#BYEDON 2020 - The End Better Fucking Be Near

[Dakota Tebaldi]

LOL....Dumpy Don is angry-tweeting because the Cleveland Indians just announced that they're dropping "Indians" and choosing a new team name. Meanwhile as a Cleveland fan I couldn't be happier.

 

[Arkady Arkright]

Echoes of Boris ?

 

[Tove]

Echoes of Boris ?

This is what I replied in the limited char allotment for Twitter to this post:
Anyone who has gone to an Evangelistic, Born-again sort of church service has seen this in action. When people express surprise at how he's "fooled" that sort I know they've never attended such a service before.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

"The sentimentality of the common people ... a shabby imitation of real feeling ..." isn't pretentious and affected at all, amirite?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

"The sentimentality of the common people ... a shabby imitation of real feeling ..." isn't pretentious and affected at all, amirite?

Of course it sounds pretentious and affected -- it's Adorno, innit?

I think, if you re-read it, you'll see he's counterposing what he calls "the so-called common people" with what "educated people" say about them and their reaction to demagogues, and suggesting that, contrary to what the "educated people" think, the "common people" are perfectly well aware that the demagogue is enacting a deliberately overstated and clownish performance, and they appreciate it as such.

They get that the demagogue is trolling the libs, in other words, and they enjoy the show. The fact the troll is upsetting "educated people" by being such a vulgar clown, as it were, is all part of the commoners' joke in the educated, since they're in on the joke that it's a performance and the elite aren't.

They're not mistaking sentimentality for real feeling -- they understand it as a performance of the emotion rather than the emotion itself, and appreciate it as a performance on its own terms, in which they participate by shouting, cheering, hissing and booing at appropriate moments.

 

[Free]

I really don't understand what Trump hopes to accomplish by doing this.

One last final coup attempt is not beyond his farcical presidency, but in the end I think he's looking for the same effect as an 8-yo does when they toss the board and all the pieces after losing the game. It's just an uncontrolled, target-less tantrum.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

How did half the country—practical, hands-on, self-reliant Americans, still balancing family budgets and following complex repair manuals—slip into such cognitive decline when it came to politics? Blaming ignorance or stupidity would be a mistake. You have to summon an act of will, a certain energy and imagination, to replace truth with the authority of a con man like Trump. Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, describes the susceptibility to propaganda of the atomized modern masses, “obsessed by a desire to escape from reality because in their essential homelessness they can no longer bear its accidental, incomprehensible aspects.” They seek refuge in “a man-made pattern of relative consistency” that bears little relation to reality. Though the U.S. is still a democratic republic, not a totalitarian regime, and Trump was an all-American demagogue, not a fascist dictator, his followers abandoned common sense and found their guide to the world in him. Defeat won’t change that.

A Political Obituary for Donald Trump

The effects of his reign will linger. But democracy survived.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Her book, Hiding in Plain Sight, detailing Trump's long relationship with international organised crime really is excellent.

Hiding in Plain Sight | Sarah Kendzior | Macmillan

Instant New York Times BestsellerWashington Post BestsellerUSA Today BestsellerIndie Bound BestsellerAuthors Round the South BestsellerMidwest Indie Bestsell...

us.macmillan.com

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Free]

Maybe, but I wouldn't be afraid of looking in Trump's freezer.

 

[Cristiano]

Life will only get worse for Mike Pence as Trump unravels on the way out

Poor Mike Pence. He’s having a real lousy month, and the next 37 days are about to become even less happy and gay.It’s bad enough having to deal with the movers. They’re having a little trouble understanding this entire “we’re still not sure we’re leaving, but we thought we’d line you up just in...

www.rawstory.com

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Maybe, but I wouldn't be afraid of looking in Trump's freezer.

I wouldn't get anywhere near any of Trump's appliances until they've been disinfected and quarantined.

 

[Free]

I wouldn't get anywhere near any of Trump's appliances until they've been disinfected and quarantined.

If his appliances are quarantined, I'm not sure you'd be allowed near them.

 

[Free]

Firing people before xmas. What a Scrooge!

EDIT: MOAR...

Some Men Walk With Giants. Bill Barr Walks Behind Giants—With a Shovel.

Twice, William Barr has been Attorney General of the United States. And twice he has proven to be a willing footman for political deceit and political corruption.

www.esquire.com

 

[Rose Karuna]

Love this:

 

[Free]

Aww, poor Republicans...

Trump antagonizes Republicans with Georgia fundraising ploy

Emails and texts raising cash for Trump's PAC have rankled Republicans, who want cash to flow directly to Georgia's endangered GOP senators.

www.politico.com

President Donald Trump couldn’t make it any clearer: He needs his supporters to fork over cash for the all-important Georgia Senate runoff elections.

“We MUST defend Georgia from the Dems!” he wrote in one recent text message. “I need YOU to secure a WIN in Georgia,” he said in another. “Help us WIN both Senate races in Georgia & STOP Socialist Dems,” he pleaded a few days later.

There’s just one hitch: Trump’s new political machine is pocketing most of the dough — and the campaigns of the Georgia senators competing in the Jan. 5 races aren’t getting a cent.

The grift machine is running full out.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Trump hasn't been appointing judges because they agree with him, though.

He's been appointing judges recommended to him by the Federalist Society, who are interested in promoting a particular conservative theory of legal interpretation, which many wealthy Americans find attractive because it seems to regard the right to acquire and hold as much wealth as possible, with as little interference as possible from the federal government, as the keystone of all other American freedoms.

However, that's not all that conservative legal theorists believe -- they also believe very strongly in an independent judiciary, and the idea that they owe any favours to the president who appointed them, let alone that they should participate in an attempted coup on his behalf, will be as repulsive to them as it is to every other right-thinking person.

Credit where it's due -- the conduct of state and federal judges at all levels during this massive abuse of the judicial process and attempted coup has been exemplary. They've treated this seditious nonsense with the contempt it deserves, no matter who appointed them.

I'm sure Trump is fuming because he would have THOUGHT these judges would owe him something... but I think you're right.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

William Barr's exit is bad news for Trump's hopes of an 11th-hour pardoning spree | Lloyd Green

In addition to Trump mulling a self-pardon, he’s also considering family members and Rudy Giuliani – but Barr’s words may come back to haunt him

www.theguardian.com

Suggests that Trump really needed someone like Barr to craft pardons wouldn't put Trump in grave danger of prosecution for obstruction of justice by granting them.

So now he's well and truly snookered himself, because Barr's guile and expertise can't be readily replaced, not even by such eminent professionals as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Lol, caught this over on Reddit. Each person was adding a part. At one point they had an extra one in there about an electoral college victory, but I think they were drunk.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, the US gave to me:

Twelve super spreaders

Eleven wasted witnesses

Ten temper tantrums

Nine calls for sedition

Eight imprisoned Proud Boys

Seven tweets a-raging

Six staffers coughing

Fiiiive sets of handcuffs!

Four years of Biden

Three Trumps a-crying

Two COVID shots

And a Bill Barr resignation!