that he then led in the White House. Trump essentially carried out a hostile takeover of the rundown hulk of the GOP, battered by the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and the rebellious internal assaults of the tea party. Virtually every key figure in the House and Senate was for someone other than Trump, and some of them ran against him. Trump swept the primaries with money and jingoistic salesmanship, but he remains widely distrusted ideologically and personally on all sides.

Trump & Co. were elected because they’d had nothing to do with government ― and it shows. 

The “transition planning” cobbled together by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a joke, and even that work was ignored by the coup plotters who burst into the White House. Almost no one in Trump’s inner circle had any executive experience in government. The list of rank amateurs in the highest places includes son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, policy strategist Stephen Miller and counselor Kellyanne Conway. They are big into concepts and messages ― sales, Trump style ― but so far not the blocking and tackling of running things.

Benign neglect. 

If they want, the amateurs can console themselves with a semi-philosophical excuse: The government, which they regard as too big and too intrusive, can use a little neglect. And so we see unfilled sub-Cabinet posts, catch-as-catch-can administrative oversight, rule by fiat that demoralizes the denizens of what White House Big Thinker Steve Bannon calls “the administrative state.” Misusing a fancy academic word, he says he’s for “deconstructing” it ― and why not do it by not filling positions or following procedure?

Worse: a contempt for the process of government. 

Republicans have joined Democrats in marveling at the sophomoric crafting of something as valuable to Trump ― allegedly ― as his moratoria on travel to the U.S. by citizens of six (originally seven) Muslim-majority countries. But the sloppiness is a sign of the contempt with which Team Trump views government itself. Yes, the Obama Nerds went over the line ― for example, some of what they did on drones is outrageous, many argue. But perhaps because they were Democrats (and lawyers for the most part, let by Obama himself), they showed enough respect for procedure to get things done. 

What goes around comes around. 

Team Trump seems shocked and outraged that so many forces in public life seemed arrayed against him, almost by instinct. What did he expect? He attacked the press at every turn, and at his rallies he all but sicced rabble-rousers on them. He attacked a federal judge as biased because he was of Mexican heritage. He called his rivals for the GOP nomination by crude nicknames, and reveled publicly in their humiliation. He hired and fired at will, dismissing aides but pulling them back in (because they could cause trouble for him in one way or another) with flattering phone calls.

The Senate alone is a monument to possible payback. Do “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “One-Percent” Lindsey Graham, “Crazy” Rand Paul and “He’s No Hero” John McCain want to help the president out in a pinch? Trump tried to have House Speaker Paul Ryan defeated in his local GOP primary in Wisconsin. Yes, Rubio and Cruz accepted dinner invitations at the White House. They said they had fun, but revenge is a meal best served cold.

Money isn’t everything in D.C. 

With his proud contempt for ethics ― or even the need to appear ethical ― Trump and his family are making a mockery of the notion that public service is a selfless exercise in patriotism. Trump has turned the presidency, at least in part, into a commercial enterprise that is enriching his family wealth. But as cool as that might seem in at least in some avaricious circles in Manhattan and Palm Beach, it doesn’t impress anyone in Washington, a city that needs money, but that doesn’t really value it per se. Money can buy you the White House, as Trump proved, but it can’t buy you D.C. Trump has yet to understand that people in the city care about the law, or at least procedure, because it is power.

Bannonism. 

A master of cunning, apocalyptic, xenophobic narrative, Steve Bannon has given Trump a grander mission ― that of saving the Christian West from Islam, materialism, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ivy League and the “Mainstream Media.” Reared and educated in a blue-collar, conservative Catholic family in Virginia, Bannon’s radical medievalism fits Trump’s royal conception of himself. But the risk is that the president will remain oblivious to what is going on outside the reality TV show Bannon has designed for him to live in, or that Trump will think that he has the kind of kingly authority that allows him to ignore the best parts of the Founders’ vision of a pluralistic, secular and welcoming America.

Too many cooks. 

Bannon is not the only power center, despite having placed himself on the National Security Council and having created a new “Strategic Initiative Group” inside the White House with himself as head. Other power centers (for now) include Vice President Mike Pence, Priebus and Kushner, not to mention Hill leaders. So who controls the message in these crucial days and weeks? No one, except perhaps the person who has created the most trouble for the White House: Donald J. Trump.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2naqy4K

#DIYS

[stormdoors78476]

Why 'Trump Administration' Is An Oxymoron

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump took the oath of office two months ago, but is not yet running a real presidency. His administration, thus far, largely is playing like a junta that surprised the royal guards and seized the palace ― while still remaining unable to pacify the capital city, let alone inspire the countryside.

The White House is as stately as ever, but there aren’t enough friends outside the (porous) iron fence to make the inhabitants as comfortable as they should be in the first months of a new regime.

Rather, Trump is under siege from pretty much all sides.

Federal courts again are slapping down Trump’s first, signature move: a temporary travel ban on citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that he says harbor “radical Islamic terrorists.”

The joint Trump-GOP effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare ― another key first promise and response ― is bogged down in multiple internal Republican divisions over everything from spending numbers to philosophy to legislative strategy.

With growing sharpness and specificity, GOP leaders are joining Democrats in dismissing as flat-out false the president’s repeatedly tweeted charge that former President Barack Obama “tapped” ― or surveilled in any way ― Trump Tower or its owner.

Trump’s new guns-and-no-butter first budget, which would literally take food from the poor and the elderly to give more money to Pentagon contractors, has been greeted with derision by many Republicans, who regard it as less of a blueprint than a political statement too harsh even for the tea party.

The nonpartisan polling “job approval” numbers for Trump have been in the 40s consistently in the first few months, and are the lowest launch average on record for a new president.

Trump has had his successes. They include the assembly, after some fits and starts, of a good ― or at least credible ― national security team of respected current and former members of the military or Congress. As a result, there is a solid chain of command for Trump in his role as commander in chief.

He nominated a man to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, to whom the American Bar Association gave a sterling endorsement.

Trump has issued some executive orders that make good on other campaign promises ― such as the gutting of EPA regulations on the use of coal, building pipelines, getting out of multilateral trade treaties and instituting tougher domestic rules on the apprehension and repatriation of undocumented immigrants.

His tweets and campaign-style speeches, vowing tax cuts and the twisting of corporate arms to “buy and build American,” have had an effect: The stock market has been on a wild run. 

But these successful measures ― the exception to the general pattern ― were comparatively amenable to direct White House control.

Everything else is harder to control or even withstand. And the dangers of drift are real. He elicited a new sense of hope from white working-class voters; their cynicism will deepen if he doesn’t deliver the jobs ― especially since his proposed new budget cuts are aimed at programs in rural counties.

Trump could well be tempted by the slow pace of change to ignore the law, especially since his aides, led by Steven Bannon, are telling him that the so-called “deep state” is itself a lawless force and is out to get him to preserve its own status.

He could use military confrontation ― such as the one brewing now with North Korea ― to emphasize the broad powers of a commander-in-chief who can’t be easily countermanded by institutions that constrain him now. Another terrorist attack on the “homeland” would give him a rationale ― if not justification ― for sweeping new executive actions in the United States.  

Leaders around the world, already confused and unsure of American leadership, could distance themselves further from U.S. aims and interests ― no matter how much more money Trump spends on modernizing the military and putting boots on the ground.

Why does a man who claims such great success as a business manager seem so overwhelmed?

Democrats have taken their time filling his Cabinet, arguing, with much justification, that Trump had presented them with a roster of conflict-laden billionaires and ideologues antagonistic to the goals of the departments they had been nominated to lead. But there a host of in-house reasons for the first months’ mess. Here they are:

He only wants to talk to people who have no choice but to agree with him, or who are glad to tell him why his enemies are scum. 

I know poll-takers who shied away from doing polls for Trump because they knew that the numbers would not be favorable ― and that Trump therefore would never hire them. “I turned down lots of jobs with him for that reason,” one of them told me. “You never give Trump bad news.” Which means that he is constantly infuriated when his yes men are forced to tell him the world says “no.”

He has to lash out somewhere, and that place is still Twitter. 

The Trump administration has been annoyed and distracted for a week ― a crucial week on the budget and on health care, among other things ― by the president’s false accusation of Obama’s purported “tapping.” He never should have said it. But he almost always does.

D.C. is not New York; politics is not real estate.

Trump’s tactical principle is that if someone “hits” you, you “hit back twice as hard.” I have heard him say it in private as well as in public, and it is a method he has used since he came to Manhattan decades ago with a million bucks from his dad. But the paradox of the presidency is this: You are the most powerful person in the world, but in dealing with the rest of government and all of politics, it’s better not to make threats, and certainly not threats in public. Everything Trump thought he knew about how to get things done in the midst of controversy is wrong now.

This is not a parliamentary system, it just looks like one. 

The Founding Fathers knew that parliaments could be dictatorial, which is why they chose not to have one. They dispersed and divided power. Even when one American party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, a president’s clout is limited by the size of the majorities, legislative rules and the courts. Trump can almost be forgiven for thinking that he had parliamentary power: Politics in America has been drifting in the one-party-rules direction for years. Obama passed his health care bill with only Democratic votes; Trump figured he could pass his with only the GOP. That already has been proven to be a faulty assumption.

The GOP doesn’t really like him, and the feeling is mutual. 

Unlike Ronald Reagan, Trump did not build from the ground up a new party and a new movement that he then led in the White House. Trump essentially carried out a hostile takeover of the rundown hulk of the GOP, battered by the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and the rebellious internal assaults of the tea party. Virtually every key figure in the House and Senate was for someone other than Trump, and some of them ran against him. Trump swept the primaries with money and jingoistic salesmanship, but he remains widely distrusted ideologically and personally on all sides.

Trump & Co. were elected because they’d had nothing to do with government ― and it shows. 

The “transition planning” cobbled together by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a joke, and even that work was ignored by the coup plotters who burst into the White House. Almost no one in Trump’s inner circle had any executive experience in government. The list of rank amateurs in the highest places includes son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, policy strategist Stephen Miller and counselor Kellyanne Conway. They are big into concepts and messages ― sales, Trump style ― but so far not the blocking and tackling of running things.

Benign neglect. 

If they want, the amateurs can console themselves with a semi-philosophical excuse: The government, which they regard as too big and too intrusive, can use a little neglect. And so we see unfilled sub-Cabinet posts, catch-as-catch-can administrative oversight, rule by fiat that demoralizes the denizens of what White House Big Thinker Steve Bannon calls “the administrative state.” Misusing a fancy academic word, he says he’s for “deconstructing” it ― and why not do it by not filling positions or following procedure?

Worse: a contempt for the process of government. 

Republicans have joined Democrats in marveling at the sophomoric crafting of something as valuable to Trump ― allegedly ― as his moratoria on travel to the U.S. by citizens of six (originally seven) Muslim-majority countries. But the sloppiness is a sign of the contempt with which Team Trump views government itself. Yes, the Obama Nerds went over the line ― for example, some of what they did on drones is outrageous, many argue. But perhaps because they were Democrats (and lawyers for the most part, let by Obama himself), they showed enough respect for procedure to get things done. 

What goes around comes around. 

Team Trump seems shocked and outraged that so many forces in public life seemed arrayed against him, almost by instinct. What did he expect? He attacked the press at every turn, and at his rallies he all but sicced rabble-rousers on them. He attacked a federal judge as biased because he was of Mexican heritage. He called his rivals for the GOP nomination by crude nicknames, and reveled publicly in their humiliation. He hired and fired at will, dismissing aides but pulling them back in (because they could cause trouble for him in one way or another) with flattering phone calls.

The Senate alone is a monument to possible payback. Do “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “One-Percent” Lindsey Graham, “Crazy” Rand Paul and “He’s No Hero” John McCain want to help the president out in a pinch? Trump tried to have House Speaker Paul Ryan defeated in his local GOP primary in Wisconsin. Yes, Rubio and Cruz accepted dinner invitations at the White House. They said they had fun, but revenge is a meal best served cold.

Money isn’t everything in D.C. 

With his proud contempt for ethics ― or even the need to appear ethical ― Trump and his family are making a mockery of the notion that public service is a selfless exercise in patriotism. Trump has turned the presidency, at least in part, into a commercial enterprise that is enriching his family wealth. But as cool as that might seem in at least in some avaricious circles in Manhattan and Palm Beach, it doesn’t impress anyone in Washington, a city that needs money, but that doesn’t really value it per se. Money can buy you the White House, as Trump proved, but it can’t buy you D.C. Trump has yet to understand that people in the city care about the law, or at least procedure, because it is power.

Bannonism. 

A master of cunning, apocalyptic, xenophobic narrative, Steve Bannon has given Trump a grander mission ― that of saving the Christian West from Islam, materialism, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ivy League and the “Mainstream Media.” Reared and educated in a blue-collar, conservative Catholic family in Virginia, Bannon’s radical medievalism fits Trump’s royal conception of himself. But the risk is that the president will remain oblivious to what is going on outside the reality TV show Bannon has designed for him to live in, or that Trump will think that he has the kind of kingly authority that allows him to ignore the best parts of the Founders’ vision of a pluralistic, secular and welcoming America.

Too many cooks. 

Bannon is not the only power center, despite having placed himself on the National Security Council and having created a new “Strategic Initiative Group” inside the White House with himself as head. Other power centers (for now) include Vice President Mike Pence, Priebus and Kushner, not to mention Hill leaders. So who controls the message in these crucial days and weeks? No one, except perhaps the person who has created the most trouble for the White House: Donald J. Trump.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2naqy4K

#DIYS