TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[BenDhyan]

So long as Trump is still tweeting as president, the war is not over slad.

[JackRiddler]

I find it ironic that the historical separation between government and entertainment has, over recent years, blurred into a near-merger of celebrity professions where politicians are now performers, and performers are increasingly hyping politics.

I think it is a much, much, much longer history, although the practices and dynamics of this relationship have taken on radically different forms through the ages and in different places, due especially to the forms of communications and technology used in different times and places and of course the endless variety of cultures. Politics has always constitutionally involved theater, and formal theatrical performance has always been at least partly political.

The idea of a separation between the two would be the product of an age of liberal faith, in which the institutions become formalized and independent of person, something that never was fully the case and clearly isn't today.

You never had a political leadership that did not put on some kind of show aiming to entertain followers, although of course the degree to which the needs of a good show determine the politics itself (as they currently do with the Reality TV producer) can vary greatly. And to bring the point home, you never had a political class that was altogether separate from their society's group of celebrated entertainers, poets, playwrights, artists, bards, singers, and of course the related class of shamans and priests and mystics. We are seeing a peak merger of the sectors for the moment, but I'd say that has been here and building not since Reagan but since TELEVISION, especially from the early 1960s.

Which reminds me of this bit from Contact, concerning the first TV signal broadcasting a staged event, a speech, to a number of receivers set up in public around a city, which may one day be received and decoded by extraterrestrial aliens who will think it is so interesting that they bounce it back at us:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRD-tO7jV9U

In the 30 years before TV there were of course massive effects from radio and movies, e.g. Wilson endorsing the first-ever blockbuster feature film, Birth of A Nation, and launching the first large-scale government-run scientific propaganda campaign to win support for the war, with all the original Hollywood stars (Chaplin too) making shorts for it.

But again, this history goes back thousands of years and is not reducible to any simple formulas.


The Apotheosis of Washington is the fresco painted by Greek-Italian artist Constantino Brumidi in 1865 and visible through the oculus of the dome in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building. The fresco is suspended 180 feet (55 m) above the rotunda floor and covers an area of 4,664 square feet (433.3 m2).

I mean, seriously. Not a signing of the constitution or some visual rendering of its principles. The APOTHEOSIS.


Peter Paul Rubens, The arrival of the Queen in Marseille, November 3, 1600

I'll bet it didn't quite rock this much.

.

[Belligerent Savant]

.
Reminds me of comments from earlier in the year...

.

Has tv stardom seduced our senses, including common sense?

Demonstrably, yes.

Do scripted performers now earn access to real roles?

Ah, therein lies the confusion. See, it's all performance. The lines have been blurred for some time*; we are now entering the nadir phase of our zeitgeist, where entertainers are politicians and politicians are entertainers. Our political landscape is scarcely more 'real' than the average American's favorite drama on TV.

The lone distinction is that political theatre has real world ramifications to those out there: citizens of other nations, the working classes, the poor.

The world of make believe has now become the greatest threat to our actual survival. The mindless audience of entertainment is mistaking the show as real.

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase Reality TV. A scripted simulacrum of 'reality'. Just like American Politics.


*Some may argue Reagan blazed the trail as the first overt performer turned President: an inevitable 'merger', now mutated into its current form.

Some may argue.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/04 ... part-2017/

...

Perhaps more importantly, the present regime is remarkably weak, despite its open authoritarianism and ambitions to redefine reality by pronouncing its own facts, in the way of Orwell’s novel 1984. Submitted: The remarkable thing about the Trump regime is not that it is a Reality TV show (with one of the best-known and most successful Reality TV producers in the starring role). Rather, it is that most American viewers do not actually buy into this administration’s televised reality. That is unprecedented.

With that I must confess another of my no-doubt regrettable views: At the latest since the advent of the Reagan presidency, the de facto first function of the thing we call “the presidency” has been to stage a reality show for the political audience, primarily via the medium of television. Note that I did not say this is the presidency’s sole function, by any means; even given the bureaucratized permanent military state and the overwhelming consensus around neoliberal-capitalist politics, the presidency retains power as a policymaking office. Insofar as many executive policies need to be enacted in public, the personal dramaturgy of the presidency feeds the propaganda arm (a.k.a. the corporate media) with the material needed to manage the public perceptions of each otherwise inscrutable move. Ideally, policies are depicted as stages in an unfolding hero journey: Watch as the man rises to the challenges, matches himself against history. What will be his legacy? That ideal has usually failed, but there was never a shortage of fallback plots borrowed from daytime soap operas, eschatological Western shoot-outs, uplifting bootstrap stories of personal salvation, and of course the ever-more frequent professional wrestling scripts. (For extra credit, match the genre to the president most commonly associated with it.)

As of today, thanks to a long-running trend to no longer suspend disbelief that has only been accelerated by the ascendancy of the Trump, the status of the White House as the entertainment bureau of the federal government has never been as obvious to a majority of the citizenry, whether or not they can muster the energy to notice or care. Not only are the society’s major institutions understood as professionally fake, many even invite one to study and admire the craftsmanship of the fakery (as with advertising/marketing and professional wrestling). In regard to the political theater of the presidency and the two-party system, this observation remains a blind spot for many in the corporate media, although they actually co-produce the show. Producers, like Les Moonves or Jeff Zucker (two of the most important and surely witting factors in the rise of Trump) tend to understand these mechanics much better than the on-air “talent,” who doubtless are selected for their relative ability to sound serious while talking stupid shit.

Politics always involved theater. Modern democratic electoral politics merged with the news and entertainment industry long ago, and for decades they have been developing in tandem. More recently a large part of the audience has been lured into treating the results as media critics, rather than as sovereigns or citizen-participants with an actual stake in the proceedings. As interesting as anything Scaramucci said is that we all treat the identity of the White House press agent as though it is vitally important. As a result of this twisted form of transparency, however, the pretext for a new war may backfire, especially insofar as the war (or the triggering event likely to precede it!) involves numerous casualties of the precious American persuasion.

But probably Debord said it all better.

[JackRiddler]

Debord? Well no kidding! And yet it can't be repeated often enough, the obvious has yet to sink in.

Sinatra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHRTCVwSKMs

He did one of this one, too, but I can't find it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DoUiNxh6_0

Found a movie version with the whole Rat Pack playing High Hopes at a fundraiser. But did it really happen?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXMxgkIOqQQ

[peartreed]

As Jack (so nimble and so quick) astutely pointed out, government and entertainment have been overlapping throughout history. It just seems to me that recent crossovers and blending have blurred and really obscured the separation.

We now have Cynthia Nixon of “Sex & The City” running for NY Governor and, to contend for the presidency against Trump The Apprentice, the Democrats are now considering having Oprah give it a serious audition. To me, this is all ridiculous.

As a traditionalist who assumes there should be proper and protective distinction between truth and lies, fact and fiction, actuality and imagination or reality and dreams, I worry that we are allowing government to become reality entertainment.

Much like propaganda, or advertising/promotion/marketing, has bridged the institutions of government and commerce and entertainment, it is no longer clear where the performance for persuasion ends and the honest political pitch begins, or where acting stops and legitimate administration starts. The absence of a dividing line illustrates the gullible electorate audience no longer seems to care anyway.

We have our heroes, our stars and our celebrity favorites rising to rule us without caring if their role, plot and script are real, predetermined by hidden producers.

The current consequence of that indifference is an actor badly performing beyond his competence and capability in a role where success is vital to our safe survival.

[norton ash]

"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry." -- Frank Zappa

I could swear that an RI'er used that as a sig line awhile ago.

[seemslikeadream]

Stormy Daniels took a lie detector test about affair with Trump -- and passed with flying colors


Judge: Trump Must Face Summer Zervos Defamation Lawsuit
https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-sum ... defamation

Karen McMougal suing today to break silence

[JackRiddler]

We now have Cynthia Nixon of “Sex & The City” running for NY Governor and, to contend for the presidency against Trump The Apprentice, the Democrats are now considering having Oprah give it a serious audition. To me, this is all ridiculous.

Cynthia's good. (I can call her that because we went to the same high school, I graduated a year before her and remember her vaguely from back then. She almost certainly wouldn't remember me. Lived in Germany for 15 years and on returning permanently to the U.S. after that was surprised to hear she was a star on Sex & The City, which was then in its fourth or fifth or whatever season. All I'd known is that she'd been Mozart's maid in Amadeus, the one who was blackmailed to spy on him for Salieri.)

There's no reason why a celebrity can't be a good candidate. Good candidates are rare, no matter what their prior profession.

[peartreed]

Admittedly a celebrity, even an actor, could be a good politician, but authenticity is the key determinant, and qualifying experience counts in auditioning for either role.

The skill set, training and abilities required to be a good actor involve sublimating, hiding and disguising the true self in order to project a convincing portrayal of an alternate character – or characters - often entirely different than the real self in most regards. One would expect a politician to, instead, be authentic.

The acted role is fictitious, the elected official is - hopefully – true and honest.

It could be argued that the same acting ability is required to be an effective politician, but the credibility of the role playing, to be convincing, involves a suspension of disbelief and audience trust to immerse entirely into the enjoyment of the portrayal of character and its related story plot.

Awareness that a politician is also an accomplished and experienced professional actor should create some distrust, in the detection of which character is the real deal at any point in time. Which of the spoken declarations and actions are contrived to fool the audience? Which statements are first scripted by others? Whose voice is it?

Trump’s credibility was initially based on his celebrity and contrived “image” as the business tycoon – the authority figure with the power to hire and fire – in charge.

His inability as an actor, or as a politician, despite continuing attempts at projecting a prestigious, dignified presidential flair, is revealed in his incompetence, ignorance, immaturity, avarice, emotional volatility and transparent egomania – amongst other revealing personal traits that emerge consistently and naturally as his real (lack of) character.

The track record of bad actors as wannabe politicians, and vice versa, isn’t good.

[Elvis]

It could be argued that the same acting ability is required to be an effective politician, but the credibility of the role playing, to be convincing, involves a suspension of disbelief and audience trust to immerse entirely into the enjoyment of the portrayal of character and its related story plot.

This is getting somewhat far afield of the thread topic, but it's worth watching Hillary Clinton tell the same brazen, self-aggrandizing whopper, on several occasions, and wondering if, by the third or fourth telling, she started to believe it herself.

Watch carefully—is she a good actor?:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfaxA9Q-9AQ


The Washington Post Fact Checker covered the mendacity pretty throroughly and gave the lie its most damning rating—Four Pinocchios—which the Post aptly terms "Whoppers."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... f755e074f0


Trump has a different style, and I doubt he'd personally back down from a lie; rather, he doubles down. While they're both lying liars who don't deserve a drop of trust, Trump's impulsiveness make him much more dangerous.

[peartreed]

That protruding Pinocchio probiscus probably profiles plenty of puppet politicians!

It’s also interesting to me that public officials, like actors, often start to believe their own publicity hype and propaganda enhancements about their supposed heroic roles to the point of absorbing the fictional exaggerations into their own memory and story recounting. It’s called swallowing your own BS, absorbing and digesting it.

The current White House occupant is the best illustration of that, but he was never alone in the La La Land of self-absorbed image augmentation and inflated legend repeats.

[norton ash]

John... fucking... Bolton. Dangerous babies assemble.

[seemslikeadream]

last act of Tillerson.......criticize Russia

last act of McMaster......criticize Russia

New NSA John Bolton (currently Fox News commentator) and warmonger
New trump lawyer DiGenova (currently Fox News commentator)

[82_28]

I really wonder when shit gets real real. What form will it take? What will be the undeniable zeitgeist?

America Takes the Next Step Toward Tyranny

Every now and again, when I find myself buried in the latest blizzard of invariably disturbing news emanating from the Trump White House, I go back and remind myself of the core narrative. I read Plato’s Republic again, the prism through which I first raised the alarm about Donald Trump’s emergence. The prism is essentially how a late-stage democracy, dripping with decadence and corruption, with elites dedicated primarily to enriching themselves, and a people well past any kind of civic virtue, morphs so easily into tyranny.

When Plato’s tyrant first comes to power — on a wave of populist hatred of the existing elites — there is a period of relative calm when he just gives away stuff: at first he promises much “in private and public, and grant[s] freedom from debts and distribute[s] land to the people and those around himself” (or, say, a trillion-dollar unfunded tax cut). He aims to please. But then, as he accustoms himself to power, and feels more comfortable, “he suspects certain men of having free thoughts and not putting up with his ruling … Some of those who helped in setting him up and are in power — the manliest among them — speak frankly to him and to one another, criticizing what is happening … Then the tyrant must gradually do away with all of them, if he’s going to rule, until he has left neither friend nor enemy of any worth whatsoever.”

This is the second phase of tyranny, after the more benign settling-in: the purge. Any constraints that had been in place to moderate the tyrant’s whims are set aside; no advice that counters his own gut impulses can be tolerated. And so, over the last couple of weeks, we have seen the president fire Rex Tillerson and Andrew McCabe, two individuals who simply couldn’t capitulate to the demand that they obey only Trump, rather than the country as well.

And because of this small gesture of defiance, they deserved especial public humiliation. Tillerson was warned of his impending doom while on the toilet — a nice, sadistic touch. McCabe was fired hours before his retirement, a public execution also fraught with venom. What kind of man is this? We have become numb to it, but we should never forget how our president is a man who revels in his own cruelty. Revenge is not a dish best served cold for him. It’s the reddest and rawest of meats.

No one with these instincts for total domination over others is likely to moderate the longer he is in power. Au contraire. It always gets worse. And so Tillerson has been replaced by a fawning toady, Mike Pompeo, a man whose hatred of Islam is only matched by his sympathy for waterboarders. Pompeo has been replaced in turn by a war criminal, who authorized brutal torture and illegally destroyed the evidence, Gina Haspel. Whatever else we know about Haspel, we know she follows orders.

Gary Cohn has been replaced by Larry Kudlow — a sane person followed by a delusional maniac Trump sees on Fox, who instantly thought up ways for the president to cut taxes further without congressional approval. And the State Department, indeed the entire diplomatic apparatus, has, it seems, been replaced by Jared Kushner, a corrupt enthusiast for West Bank settlements who no longer has a security clearance.

Then the president’s legal team was shaken up — in order to purge those few who retain some appreciation for the rule of law in a constitutional republic and to replace them with conspiracy theorists, thugs, and the kind of combative, asshole lawyers Trump has always employed in his private capacity. Trump is self-evidently — obviously — preparing to fire Mueller, and the GOP’s complete acquiescence to the firing of McCabe is just a taste of the surrender to come. “Now I’m fucking doing it my own way!” was how he allegedly expressed his satisfaction at the purge, as his approval ratings from Republicans increase, and as the GOP’s evolution into a full-fledged cult gathers pace.

And then last night, we saw McMaster fall on his sword, replaced by John Bolton, an unrepentant architect of the most disastrous war since Vietnam, a fanatical advocate for regime change in Iran, an anti-Muslim extremist, and a believer in the use of military force as if it were a religion. And this, of course, is also part of the second phase for Plato’s tyrant: war. “As his first step, he is always setting some war in motion, so that people will be in need of a leader,” Plato explains. In fact, “it’s necessary for a tyrant always to be stirring up war.”

Trump somewhat confused us on this score at first, because of his contempt for the Bushes and the Iraq War and his use of the term “America First.” For many excited (but utterly conned) conservative realists, he seemed to be returning to an older Republican non-interventionism. But of course, we now realize that his campaign screeds against the Iraq War were just his strategy to take out Jeb Bush and appeal to middle America; and that “America First” can also mean pure nationalist aggression overseas.

And everything we know about Trump’s character tells us that war is probably the only aspect of foreign relations he intuitively understands. He cannot exist as an equal party in an international system. He has to dominate other countries the way he does other human beings. And, when you look back, you see this has been obvious all along. On trade, he has long been rhetorically at war with our closest neighbors and trading partners, and now he has unveiled the contours of a major trade war with China; we already have a renewed and deeper presence in Afghanistan; and we have long been supporting the Saudi monarchy’s proxy and inhumane war with Iran in Yemen.

The real possibility of a nuclear conflict with North Korea is getting more real by the day (can you imagine Bolton’s counsel for the Kim Jong-un meeting?); and with Bolton in place, the groundwork for ending the Iran nuclear deal is also finally complete. And what’s noticeable in all this is the irrelevance of the Senate. They refuse to reclaim their treaty-making powers with respect to trade (they could end Trump’s China shenanigans overnight); they have abdicated any influence on foreign policy and war just as they have done nothing to protect the special counsel. They are just like the Roman Senate as the republic collapsed. The forms survive; there is nothing of substance behind them.

When the U.S. detonates the Iran Nuclear Accord, the European alliance, in so far as it still staggers onward, will reach crisis point; and the Iranian regime will likely accelerate its nuclear weapons program. They’d be crazy not to. At which point, the path to war starts (or rather is very hard to stop). Kushner is the key figure here, I suspect. His support for the Israeli hard right (he doesn’t just support the West Bank settlements, he funds them) and his very cozy relationship with the new Saudi prince/dictator both point in one direction: war with Iran. Getting the Americans to launch such a war is Jerusalem’s and Riyadh’s wet dream – which is why the reports of the Crown Prince’s boasting about Kushner being “in his pocket” are far from implausible.

All of these developments, I bet, have reached a new intensity because of Robert Mueller’s cumulative legal cornering of Trump, especially the special counsel’s recent crossing the line into the finances of the Trump Organization. At that point, I suspect Trump realized he was more vulnerable than he previously believed, and went on full offense everywhere. I was long a skeptic of Trump’s alleged conspiracy with Russia in 2016, but every single development in the last few months keeps pointing in the same direction — and it isn’t Trump’s exoneration.

Yesterday, we discovered that Guccifer 2.0, Roger Stone’s online pen pal, is actually a Russian agent. Trump’s initial refusal to say — even through his spokeswoman — that Russia is clearly responsible for the release of a nerve agent in a country which is one of our closest allies was simply staggering. As is his continued refusal to confront seriously the threat Putin clearly poses to democratic elections in the West. The extraordinary leak of the warning from his national security team not to congratulate Putin during the recent call is yet another sign, it seems to me, that even those working closest to the president want to alert the world about the threat to our national security that is coming from the Oval Office itself.

Part of me, of course, has long worried and hoped that my assessment of Trump as truly the tyrant of Plato’s imagination is melodramatic overkill. I’m given to excitability, even catastrophism. I’ve been wrong before. And there are many ways in which American life still seems the same. Political tribalism didn’t begin with Trump; neither did the appeal of populist authoritarianism, or the celebrification of politics. We still hold elections — even if the president asserts that they are all rigged against him. In November, we have a chance to use the ballot box to save this country, and there are some signs that a wave is building. The courts still have some independence and feistiness; the media is still free, if now accompanied by a full-bore state propaganda channel.

But I worry that the more Trump is opposed and even cornered — especially if he loses the House this fall — the more dangerous he will become. If Mueller really does have the goods, and if the Democrats storm back into congressional power, then Trump may well lash out to protect himself at all costs. We know he has no concern for the collateral damage his self-advancement has long caused in his private and public life. We know he has contempt for and boundless ignorance of liberal democracy. We know he is capable of anything — of immense cruelty and callousness, of petty revenge and reckless rhetoric, of sudden impulses and a quick temper. We also know he is commander-in-chief, who may soon need the greatest distraction of all.

War is coming. And there will be nothing and no one to stop him.

https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2 ... ranny.html

[seemslikeadream]

The Trump administration, after 9PM on a Friday night, has issued orders to ban transgender troops from serving in the military except in select cases.

Polly Sigh
‏
John Bolton will feed Trump's worst instincts & is a national security threat. He has a pattern of warping & misusing intelligence to build the case for war & a disdain for diplomacy. And like Trump, an uncomfortable relationship w/objective facts.

Trump’s New War Cabinet
MARCH 23, 2018
darth-vader-1207142_960_720
by Shahed Ghoreishi

On Thursday, President Trump moved one step closer to completing his preferred cabinet. General H.R. McMaster, whom Trump called boring, was replaced as national security advisor by ultra-hawk John Bolton. This is the same John Bolton who wrote the forward for Pamela Geller’s hate-filled book about President Obama, called on Israel to nuke Iran, urged the United States to bomb Iran and North Korea, abused a female USAID employee, advocated on behalf of the NRA for more gun rights for Russian citizens, and still defends the Iraq war. I could go on.

Trump’s other appointments have similar attributes. Mike Pompeo, set to take over in Foggy Bottom, compared Iran to the Islamic State and called it a “thuggish police state” that is “intent [on] destroying America.” Lastly, Gina Haspel, set to take over the CIA, has a history of torturing detainees under the Bush administration. She even destroyed the recordings taken of the torture years later. Meanwhile, John Kelley remains in a precarious position as chief of staff.

This team constitutes a gang of evil. The anti-diplomacy, pro-torture, pro-war initiatives they have supported have cost lives and created instability in the Middle East to the detriment of U.S. national security and international standing. Additionally, Bolton and Pompeo have ties to hate groups that promote division at home (no wonder Trump likes them). Also, some of the initial appointments belong to the same gang, including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Michael D’Andrea, the head of the CIA’s Iran operations.

Three upcoming dates likely encouraged Trump to make these rapid changes.

North Korea and Iran

Trump is slated to meet directly with Kim Jong Un by this coming May. The changes in Trump’s cabinet have put a damper on the preparations as the deadline approaches. However, the changes are no accident. Trump has used bellicose language towards North Korea from early on in his presidency. By having a like-minded secretary of state and national security advisor in place, he is sending a deliberate signal to Kim Jong Un. If Trump is going to play lead diplomat, he still has threatening cabinet members in place as a counterforce. But with such a high-level start to the talks, as many analysts have repeated, there’s little room for diplomatic recourse should the Trump-Kim discussions fail. Bolton would be the ideal person to game the next move in such a situation and show an aggressive posture. That some in the president’s own party don’t seem to care about the consequences of war or even the consequences of a limited strike does not bode well should the talks fail (or fail to happen).

The Iran nuclear deal is another worrying case. On May 12, Trump must decide whether the deal should be recertified. The International Atomic Energy Agency, assigned to overlook the implementation of the deal, has said that Iran has complied to the benefit of the international community. Meanwhile, the Europeans and the Iranians have grown frustrated regarding Washington’s threats to tear up the deal. The Europeans have proposed adding an addendum regarding Iran’s ballistic missiles, but the Iranians are not having it. Iran remains irritated by the lack of investment from foreign businesses and banks, which they blame on Trump’s bellicose language.

The recent hiring of Bolton sends a major signal to Iran’s leadership that the United States is doubling down on its aggressive posture. Again, this is by design. Trump wants either to provoke Iran to withdraw from the deal first—thus shifting blame away from Washington—or to add sanctions in May in direct violation of the deal and thereby killing it. Either way, Bolton’s presence increases the chance of a conflict that already has concerned U.S. allies.

Several regional enemies of Iran would support an American intervention. The overlap of the Bolton announcement with the visit to Washington of hawkish Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, responsible for the deadly Yemen intervention, is likely no coincidence.

The Blue Wave

Everything points toward November. The president and the Republican Party know that they are likely to suffer a “blue wave” on election night. This is the third date likely inspiring Trump’s recent moves. The president is a showman at heart. He is more timing and appearance than substance. Trump is likely to ratchet up tensions with Iran and North Korea in reaction to, or in prevention of, a blue wave. Of course, Trump would need the unlikely approval of Congress for any major intervention, but the intervention does not have to be on a regular armed conflict. It could also be in the cyber realm. Or it could be clandestine, which requires less congressional oversight.

During the campaign, Trump loved to say that he was against the Iraq war, which he called a “disaster.” Apparently during negotiations with Bolton, Trump had him promise that he “wouldn’t start any wars.” However, this is the same Trump who has continued America’s war for the Greater Middle East despite lamenting the “trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost” in the region.

The president has many attributes, but consistency is not one of them. Putting Pompeo and Bolton in such major positions of power suggests that Trump and his gang of evil are preparing for the very conflicts that he promised to avoid.

Shahed Ghoreishi is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
http://lobelog.com/trumps-new-war-cabinet/

Michael Avenatti
‏

@MichaelAvenatti
Mar 22

Remember when they were saying, during the 1980s, that John Gotti was the “The Teflon Don” and was “untouchable”. That was always true, right up until the very moment it wasn’t...