Shabbat shalom.
The orange man continues to flood the zone with his clown show chaos at “muzzle velocity”, doing his best to distract the media, build upon his momentum and take advantage of sleepy Democrats and spineless Republicans (the latter clearly a redundancy) in order to do what? Put the country through a DOGE directed “wood chipper”? Cut funding to poor, desperate people in far off places in order to find enough budget to pay for another tax cut for the wealthy? Piss off our closest allies to the point where they boo our national anthem? Commit ethnic cleansing in the middle east?
Welcome to the theater of the absurd! The orange turd’s modus operandi has not changed. He has made an art form out of his ability to use theater as a political weapon. He creates dramas that often cause his enemies and opponents to react in ways that might enhance him, but more importantly, put him at the center of the drama where he can convince his MAGA dunderheads of his faux leadership prowess. Just this last week we have been subjected to a few of these performances that are laughable, but sadly also hurtful to our integrity as the leading superpower in the world. The first two performances, led by the “Tariff of Nottingham”, called for imposing 25% across the board tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which of course 98% of economists judged would cause inflation and be harmful to the economies of all three countries. So, a lose-lose proposal with the supposed objectives of improving border control over fentanyl and illegal immigrants. But of course, Donny the deal maker got played by both Trudeau and Sheinbaum and ended up agreeing to a deal where both Canada and Mexico agreed to do things they were already doing. As Jeff Tiedrich noted in his recent post:
“but Donny’s too dim to understand that he got his pockets picked, and so he’ll be crowing endlessly about how the Master Negotiator did it again — and MAGA will eat that shit up. they’ll swallow anything.”
let’s let WaPo columnist Catherine Rampell sum it up nicely.
If all that tariff nonsense wasn’t bad enough, we had two wild and crazy guys, Bibi and the orange man, previewing Act I of the next performance of the theater of the absurd: The Mar-a-Gaza Hotel.
I am all in favor of thinking outside the box in order to come up with alternative plans for what Israelis call “the situation” in the middle east. Lord knows the “land for peace” avenue has been a dead end for too many decades as Palestinians continue to be more focused on eliminating Israel “from the River to the Sea” instead of building schools, hospitals and an economy for their country. So, fresh eyes with new ideas? Sure, bring it on. But holy shit, WTF is the orange turd talking about, resurrecting son-in-law Jared’s Gaza Riviera vision! And ethnic cleansing over two million Palestinians with the potential of American boots on the ground! Is this Trump’s channeling of Nixon’s Madman Theory in which he hopes to make adversaries believe he is irrational and unpredictable, and willing to take extreme actions to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals? The Madman Theory may have worked for Nixon, but the novelty of that approach wore off long ago for the orange man. And while I am certain Israelis (and most Arabs!) would love nothing more than shipping all Palestinians to the middle of Australia, everyone around the globe, friends and foes alike, have already dismissed the Gaza Riviera idea as lunacy, and contrary to many long established international laws to which Israel and the US are signatories.
Lost in this latest Trumpian theater was the real headline from Bibi’s visit: the executive order re-asserting the mass pressure campaign against Iran. And here I confess I am in total agreement with the orange man! (Also proving that the “broken clock theory” is alive and well, at least on the pages of the JNR.) The Iran appeasement policy of Obama/Biden proved to be a dismal failure, freeing the mullahs to spend billions on developing their proxy armies in Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. It’s time, IMHO, for the US to use our soft and hard power to bring down the mullahs and stop them from exporting more Jew hatred and genocide. This is something our bully President may actually be capable of executing. Iran has been seriously weakened by Israel, leaving the mullahs exposed and likely open to negotiating the end of their nuclear pursuits.
For this special edition, I thought I would end with a re-stack of a short post by Sam Harris titled, “The Cult of the Bully”. Sam notes the current “vibe shift” led by the orange man and Elon Musk, and asks the question, “Does the world still need good people, or are we all free to become monsters now?” Do you think MAGA parents would want their kids to emulate these narcissistic a-holes? The post is behind a pay wall, so here it is in full, below.
Does the world still need good people, or are we all free to become monsters now?
It may seem priggish to say it, given the current “vibe shift,” but we really can’t give up on personal integrity just yet. The day we celebrate our children for their selfishness and cruelty will be the point of no return.
Clearly, we need systems and institutions that can withstand the intrusions of a charismatic psychopath. We also need ones that can resist when otherwise normal people behave like psychopaths (e.g. on social media). However, if we want to live in good societies—where most games are positive-sum and decency is the norm—there is no substitute for having a sufficient number of people who are actually good, or struggling to be so.
It is, therefore, ominous that our political culture now celebrates figures who are obviously unethical—liars, bullies, and conmen—many of whom see no reason to even pretend to harbor deeper values or virtues. Whatever your politics, President Trump has said and done a thousand things that should make it impossible to admire him as a person—and he will commit further atrocities this week. Elon Musk has achieved a similarly vile orbit—lying with abandon, making common cause with racists and lunatics, and pointlessly defaming ordinary people—it seems, just for the fun of it. Both men are conspicuous for the degree to which they still resemble children, having retained a juvenile sense of entitlement, recklessness, and self-absorption. Both are already cautionary tales about the corrupting influences of fame, wealth, and power—even as they continue to achieve new heights.
Narcissism is one key to understanding both Trump and Musk. One can’t say that they suffer from narcissism, exactly—as they have become its high priests. Neither man ever apologizes for the mistakes he makes or the harms he causes. Each luxuriates in a moral weightlessness conferred by the adulation (and short attention span) of the crowd. Did Trump attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election, while falsely claiming that it had been stolen from him? Did Musk just get exposed as a fraud by some of his most ardent fans? No one cares or remembers, because there are fresh antics and outrages to contemplate today. For all their flaws, the chaos that these men bring into the world, hour by hour, is at least interesting.
Of course, their fans love them, in part, because the chaos is also transgressive. In different ways, Trump and Musk prove that it is okay to be terribly flawed—and to aspire to no ethical standards whatsoever—because you can always be washed clean by the attention of others. In this way, each man has become a kind of savior for people who don’t want to be judged. It is a mutual absolution and intoxication.
For those who are unconcerned about this phenomenon, it seems worth asking, what would it take to startle you? What could Trump or Musk do to make you suddenly feel that something essential to the health of our politics, or our society, has been broken?
And if it really is all about the price of eggs, how expensive would a dozen eggs have to be for you to realize that Trump 2.0 has been a terrible mistake?
And as Canadian columnist Dan Gardner notes, “An entire generation of young people is looking at Elon Musk and Donald Trump and concluding that the keys to success are intemperance, impulsiveness, snap judgment, relentless aggression, and ruthlessness. Try to imagine where that will take us.”
Be careful out there.
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