Monday, August 8, 2022

TWGB: The "Raid" on Emperor Commodus

 


There's nothing like starting your damn dumb day out knowing you are going to have to post about your fucking Moby Dickless white supremacist whale, but when I cracked open yon internets this morn to finally unload about the weekend's vote-a-rama and how it demonstrates Republican fecklessness, I already knew I was committed to talking later about how the Trump presidency has gone down the toilet. Literally. 

It's been widely and accurately AFAIK reported that Trump tore up docs that were required to be preserved and may have even eaten docs he didn't care to be preserved, despite the presidential records act. For someone who derided and persecuted his 2016 opponent over records retention, it is astounding that this is the guy who presided over an entirely unaccountable wipe of DHS, DOD and Secret Service digital records

I mean, astounding for a value of being shocked when a chronic liar somehow does something the exact opposite of what he claims he finds important. 

What might get lost here is that today, the anniversary of Nixon's resignation announcement, Paul Manafort had admitted that yeah, he did give Trump Campaign polling data to someone he wants to pretend he didn't know full well was connected to GRU because why not? I mean, thanks, we have several volumes of Senate Intelligence Committee data on the various connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, but it's nice someone wants to skirt about copping to it in order to secret-boast about it. He's literally humble-bragging he does coups, you guys. Do you need an election fixer? Manafort is out here putting out feelers. He is broke and in need of the only work he knows-fuckery. Kilimnik, you guys, goes back to Ukraine shit, too. It all does.  Russia was always going to fuxxor Ukraine in Trump's second term, but they are fucked because they tried it in Joe Biden's first. 

I really wish MAGA so-called patriots tried to suss out where in their Daddy fixations they decided Trump or Putin were real men. They are baby-nard projectionists. 

Anyway, today we also got a glimpse of what an anti-democratic, pro-Nazi shit Trump is with respect to his relationship with the military and entire misunderstanding of the history of American service, which includes thinking Nazi generals were al loyal and this was somehow great (ok, Operation Valkyrie, and also, this dope heard of the idea of the "good Nazi" and thought it was a compliment?) and also there was a confirmation of Adam Serwer's most salient observation of the Trump presidency--that the cruelty was the point. We also learned Trump didn't want disabled vets at his military pride parade because he thought it would look bad. 

He thought heroes who showed physical valor in the line of duty was a problem, you guys. That their physical ordeal wasn't a visible reflection of sacrifice to a higher cause.

So how would I be shocked if Mar-a-lago was "raided"? (For a value of "raided" that means subject to a lawfully executed warrant based on probable cause because of due process.) This former president took 15 boxes of apparently classified shit out from the White House with him. 

We're supposed to give a shit that MAGAs are mad about it. Of course they are. They are conditioned to be mad because of a steady diet of mad-fuel. They believe a free and fair election was stolen with no proof at all--of course they are mad about their little God King. They literally don't know what due process is or appreciate that Trump is not inviolate but is still just a citizen subject to the same laws as anybody else. 

Literally any day could be the day when MAGAs decide to explode. They did on 1/6. It looks like for some reason some /Donald peeps thought 8/8 was some kind of big deal.  (88 stands for Heil Hitler in some Nazi iconography.) Who cares? Democracy isn't about the feelings of losers and bigots. 

And justice isn't about politics either. Sometimes, your boy is just guilty as fuck and you need to acknowledge it. The GOP is having problems with the basic idea of right and wrong. But the pursuit of the evidence and the facts matters. 


3 comments:

Procopius said...

I've never been able to figure out what the big deal is about Manafort giving Republican polling data to some guy accused of being "connected" to the GRU. It's not classified data. It's not even a government document. It's probably not accurate, and it's time limited. So aside from further smearing Manafort, which is not particularly helpful to anyone, what's the point?

Vixen Strangely said...

At the risk of sounding like a flake, the thing with the campaign polling is that they were using a model for their digital campaign that was based in negatives and relied on "psychographics". They were pinpointing digital ads practically tailor-made to anybody who might be "Trump-curious", but also worked to suppress Democratic turnout via disinfo--trying to bring down potential otherwise reliable Democratic voter pools with inaccurate or conspiratorial information.

It helps to check out the intersection of Cambridge Analytica and FaceBook. The Trump campaign was about maximizing white grievance and minimizing reliable Democrat turnout. There was a parallel influence campaign waged by Internet Research Agency--a Russian troll farm--basically inauthentic accounts pushing disinfo 24/7 and deluging social media with--targeted messaging aimed at deflecting interest in Clinton and either encouraging drop out (simply not supporting her by voting at all or voting write in or third party, or even just casting a protest vote for Trump to mix it up. This grew up into movements like Blexit and Walkaway and state secessionist talk.

Now, to do this for a political campaign is just some lying bullshit. But in the hands of a country that had historically used disinfo to create wedges through the US's natural fault lines of race and religion, knowing what bugbears and tics and grievances and so on to lean into with their targeted ad campaign could be used to perhaps imply that the US government should be burned in a refiner's fire and the Civil War is the only way out of irreconcilable political divisions. The goal was a psyops campaign on the US homeland, and the Trump 2016 campaign leaned into it with gusto.

Republicans are no patriots. They simply never understood that if Russia wanted Trump to win, it could not mean anything positive for us to have elected him. They still circle the wagons around his pitiful treasonous hide anyway.

Manafort is a sleaze who took foreign blood money. He deserves all the smearing.

Vixen Strangely said...

Sat what one will about the Daily Mail, but this piece is what I'm talking about.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/fb-6068939/POLITICS-SEX-LIES-RISE-FALL-PAUL-MANAFORT.html

The sleaze is deep with Manafort. But Trump pardoned him because he was still being advised by him. Just like he pardoned Steve Bannon who defrauded people with his "Build the Wall" shit. Trump rewards useful people, however scummy. This is what TrumpWorld means. He doesn't care about right or wrong, or the rule of law. He just craves and grasps for power, and the power-worshipping idiots who have forgotten right and wrong fall in line.

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