US Politics, June 2020 — You have to dominate.

pardon?

I imagine if Trump owns an actual Christian Bible, it's one of the tacky personalized ones from Salesman (that was probably stolen from someone else--Mike Huckabee perhaps).

Genedis, Exosus,Levinthians, Deuteroshua,

i can actually recite all of the Old Testament due to a cheesy bible rap I learned as a 12 year old

the books or every single verse??

Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Joshua Judges

I'll tell you the truth
About the book of Ruth

Yea
First and Second Samuel
First and Second Kings
First and Second Chronicles
and all those things

Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
And Job
I wanna go to Heaven
in a righteous robe

THESE ARE THE HOLY BOOKS
TELL ME THE NAME AND I'LL TAKE A SECOND LOOK

i forget the rest

fuck Trump

pfft. yknow the entire books used to be oral tradition? shape up!

Now do it in Hebrew!

i think silby can?!

(goodnight from Canada)

I can’t lol I’m not very learned

usually these thread titles are at least kind of funny but fuck this one is off-putting

i respect your right to do your thing of just neurotically shitposting all the time neanderthal but... could you do it a little less please?

go fuck yourself, bruh, this title was crowdsourced, if you could read the first few posts

I kinda like "positively toward negative" as a thread title

in about five minutes I'm sure you'll be off in another thread faux-apologizing for how "aggressive you're being lately" and then doing the same aggro bullshit again ten minutes later, I'm just fuckin over it, man.

but hey, I actually posted on topic shit in this thread, you just swoop in to do your usual schtick

lads

Pop unloads:

https://sports.yahoo.com/gregg-popovich-unleashes-fiery-statement-on-trump-what-we-have-is-a-fool-in-place-of-a-president-184310589.html

love Pop

it is cool that there's one sports league where you can openly shit on the President

theres no MAGA dudes at a basketball game

or at least rather few. there are all those luxury boxes you know.

eh they always leave in the 3rd

Lol

The Pacers are still located in Indiana IIRC

at some point very soon trump/the hardcores are going to find themselves in a corner where the only options are to back down or straight-up murder a bunch of civilians in plain view of everyone. neither are likely to go over well

We shall then see if his boast about shooting someone in times sq and no one caring will come to pass and frankly, at this point nothing would suprise me.

(mainly because it wont be him DOING the shooting of course)

love Pop

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/500583-trump-visits-historic-dc-church-after-protesters-cleared-with-tear

President Trump walked to visit the historic St. John’s Church near the White House after protesters were forcefully removed from Lafayette Park by law enforcement officers who fired tear gas into the crowd ahead of a citywide curfew.

Rev. Gini Gerbasi, Rector of St. John's, said the clergy was given no warning Trump was coming. She told WUSA she was wearing her clergy collar when she was forced off the property due to the tear gas.

She accused the president of trying to "look Christian" by holding a Bible in front of the church.

"It would be far more Christian if he would behave according to the words in that book rather than carrying it around as a prop," Gerbasi said.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/nation-world/episcopal-bishop-outraged-trump-church-visit/507-0d5f64f5-58d9-46c0-9377-72b3bb66c180

Yeah like "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material", that sort of thing

via twitter:
CNN’s @kaitlancollins says on the air just now that a fence is being constructed on the perimeter of Lafayette Square, the park adjacent to the White House where demonstrators previously attempted to gather. She describes it as a “tall black fence” and “about eight feet tall.”

of course this motherfucker is going to wall himself in

for the love of god, montresor!!!!!!!!!!!!

tear down the wall!
tear down the wall!

Weenie in Chief

halfway through this: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/

curious of what others think. there are some cringeworthy moments, but also some great writing and a general scene setting that feels useful. it's very hard to take a step back and see trump for what he is, and applebaum does a good job of doing it

I must remain close to power. Another sort of benefit, harder to measure, has kept many people who object to Trump’s policies or behavior from speaking out: the intoxicating experience of power, and the belief that proximity to a powerful person bestows higher status. This, too, is nothing new. In a 1968 article for The Atlantic, James Thomson, an American East Asia specialist, brilliantly explained how power functioned inside the U.S. bureaucracy in the Vietnam era. When the war in Vietnam was going badly, many people did not resign or speak out in public, because preserving their “effectiveness”—“a mysterious combination of training, style, and connections,” as Thomson defined it—was an all-consuming concern. He called this “the effectiveness trap”:

• The inclination to remain silent or to acquiesce in the presence of the great men—to live to fight another day, to give on this issue so that you can be “effective” on later issues—is overwhelming. Nor is it the tendency of youth alone; some of our most senior officials, men of wealth and fame, whose place in history is secure, have remained silent lest their connection with power be terminated.

In any organization, private or public, the boss will of course sometimes make decisions that his underlings dislike. But when basic principles are constantly violated, and people constantly defer resignation—“I can always fall on my sword next time”—then misguided policies go fatally unchallenged.

...The Republican senators who are willing to express their disgust with Trump off the record but voted in February for him to remain in office all indulge a variation of this sentiment. (Trump enables them to get the judges they want, and those judges will help create the America they want.) So do the evangelical pastors who ought to be disgusted by Trump’s personal behavior but argue, instead, that the current situation has scriptural precedents. Like King David in the Bible, the president is a sinner, a flawed vessel, but he nevertheless offers a path to salvation for a fallen nation.

The three most important members of Trump’s Cabinet—Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William Barr—are all profoundly shaped by Vichyite apocalyptic thinking. All three are clever enough to understand what Trumpism really means, that it has nothing to do with God or faith, that it is self-serving, greedy, and unpatriotic. Nevertheless, a former member of the administration (one of the few who did decide to resign) told me that both Pence and Pompeo “have convinced themselves that they are in a biblical moment.” All of the things they care about—outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, and (though this is never said out loud) maintaining a white majority in America—are under threat. Time is growing short. They believe that “we are approaching the Rapture, and this is a moment of deep religious significance.” Barr, in a speech at Notre Dame, has also described his belief that “militant secularists” are destroying America, that “irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith.” Whatever evil Trump does, whatever he damages or destroys, at least he enables Barr, Pence, and Pompeo to save America from a far worse fate. If you are convinced we are living in the End Times, then anything the president does can be forgiven.

last excerpt, sorry:

In february, many members of the Republican Party leadership, Republican senators, and people inside the administration used various versions of these rationales to justify their opposition to impeachment. All of them had seen the evidence that Trump had stepped over the line in his dealings with the president of Ukraine. All of them knew that he had tried to use American foreign-policy tools, including military funding, to force a foreign leader into investigating a domestic political opponent. Yet Republican senators, led by Mitch McConnell, never took the charges seriously. They mocked the Democratic House leaders who had presented the charges. They decided against hearing evidence. With the single exception of Romney, they voted in favor of ending the investigation. They did not use the opportunity to rid the country of a president whose operative value system—built around corruption, nascent authoritarianism, self-regard, and his family’s business interests—runs counter to everything that most of them claim to believe in.

Just a month later, in March, the consequences of that decision became suddenly clear. After the U.S. and the world were plunged into crisis by a coronavirus that had no cure, the damage done by the president’s self-focused, self-dealing narcissism—his one true “ideology”—was finally visible. He led a federal response to the virus that was historically chaotic. The disappearance of the federal government was not a carefully planned transfer of power to the states, as some tried to claim, or a thoughtful decision to use the talents of private companies. This was the inevitable result of a three-year assault on professionalism, loyalty, competence, and patriotism. Tens of thousands of people have died, and the economy has been ruined.

This utter disaster was avoidable. If the Senate had removed the president by impeachment a month earlier; if the Cabinet had invoked the Twenty-Fifth Amendment as soon as Trump’s unfitness became clear; if the anonymous and off-the-record officials who knew of Trump’s incompetence had jointly warned the public; if they had not, instead, been so concerned about maintaining their proximity to power; if senators had not been scared of their donors; if Pence, Pompeo, and Barr had not believed that God had chosen them to play special roles in this “biblical moment”—if any of these things had gone differently, then thousands of deaths and a historic economic collapse might have been avoided.

Well yeah.

"The Aristocrats!" would also have been an acceptable answer.

Episcopal bishop in DC doing many TV hits today about the Clown's blasphemy last night

.@secPompeo meets with Tiananmen Square survivors at 2:30 pm today, per @StateDept. pic.twitter.com/XlLdyxlfPg

— Matt Lee (@APDiploWriter) June 2, 2020

timing

just wanted to say sorry in retrospect for pushing "You Have to Dominate" for thread title...i made the same mistake of jumping the gun that I'd called out the OP for...if we'd just waited another few hours, we could have had "It's A Bible" instead. everyone can enjoy that.

I'll read KM's Atlantic piece. I think sometimes I find Pence more disgusting than Trump, in the same way that, as a teacher, I'd be more upset with a bright grade 6 student who'd create some needless drama in the class than I would with a kid who had real behaviour issues--who couldn't help himself. I'd better add the usual disclaimer: do no, in any way, take that as justification for anything Trump does, I'm just talking about the two of them solely in relation to each other.

"do not"

"Um, deploying the U.S. military inside the U.S. is still kind of a no-no, last time I checked."

I believe this was done at Standing Rock, not to mention Wounded Knee in the 70's.

My only cavil, clem, with your otherwise spot-on remark: your sixth grade student is the bright one, not Pence.