[above: The President of the United States, a racist authoritarian who has done everything in his power to undermine civil rights and the rule of law, demonstrates his patriotism to non-reading Americans by hugging a flag.]
Backing down in the face of a nascent Republican backbone, President Trump today signed a misspelled executive order ending his administration’s policy of forced childhood separation at the southern border, and, in so doing, essentially admitted that he’d been lying when he said that he couldn’t stop the policy without the support of Democrats.
The President, it would seem, had finally overplayed his hand, gambling that the thoroughly complicit Republicans in Congress would go along with him on his “zero tolerance” border policy, just as they’d gone along with him on the Muslim ban, the mocking of the disabled, the lies about Russia, and everything else. As news stories began breaking about children being held down at a for-profit child detention center in Houston and injected with drugs against their will, and babies as young as three months old being brought from the border to Michigan, though, the Trump coalition began to fracture, with the more corporatist of his supporters separating from his racist base. I wouldn’t exactly call it something to celebrate, but at least we now know that there’s still a line that some Republicans won’t allow this authoritarian administration to cross. Of course, these people, like Orin Hatch, didn’t stand up because they felt compelled to on the behalf of children being kept in cages, but because they knew that, if they went along with it, there would be hell to pay in their home states. But, in a week of terrible news, I’ll accept it as a small glimmer of hope in the darkness.
Right now, they’re working hard to spin the narrative on the right. Ivanka Trump just thanked her father for having the courage to step up on behalf of immigrant children, like he’s some kind of humanitarian hero, ignoring the fact that all of this was his doing. We, as I think most of you would likely agree, can’t allow this to happen.
As we know, this isn’t over. Even though Trump signed an executive action stopping the process, there doesn’t seem to be a plan in place to return those children already taken from their families. In fact, some children, we’re already being told, may never be reunited with their parents. So we have to stay on this. We can’t let up.
I’d love to go deeper and say even more on the fracturing of Trump’s coalition, and how it might be possible that things could finally be turning, but I can’t motivate myself to jump into the muck and start wading through it right now. I’m sorry, but one can only contemplate the absolute wasteland of Trumpism for so long before it starts to take its toll. With that said, though, it’s good to know that, at long last, we may have finally reached the point at which at least some Republicans are willing to draw the line. But, like I said, I can’t go into it at the moment. So I’m just going to excuse myself now, and stare blankly into my aquarium. Before I go, though, I wanted to share this video from a Trump rally this evening in Minnesota, just in case some of you weren’t yet at my level of despair.
Trump at tonight's rally in Minnesota:
"Do you ever notice they always call the other side…the elite? Why are they elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I'm smarter than they are…I became president and they didn't." pic.twitter.com/7ia0VEWfd8
— Axios (@axios) June 21, 2018
29 Comments
I hear if you smoke enough weed, and hang out in your basement reviewing conspiracy theories, you start liking the guy and find the current state of affairs tolerable and even pleasant.
(Let’s just note for a moment that all the conspiracy theories lately are no longer about how terrible our president is but about how great the President is. About Trump being an absolute fucking genius. Since he is dismantling every institution and core principle of our democracy; the democracy itself must be evil and so the source of conspiracy. Take that one in… Neat trick.)
Take heart, Mark. The president only holds these rallies when he’s feeling vulnerable and at risk.
I’m going to watch Handmaids Tale now as a pleasant diversion from reality…
We’ve started to rewatch one of my favorite shows, My Name is Earl. It’s hilarious and makes me completely forget the pre-apocalyptic hellscape we find ourselves in.
My dad recommended the Fargo show so that will probably be up next.
I went for a couple extra hugs myself yesterday. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/oxytocin
Oh, and the Dem Gov debate was a thing that I hope folks found something encouraging in.
Oxytocin also appears to increases bias and envy.
Please don’t listen to people posing as scientists on Ted talks who refer to themselves as Dr. Hug
https://youtu.be/0Rnq1NpHdmw
It’s all good, but Dr Hug is around 10′ in.
Hope it improves your mood.
It did mine.
Laughter is all I have.
Im not too worried about the dark side of hugs. But puppies and kittens are a total gateway drug.
Science.
BREAKING: Melania Trump is at southern border today, meeting migrant children, POTUS says.
liberal redneck. a previously undescribed species of Democrat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-SeM268sWU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-SeM268sWU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcW2_ON7PQs
“rapists”
“animals”
“infesting”
These are the words Donald Trump uses when referring to asylum seekers from South America. He selected these words carefully.
The concentration camps are obviously already being planned.
@M,
Those are the words Donald Trump uses to refer to M13 gang members, some of whom are in their twenties and posing as 15 y/o Dreamers.
We all float down here, Mark. Im probably at or below your depth of despair.
I was going to advise you, Mark, that any time you were feeling a glimmer of hope, or that the tide is turning, just watch one of Trump’s rallies and you’ll get over it. But you beat me to it!
I was going to advise you, Mark, that any time you were feeling a glimmer of hope, or that the tide is turning, just watch one of Trump’s rallies and you’ll get over it. But you beat me to it!
“”This is the first demand we must raise and do [reversal of the Versailles Treaty provisions]: that our people be set free, that these chains be burst asunder, that Germany be once again captain of her soul and master of her destinies, together with all those who want to join Germany. (Applause)
And the fulfillment of this first demand will then open up the way for all the other reforms. And here is one thing that perhaps distinguishes us from you [Austrians] as far as our programme is concerned, although it is very much in the spirit of things: our attitude to the Jewish problem.
For us, this is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to-one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated. Don’t be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Don’t think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.”
Adolf Hitler, 1922
Maybe he was only referring to gang members, though.
Unbelievable that people who supposedly believe in “small government” because of the threat of “tyranny” are putting so much faith and trust in a guy who seems determined to dismantle as many checks on executive power as he can and, who routinely makes false and unsupported statements and who doesn’t even have Jesus to check his morality.
It is almost as if right wing America wants a Hitler.
Godwins Law. You lose.
Make no mistake, Hitler killed a half million people. There’s no comparison.
I definitely do not lose.
“Hitler killed a half million people”
Holocaust revisionism: check
I’ll say it again because it is 100% true:
Unbelievable that people who supposedly believe in “small government” because of the threat of “tyranny” are putting so much faith and trust in a guy who seems determined to dismantle as many checks on executive power as he can, who routinely makes false and unsupported statements and who doesn’t even have Jesus to check his morality.
It is almost as if right wing America wants a Hitler.
When the camps really get going, can we depend in EOS to speak out against them?
Of course not. She would have fit in well in 1938.
#morallybankrupt
If Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was telling the truth when she said, “We do not have a policy to separate children from their parents,” what did this executive order end?
IL, when I talk to ardent NRA supporters about what looks like obvious tyranny to me, they don’t see it now, but oh that Obummer… Turns out, of course it does, that they’re just lying about that to justify equipping a decentralized unregulated christo-fascist army. Which is now in play in the effort to save trump, what with the threats of insurrection and them actually having the gun nuts to back it up. Shit, can’t i just enjoy a few liberal redneck videos without feeling compelled to remind you all that we better be supporting our own militants until we secure a political solution.
I would give them more respect if they’d just admit that they want a white, Christian authoritarian state, rather than try to dress it up as something else.
If anything, the Berners were pretty clear that they wanted a highly centralized secular socialist authoritarian state.
I am starting to have my doubts about Donald Trump. It wasn’t very long ago he was saying he didn’t want to split up families, but he was forced to follow a Democrat-passed law which he couldn’t do anything about. But it was a good Democrat passed law because it protected children from trafficking? I thought Democrats liked child traffickers. Now Trump reverses himself. What sense does that make? Are we not to follow the law, and let child traffickers run wild? Isn’t that what the Democrats want? I will have to ask my wise cousin why. PS, does anyone know a weed dealer who accepts bottles and cans? It would save me an extra trip to Krogers today.
I just caught a 30 day ban from Facebook for anti Trump speech.
Unreal.
They said hate speech.
Be careful on that platform.
This got me a 30 day ban on Facebook.
“Steve Pickard
3 hrs
President Troll was so contrite about his kidnapping scheme getting rolled back he trotted out his illegals are rapists & murderers cliches and victim families for photo ops today. Womp Womp.
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I have noticed that some on the right have taken to manipulating Facebook’s policies about bullying and hate speech by reporting posts.
My favorite was in an attempt to turn the tables on a guy, I took the insulting post he wrote about me, changed it a bit, and then posted it back at him. He flagged it. I was not banned for 30 days but was banned from liking comments or entering more comments on that one post. He took advantage and wrote some ridiculous comment. Then, the next day, he wrote something like “I knew you wouldn’t have a good argument so you stay silent..blah blah blah…my superior use of logic (I wondered if it might be HW)…blah blah blah…”
I was mad to be sure but the whole thing was so absurd as to be funny. I admit that I did briefly contemplate learning how to manipulate Facebook myself in order to outsmart him and humiliate him but then I had to laugh at myself for even thinking of such childish revenge. * I just blocked him.
I read stories in my feminist groups daily of the harassment outspoken feminist commenters are sometimes subjected to. Facebook bans are common. Threatening messages are common. Less common but still a thing are doxing and swatting.
Anyways, I am going to break a long standing personal rule to never criticize the clothing choices of any prominent woman, no matter how much I might dislike the woman or hate her wardrobe choices. Mostly because it isn’t the fashion choice I object to but rather the words displayed. That was a downright cruel message given the context of the situation. Fuck her!
*Ok, completely off topic but I wish there was a “mean girl” video game where players scheme and plot for high school status. LOL
Just to cap off pretty much the shittiest week ever.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/22/trump-north-korea-extraordinary-threat-nuclear-program