Dem
47
GOP
53
Let us now put forth four propositions:
We are not going to pretend that any or all of these statements are false, in the name of some vague notion of "fairness" or "balance" or whatever. As Maya Angelou observed, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." Trump has been showing EVERYONE who he is, over and over, for more than half a century. And note, being an a**hole does not inherently make a person a bad president. Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and both Roosevelts were a**holes, too. It really depends on how a politician channels their a**holery.
The problem with Trump is that his a**holery is often directed at those who do not deserve it, and that it generally exists to serve his ego, as opposed to some larger purpose. And just in case anyone forgot, or hoped that maybe he'd mellow due to old age/not needing to win any future elections, Trump used the Thanksgiving holiday to remind everyone of his special brand of a**holery, using his curiously valuable social media platform to broadcast this to the nation he is about to re-assume leadership of:
Happy Thanksgiving to all, including to the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed, and will always fail, because their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad that the great people of our Nation just gave a landslide victory to those who want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Don't worry, our Country will soon be respected, productive, fair, and strong, and you will be, more than ever before, proud to be an American!
We always hold out hope that he can summon a little bit of class on days like Thanksgiving, and we're pretty much always disappointed. And in case you are wondering, incidentally, here is Joe Biden's Thanksgiving message:
Happy Thanksgiving, America.
May we use this moment to take time from our busy lives and focus on what matters most:
Our families, our friends, our neighbors, and the fact that we've been blessed to live in America, the greatest country on Earth.
It is not hard to write a fundamentally decent, graceful, unifying message. We could have given you the Thanksgiving message of any president who served during the "Thanksgiving era" (basically, since the Civil War), and as long as the author wasn't Trump, it would look and sound very much like this.
Of course, just as vultures are drawn to carrion, a**holes tend to attract other a**holes like a magnet. And so it is that the two men who are arguably the biggest a**holes in America are now in orbit around one another. We speak, naturally, of Trump's new sidekick, Elon Musk, who has also been showing the world who he is this week. For example, now that he apparently has access to... everything, Musk doxxed four federal government employees he deems to be extraneous.
The four doxxed staffers have a few things in common. First, they are not public-facing, and so interact only with other federal employees. Second, they are all in jobs related to climate control. Third, and we seriously doubt this is a coincidence, they are all women. One suspects that Musk is learning that it's not going to be terribly easy to terminate people's employment, so he's going to try to make things so unpleasant that people quit. All four women have already been the targets of much online harassment since Musk used his personal social media flamethrower to villainize them.
That said, it's not only women. On Wednesday, Musk set his sights on Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (ret.), who was a key figure in the hearings held by the 1/6 Committee, and whose brother was just elected to Congress, tweeting: "Vindman is on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty." Needless to say, Musk offered no evidence in support of any of these defamatory claims. One has to assume that the reason he "bravely" went after Alexander, as opposed to Eugene, is that it is a felony to threaten a government official.
There are two things that are very disconcerting about all of this. The first is that neither of these men has any meaningful accountability. Trump, of course, is now King Louis XIV, courtesy of Chief Justice John I. Musk's new gig is governmental enough that he has access to people, information and resources, but not governmental enough that he's subject to federal laws governing his behavior. And, by virtue of his wealth, he's also effectively judgment-proof. A nine-figure judgment nearly broke Trump's back, but would be just a mosquito bite for Musk.
The second problem, and we've only pointed this out a million times before, is that all of this scapegoating, us vs. them, "traitor" talk puts ideas in the heads of people. This isn't just speculation; it's already happening. Over the past few days, five different members of the Connecticut congressional delegation received bomb threats. And, shortly before that, Reps. Lee Zeldin and Elise Stefanik (both R-NY) got the same treatment. In other words, once you open Pandora's Box, no politician or semi-politician is immune—not even a guy who has already been the target of at least two assassination attempts this year. You'd think someone might point that out to him. Though maybe they have, and he just can't control himself. (Z)