US Politics, June 2020 — You have to dominate.

Now we have to rate the thread "Adult" - thanks, Morbs

I don't think any of us are on the Jim Mattis Tugjob Committee, just noting that this is 70 times more vitriol that any other departed appointee has managed thus far. Everybody else has just gone into silent retirement or been named Scaramucci.

Of course, nobody's going to ask him to his face about the time he spent licking Trump's boots.

It's not not a big deal.

esp whem you are threatening to wield the military

when

Mattis Tugjob Committee would good name for an acappella group.

anyway the point isn't what we think of four-star generals, it's that Trump worships them and he's gotta be cwwwwyyyyying right now

this is his worst nightmare, being called a "baby" (not mature)—up there with "dog" as his favorite insult—by a big strong so handsome tough army man

i just saw that Tom Cotton oped in the times and holy god, fuck them.

hmm the other day tom cotton said that cops/guard should 'give no quarter' -- a war crime even if it weren't against one's fellow citizens -- yet that doesn't seem to be addressed here

fwiw I don’t think Mattis or McMaster were ever in their roles to “lick boots,” they took the positions they did so that people of Esper or Flynn’s ilk wouldn’t be able to step in

I realize I am the only person on this board who thinks this, idgaf.

xp cotton manages to somehow stand out, doesn't he? you've got longtime pieces of shit like roy blunt whose main contribution to fascism is nodding along to it all and never taking either the total credit or fall for anything. then you've got a guy like cotton, who is like an evangelist for the cause, taking it to new heights, carving out his own niche of evil innovation. he seems like he has completely lost his mind. look at his eyes when he's getting into it - it's super weird

xp that may be true, but either way they failed

tom cotton is a fucking traitor and should be shot.

really wish I hadn't read that I'm having an anuerysm

On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.

^that's a hotlink to Barr's statement on categorizing Antifa as terror group, FUCK THE NEW YORK TIMES

the link to antifa goes to a bill barr press release. i should really unsubscribe.

dude

A lot of people persist in thinking Tom Cotton could be president one day. Apparently James Bennet is one of them, and wanted to taste-test his balls in advance.

NYT precedent

Well, there was this ... if in 1941 pic.twitter.com/b6af2D4qYl

— Jules Boykoff (@JulesBoykoff) June 4, 2020

I realize I am the only person on this board who thinks this

No. I think that's a fairly accurate reading of what they thought they were doing, but it was probably less about who they feared would get the job if they refused, and more about the obviously paramount need to steer events safely through the Trump minefield. Which they thought they could do. But no one can.

Morbs would not be impressed by that, because in his eyes being a general officer is disqualifying for the offices they filled, simply by reason of their military training and allegiance.

But Barr very clearly teabags Trump like nobody's business.

not sure barr really cares about trump; he just wants to see people under the boot

Mattis is a war criminal, serving Trump is just a cherry on the fuck him forever cake.

jfc how much of a piece of shit is james bennet https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-york-times-staffers-in-open-revolt-over-running-tom-cottons-send-in-the-troops-column?source=twitter&via=desktop

both sides! even if one is calling for state-sponsored murder!

But Barr very clearly teabags Trump like nobody's business.

― A is for (Aimless)

Thanks for the image!

Thread got thirsty all of a sudden...

I don't even understand why newspapers have opinion sections and editorials in the first place. It's fucking stupid, just more noise.

Entertainment.

It’s relatively cheap content and often generates lots of “engagement”

Op-eds are free, columnists get paid a lot but are cheap in regards to expenses, people click on stupid shit

They should cancel them all and just give a blank check to Bill Waterson instead.

Like, the entire internet is one big stupid opinion column, I read newspapers to counteract the noise, not to amplify it.

That said, I canceled my subscription to the Times a few years ago because the bullshit got too much. They have been so consistently cynical in how they have been covering this administration that it often does a grave disservice to and even undercuts all the hard work their excellent reporters have been doing.

And don't even get me started on the Chicago Tribune editorial board endorsing Gary Johnson.

for real. where's the tax returns?

― reggie (qualmsley), Thursday, June 4, 2020 8:37 AM (forty-four minutes ago)

📯📯📯

good evening!

good evening alfred

Going to bed shortly, after a blast of Lady Gaga and Jorge Ben.

the times does a great deal of good work, a great deal of fluffing the rich and occasionally is an abomination.

http://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/pat-robertson-donald-trump/?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial

I know how awful Pat Robertson is--just looking at this as possible evidence of all this as a turning point (or, to put it another way, of people running for cover).

xpost Alas, the abominations are often the chosen headlines, which happen to be printed in a type size several times larger than that used in the story itself, and also happen to be the most the average person probably sees or reads of the Times.

yes

it's easy and satisfying, though unfair, to hold hundreds of editors and reporters and photographers responsible for the fuckheaded decisions of one editor in a different office

rare case where i'd recommend reading the comments though

You mean the opinion sub-columns?

how else should one hold the fuckheaded decisions responsible

Nyt op eds have comment threads.

Xp, not to mookie.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-fascist-performance

Donald Trump thinks power looks like masked men in combat uniforms lined up in front of the marble columns of the Lincoln Memorial. He thinks it looks like Black Hawk helicopters hovering so low over protesters that they chop off the tops of trees. He thinks it looks like troops using tear gas to clear a plaza for a photo op. He thinks it looks like him hoisting a Bible in his raised right hand.

Trump thinks power sounds like this: “Our country always wins. That is why I am taking immediate Presidential action to stop the violence and restore security and safety in America . . . dominate the streets . . . establish an overwhelming law-enforcement presence. . . . If a city or state refuses . . . I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them. . . . We are putting everybody on warning. . . . One law and order and that is what it is. One law—we have one beautiful law.” To Trump, power sounds like the word “dominate,” repeated over and over on a leaked call with governors. It sounds like the silence of the men in uniform when they are asked who they are.

Trump got these ideas from television and Hollywood movies, and he had the intuition to recognize them. He knew what he wanted to imitate. We know that he likes the military and its parades. (A senior Administration official, speaking with the Daily Beast, attempted to downplay the President’s interest in tanks: “I think that is just one of the military words he knows.”) Perhaps he has seen many movies that feature the Black Hawk, that monster of military-industrial production, the metal embodiment of brute force. Perhaps Trump heard that, when Russia occupied Crimea, it flooded the peninsula with men in unmarked uniforms—they dominated without ever identifying themselves. Perhaps he heard the word “dominate” in his recent telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin. Perhaps he had seen a picture of Hitler in a similar pose, or perhaps he just conflated two gestures that symbolize power in American politics: one hand raised, the other on the Bible—this may explain the slight uncertainty of his display, as if he weren’t sure how much the book was supposed to weigh.

The President is a talented performer who plays an exaggerated version of an idea of who he is. On “The Apprentice,” he played what he thought a wildly successful real-estate developer would be like. He made inane pronouncements with great aplomb, and, as my colleague Patrick Radden Keefe wrote, in a Profile of the creator of “The Apprentice,” Mark Burnett, Trump made bizarre decisions that the makers of the show then scrambled to make look credible in the editing room. When the show started, Trump was a has-been, an occasional butt of tabloid jokes; by the time it ended, he and the audience both believed that he was one of the wealthiest and most successful businessmen on the planet. That, in turn, made his Presidential campaign if not immediately plausible then at least imaginable.

A power grab is always a performance of sorts. It begins with a claim to power, and if the claim is accepted—if the performance is believed—it takes hold. Much as he played a real-estate tycoon in the most crude and reductive way, Trump is now performing his idea of power as he imagines it. In his intuition, power is autocratic; it affirms the superiority of one nation and one race; it asserts total domination; and it mercilessly suppresses all opposition. Whether or not he is capable of grasping the concept, Trump is performing fascism.