Tag Archives: Donald Trump

A brutal summary of Trump’s Presidency

Posted on by The Old Wolf

A tweet from Ethical American (@AmericanEthical) which deserves to be read and shared widely.

Edit: A comment made me aware that Ethical American is not the original author, but: Redditor u/techsinger posted it because the original author encouraged people to share it widely. Redditor u/GaterMachetteSr then posted it to r/copypasta. Hence Ethical American was reposting with implicit permission, rather than stealing it. I’m still trying to track down the OP for attribution.

Edit 2: The earliest instance of this that I’ve found was by user paddyC at the politics.ie forum, dated 16 Feb 2021. Still trying to determine if sir or madam is the original author.

Only slightly bowdlerized for a family-friendly audience.

Click to view the original thread.

For what it’s worth, every one of the items listed here has been documented with painful clarity. This isn’t “fake news.” This is the real deal.

I owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology.  I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency these last four years and am still exhausted from the experience. But to be fair President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than when he:

• incited an insurrection against the government
• mismanaged a pandemic that killed nearly half a million Americans
• separated children from their families
• lost those children in the bureaucracy
• tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church
• tried to block all Muslims from entering the country
• got impeached
• got impeached again
• had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history
• pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden
• fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia
• bragged about firing the FBI director on TV
• took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community
• diverted military funding to build his wall
• caused the longest government shutdown in US history
• called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate”
• lied over 30,000 times
• banned transgender people from serving in the military
• ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions
• vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers
• refused to release his tax returns
• increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion
• had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history
• called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers
• coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist
• refused to concede the 2020 election
• hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House
• walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl
• called neo-Nazis “very fine people”
• suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID
• abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey
• pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans
• incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic
• withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords
• withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal
• withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances
• insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter
• pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op
• failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies
• called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries
• called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation”
• claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere
• forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader
• believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe
• suggested the US should buy Greenland
• colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court
• justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges
• repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people”
• claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases
• violated the emoluments clause
• thought that Nambia was a country
• told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public
• called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “pussy” for following the Constitution
• nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet
• nominated a corrupt head of the EPA
• nominated a corrupt head of HHS
• nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department
• nominated a corrupt head of the USDA
• praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies
• refused to allow the presidential transition to begin
• insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death
• spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president
• falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote
• called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser”
• falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year
• considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions
• mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID
• locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones
• used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus”
• hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted
• of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser
• pardoned several of his shady associates
• gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his [ ] crazy conspiracy theories
• got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia
• had a Secretary of State who called him a moron
• forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history
• botched the COVID vaccine rollout
• tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him
• charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties
• constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate
• claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear
• called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas”
• used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise
• opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling
• got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers
• claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US
• ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings
• blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining
• redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle
• got played by Kim Jong Un and his “love letters”
• threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution
• botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico
• threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them
• pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes
• thought that the Virgin islands had a President
• drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane
• allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing
• rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos
• pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID
• rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers
• held blatant campaign rallies at the White House
• tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man
• refused to attend his successors’ inauguration
• nominated the worst Education Secretary in history
• threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted
• attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci
• promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t)
• allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues
• struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble
• called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ”
• threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders
• went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a
• pandemic
• claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts”
• seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution
• demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director
• praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles
• completely gutted the Voice of America
• placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service
• claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower
• suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country
• suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public
• overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported
• reduced the number of refugees the US accepts
• insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames
• gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address
• named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties
• eliminated the White House office of pandemic response
• used soldiers as campaign props
• fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him
• demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade
• hired a [] ton of white nationalists
• politicized the civil service
• did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked US
• falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts
• claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won
• insulted reporters of color
• insulted women reporters
• insulted women reporters of color
• suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs
• attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him
• summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election
• spent countless hours every day watching Fox News
• refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas
• hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer
• tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him
• acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney
• attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault
• held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present
• didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media
• stopped holding press briefings for months at a time
• “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power
• led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform
• claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers
• tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course
• suggested that the government nuke hurricanes
• suggested that wind turbines cause cancer
• said that he had a special aptitude for science
• fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure
• blurted out classified information to Russian officials
• tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida
• fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban
• hired Stephen Miller
• openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them
• interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel
• abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war
• tried to get Russia back into the G7
• held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden
• seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive
• lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated
• falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t
• shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies
• still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan
• still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure”
• forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID
• told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”
• [botched] the Census
• withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic
• did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings”
• allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act
• seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican
• stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win
• constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor
• whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump
• claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened
• said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake
• claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him
• claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President
• created a commission to whitewash American history
• retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain
• claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there
• hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims
• had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others
• bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties
• apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House
• stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians
• falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police
• said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about
• tried to rescind protection from DREAMers
• gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic
• tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax
• said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states
• deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented
• claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln
• touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all
• retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile
• forced through security clearances for his family
• suggested that police officers should rough up suspects
• suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs
• tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender
• suggested the US not accept COVID patients from  a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher
• nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy
• retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “[F] tha Police” at a campaign event
• hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags
• accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address
• claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia
• mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault
• obsessed over low-flow toilets
• ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release
• called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek)
• hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech
• took advice from the MyPillow guy
• claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists
• said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition
• never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign
• falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent
• announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary
• to resign in protest
• insulted the leader of Canada
• insulted the leader of France
• insulted the leader of Britain
• insulted the leader of Germany
• insulted the leader of Sweden
• falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues
• blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually
• continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders
• said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked
• left a NATO summit early in a huff
• stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that
• called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary
• refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise
• and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.
• But other than that…

If there is any justice in the world, they will be.

Oh, and don’t forget when he

• evilly mocked a disabled reporter¹
• told America that if he didn’t win in 2020 the election was rigged
• insisted that he won the 2020 election (The Big Lie)
• incited a mob of followers to attack the Capitol on January 6th, and promised that he would be there with them (he wasn’t)
• watched with glee as the events of January 6th unfolded
• continues to this date to insist that the election was stolen and that he is the legitimate president of the United States

The Old Wolf has spoken

Footnotes

¹ Of all the horrors that The Thermonuclear Bowel Evacuation Formerly Disgracing the Oval Office perpetrated upon America, this is the one which early on showed me that he is nothing but a cruel, pathologically-motivated third-grade schoolyard bully from a terminally-corrupt family, one who should never have been allowed within 10,000 miles of any seat of government or power or influence.

How the Confederacy Survived the Civil War

Posted on by The Old Wolf

This is a Twitter thread from Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) on June 11, 2020, condensed here for easier reading and without all the responses – many of which are simply ignorant and do nothing to improve the conversation. You can visit the original thread here.

Jared Yates Sexton

All right. Let’s talk about how the Confederacy survived the Civil War, was absorbed into our culture, laws, and politics, and remains an everpresent threat we must destroy. I didn’t know any of this until I started researching American Rule.

First things first, the Confederacy is hardly dealt with in our history or curricula. There’s a reason the Civil War is reduced to a history of battles and military maneuvers. To look any deeper would mean an actual reckoning with white supremacy and power in America.

The truth is that the Confederacy considered itself the true ancestor of America and that the North had betrayed America’s founding and purpose as a white supremacist state. It wasn’t a different country. It was America interpreted as a white supremacist nation.

There’s a reason why George Washington is all over Confederate iconography. Why Jefferson Davis was inaugurated in the shadow of a Washington statue. The Confederacy was battling over the United States of America, not creating a separate nation.

And for all of the lies about it being about state’s rights, it was explicitly about white supremacy, which Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens made clear in so many words. Stephens, by the way, still has a statue in the Capitol.

Another reason we don’t talk about the Confederacy is because it was a twisted version of America, with its blatant white supremacy and its basis in white-identity Christianity. As the South lost battles, its leaders demanded humiliation, days of prayer, reckoning with God.

As I’ve mentioned before, Confederate preachers told Southerners that the Christian God was white supremacist, that he demanded white supremacy as the law of the land. The Confederacy saw itself as the real America and God’s chosen nation.

In addition to not understanding what the Confederacy was, the myth that it simply went away when it surrendered militarily has done massive damage. America re-absorbed the Confederacy and ingested its blatant white supremacy and continued its customs and laws.

To get into this properly and deal with our history, we must reckon with our myths, including the messiah-ization of Abraham Lincoln, who had troubling views on race and even tried to sell freed slaves to other countries to remove them from America.

There is a possibility Lincoln could have continued evolving had he not been assassinated, but we’ll never know. That murder, however, created a scenario wherein America could make its post-Civil War reality into a mythologized moment of redemption.

Instantly, Lincoln was turned into a martyr, his death a moment of redemption and a chance for spilled blood to scrub America’s sins clean. It was a Christianized myth that served to hide our history and the reality of race in America.

In this twisted marriage of national and Christian myth, Washington became the Father, Lincoln the Messiah Son, and Americanism the Holy Spirit. The narrative was that Lincoln had saved us from white supremacy and that America was now ready for an equal future.

What we don’t discuss much is Andrew Johnson, who took over following Lincoln’s death. Johnson was a toxic white supremacist who fought against Reconstruction and denied dignity and rights for freed slaves. This is what happened.

Johnson told black luminaries like Frederick Douglass that equal rights were an abomination and that blacks had conspired with Southern slave owners against poor whites. Johnson was disgusting and hindered the project of equality from the beginning.

Johnson installed white supremacists as governors in the south, including Florida’s William Marvin, who told freed slaves to still call their masters “master” and that they were not equal to white people and to never believe otherwise.

Meanwhile, white supremacists worked behind the scenes to create laws that could keep freed slaves as close “to the condition of slavery” as possible. The developing laws were meant to hide the insidiousness of blatant white supremacy behind laws and government.

As this was done, paramilitary groups like the KKK performed domestic terrorism, attacking African Americans using their new freedom, as well as the white allies who helped them. In this way, the Confederacy became an invisible empire enforced by law and violence.

US Grant, as president, fought against this continued Confederacy, empowering organizations and waging war on the KKK. But white voters grew tired of their taxes and his means of waging that war. They let down African Americans in a huge way.

Reconstruction was hindered by propaganda that claimed it was a means of helping lazy and inept African Americans, a conspiracy against white southerners. Meanwhile, the black community organized at record pace and was incredibly successful despite these setbacks.

The man who arguably killed Reconstruction before it was complete was Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president. Hayes wasn’t even that interested in the presidency, but promised if supported he would return the South to white supremacist southerners.

To continue the story, for years the South worked with white supremacist laws. Eventually, academics like Woodrow Wilson would use their work to wash the Confederacy clean of its white supremacy and portray it as dignified, and the war as being over state’s rights.

Wilson was a disgusting racist whose work claimed Southern slave owners loved their slaves and that they were wrongly attacked. This “Lost Cause” mythology sought to protect white supremacy and changed history completely. Unfortunately, it was incredibly successful.

Wilson’s writings eventually inspired projects like Birth of a Nation, that completely revised Construction and the post-Civil War South, portraying the KKK as necessary heroes. This affected our collective history in terrifying ways.

It was around this time that so many of the Confederate statues we’re now tearing down were put in place to continue the revision of history and remind African Americans that the Confederacy survived the Civil War in our culture, laws, and politics.

Wilson used his revised history to scrub America cleans of its sins in preparation for World War I, where he used propaganda to portray this country as fair and righteous and to hide our white supremacy so we could be a world power that supposedly believed in equality.

Wilson’s propaganda changed the American story, so when the Civil Rights Movement began Americans didn’t believe there was any fight to be had, equality had been won. The fight was to challenge this narrative in order to finally realize a semblance of equality.

There’s a reason why the South turned to Confederate flags during desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement. The Confederacy had survived in our laws, culture, and politics. This was a clear symbol that it had simply been hiding the entire time.

Meanwhile, open white supremacists like George Wallace made the connection crystal clear. He supported the Confederacy and, like the CSA, believe white supremacy was under attack by a communist, anti-American conspiracy, because the CSA WAS America.

Just like we’re seeing now, protestors were abused, brutalized, all because white supremacists believed it was a conspiracy. Instead of Antifa, it was communists, anarchists, anyone who could fit the conspiratorial mold.

By now we’re all familiar with Nixon’s Southern Strategy, but it’s important to note that this took the Confederacy and white supremacy, and drove it further under the veneer of rhetorical dog whistle appeals. It was about hiding the Confederacy but still embracing it.

If you haven’t already, please see my work on the Cult of the Shining City and Jerry Falwell and Neo-Confederate preachers. The hiding of the Confederate God in white-identity Christianity was yet another illusion that maintained the Confederacy while hiding it.

The attempt to continue white supremacy and the Confederacy and our politics continued with Ronald Reagan, who took it another step forward and hid it behind tax rhetoric and “colorblindness,” or pushing the idea that America no longer had racial inequality.

Reagan claimed that America was finally equal and that the market and economy would determine winners and losers. But the market and economy were made explicitly with white supremacy in mind. It was a giant lie from the very, very beginning.

If you haven’t before, look up Reagan’s speech at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, where white supremacist murders had taken place. Reagan took right off with Woodrow Wilson’s propaganda, promoting “state’s rights” and implicitly supporting the Confederacy.

Reagan’s dogwhistling and rhetorical appeals to white supremacy further legitimized white supremacy and the Confederacy, driving them further and further into American politics while giving them cover to operate without the ability to be scrutinized.

Following Reagan and HW Bush, the GOP and American Right began flirting openly with the New World Order conspiracy theory, which was a Neo-Confederate belief that white Americans were being threatened by evil outsiders and traitorous liberals.

We like to frame Timothy McVeigh as a lone nut, but he believed he was a soldier in the invisible war against the New World Order. There’s a reason he wore a shirt calling Lincoln a tyrant. This was the Confederacy declaring war, once again, on the United States.

The OKC Bombing was a battle in a fictitious war against the New World Order, or the Deep State, or the cabal, whatever you want to call it. American conspiracy theories are inherently white supremacist fantasies fueled by white supremacist paranoia and weakness.

McVeigh was inspired both by Right Wing appeals and Neo-Nazi literature that sought to return American to the Confederacy, which inspired the Third Reich in the first place. American domestic terrorists are seeking a return to the CSA and a racist dystopia.

There’s a reason Donald Trump is supported by these people. White supremacists see him as their warrior, a president who will explicitly stand up for them and continue hiding the Confederacy in culture while furthering its surviving goals.

He is a Confederate president.

You need to understand, the Confederacy wasn’t limited by geography or a moment in time. It was an ideology that was felt throughout the nation.

This is why the flags are everywhere, in the North, West, every part of the country.

It is a surviving worldview.

White supremacists and fascists and Confederates would much rather hide in plain sight, behind the American flag and the veneer of American equality.

That’s what they want.

But as we’re seeing now, they’re more than willing to show their true colors if necessary.

It’s no coincidence we’re having these debates now, that Trump is standing up for blatant white supremacy and the Confederacy. The movement is making actual inroads into dealing with our white supremacy, and they’ll seek comfort in the CSA just like Civil Rights opponents.

We need to relearn our history, see what actually happened, and how the Confederacy never went away. It was absorbed, hidden, empowered by its disguise. America is riddled with the Confederacy and if we want to avoid fascism, we have to rip it out by the root.

PS: As an educator, I have to say that any fight against white supremacy has to involve radical discussions about how to revise our curriculum to tell the honest story of America, because what we have now is propaganda designed explicitly to hide and empower white supremacy.

PPS: I’ve taken a ton of history classes and always considered myself really informed. Until I started on the new book so much of this was completely unknown. It’s all out there waiting to be discovered. It has to be discovered and it has to be told.

An Ode to Trump

Posted on by The Old Wolf

This was originally an “Ode to Berlusconi,” written in Italian, which I published earlier. I think it deserves a bit of cultural appropriation; it’s brilliantly crafted. The English translation ©2020 by Old Wolf Enterprises, Inc.

Il Presidente Trump si puo’ definire un por-
tento di abilita’, oltre che un uomo politi-
co di prim’ordine. Meriterebbe di essere de-
cantato con rime sacre come ad altri è gia’
capitato. Meriterebbe un monumento di ster-
minata mole marmorea che fungesse da e-
co indistruttibile nei secoli, in modo che il fe-
lice e caro nome di questo grande comunica-
tore potesse tramandarsi in eterno. Stron-
catore di malgoverni e uomo tutto d’n pez-
zo come nessun altro, il cavaliere ci incu-
te rispetto e ammirazione. Di Trump si par-
la in lungo e in largo e ci condurrà fino alla mi-
tica era di benessere con la sua onesta faccia e
seria. Tutti noi cittadini dell’America unita scor-
giamo in lui l’uomo del destino e perciò lo sor-
reggeremo con tutte le nostre forze nel mu-
tevole clamore delle folle, alzando un applau-
so a Lui e al suo Governo!		 President Trump can be defined as a marvel of ability, and in addition, a first-class politician.  As has been done for others in the past, he deserves to be extolled with sacred rhymes. He is worthy of a marble monument of immense size which would serve as an indestructible echo through the centuries, so that the beloved name of this great communicator might be known throughout eternity. A man who crushes misgovernment, a man of impeccable character like no other, this knight arouses within us feelings of respect and admiration. Trump is spoken of far and wide, and with his honest and serious face, he will lead us into that mythical era of prosperity.
All citizens of a united America see him as a man of destiny, and as a result we support him with all our energy amidst the ever-changing clamor of the crowds, raising plaudits to him and his government!

Now…
Read Every Other Line…
Presidente Trump si puo’ definire un por-
co di prim’ordine. Meriterebbe di essere de-
capitato. Meriterebbe un monumento di ster-
co indistruttibile nei secoli, in modo che il fe-
tore potesse tramandarsi in eterno. Stron-
zo come nessun altro, il cavaliere ci incu-
la in lungo e in largo e ci condurrà fino alla mi-
seria. Tutti noi cittadini dell’America unita scor-
reggeremo con tutte le nostre forze nel mu-
so a Lui e al suo Governo!		 President Trump is a first-class pig. He deserves to be beheaded. He is worthy of a monument of dung, indestructible throughout the centuries, so his stench might be passed down through eternity. A turd like no other, he buggers us far and wide and will lead us into misery. With all our energy, we citizens of a united America will fart in the face of Trump and his government.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Satire: It’s legal, Madam.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Some folks have really, really thin skins.

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, text

I suspect Ms. Parker, whoever, she is, has never been inside Barnes and Noble… or any bookstore for that matter. Peruse the shelves of any respectable bookseller, and you’ll find works from every point along the political spectrum, from Holy, Holy God, Thank You For Appointing Trump Emperor of the World (I’m sure something similar exists) to Bob Woodward’s Fear, and anything inbetween. ¹

The Humor section will be chock-full of collections of political cartoons from such geniuses as Pat Oliphant, who pilloried everyone that deserved it regardless of political affiliation.

If Ms. Parker’s train of thought were carried to its very illogical end-of-line, every bookstore in the world should be boycotted for carrying an item that someone happened to find offensive.

It’s called “The First Amendment.” Satire and Parody are Constitutionally protected speech.

But in one thing, Ms. Parker is right. This book is very disrespectful; comparing 45 to a pig is most unfair to the pigs of the world.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

¹ Someone needs to write this book:

The Hubris of Donald Trump

Posted on by The Old Wolf

This collection of statements, lovingly documented, was put together by redditor u/iamlarrypotter. I share it here for the benefit of those who do not particpate over at reddit.

If you want a classic, textbook example of narcissistic personality disorder, look no farther than 45. And then remember that this man has access to our nuclear launch codes. Our nation has never been in a more precarious state of affairs, and the damage this uneducated buffoon has done both domestically and internationally will take generations to repair.

“I’m much more humble than you would understand.”

“I have the best temperament or certainly one of the best temperaments of anybody that’s ever run for the office of president. Ever.”

“I’m the most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far. Nobody’s ever been more successful than me.”

“I’m the least racist person you have ever interviewed”

“I’m the least racist person you’ll find anywhere in the world.”

“Number one, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism. The least racist person”

“I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to the Secret Service.”

“I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country.”

“No one has done more for people with disabilities than me.”

“Nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump.”

“There’s nobody who understands the horror of nuclear more than me.”

“There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am.”

“There’s nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump,”

“There’s nobody that’s done so much for equality as I have”

“There’s nobody that has more respect for women than I do,”

“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me”

“I am going to save Social Security without any cuts. I know where to get the money from. Nobody else does .”

“Nobody respects women more than I do”

“And I was so furious at that story, because there’s nobody that respects women more than I do,”

“Nobody respects women more than Donald Trump”

“She can’t talk about me because nobody respects women more than Donald Trump,”

“Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump!”

“Nobody has more respect for women than I do.”

“Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody.”

“Nobody reads the Bible more than me.”

“Nobody loves the Bible more than I do”

“Nobody does self-deprecating humor better than I do. It’s not even close”

“Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.”

“Nobody knows more about trade than me”

“Nobody knows the (visa) system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me.”

“Nobody knows debt better than me.”

“I think nobody knows the system better than I do”

“I hope all workers demand that their @Teamsters reps endorse Donald J. Trump. Nobody knows jobs like I do! Don’t let them sell you out!”

“I know more about renewables than any human being on earth.”

“I know more about ISIS than the generals do.”

“I know more about contributions than anybody”

“I know more about offense and defense than they will ever understand, believe me. Believe me. Than they will ever understand. Than they will ever understand.”

“I know more about wedges than any human being that’s ever lived”

“I know more about drones than anybody,”

“I know more about Cory than he knows about himself.”

“I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president”

“I know tech better than anyone“

“I’m very highly educated. I know words; I have the best words.”

“I know some of you may think l’m tough and harsh but actually I’m a very compassionate person (with a very high IQ) with strong common sense”

“I watch these pundits on television and, you know, they call them intellectuals. They’re not intellectuals,” Trump told thousands of supporters in the swing state. “I’m much smarter than them. I think I have a much higher IQ. I think I went to a better college — better everything,”

“@ajodom60: @FoxNews and as far as that low-info voter base goes, I have an IQ of 132. So much for that theory. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain”

Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure,it’s not your fault

“He’s been quite critical of you as you know. He’s attacked you for being ignorant,” Piers Morgan said to Trump. “Let’s do an IQ test,” Trump interrupted

“We can’t let these people, these so called egg-heads–and by the way, I guarantee you my IQ is much higher than theirs, alright. Somebody said the other day, ‘Yes, well the intellectuals–‘ I said, ‘What intellectuals? I’m smarter than they are, many of people in this audience are smarter than they are.”

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years,” Trump told Fox News last December.

Trump says he has “one of the great memories of all time“

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”

” … I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!”

In this Salon article, Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee states that “Trump’s mental health is now a “national and global emergency.” My personal opinion is that The Thermonuclear Bowel Evacuation Currently Disgracing the Oval Office has brought us closer to global destruction than any other administration, Bush/Cheney included.

No, Senator Hatch, 45 is not a “very good man.”

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Before he passed away, and feeling the rapid onset of eternity, Senator John McCain expressed that he didn’t want 45 at his funeral, opting instead for Vice President Mike Pence, according to family members close to the respected legislator.

Orrin Hatch (R-UT) told CNN,

“I think that’s ridiculous. He’s the President of the United States. He’s a very good man.”

Feeling the backlash of public opinion, Hatch later apologized, saying

“I felt badly, I had spoken out of turn,” Hatch said. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

Whether that was a sincere apology or political mush because he was caught out is only for him to know. But the “very good man” part of that first quote is what got my hackles up. Oh, it’s not that Hatch is a die-hard Republican, Congress is full of those. People like McConnell, Ryan, Cruz, and a whole host of other supporters of 45, as inexplicable as that is to me. No, it’s the fact that Senator Hatch claims to be a member of my own faith, specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That, by definition, makes him a Christian.

So let’s start with the Bible. In 1 Timothy 3, we read Paul’s admonitions about ecclesiastical leaders:

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

Note: many people in the world don’t put stock in the Bible, and that’s fine – it’s their privilege. But Hatch does – he claims to reverence this book and its teachings, so it’s very relevant to his statement about 45’s character. In an article dealing with Evangelicals’ relationship with 45, the Washington Post wrote,

“Many have acknowledged the awkwardness of being both self-proclaimed followers of Jesus and the No. 1 champions of a president whose character has been defined not just by alleged infidelity but accusations of sexual harassment, advancing conspiracy theories popular with white supremacists, using language that swaths of Americans find racist, routinely spreading falsehoods and an array of casual cruelties and immoderate behaviors that amount to a roll call of the seven deadly sins.”

The hand-wringing, self-justification and scripture-twisting that 45’s religious supporters have brought to the stage is literally breathtaking. Our current *president fails almost every one of Timothy’s admonitions, and while some might say, “Oh, he’s talking about leaders of the church,” for me these are qualities that ought to apply to leaders of peoples and nations as well. And I’m not just talking about Republican leaders, either – I was heartsick when William Jefferson Clinton disgraced the office of the presidency (and in the Oval Office itself!) and have always felt that despite whatever qualities he brought to the presidency, he should have immediately stepped down.

But as this cartoon by Pat Bagley from the 70s illustrates, many Americans seem to tolerate a lot from their elected officials if it happens to advance their own interests:

Bagley - 3 Bears

The more you look at 45’s public persona, and public behavior, and public business dealings, the less he seems to align with anything one finds in the teachings of either the biblical or the historical Jesus.

But then there’s the Book of Mormon, another scripture that Hatch claims to reverence, where we find the story of Korihor, the anti-Christ:

“And many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.”

And that has pretty much been 45’s game all along – to paraphrase what I see in his statements and his actions and his tweets, “I’m rich, I’m powerful, I’m President, I’m the best, I’m yuuuuge, I can do anything I want, and there’s nothing wrong with any of it.”

Senator Hatch, as you look at 45 and his history, the history of questionable business dealings, irresponsible behaviors, dishonesty with contractors, countless bankruptcies, the adulteries, the dalliances, the sexual harassment, the hate, the xenophobia, the racist attitudes, the arrogance, the intolerance, the public mockeries of those who disagree with him, the inexperience, the incompetence, the unleashed and uncontrolled and unsubstantiated tweets, the megalomania, all of it – 45 makes Richard M. Nixon look like Gandhi by comparison. These are not the qualities of a “very good man.” You, and every other Latter-day Saint who cast a ballot for 45 have effectively put Korihor into the White House, and now we’re all reaping the political and social whirlwind.

Now before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy, let me quote the relevant passage for you:

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own ye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

On a personal level, I leave all judgment to God, because I’m keenly aware of my own failings. But we’re talking politics here, and public service and honor and the common good, and I hold my leaders to the highest possible standards. If our chief executive and our legislators can’t be better than the rest of  us, they have no business leading us, because otherwise they can lead us nowhere but unto destruction.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

A Taxonomy of Trump Tweets – from On the Media.”

Posted on by The Old Wolf

On the Media is “WNYC’s weekly investigation into how the media shapes our world view. Veteran journalists Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield give you the tools to survive the media maelstrom.”

A recent segment intriguingly addresses the PEOTUS’ twitter-storm, and how the media should appropriately respond.

As we all know, Donald Trump’s tweets have become a potent force in our new era. On the one hand, a single tweet can cripple opponents, activate supporters, move markets, and subsume the news cycle. On the other, they’re a window into Trump’s wee-hours, unfiltered id. But when his tweets are full of half-truths, distortions, and often bold-faced lies, should journalists treat them as normal presidential utterances, or something else? Cognitive linguist George Lakoff believes that the press must understand how Trump uses language if we’re to responsibly report on his tweets, not just magnify their misinformation. He talks with Brooke about the categories he’s come up with for thinking about Trump tweets.

A summary of the categories:

  1. Preemptive Re-framing – Trump’s tweet stated, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” This was rated “Pants on Fire” by Politifact, but it effectively re-frames the popular vote in the minds of those who see the tweet, thus distorting the facts in the public arena.
  2. The Diversion Tweet – This kind of tweet is akin to the magician’s misdirectional “nothing up my sleeve.” While you’re busy looking at his or her sleeve to be sure, jiggery-pokery is happening elsewhere. A good example is focusing on Hamilton, as Trump did when he tweeted “The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” In this way, people focus on Hamilton rather than the $25 million settlement in the case of  fraud allegations against Trump University.
  3. The Trial Balloon – Send up something and see how the public reacts, so you’ll know what to do in the future. When Trump tweeted, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” he watched to see how the public responded to this idea; in this case there was a brief discussion about nuclear policy which quickly faded from the public consciousness.
  4. Deflection – In which you attack the messenger. After being pointedly called out by Meryl Streep for mocking a disabled reporter, Trump attacked the messenger: “Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him “groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!” The video is out there; no matter how much he denies it, Trump’s actions can not be interpreted as anything other than cruel mockery of a man’s afflictions – but attacking Ms. Streep, one of the most accomplished and versatile actresses of this generation, deflect’s the public’s view from the issue at hand. This was also evident as Trump attacked Buzzfeed, CNN, and the BBC around reports on the supposed Russian dossier.

Lastly, Lakoff presents an example of a Trump tweet that uses all four strategies at once:

“Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to “leak” into the public. One last shot at me.Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

  • Pre-emptive framing: “This is fake news.”
  • Diversion – Getting the public to discuss whether or not this is fake news rather than addressing the issue itself.
  • Deflection – Attacking the messengers
  • Trial balloon – Will the intelligence agencies be stopped, and are they working like Nazi Germany?

And, of course, tucked away in the tweet is the invocation of a corollary to Godwin’s Law: In any online discussion, whoever first brings up a reference to Hitler has lost the argument, and the discussion is ended.

Lakoff’s suggestions for the press on how to handle the onslaught of 3 AM tweets, as well as the entire podcast (it’s only about 8 minutes long) are well worth the listen.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Donald Trump, Brigham Young, and the meaning of a contract.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

That Donald Trump is a “shrewd businessman” – I can put it no more charitably than that – is no secret. He himself has said that he takes pleasure in reneging on contracts if, according to him, work is poor, or not up to snuff, or late.

However, among the 1,450 lawsuits against Trump and Company are a significant percentage of people testifying that his modus operandi is to stiff people who work for him. In the past, he has generally gotten away with it because he was the 900-lb gorilla in the ring, and most people didn’t have the gumption or the legal resources to go up against him.

But recently, this practice came around and bit him on the honus, hard.

Trump’s company chose to pay small contractor Paint Spot $34,863 on a $200,000 contract. Paint Spot rustled up some high-powered lawyers willing to work on contingency and waive their fees if they lost, and sued Trump. During the trial,

Trump’s legal team looked positively stricken when the construction manager admitted during testimony that the company had decided not to pay The Paint Spot because it felt like it had “already paid enough.”

Trump’s loss was delicious. It illustrates plainly the standard operating procedure of a man who has made millions on the backs of others, without caring who gets hurt in the process – one of the classic hallmarks of a sociopath, of which Trump easily checks off at least five:

Antisocial Personality Disorder, as defined by DSM-5 – only three of these are sufficient to classify a sociopath.

1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
2) deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
3) impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
4) irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
6) consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
7) lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

Now, in contrast, let’s take a bit of satirical history from the pages of Samuel Clemens.

In  Mark Twain’s “Roughing It,” Chapter 14, we read the story of Mr. Street, busy with stringing telegraph wires across the rugged desert.

Unto Mormons he had sub-let the hardest and heaviest half of his great undertaking, and all of a sudden they concluded that they were going to make little or nothing, and so they tranquilly threw their poles overboard in mountain or desert, just as it happened when they took the notion, and drove home and went about their customary business! They were under written contract to Mr. Street, but they did not care anything for that. They said they would “admire” to see a “Gentile” force a Mormon to fulfil a losing contract in Utah! [Emphasis mine]

Mr. Street was in dismay to find himself in a country where “contracts were worthless,” until another Gentile (Note: This is the term that was long used in Mormon country for people not of that faith) suggested he go see Brigham Young. While in doubt that someone with only religious authority could help, he paid the President a visit and

laid the whole case before him. He said very little, but he showed strong interest all the way through. He examined all the papers in detail, and whenever there seemed anything like a hitch, either in the papers or my statement, he would go back and take up the thread and follow it patiently out to an intelligent and satisfactory result. Then he made a list of the contractors’ names. Finally he said:

“Mr. Street, this is all perfectly plain. These contracts are strictly and legally drawn, and are duly signed and certified. These men manifestly entered into them with their eyes open. I see no fault or flaw anywhere.”

Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room and said: `Take this list of names to So-and-so, and tell him to have these men here at such-and-such an hour.

brigham

They were there, to the minute. So was I. Mr. Young asked them a number of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then he said to them:

“You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your own free will and accord?”

“Yes.”

“Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you! Go!”

And they did go, too! They are strung across the deserts now, working like bees. And I never hear a word out of them.

While there is no evidence proving that this specific incident occurred, Roughing It is a semi-autobiographical novel detailing Twain’s travels, and through the satire some truth gleams like gems. I am inclined to believe the story has basis in fact for a number of reasons, most importantly that Brigham Young valued honesty and decried duplicity.

My mother used to sing me a little song when I was very young:

Before you make a promise,
Consider first it’s importance.
Then, when made,
Engrave it upon your heart.

I suspect my mother learned this from her father, and Linda K. Burton, general Relief Society President for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, heard the same song from her own grandfather

Honesty is one of the traits of a compassionate leader, one who says what (s)he means and does what (s)he says. I cannot, I will not support as the leader of my country someone who takes perverse pleasure in lies and deception to profit at the expense of others.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

To the millennials of this election.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Reblogging this with the kind permission of the author, David Gerrold. I saw this on Facebook, and felt it was so relevant that it deserved a wider audience.

So … I think I’ll blur the details here.

There was this person who was expounding on the upcoming election and why he wasn’t going to vote for Hillary Clinton. It was his first time voting, you see, and he wanted someone who understood and represented his generation.

He said to me, “You don’t understand — ”

And that’s where I had to stop him. “Look, I do understand. Really.”

“How can you understand? You’re too old.”

“Do you think I was born old? Y’know, I have pictures. Here’s me at thirteen — ”

“But times were different then — ”

“Yes, they were. You could get polio and measles and smallpox. An appendectomy was a serious operation. People smoked everywhere, there was no getting away from the smoke. In school, they taught us to duck and cover in case of a nuclear attack. Whites and blacks still had separate restrooms and drinking fountains. Women couldn’t get a legal abortion. Gas had lead in it. Vegetables were sprayed with DDT. You could be arrested for being gay. Yes, times were different.”

“No, I meant that protesting was a fad, not serious like — ”

“Excuse me? Do you want to see the scar on my scalp where I was hit by a thrown bottle at the first gay rights march? We also had civil rights demonstrations, anti-war marches, and rallies for women’s rights as well. That was no fad. People were dying — ”

“No, look, man — it’s the establishment. That’s what’s wrong — ”

“And you want to replace the establishment with what? A different establishment? Listen — when I was your age, when my generation was your age, we were just as frustrated and just as impatient as you are now. Honest. Am I saying we were wrong? Hell, no. We were right. Better than that, we were so right, we were self-righteous. We went around saying, ‘Don’t trust anyone over 30,’ as if somehow when you turned 30, you became one of them. Y’know?

“You know what we missed? We missed the obvious — that there were a lot of good men and women over 30 who understood the issues, and the complexities of the situation better than we did — because they’d been fighting that fight for a lot longer. We had emotion, we had energy, we had spirit — but we didn’t have enough experience, enough history, enough of everything we needed to effect real change.

“So we didn’t turn out for Hubert Humphrey and we handed the country to Richard Nixon. And a generation later, other people didn’t turn out for Al Gore and handed the country to George W. Bush. And what was missed — both times — was the fact our impatience was the single biggest mistake we could make.

“Hubert Humphrey had experience, he had wisdom, and he shared our goals. Al Gore had experience, he had wisdom, and he shared our goals. But somewhere, enough of us decided that he was too old or too much of the establishment or didn’t really represent us enough, or would just give us more of the same when what we really wanted was more, better, and different, even if we couldn’t define it — enough of us felt that way to hand the presidency to a much worse administration.

“So, no — it isn’t that you’re wrong. It’s that there are people who’ve been down this path before. We know where it leads. And it’s not a good place. We know what this mistake looks like. Because we’ve made it ourselves — and we’re asking you not to make the same mistakes we did, because each time we make this mistake, everyone gets hurt.”

And he said, “So that’s a fancy way of saying ‘suck it up, buttercup, you can’t have what you want.”

And I said, “No, but if that’s the way you want to hear it, then that’s the way you’re going to hear it. The way government works, nobody gets everything they want. The way government is supposed to work, everybody negotiates — and eventually everybody gets a piece of what they need to keep going. Nobody likes that, but consider what the alternative is — if some people get everything they want, that means a lot of people are going to get nothing at all. We keep trying that, it doesn’t work. Let’s go back to the stuff that does work.”

“But I don’t like her — ”

“I’m not asking you to like her. I’m asking you to respect that she knows how to do the job. He doesn’t. You can have your protest vote, that’s your right, but that’s letting everybody else decide who gets the oval office. And you might want to think long and hard about which of the two will build on what President Obama has accomplished and which of the two will tear it all down with no idea of why it worked in the first place. Your choice.”

And he said, “That’s not much of a choice.”

And I said, “The hell it isn’t. It’s a choice between experience and ignorance. That’s the clearest choice I’ve ever seen in an election.”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

And that’s the point —

‘I might be old, but I’m not stupid. And I suspect that a lot of other members of my generation feel the same way. We remember when we were impatient. And we remember the mistakes that our impatience created.

“Old people don’t tell young people what to do and what not to do because we want to control your lives — we just want to warn you not to make the same mistakes we did.

“But you will. Or you won’t. Because it’s your choice. Always.”

As a coda, another comment from a good friend of mine, Jeremy Grimshaw, also quoted with permission:

I’ve got an anxiety in my gut that makes it impossible for me to watch the presidential debate in real time tonight–not because I worry Hillary will do poorly or that Trump will do well, but because I fear that it doesn’t matter how well she does or how poorly he does. The fact that nearly half of all Americans take a person as cruel, crass, immoral, fraudulent, oblivious, and arrogant as Trump seriously as a potential national leader, that they have dimmed and warped their epistemic lenses so terribly that they aren’t appalled by the mere fact of his sharing a stage with her, fills me with despair. What could he say that is worse than he has already said? What depth of depravity remains for him to sink to? It’s not a matter of cringing at the content or tone of the trash he flings or wringing my hands about her responses being forceful enough. I just can’t bear to watch people watching him as if he were a valid option, as if he even belonged in the same arena as her. Remember, when she was in the war room helping call the shots that killed Bin Laden, he was touching up his spray-tan for the reality-TV cameras. We are about to offer the decorum of potential presidentiality to a man who raided the coffers of his charity to commission a gigantic painting of himself in a suit of armor to hang on the wall of a golf resort bar. The most absurdist comedy writers in the country could not conjure a more outlandish parody of the Presidency than the one the Republican Party has nominated to the office.

I can’t watch the debate because I can’t bear to watch America being so incredibly stupid. At a certain point, ignorance, made willful by moral and mental neglect and partisan indolence, crosses the threshold into blasphemy.

Two candidates. Neither perfect. One with decades of experience in governance, the other with nothing but bluster and xenophobia.

Please, please… consider so carefully what kind of a world you want to build, and vote for the candidate who most closely mirrors your values, even if it’s not a perfect match.

The Old Wolf has reposted.