Barackface: 18: Trump

Thursday, December 18, 2025

18: Trump

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Why Trump’s Viciousness Matters He wants to destroy our values, not just our democracy ........ yet another example of Trump’s vindictive narcissism. ....... That being vicious and bigoted is cool, is based in current slang. ........... Trump is one data point in the midst of an epidemic of performative hatemongering in America. And while most of this is emanating from right-wing extremists, not all of it is. ........ There were people who crowed over the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. For most of our history there were Americans who reveled in harming, subjugating and dispossessing those who were considered of the wrong race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. But we, as a country, changed. Over time, Americans on the whole became more humane and tolerant. .......... a majority of white American’s didn’t approve of interracial marriage until 1997. ........... And Trump has made innumberable crudely racist comments about Black Americans, particularly about Black American women. He’s demonized immigrants and Muslims, and suggested Democratic politicians should be executed. But the resurgence of hate speech isn’t just about Trump, nor is it solely about politics. Grown men — it’s mostly, although not only, men — now feel free to be publicly cruel and vindictive, spouting childish insults against whomever they dislike. .......... Why is this happening? The rise of social media is one significant factor in making it far easier for the like-minded to find one another and magnify their hate. ............ Even right-wing activists like Chris Rufo are complaining that X has been “increasingly hijacked by bad actors who peddle baseless conspiracies and indulge their personal psychopathologies.” ..........

Fox News polarized American voters and helped break American politics.

............. “the growing acceptability of xenophobic discourse” in the UK. His thesis is that there have always been a substantial number of people in Britain — and, surely, in every Western nation — who are socially reactionary and racist. ............ Eventually the cynical search for votes led to a breakdown of this cordon sanitaire — the Germans call their equivalent the Brandmauer, or firewall — and the latent viciousness broke into the open. ........... broader social norms, largely established after World War II, also made overt racism and other forms of bigotry unacceptable in the public sphere. Even people who were privately cruel and bigoted – some of them in influential positions – felt obliged to be hypocrites and hide their true nature. .............. In time, however, events, ranging from the Syrian refugee crisis in Germany to the election of America’s first Black president, loosened the grip of these social norms. The already-existing pool of cruelty and bigotry, which had previously been veiled by hypocrisy, came back into full view. .............. “I feel liberated,” said a top banker. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.” ............. Now, Trump is purposely breaking norms and engaging in open expressions of hate and bigotry. And among a set of people, this serves as a signal that it’s now socially acceptable to do the same – look, for example, atthe extremely racist and Nazi-praising chats among young Republican activists leaked to Politico. While these young MAGA-landers were outed and chastised, it’s clear that within MAGA-world emulating Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric is considered a way of signaling that you are loyal to the movement. .............. a symptom and a symbol of his systematic destruction of our norms, our humanism, just as he tried to destroy the norms of American democracy on January 6, 2021. It’s a profoundly nihilistic vision for America. ......... And one of these days, I predict, history will judge harshly those who stayed silent. ....... Trump gave a speech on the economy last night. It was nasty, brutish but mercifully short. It was, of course, full of lies. Were there any true factual claims? So far I haven’t found any. And it closed out with ugly claims about immigrants.

The real threat in Trump’s madness I hate to say this, but it must be faced .......... I couldn’t sleep last night because I kept thinking about Trump’s response to the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner. ............ “Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace.” ....................... Jenna Ellis, Trump’s former lawyer who’s now a conservative radio host, wrote that “this is a horrible example from Trump (and surprising considering the two attempts on his own life) and should be condemned by everyone with any decency.” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said: “We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.” .................. “In every grotesque social media post; in every cabinet meeting devoted, North Korea-like, to adulating him; in every executive-order-signing ceremony intended to make him appear like a Chinese emperor; in every fawning reference to all the peace he’s supposedly brought the world; in every Neronic enlargement of the White House’s East Wing; in every classless dig at his predecessor; in every shady deal his family is striking to enrich itself; in every White House gathering of tech billionaires paying him court (in the literal senses of both “pay” and “court”); in every visiting foreign leader who learns to abase himself to avoid some capricious tariff or other punishment — in all this and more, our standards as a nation are being debased, our manners barbarized.” .............. I’ve worked for three presidents, one Republican and two Democrats. I’ve seen presidents up close. The job is overwhelmingly difficult. It takes a toll. But I have never seen anything remotely like what has happened to Donald Trump......... If Trump was once rational, he no longer is. ................ His response to the Reiner killings, like his AI post on October 18 in which he defecated on millions of protesters, reveals a depth of paranoia and grandiosity worse than anything he has shown before. ................ His chief of staff, Suzy Wiles, told Chris Whipple in an interview that appeared in Tuesday’s Vanity Fair that Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality” because he “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.” .................. Here’s a man who thinks Rob and Michele Reiner were murdered because they had a “raging obsession” with him. A man who, according to his current chief of staff, has the personality of an alcoholic with delusions of omnipotence. ........... Trump must be removed from office as soon as possible. ...... Either Section 4 of the 25th Amendment must be invoked — because he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” — or he must be impeached and convicted under Section 4 of Article II of the Constitution for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”