Yes, we do live in “interesting” times, times in which various “thinkers” around the net, after telling us for more than eight years now that Trump is, well, “normal” are discovering that El Jefe Grande is, well, a drooling idiot! I could laugh, and I will, as I recount their grotesque struggles with, you know, “reality”, and, you know, “facts”, while alternating shots of chartreuse and absinthe when not sobbing helplessly into my pillow.
When Donald Trump rode down that famous golden elevator back in 2016, the Republican Party split into four pieces. The masses swooned; the “grown ups” (aka “the Cynics”) were “grown up” (that is to say, shameless); a few gagged openly, and a few gagged discreetly. The open gaggers became known variously as the Never Trumpers or the Anti-Trumpers. The discreet gaggers became either the semi-Trumpers or the anti Anti-Trumpers. For the past nine years, the anti Anti-Trumpers have been wishing they could talk 24/7 about what’s really important, like the Biden Crime Family, critical race theory, and transsexual athletes, but constantly find themselves “forced” to deal with the fact that the last thing that Donald Trump did was, well, not well thought out and perhaps even wrong!
But Donaldo’s last excellent adventure, which involved almost wrecking the global economy over an idiotic “theory” claiming that everyone in the world is screwing over Uncle Sam—even though we’re somehow, you know, the richest nation in the world—was something else. If it is true that, as Dr. Johnson remarked, “It concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully to know he will be hanged in a fortnight”, it concentrates a man’s mind even more wonderfully to know he will lose his fortune in an hour.
Perhaps the most impressive response to Trump’s real time economics lesson has been “the Editors” of The Dispatch, in their perhaps 95% honest post Slouching Towards Tyranny: On a dark hour for the American Right. Despite their predictably ass-covering decision to start off their magnum opus with a quote for AV non fave rave Charles Krauthammer to show that they aren’t, you know, liberals, the editors portray Trump as the bloated, decadent Monarch o’ Mar-O-Largo that he has now become, thanks to the abandonment of all honor on the part of “the right”, to which they themselves once belonged:
To the extent that Trump’s true nature was ever a mystery, it no longer is: As a White House aide recently said, the president is “at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore” and “going to do what he’s going to do.” Since retaking office in January, he has pardoned violent felons solely because the violence they committed was on his behalf. He has all but flipped the United States’ official position on Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. He has allowed Elon Musk to cripple government functions and agencies enacted and authorized by Congress—some of which do literally lifesaving work. He has threatened and vilified judges who—yes, sometimes in excess—are attempting to uphold laws written by Congress or constitutional safeguards enshrined by the Founders. Just yesterday afternoon, he directed the Justice Department to open an investigation into Chris Krebs, a widely-respected public servant who ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in Trump’s first administration, because Krebs “falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.”
Again, we have not yet arrived at unalloyed tyranny. But we are getting closer, and that is bad enough.
There was a time when conservatives in elected office would object to such usurpations of power and abuses of authority by the president. That time was approximately four months ago.
The editors of The Dispatch are two more non AV fave raves, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen F. Hayes, a pair of neocon gangsters who, like William Kristol, spent decades trying to destroy the Democratic Party and ended up destroying the Republicans instead. Naturally, they don’t cop to that, but otherwise they’ve abjured the pussyfooting, evasiveness, the Democrats just as bad, Democrats are terrible, Democrats started it riffs that marred so many of their previous posts (when they did not constitute their entire substance). So that’s, you know, “progress”. Nine years too late, probably, but still!
Throughout our long national nightmare, the National Review has been anti Anti-Trump Central, with the emphasis most definitely on the first “anti”, running endless stories on the Biden Crime Family—each post more breathless and less substantial than the last—not to mention antisemitic college students and tape-busting trannies, but every once in a while “the editors” have had to put their foot down on Donnie’s follies, as they did in this post, blandly labeled The Tariff Pause, though summoning enough sense of urgency to conclude
A few things that would really reassure the markets and set up Republicans for future success: Rescind the “liberation day” executive order, fire Peter Navarro, don’t let Howard Lutnick back on television for the next few months, and focus all attention on solidifying the 2017 tax cuts as quickly as possible. Congress should end the president’s bogus emergency declarations and retake the tariff power that belongs to it under this little-read document called “the Constitution.” If none of that happens, we’ll see you back here again in three months [when the “pause” expires].
Okay, with that out of the way, the NR crowd can get back to more important things, like praising Trump for promoting manly showerheads and $1 trillion defense budgets, which should go well with those bloated 2017 tax cuts, because if there’s one thing the National Review hates, it’s deficit spending.
Perhaps not as “manly” as the National Review crowd, but far funnier, is Nellie Bowles, the better half (or is it the other way around) of Free Press founder Bari Weiss. Nellie, being a card- or at least wedding license-carrying lesbian, isn’t quite so into the puff-chestedness thing that’s now all the rage among the MAGA men and doesn’t see that we “need” tariffs to get men out of the offices and into the factories—“real jobs” for “real men”! Says Nellie
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained to Maine lobsterman Tucker Carlson that all the unemployed government workers whose savings Trump decimated can now get jobs working in the new American factories, using their hands to labor, like Scotty and Tuck do. Scott’s hands? They’re more calloused than a Harvard rower’s. “The president is reordering trade,” he said. “We are shedding excess labor in the federal government and bringing down federal borrowings. And then on the other side that will give us the labor that we need for the new manufacturing.” Okay, in a kind of Pol Pot “punish your enemies with labor camps” way, the idea of making the lockdown fanatics and government-bloaters become factory workers does have an emotional appeal. It does. But I don’t think we have enough forever-maskers to pull it off.
And that ain’t all. Nellie’s even against the $1 trillion defense budget! Okay, this bitch arrogant woman1 is even against Trump’s $1 trillion defense budget? She’s a damn lesbian’s lesbian!
With a TRILLION dollars, we’re going into countries you’ve never even heard of. We’re going to war with those penguins Trump tariffed. We’re going to be occupying kingdoms so random, toppling Latin American presidents so democratically elected. Bari, my personal neocon, is just holding a salute and staring out the door, waiting for deployment. America is back (to invading), baby! There are a TRILLION dollars burning a hole in Pete Hegseth’s pocket, and he is practicing saying Tajikistan in the mirror, just hoping he doesn’t misspeak and say Taiwan instead. Neutralize the threats in Tajikistan. Terror c-c-c-cells in Tajikistan.
Go, Nellie, go!
1. Back in the 1990s, “Word” came with a “Grammatik” program that once told me to replace the word “bitch” with “arrogant woman” unless I were referring to a female dog.
