EricS wrote:
This article (apologies for paywall; I don’t know how to send an open version)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/opinion/matt-gaetz-attorney-general-trump.html
is another example of missing the point, I think.
I took the liberty of cutting and pasting from my own sub...
David French <https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-french>
ByDavid French <https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-french>
Opinion Columnist
Throughout the presidential campaign, I noticed that Trump supporters
tended to fall into one of two camps. The first camp — core MAGA — heard
Donald Trump’s wild rhetoric, including his vows to punish his political
enemies, and loved every bit of it. They voted for Trump because they
believed he’d do exactly what he said.
Then there was a different camp — normie Republican — that had an
entirely different view. They did not believe Trump’s words. They rolled
their eyes at media alarmism and responded with some version of “stop
clutching your pearls. This is just Trump being Trump. He’s far more
bark than bite.”
But Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz as his nominee for attorney general,
along with his selection of Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense and
Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, shows that Trump
did mean what he said. He is going to govern with a sense of vengeance,
and personal loyalty really is the coin of his realm.
Gaetz’s nomination is particularly dreadful. He isn’t just the
least-qualified attorney general in American history (he barely
practiced law before running for elected office and has served mainly as
a MAGA gadfly in Congress), he’s also remarkably dishonest and depraved.
...
Gaetz has created immense turmoil in the House. He was primarily
responsible for deposing the House speaker Kevin McCarthy in a fit of
pique, and he’s so alienated House colleagues that one had to be
physicallyrestrained from attacking him
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/us/politics/house-floor-confrontation-gaetz-rogers.html>on
the House floor. He has a reputation as showing colleaguesexplicit
pictures of his sexual partners
<https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/01/politics/matt-gaetz-photos-women/index.html>,
and he isunder a House ethics investigation
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/us/politics/gaetz-sex-trafficking.html>into
whether he had sex with an underage girl while he was a member of Congress.
Gaetz has denied these claims, and the Department of Justice closed its
own investigation into sex trafficking and obstruction of justice last year.
Gaetz’s nomination is a test for Senate Republicans. Can they summon up
the minimum level of decency and moral courage to reject Gaetz? Or will
they utterly abdicate their constitutional role of advice and consent in
favor of simply consenting even to Trump’s worst whims?
No matter what happens next, however, Gaetz’s nomination is
reaffirmation that the Donald Trump who tried to overthrow an American
election hasn’t matured or evolved or grown. He is who he is, and it
should surprise no one that he nominated a vengeful loyalist to lead the
most powerful law enforcement agency in the United States.
David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture,
religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom
and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is“Divided
We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/books/review/divided-we-fall-david-french.html>.”
You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag
<https://www.threads.net/@davidfrenchjag>).
It’s all about messaging, and the campaign of demoralization. The puzzle that
the trumper inside-group spends their time on is “What is the loudest way we
can say I wipe my ass with your `rule of law’?”
Among my MAGA "associates" (hard to call them friends given how they
choose to back/applaud this precise behaviour) this is the standard and
typically the end of any discussion we might have tried to have. Either
I end up mocking their mean-spiritedness by recommending other, even
more absurd versions of their aspirations which I *know* would blow up
in *their* face immediately, or I close the conversation with them at
that point out of dis(appointment/gust).
30ish years ago, my fairly (for their "greatest" generation)
progressive/liberal/forward-thinking/educated parents fell into the
proto-MAGA world with the likes of (early?) FOX news and Limbaugh. My
father in particular but, he entrained my mother in the opinions and
style. When we would (very rarely) verge on political topics it would
always go to them quoting or referencing various mean-spirited POVs
which I would have sworn they knew better about. The "butts" of their
judgements were very familiar to us, people they would have known and
cared about all their lives, yet they somehow had a way of carving those
particulars out as "exceptions" and then re-applying the ugly "rule" to
everyone except their "familiars" which they chose to "exceptionalize".
Their behaviour felt "addictive" in style to me.
As demonstration that I think they actually understood what they were
doing at some level, the last political discussions we had was ended
when I said: "I don't necessarily disagree with all of the points being
made in this type of discussion, it is the mean-spirited aspect that I
simply cannot abide...". I swear they quit talking politics with me at
that point as if they actually understood that their preferred
source/style was in fact specifically mean-spirited and were therefore
not interested in discussing any issues or topics if they couldn't bring
in the resentful/angry gotchas?
So it is important to pick the lowest, both in terms of depravity and
incompetence, to put as lords over the best, to prove that they can’t get out
from under it.
You nailed it so well many months ago when you first referenced (or I
heard) "performative cruelty"...
I don’t think I “feel” anything about this, except that it is very important
and I would like to understand the response to it. At the end, only
effectiveness gets you back under a living circumstance you consider acceptable.
This is my own scramble... trying to recalibrate what/how/when I can be
effective in my intentions with the world. I have more than a few
people in my life who are very appropriately wigged out by this... not
because they are "bleeding heart liberals, clutching their pearls and
filling MAGA cups with tears" but because in fact there are real-world
consequences likely to start falling over on them very soon. A few
even were from the class of those who "voted against their own
interests" ... though I think it will take longer for them to recognize
(if they ever do) the cause-effect relations.
While I *might* want to "flee" this country, I feel that there are still
plenty of things I can (should?) do which I can best do while still
nearby to those folks.
As with the events in Klemperer's journals (Jochen's astute reference)
from Nazi Germany, it is very likely that these dominoes will fall
quietly and slowly, masked by the din raised by the big-fat dominoes
that get thrown down hard to help make the (seemingly) tiny (acutely
relevant to real people in their real lives) ones seem insignificant.
Maybe not dominoes, maybe something more like Mah Jong (at least in the
vigorous style of play).
Trump's nominations: /Bam! Crack! Gong!/
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