Tag: Trump

What Donald Trump is afraid of

Slopes and stairs, contradiction, and protests, according to one article in today’s Sunday Times, about government concerns related to the planned visit in June for the official handover of British sovereignty:

Members of Trump’s inner circle have warned officials and ministers that it would be counterproductive for Charles to ‘lecture’ Trump on green issues and that he will ‘erupt’ if pushed. They want the younger princes, William and Harry, to greet the president instead. Royal aides insist that  he should meet Trump.

Senior government officials now believe Charles is one of the most serious ‘risk factors’ for the visit.

Trump’s team is also concerned that he will face a wave of protests, with thousands of people taking to the streets to denounce him…

Downing Street officials claimed the president’s phobia of stairs and slopes led him to grab the prime minister’s hand as they walked down a ramp at the White House.

UPDATE (30/1/2017): I was mentioning this story to someone recently, pointing out that “phobia” is clearly a really bad euphemism for “too old and weak”, which the strongman obviously could not admit to. He replied, “Apparently it IS a phobia – he also has a phobia of slopes, apparently.” I asked what the source was. It came from one of May’s aides, he said. And how would they know? People really have to stop defaulting to the assumption that claims coming from Trump’s circle is more likely to be true than false. On the contrary, information from anyone that has been near Trump is likely tainted.

A feature, not a bug

I assumed that the Trump administration couldn’t possibly have intended for its executive order to exclude legal permanent residents based on their country of origin. Not only is this clearly illegal, but these are clearly sympathetic individuals with established lives in the US that are being blown up by presidential whim, certain to generate bad press for no discernible benefit. But no:

Friday night, DHS arrived at the legal interpretation that the executive order restrictions applying to seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen — did not apply to people who with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders.

The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President’s inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US.

CDC works toward the president

Dem Führer entgegenarbeiten — Working toward the Leader — was one of the most important neologisms of the early Third Reich. No one really knew what Hitler wanted to do — not even Hitler himself — and the organs of state were in turmoil, certainly incapable of providing rapid guidance at the local level to the government’s plans. So everyone’s obligation was to surmise what the Führer’s ultimate objectives were, and work toward accomplishing it, without needing specific instructions.

Compare that to these recent decisions of the completely apolitical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

CDC abruptly cancels long-planned conference on climate change and health

The Climate and Health Summit, which had been in the works for months, was intended as a chance for public health officials around the country to learn more about the mounting evidence of the risks to human health posed by the changing climate. But CDC officials abruptly canceled the conference before President Trump’s inauguration, sending a terse email on Jan. 9 to those who had been scheduled to speak at the event. The message did not explain the reason behind the decision.

CDC Indefinitely Postponed LGBT Youth Health Summit After Election

To be fair, the reason seems to be that they needed the resources to focus on their conference on disease transmission by refugees and illegal immigrants.

 

One down, 208 to go

We’ve just about finished the first week of the Trump presidency. Just 208 more to go.

(I appreciate that it is anything but determined that Trump will be stepping down on January 20, 2021. I’m just guessing that, when future historians come to write about this period, January 2021 will mark the transition from the Presidency to the Imperial Reign.)

Is Donald Trump British? part 2


I pointed out a few days ago that we need to take seriously the idea that Trump’s British mother* indoctrinated him with radical colonialist ideologies. Now Trump has installed a bust of an arch British colonialist in a prominent place of honour in the Oval Office.

Imagine if Barack Obama had, as one of his first acts as president, installed a bust of Jomo Kenyatta in the Oval Office.

* An English colleague to whom I mentioned this theory said, “No, she was Scottish.”

American carnage

This is probably the best title for a reality TV show ever proposed in a presidential inaugural address. And then there’s this.

Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories, scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.

And you have to admit, most of us really are tired of our education system being flush with cash. Such a burden, and what do you get for it? Early-onset gout from the rich cafeteria food, and gold-plated textbooks that give the children scoliosis from having to lug them around, that’s what. And the rest of the economy starved for talent as the best and the brightest compete for the overpaid classroom posts. We really don’t know what to do with all that money, and our young and beautiful students won’t learn anything anyway. (We don’t care much what happens to the non-beautiful…)

That’s why we need Trump as president: Someone who has learned his whole life to cope with the burden of extreme wealth, and is willing to lift it from us.

 

Is Donald Trump British?

In some formal sense the answer is yes: His mother was Scottish, after all. But I’m thinking of two pathologies that are dominant in British politics, and observable in the purest form yet seen in Trump:

  1. Viewing all human interactions as sporting competitions.
  2. The delusion that they are brilliant master negotiators (“deal”-makers, would be Trump’s expression).

I’ve written before about the British compulsion to turn everything into a sport, so that it is impossible to imagine anyone winning without someone else losing. This is, at least, modulated by a charmingly deep-seated concern with “fair play” and being a “good sport”. (It is no coincidence that modern German has adopted the English word “fairness”. It is a peculiarly Anglo-American construct, not well covered by such overlapping concepts as Gerechtigkeit.)

But this interacts in peculiar ways with the peculiar conviction that they are particularly skilled at business and diplomatic negotiation. What they did have was an idiosyncratic blend of ruthlessness, geographic advantage, and technological prowess that they parlayed into a position of global dominance. Through stubbornness and admiration of their own idiosyncracies (“British values”) they have managed since then to turn their dominant position into a position of a weak, economically mediocre nation on the fringes of Europe, plagued by extreme inequality. But they think they’ve been winning or, where they have lost, it has been because of the perfidy of foreigners.

With Brexit, this delusion has entered its perhaps final stage. The UK has an incredibly weak hand in Brexit negotiations. They could appeal to comity and sentiment, but that doesn’t fit their vision of themselves as tough guys. They believe they know how to get what they want haggling with the lesser races — you have to show them you’re willing to walk away, and destroy both parties. That’s why the foreign secretary is threatening to turn the UK into an offshore tax haven saying the UK would “do whatever we have to do” if the EU doesn’t cave in to British demands.

Of course, that makes no sense for the UK economy, even if it wouldn’t be likely to result in crushingly punitive measures from Europe. But they think they’re brilliant, and by showing their willingness to damage themselves in order to punish Europe, the EU will agree to a “fair” deal (i.e., benefitting Britain). What is really likely happen is that the EU will be more inclined to bolt the doors against the lunatic, and leave Britain to complete its destiny as an offshore colony of Donald Trump’s America.

Assets

Against all odds, all political sides in the US are converging toward agreement. Here was a headline from the left-wing Daily Kos that seemed extreme three weeks ago:

Former spy reports Kremlin cultivated Trump as an asset for 5 years

And here is Donald Trump, speaking yesterday at a press conference:

If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what folks, that’s called an asset

The Jerusalem Syndrome

I just spent a few days as a tourist in Jerusalem. The city has many lovely and fascinating qualities, but it also felt generally stressful to be there. It got me to thinking, maybe in retrospect it wasn’t a good idea to put the Israeli capital in a city that is famous for making people crazy?

Now that Trump seems keen to move the US embassy to Jerusalem the two of them can join in a folie a deux.