I don't entirely agree with JVL's ultimate conclusion, "Trump Forever". I think Trump is a figurehead of something more sinister, which is an extreme right wing movement that not only rejects the idea of American soft power, but America's founding principles. These people believe in some serious "throne and altar" bullshit. Trump's just …
I don't entirely agree with JVL's ultimate conclusion, "Trump Forever". I think Trump is a figurehead of something more sinister, which is an extreme right wing movement that not only rejects the idea of American soft power, but America's founding principles. These people believe in some serious "throne and altar" bullshit. Trump's just the means to get to their ultimate ends, and they've been successful at convincing half of the electorate to burn the whole country down.
You are absolutely correct, the issue is that Trump isn't smart enough to realize that he's just a figurehead. The real power that is using his stupidity and the stupidity of both political parties. I would add the stupidity of the Americans that voted for him if the Democratic Party had provided a real alternative.
A real alternative in what sense? When it came to governing, Biden very much offered, and was implementing, a real alternative to both MAGA and the neoliberal consensus both the Cintons and Obama had made their peace with. Thus, neither the corporate (fire Lina) media nor the corporate Ds were on board. The net effect was the country turned a blind eye to it.
The man walked a picket line, FFS, and was the first President in decades who didn't appoint a Wall St insider to anything.
Biden did implement some good Bernie Sanders economic ideas, but it was not enough. He also used our tax dollars to finance a Genocide and made no real attempt to improve immigration policy. History will remember him as Genocide Joe, acting against the will of the American people.
The will of the American people was expressed in the primary that cost Cori Bush her seat in Congress. There were 3 others. Biden knew what you refuse to accept, "abanding Israel" would have been electoral suicide. Bibi knew it too, which is why he resisted the relentless pressure Biden put on him to conduct that war very differently, and was able to ignore Schumer's call for him to resign.
He also knew Biden had to deter Iran, so he couldn't cut off Israel. He had the stronger hand, and played it.
History will record all this, and the disastrous consequences of giving Bibi the president he wanted, rather than one who would have yanked his chain hard once the election was safely over.
Btw, "not enough" was principally due to two Senators who would not vote for any of the multiple measures proposed by Biden to directly, personally, and immediately help tens of millions of people, Manchin and Sinema. Bernie well aware, if you are not. He (and AOC) supported Biden to the end. They saw the effort to push him out as at least in part a coup by corporate Democrats.They weren't wrong.
History will record that, too. Btw, historians have always had a higher regard for Biden than the conventional wisdom. In 1984, I heard Stephen Ambrose tell then Senator Biden he hoped he would be president.
How does what you express differ in any material respect with Trump as the dictator? The emperor is always just the figurehead—to all those his rule brings to power with him. They all see themselves as the “true” top dog and they all dream of the moment they can displace him and step in to his shoes.
About Trump Forever and whether he is a figurehead for Something More Sinister. If you are looking for the 'something more sinister', this might be a good candidate:
I don’t think that writer ever actually took the time to understand what liberalism is. He defined it basically as 1. Don’t hurt others and 2. Be suspicious of authority. Those are things that he never really read about deeply, or figured out why we got to those broader ideas. He jumped right in to Aristotle and then Aquinas and so forth, and says he abandoned his beliefs, but no where does he ever state that he understood those beliefs.
They were his cultural soup, as is often said about MAGA voters today.
" But while I have always disapproved of child abuse, what upset me w[as] the disrespectful attitude towards fathers. “They should not be talking about fathers this way. They’re throwing dirt on something beautiful."
One of the many layers of irony in this skyscraper of an irony layer cake is that the "throne and altar" types are going to discover, too late for them and far too late for the rest of us who want to save the Founders' principles, that it's all "throne" and no "altar" for the people really calling the shots. And, if need be, shooting the guns.
Last night I watched Bad Faith on Amazon Prime. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest you watch it. I knew that the Christian Nationalists were growing, but I had no idea how much. It's all part of Project 2025. The MAGA's don't care about global placement. They want a country that has one religion, Christian, one color, white, and one group in charge, men. They want to be isolationists. Donald Trump was just the person to get them there because he doesn't care about anything but Donald Trump and he's just clueless enough for them to make it work.
These white Christian men may want to be isolationist, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world will allow that to happen. Someone once wrote, "A man cannot be angry at his own time without suffering some damage." All these motherfuckers who want to withdraw from the rest of the world simply can't psychologically handle the intricacies of the modern world. Frankly, I don't get it. For all of our issues and problems, we're incredibly fortunate to have been born in the United States. The Project 2025 guys have no gratitude for their good fortune and prefer to initiate their Christian version of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and bring us back to a pre-Enlightenment hellscape. They may succeed, but I would tell them that there's no such thing as utopia.
I agree about the right-wing movement. Trump is the useful idiot, the tool of the RE ideologues & the Musk cadre of tech-bros. He gets to play the boss while the others use their money and their control of media to lead us down a garden path of weeds to an authoritarian state.
FWIW, Tim, I do agree. These people are not driving Trump. Trump is exploiting their fear of social change and the loss of the dominance of their kind [white, straight, Christian]. Trump discovered them when he joined the Obama birther conspiracy theory. Then he exploited them. That's what all demagogues do.
I will always be thankful to Trump for revealing that America's "Christians", as the largest component in the GOP electorate, are functionally no different than any other extremist religious movement in the world. They are anti-democracy, anti-science, anti-Enlightenment, and in all likelihood pro-death. And you're right, Sandy: Trump's played those people like a two dollar banjo.
Useful idiot. That's all I think Trump is. I think the people pulling the strings are Musk and Project 2025 (as others have pointed out). However, I don't think Musk and P25 are aligned. It seems there are 2 puppet masters here. But whatever the case may be, the eventual outcome of all of this won't be good.
I vacillate between believing Trump is a moron (more properly, a "fucking moron" in Rex Tillerson's unforgettable epithet) or a very slick huckster, whose major superpower is his ability to use others' weaknesses to his advantage.
Say you're his political opponent -- a fairly normal Republican straight white guy, but one who walks with a limp and sometimes stumbles a bit -- then Trump will use that to make fun of how you. He'll come out with a schoolyard nickname and crack a funny, like, "Now I like X, I hear he's a nice guy, but did you ever notice he walks like he's had a few too many? ...Do you think he's been hitting the bottle too hard?? Maybe so...could be... a lotta people say so...." etc.
Sickening.
Of course, his other superpower is his sociopathic level of narcissism and dishonesty.
At some point in his life, Trump may have been a slick huckster. Now he is a doddering old man manipulated by slick hucksters. In the Oval office with Musk or Vance, he willingly relinquishes power to them. He no longer cares about real power. Money is his power and he wants all of it -- even if he has to demean the office of the presidency to get it by selling trading cards and worthless meme coins to get his 30 pieces of silver.
I do wonder quite a bit about the "ultimate ends" of the seemingly earnest revanchist eggheads behind Project 2025 (as opposed to vain profiteers seeking graft and glory).
I agree with you. Trump is old. He may think he'll live forever, but a mortality table tells us he has maybe 5-10 years, at best. Then what? Power vacuum? Civil war between economic oligarchs?
The people behind Trump are who you need to be paying attention to. There's cause to be concerned about what is happening behind the scenes. As long as you stroke Trump's ego, he'll give you anything. The man has a narcissistic hole in him that will never be filled, and he's easily manipulated.
I actually think Trump may be ill and all the rush is because the clock is ticking. I think he told Vance to basically show why he should be heir apparent.
The best we can do is read the tea leaves and see what they announce on X, etc. Only allowing "friendly" reporters in the Whitehouse certainly doesn't help.
Perhaps this can serve as another example of how we can read the tea leaves:
Seeing JD Vance take over the meeting in the Oval Office to insult Zelenskyy provides an easy explanation for what is taking place "behind the scenes." Clearly, Vance was given permission, if not an outright script, of how to play out the scene on Friday to derail the meeting and stop Zelenskyy from having any say in the peace deal.
Why was Vance given that permission? Because he serves the theocrats' will to power; he is their doorman for their entire project. Zelenskyy's role as a heroic democratic leader throws cold water on the billionaire theocrats' desire to rule this country as a plutocracy.
Vance's Friday performance was slick and professional. Trump came across as subdued, though loud, rude and dismissive. He seems to be feeling the weight of his years, although he is still vindictive as hell.
I think Trump believes this is all for him because he’s a malignant narcissist, but I agree with you generally. Christian dominionism, Catholic integralism, and general authoritarians are all perfectly happy with Trump as the figurehead. These groups are clearly interested in destroying the government so it can be remade according to their theocratic agenda. I realize how conspiratorial that sounds, although each movement has significant representation in the government and think tank circuit.
And the three groups you mention are all convinced they'll come out on top. Christian dominionism thinks they have the manpower to win. The integralists think they have the intellect to win. The authoritarians think they have the guns to win. I know who my money's on.
To those would be theocrats, bless their hearts :)
The "end times" aspect of the whole enterprise has fresh resonance for me lately. When you look at the Trump administration's dismantling of our public health safeguards and our withdrawal from the WHO, that's going to get a lot of people killed. And it's deliberate.
The 'snake' has two heads - Trump is allowed to 'lead' by both the theocrats, and the techno-feudalists - both of whom share the same 'step one' - remove any vestige of our current government.
Yep! Trump and his crew also want to present him as a messianic figure. They do it in all their imaginary like the huge golden statue in the Gaza video.
I think he is also trying to meld our past into another country (Russia) history,culture and political structure. Now that he had removed all the barriers for Russia (financially, physically and digitally) and stated the gold pass will apply to Russian oligarchs, don't be surprised when Russian language courses become mandatory in school.
I'm not sure I agree with that, Celia. Trump doesn't care about culture because he's always been uncouth. All he cares about is wealth, and as JVL noted, aligning with what is essentially a mafia state gets him there.
I take your point. Might have said it wrong. I think he sees their way of life fitting into his mafia state (better explanation). I think he sees it like a movie/TV production where he can do it like Putin with all the palaces .
I don't entirely agree with JVL's ultimate conclusion, "Trump Forever". I think Trump is a figurehead of something more sinister, which is an extreme right wing movement that not only rejects the idea of American soft power, but America's founding principles. These people believe in some serious "throne and altar" bullshit. Trump's just the means to get to their ultimate ends, and they've been successful at convincing half of the electorate to burn the whole country down.
You are absolutely correct, the issue is that Trump isn't smart enough to realize that he's just a figurehead. The real power that is using his stupidity and the stupidity of both political parties. I would add the stupidity of the Americans that voted for him if the Democratic Party had provided a real alternative.
A real alternative in what sense? When it came to governing, Biden very much offered, and was implementing, a real alternative to both MAGA and the neoliberal consensus both the Cintons and Obama had made their peace with. Thus, neither the corporate (fire Lina) media nor the corporate Ds were on board. The net effect was the country turned a blind eye to it.
The man walked a picket line, FFS, and was the first President in decades who didn't appoint a Wall St insider to anything.
Biden did implement some good Bernie Sanders economic ideas, but it was not enough. He also used our tax dollars to finance a Genocide and made no real attempt to improve immigration policy. History will remember him as Genocide Joe, acting against the will of the American people.
The will of the American people was expressed in the primary that cost Cori Bush her seat in Congress. There were 3 others. Biden knew what you refuse to accept, "abanding Israel" would have been electoral suicide. Bibi knew it too, which is why he resisted the relentless pressure Biden put on him to conduct that war very differently, and was able to ignore Schumer's call for him to resign.
He also knew Biden had to deter Iran, so he couldn't cut off Israel. He had the stronger hand, and played it.
History will record all this, and the disastrous consequences of giving Bibi the president he wanted, rather than one who would have yanked his chain hard once the election was safely over.
Btw, "not enough" was principally due to two Senators who would not vote for any of the multiple measures proposed by Biden to directly, personally, and immediately help tens of millions of people, Manchin and Sinema. Bernie well aware, if you are not. He (and AOC) supported Biden to the end. They saw the effort to push him out as at least in part a coup by corporate Democrats.They weren't wrong.
History will record that, too. Btw, historians have always had a higher regard for Biden than the conventional wisdom. In 1984, I heard Stephen Ambrose tell then Senator Biden he hoped he would be president.
How does what you express differ in any material respect with Trump as the dictator? The emperor is always just the figurehead—to all those his rule brings to power with him. They all see themselves as the “true” top dog and they all dream of the moment they can displace him and step in to his shoes.
About Trump Forever and whether he is a figurehead for Something More Sinister. If you are looking for the 'something more sinister', this might be a good candidate:
https://bonald.wordpress.com/about/ I just stumbled on it when looking up Throne and Altar and where that idea came from.
I don’t think that writer ever actually took the time to understand what liberalism is. He defined it basically as 1. Don’t hurt others and 2. Be suspicious of authority. Those are things that he never really read about deeply, or figured out why we got to those broader ideas. He jumped right in to Aristotle and then Aquinas and so forth, and says he abandoned his beliefs, but no where does he ever state that he understood those beliefs.
They were his cultural soup, as is often said about MAGA voters today.
That is horrifying.
" But while I have always disapproved of child abuse, what upset me w[as] the disrespectful attitude towards fathers. “They should not be talking about fathers this way. They’re throwing dirt on something beautiful."
Ye gods and little fishes. 🤮
One of the many layers of irony in this skyscraper of an irony layer cake is that the "throne and altar" types are going to discover, too late for them and far too late for the rest of us who want to save the Founders' principles, that it's all "throne" and no "altar" for the people really calling the shots. And, if need be, shooting the guns.
Last night I watched Bad Faith on Amazon Prime. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest you watch it. I knew that the Christian Nationalists were growing, but I had no idea how much. It's all part of Project 2025. The MAGA's don't care about global placement. They want a country that has one religion, Christian, one color, white, and one group in charge, men. They want to be isolationists. Donald Trump was just the person to get them there because he doesn't care about anything but Donald Trump and he's just clueless enough for them to make it work.
These white Christian men may want to be isolationist, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world will allow that to happen. Someone once wrote, "A man cannot be angry at his own time without suffering some damage." All these motherfuckers who want to withdraw from the rest of the world simply can't psychologically handle the intricacies of the modern world. Frankly, I don't get it. For all of our issues and problems, we're incredibly fortunate to have been born in the United States. The Project 2025 guys have no gratitude for their good fortune and prefer to initiate their Christian version of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and bring us back to a pre-Enlightenment hellscape. They may succeed, but I would tell them that there's no such thing as utopia.
There’s no contradiction here.
I agree about the right-wing movement. Trump is the useful idiot, the tool of the RE ideologues & the Musk cadre of tech-bros. He gets to play the boss while the others use their money and their control of media to lead us down a garden path of weeds to an authoritarian state.
FWIW, Tim, I do agree. These people are not driving Trump. Trump is exploiting their fear of social change and the loss of the dominance of their kind [white, straight, Christian]. Trump discovered them when he joined the Obama birther conspiracy theory. Then he exploited them. That's what all demagogues do.
I will always be thankful to Trump for revealing that America's "Christians", as the largest component in the GOP electorate, are functionally no different than any other extremist religious movement in the world. They are anti-democracy, anti-science, anti-Enlightenment, and in all likelihood pro-death. And you're right, Sandy: Trump's played those people like a two dollar banjo.
Useful idiot. That's all I think Trump is. I think the people pulling the strings are Musk and Project 2025 (as others have pointed out). However, I don't think Musk and P25 are aligned. It seems there are 2 puppet masters here. But whatever the case may be, the eventual outcome of all of this won't be good.
I vacillate between believing Trump is a moron (more properly, a "fucking moron" in Rex Tillerson's unforgettable epithet) or a very slick huckster, whose major superpower is his ability to use others' weaknesses to his advantage.
Say you're his political opponent -- a fairly normal Republican straight white guy, but one who walks with a limp and sometimes stumbles a bit -- then Trump will use that to make fun of how you. He'll come out with a schoolyard nickname and crack a funny, like, "Now I like X, I hear he's a nice guy, but did you ever notice he walks like he's had a few too many? ...Do you think he's been hitting the bottle too hard?? Maybe so...could be... a lotta people say so...." etc.
Sickening.
Of course, his other superpower is his sociopathic level of narcissism and dishonesty.
At some point in his life, Trump may have been a slick huckster. Now he is a doddering old man manipulated by slick hucksters. In the Oval office with Musk or Vance, he willingly relinquishes power to them. He no longer cares about real power. Money is his power and he wants all of it -- even if he has to demean the office of the presidency to get it by selling trading cards and worthless meme coins to get his 30 pieces of silver.
Don't forget Putin -- he's a major Trump string-puller.
I do wonder quite a bit about the "ultimate ends" of the seemingly earnest revanchist eggheads behind Project 2025 (as opposed to vain profiteers seeking graft and glory).
I agree with you. Trump is old. He may think he'll live forever, but a mortality table tells us he has maybe 5-10 years, at best. Then what? Power vacuum? Civil war between economic oligarchs?
The people behind Trump are who you need to be paying attention to. There's cause to be concerned about what is happening behind the scenes. As long as you stroke Trump's ego, he'll give you anything. The man has a narcissistic hole in him that will never be filled, and he's easily manipulated.
I actually think Trump may be ill and all the rush is because the clock is ticking. I think he told Vance to basically show why he should be heir apparent.
I think he'd like to keep things in the family.
Absolutely, that bruise on his hand was from an IV.
How do we know what is happening behind the scenes?
That’s why they are undermining the “free press” - so you can never know.
Bingo!
It's a very good question.
The best we can do is read the tea leaves and see what they announce on X, etc. Only allowing "friendly" reporters in the Whitehouse certainly doesn't help.
Perhaps this can serve as another example of how we can read the tea leaves:
Seeing JD Vance take over the meeting in the Oval Office to insult Zelenskyy provides an easy explanation for what is taking place "behind the scenes." Clearly, Vance was given permission, if not an outright script, of how to play out the scene on Friday to derail the meeting and stop Zelenskyy from having any say in the peace deal.
Why was Vance given that permission? Because he serves the theocrats' will to power; he is their doorman for their entire project. Zelenskyy's role as a heroic democratic leader throws cold water on the billionaire theocrats' desire to rule this country as a plutocracy.
Vance's Friday performance was slick and professional. Trump came across as subdued, though loud, rude and dismissive. He seems to be feeling the weight of his years, although he is still vindictive as hell.
I think Trump believes this is all for him because he’s a malignant narcissist, but I agree with you generally. Christian dominionism, Catholic integralism, and general authoritarians are all perfectly happy with Trump as the figurehead. These groups are clearly interested in destroying the government so it can be remade according to their theocratic agenda. I realize how conspiratorial that sounds, although each movement has significant representation in the government and think tank circuit.
Opes dei
What I once considered left wing paranoia is now reality. They are trying to create an authoritarian theocracy. It’s Christian Authoritarianism.
And the three groups you mention are all convinced they'll come out on top. Christian dominionism thinks they have the manpower to win. The integralists think they have the intellect to win. The authoritarians think they have the guns to win. I know who my money's on.
To those would be theocrats, bless their hearts :)
I think the religion part is a fake more often than not.
I feel dumb for not realizing sooner Trump is what many oligarchs want. Government for and "buy" the very wealthy.
It doesn't sound conspiratorial to me. It's clear to me they want power and democracy limits their power. This is what all malignant narcissists want.
The "end times" aspect of the whole enterprise has fresh resonance for me lately. When you look at the Trump administration's dismantling of our public health safeguards and our withdrawal from the WHO, that's going to get a lot of people killed. And it's deliberate.
Yep. Just connect the dots.
Trump is merely the dancing bear.
They were just waiting for the right person to use as their figurehead which they found in the easy to manipulate Trump.
The 'snake' has two heads - Trump is allowed to 'lead' by both the theocrats, and the techno-feudalists - both of whom share the same 'step one' - remove any vestige of our current government.
Yes, remove liberal democracy. It hampers their will to power.
Yep! Trump and his crew also want to present him as a messianic figure. They do it in all their imaginary like the huge golden statue in the Gaza video.
I think he is also trying to meld our past into another country (Russia) history,culture and political structure. Now that he had removed all the barriers for Russia (financially, physically and digitally) and stated the gold pass will apply to Russian oligarchs, don't be surprised when Russian language courses become mandatory in school.
The same thought occurred to me (Russian in schools), though offered as an option, not a requirement. (No government overreach allowed, you know).
I'm not sure I agree with that, Celia. Trump doesn't care about culture because he's always been uncouth. All he cares about is wealth, and as JVL noted, aligning with what is essentially a mafia state gets him there.
I'd modify what you said - for Trump, wealth IS culture.
I take your point. Might have said it wrong. I think he sees their way of life fitting into his mafia state (better explanation). I think he sees it like a movie/TV production where he can do it like Putin with all the palaces .
Palaces, yes! With lots of gold leaf and curlicues.
Oh, I think that's a reasonable observation. That's in line with how his brain thinks.