Shabbat shalom.
Let’s begin on a positive note with a tip of the kippah to Samer Sinjlawi, a member of the Palestinian Fatah organization affiliated with the Muhammad Dahlan camp, the former leader of Gaza who was eventually overthrown by Hamas. Last week, Sinjlawi visited Yarden Bibas and during his visit, told Yarden that he is ashamed of the tragedy and horrors inflicted by Hamas on the Bibas family and asked Yarden for his forgiveness in the name of the Palestinian people. While some may view it as a simple and humane response, it is nevertheless one of tremendous courage in the Arab world to openly condemn Hamas so publicly. We need more Sinjlawis if the Palestinians and Israelis will ever have a chance at living side by side.
But courage is not what comes to mind when I think about the barrage of bullshit our nation endured for what seemed like an eternity Tuesday evening. I lacked the courage and intestinal fortitude to watch it live, but have seen and read enough about it to know it was exactly what I expected: meat to the MAGA crowd, a bombastic blizzard of bullshit, lies upon lies, vindictive and mean-spirited lib-baiting. And to make matters worse, it was all supported and amplified by a parliament of fluffers formerly known as the Republican party chanting USA, USA, USA! And despite the puke gathering in my mouth, we do need to give him his props. He commanded the iconic venue with his usual bravado, and quite effectively, according to most dispassionate viewers.
But in the midst of this bravado we have actual results. He may declare that “America is back”, but the economy and the Fed are not convinced. Markets are tanking and the economy is stumbling. GDP is contracting at the fastest rate since the COVID lockdowns. The Atlanta Fed has estimated that annualized growth has moved from 4%, which is remarkable (thanks Joe!) to NEGATIVE 2.8% in the last month! Consumer confidence has also had its greatest drop since COVID. Retail spending is down, while the price of eggs is WAY UP! The markets are not in free fall, but definitely declining. The NASDAQ has lost 9% in 10 days. All of the gains since the Trump bump have disappeared.
He has the greatest levels of disapproval of any president, except one other at this time in his presidency. And that other was Trump’s first term. A stunning 52% of Americans are saying he’s ignoring the country’s biggest problems. What did he focus on in his speech? A simple word search of the transcript revealed the following: Greenland was mentioned three times more than affordable housing, veterans, or prescription drug costs. Zero mentions of health care, zero mentions of veterans or prescription drug costs. Five mentions of tax cuts for billionaires, five mentions of illegal aliens, six mentions of the Panama Canal, 13 mentions of Joe Biden, and three mentions of annexing Greenland. So yes, I guess you could say he was very effective at being ineffective.
In the demonic world of politics, we voters get what we deserve. H.L. Mencken said it best: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Well JNR peeps, the orange Dom has whipped up quite a frenzy so far, making the first fifty days of this term feel more like fifty shades of bruises. We are getting it good and hard all right, and the orange man is pumped up, and ready to bully the country and our allies into aligning with his daily dose of chaos and kleptocracy. Meanwhile, the feckless dems are failing at any meaningful opposition while the courts are showing some signs of a spine and attempting to reign in his rule of terror, but who knows if he will even abide by any court rulings? The mere thought of that very real possibility is frightening. And the markets, and our allies don’t know what to think. His decisions change day to day, much like his adult diapers, or whatever shade of orange paint he slathers on his ugly puss. And the pimple-faced DOGE douche bags are actually hurting real people. So much winning, I can’t take it any more!
I have recently been thinking a lot more about Mencken’s quote and how we democrats and liberals of good intentions are partly to blame. Some of the nonsense coming from the orange man is actually the pendulum making a corrective rightward swing to remove the vestiges of some pretty silly positions and “progressive” policies that had become institutionalized throughout academia, arts and government. DEI, trans, and immigration are a few of the hot button items that immediately come to mind, but I’m sure my conservative friends can pile on some others. And if we clear away the dead wood and look at actual outcomes, there may be a few lucky pickups in the offing (pardon the bowling metaphor). For example, for over 50 years we have been trying to get Europe to take on more responsibility for their defense and for increasing their share of NATO support without much success. But because of our a-hole orange President, they have finally opened their wallets and started to step up. Of course they all hate us now, and we will have to disguise ourselves as Canadians when we visit any foreign countries, but hey, progress. And maybe the country needs an a-hole to actually get our budget under control. For the first time in history, we now pay more in interest on our national debt than we pay for Medicaid or Defense. That is not a sustainable formula for running the country, and our grandchildren and future generations will pay the price. It’s just our luck, I guess, that the a-hole of this time in history happens to be the orange turd.
But do not for one moment think that I am changing my feelings or position about the orange turd. Whatever the ends, they will never justify his means. He is, was, and always will be the biggest a-hole to ever walk the planet and will likely go down in history as the only President to commit treason by leading a mob to attempt to subvert our most coveted democratic process. I do not wish ill on the man, and like a good patriot will try my best to support him, but if he choked on a big mac next week and (as my brother once suggested), became disabled for life, I would not shed a single tear, but would celebrate a justice long in the making.
I have re-stacked for your reading pleasure, Andrew Sullivan’s latest post. For those not familiar with Andrew, I am a faithful subscriber and fan, although his politics are more conservative than my own. He is a great writer, leader of gay rights, former editor of The New Republic, and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, The Daily Dish, in 2000, which is now published on Substack. Here is his latest offering regarding our bully president.
Also in the stacks this week: a great interview with Yair Golan, a former IDF general and hero of October 7. While well known inside Israel, Yair is not very well known in the diaspora, but is emerging as a potential candidate to challenge Bibi as Prime Minister, and one of the only leaders still talking about a two state solution.
Thanks for your ongoing readership, enjoy the weekend, and be careful out there.
Brad out.
Tuesday night showed the core truth of Trump. And of liberal democratic collapse.
MAR 07, 2025
“Dennis Burnham, who lived next door, was a toddler when his mother briefly put him in a playpen in their garden. She returned a few minutes later to find the current U.S. president, then aged five or six, standing at his fence throwing rocks at the little boy. Another neighbor, Steven Nachtigall, now a 66-year-old doctor, said he never forgot Trump … once jumping off his bike and beating up another boy: ‘It was so unusual and terrifying at that age,’” – Trump Revealed.
“When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same,” – Donald J Trump.
The pews at the cathedral were packed this Ash Wednesday — more than I can remember in years. Some others on social media seemed to notice the same thing. And the atmosphere was dark and intense even for the beginning of Lent — as ash was smeared on my forehead with the familiar, sobering mantra:
Remember, man, that thou are dust and unto dust thou shalt return.
Unbidden grief welled up. Grief for my mother and father, grief for a Ukrainian exile friend who killed himself last summer, impending grief for a Pope I love and revere. And yes, although I may be roundly mocked by some of you for this, grief for my country.
The night before, you see, I’d watched the president’s address to the Congress. Yes, yes, I know I recently pledged not to respond to every provocation from the troller-in-chief and focus on policies and long-term results. But to understand the moment we are in — and the policies that will follow — we simply cannot look away from what Tuesday night revealed about the state of our republic. I know I’m repeating myself, and have been since early 2016, but part of Trump’s psychological abuse is wearing down opponents so they stop repeating themselves, and give in to the lies. I will not be worn down. Truth matters.
Here it is: We have a sociopathic president in total command of a cult-like party; a Congress that, as long as the GOP controls it, is a rubber-stamp version of the Russian Duma under Putin; a court balanced precariously between a modest defense of the unitary executive and an Alito wing bent on empowering an American Caesar; and a Justice Department openly planning persecution of the president’s political opponents.
The speech itself, mind you, was masterful. He’s at the top of his game and clearly loving every second of it. If you knew nothing of history or reality apart from it, you’d have been inspired, entranced, even ebullient about the greatest comeback of any country in all of human history by far! And the poignant individual stories were pitch-perfect, with the Democrats’ cringey lameness the cherry on the cake.
Trump’s ability to invent and sustain a false narrative, however crazy and however incoherent, is preternatural. So are his profound skills in psychological abuse deployed to make it stick: gaslighting, intimidating, manipulating, and menacing you so that, in the end, you have no idea what the truth is or could be, and submit to the man if only to get out of his way.
Start with the opener, which was quite something:
The presidential election of Nov. 5 was a mandate like has not been seen in many decades … Now, for the first time in modern history, more Americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction than the wrong direction … In fact, it has been stated by many that the first month of our presidency — it’s our presidency — is the most successful in the history of our nation. By many. And what makes it even more impressive is that do you know who No. 2 is? George Washington.
Trump’s popular vote margin was the second smallest of any candidate’s since 1968; yes, there’s been a jump among Republicans who think the country is now on the right track, but still many more Americans believe the country is on the wrong one— and Trump’s numbers on this, far from being unique in modern history, are the same as Biden’s were at this point in his term. Oh, and absolutely no one has said that Trump’s first month is better than George Washington’s — except Donald Trump.
So here’s what I’d ask of readers who say that I have Trump Derangement Syndrome: tell me how you personally parse all these claims that were a mere warmup for the rest. When you heard him say he was better than George Washington, did you giggle? Did you just ignore it? Did you roll your eyes? Did you feel a tinge of nausea? Did you actually believe it? Or have you stopped caring altogether?
This matters because it is central to Trump’s success: no sane person with a grip on reality — unless they had just arrived from outer space — could believe vast tracts of his speech. With huge self-evident lie after huge self-evident lie, insane exaggeration after insane exaggeration, you are instantly forced to choose between walking away from the nutter or acquiescing to his madness. And since he is president, you can’t walk away. So the lies become Truth for millions; narrative replaces reality; aggressors are victims; exploding debt is fiscal prudence; weaponization of the law is anti-weaponization; and on and on.
Notice how post-modern this is. These are not the usual politicians’ lies, which pay some deference to the truth, even when eliding it. Trump, like the critical theorists, has contempt for the truth. “Truth” is entirely a myth he creates at will to justify the use of power. Critical Trump Theory, so to speak, is unfalsifiable, irrational, and seeks to replace objective reality with Trump’s lived experience so that, in the end, only his power remains. Brute power — immune to fact, argument or debate. Trump power. That’s what the Founders started this country to resist. And it’s what a majority of Americans have now given up on.
The best metaphor for Trump’s entire raison d’être is the incident cited above, when at just five years old, he was found throwing rocks at a baby: find someone weaker, first humiliate them, and then destroy them. And for Trump, this doesn’t have to lead anywhere. It is an end in itself. The bullying of others is what gives him life. He does it for those he favors as well as those he wants to destroy. Here is Trump on Truth Social in July last year, for example, on Musk. This is necessary even for Trump’s allies:
When Elon came … asking me for help on all his many subsidized projects … I could have said “drop to your knees and beg” and he would have done it.
Canada and Mexico are best understood as the baby in the playpen. Trump himself re-negotiated a trade agreement with both in his first term. Have they violated that deal? No. Have they refused to cooperate on fentanyl and illegal migrants? No. Has Mexico reduced the pressure on the Southern border to almost nothing. Dramatically. Is there anything they can or could do to please Trump? No. The pointis the abuse. And like all abusers, Trump constantly shifts what he is demanding, gaslights, threatens, charms, attacks … so that you begin to realize there is nothing you can do except wait for his mood to change. Welcome to monarchy.
And you thought he might come to Ukraine’s defense! Poor Douglas Murray. What the world saw last Friday was the same, central Trump dynamic: the leader of a smaller democracy that has withstood three years of brutal attack by a far larger dictatorship … was still publicly humiliated, because he dared air his concern of no security guarantees against Russia. “Just say thank you,” Vance harangued him. “Have you said thank you once?” I cannot recall any visiting head of state who has ever, ever been thrown out of the White House the way Zelensky was. Why? Because he did not submit.
Notice also how Tump and Vance have treated the big European democracies. Vance went to Germany to lambaste the country for curtailing extremist speech, and intervened in their domestic politics to endorse the AfD, meeting with them while blowing off the Chancellor; he described the UK and France as “random” countries that haven’t “fought a war in 30 or 40 years,” and said the UK would be the “first truly Islamist country” to have nukes. Now try and recall him saying anything comparably vicious or withering about Russia and China. Humiliate and berate Trudeau, Starmer, Merz, and Macron. Throw love-bombs at Putin, Xi, the West Bank settlers, and Kim.
The same, I think, is the real rationale behind the chaotic, often illegal, acts of DOGE. It is not about reducing the debt and never was; the savings, if any, will be trivial. The cruelty and caprice of Musk’s rampage is solely about submission. The very irrationality of the assault is designed to get the entire federal bureaucracy to surrender its will to continue as a rational enterprise.
Or take Israel and Gaza. Of course Trump sees Palestinian Arabs the way Jabotinsky did: weak, dispensable, contemptible, deserving of obliteration. And what rationale could defend the assault on Denmark over Greenland, or Panama over the canal, or what appears to be Trump’s near-pathological hatred of Canada — which we just found out is even weirder than it publicly appears? The impulse, the need, to bully.
So yes, I will wait and judge the consequences of Trump’s policies. Some — like ending DEI, mass migration, and the medical abuse of children — I support. But at the expense of reason, decency, and the rule of law?
What I saw Tuesday night was a whole new low in mass deception, delusion, and democratic collapse. What I saw was a new stage in the transition from democracy to a form of tyranny in real time. The institutional trappings remain, as they did in Rome. But the institutions no longer function as the Founders understood them; and reasoned deliberation has become utterly irrelevant. The cooling saucer of the Senate on Tuesday night was chanting “USA! USA! USA!” like a mob. If Ben Franklin witnessed the scene, his worst fears would be confirmed.
So forgive me for the grief. Things may improve; the courts are doing what they can, and Roberts and Coney Barrett seem like actual conservatives — not Trump cultists. There is a great deal of ruin in a nation, and we have a huge reserve of historical, constitutional legitimacy. Europe may yet rally. The First Amendment allows us to call out the lies — even though parts of the media have already voluntarily submitted.
The challenge for liberals of all stripes is a familiar one in dystopian democracies and rigid dictatorships: Live not by lies. Keep your grip on reality. Avoid the propaganda now washing down on you like torrential rain. Find a refuge, as I did on Wednesday — a place where eternal truths remain, or where free thinking can endure (Spinoza is a role model, which is why the Dishcast discusses him this week).
Avoid hysteria, which Trump wants and exploits. But avoid also being co-opted by a single one of his lies, to see clearly, and to speak simply. Read those you disagree with; get off most social media; choose doubt over certainty; restraint over impulse; resist this authoritarian and irrational moment by refocusing above all on the simple truth, as best as you can, and fighting all those on both extremes trying to annihilate it.
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.
Jew News Review 