Tuesday, January 21, 2025
D+76
1977 President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders
1994 Lorena Bobbitt was found temporarily insane when she cut off her husband's penis
In bed around 9:30, awake and up at 5:01. The temperature outside is -10° with a wind chill of -23°
Prednisone, day 277, 5 + 2.0 mg., day 14. Prednisone at 5:07 followed by some of my banana bread, saving Caren's banana bread for later. Other meds at 6 a.m. 2.5 mg., prednisone at 6 p.m.
Sieg Heil! Elon Musk's exuberant jubilant salute at the Capital One rally.
Tim Snyder's analysis of the internal conflicts within Trump's MAGA and billionaires camps: a struggle between those who want oligarchy to get to fascism and those who want fascism to get to oligarchy. Both are roads to ruin.
Mara Gay was on the Nicolle Wallace program yesterday. What we saw on Inauguration Day: (1) We saw the peaceful transfer of power to someone who doesn't believe in democracy or the rule of law (or the peaceful transfer of power.) (2) We saw the promise of the return to greatness of America from a president who has weakened our bonds of affection and actually weakened the strength of our county in a plethora of ways. (3) We saw the rhetorical embrace of MLK, Jr. on MLK Day by someone whose movement is almost wholly devoted to the destruction of everything that MLK, Jr. stood for. We watched as the Battle Hymn of the Republic was played, a song played by Union soldiers in the Civil War. What do we do as DJT and his movement try to appropriate the very things they are trying to destroy? What do we do when the peaceful transfer of power results in handing the power to someone who wants to burn the thing to the ground?
Devolution, de-evolution, or backward evolution (not to be confused with dysgenics) is the notion that species can revert to supposedly more primitive forms over time.
My thought watching the military bands and all the military hoopla, like the ceremonial inspection of the troops, is that we are like the UK, all the fancy uniforms and imperial ceremonial hoopla but a former great power, delusionally living in the past and many of us striving to return to the past: Make America Great Again, run by the White and the Wealthy.
Boor, n., an unrefined, ill-mannered, crude, rude, offensive person.
Cult, n., a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object, a religious or quasi-religious group characterized by unusual or atypical beliefs, seclusion from the outside world and an authoritarian structure.
The Capitol One Arena crowd: "You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know—morons.” – Jim in Blazing Saddles.
"There's no people like show people, they smile when they are low / Angels come from everywhere with lots of jack, and when you lose it, there's no attack / Where could you get money that you don't give back? let's go on with the show"
All those thousands of military people moving like robots, impersonal droids, or automatons, or standing still like statues, but all there to honor and show respect to C-in-C Bonespur, the draft-dodging playboy who has called them 'suckers' and 'fools' and pledged to avoid using them against opponents overseas but to use them against opponents in America.
Obeisance, n., deferential respect.
1500 pardons and 14 commutations of January 6th insurrectionists and dismissal of pending prosecutions = an open invitation to violence and lawlessness so long as it is in support of Trump and Trumpism. They come on top of Trump's 1st term pardons of Michael Flynn, Dinesh D'Souza, George Papadopolous, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon along with Charles Kushner, many drug traffickers, murderers, and war criminals.
The fatuousness of "This is not who we are." George W. Bush was re-elected after misleading the nation into the invasion of Iraq and joking about it at the following White House Correspondents Dinner. Donald Trump received a much larger number and share of the votes in 2020 than in 2016 and was elected again in 2024. This is who we are. George Will in this morning's WaPo:
The day after the election last fall, Kotkin, of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, conversing with Justin Vogt of Foreign Affairs, expressed impatience with those who say of Trump, “That’s not who we are.” Kotkin asked, “Who’s the ‘we’?” Trump, he said, is not “an alien who landed from some other planet”:
“This is somebody the American people voted for who reflects something deep and abiding about American culture. Think of all the worlds that he has inhabited and that lifted him up. Pro wrestling. Reality TV. Casinos and gambling, which are no longer just in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but everywhere, embedded in daily life. Celebrity culture. Social media. All of that looks to me like America. And yes, so does fraud, and brazen lying, and the P.T. Barnum, carnival barker stuff. But there is an audience, and not a small one, for where Trump came from and who he is.”
Many Americans today resent sharing citizenship with an approximately equal number of other Americans. Each group abhors the other’s politics and, perhaps as important, their manners.
Can I, the country, and the world ever forgive the vain, arrogant, foolish old man, Joe Biden, for having contributed so significantly to Trump's return to power?
Trump claimed to be a modern Messiah, the Chosen One, saved by God Himself (we know God is male) from would-be assassins to Make America Great Again.
We're going to Mars?!? To pay back Elon Musk?
Gulf of America!?! To disparage Mexico and Mexicans?
The tech magnates got the front-row seats, in front of Trump's cabinet nominees.
The Invocations and Benedictions: how can anyone expect young people to believe in organized religion and clergy people after watching all the religiosity around the inauguration of Trump.
A National Prayer Service and the Episcopal National Cathedral. The cathedral is packed with politicians and clergypeople, groups not known for their embrace of Truth. The clergy are dressed in their habilaments, signals of their religious authority, piety, and silliness. "Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." H. L. Mencken.
John Bolton, former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, is the target of an Iranian assassination plan. Joe Biden restored Secret Service protection for him because of the seriousness of the threat. Today, Trump removed his Secret Service protection. Probable reason: he became a critic of Trump after he left his administration. His punishment: exposure to an Iranian assassin. This from a "Christian" whose front attendance at the National Prayer Service with other "Christians? was televised for all the world to see. The reading for that service should have been Luke 18:9-14:
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
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