Trump simply exploited what people were already feeling—feelings that, according to the data, are rooted in authoritarianism, racism, and social dominance orientation. He was always about a “vibe,” and that vibe was to hurt the people his audience thought should be hurt... [T]here is a strong, underlying desire for an authoritarian fascist to rule the country and … even those who aren’t true believers [will] simply go along with it, or disbelieve it altogether. These perfectly nice, ordinary, generous, pleasant people are no different from any German in 1933–1945… Trump [is] merely the invitation. He [is] an outlet for an unspoken desire to seize control and remake the nation, hurting the people who [need] it along the way.
Hurt, hurt, hurt. Yet the author titles this piece NICE ORDINARY PEOPLE CAN BE FASCISTS.
Which is it, babe? Is it nice to be a sadist? Me no think so.
I’d put it this way: Sadists can behave themselves a lot of the time, but they’re still sadists; and non-sadists, even in ‘nice’ dealings with sadists, may well sense the sadism.
There’s plenty of evidence, for instance, that the daughter in law of the nation’s sadist-in-chief, perky pleasant Lara Trump, is an extreme sadist, deriving real pleasure from the spectacle of hurt and humiliated people.
She will soon chair the Republican National Committee. Put her name in my search engine.
Indeed so intimately, so thrillingly attuned is her sadism to that of her father in law that UD feels sure we will eventually learn she and he have been going at it hammer and tongs and zip ties for years. I’ve seen and heard enough of Lara Trump to identify her as a pervert who, like Trump himself, shouldn’t be broadcast during family hours. But most people still see the perky mask.
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Edward Albee once wrote that his plays condemn “complacency, cruelty, emasculation and vacuity; [they are] a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen.” His hyper-sadistic masterwork, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, considered by many the greatest American play of the later twentieth century, describes Americans (he names his two main characters George and Martha) as rage-filled self-loathers, pacifying their disgust at their stupid existence – everyone’s stupid existence – with alcohol, and, when that fails, attacking one another with a viciousness that definitely intends to destroy. Donald Trump is a kind of savior for these (tens of millions of) people – He’s doing their dirty work for them every day, eviscerating the world at a much higher level than they ever could.
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Like many of the most fervent evangelicals, these people just want the fucking shitty world to end, and they correctly identify Trump as the one who will get them there.
But he is quick to say the other thing: Millions of Americans like assholes, and the more their political assholes smell of shit the better.
Millions of Russians, as we speak, are pining for Stalin; millions of Italians for Mussolini, millions of Spaniards for Franco. It ain’t just Americans.
If some clever boots (Adam Phillips?) could figure out why millions of people absolutely adore assholes and follow their stench to the ends of the earth, it might be useful/interesting.
A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all “suckers” because “there is nothing in it for them.” A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because “it doesn’t look good for me.” A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
… A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.
UD’s favorite exchange from yesterday’s Biden impeachment inquiry featured her polygamy-defending GWU colleague, Jonathan Turley:
Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): Professor Turley, in 2006, you wrote an op-ed in The Guardian entitled, quote, Stop Persecuting Polygamists. There, you likened polygamists to, quote, persecuted minorities. And you said polygamy is, quote, a practice with deep and good faith, religious meaning. Isn’t that what you said?
Turley: I represented the Sister Wives, a family, in challenging a polygamy prosecution.
Krishnamoorthi: The answer is yes. You’ve been crusading for legalizing polygamy for years. In fact, in an op-ed in the USA Today, you said that a Utah polygamist named Tom Green, who was also convicted of pedophilia for raping his 13-year-old stepdaughter, should not have been charged with polygamy.
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Years ago, UD wrote one of her best limericks (at least I think so) about her many-wives-loving colleague:
A colleague of UD‘s named Turley Wants one boy to have many girlies. “My thing on polygamy Makes UD quite sick of me, And even my wife has turned surly.”
Andrew Sullivan (no link) tells Biden to step aside, and he’s got a point.
Yes, Trump is almost as old as Biden. But he has the energy and stamina and obsessiveness of the truly mentally ill. I started to read his interview this week with Hugh Hewitt, and yes, it was a festival of delusion and lies and occasional decent points. But what struck me also was the zeal, untempered by time, the persistent, angry passion, the untiring drive to regain power. He is not what he was, and, appearances to the contrary, is mortal. But up against Biden, he seems like raw energy.
… Trump now has the aura of the American outlaw, a victim of the Biden DOJ, a man on the run. Look at that mug shot. He’s trolling the Constitution.I once wrote about Trump in the context of Shakespeare’s Richard III: it’s hard not to root for the monster in some mischievous way.
I get all that. I don’t quite get this:
[W]hen I think of the presidency right now, it feels like an empty space. The drift so many now feel as religion recedes from American life, as social media eats away at any sense of the common good, as all the worst elements of society are replayed on our phones over and over, is palpable.
I’m not palpating it. I see plenty of healthy civic activism – environment, reproductive rights, gun control – in large parts of this country. And since when does the recession of religion equal destructive drift? Looked at Norway lately? Looked at any list of the best countries in the world by any measure you’d like? Not a non-secular one among them. OTOH I won’t waste your time listing the God-fearing catastrophes. I mean, break it down by state. Among the worst elements of our society are the fundamentalists and the bigots breathed air into by Trump, and I agree with Sullivan that Biden’s a dangerously weak candidate to go up against them.
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UD‘s very keen, if we’re talking Biden-subs, on Buttigieg, and not just because he’s read Ulysses (his father was a Joyce scholar). Unflappable, likes a good fight, smart as a whip, likeable, YOUNG, serious, military background, politically experienced, sense of humor. Americans are even willing to vote for intellectuals lately (Obama)! But I fear they’re not yet, in sufficient numbers, willing to vote – at the level of the presidency – for out gay people.
Per the John Eastman disbarment trial, new, yummy details about the traitors’ January 6 plot and the grand historic role reserved for Iowa’s own hayseed, Chuck Grassley.
The Constitution requires the vice president — who also serves as the president of the Senate — to preside over the counting of electoral votes to certify the presidential election. Historically, however, this job has at times fallen to the “Senate president pro tempore,” typically the most senior senator in the majority. In 2021, Grassley held that position…
Eastman … hinted [in an email] that he thought [Sen. Chuck] Grassley might play a role on Jan. 6. In the message, Eastman told Epshteyn that he hoped members of Congress would avoid taking any actions that might “constrain Pence (or Grassley)” from asserting the power to block Biden’s election…
Grassley started a furor on Jan. 5, 2021, when he told reporters of Pence “we don’t expect him to be there, I will be presiding over the Senate.” His comments prompted an urgent rush by Pence’s staff to correct the record, eventually resulting in a statement from Grassley’s office indicating the senator had been “misinterpreted” and was merely saying he might fill in for Pence during some portions of the proceedings that day.
Yes, of course – misinterpreted.
Apparently plans were afoot to smother Pence in a hay silo in Pocahontas County, but his staff asked if it’d be okay if he were allowed to survive the proceedings and then take his chances with the crowd trying to hang him.
