Hot already just past the noon hour this Monday here in California’s Central Valley — although the air carries a heavy feel to it as we near triple digits (101 the expected high today), it’s still below intolerable levels. Cool heat is maybe the ticket out of this heat-domed mess — only temporary as the future crushes onward.
Crushing dark humor in the time of need (h/t tengrain):
— ??MYSTIC???I AM JACK'S INDICTMENTS ? (@MDomino07) August 6, 2023
Well worth the time to follow Mueller, She Wrote’s entire thread (click on the tweet) — great view of T-Rump’s innocent, “aspirational” only actions inciting an attempted coup with a call for an insurrection/riot at the US Capitol to start the festivities.
Best quick-take on this silly-ass T-Rump defense strategy came from former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, tweeXing: ‘This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. You know who else asks people to commit crimes in an “aspirational way” without “directing” them to? Mob bosses, human traffickers & the heads of organized drug rings.‘
National security attorney Bradley Moss, suggested those T-Rump defense lawyers reveal ‘“they know they’re going to lose at trial.”‘
Not a bad outcome.
Yet the newest charges against the T-Rump show treasonous, criminal intent with autocratic tones — from NPR this morning:
The latest federal case against Donald Trump is putting a spotlight on the role of false and baseless claims in his presidency. The indictment alleges that the former president and his co-conspirators used lies for the criminal purpose of overturning the 2020 election. For some scholars of history, its forensic look at how speech underpinned an alleged conspiracy to illegally retain power helps to situate Trump into larger historical patterns.
“All authoritarian leaders have cults of personality,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history at New York University and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. “Meaning, they propose themselves as all-powerful, as the only solution possible to the nation’s ills. ‘I alone can fix it.’
At times, the drumbeat of false assertions during Trump’s candidacy and presidency perplexed the American press and public. So did Trump’s invocation of baseless conspiracy theories, which invariably situated him as a persecuted victim of a “deep state.” But Ben-Ghiat said in her studies of authoritarian leaders such as Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Silvio Berlusconi and Jair Bolsonaro, there was precedent for this.
“The use of lies takes place in a larger effort to turn the public against alternate sources of authority,” she said. Those sources might include independent courts, legislative bodies and law enforcement agencies. Or — it may be the fourth estate.
“If you’re looking to see if somebody’s going to be a strongman, what you find is even when they start campaigning, they immediately start trying to turn the public against the press, saying [the press is] biased and that they are the truth teller against the establishment,” said Ben-Ghiat. As that leader’s supporters increasingly come to believe that he is the only source of truth, she said, they will be primed to believe his claims of a stolen election.
“What Trump is doing is, he’s asking for personal loyalty to him to outweigh the rule of law,” said Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. “We see this in any authoritarian takeover of a system. We see the authoritarian say, ‘Devotion to me is more important than the rule of law.’ “
T-Rump comes first, all the rest either gets thrown under the bus or, die.
As spoken, ‘You could give me the reasons, general … designation, E-Con-Con,” and an attempted coup ends:
And another ‘Anus Tangerius‘ bites the fat neck, or not, yet here we are once again…
Image out front is my favorite of the T-Rump mugs, though, ‘favorite‘ does not mean in any form or fashion, as in, ‘my favorite movie,’ or ‘my favorite song.’ It’s more of an anti-appreciation/like.
And aptly titled, ‘Basic Shapes,‘ by caricaturist/illustrator Chong Jit Leong (and found here), it’s an image that displays the elemental form of a purloined sociopath — a bloated profile of flatulent bile and arrogant ignorance.