The lady listening to JD and DJ give a master class on narcissist idiocy accidentally gave the world a recap of what the people in the room were witnessing.
Watching the videos of JD and DJ attacking Zelensky made me embarrassed and infuriated. There’s a reason such behavior shocks. Presidents do not behave that way. Raging alcoholics might. Narcissists definitely do, but usually in private.
How anyone versed in history or politics could see this behavior as anything other than a huge red flag baffles me.
It’s not strength. It’s toxicity.
People who demonstrate this type of behavior have no place in politics or government.
JD was already pissed off because the special sofa he asked for was not made available for the meeting.
DJ oozes the type of demeanor and behavior that defines him.
Our previous allies were already on a razor’s edge about the mountain of incredible things that have come out of the mouths of our administration.
Because I follow a lot of international news, I can tell you that while the United States might be feared, this is the equivalent of waiving a gun around in a room. Our previous allies are no longer looking at Trump as a buffoonish distraction. They understand that he is leading our country toward something unrecognizable and as a threat to world stability.
I think Erika might have heard me joke one too many times about getting a mannequin for pranks.
This one arrived with only one instruction included: Do NOT burn incense near this mannequin after 8: 34 p.m. There were some odd Chinese symbols of knives, fire, and amputation with the admonition regarding incense. I’m sure it’s nothing.
I dressed Ursula and then used my fabulous wig to top off the ensemble.
In other news, this damn thing has startled me more than once already. Adding the knife to the right hand will be a nice addition on extermination day or in the unlikely event someone is stupid enough to break into my apartment.
My cat Güino has already indicated Ursula is a better conversationalist than me.
PS The prank possibilities with this mannequin are infinite!
Everyone’s had that experience at a party or social gathering. One guy, and it’s almost always a guy with too many opinions, (not to mention an endless supply of drinks) is a domineering a******. You don’t want to be directly rude to the host and tell them why you’re ducking out early or on the invitation itself.
Social media in many ways is similar. Each person gets to gatekeep not only their content, but those who participate as well. It reminds me of attending a party with that one guy who is so negative he might as well be half of a battery terminal. This dude rarely sees himself as negative.
Increasingly, I realize that I’m hitting block a lot more quickly. Not because of disagreements, but because I wouldn’t want that person in my conversation, much less in my living room.
One of my social media friends, one whose opinion I respect, always had a couple of blowhards who didn’t understand the concept of volume, frequency, or disagreeableness. Although it’s unfair, I name those people Mike when I run across them.
I recently learned that one of my friend’s biggest blowhards passed away. I will admit that I initially felt relief upon hearing about it. That doesn’t paint me in the best light – but it’s true. A debilitating case of carpal tunnel would have been enough.
Repeating what I said before, it’s not about disagreements. Rather, it’s about disagreeableness.
As for people insulting me, if it’s creative, I don’t care what their motive is. I love being snarked and insult-burned if it’s done with finesse and intelligence. This is in part true because I steal the good ideas.
It’s very difficult for me to get insulted if the insult comes from people I don’t know or whose opinion I don’t respect.
In the TV show Handmaid’s Tale, there’s a scene of the traitorous Gilead commanders bragging about the fact that China, Russia, and North Korea backed them to be included in the world economy. The news out of the UN yesterday made me feel like I had shifted to an alternate reality. In part because it’s the first time the United States has openly sided with dictatorial countries.
Ronald Reagan would spin in his grave like a gyroscope.
JD Vance, meanwhile, has his eye on a new LazyBoy recliner.
Elon Musk is so busy saluting these moves that he probably has tennis elbow.
People are discussing the complexity of the human capacity for collective evil. Whether one section of the population likes to acknowledge it or not, Germany’s example constantly pops up.
How can so many people stand by and watch the country descend into madness?
The best way to visualize this capacity is to watch the movie The Stanford Experiment. If you’re even slightly interested in the psychology of collective misbehavior, this is the easiest shortcut to benchmark how things go astray so deeply, even with intelligent and otherwise kind people.
The same effect applies to police, the military, or even people making decisions in business.
Anyone who’s never experienced the environment of a production line might not understand it. Each employee is present to earn a living and mostly do a good job. Those who own the production line want to profit while providing a living for those who work there. An interesting thing often happens, especially in poultry and similar industries.
The need for profit puts those in charge of the environment, the efficiency, and the speed of the production line often blurs the line of humanity by increasing the demands on those working it. It becomes hard to perform the job safely over time. People suffer the indignity of sometimes being able to exit the line long enough to take care of their basic bodily needs. For some, it becomes easier to dehumanize those who perform the jobs in order to be profitable and efficient.
The above can’t be explained to someone who hasn’t experienced it.
The same effect applies throughout our society. We justify less than a living wage, even though we know these jobs are necessary and that our collective decision to fail to pay sufficiently to live even a basic life is causing misery. All of this is based on economic concerns rather than the primary focus of human happiness and dignity. It is a them problem rather than an us problem.
We don’t provide universal health insurance, even though doing so would cost less than our current system. But this does not stop us from passively watching as millions of people suffer from a lack of health care or go bankrupt.
We put on our hats of authority and often forget the results of callousness. It’s our job, we think. Society apparently wants it to be that way, or we would have intervened to change it. We make decisions without consideration for how they impact people, or we are put in a position to be powerless to change things.
We marginalize certain groups. Over time, this gives us a silent yet undeniable tendency to view others as lesser. This justifies our collective behavior that often results in denigration or harm to the people in those groups.
My upbringing gave me an unholy understanding of the possibility of violence inside people. Even the pious in my family found ways to justify turning a blind eye toward what can only be called evil. Family who could observe a child being hurt and find ways in their minds, especially based on the societal norms around them, to fail to act to protect them, were they evil? Or were they just the product of their environment? Several of them held dear their holy books – and did not react well when I grew up and became confrontational about the disparity between their alleged message of love and kindness. That message had justified their deliberate choice to do nothing.
People in history are no different from us, even if we want to think they were. This gives us a pass and carte blanche to continue to behave inhumanely, even if we are technically just doing our job or fulfilling our role as citizens.
I’m not Chicken Little, nor am I crying wolf. The wolf that some of you chose has eaten the chicken and now sits in our living room.
You’re wasting time focusing on daily firings, closings, and executive orders. One of his latest orders indicating that he and the attorney general are the sole arbiters of the law and its application needs no further examination to see how dangerous he is to the concept of democracy and governance.
He and his people have said the goal out loud – and I don’t understand why you’re not acknowledging it.
The federal government is being systematically dismantled.
What will take its place?
Several labels are applicable. Each with Trump in charge, absent accountability, court review, or congressional oversight. This sort of governance is never benign, nor is it accountable to or concerned with the will of its populace.
Your right to religious freedom will be upheld only if it aligns with the predominant one – and only if it’s convenient. They’ve repeatedly told us that the government must be deleted and replaced with political religion. (Their description – not mine.)
Civil rights? Gone. Workplace rights:? Vanished. Freedom of Speech? Eliminated.
You don’t have to guess whether I’m right. Our closest allies are saying it unilaterally. I consume a mountain of foreign news. Every country which stood with us is ringing the bell of alarm.
All the people driving these changes are saying it out loud.
It can happen here. And it is.
There will be no safeguards, protections, or system to stop him.
The only solution is to do as much as possible to remove Trump from office by any legal means available. Sometime in the future, a warning post like this will be deemed treasonous, even though my intent is to preserve our democracy, as flawed as it may be.
Anything short of legally removing him from office is a waste of time and effort. Even his removal will inevitably result in a rift that might still break our union. Continuing on this current path certainly will.
I held out judgment. Not long ago, it crystallized.
Courts can’t stop him. Congress won’t.
The Presidency isn’t about one man.
It’s about our collective system of laws. They mean nothing with someone like Trump in charge.
Those who support him will read this and think I’ve lost my mind. That’s expected. They mostly ingest the superficial explanation for what’s happening. The rest do like most of us and ignore politics.
I am not reading between the lines. His people have said the quiet part out loud, and the incremental dissolution of our federal government as we know it can only be explained through the alignment of their stated goals and the daily reality of what is happening.
When our democracy fails, I will fall silent, as people must do once safeguards and the checks and balances of presidential power have fallen.
I’ll be the obedient and angry citizen of whatever comes next.
It is the office itself that yields the honor and respect, rather than the person temporarily assuming its duties.
The expectation of someone behaving in a presidential manner is one that’s been shattered. For some, this is a welcome change. For others, it’s a chaotic and devastating reality.
We have demonstratively proven that anyone can become president.
Growing up most of us were superficially exposed to the civil war. Almost all we learned was of dates and places and broad themes. We did not then viscerally understand how a nation could become so irreparably shattered.
We go about our lives because that’s what we can do.
Regardless of your political affiliation, those of us paying attention now unfortunately feel it in our bones. Whether you’re excited about the upheaval recently brought to Washington or you’re onvinced that our government is in jeopardy, I don’t think people will generally deny that this is something much different.
We are united on paper much in the same way that Jefferson’s hollow words about all men being equal applied only to white wealthy men.
The intelligent people I trust are saying the same thing. Countries who were once allies are unilaterally warning one another and the world. People have shouted that the sky is falling and cried wolf before. It feels different this time because it is.
This isn’t Clinton refusing to resign even though he should have. Or Bush demonstrating incompetence.
I will be surprised if the end of February has not brought us to cataclysm.
People need stability, as does the economy, and society in general.
The struggle through the generations to create a reality in which all people, regardless of belief, religion, skin color, or their sexual identity could coexist in peace now resembles a dystopian fantasy.
Power and progress are both unstable. The problem with authority and authoritarianism is that they both fall into chaos.
Chaos is inevitable. Entropy governs the universe.
Those who currently seek to redefine America will learn the lesson.
“Every book is a mystery novel if you tear out the last 15 pages before reading it.”
My dad loved doing this to people. Imagine reading 245 pages only to discover that the last chapter is gone. Mom wanted to murder him more than once. Uncle Buck laughed about it after the fact. Mr. Dunivan, dad’s boss and cousin by marriage? He was the perfect victim for Dad. I don’t remember all the details, but Dad put a dirty magazine right on the dashboard of Mr. Dunivan’s car more than once. Or on his office desk. Mr. Dunivan’s mom initially had a conniption fit about it, but after discovering that Dad pulled the prank, she laughed like she was dying. Due to that prank, I realized you could LEAVE any magazine or book you wanted in a doctor’s office, friend’s house, etc. This realization made for some inexpensive fun for me as I got older.
Years ago, I used to keep my mom supplied with books, music, and movies. Even though I did it by accident, the final few minutes of the film Seven were missing from the end of one of the VCR tapes I’d sent her. Initially, she was convinced I did it on purpose – and pissed. Given its “head in the box” gut-wrenching ending, it was quite the coincidence that Seven was the particular movie in question. I re-taped it and sent it to her. It was a joy to mess with her sometimes. Putting the craziest random movies on tapes, inserting a death metal song into a collection of class country songs, or adding screams at maximum volume when she least expected it.
When MP3s became popular, it was easier than ever to prank people with wild, unexpected audio files in the middle of their gifted CDs. One of my victims rolled into the Silver Dollar City parking lot, blaring one of my mix CDs. I had inserted the Cheech Marin dialogue from “From Dusk ’til Dawn.” (The one where he is selling something I can’t mention here.)
I sometimes reminisce about pranks that I witnessed. I hated so much about my Dad, but I loved the fact that he could audaciously pull off some of the most outrageous pranks, ones that you couldn’t be certain might result in a heart attack, mandatory anger management enrollment, or (hopefully) small explosions.
One way I know I’m not my usual self is that I lose interest in spontaneous shenanigans. It’s a tell-tale sign for me.
The prank is on us, though.
You got up this morning, assuming you’d pass through the day to its completion.
To know the ending of these cold hours in front of us.
It’s not true, though.
Some of us have our final pages ripped out. We just don’t know it yet.
Love, X . PS The picture is one of my parents after they remarried. Dad died nine months after they remarried. Shockingly, Mom was not the cause of his demise. .
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 