6/1/2025

Sunday, June 1, 2025

D+186/131 

1916 US Senate confirmed Louis Brandeis for the Supreme Court of the United States by a vote of 47 to 22, over 4 months after his nomination

1962  Adolf Eichmann was executed in Israel for SS war crimes

1967 The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album was released

2020 President Trump threatened to employ the military to quell protests across the country over the death of George Floyd, then walked with staff to St. John’s Church

In bed at 9 and up at 5:18.  44°, high of 62°, sunny day ahead.   The cardinal couple arrive at 5:30 on the tray feeder, engage in their kissing behavior, followed quickly by a catbird on the suet cake. 

Eye drops at 5:30 a.m. and 5:50 p.m.  Bad pain in the right kidney area again.  I returned to bed around 9 and slept another two hours.  I am sleeping more lately than I have slept in years, also experiencing quite a bit of pain in the right kidney area.  UTI?  I see Dr. Chatt on 6/12.  Will I be able to make it that long before going to Urgent Care or the ER?  I took 500 mg of Tylenol at 8:30 a.m., and it seems to have helped, but how does one know whether it's the Tylenol or the pain just subsided on its own? I've had intermittent chills, and I think I'm sick. Tylenol again at 2:10 p.m.

Is Donald J. Trump the most destructive American in U.S. history?   First, what has he destroyed or is in the process of destroying or bringing under his personal and despotic control?  We can start with republican democracy, constitutional government, and good government led by trustworthy, competent managers.  Perhaps more broadly than those, he has destroyed the government's respect for Truth, Honesty, Honor, Dignity, and the Rule of Law.  More particularly, he has destroyed the US Agency for International Development with humanitarian programs. primarily consisting of food and medicine for those in need. He has destroyed the livelihoods of tens of thousands of federal employees.  He has attempted to destroy the right to due process of law for immigrants.  He has diminished respect for Religion by his own immoral lifestyle and his purely utilitarian embrace of Evangelical Christianity.  He has waged war on scientific research, including medical research, by cancelling research grants and contracts with Harvard University and Columbia University, by curtailing the work and staff of the NIH, FDA, and CDC, by threatening the international student visa program, and by appointing a self-interested zealot to head the Department of Health and Human Services.  He has striven to restrict the freedom of the press by meritless but expensive lawsuits against ABC, CBS, and the Des Moines Register and its pollster.  He has diminished respect for Law and Order by his profligate use of the pardon power to pardon insurrectionists, gang and militia leaders, tax cheats, fraudsters, and many others based solely on political contributions and loyalty to him, and by destroying the professional independence of law enforcement agencies including the DOJ, FBI, and ICE.  He has profoundly weakened the NATO alliance that has largely kept the peace in Europe from the end of World War II until Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014.  He has wantonly violated treaties that he himself signed with Canada and Mexico, and violated other laws and treaties by imposing unauthorized and unwarranted tariffs on every country in the world (except Russia). He withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and from the nuclear treaty with Iran.  He has attacked judicial independence by publicly urging that judges who rule his policies unconstitutional or unlawful be impeached and removed from office.  He has devalued all human life except for the lives of those who support him.  The list of his governmental, economic, legal, and other depredations is too long for anyone to compile, but it surely puts him in the running for the title of The Most Destructive American in History.

Second,  what other president in American history was nearly so destructive?  Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, Warren G. Harding, Richard M. Nixon, George W. Bush?  Each of them had at least one great failure in office, but none of them comes anywhere close to the massive destructiveness of Donald J. Trump in just the first three months of his second term.  A number of his predecessors engaged in behaviors or committed acts that have resulted in their living in infamy (think of Jackson and 'The Trail of Tears," Hayes and the birth of Jim Crow, Nixon and Watergate, and G.W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq), but again nothing comes close to Trump.  Is he in fact a Manchurian Candidate of some sort, a Russian agent or mole?  A profoundly psychopathic Samson intent on bringing down the temple to destroy his enemies and perceived enemies, to get even, and more?

Third, was there any other American, not a president, who has done nearly as much damage to the country and to his countrymen as DJT?  No non-president has ever had as much power as DJT, both legitimate or lawful power, and the power of his charisma over his MAGALand followers, so no one was in a position to inflict as much damage on his country and his countrymen as DJT.