#JAILTOTHECHIEF- Shit Just Got Real

[danielravennest]

Welp

[Taliban do what is expected]

HISTORIC PEACE DEAL

Anyone who thought the Taliban would stop fighting after signing a deal with the Great Satan America is an idiot.

 

[Free]

Great Satan America

Is that some new theme park they built in Alabama?

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

It's a clutching action triggered by fear. The GOP and Trump have focused on generating fear as a political weapon, and so far it's worked out pretty well for them. Fox News uses the same tactic for the same agenda.

One important milestone in this were for sure the 9/11 events and how those were handled by the government and exploited ever since then.

Instead of seeking advice from countries who were used to decade spanning terror first and how to deal with it in a proper way like let's say Spain or the UK, it was the start of the "war on terror." Which is nonsense in itself, because terror is asymmetrical warfare and you cannot win against terror using your army - unless you are willing to maybe bomb an entire country into oblivion, and even this just will breed new terror. The "war on terror" is in reality the most succesful, biggest terror breeding measure ever. But for many Americans I guess this might be hard to understand.

One root problem is this eternal war; the other the self awareness of many Americans as "we are the good guys" while the external awareness in many countries is let's say more tricky than that.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump’s baffling coronavirus vaccine event - The Washington Post

Trump’s baffling coronavirus vaccine event Yet despite the increasingly scary situation involving the disease and preparations having been underway for weeks, he still appears rather clueless on the s...

www.evernote.com

 

[Kara Spengler]

I am going to guess it is because donnieco has plenty of idiotic things about this already. Like donnie asking if you can cure covid with a solid (huh?) influenza shot.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Sure, this thread.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

What I have concluded is that it all comes down to preserving white male privilege.

Fixed that for you.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Here's an interesting article named "How to destroy a government" in "The Atlantic" from an inside of working for the government view which describes how Trump was able to stabilize his power. You really should read the whole report, which showcases how Trump crushed many careers because those people were too indepedent thinking for his own taste while they were just doing their job, made America his bitch and it gives a very much disturbing insight on the status quo. And the status quo is similar to Hitler after becoming Reichskanzler in 1933, Trump is the head of a weakened state, rerouting all important power levers to himself using fear and by installing 1000% butt licking loyalists whereever possible - loyal only to him, not the state of course. While not finished the damage done is already pretty high on America becoming more similar to an autocracy like Russia.

When Donald Trump came into office, there was a sense that he would be outmatched by the vast government he had just inherited.

The new president was impetuous, bottomlessly ignorant, almost chemically inattentive, while the bureaucrats were seasoned, shrewd, protective of themselves and their institutions. They knew where the levers of power lay and how to use them or prevent the president from doing so. Trump’s White House was chaotic and vicious, unlike anything in American history, but it didn’t really matter as long as “the adults” were there to wait out the president’s impulses and deflect his worst ideas and discreetly pocket destructive orders lying around on his desk.

After three years, the adults have all left the room—saying just about nothing on their way out to alert the country to the peril—while Trump is still there.

James Baker, the former general counsel of the FBI, and a target of Trump’s rage against the state, acknowledges that many government officials, not excluding himself, went into the administration convinced “that they are either smarter than the president, or that they can hold their own against the president, or that they can protect the institution against the president because they understand the rules and regulations and how it’s supposed to work, and that they will be able to defend the institution that they love or served in previously against what they perceive to be, I will say neutrally, the inappropriate actions of the president. And I think they are fooling themselves. They’re fooling themselves. He’s light-years ahead of them.”

The adults were too sophisticated to see Trump’s special political talents—his instinct for every adversary’s weakness, his fanatical devotion to himself, his knack for imposing his will, his sheer staying power. They also failed to appreciate the advanced decay of the Republican Party, which by 2016 was far gone in a nihilistic pursuit of power at all costs. They didn’t grasp the readiness of large numbers of Americans to accept, even relish, Trump’s contempt for democratic norms and basic decency. It took the arrival of such a leader to reveal how many things that had always seemed engraved in monumental stone turned out to depend on those flimsy norms, and how much the norms depended on public opinion. Their vanishing exposed the real power of the presidency. Legal precedent could be deleted with a keystroke; law enforcement’s independence from the White House was optional; the separation of powers turned out to be a gentleman’s agreement; transparent lies were more potent than solid facts. None of this was clear to the political class until Trump became president.

[...]

In his fourth year in power, Trump has largely succeeded in making the executive branch work on his personal behalf. He hasn’t done it by figuring out how to operate the bureaucratic levers of power, or by installing leaders with a vision of policy that he shares, or by channeling a popular groundswell into government action. He’s done it by punishing perceived enemies, co‑opting craven allies, and driving out career officials of competence and integrity. The result is a thin layer of political loyalists on top of a cowed bureaucracy.

Justice and State were obvious targets for Trump, but the rest of the executive branch is being similarly, if more quietly, bent to his will. One of every 14 political appointees in the Trump administration is a lobbyist; they largely run domestic policy. Trump’s biggest donors now have easy access to agency heads and to the president himself, as they swell his reelection coffers. In the last quarter of 2019, while being impeached, Trump raised nearly $50 million. His corruption of power, unprecedented in recent American history, only compounds the money corruption that first created the swamp.

Within the federal government, career officials are weighing outside job opportunities against their pension plans and their commitment to their oaths. More than 1,000 scientists have left the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and other agencies, according to The Washington Post. Almost 80 percent of employees at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture have quit. The Labor Department has made deep cuts in the number of safety inspectors, and worker deaths nationwide have increased dramatically, while recalls of unsafe consumer products have dropped off. When passing laws and changing regulations prove onerous, the Trump administration simply guts the government of expertise so that basic functions wither away, the well-connected feed on the remains, and the survivors keep their heads down, until the day comes when they face the same choice as McCabe and Yovanovitch: do Trump’s dirty work or be destroyed.

Four years is an emergency. Eight years is a permanent condition. “Things can hold together to the end of the first term, but after that, things fall apart,” Malinowski said. “People start leaving in droves. It’s one thing to commit four years of your life to the institution in the hope that you can be there for its restoration. It’s another to commit eight years. I can’t even wrap my head around what that would be like.”

The President Is Winning His War on American Institutions

How Trump is destroying the civil service and bending the government to his will

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Brenda Archer]

Sure, this thread.

Yes. This crap.

If they send one of these jokers to Washington they deserve the mockery they will get from “coastal elites.” But it’s worse than that.

Genuine progressives and members of religious, racial and other minorities understand fully that the Neo-Confederates have declared war on the rest of us. I’m not using the word “war” as a metaphor. On every level from dealing with individuals to bureaucrats, if I suspect I’m dealing with an Evangelical or a White nationalist, I watch for the punishment they are ready to dish out. All it takes is their finding out I’m not one of them. Some of them will merely be impatient, some are now empowered to twist the rules to deliver real damage. They’re dangerous.

They don’t care what happens to their targets. They don’t care if they cost someone their job, housing or healthcare. This is on an individual level, and it scales up. These people know they are not sending statesmen to DC, they’re sending bouncers and bikers looking to start a fight with the rest of us.

They’re at war, and the rest of the country is starting to understand. I hope it’s enough to drive turnout. In many ways, the coup has already happened, but even a rigged election shows voter intention and is pushback.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Ugh, 'Bama, you do you.....

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

105 million couldn't be arsed to show up.

3rd party voters in a swing state.

Enjoy.

How the Roberts Court Abandoned Bipartisan Consensus

Relying on 5–4 decisions hurts the court’s credibility.

slate.com

 

[Fionalein]

This is a joke post, right?

Well, Twitter is about as "Left" as Stalin... that is technically not at all but they like to claim to be.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Trump's Coronavirus Press Conference Was the Apotheosis of 40 Years of Republican Philosophy

The neglect of science, the rejection of empiricism, the deliberately cultivated incompetence within the institutions of government.

www.esquire.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

They just can't help themselves:

A mini-diplomatic row may be brewing after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the coronavirus as the "Wuhan virus" - for the second day in a row.

Asked in a CNBC interview on Friday about the success of China's response to the outbreak, Mr Pompeo said: "I'm happy you complimented the Chinese Communist Party today, but remember this is the Wuhan coronavirus that's caused this."

And a day earlier, Mr Pompeo spoke about the "Wuhan virus' spread" when referring to US aid for countries hit by the virus.

His comments are likely to anger China, which is yet to publicly comment on the issue.

The novel coronavirus is believed to have originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan last year.

Diplomatic row brewing over 'Wuhan virus' comments

 

[Kara Spengler]

They just can't help themselves:




Diplomatic row brewing over 'Wuhan virus' comments

Considering the official term is covid 19 to avoid racism ...

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Considering the official term is covid 19 to avoid racism ...

But isn't it derogatory towards crows?

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

But isn't it derogatory towards crows?

Crows are Corvids', not covids.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I swear, every week that goes by he looks more and more like he's "Wearing an Edgar Suit"

He's so far down in the uncanny valley now that I've seen badly scripted animatronics that seemed more realistically lifelike.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

I swear, every week that goes by he looks more and more like he's "Wearing and Edgar Suit"

For those who don't know the reference:

He's so far down in the uncanny valley now that I've seen badly scripted animatronics that seemed more realistically lifelike.

Seriously, he sort of does look uncanny valley, though for me it's Jared Kushner that marks off the "alien plastic android" checkbox.