Subscribe to the IHARE Blog

Donald Trump

A Tweet Taxonomy for a Very Little Man: Bringing Order to Trump’s Chaos

May 28, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Twins with no sense of decency (Leonard Mccombe/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images, (left); Patrick Semansky, via Associated Press, (right).

The news media is failing the American people. It is failing the American people by continuing to treat the very little man as if he were an adult. The burden has now fallen to Twitter to try to monitor what the media should have been doing all along.

Anderson Cooper is facing the truth about our immature child president. He has referred to his hissy-fit tweets as “schoolyard.” Exactly right. What else should you expect from a seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck? What took you so long?

Cooper also has called Little Donnee Waney “a little man.” He did so repeatedly in fact. In the segment I heard, I kept waiting for Cooper to add the word “very” but he didn’t. Still, he looks as if he has reached the point where enough is enough.  Perhaps it is because America is at 100,000 dead on this President’s watch and he still rates himself a “10” who wouldn’t change a thing. Perhaps it is because of the incessant unfounded assaults on Joe Scarborough. Perhaps it is because of the complete lack of empathy and sympathy by the very little man. Perhaps it is because of another racial incident during the presidency of the Racist in-chief. Perhaps it is because of his willingness to jeopardize the health of Americans by not wearing a mask. Perhaps it is because of the absurd miracle cures the scam artist peddles to the desperate people who accept him as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his name. Perhaps it is all of the above and today was just the day when the straw broke the camel’s back for Cooper.

The time is long past due when the news media should stop treating Little Donnee Waney as an adult. The time is long past for the news media to follow the example of Twitter. Instead of simply reporting on what he said and expressing some rage, the media needs to be more organized and disciplined. It is tiring hearing people talk about how the immature child erupted today at the White House and/or on Twitter. That’s what eight year olds do. They have tantrums. A child having a tantrum is no more news than tracking the eruptions of Old Faithful is. His tantrums may not be quite as regular but that happen frequently enough to know that tantrum tweets, tantrum press conference exchanges, and tantrum political rallies are par for the course.

Don’t report his tantrums as news. Classify them.  Here is a system I proposed last September (Bringing Order to Chaos: Creating a Trump Taxonomy). It’s a suggestion on how to fill a need. You may have your ideas. That’s fine as long as something is done to systematize the Little Man’s comments instead of treating everything one up.

  1. Trumps – Little Donnee Waney is incapable of telling the truth except by accident. So far he has trumped over 12,000 times [obviously outdated!]. In this instance, the number of occurrences is being tracked. Unfortunately news organizations do not display a bar chart with the ever increasing numbers or announce each day how many additional trumps were told the previous day.
  2. Hissy fits – Here is where the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck is in his natural habitat. It is easy to see how much he enjoys demeaning people. He demeans people as individuals, by ethnicity, by race, by religion, by appearance and he has great fun doing so. He especially enjoys responding to criticisms about him by others by insulting them personally. He would not rape someone because she is not his type but did not volunteer what his type was.
  3. Bozos – This category refers to the statements by the very stable genius that display his true ignorance. Who knew that Canada burned the White House after the patriots captured the airports? Who knew that 306 Electoral College votes was a landslide? It is important to distinguish between bozos and trumps. If he says that two plus two equals five, then you need to make a determination. Does he know that the correct answer is four and deliberately misstated the answer? That is a trump. Or is he genuinely ignorant of the correct answer? In that case, it’s a bozo.
  4. Alabamas – This is a new term for a long-time action of his. When the immature child is caught in a mistake, whether an honest one or a bozo or a trump, what is his reaction? He always doubles down. He never admits he made a mistake. He will demand other people who work for him to trump at the cost of their integrity and possibly their job if that what it takes to cover up his mistake. He will never man up, he will always carry on like the immature child he is. In the classifying of actions as Alabamas, one always needs to link them to the underlying bozo or trump that made the Alabama necessary. The database needs to have cross-referencing capabilities. [One day the Sharpie he used to mark the path of the hurricane will be in the Unpresidential Library.]
  5. Ka-chings – Part of the reason for his running for President was to make money. As President, he has worked ceaselessly to bring home the bacon. If China offered to build Trump Resorts in the South China Sea, he would have caved in a moment. [Probably not true now.] It’s all about the Benjamins. We need a running tally of the ka-chings both as to the number and the dollar value.
  6. Swamp Builder – There once was a time when some news outlets tracked the number of resigned appointees in this administration. Clearly far from hiring the best people available, he aims for people like himself – people who know how to game the system, people who sexually assault or harass women, people who are ignorant. As long as they are loyal to him what does he care? And if he does hire a competent and honest person, how long do such adults last in the White House anyway? How many appointees have there been and how many turned out be ignorant criminal scam artists…including those who still are in power?
  7. Flip Flops – If you do not like what he says, wait a while and he may say the opposite; if you do like what he says, do not count your chickens before they are hatched. He will release his tax returns. He will release his tax returns after the IRS completes its audit. He will release his tax returns after hell freezes over. He will meet with Iran without pre-conditions. He never said he would. He will support gun control. No, he will not. You will have to pry his assault weapons from his small cold dead hands. Again there is a need for cross-referencing. The original pronouncement before he flips probably was a trump.
  8. Hide and Seek – The most transparent government in the history of the United States (classified as a trump) will reveal nothing. No law, no regulation, no subpoena, no court ruling will ever cause him to reveal anything. Based on the concept of six-degrees-of-separation, this means that everyone in the United States is prohibited from testifying against him because they have some connection to him. How many outstanding unanswered requests for information are there? Historians will want to know. [When will Scarborough and the Klausutis family sue him for everything he has?]
  9. Unfilled Promises – After the election he will sue each and every woman who accused him of sexual harassment. He will balance the budget. He will pay off the debt. He will bring back coal. He will present a beautiful beautiful health care plan. AND MEXICO WILL PAY FOR THE WALL!

Help make the life of future graduate students in history easier. The historians writing about this administration are going to need this information. The application of this classification system will change the way news is reported. Look at the power of Twitter to disrupt the White House and Trumpicans in but a single day. Imagine what would happen if every nasty cutie pie scum bogus charge was tracked, classified, and made visible for all the voting public to see? What are you waiting for?

Contingency Plans for January 20, 2021: If He Loses

May 26, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Preview to the Third Civil War: Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor: 12th & 13th of April, 1861 (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b49873/)

What are the contingency plans for January 20, 2021, if Joe Biden wins the election?
What are the contingency plans for January 20, 2021, if Joe Biden loses the election?

America’s Third Civil War is moving forward to its showdown. So far the skirmishes in the culture war have been mostly local and mostly non-violent. Clearly now the intensity is ratcheting up. That process will continue until Election Day. Given the write-in ballots, the boiling point may not be reached until after Election Day as the time required simply to count the votes may go beyond Tuesday. And then there will be the law suits. Lots and lots of lawsuits.

Two pre-election Civil War scenarios have been presented in the publications I receive. The first was published in the January/February 2019 issue of The Atlantic by Elizabeth Goitein, a co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, entitled The Alarming Scope of the President’s Emergency Powers. I have slightly revised her possible scenario to bring it up-to-date.

Imagine that it’s late 2020. Trump’s approval ratings are at an all-time low. A disgruntled former employee has leaked documents showing that the Trump Organization was involved in illegal business dealings with Russian oligarchs [and Saudi royalty]. A disgruntled government employee has leaked Trump’s taxes showing that he has violated the law many times for many years.  The coronavirus and trade war with China and other countries has taken a significant toll on the economy. Trump has been caught once again managing ineptly, and his international gaffes are becoming impossible for lawmakers concerned about national security to ignore.

In straw polls pitting Trump against various potential Democratic presidential candidates, the Democrat consistently wins. Trump reacts. Unfazed by his own brazen hypocrisy, he tweets that the Ukraine and China are planning a cyber operation to interfere with the 2020 election. His Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, claims to have seen ironclad (but highly classified) evidence of this planned assault on U.S. democracy [and the release of Covid-19]. Trump’s inflammatory tweets provoke predictable saber rattling by the Chinese leaders; he responds by threatening preemptive sanctions and tariffs. Some Defense Department officials have misgivings, but others have been waiting for such an opportunity. As China’s statements grow more warlike, “Chinaphobia” takes hold among the American public.

Proclaiming a threat of war, Trump invokes Section 706 of the Communications Act to assume government control over internet traffic inside the United States, in order to prevent the spread of Chinese disinformation and propaganda. He also declares a national emergency under International Emergency Economic Powers Act, authorizing the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of any person or organization suspected of supporting China’s activities against the United States. Wielding the authority conferred by these laws, the government shuts down several left-leaning websites and domestic civil-society organizations, based on government determinations (classified, of course) that they are subject to Chinese influence. These include websites and organizations that are focused on getting out the vote [and resisting voter suppression].

Lawsuits follow. Several judges issue orders declaring Trump’s actions unconstitutional, but a handful of judges appointed by the president side with the administration. On the eve of the election, the cases reach the Supreme Court. In a 5–4 opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court observes that the president’s powers are at their zenith when he is using authority granted by Congress to protect national security. Setting new precedent, the Court holds that the First Amendment does not protect Chinese propaganda and that the government needs no warrant to freeze Americans’ assets if its goal is to mitigate a foreign threat.

Protests erupt.

On Twitter, Trump calls the protesters traitors and suggests (in capital letters) that they could use a good beating. When counterprotesters oblige, Trump blames the original protesters for sparking the violent confrontations and deploys the Insurrection Act to federalize the National Guard in several states. Using the Presidential Alert system first tested in October 2018, the president sends a text message to every American’s cellphone, warning that there is “a risk of violence at polling stations” and that “troops will be deployed as necessary” to keep order. Some members of opposition groups are frightened into staying home on Election Day; other people simply can’t find accurate information online about voting. With turnout at a historical low, a president who was facing impeachment just months earlier handily wins reelection—and marks his victory by renewing the state of emergency.

Over all, this prognostication remains fairly believable. I tried to update it to reflect the coronavirus and to diminish the Iran factor. I did not revise it to account for the extensive voter suppression activities already underway in the attacks on mail-in ballots, the cleansing of voter rolls in Trumpican-governed states, and the pending deployment of the Trumpican Voter Suppression army. These actions will only heighten the tension. We can witness in Hong Kong what easily could happen here.

The second example “How Far Would Trump Go to Keep Job? Foes Brainstorm Options,”   (NYT, May 25, 2020, print), is briefer as reported in the article. My awareness of this article triggered my reviving The Atlantic one. Preparing such scenarios seems more relevant now as we approach the moment of truth. In this version:

In October, President Trump declares a state of emergency in major cities in battleground states, like Milwaukee and Detroit, banning polling places from opening.

A week before the election, Attorney General William P. Barr announces a criminal investigation into the Democratic presidential nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

After Mr. Biden wins a narrow Electoral College victory, Mr. Trump refuses to accept the results, won’t leave the White House and declines to allow the Biden transition team customary access to agencies before the Jan. 20 inauguration.

The approach here is more domestic-based but ultimately leads the same moment of truth for the United States. It also means that if Joe Biden wins he will face more than legal battles that will drag on for weeks. He will receive no transition support since according to the incumbent, Biden didn’t win and isn’t entitled to any. Therefore as much as possible Biden needs to be ready Day 1 with a full slate of officials who know what they are doing. This interim period will provide a window of opportunity for any foreign entity wishing to take advantage of the American vulnerability. It puts the American military in a bind since it already knows what the rest of the world knows: the American commander in-chief is a blithering idiot, a simpleminded person of limited knowledge, attention span, and retention. Who knows what he might order to be done? Who knows who will obey him?

I first considered the topic of the 2020 election chaos in a blog back in 2018 about Anonymous

Suppose the very stable genius is wrong about 2020 (assuming he is still in office and chooses to run again)? Will the President honor the election results? Will the President leave the White House voluntarily? Will he demand a full investigation into the rigged results? Will he remain in the White House until the investigation by his Attorney General (not a stupid Southerner[Sessions]) is completed?  

In the follow up on March 17, 2019, I added this perspective on my earlier blog:

Those of you who read this blog [2018], may I have thought I was off my rocker. I am pleased to note that five months later the Fixer, who well knows the personality of Person #1 and what he is capable of, raised the exact same concerns in his Congressional testimony. There was not the chance to resolve this issue in the 2018 elections since the Democratic tidal wave was so huge. Even for someone living in an alternate reality there are limits as to how many Congressional districts can be contested. The situation is quite different at the presidential level.

Suppose in 2020, the Democratic candidate wins by the same small margin as the 306 electoral vote landslide in 2016? How many states would need to be contested to switch the national results? At this point it is impossible to know. Indeed we may never know if the margin is comparable to the Congressional vote in 2018. An almost 9% spread is difficult to finesse to an Electoral College victory.

I revisited the subject on May 6, 2019, When Did You First Know Individual #1 Would Reject the 2020 Results If He Lost? following an article two days earlier. Remember Nancy Pelosi’s concerns (Pelosi Warns Democrats: Stay in the Center or Trump May Contest Election Results, NYT, May 4, 2019):

PERSON #1 WON’T LEAVE THE WHITE HOUSE VOLUNTARILY

Few people outside Ms. Pelosi’s inner circle were aware of how worried she was that Mr. Trump would try to stop the opposition party from taking control of the House unless the Democrats’ victory was emphatic enough to be indisputable.

 “If we win by four seats, by a thousand votes each, he’s not going to respect the election. He would poison the public mind. He would challenge each of the races; he would say you can’t seat those people.” In recent weeks, Ms. Pelosi has told associates that she does not automatically trust the president to respect the results of any election short of an overwhelming defeat.

 She said the victory in 2020 needed to be by a margin so “big” that it cannot reasonably be challenged.

 “We have to inoculate against that, we have to be prepared for that,” as she discussed her concern that Mr. Trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost re-election by a slim margin.

The questions I asked on March 17, 2019, remain valid.

Will Individual #1 unleash his muscle in his militias, military, police, and Second Amendment people to protect him from the greatest threat to the United States ever?

How long would it take the Supreme Court to adjudicate all the legal claims filed?

If his Supreme Court betrayed him, would Individual #1 honor its ruling?

Who would actually extract Individual # from the White House?

Based on The New York Times article, it appears that more people and with more standing than I have now realize the issue is not some wild-eyed hypothetical but a real world possibility with the clock ticking. We are headed for a showdown. Of course, if the post-election legal fight drags on long enough, it could lead to Nancy Pelosi becoming President on January 20, 2021 (Could Nancy Pelosi Become the First Female President?: A Constitutional Crisis).

One final possibility to consider is suppose Biden loses. How will people react to four more years of our immature child president? Will that result push people over the edge? That is a subject for another blog.

If Mike Pence Were President, How Many More Americans Would Be Alive Today?: Over 80,000 and Counting

May 22, 2020
by Peter Feinman
God’s Plan for Mike Pence (The Atlantic, Tim O'Brien)

If Mike Pence were President, how many more Americans would be alive today? I posed that question in my blog on April 27, 2020, entitled If Mike Pence Were President, How Many More Americans Would Be Alive Today? At that time, I did not have a specific figure. I wrote this about the counterfactual:

This time we have hard-based scientific evidence that the situation could have been different. We know that social distancing and lock-downs work. It is possible to examine the dates of when cities in the United States (like New York) and cities throughout the world commenced a lock down. The numbers aren’t hidden figures. They are visible in plain sight. We know that the earlier these actions were taken, the fewer deaths there would have been and would be.  The same applies to the states. It is possible to examine the numbers from the 50 states and observe how many lives would have been saved if a state had acted a day earlier, two days earlier, a week earlier, or two weeks earlier. We know with different national leadership fewer Americans would have died and the economy wouldn’t have collapsed as much.

In my concluding paragraph, I wrote:

It is really not so difficult to imagine a different scenario being played out. The evidence is right there before us. We have the numbers. We have the multiple examples from the different cities, states, and countries.

Now we have the answer. A team of researchers at Columbia University have crunched the numbers and created a model in a report entitled “Differential Effects of Intervention Timing on COVID-19 Spread in the United States” by Sen Pei Kandula and Jeffrey Shaman. I don’t expect it to be on the night stand of our elementary-school literate President or mentioned on Fox except perhaps in a derogatory way.

According to the study, the implementation of mitigation measures a week or two earlier would have made a substantial difference. They used the May 3 death toll of 65,307 as a control point for the number of deaths and March 15 as the date for the start of mitigation measures in the United States. The results for starting earlier are:

March 8 – a decrease in the number of deaths from 65, 307 to 29,410 deaths for a reduction of 35,987 or almost 55%

March 1 – a decrease in the number of deaths from 65,307 to 11,253 deaths for a reduction of 54,054 or almost 83%.

If we extrapolate the results to the pending 100,000 actual deaths, the results based on the March 1 date mean approximately 17,000 Americans would have died instead for a reduction of 83,000. Presumably these calculations would ripple through the timeline.

True, this is a model. But when asked by Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” about the impact of starting mitigation efforts in February Anthony Fauci replied:

“I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives…  Obviously, no one is going to deny that.”

My immediate reaction on hearing that comment was that obviously one person was going to deny that. After all he rated himself a “10” and wouldn’t change anything he has done. Fauci went on to say:

“We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But we — it is what it is. We are where we are right now.”

Would we be where we are right now if the Senate had voted to remove the impeached President and Mike Pence had become President in February instead? We will never know but I think it is safe to say he couldn’t have done any worse. We certainly never would have heard of hydroxychloroquine or have considered the feasibility of disinfectants. Time Magazine has reported a spike in accidental poisonings with household disinfectants (May 25, 2020). The number of prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine has nearly doubled now that it has the Presidential seal of approval. How long will it be before the lawsuits against the government start?

But, of course, Mike Pence did not become President? Could he have risen to the occasion and become a profile in courage against the buffoon President? Could Vice President Brown Nose have cast aside his subordinate identity and become as outspoken and dedicated to the truth as Fauci is? I asked that question in a blog on October 3, 2019, minus the Fauci reference, entitled Will Mike Pence Become a Profile in Courage?   The blog gave me the opportunity to compare Pence to a lookalike Star Trek figure Captain Merik in “Bread and Circuses” who did rise to the occasion.

Mike Pence Is No Captain Merik in Star Trek “Bread and Circuses” (William Smithers)

My conclusion then was that Pence would not:

What will Mike Pence do? He prides himself on his Christian values. Will he tell the truth? He prides himself on never dining alone with a woman who is not his wife. Will he tell the truth? He prides himself on his integrity. Will he tell the truth? He thinks he is part of God’s plan. Will he tell the truth?

No. Even his staff knows the truth does not register with him.

He will not rise to the occasion.

He will not be a profile in courage.

He never would have been picked for the position of Vice President if he was.

Thinking about this topic now caused me to reread The Atlantic article God’s Plan for Mike Pence by McKay Coppins (January/February 2018). Coppins began by describing Pence’s appearance at a political rally where he passed on the good wishes of the president.

He delivers this message with a slight chuckle that has a certain, almost subversive quality to it. Watch Pence give enough speeches, and you’ll notice that this often happens when he’s in front of a friendly crowd. He’ll be witnessing to evangelicals at a mega-church, or addressing conservative supporters at a rally, and when the moment comes for him to pass along the president’s well-wishes, the words are invariably accompanied by an amused little chuckle that prompts knowing laughter from the attendees. It’s almost as if, in that brief, barely perceptible moment, Pence is sending a message to those with ears to hear—that he recognizes the absurdity of his situation; that he knows just what sort of man he’s working for; that while things may look bad now, there is a grand purpose at work here, a plan that will manifest itself in due time. [bold added]

Did you notice that “slight chuckle” at any of the coronavirus press conferences? You probably noticed the grimaces and groans of Fauci and Birx as the simple-minded immature child wandered off into his imaginary world. As for Vice President Brown Nose, nary a facial expression of any kind except beaming adulation. At some point someone will document the timeline of when and why Pence sold his soul.

Coppins also reported Pence as saying:

“We’ve come to a pivotal moment in the life of this country….It’s a good time to pray for America.” His voice rising in righteous fervor, the vice president promises an opening of the heavens. “If His people who are called by His name will humble themselves and pray,” he proclaims, “He’ll hear from heaven, and He’ll heal this land!”

It is quite possible Pence actually believes what he is preaching. If McConnell has been the conduit for the appointment of conservative judges, then Pence has been the conduit for white evangelical Christians to the White House. He’s doing God’s work.

Pence is following God’s plan.  “If you’re Mike Pence, and you believe what he believes, you know God had a plan,” says Ralph Reed.

Coppins own analysis probably written at the end of 2017 is tinged with tragic irony given what has occurred.

Pence is a man who believes heaven and Earth have conspired to place him a heartbeat—or an impeachment vote—away from the presidency. At some crucial juncture in the not-too-distant future, that could make him a threat to Trump.

We had the impeachment. Did you notice any change in Pence? We are having the coronavirus crisis. Did you notice any change in Pence? Do you think the President ever worries about the Vice President telling the truth?

Coppins observed:

In Pence, Trump has found an obedient deputy whose willingness to suffer indignity and humiliation at the pleasure of the president appears boundless.

Still true over two years later.

Kellyanne Conway: “Mike Pence is someone whose faith allows him to subvert his ego to the greater good.”

Pence’s belief in “servant leadership” makes him a perfect patsy for a skilled con artist who knows how to manipulate people.

Evangelical Marc Short [White House director of legislative affairs] told me that in moments of need, Pence turns to a favorite passage in Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Coppins noted this passage in conjunction with the Hollywood Access tape crisis. What exactly is that plan? Is it to go down with a sinking ship? Is it to stand idly by and watch tens of thousands of Americans die? When will that divine plan manifest itself? According to the evangelical Vice President in April:

“I truly do believe that if we all continue to do that kind of social distancing and other guidance broadly from federal and state officials, that we’re going to put this coronavirus in the past. I believe by early June we’re going to see our nation largely past this epidemic. I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.”

The day of reckoning is upon us. Memorial Day Weekend is here. Will Pence face the truth of his failed prophecy? Will he see the light at the end of tunnel? Will he rise to the occasion? Will he be the leader America needs? No. No. No. And no. Are you kidding me? He will claim his prophecy has been fulfilled just as his Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, will.

Friday Night Lights: Risking Lives for the Dow

May 21, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Friday Night Lights versus the Coronavirus (https://www.nccfnl.com/)

We have now celebrated V-Zero Day over the coronavirus per the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In a few days we will be looking back at the crisis per the Vice President of the United States. Next month we will be back to normal per the son in-law of the President of the United States. We have prevailed. There is light at the end of the tunnel per the President of the United States. We’re back!

What does it mean to be back to normal? For Trumpicans, the coronavirus crisis has been an economic crisis and not a medical crisis. People in New York got the virus. People in prisons did. People in nursing homes did. You know…those people did. Real Americans didn’t get the coronavirus.  As a person at a plaza in an Atlanta suburb said:

“When you start seeing where the cases are coming from and the demographics⸺I’m not worried.” (quoted in the Washington Post and by Michelle Goldberg, NYT 5/19/20).

The counter quotation on the same day was by Rebecca Patterson the girlfriend of Ron Wilkins in Texas who endured 37 days on a ventilator and has the medical bills to show it.

“People don’t really understand how serious this is until they know somebody who’s going through it. It’s only a matter of time before everyone in the country knows someone. I don’t know what the solution is but I don’t think hurrying to open is it.” (USA Today, 5/19/20).

If she was a Trumpican, it doesn’t seem like she is anymore.

Friday Night Lights

Sports, like every other segment of society, has been part of the coronavirus crisis. The Olympics have been postponed. Professional basketball and hockey seasons ended. Tennis tournaments and gold matches weren’t held. There was no “Play ball” for baseball. Football is trying to figure out what to do. Colleges are struggling with how to play sports if there are no students on campus or in the stands. But what about high school sports which affects every community in the country?

Friday Night Lights has been a book, a movie, and a TV series. It carved out a niche for itself as a tale of the role of high school football in a Texan community. It almost was an anthropological window into the way of life of a people and with a story to boot. Even people who were not from a Friday Night Light community themselves were drawn into its storylines of small town life with larger than life meaning.

But besides all that other stuff, it also was about football, about high school kids playing football, about high school kids playing football with practices in August which is only a few months away. Forget about all the talk about reopening schools in September for a moment and think about reopening football practice in a little over two months. Kids practice wearing helmets not masks; they practice near each other with no social distancing; and they sweat a lot especially in the hot and humid south.

And then there are the games. In a Friday Nights Light community, the whole town turns out for the games. It is not like high school in urban communities especially ones with professional sports. It’s tough enough to get coverage of college games yet along high school games there. Friday Night Lights and College Town football are different worlds from City Professional sports. Are you going to deprive these communities of the events that are essential to the social fabric of a community?

The game is more than a game. The whole community is involved. Politicians, families, local businesses, churches…you name it, it is part of the experience. So are the after game parties. So are the caravans to the away games. So is sitting in the stands. Real men don’t wear masks. Real Americans don’t get coronavirus. Who’s going to tell people in the stands to wear masks? Who’s going to tell them to sit apart? Who’s going to enforce it? Friday Night Light life poses an immense challenge if the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the son in-law of the President of the United States, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers are wrong and we have not prevailed, are not looking back, and there still is no light at the end of tunnel.

Church       

Friday Night Lights are not the only places where people gather on a weekly basis. There also is Sunday morning church. That debate isn’t waiting for August, it’s happening now. Weekly services are part of the routine of life for millions of Americans. For others who attend church for marriages, funerals, and the big holidays, the world of people who religiously attend weekly is as remote as Friday Night Lights football communities are. Simply being there in a religious building on a regular basis is part of the way millions bring order to chaos, strengthen themselves for the days to come, and find comfort. Are you going to deprive people of what is essential to their way of life?

We know that people gathered together indoors for an extensive period of time provide a ripe venue for the spread of the coronavirus. Outbreaks have occurred when simply one person has attended such family and religious events. People may not be in churches for as long as they are in a nursing home, a prison, a meat plant, or a cruise ship, but at this point, no one knows how much time it takes to spread the virus. It’s one thing for people to be willing to take the risk with their own lives; it is quite another for them to risk the lives of others. That’s the equivalent of not taking a vaccine.

Political Rallies

Our president feeds on the adulation of people who have accepted him as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name. How long can he go without being fed? How long can they go without praising his name, laughing at his insults, and reciting the approved chants? He needs his rallies.

These rallies are indoors and for long periods of time.

No one who wears a mask will be allowed inside. Only Fox will be able to cover the events, the mainstream media won’t be able to.

Only Trumpicans will be present. They are immune to the coronavirus and the crisis is over.

Is there any doubt that Trumpicans will flock by the thousands to rally on behalf of their Lord and Savior once they are finally able to? After all, what could possibly happen to them?

Trumpican Presidential Convention

The single longest and largest concentration of Trumpicans will occur this August at the Trumpican coronation. Nobody will be allowed to wear a mask and there will be armed freedom fighters stationed at the entrances to ensure that no weak and wimpy people are allowed in. There will be no social distancing either. For days, Trumpicans by the thousands will rally indoors on behalf of their leader. And then they will walk the streets of the city in search of food and alcohol where they can continue the celebration. After all, what could possibly happen to them? We have prevailed, we are looking back, and we have reached the light at the end of tunnel.

The reopening of the country will pose many problems. First is the lack of reliable information from our national government. Second is the lack of reliable information from our state governments. Third is the belief in one’s invulnerability which doesn’t end when you stop being a teenager. Fourth is the fact that we are social animals who need to be with other people and touch them physically. Fifth is the origin of this country with the “Don’t Tread on Me” ethos that complicates the challenge of getting people to obey the government or common sense. And finally, of course, there is our impulsive immature child president who lives in an imaginary world where he creates his truth simply by speaking it and helped cause this crisis to begin with. All these factors do not bode well for the reopening.

Donna Reed, Eddie Haskell, and The Donald: The Fifties Live

May 20, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Were The Donald's 50s His "Happy Days"? (https://www.wellesnet.com)

The Fifties are alive and well with The Donald, more so than I had realized. Yes, people have often commented on his preference for the white world of America’s idealized past, but there is more to it than that. I have frequently commented about The Donald being an immature 13 year old or 7th grader in contrast to the level-headed 13 year old Tom Hanks in “Big.” While that is true, I neglected to situate that immature child in time. In other words, he is different from 13 year olds in other time periods; he is a child of the 50s who never grew up.

I first realized his temporal status when he withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement in 2017. At the time he said:

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Put aside the fact that Pittsburgh had voted for his opponent. Instead focus on the city itself. In recent years, it has transformed itself. It is not the iron and steel city it once was. The football team may still be named the Steelers, but steel is not what the city does. Then it occurred to me: The Donald was living in the past. His image of Pittsburgh was based on what the city once had been. It was a manly city where people had manly jobs doing mainly things with iron and coal. His image of the city in the present is based on his image of the city when he was growing up. His Pittsburgh was a city where men were men and women were women and people knew their place.

I should have realized then that legacy of the 50s may have extended beyond that one reference.

Queen Elizabeth

Here again was a passing reference to the childhood of The Donald in the 50s that turns out to be another brick in constructing an understanding the immature child today. When our President was about to meet the Queen, here was the headline in my local paper:

Trump’s Fascination With Royal Family Goes Back to His Mother’s Admiration (NYT, June 4, 2019, print).

According to the article:

One of President Trump’s earliest memories, one he routinely recounts to journalists and biographers, is of watching his mother watch television, so enthralled that she barely moved for hours, on the day in 1953 that Queen Elizabeth was crowned.

He was only 6 years old, but he understood that the gilded spectacle unfolding more than 3,400 miles away inside Westminster Abbey struck a chord in his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, a poor girl who had immigrated from Scotland and who had worked for a time as a housemaid in a grand mansion. He also understood that, for some reason, the same spectacle offended his father.

“I also remember my father that day, pacing around impatiently, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mary,’ he said, ‘enough is enough, turn it off. They’re all a bunch of con artists,’ ” Mr. Trump recalled, years later. “My mother didn’t even look up. They were total opposites in that sense.”

For William Jefferson Clinton, the iconic moment occurred when the 16 year old met President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. That father-figure was an important one in understanding the future President. Similarly one may observe how the Queen and the royal family served as a benchmark for Little Donnee Waney as well…even when he became a crude, rude, 13-year old who had to be sent to military school in the vain hope he would man up.

The Golden Age of NYC Baseball

Typically when referring to the Golden Age in New York City baseball, one is referring to the 1950s. It was the decade when New York teams dominated. The New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers either won the World Series or played in it. Sometimes they play each other in the Series. Sometimes the Giants and the Dodgers played each other to determine who would be the National League champ and go on to the World Series. These series, playoffs, pennant drives, and individual plays became part of baseball lore. It was the time of Mickey, Willie, and the Duke. This era was imprinted on the minds and souls of countless boys who lived through it.

The Donald played baseball. Apparently when he was in 6th grade, he wrote a baseball poem that was published in his elementary school yearbook (per the Washington Post, 06/22/16):

I like to see a baseball hit and the fielder catch it in his mitt…
I like to hear the crowd give cheers, so loud and noisy to my ears.
When the score is 5-5, I feel like I could cry.
And when they get another run, I feel like I could die.
Then the catcher makes an error, not a bit like Yogi Berra.
The game is over and we say tomorrow is another day.

The 6th grade catcher mentions fellow catcher Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees. It is quite reasonable to think that The Donald was a Yankee fan. It is hard to imagine him rooting for those National League teams with all those Negroes playing for them. And besides, the Yankees were the Team of Champions. Recently during the coronavirus crisis, he said:

“I saw baseball is doing something very unusual, I don’t know if I agree with it,” he said. “I’d like to see the Yankees play at Yankee Stadium. I see they have some ideas for baseball which are very different. I guess I’m a traditionalist. … I think they’d be able to play in Yankee Stadium with obviously smaller crowds and then the crowds would start to build as things get to be a little bit better. I think you’re going to see some big things happen. And again, this is going away.” WFan 4/29/20

Strangely though, most of what you hear about The Donald and baseball is about himself during the early 60s when he was in high school. As expected, virtually nothing that he says about his high school baseball career is true except that he did play for his high school team. That’s no surprise. But what is missing are the baseball stories about the 50s. Did he attend any games with his father? The sixth grader knew about Berra making an error; does he have any memories of any other plays, players, games, or World Series. Perhaps there are real diehard baseball fans who can identify the error Berra made that made such an impression on him. As we all know, it is always about him, so it should not be surprising that he has no stories to tell about others. Imagine The Donald and Billy Crystal trying to swap stories about baseball in the 50s or any other time. When it comes to The Donald and baseball in the 50s it is like there is no there there.

Eddie Haskell

Ken Osmond, the actor who played Eddie Haskell in Leave It to Beaver, just died on May 18, 2020. His character lived on long after the show ran (1957-1963) and was something he never really escaped. Osmond was 14 years old when he started performing as Haskell and about 20 when the show ended. That made him older that The Donald who was 11 when the show began and remains 13. Haskell was not The Donald. Haskell was great character. How could anyone in the show not see through him? But unlike The Donald, he was two-faced. Haskell knew how to act before the parents, the people of authority, and what he could get away with when their backs are turned. By contrast, The Donald was and is one-faced. He thrives on being the naughty boy in public. Think of how much fun he has when he curses in public at one of his professional political wrestling rallies. Think of how much fun he has when gratuitously insulting press reporters (adults, people who can read and know things) at his press conferences. Osmond grew up and became a cop; Little Donnee Waney remains frozen in time.

Donna Reed

So what does Donna Reed mean to The Donald? His image of her was not set by It’s a Wonderful Life Donna Reed but by her TV series The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966). He would have been 12 when it started and would have already graduated high school when it ended. My guess is his watching was during the earlier years. Did he watch the show about the ideal mother and wife with his mother? Did it remind him of his own family? Did he lust for her and want to grab her? All of the above? Some of the above? I don’t know the answers to these questions. Mothers change diapers and raise the children as they did with his own wives…and if they wanted more they were no Donna Reed and the marriage was over.

Did The Donald read the Bobbsey Twins on his own? Did his mother read the stories to him as a child? Why didn’t she read The Hardy Boys or Chip Hilton to him? Today we tend to focus on the experiences of The Donald with his father: the KKK, the racism in the business, the $413 million the father gave the son making him the biggest individual financial loser in American history. What about the mother? Remember how he wanted to reopen the country by Easter so families could celebrate together and go to services just like a Donna Reed family? That sounds more like his mother speaking than his father? If biographers have covered this topic already I apologize for not having read those books. To me at least, there is more to our immature child President than we may realize. Was his mother his Rosebud for an imagined world he never had?

V-Zero Day: We Have Prevailed Over COVID-19!

May 19, 2020
by Peter Feinman
"We have met the moment and we have prevailed,"

Did you celebrate V-Zero Day? Did you celebrate the day when we finally prevailed over Covid-19?

Ever since the White House Council of Economic Advisers delivered its Happy Talk message showing deaths dropping precipitously to the point of zero by May 15, I have been counting down the days on my blogs.

We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2! We’re Number Two: Trumpicans Rejoice

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: in 3 days!!!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus again: in 13 days!!!!!!!

“The Trump Presidency Is Over:” Peter Wehner Is Wrong and Living in an Alternate Reality

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: TOMORROW!!!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus again: in 11 days!!!!!!!

As the first promised day drew nearer the excitement mounted. Given the track record of success in White House predictions of miracle cures, it will just go away, and 15 to zero, I anticipated front page coverage of this historic event. I chose not to issue a blog Friday night covering the celebration and I guess I missed the fanfare. On Monday, Rachel Maddow did devote a segment to this auspicious achievement…and heralded the upcoming triumph on May 25. The countdown continues.

REVENGE AGAINST THE NERDS

How popular were nerds in 7th grade, the emotional age of our President? Nerds tended not to be the most popular kids in the class. They knew science. They knew math. They could read books. Remember even non-nerd Tom Hanks when he became big could read a book and understand algebra (see Tom Hanks versus Our Immature Child-President 08/08/17).

For Little Donnee Waney, it is unlikely that nerds were his favorite people. The seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck was superb at insulting and demeaning people. It would be nice to know more about why Fred Trump placed his son in military school in the vain hope that Macho Macho boy would man up.

By coincidence there was a recent book review on And Then They Stopped Talking to Me: Making Sense of Middle School by Judith Warner (NYT 5/10/20). Reviewer Shannon Hale wrote:

Warner shows how for so many of us, our “narrative identity” is greatly affected by what we suffered in middle school, and since our perceptions during those years are undoubtedly distorted, so too might be our sense of self. How many of us are walking around with the unhealed emotional wounds inflicted in junior high?

 Warner recommends “compassion.” She does so both for actual middle schoolers and middle-aged adults who still are middle-schoolers inside and “even now feeling somewhat wrong, inferior and unfinished.” Or as I have written: it is not fair to judge Little Donnee Waney by adult standards since he isn’t one.

Think of what it must have been like for Macho Macho boy to have been repeatedly upstaged by Fauci. Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is someone our immature child president never would have associated with back in junior high school. And now here is Fauci with far higher approval ratings claiming the center stage from the narcissist in-chief, the stage that was supposed to showcase how the war leader with the supergenious medical uncle was saving America. It had to be humiliating to have to stand there while this little nerd commanded the respect the immature child can only fake but never achieve. Think of how Bonespur Boy loved to trot out his Hollywood-cast uniformed generals. He loved playing with his action figure dolls and parading them with all their accessories for the world to see as if he were a real man. Now this little pipsqueak of a nerd was showing him up daily.

People have caught on to his act. Our previous adult President just said at a virtual high school graduation commencement:

Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up.

Barack Obama grasps the truth about Little Donnee Waney. At some level, it must infuriate the immature child to see the adult President behaving in a way he will never attain…even if there was no racial component.

This background helps explain the science recently demonstrated by the person with the maturity of the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck. Consider these examples of logic and scientific reasoning by the President who is not Spock or Kirk either.

1. New York City raised the number of Covid-19 deaths by over 3000. Given the uncertainty and chaos of the early days, it is easy to understand why the death totals might not be accurate. People were dying at home as Fauci pointed out. Coroners didn’t know what to look for at first…or have the means to test for it. The volume was overwhelming. Even a normal 7th grader could understand that.

But not the narcissist in chief. Since it is always about him, the reason for the discrepancy could only be due to one thing: the Deep State plot to undermine his presidency by inflating the number of dead on his watch.

2. If he couldn’t handle the increase in death count of over 3000, what are the odds he could accept The New York Times analysis showing up to 20,000 more deaths. The study compared the number of deaths this year during the worst weeks with the death totals from the same time period in previous years. A nerd could understand this, an immature child could not. Our President genuinely lacks the mental necessities to understand this analysis. His uncle may be a super genious who could have but his nephew has been wearing the proverbial dunce cap for decades.

How did he respond to these numbers? The answer is exactly the same as when he is forced into an adult conversation and realizes that he cannot function at that level. In a press conference exchange with adults, the nasty cutie pie always resorts to his seventh-grade persona when the going gets tough because that’s what he really is. The temper tantrum via tweet or verbal putdown is the only weapon in the arsenal of Macho Macho boy. In this case of the number of Corvid-19 deaths that means the numbers are false. The unhappy talk numbers are part of the Deep State attack on him. Given his middle-school mind, what other possibility is there?

3. His lack of reasoning skills has been on full display. After all, if we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases of Covid-19, right? If President Joe Biden institutes a robust national testing program and the number of cases increases dramatically, what would that mean? Right now the mortality rate is averaging 6% of the infections. That is fairly high, in fact, 60 times the mortality rate for flu and 6 times the projected rate of 1%. Is that infection rate valid? If the number of infections also was six times the present number, then the mortality rate would decrease to a less scary 1%, still 10 times worse than the flu but much less terrifying than the present numbers. Unfortunately the very stable genius is far from being the smartest person in the room. By his calculations, that increase in infections would mean that as soon as Biden became president, the number of cases skyrocketed because Biden was a failure as President. That is the level of his thinking. STOP THE TESTING TO STOP THE NUMBER OF INFECTIONS!

So what can we look forward to?

“By Memorial Day weekend we will largely have this coronavirus behind us.” Just ask him.

After Memorial Day, there will no longer be any need to take hydroxychloroquine. Just ask him.

How many lawsuits will there be against the President on behalf of people who take   hydroxychloroquine and have adverse effects? Just ask him.

Note 1: Tubby-wubby is not “morbidly obese.
Note 2: How many of the 3 Foxettes are taking hydroxychloroquine?

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

ATTENTION WASHINGTON POST: IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO TRACK HIS 16,000+ TRUMPS, TRACK HIS PROMISES TOO.

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 5 2020: “There is tremendous hope as we look forward and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.” DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT YET?
May 8 2020: “Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon.” WHEN IS SOON?
May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: WE HAVE PREVAILED!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus again: in 6 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal economy
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now: “We will transition into greatness. That’s a phrase you’re going to hear a lot, because that’s what’s going to happen.”
July 4 2020 Supreme Court rules Republican President is above the law; American experiment ends short of 250th anniversary
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
Fourth Quarter 2020: economy will be tremendous
October 2020: announce vaccine cure in election day surprise
November 3 2020: Deploy army of real Americans to suppress vote of…you know…those people – Vote Suppressors to become a TV reality show
November 3 2020: CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER THE RESULTS
November 3 2020: Democratic coronavirus hoax magically disappears and all lockdowns and restrictions end
January 1, 2021: begin distribution of miracle vaccine
January 20 2021: Nancy Pelosi becomes President
January 20 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers

“The Trump Presidency Is Over:” Peter Wehner Is Wrong and Living in an Alternate Reality

May 14, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Who Is the Un-Lincoln Dividing America Today? (Library of Congress)

All the way back on March 13, 2020, Peter Wehner wrote an article: “The Trump Presidency Is Over: It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain” (Atlantic). His opposition can be traced back to his op-ed piece Why I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump (The New York Times, January 14, 2016, print). He expressed many highly critical assessments of the shortcomings of the prospective candidate. He was particularly concerned in the event there was a national catastrophe during the presidency of such an obviously inadequate person for the job and such a reprehensible person in life.

He followed that op-ed piece with an interview on July 14, 2016, on C-Span where he raised many of the same concerns. Of course, by this time, the discussion was less theoretical as least concerning the nomination.

His next foray was with Atlantic.

Trump Is Not Well: Accepting the reality about the president’s disordered personality is important—even essential. September 9, 2019

At the top of my list: Talk to psychologists and psychiatrists about the state of Trump’s mental health, since I considered that to be the most important thing when it came to understanding him. It was Trump’s Rosetta stone.

These comments reveal the continual shortcoming by the media – treating him as if he were an adult. For some unknown reason, even the people who mock him for his childish behavior have yet to grasp the reality that portions of his brain still are at the level of an immature child.

Jennifer Senior just wrote about him: “whose pathologies only permit an infantile vision of the world he longs for, not the world as it truly is” (The New York Times, May 11, 2020, print).

Maureen Dowd’s take is similar: “We can vividly see in this crisis how close to the surface Trump’s id is and how easily he cleaves to delusions’ (The New York Times, March 6, 2020, print).

Tom Nichols on Morning Joe compared him to children playing hide and seek: if I can’t see you, then you can’t see me. He is child-like with his magical thinking.

No he isn’t child-like, he is a child. He is an immature child of impulse and id, lashing out in temper tantrums with tweets, law suits, and hissy fits, and living in an imaginary created in his mind. I still hope one day to hear someone on a talk show or read in a newspaper or magazine that there is a need to consult child psychologists and child psychiatrists. What will it take?

“He’s deteriorating in plain sight,” one Republican strategist who is in frequent contact with the White House told Business Insider on Friday. Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, “You should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment.”

How long can a person deteriorate? He was deteriorating last fall. Now he is deteriorating this spring. Meanwhile he is proceeding full speed ahead on multiple fronts to fulfill his agenda. He even as ramped up his attacks on Time Magazine’s Person of Year. He is isn’t content simply to muzzle Fauci; now he and Fox have launched a full-scale assault against him.

Many Americans haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that we elected as president a man who is deeply damaged, an emotional misfit. But it would be helpful if they did.

This idea is classic denial. Wehner can’t come to grips with the fact that Trumpicans do not now and never will see him as Wehner does. Wehner persists in thinking there will come a time when the truth will be seen. In March, his wishful thinking was in full bloom.

 “The Trump Presidency Is Over: It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain” (Atlantic, March 13, 2020)

It took until the second half of Trump’s first term, but the crisis has arrived in the form of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the coronavirus has overwhelmed Donald Trump.

For Wehner, his worst fears about the immature child President had come true. There was a national emergency requiring exemplary adult leadership if America was to prevail. Instead we had the world’s worst manager at the helm of the ship of state and have prevailed only in the imaginary world of the immature child’s mind.

 Day after day after day he brazenly denied reality, in an effort to blunt the economic and political harm he faced. But Trump is in the process of discovering that he can’t spin or tweet his way out of a pandemic. There is no one who can do to the coronavirus what Attorney General William Barr did to the Mueller report: lie about it and get away with it.

Wehner is positive that this time it will be different. This time all the usual tricks won’t work. You can’t con a virus. Now the people will see the con man behind the curtain. WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! He can spin and tweet his way out of a pandemic at least to Trumpicans. Keep in mind, that Trumpicans have not and are not dying in droves from Corvid-19 so as far as they are concerned, it is not a medical emergency but an economic one.

 The nation is recognizing this, treating him as a bystander…

 Donald Trump is shrinking before our eyes.

 Wehner really believes this. Or at least he did back in March. The deteriorating person is now shrinking as well. Soon he will vanish to nothing just like the number of coronavirus deaths will drop to zero as of May 15. Wehner probably knows better now than to believe what he wrote only two months ago.

The coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation.

 It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over.

 Wehner wants to believe this so badly he is in danger of living in his own alternate reality. In the real world, this depiction isn’t even close to being true. Even as Wehner is forced to admit that the real world is not the one he wants it be, he continues to hope that one day it will change. So he tries again with another article.

 The President Is Unraveling: The country is witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of Donald Trump (Atlantic, May 5, 2020)

We are witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of an American president. It’s something the Trump White House cannot hide—indeed, it doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. There is not even the slightest hint of normalcy.

Talk about wishful thinking. Little Donny Wannee was like this back in 2016 when Wehner started writing. He was like this in 2019. He was like this in March. He is like this in May. At what point does the media recognize that the supposed deterioration, the shrinking before our eyes, and the steady decomposition is just more of the same. Sure he may have a bad day. Little Donny Disinfectant anyone? But that is temporary. Then it is back to normal, his normal.

 We will see more extreme appeals to the fringe base of Trump’s party, including right-wing militias.

Yes, and it will work too but that’s another blog.

 What this means is that Americans are facing not just a conventional presidential election in 2020 but also, and most important, a referendum on reality and epistemology. Donald Trump is asking us to enter even further into his house of mirrors. He is asking us to live within a lie, to live within his lie, for four more years. The duty of citizenship in America today is to refuse to live within that lie.

Exactly…in Wehner’s world. But that is not the world of Trumpicans nor will it ever be. They think their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, is fighting to save the Real Americans and to prevent the politically-correct Socialists from taking over completely next year. It is the Wehners and the mainstream media who are having trouble facing the Trumpican truth.

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: TOMORROW!!!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus: in 11 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now
July 4 2020 Supreme Court rules Republican President is above the law; American experiment ends short of 250th anniversary
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
November 3 2020: CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER THE RESULTS
January 20 2021: Nancy Pelosi becomes President
January 20 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers

We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2! We’re Number Two: Trumpicans Rejoice

May 12, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Live from New York! It's Little Donny Disinfectant (Nick Levesque, Atlantic)

We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2! We’re Number Two: Trumpicans rejoice as America’s position in the world declines. The battle between the Middle Kingdom and the City on a Hill for world leadership continues (The City on the Hill versus the Middle Kingdom: Who Will Win World War IV?, May 6, 2018). If anything, the determination to triumph in World War IV has increased. There can be only one cosmic center at a time. It can be Ashur or Babylon, but not both, London or Paris, but not both, New York or Moscow both destroyed at the end of Failsafe, but not both. Ancient Rome and China could rule their respective realms in isolation from each other based on the transportation and communication technologies of its time. Now Mainland China not only can exert its influence in the South China Sea, it can make a mockery of the Monroe Doctrine.

Until recently, China could quietly and steadily move ahead through its Belt and Road Initiative to link the countries of the world to its economic engine. It became the manufacturing center of the world displacing the United States. In the meantime, the United States withdrew from the world, alienated allies, and abandoned its leadership role. From the Chinese perspective, everything was working out fine. It was only a matter of time before it officially assumed the leadership position at international organizations. After all, who was going to stop them?

The coronavirus upset everything. To the best laid plans of mice and men, the Corvid-19. Everything is different now. My first impression back on February 4 was that the virus would undermine China’s quest for global leadership (Kobe and Coronavirus: Meaning for World War IV). China’s mishandling of the coronavirus and the demonstration of American soft power at a global level suggested America would prevail even with a President who had no interest in America’s role in the global arena. In his imaginary world, everyone was looking at America in envy because of his leadership. He displayed no awareness that he already had become a laughing stock even before becoming Little Donny Disinfectant.

But then Mainland China got its act together while Trumpican America did not (Can China Leverage the Coronavirus to World Leadership?, March 19, 2020). As America floundered in February and March not taking Corvid-19 seriously or taking half-ass measures, Mainland China boldly seized the opportunity which it had been given. First, it got its own act together and then, it sought to save the world. It would fill the role that the world expected the United States to fill. In reality since World War II and in movies (Santa Claus to Relocate from Vanishing North Pole to Mar-a-Lago), it was the United States which rose to the occasion. This time it was MIA. Even worse, the American shortcomings were broadcast live for all the world to see. Only in the mind of the American immature child president and on Fox was America succeeding against the virus. Everyone else knew America was a loser.

On April 24, the question was asked “’How Can This Happen?’ A World Missing American Leadership,” (NYT). The article presents a number of people who were stunned at what they were seeing on TV. As succinctly stated: “It is shaking fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism ⸺ the special role the United States played for decades after World War II as the reach of the values and power made it a global leader and example to the world.” American exceptionalism has been superseded by TRUMP EXCEPTIONALISM: he is exceptional and the country is only through his leadership.

TRUMP EXCEPTIONALISM has not played well on the global stage. The eyes of the world are still upon us but now it sees an erratic child who devalues scientific expertise. The seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck lacks the mental necessities to understand science despite his supergenius uncle. It’s not just that the United States is failing the world, its president is failing the American people. Germany and South Korea, countries the United States help revive, is showing the way while the United States lags behind.

The situation hasn’t improved since this article on April 24. A recent expression on this subject was The Rest of the World Is Laughing at Trump: The president created a leadership vacuum. China intends to fill it by Anne Applebaum (Atlantic, May 3, 2020). The article documents how the world is now full of Alex Baldwins on SNL ridiculing the immature child president. Indirectly, it notes that the world doesn’t watch Fox and that Little Donny Disinfectant is absolutely clueless about his image.

But out there in the real world—out there in the world where Pompeo’s boss is perceived as a sinister clown, and Pompeo himself as just the sinister clown’s lackey—not very many people are listening. Once again: A vacuum has opened up, and the Chinese regime is leading the race to fill it.

These words recall those of Brian Williams on MSNBC where after reporting on the daily absurdities at the White House then intones, “In the real world…” One also recalls the old adage, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”  Applebaum concludes with:

And if Trump wins a second term? Any nation can make a mistake once, elect a bad leader once. But if Americans choose Trump again, that will send a clear message: We are no longer a serious nation. We are as ignorant as our thoughtless, narcissistic, ignorant president. Don’t be surprised if the rest of the world takes note of that, too.  

Imagine being an international traveler from America in the future and having to explain how America could have elected this clown twice! The ridicule the student, tourist, or business person will face will be fierce and unrelenting.

Fortunately the collapse of America’s leadership role may not be fatal. This is because China overreached. At home and abroad, China has ratcheted up the intensity and fervor of its own version of Middle Kingdom exceptionalism. Imagine America if the only news media was the government propaganda network. Imagine if there is no alternative Fox. That is the tragic situation in Mainland China. All there news comes from their Sean Hannity! (The China Hannitys versus the American Hannitys: The 2020 Olympics, April 20, 2020)

Abroad, Wolf Warrior diplomacy has backfired. China expected to be welcomed with open arms as the savior of the world for its largess and own success to defeating coronavirus at home. It’s hasn’t worked out that way. The Wolf Warriors have antagonized with their insults and superiority attitude the very people who are supposed to be thankful to China. They have done such a horrendous job that even Taiwan has been able to take advantage of the mistrust of China to positively reach out to the world itself.

So now Little Donny Disinfectant wants to make China the Mexicans of the 2020 election. Whereas in 2016, Mexico was going to pay for the wall, China now is going to pay reparations. Despite having no evidence but wishful thinking, would-be 2024 Trumpican Presidential candidate Mike Pompeo intends to indict China for unleashing the coronavirus of the world. He is aiming for billions. That’s the scam.

The Chinese counter to this maneuver is easy. Besides simply refusing to pay, China has a devastating case to make. It no longer needs the canard about American soldiers introducing the virus in China ⸺ it has Fox. China already can use clips from Fox and other shows that highlight the ineptitude, incompetence, and ignorance of the immature child President. Little Donny Disinfectant is a laughing stock in China too. The “Mourning in America” video was made when the number of deaths was 60,000. Look how obsolete it is already. Joe Biden is now starting to launch his own videos highlighting the shortcomings of the incumbent. In the international arena, it will be a lot easier for China to make the case that Trump is an idiot than it will be for Pompeo to prove that the virus originated as a Chinese plot. But the world doesn’t vote in American elections. Pompeo’s goal is not to convince the world but to show Trumpicans that he is fighting for them…and therefore they should vote in 2020 for the candidate who is fighting for them as they did in 2016.

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: in 3 days!!!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus: in 13 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now
July 4 2020 Supreme Court rules Republican President is above the law; American experiment ends short of 250th anniversary
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
November 3 2020: CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER THE RESULTS
January 20 2021: Nancy Pelosi becomes President
January 20 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers

A Frog, Boiling Water, and a President: Accepting the New Normal

May 8, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Zero deaths per day rising to 3,000 per day

Everyone knows the story of the frog and boiling water. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog immediately will jump out. The frog will live to hop another day no worse for the wear. Instead, suppose the frog is placed in a pot of water at room or pond temperature and then water is then heated. What happens to the frog then? The frog dies. It keeps adjusting to the new normal until it is too late and it dies. The story is a good one whether it is true or not for frogs. That’s because it is true for people.

Imagine this scenario for being placed in a pot of boiling water. The year is 2000. Suddenly you visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future or a Terminator or Marty McFly or Clarence the Angel. You are told about the year 2020. You instantly become fully immersed in the year 2020. [This works better in science fiction than in the real world.] What do you see in the world of 2020 compared to the world you know in 2000?

A president who can’t tell the truth except by accident.
A president with no morals, no ethics, and no conscience.
A president with no sense of sympathy or empathy.
A president who is full-scale narcissist.
A president who is a bigot.
A president who is incapable of reading a book.
A president who has trouble speaking in complete sentences.
A president who has elementary-school level writing skills.
A president who has alienated America’s allies.
A president who prefers dictators and authoritarian leaders to democratic ones.
A president who fires anyone who is professional and loyal to the Constitution over him.
A president who will only accept happy talk from subordinates.
A president who thrives on insulting and demeaning people.
A president who operates on the level of a seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck.
A president who had the brains of an immature child.
A president at the time when a new disease killed tens of thousands of Americans because he lives in an imaginary world and has no management skills.
A president at the time when a new disease caused the largest unemployment numbers since the depression in little over one month.
A president who forfeited America’s leadership role in the world that it had held since World War II.
A president who is the laughingstock of the world.
A president who thought disinfectant could cure people of a virus.
A president who 40% of the American population accept as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, who can do no wrong.

So there you are in 2000 suddenly confronted in one overwhelming moment with the totality of President Donald Trump in the year 2020. In an instant, all at once, you are hit with the staggering onslaught of having to absorb all the conditions itemized above.

What would your reaction be if you are not a Trumpican?

You would scream. You would scream as loud as you could possibly scream. You would scream for as long as you possibly could scream. And then you would scream again. After physically exhausting yourself and while laying helpless in bed or on the floor, you would ask the Ghost of Christmas Future or the Terminator, Marty McFly, or Clarence the Angel how could such a dystopian world could exist? Could anything be done to prevent such a dystopia from occurring? Was such a dystopia inevitable or merely a possibility?

Of course, such an event in 2000 did not and could not occur. There was no way anyone could realistically predict the election to the American presidency of the immature child simultaneous with the coronavirus. Maybe someone could and did predict one and not the other, but both seems farfetched. No such script would have been accepted by Hollywood. No such book proposal would have been accepted by a publisher. Even Donald Trump would not have believed anything so outlandish.

But in the real world, we were not dropped into a pot of boiling water. In the real world we did not awaken after being a coma for 20 years. In the real world, we experienced the future one day at a time, like heating a pot of water. And we adjusted to the new normal little by little until at last we died…or will be able to avoid the horrendous future shown by the Ghost of Christmas Future, the Terminator, Marty McFly, or Clarence the Angel? Will we be able to make things right and live the world of George Bailey and Donna Reed? Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Meanwhile in the real world as we ponder our future, the pot keeps boiling. Look at what the unhinged President has been able to accomplish recently.

Fauci has been muzzled.
Flynn has been exonerated.
Obamacare has been targeted even during a health epidemic.
Food stamps have been curtailed even as hunger mounts.
Inspector Generals have been neutered and replaced with West Wing World replicas.

We know that Mike Pence has sold his soul.
We see that Kayleigh McEnany has too.
We watch as Deborah Birx struggles to keep hers.
We watch as Mike Pompeo campaigns for the 2024 Trumpican Party presidential nomination…assuming that the current incumbent won’t run then even from prison.

We learn about the value of human life to the President with no conscience. No more talk about zero deaths soon. No more talk about 50,000 deaths, or 60,000 deaths, or 75,000 deaths. We wonder when in June we will hit 100,000. Hannity will still crow that it is far less than 2 million so why believe the so-called experts and scientists. It is past the time to liberate Americans so We the People are able to live free and let die. By the way, 3,000 deaths/day for a year is over 1 million people. If there is still no vaccine and/or the prospective death rate increases as we are freed from oppressive governors, will Hannity and co. still be exulting then?

So now the President has made a decision. That’s what he is supposed to do. The buck stops with him. He takes responsibility. He is the wartime President and We the People are his warriors. In a war, people die. Bonespur Boy accepts that. He knows that in a war, he will have to order people to their death. He accepts the projection that 3,000 people/day will die between now and the election. He can live with that number. After all real men can’t get infected and real Americans can’t be either. If old people who are going to die soon anyway die and…you know…those people  die, too, that is a price he is willing to pay to re-open the economy so he can be re-elected and maintain his immunity. The gut instincts that enabled him to exploit the pain of Americans in 2016 now tell him that Americans, especially Trumpicans will accept 3,000 deaths/day as the new normal. The frog will be stay in the gradually heating pot.

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 25 2020: celebrate the victory over the coronavirus: in 17 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
NOVEMBER 3, 2020: CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER THE RESULTS
January 20, 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers.

The America We Need versus the Leadership We Have

May 6, 2020
by Peter Feinman
What hole? I don't see a hole? Do you see a hole? (Waterford, NY, May 3, 2020, CNN)

“The America We Need” is the title of a two-page editorial in the Sunday Review of the New York Times (April 19, 2020, print). The huge font size of the title and the location on pages 2-3 of the section deliver a message of importance that is diminished in the digital format. Although the editorial doesn’t include the word “leadership” in the title, much of it is about leadership during crises in American history. As one might expect, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt figure prominently in the discussion. Obviously their examples as well as Lincoln’s Memorial have been in the news a lot lately.

One prominent name was missing: George Washington. It is easy to overlook his importance and fail to recognize that if he had not been the leader he was there would have been no Union for Lincoln to save and none for Roosevelt to rescue and protect. Truly Washington was “the indispensable man.” Regardless of the French military contribution to American success in winning the American Revolution, the likelihood is that no other person could have kept the former colonies now states together for France to aid. Similarly without him as the expected first president, who knows if the delegates ever would have forged a compromise that constituted us as a country. It is not just the selection of the capital city site that now bears his name that kept the states together. They forged the country with a sense with the awareness that he was there to lead them. Finally, once he did lead the country, he established routines that minimized the possibility that the American President would be above the law or have the right to do whatever he wanted.

Turning to Lincoln and Roosevelt, there are some critical points to consider especially now that they have been abandoned.

1. The belief in a strong American role in human history and the global arena
2. The belief in allies and not zero-sum relationships except against actual enemies
3. The importance of home, education, and infrastructure
4. The recognition that not all Americans were sons and daughters of the American Revolution but that people who were Americans by choice stood as one with those who were sons and daughters.

They read. They were interested in history. They were capable of growth. They lived in the real world.

The opening line of the editorial is:

From some of its darkest hours, the United States has emerged stronger and more resilient.

The closing lines are:

The United States has a chance to emerge from this latest crisis as a stronger nation, more just, more free and more resilient. We must seize the opportunity.

“Chance” is not a strong expression of hope and confidence. It is not a ringing endorsement of the idea that we will emerge “more just, more free and more resilient.” It is a recognition that we might not. The last sentence in the editorial with its imperative action highlights the urgency. The editorial mentions the current President but almost in passing:

After criticizing the actions of the “White House” regarding the procurement of the necessary medical supplies and equipment, the editorial backs into denigrating the wartime President. Because of “Trump’s feckless leadership and the tattered condition of the government he heads” bad things are happening, bad things to use the sophisticated analytical terms preferred by the President. Almost hidden in the editorial is the call that “the country is burdened with weak leadership. There is an upcoming “chance” to replace that leadership as was done in the elections of Lincoln and Roosevelt. For an editorial entitled “The America We Need,” these uses of “chance’ poorly reflect on the “fierce urgency of now” that faces We the People.

Can a bro from Queens provide adult leadership to America?

Leadership We Need Not Just in New York State

You are living a moment in history. This is going to be one of those moments they’re going to write and they are going to talk about for generations. This is a moment that is going to change this nation. This is a moment that forges character, forges people, changes people. … Ten years from now, you’ll be talking about today to your children or your grandchildren and you will shed a tear because you remember the lives lost. You’ll remember the faces and you’ll remember the names and you’ll remember how hard we worked and that we still lost loved ones. … But, you will also be proud. You’ll be proud of what you did. You will be proud that you showed up. You showed up when other people played it safe, you had the courage to show up. You had the skill and professionalism to make a difference and save lives. That’s what you will have done.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, to the National Guard, March 27, 2020

Leadership We Have
Now consider the words of the National Tweet in-chief.

In a Twitter message on May 4, 2020, on George W. Bush’s three-minute call for national unity video the day before: “(W)here was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside. He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history.”

In a later Twitter re-tweet from a Trumpican: “Evidence has surfaced that Barack Obama was the one running the Russian hoax.”

At a press conference after being informed that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had just issued a report expressing the conclusion that the coronavirus was not man-made, the wartime President twice asked for the name of the person who had issued the report that contradicted what he had just said. Gosh, what do think was going to happen to her while no one was looking?

What can be learn from these recent incidents?

1. The wartime President is the first President in the last century who can’t and doesn’t want to consult past presidents in a time of crisis. He constantly berates and belittles them with no awareness that future American Presidents will be even more brutal about him.

2. It’s always about him. No surprise there.

3. His simple-mindedness was on display. He always reverts to being the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb- aleck because that who he really is. Notice he didn’t simply castigate Bush for not being loyal during the attempted extortion of the Ukraine – it was “the greatest” hoax in the entirety of American history. Here he combines his simple-mindedness with his ignorance.

How many hoaxes in American history can he even name that don’t involve him? The odds are in the Trumpican universe the claim is correct since the only other hoax he can name is the Russian one. Even if he used the term in reference to other events can he name them?

Notice also the use of the superlative. His simplemindedness operates on a binary basis. There is no nuance or in-between. It is all or nothing.

The worst trade deal ever… [How many does he even know about?]
The worst presidential campaign ever… [How many does he even know about?]
The worst Secretary of State ever… [How many does he even know about?]
The absolute worst Speaker of the House in United States history/maybe the worst speaker in the history of our country… [How many does he even know about?]
The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on our country (impeachment)… [How many does he even know about?]
I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen…I believe I am treated worse than Lincoln.

The pattern should be obvious. The historically-ignorant immature child only knows about 1 or 2 examples at the most anyway in each category. In his universe, the accusations may be true! Don’t judge him by adult standards as if he is knowledgeable about American history.

Real Men Don’t Cry
Our immature child President brings other characteristics to his leadership.

“When I see a man cry I view it as a weakness. The last time I cried was when I was a baby.” (People magazine 2015)

No sympathy. No empathy. No mask. Real men don’t get coronavirus.

Fox is Bonespur Boy’s Westworld: a fantasy realm where the President can be the man he wants to be rather than the man he is (David Plouffe as told to Maureen Dowd, NYT March 6, 2020, print)

“He seems psychologically incapable of dealing with a virus that is complex and uncertain. The virus will be in every community and needs truth, honesty and intelligence ⸺ all absent from the unstable Trump, who at his core is a frightened boy and pretender.” (Maureen Dowd, NYT March 6, 2020, print)

Exactly right. That’s what happens when an immature child is forced to operate in the adult world and is out of his league.

“At a time of crisis, America is led by a whiny childlike man whose ego is too fragile to let him concede ever having made any kind of error.” (Paul Krugman, NYT, May 5, 2020, print)

Almost right. He is not “childlike,” he actually has the brain of a child. Check his brain scans. Talk to a child psychiatrist.

The stress on functioning in the adult world is too much for the immature child. It has become too difficult for him to make up imaginary rules that work even in his own mind. So what can Donnee Disinfectant do? Declare game over, muzzle the Time magazine Person of the Year, and start a new game of economic recovery. Because in his world, even a death toll of 3,000 Americans/day is acceptable as long as he thinks it will mean he is re-elected and maintains his immunity from jail.

Soon it will be May 25, Victory over Coronavirus Day.

I truly do believe that if we all continue to do that kind of social distancing and other guidance broadly from federal and state officials, that we’re going to put this coronavirus in the past. I believe by early June we’re going to see our nation largely past this epidemic. I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us. (The most pathetic Vice President in American history on Geraldo Rivera’s radio talk show, May 1, 2020)

Are you ready? Start making your celebration plans to party now.

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 25 2020: celebrate the victory over the coronavirus: in 19 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
January 20, 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers.

The countdown continues.