Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, July 27, 2017

It's Getting Worse

One of the things you heard in those countless "What do Trump voters think now?" pieces that have flooded the intertubes since November is that "Of course Trump is shaking things up.  That's what we wanted."

Less ignorant observers of the norms and standards of governance shook their heads at this sort of thinking, like the Presidency is a floundering reality show that needs a more flamboyant lead actor to juice its ratings.  Other Trump voters would follow this up with, "He's new to government; give him a chance."

Well, at this point, all Trump has demonstrated is that he remains manifestly unfit to be president.  What's more, his behavior is getting worse, not better.  The half-baked Twitterendum on transgender service members is a great example.  Whatever support he might have garnered by relying on cover from the Pentagon and building coalitions in Congress was squandered by the fact that Trump is getting hammered and wants to throw red meat to his base and the Talibangelicals that constitute that base wanted their hate rewarded.

His hiring of Scaramucci - a parody of a Long Island stock market dudebro, what someone called the personification of a double-parked BMW - represents a doubling-down on his aggressive, dominance fueled political style.  The same can be said of his hazing of Jeff Sessions, in that it demonstrates his basic lack of human decency and his need for soothing pledges of personal loyalty, as opposed to respecting the norms of his office.

Everything we are seeing suggests the following:

- Trump remains as out of his depth as he did on January 20th.
- He is incapable of growing into the office.
- The scandals around him are real and growing tighter around him.
- As those scandals grow, he will lash out impulsively at any target that is handy.
- This will cause him to lose allies, one by one, until he is more paranoid and isolated than Nixon was.
- He has access to the nuclear codes.

Thanks a fucking ton, Republicans...

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