Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Some Reasons to Fear Republicans and the Republican Party

Deadly political war


Here's some delightful back and froth (not forth) on a recent thread here.

Commenter: If a political figure, such as Charles Murray, is invited to speak on a college campus, and a mob of leftwing students turn up and destroy the meeting by physically attacking him ..... is this authoritarianism?

Germaine: If a mob of leftwing students turn up and destroy a meeting by physically attacking anyone, LOCK 'EM UP!! LOCK 'EM UP!! LOCK 'EM UP!!

Lawbreaking, especially if anyone is attacked and harmed is bad, immoral and not tolerable. LOCK 'EM UP!!

That said, about 0.001% of the left might participate in that kind of illegality. Does that mean the other ~99.999% are just the same?

Because the people who carried out the 1/6 coup attempt were T**** supporters, does that mean that all T**** supporters are fascists who want to overthrow the government by force so they can install a corrupt, mendacious, treasonous dictator for life? I don't think so. Do you?

Commenter: Well, we agree here. Lock 'em up! And I also agree -- as a conservative and not a 'Never-Trump' conservative (although one who was'/is not happy to have this man in the leadership of American conservatism) -- that the US is entering a dangerous period, where authoritarian, or worse, 'solutions' could appear increasingly popular to a lot of people, both Right and Left.

Given a major American military humiliation by a newly-dominant China, combined with a major economic crisis, perhaps caused by the ending of the dollar as the world's reserve currency -- anything is possible.

However, I don't think the problem is confined to the Right. Liberals used to be for free speech -- in fact, they were better on this issue than conservatives. Now, liberals who speak up for free speech are a dwindling minority.

Then there is the race issue.
Here's a question for you: if one race has been dominant for a long time in a country, and is supplanted in this position by the previously-non-dominant race ... do the previously-dominant ones have anything to worry about? If they are unhappy about this change, are their fears rational?

Here's a related question: Mexico has a certain political culture. This culture is independent of which party is in power, and is persistent. It's rather like the mass culture of Sicily, with respect to the Mafia: for some, active support, for economic reasons; for others, passive acceptance; for others, weary acceptance reinforced by fear if they are seen not to accept it.

So, in Mexico, if you speak out against the drug cartels, your life may be in danger. It's even possible in some areas for the cartels to defeat the Mexican army. Lots of money (due to America's wealth and appetite for drugs) plus utter ruthlessness make the cartels, evidently, unremovable. So their existence and great power is accepted. The culture of the bribe, of corrupt police (and teachers unions) ... of people who are murdered if they get too uppity about these things -- it's just accepted, perhaps not eagerly embraced but ... accepted. If large numbers of people did NOT accept it, it wouldn't last.

Question: if large numbers of people who have grown up under this system transfer their citizenship to another country, is it guaranteed that they will leave this aspect of their culture behind them? Is it racist to assume they will, or to demand that they do? (After all, you're saying that this aspect of their culture is bad and you're demanding, or hoping, that they will embrace yours.)

Germaine: 
Now, liberals who speak up for free speech are a dwindling minority.
There are three kinds of free speech, all legal as I define them, honest free speech, ambiguous free speech and dark free speech. Sometimes the line between honest and dark can be fuzzy, so that's ambiguous speech, e.g., because some relevant facts are not known or are unknowable.

Dark free speech: deceit, lies of omission and commission, irrational emotional manipulation (unwarranted fear, anger, distrust, bigotry, etc.), unwarranted character assassination and flawed motivated reasoning.

My read of the history of tyranny, demagoguery, kleptocracy and failures of democracy, is that the most common way for authoritarianism and corruption to rise to power is to rely heavily on dark free speech.

Maybe some liberals are becoming intolerant of dark free speech. I don't blame them. I don't want to tolerate it any more either. T**** and decades of vicious GOP and conservative dark free speech (Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Breitbart, InfoWars, etc.) has torn American society apart and severely damaged democracy and honest governance. In other words, American society, democracy and the rule of law are all under a ruthless, sustained attack by authoritarian radical right dark free speech.

The GOP is now hell-bent on massive voter suppression because republicans can't win elections without vote suppression any more. That is pure fascist authoritarianism. The GOP leadership and apparently most rank and file has come to accept that the free press is the enemy of the people, democrats are evil, inconvenient science is lies, bigotry is acceptable, convenient lies are truth and inconvenient truths are lies, the 1/6 coup attempt was just a little kerfuffle of no major import, and corruption in government is tolerable, at least for corrupt republicans like T****. I do not see anything close to equivalence coming from the left.

What are the top three threats you see coming from liberal extremists? Do you think Biden is a liberal extremist, as T**** and the rest of the GOP leadership and conservative punditocracy says? What exactly are the liberal threats? I don't get it. The left can be nutty but they aren't out to install a corrupt, incompetent, mendacious (dark free speech-dependent) dictator like T****.

.... do the previously-dominant ones have anything to worry about? If they are unhappy about this change, are their fears rational?
Excellent questions. Perfect. That nicely encapsulates the irrational fear and White grievance mindset. Let me start start with this insight:


If, democracy and the rule of law were to be respected, which they are not under current republican authoritarianism, the previously-dominant ones (White people) would not have anything to worry about. Some or most of those White people who are unhappy about this change, are feeling race- and social change-based fears that would be irrational in a democracy that operates under the rule of law.

But since the republican mindset is now open to a fascist demagogic dictatorship, they see how that kind of bad government and society could blow back on them in the form of oppression. Some or most White conservatives fear the same kind of oppression what White people have inflicted and still inflict on racial minorities, women and hated out-groups such as the LGBQT community.

In other words, some or most republicans fear what could happen to them if minority people start to gain social and political power. So they are now rushing to destroy democracy, the rule of law and establish a demagogic dictatorship under the rule of the dictator who promises to protect privileged White people and their privileges.


if large numbers of people who have grown up under this system transfer their citizenship to another country, is it guaranteed that they will leave this aspect of their culture behind them?
Yes, it is guaranteed if this country remains a democracy that operates under the rule of law. To the extent any aspect of an imported culture conflicts with the rule of law, it gets shut down by the law when conflicts arise. That is how the rule of law is supposed to work in a democracy.

In essence, what republicans are saying is that they have lost faith in democracy, the rule of law, social tolerance and social trust. That is the kind of poisonous wound that decades of authoritarian radical right dark free speech has inflicted on American society and governance. Millions of minds have been poisoned.

My assessment:
T****, the GOP leadership and rank and file republicans: ~85% responsible for the damage to democracy, rule of law, social comity, respect for truth, etc.
Everyone else: ~15% responsible

All of the foregoing is why the radical right terrifies me, but not the radical left.

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And so it goes. Hand to hand combat. One mind at a time. Very few moments of mutual understanding. No mind changes. This is hard work, grunt, grunt. Dang, I need a pay raise.

Happily at work

Monday, March 8, 2021

Lies. Liars and Truthtellers

 You have seen the claims. Masks and distancing are not necessary. Just pray to God, and he will protect you from the virus…and oh, by the way, come to my church and put lotsa money in the collection plate.

The lies continue. Trump was chosen by God to be President. Satan helped Democrats cheat him out of his re-election, but don’t worry. God is gonna fix it, expose all the cheaters, and restore Trump to his rightful place as leader of our nation, anointed by God. When will this happen? Hand-waving. Maybe two weeks, maybe two months, maybe longer. Be patient. And meanwhile, keep feeding my collection plate.

It is tempting to lump all Christian evangelical pastors into one stinking putrid pile of excrement and condemn them as liars who are cynically duping their followers so that they can extract money and gain power. There are a number of those, but not all of them are stooping to such levels of despicable dishonesty, as an article in the LA Times pointed out today.

One pastor from a Baptist church in rural Michigan described a recent encounter with a member of his church. After he gave a prayer that lamented the attack on the Capitol, she told him that it was “too political.” She followed with a barrage of conspiracy theories: The election was a fraud, the attacks were incited and led by Black Lives Matter and antifa, and the FBI was in on it all. She finished by telling him that the day would soon come when all the evil, the corruption, would come to light, and the truth would be revealed.

The pastor was so startled by the attack that he was moved to tears. He told her, “You have been lied to. You need to know how crazy this is. You have been with my family, in my home, and I care for you. You are dabbling in darkness. You are telling me it is giving you hope. I am telling you, as your pastor, that it is evil.”

I suspect that he lost a church member. She has not spoken to him since. The pastor should be praised for his honesty and courage. The area where his church is located voted for 2-1 for Trump. His honesty will probably limit his tenure at the church, and worse yet (horrible thought) put his life at risk, just as Democratic Senators are in great danger. The assassination of a single Dem Senator from a state with a Republican governor could change the balance of power in the Senate, and allow Republicans to stonewall everything that Biden tries to accomplish.

The pastor spelled it out: “Something disturbing has happened with evangelicals in this country, where we have become prone to conspiracies and believing the worst about our enemies, where we end up placing the Republican Party and ourselves as Americans first before true Christianity,”

Some Christian leaders are pushing back. A group of more than 500 influential evangelical pastors and faith leaders published an open letter recently titled “Say No to Christian Nationalism.” The letter condemned “radicalized Christian nationalism,” and the rise of “violent acts by radicalized extremists using the name of Christ.”

As the Times article noted, the spread of disinformation is not exclusive to religious organizations. But because Christianity is the largest faith in the US, and churches are places where ideas spread, pastors are instrumental in forming the substance of those ideas. When they spread lies and conspiracy theories to the members of their churches, it has a magnifying effect because of their stature as religious leaders.

Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at the University of Indiana and Purdue University, describes Christian nationalism as the “fusing of Christianity with the belief that we are a Christian nation, one that God has chosen specifically for success and a particular Christian path, one that has been tied to the Republican Party and being white.” He goes on to say that this joining of politics and faith “has been influential for decades but was given a much bigger megaphone by Trump. We’ve seen that those who embrace Christian nationalism are also more likely to believe in conspiracies.”

Mark Fugitt, a Baptist pastor in Missouri said he has battled against conspiracy theories in his congregation of 300. He listed a number of ideas his church members have shared: face masks cause carbon dioxide poisoning, germ theory is fake, 5G networks are part of a ploy for mind control, and the theory of a child sex trafficking ring with connections to Hillary Clinton and her allies was being run out of a Washington pizza shop. After seeing a recent post by a pastor who said who said rolling blackouts in Texas were the federal government “trying to condition us for communist control,” he was at a loss. He didn’t respond, he said because he “didn’t think he could change any minds.”

For some pastors, the craziness is too much to bear. Vern Swieringa, a Christian Reformed Church pastor left his post in the small western Michigan town of Hamilton after months of disputes with his congregation over his requirement that they wear masks, but he says there was a lot more. “Elderly church members shared videos claiming that Democrats were going to turn the country to socialism, that they were evil and that QAnon was right.” He moved to a church in South Haven, Michigan where masks are mandatory. (See Note)

Jared Stacy, a Southern Baptist pastor in Virginia, had a similar experience. Over the four years of the Trump administration, he observed a gradual increase in conspiracy theories that was dividing his congregation, especially the sex trafficking conspiracy promoted by QAnon.

“It’s like 2020 just exposed so many undercurrents that were already there and growing,” he said. “How could I compete with an hour sermon on Sunday, with a person who was committing hours and hours to media and information on YouTube and Facebook?”

Stacy left the church in November. Today he lives in Scotland, where he studies theology at the University of Aberdeen. He hopes to return to the US someday.

“the year 2020 drove my family to take a distance from America,” he said. “Christianity is global. Evangelical Christianity is global. When you look at US Christianity from the outside, you wonder what happened.”

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2021/03/06/lies-liars-and-truthtellers/

Regarding Research on the Morality of Atheists



I do not myself believe that many people do things because they think they are the right thing to do . . . . I do not think that knowledge of what is morally right is motivational in any serious sense for anyone except a handful of saints.
 -- federal judge Richard Posner, referring to the power of social situations to compel behavior, moral or not, rational or not


Moral consequentialism (moral utilitarianism): morality is assessed by looking only at the consequences of an act or the state of the world that will result from what a person does; that absolutist attitude is persuasively criticized as not always the best way to do moral reasoning, but it is a reasonable way to include consideration of regarding moral dilemmas before arriving at a moral judgment


CONTEXT
An interesting research article, The amoral atheist? A cross-national examination of cultural, motivational, and cognitive antecedents of disbelief, and their implications for morality, examines the stereotype that atheists are untrustworthy and lack a moral compass. The paper looked at differences between believers and non-believers. The hypothesis was that social distrust of atheists was a major source of negative attitudes toward atheists and their perceived lack of morality. The research surveyed people in a religious country, the US, and a relatively non-believer country, Sweden. 

A 2019 survey generated data showing that 44% of Americans think that belief in God is necessary for morality. Many Americans believe that atheists are least in agreement with their vision of America compared to all other groups because they do not share their moral norms and values with 'normal' people. Some research has found that some atheists also believe that atheists are immoral, so there is solid evidence that this belief is common in most countries.


The results
The survey data indicated that compared to believers, disbelievers or atheists are less inclined to endorse moral values that serve group cohesion. By one hypothesis, those morals are socially binding moral foundations or values. Only minor differences were found in endorsement of other moral values referred to as individualizing moral foundations (care/harm and fairness/cheating morals) and epistemic rationality (something that some people do not believe is a moral value, but is the central moral value of pragmatic rationalism). The data also indicated that atheism correlated with cultural and demotivational antecedents (limited exposure to credibility-enhancing displays, low existential threat***) are associated with disbelief. Those moral beliefs correlated with weaker belief in binding moral foundations in both countries. The results also correlated disbelievers (vs. believers) with a more consequentialist source morality in both countries. Moral consequentialism was also correlated with analytic cognitive style, which is another hypothesized antecedent of disbelief.


*** Credibility enhancing displays (CREDS) were assessed by survey questions such as “Overall, to what extent did people in your community attend religious services or meetings?” (1 = to no extent at all, 7 = to an extreme extent). A low CREDS score is believed to constitute an antecedent or path to religious disbelief. Existential threat perceptions were assessed by questions such as “There are many dangerous people in our society who will attack someone out of pure meanness, for no reason at all”, and “Any day now, chaos and anarchy could erupt around us. All the signs are pointing to it” (1 = Completely disagree, 7 = Completely agree).



Commentary
As usual, the situation is complicated and data needs to be (i) considered with caution, and (ii) replicated to confirm and further explore the results. There multiple concepts discussed in this paper that I am not familiar with, e.g., measurement and interpretation of CREDS, antecedents to disbelief and analytic cognitive style. 

The authors speak of associations or correlations, not causal relationships. In addition, other research has shown that religiosity is positively related to some morally relevant behaviors, but unrelated or negatively related to others. Also, acting in a way that can be considered moral does not imply that the behavior was morally motivated. A behavior can arise from multiple motivations. For example, behavior is well-known to usually be variably, often strongly, influenced or even dominated by different social situations or contexts.

If the results hold up, they arguably point to a social and political weakness and strength in atheism and pragmatic rationalism. The weakness is the a mindset-ideology that is insufficient for good social cohesion and trust. The glue in the mindset-ideology may be too weak to sustain a liberal democracy, especially a racially diverse one. Although it's counterintuitive, that possible weakness suggests that atheism and pragmatic rationalism probably need to find some sort of spiritual component, e.g., Buddhism, that can afford some social glue. Atheists seem to be more like a herd of cats than any united kind of cohesive human group. If there are non-spiritual sources of pro-democracy social glue, they are not apparent to me. 

The strength is an analytic cognitive style that tends toward rationalism (epistemic rationality) as a moral value. Although I believe that mental trait is pro-democratic, anti-authoritarian, anti-corruption, anti-lies, etc., the paper points out that some people do not treat rationality as a moral value.**** The paper's authors comment that research on religious disbelief has also been linked to moralization of epistemic rationality. If that is true, both atheists and pragmatic rationalism may be fundamentally morally different from most significant political, religious and economic ideologies or moral frameworks that compete for influence, wealth and power today.

**** Humans did not evolve to be rational. We are intuitive, biased, social (~tribal) and arguably morally intolerant, unless one adopts tolerance as a moral value. According to psychologist Johnathan Haidt, we are designed by evolution to be “narrowly moralistic and intolerant.”[1] In other words, we evolved to be self-righteous little buggers.


Footnote:
1. The paper refers to morality in the context of Haidt's moral foundations theory. I do not know to what extent researchers have adopted this mental framework for morality research. Morality research is in its infancy. It is fraught with complexity, confounding factors, human biases, p-hacking, raging controversy and general messiness, including skepticism that morality research can ever rise to the level of a respectable scientific discipline. Despite the mess, morality research might reveal ways for humans to tame their innate tendencies to bigotry, hate and self-destructiveness enough that we avoid destroying civilization on a good day or maybe even avoid species self-annihilation on a bad day.


But isn't morality sometimes absent when spirituality is present?
Maybe morality is always necessary, unless it's bad morality
Why can't morality be a kind of spirituality?

Sunday, March 7, 2021

Bipartisanship is Dead

The New York Times writes:
President Biden ran for the White House as an apostle of bipartisanship, but the bitter fight over the $1.9 trillion pandemic measure that squeaked through the Senate on Saturday made clear that the differences between the two warring parties were too wide to be bridged by Mr. Biden’s good intentions.

Not a single Republican in Congress voted for the rescue package now headed for final approval in the House and a signature from Mr. Biden, as they angrily denounced the legislation and the way in which it was assembled. Other marquee Democratic measures to protect and expand voting rights, tackle police bias and misconduct and more are also drawing scant to zero Republican backing.

The supposed honeymoon period of a new president would typically provide a moment for lawmakers to come together, particularly as the nation enters its second year of a crushing health and economic crisis. Instead, the tense showdown over the stimulus legislation showed that lawmakers were pulling apart, and poised for more ugly clashes ahead.

Mr. Biden, a six-term veteran of the Senate, had trumpeted his deep Capitol Hill experience as one of his top selling points, telling voters that he was the singular man able to unite the fractious Congress and even come to terms with his old bargaining partner, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader.

Congressional Democrats want far more than Republicans are willing to accept. Anticipating the Republican recalcitrance to come, Democrats are increasingly coalescing around the idea of weakening or destroying the filibuster to deny Republicans their best weapon for thwarting the Democratic agenda. Democrats believe their control of the House, Senate and White House entitles them to push for all they can get, not settle for less out of a sense of obligation to an outdated concept of bipartisanship that does not reflect the reality of today’s polarized politics. 
But the internal Democratic disagreement that stalled passage of the stimulus bill for hours late into Friday night illustrated both the precariousness of the thinnest possible Democratic majority and the hurdles to eliminating the filibuster, a step that can happen only if moderates now deeply opposed agree to do so.

Some observations
Biden was right to tout bipartisanship and to try to engage in it. He would be right to keep talking about it and trying. But he is also right to go ahead and not let republicans slow him down in the two precious years he has before voters put the fascist GOP back in control of the House and/or Senate. That would be return to gridlock. Gridlock favors the fascists and harms democracy. Time is grinding democracy and the rule of law down. It is also grinding down social comity, trust and respect. Trust and respect are mostly gone. Lies, corruption, gross incompetence and crackpot motivated reasoning, e.g., 'the election was stolen' and 'the democrats are pedophilic communists', are now normalized among mainstream majority conservatives. 

Maybe the democrats can modify the filibuster to allow passage of laws that protect democracy and voting. But maybe not. It looks like the next two years could amount to three laws passed by the budget resolution process without a single republican vote, two in 2021 (pandemic relief, infrastructure) and one in 2022 (?). And that would be it. That could easily be nearly the entire Biden legislative legacy. Everything else would have to come from executive power alone.

Despite a growing majority support for key democratic policy goals, the defenses of democracy and the rule of law look to be still slowly crumbling. Time is grinding the American experiment down to an end marked by fascism, corruption, rank bigotry and gross incompetence. At least, that is how it looks now. Maybe by the 2022 elections, things will have significantly improved. Maybe.

Saturday, March 6, 2021

The Origin of Republican Authoritarianism: Race?

GERMAINES DELISH TOXIC STEW
Ingredients:
1 mendacious, narcissistic cult leader (~330 lb)
1 corrupt, enraged republican party in existential crisis
2 buttloads (metric) lies, slanders and crackpot conspiracy 
theories (Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Qanon, etc.)
1 society in social and racial flux
½ buttload out-group bigotry
Seasoning: weak public education, 4 buttloads of 
special interest money in politics, a pandemic, lots of grumpy,
misinformed voters, lots of angry White supremacist groups, 1 weird guy with a funny hat


Washington Post editorialist Dana Milbank opines:
On the conservative Bulwark podcast this week, two admirable never-Trumpers marveled at what has become of the Republican Party since President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.

“I am a little amazed by the willingness to go just authoritarian, to really go anti-democratic,” Bulwark editor-at-large Bill Kristol said.

Columnist Mona Charen was likewise puzzled. “The attraction of authoritarianism, I don’t know, Bill,” she said. “I’m really at a loss.”

And I’m at a loss to understand their confusion. The Republican Party’s dalliance with authoritarianism can be explained in one word: race.

Trump’s overt racism turned the GOP into, essentially, a white-nationalist party, in which racial animus is the main motivator of Republican votes. But in an increasingly multicultural America, such people don’t form a majority. The only route to power for a white-nationalist party, then, is to become anti-democratic: to keep non-White people from voting and to discredit elections themselves. In short, democracy is working against Republicans — and so Republicans are working against democracy.

Then, on Wednesday, House Republicans mounted lockstep opposition to H.R.1, a bill by Democrats attempting to expand voting rights. The bill would, among other things, create automatic voter registration, set minimum standards for early voting and end the practice of partisan gerrymandering.

In the House debate, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), sounding like Trump, made unfounded claims of “voter fraud” and asserted that the law would mean “future voters could be dead or illegal immigrants or maybe even registered two to three times.”

“This,” McCarthy said, “is an unparalleled political power grab.”

So, in the twisted reasoning of this white-nationalist incarnation of the Republican Party, laws that make it easier for all citizens to vote are a power grab by Democrats.

The toxic stew
Milbank's explanation is arguably somewhat off. It's more than race that has turned the GOP into an authoritarian personality cult. Race is one of the core drivers of the irrational fear, but it's not the only factor. Other significant factors include blind loyalty to the cult leader and widespread belief in his main lies about stolen elections and a satanic, socialist-communist democratic party. And there is a perceived existential threat that the republican party will become, or already is, a long-term or maybe permanent minority. 

But the factors overlap. The republican lust for power drives widespread voter suppression efforts in the anti-democratic but innocent-sounding name of "election integrity." Part of that is indeed aimed at racial minorities. But part of it is also aimed at democrats, the LGBQT community and other out-groups the republicans love to hate and slander. Another part is what Erich Fromm called the urge to escape from freedom due to an unsettling and changing society. The psychological burdens of freedom are more than some people can bear. They want to escape from freedom to authoritarianism, even if a fascist personality cult is the only escape route.

When one tosses all those ingredients into the cauldron, the stew gets pretty toxic. Some way to soften the fears, prejudices and susceptibility to the dark free speech would be helpful to say the least. This is where Mona Charen’s comment “I’m really at a loss” is appropriate.


Funny hat guy’s mug shot
Quote after his arrest: “I was wrong. Period.”


Friday, March 5, 2021

Trump’s Kryptonite…

 I'm still waiting to stumble upon it.



Just as Trump barely WON the presidency in 2016 by merely a handful of popular votes in critical “electoral-votes” states, he barely LOST the presidency in 2020 by that same critical handful.  But in that interim, between 2016 and 2020, we all got an up-close-and-personal look, indeed on a daily basis, at who Trump the man was and continues to be.

So let’s look at what HASN’T been his kryptonite so far.  Over these last 5-ish years, we’ve seen and/or heard about:

  • Pu$$y grabbing and rape accusations
  • Porn star payoffs
  • 500K+ deaths from a botched virus containment
  • 30k+ lies and misleading statements, per WaPo
  • Staff turnovers dropping like flies in winter (due to scandal and/or disgust)
  • Nepotism-ing his administration with blatant overriding of FBI security rules/checks
  • Used ethnic and/or other slurs (Pocahontas, Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, etc) on his opponents
  • Advocated separating migrant children from their families at the southern border
  • Trying to bribe a desperate Ukrainian ally
  • Withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement
  • Throwing paper towels at a hurricane ravaged country
  • Mocked a disabled reporter
  • Has no problem calling women he doesn’t like “pigs, dogs, slobs, disgusting animals”
  • The hiding of his financials
  • Palling around with dictators (Kim, Putin, Erdogan, etc)
  • “Sharpie-gating” weather maps
  • Proclaiming John McCain was not a war hero
  • Called the military “suckers and losers”
  • Called white supremacist “very fine people”           
  • Told the Proud Boys to “stand by”
  • Betrayed our Kurdish allies
  • Suggested injecting bleach and/or light into the body
  • Accused President Obama of spying on him
  • With rare exceptions, refused to wear a mask, not setting a good example
  • Two failed impeachment trials
  • The pardoning of traitors
  • A bloody and deadly D.C. insurrection in his name (“You’re very special, we love you”)
  • Heretofore secret Covid shots for him and Melania in January
  • A media who can’t quit him
  • A GOP who can’t quit him

And hell, I’ve just touched on the more blatant shenanigans that immediately come to mind.  We have been here and historically witnessed, firsthand, all of this and so much more.

So other than his physical demise itself (likely attributable to too many Big Macs and KFC Buckets), I’m truly baffled at what on earth Trump’s Kryptonite could possibly be.  Truth hasn’t been able to do it.  His bad behavior hasn’t been able to do it.  His incompetence hasn’t been able to do it.

Question: Is there anything, anything known to humankind, that can finally “inactivate” Trump?  Any Ideas??

Myself, the only thing I can think of is if it is “proven” that he has paid for an abortion.  And even that will be iffy, since “proven” has become something in “the eye of the beholder,” it seems.  Time and distance, like with many (all?) things, could be another cure.  But we can’t seem to get away from him.  They won’t let us (she said, as she posted this OP 🤯).  So, I’m out of ideas. :/

Thanks for helping me out here.