The letter ends by stepping away from the present and imagining the people 100 years from now, looking back and seeing things from their point of view:
There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.People of the Future, I am speaking to you.
One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.
That is, of course, a way to speak to people of the present. Conjure up the people of the future who are watching what we do now. Don't want them looking at us with horror or contempt, do we? The anti-Trumpers are doing the same thing. Join us or the People of the Future are condemning you.
(Greta Thunberg has soared to power and fame by convincingly embodying the People of the Future. She is Them, and she is scorning and excoriating you.)
So, we're hearing lots of statements using this rhetorical device of the People of the Future. Trump's contribution to the People of the Future genre is distinctive for 2 reasons:
1. It's not just one more statement in the voluminous back and forth about impeachment. It's a written compendium of everything the President of the United States wants to say on the subject of this important historical event. It is long in that it's 6 pages. (Anti-Trumpers have enough to be able to disparage it as rambling.) But it's also short. (The Mueller Report is 448 pages.) It will surely be preserved and read and studied and reflected upon far into the future. It is clearly a historical document, unlike virtually all the other statements bandied about in — to use Trump's term — "this impeachment fantasy."
2. The letter refrains from purporting to say what the People of the Future think. It speaks to them. It's modest in that regard: I'm thinking of you, and I want to talk to you, to "put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record" for you. He wants you "to understand... and learn." There's a mellow, humble tone to that. It should be distinguished from People of the Future rhetoric that conjures up a crowd shouting: We hate you! You were horribly destructive and blind!
ADDED: The People of the Future genre is vast. Think of The Ghost of Christmas Future:
ALSO: I wanted to list some of the ephemeral writings diminishing Trump's contribution to the annals of American history: "It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump’s letter to Pelosi is" (Jennifer Rubin in WaPo), "Trump's most expansive defense against impeachment is just as lame and dishonest as his tweets" (LA Times), "Trump's wild letter to Pelosi is filled with false and misleading claims" (CNN), "President Sends Six-Page Letter of Randomly Capitalized Ranting to Speaker of the House" (Slate).
Posts
108 comments:
Not claiming to know what people of the future will think. Very different from the narcissistic Greta. (Or Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Nadler et alia)
Six pages?!?
I thought Twitter had a 144 character limit.
I wish his letter was one of those in which the first letter of each line spelled out a message, in this case "I'm going to declassify everything."
Trump's right.
Election nullification and covering the Bidens' asses is what this is all about.
I caught a moment of the wonderful Heather MacDonald on Dennis Prager show yesterday.
Depressing - the college campus is no longer about learning history. I hope 100 years from now history will matter.
Today - the woke jerks want to tear it all down.
The modern democrat party is corrupt.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way about it. The scathing tone is a proper counter to the partisan nature of the political act. I presume lefties will chalk it up to Trump whining. Trump's re-election added to this document negates any desired impact lefties intended.
It's a great letter attacking the fiction that governs now.
A milder way to look at it is that we have a pariamentary system now, and if Congress doesn't like the president the congress votes him out. Vote of no confidence.
A fiction of a crime is required, though; and Trump's atacking the fiction, and attacking changing the system of government to something else. Two different things.
A glorious letter that will indeed be treasured long after the current hysteria dies down.
Rule by the House avoids the electoral college.
So, we're hearing lots of statements using this rhetorical device of the People of the Future
Sorry, can't resist:
A past look at messing with people of the present using the People of the Future.
Considering the other crap Democrats want to do, I'd rather they ran in circles screaming about Trump.
Hillary Clinton rigged the 2016 primaries and tried to rig the general election.
Hillary is the real Russia colluder.
Joe and Hunter Biden have some great extortion and bribery rackets going.
Three years now of Democrats accusing Trump of the crimes they committed.
The letter was quite compelling. Unlike the phony articles of impeachment.
He should read it aloud and go for a grammy.
I got to thinking about the Chef of the Future.
There's also the Ghost of Christmas Future.
For any reader who is holding a printed-out copy, a word of a caution -
Said letter copy may burst into self-ignited flamers well before you get to Page 2.
Trump’s letter is a masterpiece. It concisely sums up what those of us not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome think of this impeachment imbroglio. Trump even calls out Pelosi’s fake pious pose. The letter is a 6 page polished tweet.
Although the letter does use inflammatory language rather than passive-agressive standard official language, it did lay out all the arguments and evidence in his defense that were deliberately left out in the proceedings and which the Senate is preventing from being entered into the record by not calling witnesses. He is a magnificent bastard, isn’t he?
The Ghost of Christmas Past is The Pussy Hat and Greta Thunderberger.
It won't change anything (in the present), but it really needed to be said. Good for him.
He is a magnificent bastard, isn’t he?
Yes, after decades of asshole Democrats calling everybody else a bigot, it's refreshing to have a leader who will sling some shit back in the SOB's faces.
The Horowitz Report: Documenting One of the Worst Scandals of our History
Timing of Trump's impeachment? perfect.
No amount of facts will shut up the poo-flinging monkeys. Better brace yourself for the long haul. This is only the first impeachment they will manufacture against Trump.
They are publishing newly hatched conspiracy theories at MSNBC, CNN, the NYT, and the Post faster than anyone could possibly debunk them.
I am reminded of Hari Seldon's missives, though of course they only revealed themselves to the people of the future *in* the future.
The letter is the ranting of an unstable old man. One hundred years from now the question will be "want kind of people elected this raving lunatic president?"
Amazing.
Trump puts the Democrats on the ropes. Again.
He's going to beat them over the head with this impeachment all the way across the finish line into his second term.
Nancy knows it but, let's be honest, there was nothing she could do. The batshit crazy wing would have eaten her alive if she hadn't delivered.
She chose the form of her destruction. Trump will happily oblige.
I'm thinking the FISA court announcement yesterday was the break in the dam.
This thing is beginning to unravel on the Dems.
When anonymous wrote a NYT editorial, it was hailed as groundbreaking.
This is way more substantive than anonymous.
More than the impeachment itself, it serves as the prime demarcation line of the schism in America.
How you respond to it shows where you stand.
Of course, there will be those who 'understand' it, but will desire to vote for the Democrats, anyway.
Which is really the only overlap available: those of the fence-sitters and useful idiots who believe the nihilists won't shit on your doorstep.
Watch your shoes.
I am Laslo.
Ain't it the truth?
The future, as now, will see a twisted letter from an unstable President who has never taken responsibility for his actions.
I just finished reading it. RCP directly linked to it this morning. The thing that I liked most about it was that it was so obviously Trump's voice. His voice is distinct. So recognizable. It's interesting that I probably couldn't pick out any other modern President's writings as unique to them. In fact, I'd guess that they all read exactly the same. I suspect that the Presidents to follow Trump will end up being more Trumpy, less generically Presidential.
He nailed it. He nailed Pelosi and he nailed the Democrat Party.
There should not be another Dem elected for two generations.
Earthy rhetoric today using the rhetorical device of addressing future earthlings is exactly why the perspicacious Althouse commenters in the initial thread on this letter invoked Cicero. This is grand rhetoric. It is galling to impeachment supporters, and downright embarrassing to "orange man bad" crowd alongside Pelosi's clumsy invocation of American and religious pieties in her lame attempts to elevate her rhetoric. She is overseeing a descent into unAmerican parliamentary morass, subverting the Executive even if you're suspicious of the unitary executive. And we don't even, yet, get the entertaining aspects of parliamentary systems, where the members demonstrate rhetorical skill and panache and throw fists and shoes when they're bested. They act more dignified than that, but without the actual dignity. It really would be a service to the Republic for Schiff to get a pie in the face from a fellow Congressman, or even a caning. If you don't want to violate assault laws, at least stick a sign on his back before he enters or exits the chamber, in view of cameras.
At some point, you've lied enough and you're such a lying liar that your colleagues' dignity is damaged by your mere presence. Nunes' letter is a snarky start, but it hardly restores dignity to Congress the way the President has maintained his own dignity through "undignified" behavior. Take a hint, GOP.
The DNC talking points (evidenced by Freder and r/v comments) are that this letter is a sign of emotional and mental instability. I expect Inga, Chuck and a few others to have similar comments.
You guys might be more convincing if you actually read the letter and pointed out areas that support your contention. However, this has rarely been the method for our leftist trolls. They are justly derided for repeating talking points and giving no evidence of independent thought ... or any semblance of thought at all.
This letter neatly nullifies the Democrat's latest stratagem, no longer removal from office but staining Trump's presidency, by staining this Congress and Pelosi in particular for all time. Trump is a most effective counterpuncher.
The genius of Ed Wood nailed it regarding The Future: Criswell.
I am Laslo.
Newly Released Eric Holder Memo: Feds Can Use FISA to Spy on Journalists
Thank you for that, Althouse. In the daily exchange of provocative Trump one-liners and vomit of media response, it was easy to dismiss this letter as a scolding rant. You are exactly right on all points. - Hammond
I agree with this letter being incredibly important. On top of it just being powerful and true, Trump has giving Pelosi a chance to end this now instead of being humiliated in the Senate which makes it merciful also. It's in the record now. It's more important than all his tweets and will exist for posterity so others can judge clearly. They have always underestimated him
Gram P.:
One hundred years from this day
Will the people still feel this way
Still say the things that they're sayin' right now
Everyone said I hurt you,
They said that I desert you
If I go away,
You know I'm going to get back somehow
Nobody knows what kind of trouble there is
Nobody seems to think it all might happen again
One hundred years from this time
Would anybody change their minds
And find out one thing or two about life
But people are always talking
You know they're always talking
Everybody's so wrong
That I know it's gonna work out fine
Nobody knows what kind of trouble there is
Nobody seems to think it all might happen again
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Gram Parsons
One Hundred Years From Now lyrics © BMG Rights Management
The local left wing has weighed in, I see.
Sometimes it is good to learn about the past, as well.
"There is documented proof of a series of secret meetings between Chief Judge John Sirica and Watergate prosecutors. I don’t know which is the bigger surprise: that they were secretly meeting to resolve issues in advance of trial or that they were documenting their agreements in memos to their files. The mother lode of these documents, improperly removed in 1974 when Jaworski left office, first came to light in 2013 in response to my FOIA requests.
Watergate was a coup and we now know how it was done. Trump does, too.
I'm reading a biography of Sam Houston and this is a quote from him when he was defending himself in court against the unlawful in of power and the legislative body
"All history will show that no tyrant ever grasped the reins of power till they were put into his hands by corrupt and obsequious legislative bodies."
They're not giving the reins to Trump but they're going to give them to somebody
The Left has always, *always* treated any opposition to their goals as a form of mental illness worthy of incarceration, exile or execution. The gulags weren't an accident.
And once Trump is gone, they will do the same to you.
Lefties figure that in 100 years their great-grandchildren can just clinesmith the letter, adding the word "not" here and there untill it's clear that Pelosi and Trump were BFFs just having a laugh.
Birches: The thing that I liked most about it was that it was so obviously Trump's voice. His voice is distinct. So recognizable. It's interesting that I probably couldn't pick out any other modern President's writings as unique to them. In fact, I'd guess that they all read exactly the same. I suspect that the Presidents to follow Trump will end up being more Trumpy, less generically Presidential.
It's a very "old school" document in tone. It's not the voice of a modern, technocrat pol, president or otherwise - who all sound alike, as you say.
I hope you're right that the speech and writing (and actions) of future presidents will be less "bugman".
"want kind of people elected this raving lunatic president?"
The Field Marshall has spoken, as eloquently as ever.
The comments of our resident lefties of late are even more sullen and puerile than usual.
I hope history adds Victor Hanson's awesome "When that didn't work..." editorial as a corroborating document to this letter.
"Trump's 6-page letter is — and he intended this — one of the prominent documents in the annals of American history.
I wanted to write that out precisely because I believe it is true and it is — for millions of people — enraging — enraging and flummoxing."
The Althousian spiel is getting a little old.
The letter is "prominent." She believes it is true that it is "prominent." For "many people" it is "enraging," and let's not forget "flummoxing." The only thing missing here is the rush to the OED to play with "flummox."
So, Althouse, are you enraged by the enraging coup? Are you still enraged by the impeachment you ever so briefly raged against yourself? Or are you just flummoxed?
"It's sad he had to write such a letter! I can't believe the events that provoked it! It's terrible! Now let me see what happens so I can make plans in 2020."
"He's unstoppable - He's UNSTOPPABLE - He will only stop when he decides to,..."
Field Marshall and Self-anointed Global Security Expert Freder: "The letter is the ranting of an unstable old man."
LOLOLOL
Apparently it took an "unstable old man" to:
1) Defeat the 99% media supported "guaranteed 100%" anointed dem candidate for the Presidency
2) Survive and expose an entirely corrupt weaponization of the deep state against domestic political opponents
3) Deliver the best economy in our lifetimes (by finding obama's "magic wand!!)
4) Keep every single campaign promise
5) Execute an astonishingly complex and effective global trade agreement revamping to US advantage (which the dems/LLR's said was impossible)
6) Implement a brilliant political/economic/military strategy to undermine the biggest global threat to the US and free world: China
7) Reset the US against the assault on freedom by the US left/dems/LLR's
8 to infinity)... and on and on and on
No Freder. What you actually are afraid of and what the powers that be now fully recognize is that this "stable genius" has your number and he knows how to fight you and win and he has the will to stand up to your "project 1619"/"men have vaginas too"/open borders/marxist BS and call it out.
You and your sick democrat/LLR army are going to lose to him again next year.
You and Team Dem/LLR have no record to run on in 2020....so this is it.
But you do have vote harvesting and illegals being given drivers licenses and dead people continuing to vote democrat and democrat judges coming up with ever more creative rulings allowing dems to keep your precincts open longer and longer and allowing all manner of "surprise" ballots found in trunks to be included in the counts.
We are going to see if that is enough.
Freder Frederson said...
The letter is the ranting of an unstable old man. One hundred years from now the question will be "want kind of people elected this raving lunatic president?"
You clearly have no idea what sort of things history cares about (ironically, this puts you in good company with today's academic historians).
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." george orwell
it is a battle of narratives in the here and now to describe what happened in the past in an attempt to determine what will happen in the future.
Trump is a street fighter, the dems are a gang, and impeachment is a brief but important running street battle where the police (the rules) play only a marginal role. as bad as this is, it's only a prelude to the 2020 election.
Trump TWEET
9:54 am:
Good marks and reviews on the letter I sent to Pelosi today. She is the worst! No wonder with people like her and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, D.C. has been such a mess for so long - and that includes the previous administration who (and now we know for sure) SPIED on my campaign.
Qwinn: "The Left has always, *always* treated any opposition to their goals as a form of mental illness worthy of incarceration, exile or execution. The gulags weren't an accident."
The weaponization of psychiatry against political opponents is perhaps the most common of leftist/LLR-leftist tools...along with spying on them and framing them and using the vast power of the state to coerce them.
Trump has exposed every one of these lefty/LLR-lefty junior Berias.
Every one of them.
I am Wondering if Catholic Pelosi has JoanD'Arc complex?
is there such a diagnosis?
Excellent Guild of Cannonballs. I was trying to post my SOTR version with Mcguinn, Hillman and Marty Stuart from last year.
Free associating
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl8esy_-3IA
Hugh Hewitt on Trump’s letter:
It is a historic document and will be cited by @POTUS scholars for generations as the defining example of Article II blasting Article I.
You clearly have no idea what sort of things history cares about (ironically, this puts you in good company with today's academic historians).
Freder has repeatedly shown how little he understands about the subjects he keeps bringing up here.
Oh, no. The Federalist Papers will have to be re-printed to include the best one yet.
Unfortunately, unlike The Gettysburg Address, the length will make memorization harder to do. Better get to work.
Is there an Edwin Stanton of this drama, that is, an embodiment of the villain? He managed to alienate the two preeminent war-winning generals of his day, one of historical equanimity (Grant), and provoke a president into "impeachable" offenses. The treatment of Stanton in WT Sherman's memoirs is worth reviewing, although Grant is kind to him, emphasizing his organizational genius and its role in the successful war effort. I'm going with Brennan as the central villain, who will soon have lots of fingers pointing at him. And I don't think Trump will remember him kindly, as Brennan presided over nothing particularly successful.
henry said...
Not claiming to know what people of the future will think. Very different from the narcissistic Greta. (Or Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Nadler et alia)
12/18/19, 7:11 AM
Well, according to Greta there won't be any "people of the future". Either "global climate warming change cooling" will kill us all or her and her cult will "line us up against walls". So why worry! Party like its 1999!
Robert Cook said...
We can be sure Trump did not compose the letter himself.
12/17/19, 3:38 PM
____
Freder Frederson said...
The letter is the ranting of an unstable old man. One hundred years from now the question will be “want [sic] kind of people elected this raving lunatic president?”
12/18/19, 7:35 AM
____
Which is it?
I haven't read the letter, but if Rubin hates it then I am encouraged.
Freder Frederson said...
The letter is the ranting of an unstable old man. One hundred years from now the question will be "want kind of people elected this raving lunatic president?"
12/18/19, 7:35 AM
Fender posts to us from the universe where Spock has a beard...
I'm not worried. But I am pissed off.
I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.
Well, then.....He'd better put the letter in some format that WILL be permanent, legible and accessible to the people of the future.
Computer technology changes all the time. We can't even access those old big floppy discs. Old operating systems are not compatible. And then there are always the future Electromagnetic Impulse bombs that people of the future and the Sun of the future are going to spring on us.
Paper decays. Stone carvings erode. Entropy happens.
Take the long view and engrave the words on plaques of copper and seal them away in lead lined casks.
Who knows what level of language or civilization will exist in 100 years? The way the world is going now, probably not much.
Anybody heard from Val Jarrett lately? As much as I like the idea that Brennan is the ultimate villain in this sordid farce, I'm not sure he's quite bright enough to have run the whole show. Nor is Comey, nor McCabe and certainly not Clapper or Lynch. Nor, for that matter, is Obama.
But Jarrett . . . hmmm. One wonders.
I saw a reaction from Pelosi on Fox last night. IIRC, when asked for her reaction to the letter she uttered "sick". She was clearly annoyed that Trump found a way to defend himself and was able to present his side of the story.
Fender posts to us from the universe where Spock has a beard…
I like that! But, indeed, Freder Frederson comes from the world of Metropolis.
We seem to be watching the first gusts of the Storm Trump has been smirking about coming to blow away the Corrupt Dems and RINOs. Enjoy the Navy's all inclusive Caribbean Resort guys.
Headlines read we are all reassured Orange Man really BAD.
Read the letter? WTF. It's the ranting of a delusional maniac trying to be King of America. We already know Orange Man Bad, we already know he broke (uncodified?) laws, we already know....
"so many things that are wrong".
Same player different note:
https://mobile.twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/1207313953405227009
Maybe this one
https://mobile.twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1207279732946960385
"It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump’s letter to Pelosi is"
Shorter Jen Rubin: It's all Trump's fault this column is going to suck.
The so called fact checkers claim Trump's letter is full of lies and misstatements.
Read the CNN one. It is merely spin.
My favorite is:
Trump wrote, "Biden openly stated: 'I said, "I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars"... I looked at them and said: "I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money." Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.'" Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with NPR that it 'looked bad.'"
Facts First: Trump was not entirely clear on what he meant by "it," but he left open the impression that Biden had recently told NPR that his effort to oust Shokin, or the 2018 video of him telling the story of his effort to oust Shokin, "looked bad." In fact, Biden's "looked bad" comment was about something different: Hunter Biden's position on the board. Specifically, Biden said "the appearance" of Hunter Biden's presence on the board "looked bad and it gave folks like Rudy Giuliani an excuse to come up with a Trumpian kind of defense."
This is a version of the popular "Republicans pounce" misdirection.
Excellent post.
A nice summary of the whole matter.
The man who best sees right through this thinking is, of course, Professor John Marini. Because I have spoken at length of his thought in the CRB (“Draining the Swamp,” Winter 2018/19), I here offer the barest summary of the most relevant points. Beginning in the late 19th century and intensifying in the mid-1960s, elites inside and outside our government have centralized authority in a “fourth branch,” the executive branch’s agencies and bureaucracies. Marini refers to those institutions, the people in them, and their governing philosophy and methods as “the administrative state.” Administrative state rule is fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-constitutional, intended to be rule by “expert consensus.”
The experts don’t like to be challenged—especially by non-expert voters or the politicians they elect to limit administrative state power. Here, finally, we come to the “truest cause, though least in speech” of the impeachment freight train: the administrative state is striking back at a mortal threat. As Marini explained in a recent speech,
Many great scandals arise not as a means of exposing corruption, but as a means of attacking political foes while obscuring the political differences that are at issue. This is especially likely to occur in the aftermath of elections that threaten the authority of an established order. In such circumstances, scandal provides a way for defenders of the status quo to undermine the legitimacy of those who have been elected on a platform of challenging the status quo—diluting, as a consequence, the authority of the electorate.
And the chaser:
The key to understanding how this works is to see that most political scandals, sooner or later, are transformed into legal dramas. As legal dramas, scandals become understood in non-partisan terms. The way in which they are resolved can have decisive political impacts, but those in charge of resolving them are the “neutral” prosecutors, judges, and bureaucrats who make up the permanent (and unelected) government, not the people’s elected representatives. To resort to scandal in this way is thus a tacit admission that the scandalmongers no longer believe they are able to win politically. To paraphrase Clausewitz, scandal provides the occasion for politics by other means.
It is no accident or coincidence that the only three presidents who have fundamentally challenged the administrative state—and questioned its song sheet, the “U.S. government policy community consensus”—have been dogged by “scandal” and threatened with impeachment: Richard Nixon by Watergate, Ronald Reagan by Iran Contra, and now Trump. (Whatever you think of Bill Clinton’s impeachment, it was emphatically not driven or supported by the administrative state, which protected him at every turn.)
Freder and crowd's posings are irrelevant, but the corrupt media and the Democratic Party's bald faced dishonesty, which is manifested in their never ending "resistance" this impeachment farce, will eventually force the civil unrest that Buwaya has predicted. When one side comes to believe that facts and reasoning no longer mean anything and responsible government agencies are partisan and will not uphold the rule of law, what are people to put their faith in? Is the citizenry expected to sit idly for five more years of the extreme political agitation and lawfare that has characterized the last three? Not likely to happen. The fundamental problem is that when people lose faith in their institutions' ability to deliver justice, the institutions themselves will need to be fixed, and absent bipartisan agreement, that fixing will likely involve some type of coercion. A lot is going to depend on the Durham investigation's ability to restore some sense of justice, but failing that Buwaya may eventually be proved to have been an optimist.
Absolutely love the terminology "administrative state," which is way better than the tin-hat sounding "deep state." Deep state implies a level of secrecy and operations in the shadows. These administrative state actors are in plain site, counting on the compliant press and the distracted public to get away with scandalous behavior. It's been working more or less well for a long time, although the information revolution is a secular factor that challenges administrative state superiority. They need to up their game. People are not quite as stupid and distracted as assumed, and dogged OSINT operators (open source intel) are driving the undernews into the narrative.
I liked the letter -mostly. Trump should've struck out all the boasting about how Great things are. Keep to subject Trump. Its a good 6 page letter, that could've been an EXCELLENT 4 page letter.
Echoing AZ Bob.
I read the NYT's version. "Fact checked" in side by side columns with the fact checked statements highlighted in yellow. Not only was it distracting, but I was angry that a "newspaper" couldn't publish a newsworthy document and let it stand or fall on its own. But when I considered that every single checked fact was characterized as either misleading, exaggerated, or false, I realized that that left a lot of damning unhighlighted facts that must be true, even for the NYT.
I can only hope that there are some other readers who noticed the same thing, and drew the same conclusion. The fact checks themselves were misleading, exaggerated, and even petty. The NYT overplayed their hand by being so obviously desperate to discredit the letter's substance.
jaydub: The USA is too fat and happy gorked out on supersized Big Kahuna Burgers and mind numbing drugs to revolt.
Howard, you say that with such confidence...is that why you're so comfortable supporting the resistance, because of its futility? I think we're experiencing a renegotiation of terms geopolitically and domestically on the scale of things that have precipitated civil unrest in the past, and as a result we're likely to experience some ourselves. The beneficiaries of globalization, our elites for lack of a better word, don't seem like they're willing to be replaced. They are ineffectual thus far, but ultimately they hold in reserve massive powers of the state which today they deploy against high profile pretenders, but eventually could apply more broadly. If the administrative state doesn't get strong pushback now, they will continue perpetrating scandalous things at a rate that will increase with their electoral vulnerability. A punch in the nose now may be worth a lot: change tactics now, and maybe subverting electoral accountability becomes less necessary along with being riskier to their careers. I hope that's how we proceed, but it seems quite possible that today's scandals will be eclipsed in the next electoral cycle or the one thereafter. Things could get really interesting.
Whose side do you think the cops will ultimately take? Antifa types, or the deplorables? Right now the cops stand down for loud progressives, but that's because their leadership is drawn from the anointed and mostly our law enforcement organizations are still relatively high functioning.
Daskol: you make good points. IMO, the elites are currently fighting it out between the newer and more systematically growing technology elites versus the older political controlling money changing elites. As long as the masses have their bread and circuses the elites are not worried about revolution. Trump created quite the circus. All of the fake outrage and tempest in a teapot hand-wringing on both sides it's just a smoke screen which means nothing other than angling for changing the votes of 30000 people in 3 States
Whether Trump wins or loses the outcome will be determined based on whom ever has the best voter turnout organization, IMHO.
Keep in mind the people who are calling this letter a rant from an unstable old man are the very same assholes who screamed Brett Kavanaugh was a lunatic for getting upset at being labeled a drunken racist.
They can all go to hell.
The USA is too fat and happy gorked out on supersized Big Kahuna Burgers and mind numbing drugs to revolt.
You just keep telling yourself that.
It is no accident or coincidence that the only three presidents who have fundamentally challenged the administrative state—and questioned its song sheet, the “U.S. government policy community consensus”—have been dogged by “scandal” and threatened with impeachment: Richard Nixon by Watergate, Ronald Reagan by Iran Contra, and now Trump. (Whatever you think of Bill Clinton’s impeachment, it was emphatically not driven or supported by the administrative state, which protected him at every turn.)
Really, Nixon challenged the Administrative State. He founded the fucking EPA! And Reagan, for all his posturing he still made two significant nuclear arms treaties with the Soviets.
Nixon went to China and Reagan agitated the situation with the Soviets via arms race and sold arms to the Contras, all of which moves were opposed by the administrative state, foreign policy division.
one almost suspects he was impeached for ending the Vietnam war, that was probably one of mark felt's hangups, so now we've been in Afghanistan, twice as long as Vietnam, any reasonable timetable for redeployment is ignored,
Howard said...
Whether Trump wins or loses the outcome will be determined based on whom ever has the best voter turnout organization, IMHO.
And nonvoter turnout, Howard. Ballot harvesting worked pretty well in 2018.
Howard said...
jaydub: The USA is too fat and happy gorked out on supersized Big Kahuna Burgers and mind numbing drugs to revolt.
Howard certainly speaks for his 40%
Oh yeah, he ended a war, the ultimate impeachable offense apparently. I used to think condemnation of the "military industrial" complex was overblown. Now I just think it's somewhat misdirected or at least too broad: the war profiteers in the private sector are hardly a bother compared to their administrative state patrons, who are the ones operating under truly perverse incentives.
Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Freedom, not to praise it.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Freedom. The noble Pelosi
Hath told you the Right was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath the Right answer’d it.....
Bet Trump could cause a riot with such a speech!!
Here's an electronic address on Amazon for the standard one volume documentary history of the United States (originally published in 1952). The current 10th edition from 2018 includes a selection of Trump tweets.
https://www.amazon.com/Documentary-History-United-Revised-Updated/dp/0451490010
The documents (you can click through to the table of contents) include the Nixon articles of impeachment, but no documents from the Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton impeachments, presumably since they did not lead to the president's removal from office.
Uh, scolding swede Greta Thunberg soared to power and fame through machinations and wall-to-wall camera imaging and coverage by some Luddite and some Marxist but jet-setting media and their oligarch owners / controllers. How Dare You.
IMO, the elites are currently fighting it out between the newer and more systematically growing technology elites versus the older political controlling money changing elites
Like watching mafia families decide how they're going to go about and allocate stealing from you. Only with fake solemnity.
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