For too long, Donald Trump has been viewed in terms of incompetence rather than his wily skill at bending the system for his own ends. The House Select Committee aims to stop that.
Even though during the run up to the 2016 election, I recognized Trump as a morally bankrupt megalomaniac who kept Mein Kampf, the manifesto for Nazism, on his bedside table as a sort of Bible, I never saw the scale of his network and plans. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat has pointed out in her substack essays, Lucid, as well as in her history of the rise of brutal autocracies in the last 100 years in Strongmen, Trump is a MASTER manipulator. And DeSantis has adopted many of Trump’s successful techniques (very dangerous man). We must never give up on the Rule of Law and push the DOJ to prosecute. Thank you, Steven, for this insightful writing today. 🙏🏼
Great article. Thank you, Steven, for writing it. I truly hope more than ever, even though I do despair at times, that goodness and truth will prevail.
There was definitely a method to Trump's brand of madness. He perpetuated shock and awe tactics by relentlessly bombarding Twitter, prior to being banned from the platform; an action I felt should have occurred long before the January 6th insurrection. He held Reality-Show celebrity status with his supporters, who believed he would save them and the country. Nothing could have been farther from the truth than Trump's 'alternative facts' universe.
Perhaps to understand trump, we must explore the science of DNA and its effect on the brain. As you know, half of the genes come from each parent.Some are active, others, not.1/3 of active genes are found in the brain , and they control how we think,act,believe,feel. I think this explains how he can be both incompetent and criminally inclined, how he acquired the same genes as his brother Freddy, but each had different ones active.Fred Sr. was a crook & a racist but also funded good programs. His wife, raised poor in Scotland and worked as a nanny in America, spent a lot of time doing charitable activities but was remote and detached from her son Donald, spending her life after marriage wrapped in riches with the job of collecting quarters from laundry machines in their owned properties. Freddie acquired their respectable active genes that made him want to be independent, empathetic, a pilot, not a business man, and the conflict and degradation by Sr. for this caused his early death from alcoholism. Donald acquired the active second rate genes of both parents, and thus, we have a boy who threw erasers at his teachers and a Wharton professor saying Donald was the worst student he ever had. And his performance as an adult, a businessman, and a president has shown his tendencies toward corruption and self absorption. His father told him over and over "you are a killer, you are a king." You must be one if you wish to be the other. Thus, his admiration for Putin, Kim, despots, his consideration that others are weaklings and so they have turned out -McConnell, McCarthy, Gaetz, Johnson - all weak and succumbed to his bidding. Needy people see him as strong, no push over, and someone who will fight any an all for what they think they are owed. He isn't, he won't. He is who he is and that will not cease until he does.
As for Bannon, there is no lack of education: Catholic military school, VA Tech, .Georgetown U, Harvard Business School. He was a Navy officer ( as was DeSantis. What's going on there? ) his parents were Democrats, and here he is, believing countries,governments go in cycles throughout history, and now is the time for revolution throughout the world, and himself as master of the globe. To me, I just think he is looney tunes.
There is a book, Zero Fail, published in 2021 that tells the story of the Secret Service. It is wanting. Never given the money it needs for the job it does, underpaid agents, scandal ridden (read prostitution involvement ), jealousy in the ranks, bad leadership. Many actually supported trump, spread the big lie, were politicized by him. When Biden won, many who had protected/sided with trump, had to be replaced for the new president's safety.
Soooooo, here we are. With the exception of continued racism, there really were "good old days." If the Jan. 6 investigation does not light the match under the DOJ, if Biden insists on running again , if trump throws in his hat once more-his followers that I know are more determined than ever to follow him-well, like the quote says, Like the driver who has lost control of his vehicle, brace for the impending crash.
Right you are again, Steven. The hammer square on the nail! Trump is no genius, but at the same time, he is no idiot either, although I know I have called him that many times in the past. He is a master showman who wants to be like Putin, Erdogan, the president of China, the Great Leader in North Korea. He wants to be emperor, fearless leader, king of the world, not just the US, nothing less. His ego is so large that he has actually convinced himself that he deserves all of this. Sorry, big guy wanna be, it ain't going to happen, but it is surprising how close he actually got to the first step, isn't it? And now his minions are becoming just that, little people on the coattails of the big guy, to be in the shadow of the emperor, and now scurrying from a sinking ship. Oh my, what is he to do? As any narcissistic egoist of his magnitude, he just continues with the big lie as if it were the truth, and to our great dismay, many still worship him and hang on every word he says. But, why is that a concern? There has always been 30% to 40% of our country that have fallen for charlatans, and everyone rings their hands that over 70% of self-styled Republicans still would vote for Trump (maybe, maybe not) without realizing that these self-styled Republicans only make up about 30% of the electorate. Almost 40% of the people who will vote in November are independents who will vote any way they want, based on the best message at the time, but I am betting they will move away from the Trumplicans and start moving back to sanity (whatever that is). But, as I have said before, I am an optimist, and my hope is just larger now.
And I hope they do. But sometimes I worry that they are preaching to the choir. They laid out the facts with skill and told the story of what happened, what was done to derail our democracy from before the 2020 election, before a winner was announced on November 7, and then through the months that followed, culminating in the 1/6/21 insurrection. However, I fear that although some former loyalists bravely went under oath and told the committee what happened, there are lots of people who didn’t tune in, whose loyalty is so baked in, whose minds are already so closed to the truth, whose only media outlet is what we call the “state tv” station, where they go to be fed more lies and go to be with like-minded members of the Trump cult. I fear that Trump tapped into some dissatisfaction with the status quo in such a criminal and brain-washing way that we won’t be able to reclaim our country and our democracy. Sure there are things to repair and we have work to do to make it a more perfect union; but if Trump has permanently destroyed the essence of our Constitutional Republic, how do we even begin our work.
For his entire presidency, his behavior, actions and speech have been calculating, deliberate and premeditated corruption..his incompetence at the job is merely a byproduct of that..Everything he did and said post election was as well..Donald J. Trump is and has always been a clear and present danger to every thread stitching together the fabric of our Republic, he must be removed from this equation by any means necessary..The Jan 6th Select Committee has proved to be a very good place to start. The DOJ must take the next steps. We are in desperate times, they may require desperate measures..We shall see..
As for Steve Bannon, he is a cockroach that must be stepped on and crushed..
Even though during the run up to the 2016 election, I recognized Trump as a morally bankrupt megalomaniac who kept Mein Kampf, the manifesto for Nazism, on his bedside table as a sort of Bible, I never saw the scale of his network and plans. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat has pointed out in her substack essays, Lucid, as well as in her history of the rise of brutal autocracies in the last 100 years in Strongmen, Trump is a MASTER manipulator. And DeSantis has adopted many of Trump’s successful techniques (very dangerous man). We must never give up on the Rule of Law and push the DOJ to prosecute. Thank you, Steven, for this insightful writing today. 🙏🏼
Depraved. You finally helped me find the right word to describe Steve Bannon. Thank you.
Great article. Thank you, Steven, for writing it. I truly hope more than ever, even though I do despair at times, that goodness and truth will prevail.
I cannot begin to tell you how grateful that I subscribe to your emails. So thought provoking, filled with truths. Our nation is in grave danger.
There was definitely a method to Trump's brand of madness. He perpetuated shock and awe tactics by relentlessly bombarding Twitter, prior to being banned from the platform; an action I felt should have occurred long before the January 6th insurrection. He held Reality-Show celebrity status with his supporters, who believed he would save them and the country. Nothing could have been farther from the truth than Trump's 'alternative facts' universe.
Perhaps to understand trump, we must explore the science of DNA and its effect on the brain. As you know, half of the genes come from each parent.Some are active, others, not.1/3 of active genes are found in the brain , and they control how we think,act,believe,feel. I think this explains how he can be both incompetent and criminally inclined, how he acquired the same genes as his brother Freddy, but each had different ones active.Fred Sr. was a crook & a racist but also funded good programs. His wife, raised poor in Scotland and worked as a nanny in America, spent a lot of time doing charitable activities but was remote and detached from her son Donald, spending her life after marriage wrapped in riches with the job of collecting quarters from laundry machines in their owned properties. Freddie acquired their respectable active genes that made him want to be independent, empathetic, a pilot, not a business man, and the conflict and degradation by Sr. for this caused his early death from alcoholism. Donald acquired the active second rate genes of both parents, and thus, we have a boy who threw erasers at his teachers and a Wharton professor saying Donald was the worst student he ever had. And his performance as an adult, a businessman, and a president has shown his tendencies toward corruption and self absorption. His father told him over and over "you are a killer, you are a king." You must be one if you wish to be the other. Thus, his admiration for Putin, Kim, despots, his consideration that others are weaklings and so they have turned out -McConnell, McCarthy, Gaetz, Johnson - all weak and succumbed to his bidding. Needy people see him as strong, no push over, and someone who will fight any an all for what they think they are owed. He isn't, he won't. He is who he is and that will not cease until he does.
As for Bannon, there is no lack of education: Catholic military school, VA Tech, .Georgetown U, Harvard Business School. He was a Navy officer ( as was DeSantis. What's going on there? ) his parents were Democrats, and here he is, believing countries,governments go in cycles throughout history, and now is the time for revolution throughout the world, and himself as master of the globe. To me, I just think he is looney tunes.
There is a book, Zero Fail, published in 2021 that tells the story of the Secret Service. It is wanting. Never given the money it needs for the job it does, underpaid agents, scandal ridden (read prostitution involvement ), jealousy in the ranks, bad leadership. Many actually supported trump, spread the big lie, were politicized by him. When Biden won, many who had protected/sided with trump, had to be replaced for the new president's safety.
Soooooo, here we are. With the exception of continued racism, there really were "good old days." If the Jan. 6 investigation does not light the match under the DOJ, if Biden insists on running again , if trump throws in his hat once more-his followers that I know are more determined than ever to follow him-well, like the quote says, Like the driver who has lost control of his vehicle, brace for the impending crash.
By Rita's Psychology 101..............or not. ???
Right you are again, Steven. The hammer square on the nail! Trump is no genius, but at the same time, he is no idiot either, although I know I have called him that many times in the past. He is a master showman who wants to be like Putin, Erdogan, the president of China, the Great Leader in North Korea. He wants to be emperor, fearless leader, king of the world, not just the US, nothing less. His ego is so large that he has actually convinced himself that he deserves all of this. Sorry, big guy wanna be, it ain't going to happen, but it is surprising how close he actually got to the first step, isn't it? And now his minions are becoming just that, little people on the coattails of the big guy, to be in the shadow of the emperor, and now scurrying from a sinking ship. Oh my, what is he to do? As any narcissistic egoist of his magnitude, he just continues with the big lie as if it were the truth, and to our great dismay, many still worship him and hang on every word he says. But, why is that a concern? There has always been 30% to 40% of our country that have fallen for charlatans, and everyone rings their hands that over 70% of self-styled Republicans still would vote for Trump (maybe, maybe not) without realizing that these self-styled Republicans only make up about 30% of the electorate. Almost 40% of the people who will vote in November are independents who will vote any way they want, based on the best message at the time, but I am betting they will move away from the Trumplicans and start moving back to sanity (whatever that is). But, as I have said before, I am an optimist, and my hope is just larger now.
Sadly Biden STILL is in the Tip and Ron are going to have a beer and solve all our problems camp. Goddammit
And I hope they do. But sometimes I worry that they are preaching to the choir. They laid out the facts with skill and told the story of what happened, what was done to derail our democracy from before the 2020 election, before a winner was announced on November 7, and then through the months that followed, culminating in the 1/6/21 insurrection. However, I fear that although some former loyalists bravely went under oath and told the committee what happened, there are lots of people who didn’t tune in, whose loyalty is so baked in, whose minds are already so closed to the truth, whose only media outlet is what we call the “state tv” station, where they go to be fed more lies and go to be with like-minded members of the Trump cult. I fear that Trump tapped into some dissatisfaction with the status quo in such a criminal and brain-washing way that we won’t be able to reclaim our country and our democracy. Sure there are things to repair and we have work to do to make it a more perfect union; but if Trump has permanently destroyed the essence of our Constitutional Republic, how do we even begin our work.
For his entire presidency, his behavior, actions and speech have been calculating, deliberate and premeditated corruption..his incompetence at the job is merely a byproduct of that..Everything he did and said post election was as well..Donald J. Trump is and has always been a clear and present danger to every thread stitching together the fabric of our Republic, he must be removed from this equation by any means necessary..The Jan 6th Select Committee has proved to be a very good place to start. The DOJ must take the next steps. We are in desperate times, they may require desperate measures..We shall see..
As for Steve Bannon, he is a cockroach that must be stepped on and crushed..