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Post-Trump: III (decline, further tantrums, legal proceedings, book deals etc)

tones said:
This, it seems to me, goes to the heart of the US dilemma. There's a view that the US should be a nation of rugged frontiersfolk, looking after themselves, with zero interference from the government. From this comes the Republican belief in low taxation, in Grover Nyquist's famous formulation, eventually to reduce the government to such a size that it can be drowned in a bathtub.
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I find that aspect of the US right mindset incomprehensible, it is just insane, though I feel that way about religion too, and that’s obviously right in the mix here too.

One of the YouTube guitar/music-tech bloggers, ‘Brad the Guitologist’, I used to follow is now facing actual terrorism charges after going all Trump/libertarian anti-mask nutter at a local school. I unsubscribed after the last US election after it became clear he was on the total delusion/anti-democracy side of the political map and it was clearly starting to impact his content. Since then he looks to have turned into Charles Manson:


PS FWIW I do think he has a legitimate point with regard to masks and his autistic daughter. Here in the UK she would be exempt for that reason. The rest is however batshit libertarianism with an ugly underlying current of white supremacy, as right-wing libertarianism always has. I found it fascinating and depressing just how far clearly bright people can fall down such an ugly rabbit hole. He’s a really good guitar/guitar amp tech and his channel used to stick to that content.
 
tones said:
This, it seems to me, goes to the heart of the US dilemma. There's a view that the US should be a nation of rugged frontiersfolk, looking after themselves, with zero interference from the government. From this comes the Republican belief in low taxation, in Grover Nyquist's famous formulation, eventually to reduce the government to such a size that it can be drowned in a bathtub.
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I'm not sure which is the chicken and which the egg - I have not lived in the US for long enough.

Perhaps Americans were more, for want of a better word, collectivist, before Reagan took office and the GOP started their decades long propaganda war to persuade Americans that government was the problem and not the solution. It's my belief that the GOP don't really believe any of this, but it's a way to cut social programs so that they can both cut taxes and funnel what remains of federal spending to their crony chums. They are basically looting the nation dry under the false pretext of libertarianism.
 
sean99 said:
It's my belief that the GOP don't really believe any of this, but it's a way to cut social programs so that they can both cut taxes and funnel what remains of federal spending to their crony chums. They are basically looting the nation dry under the false pretext of libertarianism.
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And that, with only detail differences, is exactly the same process employed by the current Tories in the UK. When you cut through all of the bollox,it is simply legalised theft.
 
tones said:
Speaking of craziness, and I apologise if this subject has previously surfaced, if anyone has never heard of the, er, art of Jon McNaughton, this sample, "Spirit of 2024", should put you off forever:

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This stuff is pure comedy. Or would be if it weren't so frightening.

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tones said:
Heather Cox Richardson's latest letter starts off interestingly:

This morning, on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, personality Steve Doocy told viewers to get the coronavirus vaccine because it would “save your life” and noted that 99% of the people now dying from Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Brian Kilmeade answered that not getting the vaccine is a personal choice and that the government has no role in protecting the population. “That’s not their job. It’s not their job to protect anybody,” he said.
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All the more ironic as it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote that "[T]he care of human life & happiness, & not their destruction, is the first & only legitimate object of good government."
 
The Bish said:
WTF - why is Trump wearing Alan Partridge's jacket? This is either high parody a la cold war steve or deeply scary.
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As with so much right wing noise, it may look like parody but the "artist" is totally sincere. So, yes, deeply scary.
 
An entire party of nutters, it seems - from today's FT:

https://www.ft.com/content/76f9fdc2-3449-4c97-80c6-47c6625aa1d2

An excerpt:

The finality of Trump’s ownership became clear this week at the hearing into the January 6 assault on Capitol Hill. It is worth stressing how rapidly the party has evolved since then. In January, Republican leaders condemned the insurrection that was meant to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and harm those presiding, including Mike Pence, the vice-president. Their disgust did not seem feigned. Within a couple of weeks they had switched to saying that America should let sleeping dogs lie, especially since Trump was no longer president. Let the law take care of the most egregious offenders.

Their next mental leap was to fan the conspiracy theory that the assault was infiltrated by leftwing groups, such as Black Lives Matter, with the help of the FBI, to besmirch the Republican name. Finally, as we saw this week, the centre of gravity has moved to a purely Trumpian account of January 6: the hearings are a partisan witch hunt; aside from a few probably implanted miscreants, those involved were true patriots. Many of these accounts coexist. Trump’s gentler apologists say that half the country has lost faith in the integrity of the US election system and their voices need to be heard too. Others say Biden is a traitor. They are all on the same bullet train that is heading for Mar-a-Lago.

Paul Krugman of the NYT has been saying for a long time that one of the US parties has lost its mind. There can now be no doubt. And they're not even trying to disguise their villainy! What's going to happen at the next election when their committees start to overturn votes that they don't like? The USA goes through periodic bouts of craziness, but has always recovered. But this time?
 
TheDecameron said:
Trump doesn’t pay taxes because he has the smarts. Everyone should be like Trump.
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That appears to be the general feeling of many Americans. It was hotel heiress Leona Hemsley who famously said that "only little people pay taxes". The US research head of a major client said that he really didn't care if the road leading to his beautiful driveway was full of potholes, so long as he didn't have to pay any taxes to keep it in repair. And a US colleague, when confronted with the fact that wealthy people such as Trump pay miniscule taxes, simply said, "They can afford clever accountants", leaving it in no doubt that he wished he could afford such accountants. In the end, it all appears to boil down to the Eleventh Commandment, thou shalt not get caught doing it.
 
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What it boils down to is that the wealthy classes have no sense of collective responsibility.

That's probably a factor in how they got wealthy in the first place, and it's certainly a factor in how they stay that way.
 
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