William Svelmoe

Rebel Yell

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One of the things I try to do when writing a post is to find a common theme, some way to bring a number of perhaps disparate events together in a way that makes sense. This works fairly well when posting regularly. The material on the input end, the stuff happening in the world, somehow settles at a manageable level.

When, however, for whatever reason, posting gets delayed for a week or so, material on the input end gets entirely out of control. How do you keep up with the chaos, the destruction, the incompetence, the daily national humiliations wreaked upon us by the Trump administration? And then how does one categorize events so that they somehow at least seem to cohere?

It turns out that a nation descending into its twilight comes in many guises, disguises, events comical, ridiculous, but also disturbing, grieving, dangerous. And, it turns out, and this is both unnerving and heartening, a citizen in such a declining nation can find him or herself rooting against the nation’s own leaders, cheering their humiliation, applauding when their plans are thwarted, welcoming even a level of personal pain, even harm, if such destruction, such chastening, may, perhaps, lead to a renewed, if humbler, nation in the end.

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Impardonable?

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So quite the hullabaloo over Joe’s pardon of Hunter. And I get it, I guess. He said he wouldn’t. Then he did. Not a good look.

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Adams Chronicle

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Every fall semester, as I did again last week, I have the privilege of showing my students episode 2 in HBO’s marvelous dramatization of the life of John Adams. Episode 2 covers the debate in the Continental Congress over declaring independence from Great Britain.

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The Wind from the Midwest

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We made it home. I’m sitting on the deck in 90-degree heat worrying that the 103 degrees we drove through in Nebraska might be on its way here. Uh-oh.

At any rate, a few random thoughts while driving across the West.

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Death of a Salesman

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File under #Grabembythebigotry. [Copyright to John Haas.]

So, Donald “George Wallace” Trump enlightened us all on his racial views yesterday before a group of black journalists.

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Waiting (& Roosting)

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Originally posted on Sunday July 14, 2024.

One of the primary lessons I have learned after many years on social media is that it never hurts to wait before commenting. Waiting is usually the right choice. The wise choice.

Example: Within minutes of yesterday’s shooting, one of my Facebook “friends,” deeply mired in the Trump cult, took to my page to rage about “the liberal wacko,” “the liberal moron,” who, provoked by the “violent” rhetoric from the left, tried to assassinate Trump.

Then we wait.

Then it turns out the young man is a Republican. Who gave $15 to a Democratic Get-Out-the-Vote group. With a Libertarian father. A Democratic mother. And an AR-15.

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U.S. Telos

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The author posted this at the top of 2024, before the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary, and the E. Jean Carroll judgment, but his forecast for ‘24 is still ripe…

Three years ago today we witnessed the natural end of the Republican Party. I don’t mean a chronological end. As long as there’s FOX News and people eager to tune in, there will be the ignorance and outrage levels necessary to nurture Trumpist conservatism.

I mean end as in the Greek term “telos,” which evokes a phenomenon’s essence — its reason for being. In that sense January 6 three years ago, in its lusty dance with violent ignorance, in its recognition, however dully, that the future of Trumpism did not line up with the future of democracy, indeed demanded its overthrow, all this was the completion of Trumpism, the full Donald.

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November’s Children

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This past week, we’ve received a master class in the difference between polling and voting. There’s an enormous difference between an easy answer to a poll question, and the private choice in the stillness of a voting booth. And what we’ve witnessed is that when it comes to pulling the lever or marking the circle, Democrats are victorious in, at times, astonishing places and in astonishing ways. And MAGA Republicans are enduring so much … losing.

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Benificence

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A couple of comments on Florida’s new history standards. I use the word “standards” loosely, of course.

But first a tweet that I give my highest compliment. I wish I had written it.

Larry Sabato: “So far Ron DeSantis has run a failing campaign. But here’s the good news: DeSantis has developed skills which, in some instances, can be applied for his personal benefit.”

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America’s Bottomley

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This clip from Trump’s Fox interview with Brett Baier is making the rounds…

YOUTUBE.COM

Trump is boasting about how he used his pardon powers to free low-level criminals. He brings up a woman, jailed on a drug dealing charge, that he pardoned. Baier reminds him that under the policy Trump is touting, wherein he would execute drug dealers, this woman would have been killed.

It is a remarkable moment. For a split second the Fool is caught in his folly, and the gears freeze. Even Brett Baier has to laugh.

But what I see in this clip, more than Trump’s childish policy prescriptions, is one of the keys to the man’s success. How quickly the master Bullshitter comes up with, not one, not two, but three half-coherent responses. Responses graded on a bullshit scale of course. The bar is low.

But Trump is not wooing the genius vote. All he needs is to keep his base bamboozled. And I’m struck, watching this clip, at how quickly the stunned hamsters on the wheels in his brain recover and start spinning even faster than before. How manically the gibbons hurl bananas at the wall to see what might stick. And before you can say, Look out for the bull, you’re covered in fresh bullshit.

Would depend on the degree. Not retroactive. My policy would have scared her off. And his base goes, yeah. Makes sense to me. And he lives to play another day.

You almost have to admire it. It gets him from point A to point B. He never gets bogged down in the details or logic of point A. There’s always a point B and then a point C. And if you get to those points quickly enough, no one remembers point A.

Trump lives his life in five- to ten-minute increments. Whatever bullshit gets him through the next ten minutes. Hell, the next ten seconds. He’ll have new bullshit to spew if/when he makes it through the next ten. Trump family motto. “Trust the Bullshit.”

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Being Republican

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Senator Tommy Tuberville: “The Covid really brought it out how bad our schools are and how bad our teachers are — in the inner city. Most of them in the inner city, I don’t know how they got degrees, to be honest with you. I don’t know whether they can read and write. … They want a raise, they want less time to work, less time in school. We ruined work ethic in this country.”

Tommy would have been right at home on a southern plantation.

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No Way Up

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CNN headline: “Mike Pence sits alone in a corner of sadness.”

I defy anyone to read that headline and not click on the article. Nice work whoever came up with that.

It was a short article simply reporting on polls that show that, while Republicans are well acquainted with ol’ Mike, they really don’t like him. The moment Mike merely nodded toward reality and truth, he lost any chance of ever being the Republican nominee.

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But Ugly (& Durham at the Bar)

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And so Paul Pelosi is attacked by a hammer-wielding right-winger looking for Nancy.

The governor of Virginia “jokes” about it. “Speaker Pelosi’s husband, they had a break-in last night in their house and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere, but… ”

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Trumping a Country of Laws

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It is estimated that 15 to 20 million Americans think violence would be justified to return Trump to office.

Set aside for the moment that anybody, let alone 20 million anybodies, is willing to commit violence, go to jail, die, for that guy. That is something most of us will never understand. Folks going to the mattresses for the most self-centered guy on the planet.

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G.O.P. Hot Takes (and the Dead)

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Once again, I am astonished that I can be astonished at the level of gun violence in this nation. It is so routine. And yet so astonishing.

And once again, I am astonished that I can be astonished at the level of Republican callousness. It is so routine. And yet so astonishing.

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Silver Linings

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“Supreme Court further erodes separation between church and state in case of praying football coach.”

Of course they did. And they did so with the supreme confidence that comes with knowing they’re on God’s side in the matter.

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Mother Cheney and The Mob

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Liz Cheney speaking yesterday at the Ronald Reagan library.

The whole thing is well worth hearing, but start at 8:45 for the meat. Listen to at least 17:35, although you might not want to miss the raucous applause at 23:30 when she says, “We must not elect people who are more loyal to themselves or to power than to our Constitution.”

But then why not listen to the end, for the applause for the mention of Cassidy Hutchinson, and then Cheney’s challenge to the “girls” of the nation to become leaders because “the world is run by men, and the world ain’t doin’ so well.”

Indeed listening to the repeated applause for Liz Cheney gives me a tiny sliver of hope. Hope that there just might be enough Republicans out there who have not sold their souls to Trump to turn this thing around.

But then I watch the Jordan Klepper piece,…and my hope starts to feel very quicksand-like. And I think of the two audiences, the Reagan Library and a pro-Trump rally, and I realize that if we are to be saved, it’s conservative elites who will have to stand against what Hamilton so often referred to as “the mob.”

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