TWGB: Very Fast and Very Hard

The thing with Trump and his unique pathology (I don't know what else to call it) is that he isn't exactly transparent about the things he prefers others don't see, but then he goes and threatens things like obstruction of justice or war crimes or whatever in public. His sense of right and wrong isn't like an ethical thing so much as an optical one. The payola shit like who he owes money to makes him look weak, but he thinks blowing up mosques might make him look strong.

Does he really have 52 Iranian sites he's planning to wipe out in the event of Iranian retaliation for the death of Soleimani? Here's the thing--maybe. And they may include world heritage sites. A lot of commentators have pointed out that this is like ISIS or the Taliban targeting things of cultural and historical value because he, like them, has no idea of the value of these things. But there's more to it than that.

He refers in the Tweets to Iran's civil unrest and the crackdown. I don't think he realizes that instead of highlighting the social division of Iran internally, he might be providing cause for some cohesion--to rally against us. He doesn't think like that.

We know some things about how Trump thinks, though--he telegraphed in 2011 and 2012 that he imagined that a desperate president might try to go to war with Iran to save his political bacon. We know guests at the "Winter White House" might have heard as much about Trump's big plans against Iran as the Senate did, and we know he spoke with friendly GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, but not the Gang of Eight.  This makes the rationale behind the move suspect--because when he and Defense spokespeople suggest that this move was "to prevent a war not start one" or to "prevent an immanent attack" which they for sure and really no honest have proof of, I feel like the public should be demanding receipts.

It's especially troubling when VP Pence (and why don't we have more information on his conversations with the Ukrainian president?) just bald-faced lies about how Soleimani might have been involved with 9/11 terrorists, because he seems to think the justifications (potentially true but requiring verification) aren't valid enough without a total lie thrown on top (which tends to suggest they weren't all that valid, right?). It actually appears the likelihood of immanent attacks was "razor-thin".  It also seems that Trump was presented with an array of options of retaliations towards Iran aggression and picked the most severe one.

This makes me think of the "madman theory"--the idea that some countries will only respect a power if they feel that the person in charge is so insane that they will do anything and are best left alone. It's associated with Kissinger and Nixon.

It doesn't work, though. "Fire and fury" didn't get Trump anywhere with North Korea. (Nor did reversing course.) It hasn't with China trade negotiations, and it won't here.

Iran has time to do whatever they mean to do--they don't have to respond "very fast and very hard". The thing with asymmetrical warfare is that it can be as slow and grinding as possible for the "weaker" side. They reply on their own terms, and there is a limit outside of total war that Trump can engage in. But one shudders when Secretary Pompeo mourns the lack of support Trump has from European allies.  Maybe Trump threatening them with dumping ISIS fighters back on their soil was....not good? Will Pompeo express the same amount of surprise at the lack of assistance we might expect from the Kurds? Does he not understand why our good friends in Russia and Turkey will look at us blankly, as well?

This choice seems to have been made as if in a world where events never had consequences (much like Trump's decision to shake down Ukraine). If Trump is going to ever learn anything, he'd have to come to some kind of understanding very fast and very hard.

But he won't--it's off brand. He will stand by his decision and his people will stand by him--however it turns out.

Ladies and Gents, This is Lindsey Graham

Graham blocks resolution recognizing Armenian genocide after Trump-Erdoğan meeting https://t.co/VURZgeFkqn pic.twitter.com/PzGP1sHFUL

— The Hill (@thehill) November 14, 2019

Senator Lindsey Graham met with his golf buddy Trump and his golf buddy's good friend President Recep Erdogan and has decided that the US Senate should not be so hasty (It's been, like, a century, so?) about condemning the Armenian genocide. He says he's objecting "not because of the past, but because of the future." This is happening while, in the present, Kurds are being subjected to war crimes by Turkey.

Before we condemn Graham too swiftly, he never showed much interest in the history of the genocide of Armenians previously. Opposition to such a resolution has a bit of a history, actually, and it has been rejected before for the same kind set of general reasons--because what does it have to do with what is happening now?

The problem I have with this thinking is that not acknowledging the past is a way of denying the events that led to our present. Today, politicians are already coming up with their reasons for why we're going to be okay with ignoring what is happening to the Kurds. What we tolerated in the past, we demonstrate we can tolerate again. We have already witnessed the senator contort himself over whether Trump's concession to Erdogan in greenlighting his military advance into Syrian Kurdistan was a great "out of the box" idea. We will soon dispense with even sanctions, correct? if Graham become concerned about "the future" where sanctions inhibited Trump's out of the box thinking.

Which I think might mean something to do with Graham's perception of his own future in being elected once again to the Senate in the upcoming 2020 election? Because I know, because Graham has said so himself, he worries about the demographic changes the country is going through and what it means to his party, and he has seen that Trump can harness forces of isolation, resentment, division, and "economic anxiety" to establish a solid turnout regardless of issues of right or wrong, or even what conservatives have previously supported. (Or for that one time. In 2016. With a possible assist.)

Or maybe Graham still just doesn't give a shit about Armenians, because in South Carolina.... except South Carolinians actually do give a good goddamn about people who have suffered. Even if Graham cares a little bit more about himself and his Erdogan and Putin loving friend right now.

Graham is wrong an awful lot. It's the malleability and toady-ness of his wrongness, of late, that is simply striking. And I would be remiss if I did not point out that South Carolina has a lovely alternative who would like very much to work for them, and has not established himself as a Washington DC, Sunday chat show know it all hack who is, staggeringly wrong on moral concerns.

Trump Doesn't Know Anybody

Wall Street Journal reporter Shelby Holliday has the best thread regarding Lev Parnas' Instagram account, because it destroys the idea that the recently arrested crime comedy team of Parnas and Fruman were completely unknown to Trump World. Lev Parnas actually has a long Trump history.

But Trump said he never knew these guys.  So weird!

Also, as we might have noticed earlier, former Trump attorney Dowd indicated that they were part of Trump's legal team and had attorney client privilege--how is that possible if he doesn't know them? Right?

But that's normal, Trump also doesn't know the State Department employees that are testifying against him right now. He doesn't know a lot--he gave this discursive speech of sorts today in front of people:

But we’re going to bring our soldiers back home.  So far, there hasn’t been one drop of blood shed during this whole period by an American soldier.  Nobody was killed.  Nobody cut their finger.  There’s been nothing.  And they’re leaving rather, I think, not expeditiously — rather intelligently.  Just leaving.  Leaving certain areas.  Leaving. 

We’ve secured the oil.  If you remember, I didn’t want to go into Iraq.  I was a civilian, so I had no power over it.  But I always was speaking against going into Iraq.  It was not a great decision.  But I always said, “If you’re going in, keep the oil.”  Same thing here: Keep the oil.  We want to keep the oil. 

And we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, they have some cash flow.  Maybe we’ll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.  But they’ll have some cash flow, which they basically don’t have right now.  Everybody is fighting.  It’s not a big oil area, but everybody is fighting for whatever there is.  So we have a lot of good things going over there, and they’re going very well. 

He secured the Kurdish oil that Assad gets with the handful of hundreds who will ultimately remain in Northern Syria? Or he secured the Saudi Arabian oil with the extra couple of thousand people he sent in?  Or both, because he sees securing oil as very important, and maintaining allies--actual human relationships, as not as important? But maybe "we'll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money". Because that will fix their being displaced, and their slaughtered people. Money. You throw money at them, champ. See how that will fix anything. You jowly orange peel fuck.  You low-lying fungal spore-cluster; you fetid earthen vomit.

He doesn't know. He doesn't know the policy advisors who would tell him to say anything but that bullshit. He thinks they are fighting over sand and oil, and not an actual place where humans have lived, and made history, because he only found this place right now.

He doesn't know these people. He doesn't know foreign policy advisors who would tell him all of this is wrong. He doesn't know anyone in his own home who will let him know he fucked it up. He will look in the mirror, and the face in the mirror will smile fakely and toothily back at him.

He doesn't know what any Ukrainian would have said to him in any situation. He doesn't know what the whistleblower really said, and why this anonymous person is still a blur to him. He doesn't know...

But if you listen to the wind blow through  him, the FOX News wind, the grievance, the stupidity--

You know him a lot. You really do. It isn't good. It isn't making America Great.

TWGB: He Ain't So Tough

The White House impeachment war room is a one-man platoon of the president himself — in the role of playground bully, wielding his shamelessness like a weaponized rubber kickball, ready to pummel into the mud anyone who dares to level a charge against him. https://t.co/hqkU2LCc2N

— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) October 10, 2019

This is one of the things I think people have a hard time understanding: Trump does this schoolyard nickname thing not because he's strong or strategic. He's an ignorant reed blown by the fucking wind. If you look at stuff like "I'm not the puppet, you're the puppet" or "Liddle' Shifty Schiff" and think "shit, where does this guy come up with these retorts?" let's get real. The guy's a seven year old. Everyone is trying to respect his office and act like there's a fully-realized adult in there worth talking to. He's a full-blown reactionary, in the sense that he reacts/responds to stimuli. He doesn't understand all of it, no. He responds to it.

Take the disaster unfolding in Syria. He "went off script" on a phone call with Erdogan and somehow, gave the nod to Turkey to strike against the mostly Kurdish SDF. Trump once described himself as trusting people too much. Did he trust that if he threatened Erdogan's economy and made noises about how we'd sanction him and stuff, that would do anything?

Maybe, maybe not. He's now saying reprehensible shit about people who cleaned up ISIS like, "they didn't help us with Normandy". (They actually were apparently part of Allied forces, generally, however. Unlike Trump's father. If Trump wants to cite Khe Sanh, I might cite that I need to see his long form foot X-ray.) He's saying he doesn't care if ISIS fighters are dispersed because they will be heading to Europe--where he's threatened to dump ISIS fighters previously. Does he understand the kind of stochastic terrorism they might intend to wage on our Western allies? Does he think the world so big that doesn't have ripples here?

The better question might be: does he understand what allies are? He thinks we can form new alliances easily--which strongly suggests he doesn't understand the time, investment and cooperation that goes into any of it. It's all transactional to him. I don't think he even understands that this means his temporary allies of today (Republicans) can throw him over for a better deal (not being associated with him) if his name truly begins to stink. And it will. And it should.

His temporary allies of today in the Republican party also need to understand this is how he feels about you. Some people seem to have abandoned all principle in the fear of a series of mean Tweets, as if the vicious seven year old's taunts were somehow better than the considered opinion of people who have frankly, been around these issues far longer than he has and understand the stakes and stakeholders' concerns far more than he can understand them.

Today we hear, among other things, that there are dozens more claims of sexual assault made against Trump in a new book. Nearly life-long rumors of being a sex-pest don't actually jibe well with "family values", do they? These women aren't saying these things for money or acclaim and understand full well the shit they will catch in their personal lives for saying anything against a wealthy and powerful man. The simplest reason for their doing so is...it's their truth. Ask yourself what kind of man preys on vulnerable women and makes them frightened enough of him to keep that under wraps for years. It isn't a strong man. It's a weak man who deals with people as commodities. Their gratification of his temporary needs was a thing he took. He extracted the regular payment from them of their silence, and they have decided to stop paying it. Because they understand he isn't so tough--if they band together.

This sort of thing is his vulnerability. He tries to call himself "transparent" even if this is laughable. No political figure of the modern era in the US has been so protective of, say, their tax returns. Trump's lawyers have said he won't comply with the impeachment proceeding and it looks like they intend to block any testimony or deny the release of any documents.

There's no "soft-pedal" way to deal with that sort of thing. Subpoena everything, charge of obstruction for things withheld, contempt for people who side with President Tantrum-Haver. If he wants to cry victim, the point is--he is bringing this on himself by making it difficult, and if his phone calls and everything else are so squeaky clean and perfect, he shouldn't have a problem. But he clearly does, because why the ten potential charges of obstruction we already have in the Mueller Report? Why specifically deny the testimony of people like Ambassador Sondland whose statements should have confirmed "no quid pro quo" right? Unless that was a matter of messaging directed by the president, as opposed to the actual policy, which was all kinds of quid pro quo, maybe?

Every press conference it needs to be said: What is this administration hiding? Why does Trump lie? If this looks bad, doesn't it mean--it is bad? Every day. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So when things come out like how Trump tried to "fix" things for one of Giuliani's clients, an Iranian Turkish gold dealer who violated US sanctions--what are we to believe? Even petty abuses of office out of sheer transactionalism paint a picture of what a corrupt, weak, unethical being this Trump is. He needs to be called to account on every single one. Every charge. Every thing.

Every single one. He isn't tough. He isn't good. He isn't smart. He isn't godly, even if opportunistic theocrats want to paint him as such. He is not king, because the United States has no monarchs, even if his minions want to talk about "regicide".

He is just a little, dumb man who watches a lot of Fox News, has a certain kind of wealth (and debt), and probably never looks at himself in a full-length mirror naked.  He ain't so tough. He's a gangster, and gangsters fall. That's all you need to know. Band together. He can't fuck us all up. This country isn't him. We're bigger than him, and older and better. We are great.

He just isn't.