Category Archives: awful people

the bleeding ear of trump

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I confess, I’m a wee bit disappointed. I mean, yeah, I’m glad Trump’s idiotic but hypnotic control of the MAGAverse is waning. But I really thought this might happen. I’m talking about the potential for an Ellen Jamesian moment.

Now some (okay, probably most) of you right now are wondering, “Greg, old sock, who is this Ellen James of which you speak and what would that moment entail?” I’m going to tell you. Back in 1978 novelist John Irving published a novel called The World According to Garp. It won the National Book Award for Fiction the following year. Garp was the first novel I’d ever read that explicitly examined toxic masculinity, and the first novel I’d read that featured a trans character in a positive way. It also looked at ideological extremism and cults of personality. One critical element of the narrative revolves around a group of women who cut off their own tongues in solidarity with an eleven-year-old sexual assault survivor (Ellen James) whose tongue was cut out by her rapists to silence her.

When I first saw a Trump supporter wearing a sweatshirt with a ‘Diapers over Dems’ logo and other supporters wearing adult diapers with the logo ‘Real Men Wear Diapers’ I thought his cult of personality might have hit a high water mark. Then came the assassination attempt. Trump’s ear got pinked, possibly by a bullet fragment. It doesn’t matter what pinked his ear; it got pinked. It bled. He had to wear a bandage for a few days. And some of his supporters adopted the bandage. People actually put bandages on their ears. It looked ridiculous, but that never stopped them before.

I felt all the elements of an Ellen Jamesian moment began to coalesce. I actually thought there was a chance–not a great chance, but a chance–members of the MAGAverse would pink their own ears. But no. The cowards stopped with the bandage. Sure, there was at least one guy who got a tattoo of Trump surrounded by Secret Service personnel with his tiny fist raised and an angry look on his face. But that was about it.

Bloodless fake crucifixion

I truly believe that if the assassination attempt had happened a year ago, we’d have seen some MAGA fuckwits piercing their own ears. A year ago, a bleeding ear would have been seen as Trump stigmata. Maybe the most dedicated Trumpists died of Covid, maybe his people are just weary of having to support every idiotic thing that rancid motherfucker utters, maybe JD Vance has hollowed out some of his support, but a year ago Trump’s bloody shirt would be enshrined at Mar-a-Lago. A year ago Trump would be selling cheap-ass Chinese-made white shirts with symbolic blood on the collar. It seems clear (to me, at least) that Trump doesn’t command quite the same passion that he did a year ago.

And yes, that’s a good thing. A very good thing. But I did sorta kinda want to see Trumpists tearing out a chunk of their own ears.

if it had been anybody other than trump

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Yes, it’s an impressive photograph. You know the one I’m talking about. Trump, bloody, angry, fist raised. I’m not going to post it because I’m already sick of it. But it’ll probably win a lot of photojournalist awards, and rightly so. A lot of folks (and by ‘folks’ I mean ‘political pundits’) believe that photo is going to help Trump in the coming election. They think it’ll carry Trump along on a groundswell of sympathy.

A lot of folks are wrong.

Had it been anybody other than Trump, they’d probably be right. But we’re talking about Comrade Donald J. Trump here. Trump is different. There’s not a lot of sympathy for Trump. Perhaps the most remarkable (and, in a very real way, incredibly sad) aspect of the assassination attempt against Trump is this: so many people are disappointed that it failed.

Yes, that’s a horrible thing to say. But there it is. I’ve heard it and I suspect you’ve heard it as well. It’s usually expressed in a soft voice–maybe even a whisper–and it’s often said with more than a little shame. But it’s being said all the same. Regret that Trump didn’t catch one of those rounds fired.

The people saying this aren’t raging ideologues, they’re not political junkies, they’re not rabid progressives or conspiracy nuts. They’re regular people. Moms to their kids, people in the produce aisle at the market, couples eating smashburgers at a diner. They’re saying stuff like, “You know, I don’t really want anybody to get shot, I’m opposed to any sort of violence, but….” And they let that ‘but’ hang there, and the person they’re talking to frowns and nods. Or maybe they turn it into a joke. “Nobody’s been that disappointed by a couple of inches since Stormy Daniels.” And we cringe and groan, but we’re still nodding.

Most people who feel this way are properly reluctant to say it out loud. It’s a horrible thing to say. It’s a horrible thing to feel. I mean, we’re decent people–or we try to be. But that thought and feeling is out there, and it’s widespread. And it’s Trump-specific.

If it had been anybody other than Trump…

hey MAGA, remember this?

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We knew there was going to be violence, didn’t we. I mean, the threat of violence has been a constant theme in the MAGAverse. Just a few days ago, Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, announced, “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Hell, Trump his ownself, during the George Floyd protests, asked his Sec. of Defense, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

Of course there was going to be violence. We just didn’t expect the violence would be directed at Trump. It’s always been MAGA that’s been doing the threatening. They’re the ones with all the guns. Democrats and the left have all been threatening to…you know, vote. We’ve been threatening to…you know, hold criminal investigations and give Trump and his MAGA fuckwits a chance to defend themselves in court. We’ve been threatening them with the Constitution of the United States. Or the tattered shreds of the Constitution after SCOTUS ripped it up.

And MAGA? This is their approach:

A pickup tailgate with the image of a kidnapped President Biden.

We post images of Trump in an orange jumpsuit on social media. They celebrate the imagined kidnapping of Joe Biden. And let’s not forget, just four years ago 13 men were arrested by the FBI and charged in a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and ‘try’ her for the crime of…you know, implementing Covid public health restrictions.

But the MAGAverse is trying, once again, to turn reality on its head. Here’s one of the headlines in the morning’s Washington Post.

Trump allies immediately blame Biden, Democrats for their rhetoric

There are LOTS of examples of GOP politicians and supporters blaming Democrats. I’ll just mention one. Senator Tim Scott, once a hopeful VP candidate, said “This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.” Scott ignores the fact that Trump actually IS a threat to democracy.

At this point, we know very little about what happened yesterday. We know the shooter was a 20-year-old registered Republican armed with an AR-15 style rifle. That’s about it; that’s about all we actually know at the moment. We’ll know more by the end of the day. We’ll also be inundated by a cascade of conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation, and outright bullshit. It’ll be hard to separate what we know from the bullshit. Hell, a lot of folks won’t even try to separate it. MAGA won’t.

But we can count on this: Democrats and folks on the left will be held to a higher standard of behavior than Republicans and other MAGA fuckwits.

fuck everything, especially those guys

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Yeah, I’m talking about those Nazgûl motherfuckers on SCOTUS. Like almost everybody I know, I spent yesterday vacillating between 1) feeling depressed and helpless and 2) wanting to set fire to the entire combustible world. The decision yesterday that POTUS (and Trump in particular) is essentially above the law was appalling and frightening, but the fact that it was delivered in smug terms by the most conspicuously corrupt and openly partisan SCOTUS in history was insulting. It’s like they’re standing there, grinning in their black robes, saying “Fuck yeah, we’re corrupt. And ain’t nothing you plebs can do about it.”

Justice Sotomayor, in her properly raging dissent, wrote, “in every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” And she’s right. That whole notion that nobody is above the law has gone straight down the porcelain facility. This is an unprecedented fuckwankery. This is deep fuckwankery; fuckwankery down at the cellular level. I mean, the spouses of two of the Justices (Alito and Thomas) openly supported the insurrection/insurrectionists, and yet those two tainted pricks didn’t have the fundamental sense of decency to recuse themselves from the case.

What makes this even more galling is the fact that those arrogant motherfuckers on SCOTUS were put on the bench by partisan politicians who represent a minority of US citizens. A combination of partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the absurdity of the Electoral College means that the US is largely ruled by the minority. And in recent years, that minority cheated, lied, and wriggled around enough to install three partisan hacks onto the SCOTUS bench.

Wipe the smiles off the faces of 6 of these corrupt wankers.

Every single one of the Justices sitting on this SCOTUS testified under oath that they respected stare decisis, the legal concept that courts should follow precedent. At least six of them lied about that. This Court has largely shat all over precedent. For almost half a century, Roe guaranteed a woman’s right to choose. That’s gone. The Bakke decision on race-conscious admissions in higher education was the law of the land for almost as long. Not any more. For 40 years, Chevron — Jesus suffering fuck, people, there have been 70 SCOTUS and some 17,000 or so lower court cases based on Chevron, which states courts need to defer to the experts in various regulatory agencies when deciding how to interpret a law. A judge probably doesn’t know enough to decide what level of exposure to a certain chemical or substance would be harmful to a child. A judge probably doesn’t have a fucking clue about the long term effects of effluent run-off from a hog containment farm into a local river upstream from a small town. Experts need to decide this shit, not judges. But nope, this SCOTUS has turned that power over to elected or appointed judges.

Wait…I forgot bribery. Last week, this SCOTUS (and I am NOT MAKING THIS UP) made the bizarre decision that while it’s illegal for a public official (like, say, a mayor or a member of Congress, or possibly a judge) to accept a bribe, it’s perfectly for fine for them to accept a gratuity. A bribe is the offer of money (or something of value) from a person/entity before the public official makes a decision affecting that person or entity. A gratuity is accepting the same fucking thing after the decision is made. Seriously, the Court says bribes are bad but gratuities are okay. This decision was written by the Justice whose massive credit card debt was mysteriously paid off before he was nominated. You know who I’m talking about–the guy reliably accused of sexual assault. That guy. (Okay, Kavanaugh.)

If you’re reading this hoping that at the end I’ll suggest some way to make you feel better about the situation…sorry. If you’re hoping I’ll cobble together ideas for a way forward, or maybe offer some practical advice on how to minimize the damage…nope. Maybe tomorrow or at some point in the future. For now, all I have to say is let yourself be angry or depressed for a while. Maybe just be numb for a while.

But pretty soon we’ll need to get over it and resist. Resist in any way we can. Resist in every way we can. But today it’s literally raining here in the heartland, and for today that’s fine.

fairness

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Try to imagine this. A nation in which entities licensed to broadcast news or entertainment to the public were obligated to set aside a certain amount of their broadcast schedule to discuss controversial matters of public concern–and to do so in a way that included different perspectives.

Let’s say there was a television network called Really Good TV. To keep its broadcast license, RGTV created a regularly scheduled program called Really Important Stuff. And let’s also say there was a public controversy involving…I don’t know, maybe the overpopulation of parrots. RGTV’s Really Important Stuff show might do a segment in which people would discuss whether overpopulation of parrots was a critical issue, and if it was, how it might be handled. They’d include folks who very much enjoyed all the parrots and didn’t think it was a problem, and folks who totally fucking hated parrots and felt they should be poisoned at government expense, and folks who felt the best solution to parrot overpopulation was to allow them to be hunted for sport, and folks who felt parrots should be captured and neutered and released back into the city. Every main point of view would be included in the discussion, and viewers would be allowed to evaluate those positions and make up their own minds.

Reader, we actually used to live in that nation. We really did.

In 1927, Congress decided the agency that regulated federal communications (back then it was the Federal Radio Commission) should only issue broadcast licenses when doing so serves the public interest. Not private interests, not corporate interests, not the interests of the rich, not the interests of a particular political party. The public interest. In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission (which expanded the FRC to include television) created a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses to 1) present controversial issues of public importance AND 2) to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. It was called, appropriately, the Fairness Doctrine.

And hey, it worked. Television and radio stations were allowed to decide for themselves HOW to implement the doctrine; they could do it through news segments, or public affairs shows, or through editorials. Nor were the stations required to provide equal time for the various opposing views. But they had to devote some time to important public issues and they had to present contrasting viewpoints.

It didn’t always work smoothly, but it worked. In 1969, for example, the FCC yanked the broadcast license from WLBT television in Mississippi (an NBC affiliate station) because the station’s overtly segregationist politics shaped their decision to refuse to broadcast NBC’s coverage of the civil rights movement.

News media ‘free speech’ includes misleading information & lying.

Think about that for a moment. A local NBC news station refused to show news coverage of the civil rights movement created by NBC–coverage of a nationally important topic–because the owners/staff of that local station opposed civil rights. That local station didn’t have to agree with the coverage (and clearly, they didn’t; WLBT broadcast the Citizens’ Council Forum, a syndicated series of fifteen-minute interviews with segregationists). But they needed to present the issue fairly to their audience, about half of which was Black. When the station refused, the FCC punished them by taking away their broadcast license.

It was a powerful statement by the government that important public issues broadcast on public airwaves needed to be addressed fairly, and that meant including differing perspectives held by the public.

What happened to the Fairness Doctrine? One of the two dominant political parties felt oppressed by having to present opposing points of view. Care to guess which one?

President Ronald Reagan, in the mid-1980s, appointed three new commissioners to the FCC (the fourth had been appointed by Richard Nixon). They issued a report stating the Fairness Doctrine actually harmed the public interest by violating the 1st Amendment protection of free speech. Seriously. The FCC commissioners argued the free speech rights of political entities were diminished by requiring opposing views to be presented to the public. They voted unanimously to abandon the Fairness Doctrine.

Congress, believe it or not, disagreed with the FCC decision. It’s difficult to imagine now, given the current level of hyper-partisanship, but back then both houses of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, voted to enact the Fairness Doctrine into law (previously it had only been an FCC policy).

Not surprisingly, Reagan (who, again, engineered the destruction of the Fairness Doctrine) vetoed the legislation. Congress failed to overturn the veto. The FCC decision was implemented. By the summer of 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was dead. Dead as the Wicked Witch of the East–not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.

About a year later, in the summer of 1988, radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh began his new radio show at WABC-AM in New York. In 1991, Democrats attempted to revive legislation to make the Fairness Doctrine law. That failed when President George H.W. Bush announced he would veto the law. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch and former Republican Party political strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News.

Do the math.

hitler/trump — not just a cheap shot

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A couple of years ago, when I was dodging the work I should have been doing, I decided to research the authenticity of a quotation that frequently appeared online. I’d seen it attributed to both Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. You’ve probably seen it too.

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that either Hitler or Goebbels said it, though they certainly believed it and acted on it. However, a very similar line appeared in a classified World War 2 psychological profile of Hitler:

People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

I downloaded the report (which was declassified in 1968) to read later…and promptly forgot about it. Until yesterday, when I stumbled on it again while deleting old files. I decided to glance through it before deleting it…and lawdy.

This is what happened. Back in late 1943 or early 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (the US intelligence agency during World War 2, which eventually morphed into the CIA) tasked a psychoanalyst named Walter Langer to prepare a profile on Adolf Hitler. The report was “an attempt to screen the wealth of contradictory, conflicting and unreliable material concerning Hitler into strata which will be helpful to the policy-makers and those who wish to frame a counter-propaganda.”

We’ve all seen a lot of comments comparing former POTUS Comrade Donald Trump to Hitler. It’s easy to either nod and agree or dismiss the comparison as overreach. But when you read the report–which, remember, was completed before the end of the war, when Hitler was still alive and in power–it’s uncanny how closely Langer’s evaluation of Hitler resembles Trump. The report itself has six sections: 1) Hitler as he believes himself to be, 2) as the German people know him, 3) as his associates know him, 4) as he knows himself, 5) a psychological analysis and reconstruction, and 6) Hitler’s probable behavior in the future. Only some of those could be applied to Trump. The quotations are taken directly from Langer’s report (which can be found here).

Hitler/Trump as he believes himself to be:

Many people have stopped and asked themselves: “Is this man sincere in his undertakings or is he a fraud?” Certainly even a fragmentary knowledge of his past life warrants such a question…. [A]ll of his former associates whom we have been able to contact, as well as many of our most capable foreign correspondents, are firmly convinced that Hitler actually does believe in his own greatness.

It makes little difference whether the field be economics, education, foreign affairs, propaganda, movies, music or women’s dress. In each and every field he believes himself to be an unquestioned authority.

He has fallen in love with the image of himself in this role and has surrounded himself with his own portraits.

Does that sound like Trump? Oh, absolutely.

Hitler/Trump as the people know him:

[F]rom a physical point of view, is not, however, a very imposing figure.

[His] personal appearance… it is safe to assume that this has been greatly tempered by millions of posters, pasted in every conceivable place, which show the Fuehrer as a fairly good-looking individual with a very determined attitude. In addition, the press, news-reels, etc., are continually flooded with carefully prepared photographs showing Hitler at his very best.

[H]is speeches were sinfully long, badly structured and very repetitious. Some of them are positively painful to read but nevertheless, when he delivered them they had an extraordinary effect upon his audiences.

[B]y the time he got through speaking he had completely numbed the critical faculties of his listeners to the point where they were willing to believe almost anything he said. He flattered them and cajoled them. He hurled accusations at them one moment and amused them the next by building up straw men which he promptly knocked down. His tongue was like a lash which whipped up the emotions of his audience. And somehow he always managed to say what the majority of the audience were already secretly thinking but could not verbalize.

[H]is refusal to permit ordinary scruples to get in his way is given as a sign of his greatness.

Yeah, that’s Trump.

Hitler/Trump as his associates know him: much of this section contradicts comparisons with Trump. Hitler, it seems, was a hard worker who was actually well informed about the workings of government. Apparently, he was generally thoughtful with his underlings, making sure they took breaks and ate well–even to the point of refusing to eat until everybody in the room had been served. He was also, it seems, personally courageous. However, there are a lot of aspects of Hitler’s personality that are equally Trumpian. For example:

H]is ability to persuade others to repudiate their individual consciences.

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong.

He has a passion for the latest news and for photographs of himself…. Very frequently he becomes so absorbed in the news or in his own photographs that he completely forgets the topic under discussion.

Almost everyone who has written about Hitler has commented on his rages. These are well known to all of his associates and they have learned to fear them…. [H]is behavior is still extremely violent and shows an utter lack of emotional control. In the worst rages he undoubtedly acts like a spoiled child who cannot have his own way and bangs his fists on the tables and walls. He scolds and shouts and stammers and on some occasions foaming saliva gathers in the corners of his mouth.

It must not be supposed, however, that these rages occur only when he is crossed on major issues. On the contrary, very insignificant matters might call out this reaction. In general they are brought on whenever anyone contradicts him, when there is unpleasant news for which he might feel responsible, when there is any skepticism concerning his judgment or when a situation arises in which his infallibility might be challenged or belittled.

We all know how he can say something one day and a few days later say the opposite, completely oblivious to his earlier statement. He does not only do this in connection with international affairs but also with his closest associates.

[H]e seems to lack any real sense of humor. He can never take a joke on himself.

That’s so totally Trump.

Hitler/Trump as he knows himself and Psychological analysis and reconstruction: These sections are devoted to a Freudian psychoanalytic view of Hitler’s personal life and history. It’s about his family, his youth, his military service in WW1, his rise to power, his relationships, and his sexuality and sexual proclivities. They’re full of Freudian concepts and interpretations (like “Unconsciously, all the [Oedipal] emotions he had once felt for his mother became transferred to Germany.”) and there’s a lot of focus on Hitler’s probable issues with childhood toilet training trauma. I mean, this was the early 1940s–Freud still wore the biggest hat in the field–so we have to expect this stuff. I suppose we could include Hitler’s alleged indulgence in urine play as a similarity with Trump, but I’m not sure that anybody’s particular kink is terribly relevant.

What MIGHT be relevant, though, is this observation by Langer:

Hitler’s outstanding defense mechanism is one commonly called projection…his own personal problems and conflicts were transferred from within himself to the external world where they assumed the proportions of racial and national conflicts.

We’ve all heard that every accusation made by Trump is also a confession. It’s interesting to read, to be sure, but while there are comparisons to be made with Trump’s personal life and history, the comparisons are rather generic.

Hitler’s/Trump’s probable behavior in the future: Langer outlined eight possible/probable scenarios for Hitler’s fall.

  1. He said Hitler might die of natural causes, but considered that a remote possibility. Given Trump’s diet and lack of exercise, this possibility is less remote in his case.
  2. Hitler might seek refuge in a neutral country. Langer also considered this to be extremely unlikely. Trump, who has property in other countries, might be more open to this.
  3. Hitler might get killed in battle. Langer thought this was a real possibility. He said it would be undesirable from the US point of view, since it would make Hitler a martyr. As for Trump, ain’t no way he’d martyr himself.
  4. Hitler might be assassinated. Langer felt Hitler was too well protected for this, and thought it would be undesirable–again, that martyrdom business. It also seems an unlikely scenario for Trump.
  5. Hitler may go insane. Langer meant more insane. Incapacitated by mental illness. Which could also happen to Trump, as his emotional defenses collapse.
  6. German military might revolt and seize him. Langer believed as Hitler’s behavior became more neurotic, a point might be reached where the military confined him. As for Trump, nobody in the MAGAverse has the courage to seize him.
  7. Hitler may fall into [the US military’s] hands. Yeah, no, doesn’t apply.
  8. Hitler might commit suicide. Langer said this was the most plausible outcome. And hey, that’s what Hitler did. I won’t comment further on this possibility.

Langer’s profile concluded with this comment:

[Hitler’s} mental condition will continue to deteriorate. He will fight as long as he can with any weapon or technique that can be conjured up to meet the emergency. The course he will follow will almost certainly be the one which seems to him to be the surest road to immortality and at the same time drag the world down in flames.

Again, that’s totally Trump. Willing to burn the entire combustible world in a fit of pique if he can’t get his way.

It’s weird and disturbing that Walter Langer, 80+ years ago, writing about a man “the world has come to know…for his insatiable greed for power, his ruthlessness, cruelty and utter lack-of feeling, his contempt for established institutions and his lack of moral restraints” seems to have provided us with some pretty solid insight into the psyche of Donald Trump.

chik chik chik chik

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Guilty as charged in all thirty-four counts. Everybody has a take on this, of course. Most of those takes are focused on either Comrade Trump’s immediate future or the effect these convictions will have on the 2024 presidential election.

Take a step beyond that. Remember that this case–these 34 indictments–was the most complicated and weakest of the four sets of indictments Trump is/was facing. The prosecution had to convince a jury of ordinary people that 1) Trump knowingly falsified some business documents, and 2) he falsified them with the intent to commit another crime. That’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s fucking hard to prove intent, because intent takes place in the mind. In this case, the State was able to prove intent almost entirely because Trump’s malignant personality got in his way.

Trump’s other cases are much less complicated; the evidence in those cases is a lot more clear and easy to understand. The Georgia case has a fucking tape of him trying to strong-arm the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” votes that weren’t there, to “find” enough votes for Trump to claim he’d won that state. There’s SO MUCH clear, easily understood evidence in that case. The Florida documents case? Tons of evidence that he took them, denied he had them, refused to give them back, left them lying about unsecured in a goddamn golf club that was frequently visited by foreign agents, moved them around to make them harder to find, lied about moving them. Sure, the judge in that case is doing everything she can to kneecap the prosecution, but if it ever goes to trial, it’ll be pretty one-sided. The insurrection case has texts, recordings of phone calls, eyewitness testimony, and hours of video of assholes actually storming the goddamn capitol in an effort to stop the electoral college vote, not to mention hundreds of other participants already serving prison sentences.

Compared to those other sets of indictment, the NY indictments were like hieroglyphics. If a jury could figure them out and reach a verdict in the NY case, the other cases should be significantly easier.

chik chik chik chik

What this first case does is further erode the notion that Trump is untouchable. Trump has lost legal cases before, of course, but the last year was (I believe, I hope) the beginning of a cascading sequence of increasingly serious legal setbacks for Trump.

  1. In May of 2023 Trump was found legally liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll; he was ordered to pay her US$5 million in damages.
  2. In July of that year, the judge acknowledged that the jury had found Trump raped Carroll, according to the common definition of the term.
  3. In January of this year, 2024, a second trial brought by Carroll as a result of Trump’s continued defamation awared her an additional $83.3 million in damages.
  4. In February, Trump (along with his sons and his company) was found to have committed years of fraud by lying about the worth of his various properties. He was fined $355 million.

What makes Trump so admirable to his cadre of MAGA fuckwits? His sense of invincibility. The notion that he can do whatever he wants, no matter how outrageous, and get by with it. Remember, this is the guy who bragged he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes. The guy who bragged he could grab women by the pussy because, “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” MAGA loves that shit.

That aura of invincibility is being shattered. Each of those cases exposes Trump as a loser. A consistent loser. Right now, of course, the MAGAverse is awash in bullshit patriotic pro-Trump rhetoric. Trump is raising funds calling himself a political prisoner. The congressional MAGA remora who’ve attached themselves to Trump continue to feed on his backwash. And on FreeRepublic they’re digitally shouting “Remember May 30th!” like the courtroom in lower Manhattan is the fucking Alamo. BUT…

But they know. They may not admit it to anybody, to themselves, but they know. In their secret hearts, they know Trump’s not really Trump anymore. He’s not what he was. He’s failing, he’s getting shoved around, he’s unable to defend himself, he’s weak.

That first domino was tapped. It took a while for the second to fall. Then the third. If you listen, you can hear it. That inevitable chik chik chik chik.

the end of kristi noem

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Like you, I was curious how the ‘patriots’ at Free Republic would respond to the story of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem killing her 14-month-old puppy, Cricket.

It’s possible you’re unaware of this story. It’s included in Noem’s soon-to-be published autobiography, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward. She suggests the young wirehair pointer was “untrainable” and “less than worthless as a hunting dog.” So she took the puppy to a gravel pit and shot it. And as long as she was in the shooting animals mood, she also fetched a smelly billy goat, took it to the gravel pit, and shot it too. Fewer people are concerned about the goat.

Cricket’s killer

Okay, maybe you weren’t really interested in how Freepers responded to the story. Maybe you hadn’t even given Freepers a moment of thought. Hell, you’d probably prefer not to think about them at all. And who could blame you? But because FreeRepublic is one of the more vitriolic and zealous branches of the MAGAverse, I’m inclined to see them through a canary-in-the-coal-mine lens. They can be predictive of MAGA behavior. So I periodically check in to see what these folks have to say about current events.

I assumed they’d defend Noem’s puppycide, and for the most part, they did. There was also a sizable anti-puppycide contingent. What surprised me (though it shouldn’t have) was a third group; people who were either pro-puppycide or puppycide ambivalent BUT were adamant that Noem’s problem was openly confessing to her puppycidal behavior. There were a LOT of ‘If you’re going to kill puppies, DON’T talk about it comments. In the interest of brevity, I’m only going to include this single example of this group:

How she could be so dumb to write about killing a puppy basically is beyond me.
by toddausauras

The discussion thread I reviewed was called This is The End of Kristie Noem Even if Trump Picks Her, so much of the ‘analysis’ and opinion was dribbled through a filter of her viability as a candidate for Comrade Trump’s vice presidential ticket. Maybe 15-20% of Freepers agreed that killing a puppy was, all by itself, disqualifying. Here’s a representative sample:

She can’t handle a simple 14 month old dog.
by NoLibZone

Noem said she “hated that dog” and deemed it “less than worthless”.
She killed it out of hate. And then she wrote about it in her book as if it were a perfectly normal thing to kill animals you hate. That is textbook sociopathic behavior.
by 10mm

Anyone that does something like this, and thinks it makes her seem like a leader, is a POS. Trump needs to pick a man, and skip the backward notion of women in high office. They try to hard to seem strong enough, and fail to realize that leadership and strength require thought as well as action.
by MagaMatt

While unlike Pit Bulls and some others, I think a wirehair pointer would quickly find adoption, and which should have been her choice. And where is the man of the house in all this?
by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)

A number of anti-puppycide Freepers seem to think Noem’s willingness to kill a puppy (and let’s not forget the male goat) had something to do with being a woman. I wasted some time trying to work out the misogynistic logic there. I mean, are they arguing that the puppycide could have been averted if only a strong man had been around to prevent her hysterical reaction? Or that killing a puppy is okay if a man does it? I gave up trying to reason that out; that way madness lies.

Cricket

The majority of Freeper responses fell into the pro-puppycide category. Some felt shooting the dog was acceptable though unfortunate. Most, however, defended her, arguing it was actually necessary for her to execute the puppy (and the goat). Predictably, some Freepers found it amusing; some actually reveled in the cruelty of the act. Here is a representative sample:

Puppy? Let me know when you adopt a “puppy” that attacks and eats your children.
by Responsibility2nd

A lot of people don’t understand that dogs aren’t only pets, some are actually working animals that are expected to do a job and their owners depend on their ability to do that job for their livelihood, and that if they can’t do their job their owners don’t have the resources either time or money to keep them as pets.
by Truthsearcher

She killed a dog?
Maybe the postal workers union will endorse her.
She may even become “Cat Fancier” magazine’s “Woman of the Year.”
by x (She’s only killing the dogs the illegals can’t be bothered killing.)

The joyful chicken killer.
Chicken Lives Matter.
How many eggs did Cricket produce?
by kiryandil

One of the biggest hopes America has of not going full-Islam is Americans’ love of dogs.
Regardless of how much sense can be made of her killing a dog, it won’t fly with the vast majority of dog owners.
We supposedly need some soccer moms to vote for Trump. Soccer moms are not going to vote for a dog-killer.
by who_would_fardels_bear

Noem did the right thing shooting the dog. You’re highly sensitive aren’t you?
by Macho MAGA Man

I find nothing wrong with killing a dog that wont hunt. or a nasty goat.
and a billy goat that is mean could hurt someone if it got out. and you can eat it.
by Ikeon (My only issues with stupid people are, they encouraged to talk and post stupid opinions.. )

I would like her even more if she made slippers from cricket’s pelt.
by Wilderness Conservative (Nature is the ultimate conservative)

These examples don’t show the actual scope of the Freep responses to Noem’s puppycide. There were several comments comparing shooting a puppy to abortion. Some ignored Noem and the puppycide altogether and just advocated other potential VP selections. And some comments had no obvious connection at all to the topic being discussed. But it wouldn’t be FreeRepublic without a bit of random casual racism, so I’ll add one more comment.

She had to have some Indian blood, as seen from the high cheekbones.
by nwrep

Noem, responding to folks to the anti-puppycide crowd, referred to this and other stories in her book as “real, honest, and politically incorrect.” Seriously, politically incorrect. As if there was a political stance involved in killing an adolescent dog.

It’s to be hoped that the title of her book is prophetic. Let’s hope there’s no coming back for her. Let’s hope the Freep discussion thread was accurate, that this IS the end of Kristi Noem.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We need to burn the patriarchy. Burn it and bury the ashes with a wooden stake driven directly through where its heart should have been. Then burn the stake. Burn the patriarchy and salt the earth where its ashes are buried. Keep salting the earth for generations. Then nuke it from orbit. Then tea and biscuits.