Plenty of talk about the Gazan genocide that didn’t involve BB around the 3rd/4th.
“Of course they’re human but I want them slaughtered anyway.”
Fuck off, Waldo.
I’ve tried to follow this thread, but everytime nemo makes some self-serving, dismissive proclamation that nemo and only the all wise nemo knows The Right Way to fight trump, fascism, or any wrong in the world, makes me roll my eyes, and I get a headache. I give up.
This current P&E thread is a good demonstration of what the OP was getting at way upthread.
No personal animus against Crane. Despondency in the face of the Trump administration’s actions is excusable. It’s just that “US invasion of Canada” isn’t the kind of thing to which the U.S. anti-Trump populace should feel compelled to immediately devote resources.
Let’s watch what happens in Portland. Probably nothing, but Trump will broadcast triumph and move on to what is next.
I agree with your point, but there may come a time when known only to the mind of Trump, we will teeter on the brink.
Correct, Oregon’s governor has already warned Trump off as Pritzker did in Illinois. From Monday’s Status Kuo Substack:
Whenever Trump says something crazy (“We’re going to war in Chicago! I’m ordering Pam Bondi to prosecute my enemies! I’m sending troops into Portland!”), we should first hit pause. Begin from the presumption that Trump is saying something to grab attention, and that he relishes how everyone jumps and scrambles to deal with whatever consequences will flow from his words.
Whether he will follow through—and if he does whether it will be effective—are different questions entirely. In the case of invading Chicago or Portland with the “full force” of the military, he backed down over Chicago and last night apparently backed down over Portland after Gov. Tina Kotek actually spoke with him and explained that what Fox News was showing him wasn’t the reality on the ground.
What we get instead are displays of force meant to demonstrate power without actually seizing it. We saw this in the MacArthur Park display in Los Angeles, on the streets of downtown Chicago yesterday, and around D.C. with the National Guard. The White House knows it has to be careful not to cross the line, however, or it could face adverse judicial rulings as in California. Indeed, even while Gov. Kotek was defusing the situation, she and the mayor of Portland filed a lawsuit on Sunday to challenge the troop deployment.
The fact is, as Pete Buttigieg noted on social media, in a post seen by over five million users, Trump is not as popular as he wants us to believe, and we are far more powerful than he wants us to think. This is particularly true in the blue states, where his ability to deploy troops is constrained by our federal system and the Posse Comitatus Act.
When Trump threatens a city within a blue state, it gives another governor and another mayor a crack at reasserting the limits of his power. Each time he does it and backs down—in Los Angeles, California; in Chicago, Illinois and now in Portland, Oregon—another pair of blue angels earns their wings. That means the important thing isn’t that Trump has threatened another city, as he will continue to do just to grab attention and freak people out. The important thing is to look at and appreciate how effectively the leadership and the citizens of that city stood up to him and helped shore up our system.
But Trump need only succeed in his own mind to encourage him to move on. He keeps saying that Washington DC is a revitalized community without crime and with citizens mowing previously unkept lawns. It is a Trump created utopia. Portland is next.
Let’s see what happens. NPR put out a good wrap-up article about all this earlier today. Looks like at the moment, Hegseth is still aiming to mobilize some of Oregon’s National Guard into Portland.
I think Little Nemo makes a good point.
When rational people talk among themselves it’s fine to compare Trump with Hitler or Putin. (Although Hitler was a fiery orator with well-defined goals for the German nation, while Trump babbles incoherently and is almost too illiterate to read a teleprompter. And although Putin has organized Russia into a giant criminal organization with Putin controlling as much wealth as Elon Musk, while Trump pursues only blatant or simple-minded grifts, and even plays as baby brat to steal a gold trophy.)
But MAGA supporters are a stupid unimaginative bunch and only the most clear-cut anti-Trump claims should be made when trying to pound sense into their heads.
Yesterday, Trump told America’s generals that American cities should be training grounds for our troops.
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that any other leader, one with nukes, said something like that. If you’re not terrified about what he might do, “hysterical”, I guess, then you should be terrified that he’s the one that controls the nukes with essentially no checks. I think anti-Trump hysteria is warranted.
The problem is that it’s a fool’s cause to try to convince these people, and there are a lot of other people who could probably be energized and mobilized if we turn our efforts to them instead.
I’m happy to leave the work of convincing MAGA and MAGA-adjacent folks to organizations like this one: https://leavingmaga.org/
The rest of us should find groups of people who are actually reachable by people like us, and talk to them. It’s far more efficient.
One thing never to lose sight of – from Scott Galloway:
Arguably the most powerful person in domestic politics. Right now is Epstein posthumously because he basically shut down the government. And in order for Speaker Johnson to try and get this out of the news cycle, he dismissed Congress early. And I believe, and, and this is my thesis, that there are 5 or 6 people in a room querying AI. How do we keep Epstein out of the news cycle? I think there was a concerted, methodical and quite frankly quite effective strategy right now of everyday pushing Epstein out of the media cycle.
“Flood the zone with bullshit” and “muzzle velocity” were Steve Bannon’s pithy phrases to characterize their style of ‘governance.’
I think he confused ‘governance’ and ‘control.’
Naw. As another thread so eloquently stated my views, I am bored. You just can’t begin to fathom how utterly fucking bored I am of this blustery, yet harmless, administration.
Now you’ve got my curiosity up, and I am wondering what the fuck would excite you?
A outright delusional statement, considering that they’ve done vast amounts of harm. Was Jack the Ripper just a harmless prankster to you?
Jack the Ripper was not dangerous to MALE prostitutes!
The Trump administration is harmless?
That’s the most willfully ignorant, or most shockingly naive thing I’ve read since Trump’s first election.
So true.
Trump, Mr. “I want my Nobel Peace prize and I will kill to get it” Is just itching to start a war.
And he has. It’s a war against the USA.
(Quote is Jay Kuo’s)
Excellent point. Lots of what Trump is doing is truly awful and must be resisted…but we shouldn’t waste energy on things that are mostly just performative bluster.