Saturday, November 4, 2017

A Low-Level Volunteer Trump World Grab-Bag

You know, when the Trump Campaign decided to get their almighty shit together and develop a foreign policy team, they did a brilliant job. Somewhere between Sam Clovis and Jeff Sessions, they managed to form a team that included George Papadopoulos, who I mentioned earlier this week as having pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and who was actively cooperating with the investigation, and Carter Page, who just now admitted he really did fly to Russia and met with Russian government operatives, and at least Jeff Sessions and probably other folks in the Trump campaign knew about it. Now, these were some incredibly great choices for Trump's foreign policy team! Papadopoulos, in particular, represented the Trump campaign quite ably in a variety of situations, it turns out. And Carter Page...

Well, Carter Page! Anyhow, he is pretty obviously a people person, meets all kinds of people of all walks of life, and loves chatting. But you can kind of see where these young guns on the Trump foreign policy team are causing a little problem for Jeff Sessions.  I mean, the little bit of perjury over the meetings he himself had with Russians was one thing, but by now, his pretense that he had no idea that the Trump campaign was making Russian connections seems really like a goddamn lie. 

But that's just Jeff Sessions, and he already is in hot water with the Boss for recusing from the Trump/Russia investigation and also not going after Hillary Clinton (which is so weird based on his fake justification for firing Jim Comey, but who am I to have a long memory about such things?) But recent revelations also turned out to be bad news for Sam Clovis, the guy who Trump picked to be head scientist at Department of Ag., who had to back out not so much because he has absolutely no science credentials, but because he knew all about young G-Pap and his Russian peregrinations.

In news I don't even know is related, Robert Mercer stepped down from his hedge fund and the data thing and I guess funding Breitbart and supporting Milo, and will let his daughters do those things, because of the entire grubby his name-getting-draggedness of it all. Cambridge Analytica, Mercer's joint, was a factor in Trump's 2016 win, which seems to have heavily involved Facebook fake accounts and dodgy advertisements.  (Twitter gets a dishonorable mention for literally discounting Russia advertising on their platform, so? I don't think this has anything to do with Mercer, but I'm throwing it in as showing the extent of the Russian fuckery.)

Meh. In other news, Paul Manafort had three passports. I don't know what that means, except he seems to have fancied himself a James Bond-type.  He wants to say he isn't a flight risk because he's too recognizable, but a resourceful cat like him is probably not just an international man of mystery, but a master of disguise.

Anyway--spokespeople in Trumpworld allege that the shocking Russian stuff about Papadopoulos and Page are just the shenanigans of low-level volunteers--like these guys were knocking on doors and licking envelopes, not being foreign policy advisors like Trump touted them to be early on in his campaign. But you can't really throw campaign manager Manafort out as having been low-level, right? Or dismiss the influence of Mercer, who was the guy who has always been behind Steve Bannon? It is too much!

In other news, Trump is probably mad at Jared Kushner for being a serial fuck-up who probably made him fire Comey and brought on the Special Counsel Investigation because he thought this would be better somehow. Jared, like his father-in-law, takes no salary for his White House gig.  Maybe that makes him a senior WH advising low-level volunteer as well?

One hardly knows what to think anymore.

2 comments:

Formerly Amherst said...

Hi Vixen, this is off-topic, but I wanted to thank you for your favorable comment about some of my views over on mikey's site.

I thought about responding to mikey, but I decided to give it a pass. In my capacity in our magical lodge I have to walk a thin line.

I have learned over the years that the least productive groups to try and fence with are Baptists and people deeply entrenched in science. They both have orthodoxies that makes it difficult for them to consider anything outside of their own dogma.

In philosophy what we do is discuss. And if a person is not willing to discuss, then there is simply nothing to talk about. I've had run-ins with scientific types before and have found they're rarely interested in discussion. When your basic complex of knowledge is the esoteric, you receive very little sympathy from the bastions of science. I could say a lot of things, but they would simply be met with derision, and so it is pointless.

Still, I wanted to say that it was nice of you to express some appreciation for my point of view.

Vixen Strangely said...

De nada. I see respecting your POV as a good-faith part of our dialogue and recognize we have some overlap with respects to background. I don't have a beef with science and am not going to rank factual arguments as scientism--but I have some tolerance for the language of faith-traditions because they are more broadly my area of study because they regularly come up in histories, folklore, and literature. For me, both science as a process and folklore/religion as a matter of understanding cultures, have informed my understanding of the world. Although I am basically an agnostic for religious purposes and a enthusiast regarding science as a way to understand the universe I exist in, I can not be dismissive of other philosophies because they are essentially other ways to grasp what matters to other people.

In the words of Dickens regarding Jacob Marley "Mankind was my business." I am fascinated by ways humans understand themselves because it helps me understand humans. As an admitted internet semi-anonymous weisenheimer, I can disregard neither your POV, or his--after all, his has proofs, and facts, and numbers. And yours has history, traditions, and intuitions. We humans struggle between these poles. His reality prevents polio, yours, can inform how one spends part one's elongated existence in self-improvement.

My judging others for their deeply-held beliefs is reserved for actions of harm. I think you once described my Kabbalic tendencies towards Geburah a little harshly. I prefer to think of myself as expressing Maat nature--I hope to be honest.

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