Overwhelming evil

During the tenure of the Trump administration, this newsletter has become ever less ‘daily’ and so I have dropped any pretense that it is or is even meant to be. It’s not that things aren’t happening. It’s that the evil is painfully predictable evil of a most mean-spirited authoritarian populist kind with a president who certainly verges on the racist aspects of paleoconservatism (authoritarian populists are racist but deny that they are) while celebrating the destruction of our environment; leading the U.S. toward war with Iran and, still possibly, North Korea; and prosecuting even more viciously a war on the poor. Meanwhile, too many Democrats imagine that Trump can be dealt with ‘normally,’ that this is somehow politics as usual, even if a little more offensive than usual.

There’s nothing really new here except an unimaginable degree of sleaze and that somehow Donald Trump’s penis size became an issue[1] and that rather than a special prosecutor being a primary threat to his presidency,[2] that threat might come from an adult film star or a number of other pending lawsuits.[3] This that is new is only of peripheral interest to me (even if I’ll openly snicker about Trump’s penis size where, I figure, others are too embarrassed to do so). And the rest is just really, really tragic with very little hope of improvement. I knew there would be evil.[4] I am sure I underestimated it. But as this country became much too large, it was probably inevitable (which is the subject of my work in progress).


Updates

  1. May 17, 6:22 pm:
    • Exceptions to the proposed work requirement for Medicaid would disproportionately benefit whites.[5]
    • It’s difficult to keep track of all of Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt’s scandals. They are legion, but “[t]he president, and most congressional Republicans, have stuck with Pruitt, presumably because he has proven skilled at dismantling the EPA.”[6]

Donald Trump

Warren Richey, “Mueller aside, Trump now faces legal peril from a host of sources,” Christian Science Monitor, May 11, 2018, https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/0511/Mueller-aside-Trump-now-faces-legal-peril-from-a-host-of-sources


James Comey

Dana Bash, “Giuliani: Mueller’s team told Trump’s lawyers they can’t indict a president,” CNN, May 16, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/politics/rudy-giuliani-robert-mueller-indictment/index.html


Polarization

Neil Gross, “Is the United States Too Big to Govern?” New York Times, May 11, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/opinion/sunday/united-states-too-big.html


Medicaid

Christine Emba, “The GOP is quietly crafting work requirement waivers — for white people,” Washington Post, May 16, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-is-quietly-crafting-work-requirement-waivers–for-white-people/2018/05/16/fcef4eb8-5928-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html


Scott Pruitt

Dana Milbank, “Scott Pruitt has an emergency,” Washington Post, May 16, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/at-the-epa-lights-sirens-and-lots-of-smoke/2018/05/16/9d4e885e-594e-11e8-858f-12becb4d6067_story.html


  1. [1]Marlow Stern, “Stormy Daniels’ Penthouse Revelations: On Trump’s Hair, Penis and More,” Daily Beast, May 7, 2018, https://www.thedailybeast.com/stormy-daniels-penthouse-revelations-on-trumps-hair-penis-and-more
  2. [2]Dana Bash, “Giuliani: Mueller’s team told Trump’s lawyers they can’t indict a president,” CNN, May 16, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/politics/rudy-giuliani-robert-mueller-indictment/index.html
  3. [3]Warren Richey, “Mueller aside, Trump now faces legal peril from a host of sources,” Christian Science Monitor, May 11, 2018, https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/0511/Mueller-aside-Trump-now-faces-legal-peril-from-a-host-of-sources
  4. [4]David Benfell, “An apology,” Not Housebroken, January 13, 2017, https://disunitedstates.org/2017/01/13/an-apology/
  5. [5]Christine Emba, “The GOP is quietly crafting work requirement waivers — for white people,” Washington Post, May 16, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-is-quietly-crafting-work-requirement-waivers–for-white-people/2018/05/16/fcef4eb8-5928-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html
  6. [6]Dana Milbank, “Scott Pruitt has an emergency,” Washington Post, May 16, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/at-the-epa-lights-sirens-and-lots-of-smoke/2018/05/16/9d4e885e-594e-11e8-858f-12becb4d6067_story.html

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