Trump – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Hinge Moment?

It’s going to be a weekend.

There’s really no way to know if you’re living through a hinge moment of history or not. But these next few days certainly have the makings of one.

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Between the events in Los Angeles, (including what happened to Senator Padilla,) already planned but now growing No Kings protests, Trump’s ego-fluffing birthday parade, and events in the Middle East, the atmosphere is charged. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t feel a sense of foreboding.

There’s no way to know what is going to happen and yet we all know we have to live through whatever comes. It’s almost like preparing for surgery knowing you have a negative reaction to anesthesia.

To be perfectly honest, I think my biggest fear is that we have such fools and imbeciles in charge. There may be plans, there may be desired outcomes. There may be plans to disrupt either. The events I cited above, while all potentially fraught with the potential for danger, all depend on those imbeciles and whatever decisions they are going to make, and the reactions to them.

Sadly, we don’t have to look hard to find them or see their imbecilic behavior. Apparently, according to the Secretary of Army, there is an American soldier on the moon. The Pentagon is a mess. And the White House, well.. let’s just say I think the faithful is starting to lose a bit of faith in what comes out of there anymore.

Speaking of faith, I don’t have much of it in those elected to be leading voices in opposition.

If so much didn’t hang in the balance, all of this would be laughable. But so much does indeed hang in the balance. Beyond my fears of the imbeciles is how much they relish being cruel. They’ve baked cruelty into the cake they want to stuff down our throats to a point that just being cruel for the sake of it seems to be the entire point, not just a means to an end.

To be honest, while it feels like things are stacked against those, like me, who stand against this imbecilic sadistic regime, I sense that there are still possibilities to erode the ground underneath their plans. I may not be encouraged by the s0-called leaders of the opposition, but I am heartened by what seems to be a growing groundswell of anger among those they think they’re leading.

Things might need to get uglier first, sadly. The saga of human history bears that out. Perhaps these next few days will tell us which way the hinge of history is going to swing. Perhaps not.

See you on the other side.

Photo by Vasylchenko on Shutterstock.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Paying attention for the next generation.

Good morning. Visiting the grandkids this weekend, so this will be a short stack of links to share. Fair warning ahead most are on the darker side of the ledger. The links. Not the grandchildren. They are the light. The grandchildren are why I pay attention.

First up is a piece on despair from Dean Pritchard titled Despair, What Is It Good For. He calls it a hopeless call to action. I’m not sure it’s hopeless at all. Just another step in finding what may or may not turn out to be answers. As long as we keep stepping.

NatashaMH says that social media addiction isn’t just about us, it’s about the people around us in Unread, Unavailable and Unbothered. I’ve never been one to buy into the social media addiction theory. It’s too damn easy to put down the damn phone. But I take her points because it’s too damn easy to keep hoping to find new ways to avoid despair.

Lauren Goode takes on Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia. Somebody needs to.

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman say that Trump is betraying the voters who elected him in The White Rural Reckoning. They are correct. But we knew that would happen. Scum likes to remove itself from other scum once it’s done scumming around.

Joan Westenberg compares the comeuppance moment Apple is enduring to Martin Luther’s reformation moment in Apple’s Diet of Worms. Given the abundance of fanatics there’s more than a little truth here.

Playwright Sara Ruhl is one of my favorites. Charles McNulty takes a look at what she has to say in her new book In ‘Lessons From My Teachers,’ Playwright Sarah Ruhl Finds Wisdom In Art, Motherhood, Even Grief.

And as for weathering despair, check out Lost At Sea by Alec Frdyman. Excellent reading about a scary adventure.

And to close out this weekend I’ll leave you with this uncredited thought that pops up every now and then on social media.

And just remember who the tax breaks are targeted for.

Peace.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Hostile and Political Amazon

The dangerous farce continues (and sometimes it’s quite funny.)

I guess someone at Amazon read my post from a few weeks ago about how it is possible to bring a bully to heal. I doubt it. But it is fun to watch Jeff Bezos make the Trump administration sweat a bit under similar circumstances. At least for the moment.

In response to the Trump tariffs, which are already driving up prices and driving down consumer confidence, Amazon has announced that they will be displaying the amount of price increases that are due to tariffs on its product pages.

Of course this generated an immediate response from the White House with the press secretary, standing at the podium beside the Treasury secretary, labeling Amazon’s move as a “hostile and political act.”

Oh my.

Three things to quickly comment on:

First, when you need to trot out Treasury Secretary Bessent to try and clam waters you’re losing. As I’ve said before, he reminds me of the LaLa guy. Remember him?

Whatever Bessent says seems to make as much sense.

Second, we just reached the 100 day mark of this dangerous farce of an administration and the meaningless polls are telling us folks are unhappy. You don’t need polls to know that, see that, or feel that. The unease in the air is thicker than this Spring’s pollen count.

You can only create a fake reality in the movies. And even then, those fake realities fall apart in the end.

Third, most early bets are Bezos will fold and pull back on this. But one can only bend a knee so far before it breaks. Or they don’t let you launch any new satellites.

And the bending begins.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

There’s a Corner and Trump Has Backed Us Into It. Again.

The farce continues

The headline of this post came to me first. Sometimes that happens. Then I had a memory flashback suggesting that I had used that headline before. I have. That was in early August of 2023. That’s why I added the “Again.”

The first time was right after the orange menace was indicted for the third time. As excited as some were for the legal victory in that moment, I felt then that we were still in great peril. That feeling proved accurate. It chills me to read what I wrote then:

There’s no back to find our way to, regardless of the legal outcomes. Frankly there’s no back to find our way to even if somehow this monster suddenly disappeared from the planet. The damage has been done. And I don’t think we collectively have what it takes to bridge the gaping wounds, much less comprehend them. Our political systems are incapable of stopping the slaughter of children with guns. Our spiritual institutions keep remaking foundational tenets into something unreconcilable with their founding. And we’re going to fix this?

The wounds are fresh. The pain is real. There’s a monster in our midst and it’s going to take extraordinary measures to defeat it. Nothing will be the same if we do. Nothing should be the same as we try. And if there’s any healing to come it’s not going to happen without amputations that alter the way we navigate the world.

We keep repeating this cycle. We’re still in that same corner as we sit watching, hoping, perhaps praying for some legal or moral victory to change any of the actions the Trump administration is tossing about. I know there are many, like me in that previous post, who wish he would somehow disappear from the planet. But neither legal victories nor acts of God are going to change the course of destruction we’re on and have been. The damage has been done and more keeps happening daily. Some bizarre force is keeping us in trapped in a corner. It’s also keeping Trump there too. He seems to enjoy it. Most, not all, of the rest of us do not.

Let’s take this Abrego Garcia deportation case. The Trumpsters have already tossed aside (for the moment) a Supreme Court ruling against them, redefining it as one in their favor, turning no into yes, day into night, and reality into fantasy. By doing so these fluffed up maniacs have dug a hole so deep that they can’t climb out without damaging their own machismo, dragging all of us deep into it as well.

It’s a serious moment that requires serious people to actually act seriously. A rare combination that’s tough to find these days. Whether it’s this issue, an unexplainable tariff/trade war, threatening law firms and universities, or whatever this administration is tossing into the bottomless blender of bluster, behind the scenes they are still ardently working towards success in an issue that might just render moot all of the moments of new horrors they unveil daily.

The subtext beneath all of this is a plot line that threatens to make any and all of these horrid actions seem like distractions. I’ve said all along that this administration is acting as if they don’t care about the outcome of future elections. They would not be acting this way if they were. Yet that’s the frame we seem incapable of breaking when discussing each of new eruption.

If we’ve learned anything (there’s no proof we have) it is that this dictator and his henchmen mean what they say and it’s no mistake that they keep hinting of a third term, or president for life scenario. Yes, there will most likely be elections. There are elections in Russia, Hungary, and pick your favorite autocracy. This will be the battle that decides all, and we need to face each new challenge within that context.

There’s a straight line that can be drawn between the moment this Abrego Garcia case finally winds its way back to the Supreme Court for a decision and the fate of future elections. The chess moves are simple to see.

If the Supreme Court defers in any way that subjugates the due process clause of the 5th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, then all bets are off. Game over. If the Supreme Court, or rather the conservative members of that court, put the administration in check by ruling against it, the next move is either surrender or tossing the pieces from the board, scrambling it all and declaring the game invalid.

I’m frankly not sure which outcome is worse. The Supreme Court abdicating ends all but the waiting game for the next shoe to drop, continuing the charade of hoping for some moment of truth that will set us all free. Upsetting the game board acknowledges where we actually are, but are afraid to admit. Both sides are cowering in that corner, afraid to face that moment of truth.

Dark times.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be

US Government Idiot Watch

Make no mistake, the folks Donald Trump has chosen for his cabinet are mortal. They are also fools.

According to Jeffery Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic, they were communicating via the messaging app Signal, about recent military plans to strike Houthi rebels in Yemen. Bad enough in and of itself, but they also included journalist Goldberg in on the plans.

According to Goldberg:

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining. […]

And explain he does in this article which includes images from some of the messages between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and more. Don’t worry. Goldberg does a better job of protecting sensitive data than the culprits do.

Obviously everyone but those in the cult of knee-benders and compliant media knows already that these guys are incompetent fools. Perhaps now the media will start calling this ship of fools out for what it actually is.

I don’t wonder at their incompetence or reckless behavior. I just wonder why they aren’t using government secure channels to do their dirty work. Has Elon Musk locked them out of that too?

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

The Stranger In The Room: The Zelenskyy Ambush

Don’t we at least deserve competent evil doers?

In most meetings when big decisions are going to be made or deals are poised for closing all of the hashing out of details is done ahead of time, before the principals show up to make a show of it. But when one side doesn’t want the deal to close or has nefarious designs on tricking the other there’s an age old tactic used to help derail things. It’s called “The Stranger in the Room.”

The “Stranger in Room” during the Zelenskyy visit to the White House was J.D. Vance.

Here’s how the game is played.

“The Stranger” is present in the meeting, often as a second, third, or even lower functionary. Often as innocuous decoration. But “The Stranger” is brought in with the purpose of blowing things up, so that the principal doesn’t have to get his/her hands dirty.

Often it’s with an innocuous comment. Sometimes it’s with a serious question. Occasionally, though rarely, it’s with a completely defiant statement. I’m sure you’re familiar with the variant of having an assistant call someone out of a meeting for an important call at just the right time.

Vance’s role was to derail the meeting once things looked like they weren’t going The White House’s way, perhaps even scotch things from the beginning. He succeeded, but the masquerade was shorn of its cover when his principal, Trump, decided to open his mouth, and escalate things further, letting his ego take over revealing not only the game, but how ineffectual Vance was at playing his role.

It’s now quite obvious that Trump and his cadre of criminals thought they could snooker Zelenskyy. But they snookered themselves, endangering the future of Ukraine, Europe, and the world order in the process. Zelenskyy was right that they aren’t playing cards. Which is a good things, because the idiots he’s dealing with can’t even cut a deck, much less deal it.

Look, I know these are evil assholes intent on horrible things. It’s just a damn shame we don’t even have competent evil assholes. But then again, when damage is done it doesn’t matter if it was brought about by ignorance or malice.

(apologies for the weird formatting. WordPress is doing odd things today.)

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Can We Just Get This Over With?

Fluffing the king is the new national pastime.

We’ve been heading here for far too long to continue denying we’ve arrived. It’s time we acknowledged it and adjust our reactions accordingly. Because face it, reactions are all we have left, given the collective lack of action that should have been. Today, on social media, Donald Trump essentially ended the charade and declared himself king.

The political party that has been tying itself into knots supporting him and the political party that should be opposing him have both covered themselves in cowardice. The media that cherishes its hallowed 4th estate has found new and very poor ways to tell us we shouldn’t believe our eyes and ears. Men with power and money willingly submit like suckling pigs hoping they won’t get led to slaughter. Let’s not forget the deluded cult members and greedy bastards who think this guy is doing things that will help them. Woe be unto them. Woe be unto us all. I’m not saying we should accept this. We shouldn’t. We should fight it with every ounce of strength we have. But let’s for goodness sake acknowledge what we’re fighting and quit the pretense. The man sees himself as a king and those who know better are way to content to play the game. Those that don’t, but cowardly won’t call bullshit loud and often enough, are essentially giving him the runway for all of the planes to continue to crashing among us. To be honest, I think he’s somewhat oblivious in the world this decaying orange turd thinks he’s living in. He’s already on the throne and supported, willingly or no, by those who have any modicum of power in this country as they keep fluffing him while they wait for him to rape the next porn star that crosses his path. If it all one day comes crashing down he’ll be as surprised as anybody that he takes down with him. Hans Christian Anderson could never have imagined his story quite like this. Perhaps we do need a child to lead us, because the adults in the room can’t seem to find their way out from under their own shadows. You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

January 6th. Never Forget. Remember While You Can.

We’re living in a moment like no other.

Never Forget. Never Fucking Forget.

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Crime has a new and devalued meaning in this new world, but the criminal who started this will be in charge soon. Never forget that he and his worshippers did what they did to this country on January 6th. To make a buck. They may legally be let off the hook, itself another crime that mocks our legal system into irrelevance. They most certainly will try and erase history and this story. We have a history of that sort of whitewashing in this country. It’s something we do all too well.

Bad things are going to happen to this country and its people beginning in a few weeks. This most recent spark may have been lit on an escalator in 2015, but it burst into all-consuming flames on January 6th, 2021, after smoldering with occasional flare-ups since the American Civil War, itself an conflagration smoldering since this country’s founding.

I recommend reading this article in The Atlantic from Jacob Glick, “ What I Saw on the January 6th Committee.” It has an interesting and worthy perspective on the surrounding investigations. But let’s set investigations aside. They mean little these days when they can be both derailed or manufactured from whole cloth.

The Big Lie won. The Big Liar won. Those who worship at his feet, along with those of us who see what is actually happening and about to happen, lost. There’s this sense of trying to find a sense of normalcy, a sense of balance to manage the treacherous path ahead. There will be none. We’re off-axis, and gravity is behaving in mysterious ways.

We are living in a moment when the history of this world will change. Not under our feet, but in front of our faces. There’s no rug to be pulled out from under us, only a mirror we avoid like a vampire.

We really don’t know how or what those changes will bring. The times they are a-changing, but it’s not the same song. We are breathing rare air right now, and in our lungs, it feels mysterious and wrong. January 6th will be the moment remembered. Never forget it.

Never forget it in the ways we have forgotten the other moments that allowed it to take place.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Looking ahead, looking back, yet always looking in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

It’s Sunday. It’s the Sunday after the U.S. election that will change everything. In my opinion those changes will make life worse not better. The one thing that won’t change is my curiosity and sharing that in Sunday Morning Reading.

I cranked out a Thursday edition of Sunday Morning Reading this week to share some terrific writing in the aftermath of the election. I’m going to once again share a couple of those titles here, for the record, but also because they are worth re-reading now, and perhaps also later.

John Gruber’s thoughts post election are special, as is his piece How It Went.

Ken White of PopeHat fame’s piece And Yet It Moves is also worth re-reading and re-sharing. Excellent.

David Todd McCarty’s So, That Happened is also worth re-visiting.

Now on to some new stuff to share.

A series I had been sharing links to for awhile never really escaped my radar, but for some reason didn’t get mentioned as much here. Ellis Weiner and Steve Radlauer’s excellent serial The Split has come to an end. Conceived as a meditation “about what a country modeled entirely on red state ‘values’ would be like,” it has been a fantastic journey through 52 chapters. I’m sorry to see it come to an end. You can find the final chapter here and all of The Split here.

Over at Beardy Guy Musings, Denny Henke advises that we Remain Calm. But Prepare. Good advice.

Rachel Maddow reminds us that America has had its share of bad guys in the past in Dead Last.

Jeff Jarvis asks and answers Why Are Liberals So Infuriated with the Media?

Matteo Wong ponders The Death of Search in a world racing to embrace AI harder and harder.

Finally Frank Landymore tells us that a Physicist Says There’s Another Universe Hiding Behind the Big Bang. You can read the original essay Landymore refers to by Neil Turok here. Intriguingly not only does it exist in this theory but it is moving back in time. I’m sure not alone in wishing somehow we could do that either here or there.

America Had A Choice. America Chose Wrong

Sharing some thoughts of mine and others while trying to process this awful change.

America had a choice on November 5, 2024. America chose wrong. Donald Trump, the decaying orange convicted felon/child rapist who stole state secrets and tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat was reelected to be President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States. We can’t say we weren’t warned.

I’m still reeling a bit, alternating between shock, grief, and trying to find my way to process what I believe marks the end of America two years shy of its 250th birthday. Oh, sure it’ll still show up on a map, have a flag, and command a place in the world. But it will never be the same. No more defiantly claiming this is not who we are. In an act of national lunacy, this is who we’ve chosen to be. Sorry. That’s how I see it. You don’t invite a criminal into your home and stand in surprise when he steals the silver.

But back to the processing.

One of the things I do is read and share writing and subjects I think are worth your time. Typically that appears in my Sunday Morning Reading column here on the Wicked Stage. Today, I’m sharing some reading that has helped me through a couple of sleepless nights and very gray moods under very gray skies. Some seeks solace and understanding. Some might feel vindictive and angry. As I said, processing.

I hope you take the time to read this writing from some very thoughtful thinkers.

First up is Scattered Thoughts On The Worst of Days by Ian Dunt. Helpful words from overseas.

David Todd McCarty is trying to make sense of things in the aftermath of a catastrophe in So, That Happened.

Mark McKinnon pens An Open Letter to My Daughters. It’s meant as some words of solace. I’m not sure I’m there yet. One day, maybe. But I’m saving this for my granddaughter to read down the road.

Charles Pierce writes With The Election of Donald Trump, America is About to Get Exactly What It Wants.

James C. Nelson is a vet from a distinguished military family. He comes in hot with I Will Fly My Flag No Longer.

Finally, Ken White of PopeHat fame writes down some thoughts in And Yet It Moves. Damn good. Here’s a quote:

Are Americans inherently good, freedom-loving, devoted to free speech and free worship, committed to all people being created equal? That’s our founding myth, and isn’t it pretty to think so? But a glance at history shows it’s not true. Bodies in graves and jails across America disprove it. We’re freedom-loving when times are easy, devoted to speech and worship we like with lip service to the rest, and divided about our differences since our inception.

In some small way I’m selfishly hoping sharing this might help me as much as you. Good reading.