This is Not a Great Sign

 

Trump: "When you go to a voting booth, and you do it the right way, and you go to a state that runs it properly, you go in -- they even asked me, they asked me for my license plate. I said, 'I don't know if I have it.' They said, 'Sir, you have to have it.' I was very impressed… pic.twitter.com/SVP1xAsdH0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 18, 2025

I guess there are other things (many!) I could have to say about yesterday's events, but I'm just singling this out here: Trump's brain was trying to grope after the term "driver's license", but it came up with the entirely different "license plate." It's just a word substitution in one sense, a misspeaking, but it feels like a sign of senility, 

Well, to me anyway. It's like when he seems to have wires crossed regarding "political asylum" and "mental asylums". Or when he insists he has to show his ID to buy groceries. He may be losing his mind or, and this is also really quite terrible--he never had much of a mind to lose. 

He thinks solar energy doesn't work at night. He thinks magnets won't work when wet. You can look those things up. Trump has never looked up anything, ever and it shows.

Now MAGA being MAGA, they might just insist this is the strength of Trump: he so muscular he can just wrench his license plate off the car and fold it up in his wallet. Ignoring that Trump says batshit things in all seriousness is worrying as hell.

That's how we got here, and literally millions of lives at any time could depend on Trump not being full-blown delusional. Yet here he is, doing "peace negotiations" with a mental deficit and a florid personality disorder. 

"If You Go Carrying Pictures of Chairman Mao...."

 

I get it, I think. There's a handful of them in every radical crowd. They're so hip, they're positively pelvic. If you're offended by their t-shirt, the problem is you, etc. And nonetheless, the young folks who have discovered Bin Laden's "Letter to America" are just so disappointing. I always hoped, somewhere out there, that, having grown up with the internet, some kind of extra media-savvy would rub off on them, and they would understand that there is propaganda, everywhere, and just because you've run into something "new to you" doesn't mean it's actually valid. That the youths would seek context.

This is called, me, being overly optimistic about human nature. Also, too, I know a bunch of elderly "leftists" who are likewise suckers for the same sort of thing. 

Bin Laden was a recruiter for terrorism against the US--he peddled horseshit pills for what ailed the world. Lots of bloody-minded assholes do that. It's not special. 

I'm not going to be the one who waves my fist and yells at the kids to get off my lawn or stop making human chains or whatever they do today, even if for the love of the revolution, please consider why you are getting dragged off of private property and whether blocking doors are a fire hazard. And also too, be aware cops will wreck your property and get physical at pretty much any leftist protest--it isn't personal. 

But for the love of fuck, please try not to make actual monsters your fucking mascots--is that TOO MUCH to ask? 

Finally--yes, movements can be discredited by malicious actors from within. There were bad actors embedded in Occupy and BLM, and they are already down in your pod.  Don't be hoodwinked and bamboozled babies. It's a jungle out there. 

De-Escalate in Ukraine?

I might have a lot of opinions about what Russian President Putin seems to be about, but I hope he takes President Obama's call pretty seriously.

Here's the deal--I don't have to like Putin or what he's doing to acknowledge that levering his ass out of Ukraine isn't happening without a fight. I also don't have to buy into the idea that "The West" staged a coup (which is just bizarre to me, because did you see Yanukovych's pirate ship?) when Ukrainians had good reason to be aggrieved with their old leadership, to realize that there is an interest anywhere to be sure that people everywhere have a right to choose their government. And this point includes bigger countries not just taking over smaller countries just because. It's occasionally done, but it's not really a "done thing".

Getting back into a Cold War mentality seems unhelpful. Arming and "training" Ukraine (in what--reading the manuals of the arms we give them?) seems like the start of what could grow to a larger commitment. Also, if we did decide to go so far, what is the Russian response?   I'm not saying the whole thing looks like War Games except for reals and with better computers, but yeah--

I don't want to "play a game". Everybody would do better taking a big step back.