Sunny with a slight breeze this Friday afternoon on California’s north coast, and warm, too.
(Illustration: M.C Escher’s ‘Scholastica (Full Moon),’ found here).
As the T-Rump continues to spiral into dangerous madness on a daily basis, there comes the question whether the piece-of-shit is the worse president, ever, or not — in the 2017 C-Span Presidential Historians Survey, the Number-One baddie was James Buchanan (on the shit list, Dick Nixon was 16th worse, George W Bush was the 11th).
The article on the survey, though, contained this disclaimer: ‘You expected Trump in the worst-ever slot? The 45th president isn’t eligible for this ranking, since he’s the current president.’
Bullshit!
Richard Striner, author and professor of history at Washington College, presented a compelling tale at History News Network last Sunday for the ultimate horror of T-Rump’s presidency, as most-likely the worse — after musings on the rottenness found in the antics from Andrew Jackson, belligerent, genocidal racist; to the likes of John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan. and on through Grover Cleveland, Herbert Hoover and Nixon.
All shitty…:
However incompetent or even malevolent some previous American presidents were, this one is unique.
The Trump presidency is a singular aberration, a defacement of norms and ideals without precedent.
However bad some other presidents were all of them felt a certain basic obligation to maintain at least a semblance of dignity and propriety in their actions.
Not Trump.
Foul beyond words, he lurches from one brutal whim to another, seeking gratification in his never-ending quest to humiliate others.
He spews insults in every direction all day.
He makes fun of the handicapped.
He discredits journalists in order to boost the credibility of crackpots and psychopathic bigots.
He accuses reporters of creating “fake news” so he can generate fake news himself: spew a daily torrent of hallucinatory lies to his gullible followers.
He amuses himself — with the help of his money and the shyster lawyers that it pays for — in getting away with a lifetime’s worth of compulsive frauds that might very well lead to prosecutions (later) if the evidence has not been destroyed and if the statute of limitations has not expired.
So far, however, he is always too brazen to get what he deserves, too slippery for anyone to foil.
Anyone with half of ounce of decency can see this wretched man for what he is.
They know what’s going on, and yet there’s nothing they can do to make it stop.
And that adds to Trump’s dirty satisfaction.
Any chance to out-maneuver the decent — to infuriate them — quickens his glee.
It makes his victory all the more rotten, incites him to keep on taunting his victims.
It’s all a big joke to Donald Trump, and he can never, ever, get enough of it.
Compare the histories as with this must-read piece from this morning by Timothy L. O’Brien, executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, and the T-Rump being beyond the worse — read the whole article, but this captures the fright (h/t Digby):
At his Cincinnati rally Thursday night Trump unspooled familiar themes.
In a flood of self-aggrandizing talking points, he attacked the Democrats, the media, the judiciary, Hillary Clinton, and Robert Mueller; extolled the virtues of supporters who adore him; slagged the city of Baltimore and the state of California for the umpteenth time; invented some new history for Russia; dumped on immigrants; took credit for legislation helping military veterans that Barack Obama actually signed; and pledged to “keep America great.”
Oh, and he promised to cure cancer.
By horribly-far, the T-Rump is beyond being the ‘worse‘ — he’s pure excruciating on so many levels.