Random Ranting On Ridiculousness Recently Received on 16-Feb-2020

This started off as a small FB post but evolved into something just slightly too long for that so...

I heard someone on the news just say that they believe it is God's will that Trump be President because if it weren't, God wouldn't have allowed it to happen... fair enough, then it was also God's will that Obama be President for 8 years, right? Also, does God's will in this way apply only to Presidents or is it all things? If it's all things, then there's no point to you discussing any of this since it's clearly God's will that the viewers of this MSNBC show and you will forever disagree, most likely on everything that comes out of your mouth. Let's say it's only Presidential elections that God intervenes in. How much do you want to bet that it won't be God's will when a Democrat comes to office and can we forego however long that takes and have you just hand over that bet money to me now?

Moments later in the discussion, this same person said that Trump was in office to allow the country a chance to "recover"... ok, recover from what? If it's God's will that whoever becomes President becomes President, was it not, therefore, God's will that Obama be President and was it not also God's will that everything that transpired did transpire in those 8 years? And in what way are we "recovering" right now? Were we not deporting enough people when Obama ramped up deportations during his Presidency? Did we not have enough support for racism and bigotry? Perhaps Obama wasn't vindictive enough and wasn't political enough when giving speeches in the well of the House or when giving press conferences?

Minutes after these points, the same person then said that there was an election and this was therefore the will of the people.  I'm SO tired of hearing that elections have consequences.  Where was this explanation coming from the Right in 2009 when the Tea Party was sprouting into existence and rallying against Obama, literally hanging effigies of him?  How does this defense work in tandem with the suggestion in 2012 and 2016 that the Right must "take back" the country?  "Take back" from who?  Also, not for nothing, but will of the people?  How is it the will of the people when "the people" vote for one person by 48.2 to 46.1 and the person with 46.1 percent becomes the President?  You can't say "the people" voted for this President when it was a minority of the "the people" who made the decision.

Ok, rant almost over, I promise.

The news piece was actually about how Trump is acting like an authoritarian leader in the way that he governs and the way that he behaves toward the news.  This is absolutely on-point.  The correspondents were pointing out that the news teams have an obligation to not just give both sides' talking points, not just sometimes say when one side is lying, but to tell the story so it is clear as day what is happening.  I'm not entirely sure how that was spun into "this President was elected by the people and it was God's will that that happen so suck it."  Really, I feel there's no answer that can be legitimately provided in response to this so the only answer to be provided is one that changes the narrative ... even if it is to something blatantly false like that the news media only lies about Trump (the first response provided in the discussion) or an explanation of "well, he's in office so it must be God's will" when asked "President Trump has said that it's God's will that he be President, do you agree".

Republicans' Defense Against Impeachment...

So... let's just summarize the Republican talking points regarding the impeachment:

 

• Republicans feel that the testimony being held behind closed doors during the initial grand jury testimony was wrong.  
• You know, the testimony that is generally performed behind closed doors prior to a trial? The trial itself comes AFTER the person has been charged with a crime.  If the House votes to impeach the President, that vote is them charging the President with a crime.  
• Republicans feel that it was important to let the President, or his lawyers, cross examine witnesses and face his accusers.  
• It is typically after you have been charged with a crime that you cross examine the witnesses and have the right to face your accuser.  I've never heard "I want to face my accuser" as the response to being questioned by police before a charge is made.  So, again, slow your roll.
• Republicans say that without the whistle blower coming forward, there is no way to judge the case.... oh, and that the whistle blower can't be believed because they don't have first-hand knowledge... I mean, if the latter is so critical, why does the former even matter?
• First off, you also keep telling us to just read the transcript.  We did and that is essentially one of the witnesses.
• Secondly, let's say there are 10 witnesses to a crime.  One of them talks to a friend and that friend goes to the cops to let them know the crime was committed.  If 7 of the 10 witnesses then get brought in by the cops and they testify to what they witnessed... what does anything about the friend matter?!?
• Speaking of witnesses, Republicans are complaining that those coming forth now are still not close enough to the President... they're just the ambassador to Ukraine, and similar level,  who were directly going between the White House and Ukrainian officials
• Ok, but you've told everybody with more direct connections to the President not to testify so how about you let them testify instead of saying "we don't think you're bringing enough of the evidence that we're withholding from you."
• The President says there was nothing wrong
• I'm amused by this but it can hardly be considered a surprise given that ...
• virtually everybody has told him that it's wrong to accept political aid from a foreign power and yet he keeps saying that it's totally reasonable and that everybody does it.
• he lies about everything.  The size of the crowd at his inauguration, how people behave around him (all those people crying during an event we have a video recording of which show NOBODY crying), whether he has reason to believe Russia tampered in the election (first he said he had no reason to believe they did and then he "clarified" that he meant to say "he had no reason to not believe they did"... yeah, that's a helpful clarification and one that's totally believable... you could have just said "I was just told x by Putin but believe my team" rather than "I was just told x by Putin and I have no reason to believe anything else")
• Republicans point out that there can't be a quid pro quo because the Ukrainian President never ended up giving Trump what he wanted but we did end up giving Ukraine the funds.  Ok, this is the hardest one.  It's the most reasonable one I've heard... thus why I saved it for last.  It also happens to be the one I've heard the least, which tells you something about the messaging of the Republican party on this matter... why try a rationale response when you can lie or use irrational responses?... but let's try to figure this out, shall we?
• Alright, so... if I go into a bank and pull out a gun and tell the bank teller to give me $1,000... and someone apprehends me... I still can be charged and convicted for attempted bank robbery.  My getting caught doing the illegal thing and prevented from getting the outcome I wanted doesn't prevent the illegal thing from happening in the first place.  Essentially, what I'm saying is that, even though Trump was essentially forced to send the money to Ukraine, the month that he had been directed by Congress to send to Ukraine... even though he sent it days before the Ukrainian President was scheduled to go on TV... the fact that he was caught doing this and forced to send the money doesn't stop us from recognizing that he was trying to do this. Interesting information on his being forced to release the money came out a few days ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-09/state-department-freed-ukraine-money-before-trump-says-he-did  In addition to this, the investigation into the situation started roughly at the same time as the Ukrainian President was scheduled to announce the investigation.

Trump Condemns White Nationalists...

Unlike many of my friends, I'm going to give Trump credit for saying that we need to confront white nationalism... hear me out though... Trump has made it his modus operandi of creating a problem and then solving it. So... here he is again, stoking the pre-existing racism in this country into a frenzy and then finally, years later, condemning it. Ok, so maybe he didn't create the racism that I'm essentially giving him credit for but he's also not solving the problem this time either... so... I guess I'm not giving him credit for his statements after all.

Seriously, though, I'm tired of Republican presidents blowing racist dog whistles consistently and then condemning racism when something tragic happens. In the case of Trump, he's been using racist blow horns at every rally and until now has not condemned white nationalists for any of the events that have happened. This statement he had written up for him to read is as empty and as sincere as my offer of credit for it. Now, mind you, all Presidents have statements written for them, the significance here is that Trump has a tendency to say things that are the polar opposite of the written statements when he is off script.

No, not all Republicans are racists, of course they aren't. Yes, there are plenty of racist Democrats. And yes, we've had racist Democratic presidents. But the racism that Trump has stoked since even before his run for the presidency and through to just last week (and likely in the next campaign rally or potentially the next press briefing) dwarfs what we have seen in recent history. Add to that, the frequency of bald-faced lies Trump and his team hold firmly to and you can see why I don't believe for a moment that Trump actually feels that we need to confront white nationalism. At best, he's trying to make it ok for his supporters to support him. At worst he's trying to deflect and cause more chaos, as is his underlying main modus operandi.

Is Every Trump Supporter a Racist? Does it matter?

There's been a lot of talk of whether Trump supporters are all racist.  The Right keeps saying this is nonsense, that you simply can't paint his supporters with that brush.  Perhaps we should start with some facts though.

Fact one: Trump is a racist, or at a minimum, he plays one on his reality tv show that he's going going on: "The President."  He plays one to such a degree that his rally-goers chant and proclaim racist statements all the time.  He plays one to such a degree that it's not a question of whether he knows what the dog whistles have underlying them.  And he has played one to this degree for well over a decade (go look up The Central Park Five, where, after the true murderer admitted his actions, Trump continues to say the 5 falsely accused were guilty).

Fact two: Racist acts and hate crimes have been on the rise since Trump became president.

Fact three: Trump's supporters are, for the most part, unwilling to say something about Trump's racism in public.

Fact four: When Obama was president, there were plenty of Obama supporters who called him out on a variety of issues.  The most common ones I saw were overseas military actions (bombings) and deportations (note, this is deportations, not separating children from their parents when they come asking for asylum).

Alright, so, for the non-fact-based portion of this thought experiment... let's acknowledge that you can support someone without supporting all of what they do and say.  Obama is a great example given the fourth fact, above.

There is the potential that people aren't willing to acknowledge that Trump is a racist because "racism" is such a negative by the general populace that they think they lose every argument attached to Trump if the acknowledge it.  In most cases, that identifies that the thinker of this feels that the racism being promoted IS THAT BAD.  I suppose there could be the idea that the general populace thinks racism is bad but that the thinking doesn't believe the general populace is right.  Certainly, there are many on the Left that feel that it is that bad and cannot be tolerated, though we haven't seen a scenario play out yet where we have someone on the Left being racist in this manner without being called out in any way by the Left.  We have had individuals be racist, but they tend to be called out as such.


All that said, one of the biggest tactics Trump uses is racism to divide the country.  He does this in so many different ways and so openly.  He sometimes tries to claim he's not using it, like when he initially claimed to the news that he had didn't like the "Send Her Back" chant at one of his rallies.  What's really amusing about these attempts is that he has nothing to stand on so when he makes these claims, anybody with a memory and access to the video of the earlier event or his twitter feed can easily see that he's lying.  In the case of the "Send Her Back" chant, he initially claimed that he tried to stop it by talking very quickly.  A few things about this claim:
1) It's false.  He didn't start talking quickly.  He in fact stepped back and let the chant wash over him like a victorious speaker appreciating the crowds cheers.  Only after the chant died down did he start talking again, and at that point he didn't talk quickly.
2) That's not how you stop a chant!  You only have to go back to when Senator McCain ran President Obama to understand what a dignified individual does in the face of a crowd throwing racism about.  Senator McCain, say what you will about him, and I can say a lot, on a number of occasions did not stand for the crowd bringing racism into his race for the presidency.  He would receive a question from the crowd and immediately take control and explain calmly but sternly that Obama was not whatever the crowd member was suggesting and explaining that while the two have differences of philosophies, Obama was a citizen of the US or was a dignified human being and not someone to be "scared of."  If you're going to try to say that racism is wrong, you say it.  You don't just continue with your rant trying to talk over a chant and you CERTAINLY don't just step back and listen to the chant.  You call it out.  You tell your supporters that they're wrong to use that language.  But Trump doesn't believe that they're wrong to use that language and he doesn't believe that the racism involved is reprehensible.

Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there.  Again, it's clear that Trump is racist or is, at a minimum, ok with playing the racist.  And his supporters are ok with his doing so as well.  So, back to the question, does being ok with your leader being a racist make you a racist?  I would suggest that it's a matter of degrees but that, if you are ok with your leader being a racist and you don't complain about it and point it out every time he does something racist, that makes you an accomplice at best.

I have yet to hear or read of a Trump supporter acknowledging the obvious racism publicly though.
 So, yeah, Trump supporters may not themselves be racist, but as long as they're not speaking up, they might as well be.

PS - Racism isn't the only dividing issue Trump plays on.  He also is very much a sexist and plays into anti-LGBTQ tropes.  The last bit is somewhat interesting to me because he pretended at the Republican National Convention in 2016 that he was proud of the party for being welcoming of his pro-LGB-rights messages.  So add these to the lists of things Trump supporters are buying into if they're not openly upset by. It's astonishing to see this culture war being pushed openly by the Right when they have been pushing most of it a little more descretely (though still obviously for those who could read between the lines and understood the tropes and dog whistles).

Timeline of DACA - Trump relationship

I'm just going to leave this progression of Trump's relationship with DACA and the Dreamers here:

throughout 2016 Campaign [1]: DACA was an illegal overreach by President Obama

5-Sep-2017 [2]: I like Dreamers so I'm going to try to get Congress to pass something that I consider legal and give them until March, 5 2018 to do it... once we hit March 5, I'm going to undue DACA because it is illegal (and therefore, even if it hurts those I really like, trust me, believe me, I like them, a lot, I'll get rid of it).

09-Jan-2018: I like Dreamers so much that I'll sign any bill that deals with them that Congress passes

21-Jan-2018 [3]: Democrats are wrong to shut down the government over Dreamers

14-Feb-2018 [4]: Nope, I don't like the bill that the Senate has come up with so I'm threatening a veto

16-Feb-2018 [5]: Democrats are to blame if DACA goes away without something in place to replace it.

Sources:

1) https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/us/immigrants-donald-trump-daca.html

2) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/us/politics/trump-daca-dreamers-immigration.html

3) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42759934

4) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/us/politics/trump-immigration-veto-threat.html

5) https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/16/trump-slams-democrats-daca-disaster/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

Quick Summary of Charlottesville Rally on 11-Aug-2017 and the events that followed

• Charlottesville, VA decides they're going to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate monument (I'm genuinely curious if there are many other countries where the losing side of a conflict have so many memorials to "protect heritage")
• A white supremacist organizes a "Unite the Right" rally.  Let's pause for a moment.  This is someone claiming to speak for the right wing of the country and saying that his position is one that the rest of the right wing should rally around... that position being white supremacy.  I haven't seen many right wing people concerned about this.  Alright, let's go on.
• The city of Charlottesville votes to revoke the rally permit.  
• The permit is reinstated by a federal court the week before the planned date for the rally.
• The rally begins and there are images and tapes of white supremacists, carrying torches ... tiki torches, but torches all the same, performing the nazi solute, and chanting things such as "Jews will not replace us."  During the rally, David Duke (former head of the KKK) says "This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That's what we believed in. That's why we voted for Donald Trump - because he said he's going to take our country back."  O.k., that gives you some idea as to what the rally was really about... not just "protecting heritage" but rather about stating that the racists are back and willing to be way out in the open. 
• There is a counter-rally with people shouting offensive things at the white supremacists.... though to my mind, you don't really consider a match to be a flame when someone is holding a blow-torch nearby.... none-the-less, there is a reason I mention it.
• After the rally, the groups collide and violence ensues.
• James Alex Fields Jr drives his car into the counter-rally goers, killing 1 and injuring 19 others.  He later explained his actions as being his response to people abusing his car.... This is a scenario similar to stand your ground, I imagine, where if you feel endangered, you can commit murder without expecting repercussions.
• President Trump responds 
• At first by saying that there was a lot of hatred "on all sides"... here's where we come back to the counter-rally folk holding up their matches when others are holding up literal torches.
• He comes back on Monday, after many calls for him to be more vocal about denouncing racists and does exactly that... he denounces racist groups... "Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,"  Read that carefully because he doesn't actually walk back what he said previously.  He leaves the door open for many of his supporters to consider the counter-protesters to be members of hate groups.  Many believe Black Lives Matter, for instance, to be a hate group, even though the group is about trying to raise awareness of the violence toward blacks and the inequity and racism that still exists in our country.  This is like suggesting that someone calling attention to a house that's on fire is doing so in an attempt to light other houses on fire.
• On Tuesday, President Trump returns to the reporters to talk about infrastructure and, as you might expect, gets more questions about Charlottesville and his responses.  He states again that there is blame to be found on both sides and starts equating General Lee to President Washington, asking that since Washington had slaves, should we be taking down his monuments.  This is commonly referred to what-aboutism, where people respond to a question with "what about this other thing?"  The other thing tends to either not be nearly as problematic as the original element in question or tends to be on a completely different topic.  Furthermore...
• Lee's monuments were put up nearly half  a century after the end of the Civil War and were there to justify Jim Crow laws.
• Lee's monuments are in remembrance of Lee's actions in the Civil War, standing up against the big bad United States of America (and the rights of states to allow slavery), in contrast to monuments to Washington which are in remembrance of his support and leadership of the United States of America (with no direction within this rememberance, one way or another, regarding slavery)... subtle difference there, right?
• Free Speech rallies are planned in 23 states.  One of the first to be held is in Boston, MA.  The Boston event showcases rally goers in the 10's and counter-rally goers in the 10,000's (estimates put the counter-rally protest at between 30,000 and 40,000 people).  Police arrest 30 of the counter-protesters for violence... remember, that's out of 30,000 people who attended.  The rest of the rallies are replaced with online gatherings rather than in person rallies.

Republicans, Racism, and President Trump

If you've missed it, Republicans in the House and Senate have been outraged by President Trump's lack of racism denouncing.  Their interest in distancing themselves from leaders of racist groups is nothing new.  David Duke, former head of the KKK, has been disavowed by various Republican candidates over the years.  Conventional wisdom says that you can't get general support if you're supported by hate groups.

The Republican establishment certainly believes this.  After the defeat in 2012, they had an analysis of the election performed.  The lesson learned was that they should seek the votes of minorities because the white majority was dwindling and the party could not continue to expect to win if it maintained its thorough reliance on white men.  This, of course, comes after the highly racial backlash against Obama's victory in 2008.  The backlash saw racist dog whistle remarks from many of the leaders in Congress as well as blatant racist remarks from the citizens attending rallies against Obama.  There was a strong push to delegitimize Obama's win by suggesting he wasn't a US born citizen... one that Trump would join and come to the forefront of in the years after 2008.

2016 rolled along and the Republicans actually managed to run some candidates for President that were not white men... There were quite a few candidates (17), but among the top 10 were 1 white woman, 1 black man, 1 indian-american man, and 1 man of Cuban descent.  That's right, almost 1/4 of the Republican Presidential ticket were non-white-men.  That's impressive given the breakdown in Congress which shows that while Democrats having a little over 80% as many seats in the two chambers of the Federal legislative branch, they have 3 times the number of women (78:26) and nearly 6 times the number of minorities (94:16).  In fact, the Democrats have just about the same ratio of minorities to whites in office at the Federal level as the country has in its population.  That indicates that the Republicans have a long way to go to bring their office-holders looking like the citizens they are there to represent.

So, the Republicans ran 13 angry white men, 1 angry white woman, and 3 angry minority men in 2016.  That's a lot of anger in one room... too much, in fact, so they had debates of <= 10 candidates instead.  As you might expect, the woman in the group was the first to be taken down by the candidate that would, throughout the campaign, disparage and demean women.  Good news for Trump: white nationalists tend to also be misogamists, so the base of his support is well in hand.  Trump continued to name-call and demean his opponents and serving up red meat for his fearful followers in the form of suggesting that land-based immigration from Mexico, Chinese trade, NAFTA, Obama-care, and Islamic Extremist terrorism were the biggest threats to the US and only he knew how to resolve them.  Care to count the racist elements of that train of dangers?  Go on, take a moment to do the math and find the percentage of issues that are race-based.  Trump was calling things as he saw them, or at least how people thought he saw them, and that was a strong selling point.  Based on responses at rallies, being openly racist, misogamistic, self-aggrandizing, and anti-media were the biggest winners for Trump.

Supporters ate it all up.  Finally, a candidate willing to be openly part of that group that the popular culture has been so opposed to.  Popular culture, for decades, has been anti-racism and anti-misogamy.  Trump's supporters loved the concept that political correctness was why their leaders tempered their words and used dog whistles instead of being, what popular culture would consider, openly racist and sexist.  It's stifling our discussions, they would say, to not be able to talk in terms popularly considered to be racist and sexist without being called racists and sexists.  After all, how can you have an honest discussion about Mexicans being rapists, Muslims being terrorists, women being emotional wrecks, and Blacks being lost sheep, duped into voting for a party that doesn't represent them, all these topics, while being labeled as someone who believes negative things about particular races and women?  How can you possibly stand up for racist beliefs when you'll be called a racist?  It's hard, I'm sure.

Anyway, the point being that for decades, the Republican party leaders had welcomed the quiet racism and almost-under-the-radar sexism, using dog whistles, code words that many of us understood the true meaning of but could be denied.  Now, Trump was openly saying the racist and sexist things the dog whistles had indicated in a seemingly-defensible way.  Much in the same way that the anti-government undercurrent that has supported the Tea Party was fostered by the Republican establishment and right wing news and talk shows, the undercurrent of racism and sexism, while based in a culture from the past, has been nurtured and given aid and comfort by the same parties.  The Tea Party has become a problem for the Republican establishment because of a lack of interest in negotiating or doing anything that could be identified as promoting government... an issue that the Republicans trying to accomplish anything in Congress, even with control of both chambers, are running into now and undoubtedly questioning their push to get to this point.  Likewise, Republican leaders are looking at the support being given to the racists now and railing against it.  They were the ones that helped get us here though.  It's hard to take Fox News saying that the President is not treating the situation appropriately when they've been pushing us in this direction for quite some time.

So, here's the question I have: Are the Republican leaders in Congress right to think that they can't be openly supportive of white supremacists?  And are labels so damaging and so upsetting to people that they would prefer to empower the worst of the racists than to recognize that maybe, just maybe, they are indeed a bit racist and maybe, just maybe, they should accept being labeled as such when they say racist things.

Is Trump’s Support About to Crater?

Basket of deplorables.  That’s what the nazis and other white supremacists are to us.  And that’s what we think everybody else thinks too.  That’s why, when Charlottesville had a protest, that looked an awful lot like it was entirely nazis on one side, shouting “Heil Trump” and other slogans that are all too reminiscent of 1939 Germany, when those protesters showed up on our televisions and in our social media feeds, that’s why we all assumed the nation would agree that these were clearly the villains in the story that was unfolding.  Trump came out and denounced the hatred “on all sides”… surely *this* would do the trick, surely the nation would see Trump the way the left-of-center had seen him this entire time, as a repugnant racist, or at least someone who would be willing to play to repugnant racists and embolden them beyond what should be considered reasonable in 1950, never mind 2017.  

But here’s what the media and many of my friends are forgetting…. this already happened… not only had it happened, but it had happened in a number of different ways throughout the campaign.

Trump announced his candidacy by suggesting, essentially, that immigrants were the problem we were facing and that those crossing our southern border were nearly all (if not all) criminals of a particularly unsavory type.  “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”  It doesn’t take much to unpack this and it matches his style entirely.  He isn’t saying everybody that crosses the souther border is a criminal, that’s just what he’s heard about, right?  He’s not saying something bad about a rival GOP candidate for President, he’s heard other people saying it, but he’s not saying it, he would never, but you’ve heard about it, right?  But I digress… many understood that he was calling Mexican’s criminals and lowlife scum.  Many thought he was a joke after that speech… but he wasn’t…  and his supporters backed him.

Trump later called for a ban on Muslims entering the country.  We had thought you couldn’t get more blatant with your racism but there it was.  Subtly hidden within the fear that Muslims coming to our shores might be terrorists… that they are a great threat that must be dealt with.  Nevermind that a vast majority of terrorist attacks on US soil since 2002 have been perpetrated by US born citizens, and that you’re hard pressed to find any non-US born perpetrators who came here after they were 10 years old.  Nevermind that the terrorist attacks since 9/11/2001 are dwarfed in their number of victims by mass killings determined not to be terrorism.  No, these Muslim immigrants are the problem.  Many on the Left were shocked and enraged and thought, surely, surely this would indicate to the rest of the country that he couldn’t possibly be fit for the Presidency and the candidacy would falter… but it didn’t… and his supporters backed him.

Weeks before the general election, a tape came out that many on the left believed would be his downfall.  In it, Trump can be heard discussing his behavior toward women, which the left critiqued as sexual assault and his supporters considered “locker room talk” and the thought of the actions described as, while not necessarily appropriate, also not terribly wrong either.  Yep, the media and the left thought this was the end… but it wasn’t… and his supporters backed him.

Bill O’Reilly (I’m sorry, let’s take a moment to consider this came from O’Reilly… how far do you have to be from the beaten path of conservatism to have O’Reilly try to take you down) took his stab at Trump in early February 2017, pointing out that Putin is a killer and questioning the President’s respect for Russia’s leader.  Trump’s response was “There are a lot of killers.  You think our country’s so innocent?”  At this, media and the left thought, surely, surely now people will understand the concerns we raised about his ties to Russia… But they didn’t… no, his supporters backed him.

That’s why, upon brief consideration, I was neither surprised nor particularly disheartened when I heard the comments made by our President in response to what popular culture considers the ubiquitous villain… nor was I surprised when the media attacked him and called for the denouncement of white supremacists as an obvious move that should have been taken… nor will I be surprised if his supporters continue to back him.

The Republican leadership in the House and Senate called for a stronger response, but they have called for him to behave differently in the past, they have backed away somewhat on their support for him and then come back to his side.  The attack on President Trump surprised me, but within minutes of hearing about it, it made sense and it fit the narrative we’ve had for the last year.  

The emboldening of racists, of nazis, the villain we love to see our heroes go up against, this has been coming for a long time.  Our President has helped it along substantially and given this enemy aid and comfort.  But none of this is particularly new to the equation and so I don’t believe this will have a true impact on Trump’s presidency.  It will, however, have a real impact on the citizens who have to live in the midst of this crop of racists…. but that’s a post for another time.

Paris Climate Accord

President Trump has determined the US should withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.  His rationale?  America first, its unfair to the US tax payers, it's job killing, and we would end up being laughed at by the world.

Shall we take those reasons one at a time?

America first.  ~sigh~  What does it mean to be America first in this scenario?  Does it mean we should be more concerned about coal / gas power plants than we are about our citizen's health?  If so, he's right, doing away with regulations, as he already was doing, will do the job.  We'll continue to have a stable amount of health problems due to the pollution from these power plants and from car exhaust.  And those health concerns will be covered by healthca... oh, right... well... hm...

It's unfair to US tax payers... this is really the same as America first except it more obviously identifies that we should be going forward with the regulations.  The financial benefits in decreased health costs far outweigh the negatives of increased power costs and the cost of tax incentives.

Job killing.  Seriously?  Job killing?  Without the regulations, natural gas was already putting coal out of business.  What we need, if we're concerned about jobs in power production, is to get coal country to switch to solar/wind power generation.  It wouldn't be easy but with the proper efforts it could be done.  And what jobs would there be?  Well, what do we need?  We need parts construction... are you telling me we can't get companies to build construction plants in these areas?  We need to build parts for solar panels, parts for power plants... how about we take the tax incentives for oil companies and switch them over to companies that build solar/wind equipment in coal country?  And couldn't we create a power plant or two in those states?  Renewable jobs already outpace coal jobs like nobody's business.... well... I guess like renewable business.  What we need to do is get some of those renewable jobs moved to coal country and help the transition a bit more.  What we don't need is to pretend that we'll bring back coal and continue to ignore the coal workers' actual needs by giving them false promises.

He doesn't want the US to be the laughing stock of the world.  What exactly would it take for us to be more of a laughing stock of the world?  Seriously.  The world is laughing at (and crying) about us right now.  They're also recognizing that the states, companies, and people of the US are going to keep to our word and do significantly more than Trump is suggesting we should do.  He thinks that because the US was going to try to do what he considers to be more than other big countries, that the other countries were going to laugh at us.  Here's the thing: you don't laugh at people who are being better people than others.  You don't laugh at someone who has a mansion and decides that they should feed a few of the homeless nearby.  You don't laugh at someone who helps his neighbors get jobs.  You're impressed by them.  We're already the laughing stock because of President Trump's tweets, his administration's inability to tell a single truth and the particular lies it decides are super important (such as that the crowds at his inauguration were the biggest ever, remember that lie that they kept shoving at us?).

So what does the withdrawal really mean?  It means that we are further putting ourselves at odds with the world.  Other than that, it means nothing.  Really.  The Paris agreement was essentially each country saying what it thought it could do.  O.k., actually, what it wanted to do.  So to say "we don't want to do what we said we'd do"... well, you could say that without withdrawing.  You could say "actually, we changed our priorities" and nobody would have been surprised.  Withdrawing is just withdrawing from the community.  It's like if you and I went out for dinner, before hand I said I was going to be super healthy, and then we got there and I ordered a cheeseburger.  You wouldn't be surprised, I am who I am after all... but no, instead, we are withdrawing... so we were going to dinner, I said I'd eat something healthy and then I said, you know what, actually, I'm going to have a cheeseburger but because I said I'd be eating something healthy and now I want a cheeseburger, I'm going to get my cheeseburger and head home and eat it alone rather than engaging in conversation with you and enjoying a night out together.  Who's the laughing stock now, bozo... you're off eating dinner with 193 (or 146, depending if you're counting signers or just ratifiers) friends and I'm eating alone... so long suckers!  ... God I wish I had someone to talk to.... well, at least they're not laughing at me (and my stubborn resolve to be an idiot), right?