Nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies

Brother comes for a visit tomorrow. I probably won’t post again until the middle of next week. The nasty guy gave his State of the Union speech Tuesday night. Of course, I didn’t watch or listen. He set the record for the longest of such speeches, another reason not to listen. Daily Kos has several articles about the speech. Go find them there or at your favorite news source if you really need more information. I’ll stick to just three articles. The first is by Kos of Kos. His major point is Republicans really need to have something to run on for the November midterm election. And the nasty guy very much did not give them that. Kos took a few paragraphs to highlight why the nasty guy’s approval rating is so low – voters definitely do not agree that now is “the golden age of America,” the phrase the nasty guy used to open his marathon speech.

But Trump didn’t just fail to connect with voters’ economic anxiety. He was nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies. At a time when the nation is still basking in the warm sportsmanship of American athletes at the Olympic Games in Italy, Trump lashed out at his perceived enemies, taking repeated and nasty shots at the Democrats, blue states and cities, and various ethnic groups. ... If anything, Trump’s overall message was, “The country has never been better, but WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!”

In the second article Lisa Needham of Kos noted the nasty guy did not mention Minneapolis and his “success” in removing the “worst of the worst.” Could it be because the effort was so massively unpopular? He did mention Minnesota, as in accusing massive fraud by Somali-Americans in child care subsidies for low income families. Of course, he used numbers ridiculously high. I heard about this in the morning news with NPR host A Martínez talking to reporter Matt Sepic. It again left me puzzled. When Republicans accuse federal programs of fraud they move to stop the funding, not to offer help in combating the fraud. In this case Gov. Tim Walz says they are already working to minimize the fraud. But they are having difficulty because most of the experts in combating fraud in the FBI have left in protest over the nasty guy’s actions after the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In the last article I’ll bother with, Oliver Willis of Kos discussed the sanewashing perpetrated by mainstream media. They excused his behavior by saying he “put on a show” and had a “showman’s theatricality.” His blatant lies were described as a “reframe.” The low approval rating showed voters were merely “dissatisfied.” Republicans were said to be “breathing a sigh of relief” – well, they did praise the speech. Willis described the speech, saying, “When he wasn’t lying he was being racist.”

Since 2015, the mainstream press has worked overtime to present an image of Trump that doesn’t match up with reality. They simply omit his worst offenses or summarize his statements and actions without providing context to their audiences. When he makes disastrous mistakes, they are morphed into mere “blunders” and at moments like the State of the Union this drive to clean up after Trump goes into overdrive. Fortunately, this strategy isn’t really working among the public at large.

Needham looked at the Supreme Court decision that overturned some of the nasty guy’s tariffs. The whole thing was 170 pages, though the actual ruling was rather short, no more than 44 pages. It was the side commentary and dissents that added to the page count. Needham described those extra pages. Kavanaugh took 62 pages to show how smart he is, to flatter the nasty guy, and to offer a guide on how to keep tariffs going after the rest of the justices called them unconstitutional. Gorsuch, though in the majority, wrote a concurrence that “is pure whine and snarl, lashing out at everyone for not being as amazing and smart as he is. For 46 pages.” Part of it was complaining that Congress needs to “get off their butts” as Needham paraphrased it. Odd, coming from a guy who has been giving the nasty guy all he wants so that Congress isn’t necessary. Thomas, in a brief 18 pages, explained how the nasty guy could institute tariffs without Congress. That was some mangling of definitions so Congress could give away its power. “That’s horrifying, ahistorical, and too weird even for Alito.” Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that we know the FBI and Justice Department haven’t released all the Epstein files. We know that through reporting by NPR and confirmed by MS Now. We know it because one witness, who accused the nasty guy of sexual assault when she was 15 or younger, was reportedly interviewed by the FBI four times in 2019. However, only one of those interviews appears in the files that have been released. No surprise that the one that was released doesn’t mention the nasty guy. Einenkel provided a link to the NPR story, which is here. The audio is 3 minutes (I didn’t listen), though the associated article appears to be much longer. From the article:

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have already been investigating this allegation against the president and will now open a parallel investigation into the DOJ's decision not to release these particular documents. ... In a Feb. 14 letter to members of Congress first reported by Politico, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insist that no records were withheld or redacted "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."

Kos of Kos discussed the latest from the Make America Healthy Again movement headed by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. They want support from the full Republican Party and to do that MAHA Action president Tony Lyons is trying to find the right message to turn “a toxic brew of wellness culture and institutional distrust” into an actual winnable coalition. So far they seem to relying on polls built on...

That’s “message testing.” You write a paragraph that makes your side sound like common sense and the opponent sound reckless, strip away party labels and governing records, and then treat the results like a revelation. ... If MAHA was truly a transformative political force, Republicans wouldn’t need to tiptoe around its core message—they’d be running on it. Instead, the memo urges nuance and careful phrasing, because they know the raw version doesn’t sell. Ultimately, the things MAHA claims to champion—safer drugs, healthier food, fewer environmental toxins—aren’t partisan tenets. This is generic stuff everyone cares about. The real divide shows up when it comes to science, regulation, and who actually confronts industry power in the real world.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jennifer Weiss-Wolff of The Contrarian. The quote is long so here’s my summary: When pregnant children are apprehended by immigration enforcement they are being sent to a facility in San Benito, Texas. Pregnant children were likely raped and likely have sexually transmitted diseases that make pregnancy dangerous. At San Benito they are less likely to get the care they need. Why San Benito? According to the Project 2025 playbook it is because Texas has banned abortion. Here’s another summary of a quote by Timothy Snyder writing in his “Thinking About…” Substack. “Fascism demands a chosen enemy, and victims.” But, the current attack on immigrants has produced stasis, not the jump from “competitive authoritarianism” to outright fascism. It has also produced sustained protest. So the nasty guy needs more:

To complete the fascist transition, Trump has to give the country a war it does not want, and win it, and transform the society. He has brought us to the doorstep of a major war with Iran: but in the State of the Union, speaking about war preparations, he was looking around hopelessly and waving his hands. He is happy to talk about war with Iran, and hope somehow that others will deliver it. But he cannot do it himself. Americans do not want such a war. But that is not exactly Trump’s problem. Germans did not want a war with Poland in 1939, either. But Hitler fought one anyway, and won it quickly. Trump’s problem is that he does not know how to fight a war. And he flounders.

Snyder says the nasty guy must win that war. Snyder also says he doesn’t know how to fight one. That suggests if he does start one he’s likely to lose. I guess that’s a blessing? In the comments kurious linked to two news articles about the corruption in the nasty guy administration. One is from Bloomberg, the other from Daily News. Then he has a quote box, though doesn’t say which article he is quoting. Perhaps both. The box does list the corruption and crimes and some of them have links to sources. Murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti, slandered them, and allowed their killers to go free. Violated the rights of citizens and non-citizens. Killed dozens on the high seas. Released the hundreds of Jan. 6 felons. Threatened to seize Greenland, a NATO ally. Called for the execution of members of Congress for telling military personnel of their duty to disobey illegal orders. Repeatedly violated court orders. Shaken down large universities.

Viewing the Trump administration as a massive crime syndicate allows us to be clear-eyed about what is coming down the road, and to plan accordingly. To take the most urgent example, there ought to be no question as to whether Trump will try to steal the midterm elections. Of course he will try to steal them. Criminals gonna crime. It is every patriotic American’s duty to oppose the coming effort to nullify the will of the voters.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, listed the winners of the Minnesota Department of Transportation contest to name its snowplows. Some of this year’s winning names:

Oh, for Sleet’s Sake Flurrious George K Pop Blizzard Hunter. O Brother, Where Art Plow? Minne-Snow-ta

He's a cheater of wives, at golf, and Americans out of votes

Alex Samuels of Daily Kos discussed a poll that asked whether gerrymandering should be legal. Of all US adult citizens 9% said yes, 69% said no. Even Republicans don’t like it – 14% yes, 57% no. Some of this is definitely in response to the Texas Republican attempt to create a more severe gerrymander to squeeze out five more seats. And driving the perception that gerrymandering is bad is one of the jobs of the Democrats who broke quorum in Texas. The longer they stay away the more attention they bring to the Republican power grab and the better chance of boosting national outrage against gerrymandering. Samuels also discussed the more seats Republicans try to squeeze out the smaller their margin will be in each one. That means there is the possibility of holding an election that is a referendum on the guy in the Oval Office and a blue wave could swamp what they think are safe seats. But another problem is an erosion of trust in democracy. A YouGov poll found a third of Americans are unsure whether their state districts are fair and a bit more than a third know they are unfair. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on the comments of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. He is hosting many of the Democrats who broke quorum in Texas. Pritzker said:

It's a big ugly bill. It's hyper unpopular in Texas, among people in Texas and across the country. And he knows he's going to lose the Congress in 2026. That's why he's going to his allies and hoping that they can save him,” Pritzker said. “And we've all got to stand up against this. This is, it's cheating. Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives. He cheats on golf, and now he's trying to cheat the American people out of their votes.

Back in 2016 the question was: Is the nasty guy a white supremacist? The answer was: I can’t tell you – but white supremacists sure think he is. Oliver Willis of Kos discussed an update of that question. Is the nasty guy a Nazi? Actual Nazis sure think he is. Alas, that support from the top has come with a rise in white supremacist violence. In 2020, 13% of extreme demonstrations and violent acts involved white nationalists. Just four years later, in 2024 almost 80% of such events involved white nationalists. Emily Singer of Kos wrote that the gaudy ballroom the nasty guy plans to start building next month is illegal. Major changes to the White House (beyond hanging gaudy gold plated stuff all over the place) need to have the approval of the National Capital Planning Commission. Approval can take years because the commission verifies the changes don’t compromise the historic building. Doubling the footprint would definitely do that. Because the nasty guy says construction begins next month we know he didn’t submit the plans for review. Though the nasty guy has committed many vile crimes he has never been held accountable for any of them. He has also stacked many courts, especially the Supreme Court, to make sure he never will be. So why would the illegality of his ballroom plans stop him? In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted tweets by Justin Wolfers. I’m looking at the second and third of those tweets:

I was just in Japan for two weeks, and learned a lot from talking Japanese policy wonks about the "strategic ambiguity" at the heart of the US-Japan trade deal, and what this reveals is – and isn't – in a number of the President's "deals." I should have been clearer: Both sides (implicitly) agree not to write down any deal. They understand Trump will fill the silence with outlandish claims, delivering him a political win. And our trading partners are obliged to deliver nothing, giving them the economic win.

In the comments is a cartoon that needs a bit of explanation. Recently, the DOGE whiz kid known as “Big Balls” (there’s a real name somewhere) was allegedly the victim of a carjacking. The details don’t matter. It was that incident, or at least the report of that incident, that prompted the nasty guy to claim DC is a crime infested hellhole only he can clean up. He federalized the DC Police and pulled in the National Guard to make DC safe again, even though the DC crime rate has been falling and is the lowest in 30 years (as various news organizations have been reminding us). The cartoon is by Jesse Duquette. The title is “‘Big Balls’ is a false flag.” The caption says:

Step One: Have a dutiful stooge take part in a staged event Step Two: Used staged event as pretext for militarized takeover of a city Step Three: Cory Booker probably gives a long speech while Chuck Schumer writes a strongly worded letter Step Four: Onto the next city Step Five: Repeat

Willis reported on Monday that because of the nasty guy’s infatuation with the safety of DC the FBI has assigned 120 agents for night patrols in DC. They are pulled from other duties that would have more consequence over safety. On Sunday night at lest two dozen agents were on the scene of a minor traffic accident between a car and moped. Actual police handled it just fine. Washington Post writer Drew Harwell posted a video of armed agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration patrolling the National Mall. He called it “tremendously goofy.” DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has been keeping her cool. It is “the president’s call about how to deploy the Guard.” And: “I just think that’s not the most efficient use of our Guard.” And all of this looks like a big diversion from the Epstein files. In Tuesday’s roundup Chtown Kev quoted Mark Jacob of his Stop the Presses Substack and his interview of retired journalism professor Jay Rosen.

JACOB: Can’t the media become much more aggressive than anything you’ve suggested here? Can’t headlines start with the words “Trump lies”? Wouldn’t a confrontational approach be better for the media — and the public — than the current practice of amplifying the lies and correcting them quietly while the independent press dies of 1,000 cuts? ROSEN: Calling things by their right names is a hugely important use of the First Amendment, a case of “use it or lose it.” The press has to be aggressive, yes, and in multiple ways: digging for information, asking blunt questions (when they are good questions) even if that might endanger a reporter’s future access. Aggressive, too, in warning the Republic that its democracy is under attack, and bringing attention to that warning by use of every media platform available. There’s also a kind of aggression in dispensing with refuge-seeking behavior in journalism — in contrast with truth-seeking. [...] I want false claims to be declared false. Clearly and provably. By journalists who are themselves evidence-based. If the best description of what they know is there’s no evidence of that, then say it: “There is no evidence.” If a provably false claim is knowingly used to whip up resentment against a marginal group, there is every reason to call it a lie in tomorrow’s newspaper. What I care most about is that false claims get presented as false. Is that true? Did that really happen?

In the comments are several good memes and cartoons. Rep. Adriano Espaillat quoted some of the nasty guy’s announcement that he was taking over DC.

And we are getting rid of the slums, too. We’re getting rid of them. It’s not politically correct. We’re getting rid of the slums where they live.

I note he doesn’t say how he will be getting rid of the slums and what he will do with the residents. Though the urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 60s come to mind, where black neighborhoods in many large cities (including Detroit) were replaced with freeways that allowed white residents to flee to the suburbs and still work in Detroit. Espaillat responded to the nasty guy:

Using military force against an impoverished civilian population is the act of a dictator, not a president. Donald Trump’s actions to declare a public safety emergency against individuals experiencing homelessness and personally attacking them is vile and inhumane.

A meme posted by exlrrp shows the words of Chef José Andres:

Donald Trump, you didn’t have the power to call the National Guard on January 6... But now you do?

Dobber included a tweet by Will Chamberlain.

I bought my family to DC for the Cherry Blossom festival. The first thing I saw when I exited the L’Enfant Plaza Metro was a gang of youths driving ATVs down the street, one of whom was doing a wheelie. So forgive me if I doubt that crime is down.

keptsimple responded:

Bragging about being a giant pussy is integral to the conservative mindset.

I add: Youths driving ATVs and doing wheelies is not a crime. Only a giant pussy would infer that those actions mean they are also criminal. A tweet by Acyn:

Baltimore Mayor Scott response on Trump: I think it’s very notable that each and every one of the cities called out by the President has a black mayor, and most of those cities are seeing historic lows in violent crime.

A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Sandeep Adhwaryu shows two extremely thin people sitting in front of the rubble of Gaza. One says: “Do we get a Nobel Peace Prize for starving quietly without troubling their conscience?” In today’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet by Mark Hertling:

For the record, our division commander BANNED things called “presence patrols” in Iraq. “If you don’t have a specific task & purpose, your ‘presence’ doesn’t do anything.” National Guard stating they are now doing presence patrols in DC. A complete waste of soldier’s time & effort.

At the top of the comments LJ Slater posted a cartoon by Slyngstad. At the top it says, “Trump calls in National Guard and takes control of DC Police to deal with crime.” In the center is a drawing of the Capitol attack. Below that are the words, “Oh wait, sorry wrong cartoon...” A tweet by ramseyfay33 shows a woman in a selfie. She’s along the Reflecting Pool with the Lincoln Memorial in the background. There are very few people about. She wrote. “Checking in from the front lines of the downtown DC war zone. There are baby ducks and a lady tap dancing. Send in the Guard!” Fiona Webster posted a cartoon by Carolyn Crampton. It shows two young witches on either side of a crystal ball. In the ball is an image of a man with a glum expression. One witch says, “I see Chief Justice John Roberts weighing his oath of to the Constitution against blackmail threats from the face-eating-leopard party.” Way down in the comments paulpro posted a meme by Lainey Molnar. It shows a woman with an infant and behind her is an outline of a man. The caption says, “I wish we said ‘children of absentee fathers’ instead of ‘single mothers’, because how is the parent who stayed the problem?”

Billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired

Morgan Stephens of Daily Kos reported there is an effort to get Biden to certify the Equal Rights Amendment to require gender equality. This article says this amendment to the Constitution has been ratified by enough states. All that needs to be done is for Biden to tell the National Archives: yep, all the requirements have been met, so make this amendment officially a part of the Constitution. Even after reading I am puzzled why the Archive can’t do that on its own. The last state to ratify was Virginia in 2020. The nasty guy told the Archives not to make it official because the confirmation process took too long. Since I hadn’t heard anything about the ERA since the 1980s and hadn’t heard about Virginia’s ratification only four years ago I thought I had better check this story out. So I went to Wikipedia (aware that its accuracy is suspect). And I found the situation isn’t simple. The amendment was first proposed in 1921. It finally passed Congress in 1972 with a seven year time limit (which was in an accompanying law, not in the amendment text). To be part of the Constitution 38 states (¾ of them) must ratify an amendment. By the time of the deadline in 1979 only 35 states had ratified it. Them some of them revoked their ratification. The deadline was extended to 1982. Four more ratified, then one of those revoked. Some states said their ratification is good only until the deadline. If not enough states have ratified by then our approval has expired. Since then there have been more extensions and extension attempts. There have been lawsuits against the extensions. There have been lawsuits over whether a state can revoke its ratification. All that means I understand why Biden is hesitant to tell the Archives the amendment should be made official. I had written that the nasty guy wanted to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray. The nasty guy had hired Wray (after firing his predecessor) and Wray has another three years in his ten year term. That term was set up by Congress to make sure FBI directors could remain above politics. Oliver Willis reported that Wray has said he will resign on inauguration day. He says he is doing it so the FBI can focus on fighting crime instead of on his fate. So the nasty guy is free to nominate Kash Patel to the job. Willis reminds us why Patel will be so bad. One reason, which I had mentioned before:

Patel also authored three children’s books starring a thinly veiled version of himself and Trump (as a king) fighting against Democratic plotters seeking to usurp an imaginary kingdom.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic:

Now Trump, preparing for his second term as president, has decided to replace the FBI director again. The figure he picked to replace Comey—the lifelong Republican Christopher Wray—proved unable to meet Trump’s expectations for the position, which are (1) to permit Trump and his allies to violate the law with impunity, and (2) to investigate anybody who interferes with (1). Wray, wrestling with the problem of Trump’s desire to separate him from a job he apparently liked, chose to step down on his own. This raises the likelihood that the media will treat the replacement of Wray as normal administrative turnover rather than as a scandal. […] The problem that keeps arising is that there is no way to remain in Trump’s favor while following the law. In a celebratory statement posted to Truth Social, Trump claims, “Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause.” Had the FBI raid actually been illegal, he could have proved that in court. He didn’t, because by taking massive troves of classified documents when he left office, keeping them in a wildly unsecured location, refusing multiple requests to return them, lying repeatedly about it, and engaging in a clumsy cover-up, Trump had given the bureau no other choice. For Wray to allow this brazen defiance of the law would have been to simply admit that the law doesn’t apply to Trump, in or out of office. But that is precisely the credo Trump demands that the bureau follow. It is why he has selected Kash Patel, a sycophant so childishly worshipful that he spelled out his loyalty to Trump in a literal children’s book portraying Trump as a virtuous king and himself as Trump’s loyal wizard. Perhaps Patel (or whomever Senate Republicans ultimately confirm for the position) will, once in office, somehow develop an adult, professionalized understanding of the rule of law. More likely, Trump’s FBI director will discover that actually locking up Trump’s enemies is hard. This was the anticlimactic outcome of the Durham investigation, Trump’s first-term campaign to imprison his foes, which resulted, after months of conservative-media salivating, in two embarrassing acquittals in court.

In another roundup Kev quoted Paul Krugman, in what he announces is his last column for the New York Times. A bit:

What strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. And I’m not just talking about members of the working class who feel betrayed by elites; some of the angriest, most resentful people in America right now — people who seem very likely to have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration — are billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired.

Kev also quoted Res Huppke of USA Today:

Axios reported last week that, including Trump himself, the administration-to-be is already staffed with 14 billionaires. ... I’m sure these down-to-earth billionaires care deeply about the forgotten men and women who put Trump in office. Surely they are in no way “elite,” aside from perhaps owning an island, or maybe occasionally hunting poor people for sport on said island.

Down in the comments – after the cartoons – The Geogre wrote about an article by Adam Cox and Ryan Goodman of Just Security on “The Public Framing of Mass Deportation” as in how they’ll structure their lies to keep mass deportation palatable to the public. They will say they are targeting the deportations the public supports – getting rid of those who have broken the law – but they’ll actually target groups whose deportation is easiest to accomplish. Deporting criminal noncitizens will keep public support but there aren’t nearly enough such criminals to meet the numbers the nasty guy is talking about. Saying that’s what they’re doing is a trick to satisfy those who have no idea of the state of immigrants and their lack of crimes. Polling has shown the public doesn’t support dragnets that tear families apart or hit long-term residents with deep ties. So they’re already lying by redefining their terms. They will falsely tag entire classes of immigrants as criminals. See the effort in falsely claiming immigrants ate pets in Springfield, Ohio. There will be lots of stories of immigrant crime. An example (which is not true) would be a headline blaring, “Mexican nationals rape women.” The story would be spread by media and eventually appear on an executive order. They will falsely equate criminal law and immigration law, declaring that a violation of immigration law is a crime when it is only a civil offense. That makes all undocumented immigrants, which they’ll refer to as an “illegal immigrant” (a legally meaningless term) to be a criminal and a high priority for deportation. The Geogre reminds us “the goal is quiescence, not legality.” The goal is to keep public protests at a minimum while keeping “immigration” a hot topic for the 2026 midterm elections. Then comes redefining legal immigration – those here with official permission – as illegal. Along with that they’ll keep up the drumbeat that immigration is an “invasion.” The Geogre’s quotes and comments ended here. So I went to the original article. Some of the other thing it discusses: A major obstacle is to mass deportation political. Americans support stiffer border patrol, but they don’t support mass deportation and do support paths to legal status and citizenship. Another major obstacle is logistical. How to identify, locate, and arrest large numbers of noncitizens? In modern times the US has deported only a quarter million in any one year, and that rate wasn’t sustainable. It was also more than a decade ago. The nasty guy’s goal is an order of magnitude larger. I add one way to avoid the work of determining who is and isn’t a citizen is to not care if citizens are caught up in any dragnet. Undocumented immigrants that have been here for more than a decade are not easily identified. This include most of the 11 million who are undocumented. That lack of easy identification is why the nasty guy will target the easy to identify first. Another way to tag immigrants as criminals is whether they use programs they shouldn’t. An example is getting a drivers license. Immigrants from several countries have been given Temporary Protected Status. These are countries with high internal violence where going back could be deadly. Haiti is one of these countries. The nasty guy could revoke those programs and easily send those people back. This could be one million such people, perhaps as many as three million.

At bottom, these tactics boil down to a potentially profound betrayal of the American public. These approaches fail to reflect the public’s expressed preferences for immigration policy, and mislead rather than try to reason with or persuade Americans toward a more aggressive deportation policy. Some of the rhetorical tactics are familiar, and, indeed, have been practiced by both Democratic and Republican administrations. But not in the context of trying to legitimize the displacement of potentially millions of people. The remaining question is whether such tactics can succeed in the coming period, that is, whether deceptive framing of actual underlying deportation policies can win out.

A couple days ago Leila Fadel of NPR spoke to Kristin Kobe Du Mez, who is a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University, a Christian school. She is the author of the book Jesus And John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted A Faith And Fractured A Nation. In this discussion she explores the belief that the US is (or is supposed to be) a Christian nation and explores how her faith has been politicized. Here’s some of what Du Mez said:

What's different about Christian nationalism is this sense of privilege that the country itself must reflect particular Christian values. They present histories - largely mythical histories of the founding era that suggests that the Constitution was, even some will go as far as to say, inspired by God and that the Constitution reflects biblical values.

Responding to the nasty guy promising a task force on anti-Christian bias.

Now, to understand how that can make sense when the majority of Americans do hold Christian beliefs, it's important to note that when they talk about threats to religious liberty, many conservative Christians have a fairly expansive notion of what that entails. They want the religious liberty not just to practice their own beliefs, but also they think that to be faithful as Christians means to reshape society and even to impose those beliefs on fellow Americans. And when they are not able to do that, that seems like a restriction on their religious liberties. It'll be very interesting to see what that task force actually entails because within the Christian nationalist framework, often some of the key targets of Christian nationalists are fellow Christians themselves - fellow Christians who did not adhere to the Christian nationalist agenda.

I long ago figured out when religious people talk about religious freedom they mean freedom to discriminate, to force others to be like them. Du Mez was asked why the nasty guy appeals to the far right of Christianity:

His real appeal lies in the fact that he has promised to give Christians power. ... And, yes, he's not what many might expect, but he's their strong man. And in fact, he may be all the more effective at restoring Christian America because he's not constrained by traditional Christian virtue.

Du Mez added these people argue that the separation of church and state is a myth.

Giving a pardon to avoid a corrupt, incompetent freakshow

Dana Nessel, attorney general for Michigan, wrote an opinion piece in last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press. Her main point is that the nasty guy staffing his cabinet with people accused of sexual assault will mean two things. Assault survivors will be less likely to report the crime because they feel it won’t bring justice and reliving the trauma will be useless. And assault perpetrators will feel they have permission to attack again. Those who have been accused are Pete Hegseth, nominated for Defense, Robert Kennedy Jr, nominated for Health and Human Services, Matt Gaetz, nominated for Justice (yeah, he withdrew, but he was still nominated), and Linda McMahon, nominated for Education. McMahon isn’t accused of committing assault, but is accused of enabling abuse of children by employees of her organization. That got me thinking that in the mind of the nasty guy a sexual assault accusation is a bonus. As I’ve discussed several times the nasty guy is highly invested in the social hierarchy. He wants to be top dog and have no rivals. He wants there to be a huge difference between himself and the teeming masses and will oppress them to make that difference greater. The only people he will tolerate in his presence are those who profess their adoration. He has been convicted of sexual assault. In his mind being accused of sexual assault is a bright sign to say that person is also one highly invested in the hierarchy (otherwise they would not have committed assault). That makes them a strong candidate for his regime. It’s going to be a dreary future. Following similar logic... Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported:

Donald Trump ran for president by selling the notion that he would be a fighter for working-class, blue-collar values. But he has selected a slew of obscenely wealthy people to help him run the government when he takes control in January—and their net worths are nowhere near the average American family’s.

The median family net worth in America is $192,700 and a lot own much less than that. Several of these nominees are billionaires. They are clueless about the issues most Americans face. This will be government by the billionaires, of the billionaires, and for the billionaires. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that Biden has pardoned his son Hunter for his conviction in a case of lying on a gun permit application and his guilty plea for tax charges. A lot of talking heads are saying but Biden said he wouldn’t pardon his son. Yeah, he did. Circumstances changed. A second AP article on Kos explains the pardon in more detail. It also mentions Biden’s reasoning:

In his statement Sunday, Biden said that his son had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.” Biden has been concerned—as Hunter Biden was—about his political adversaries. ... “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter—who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me—and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

Put another way Biden saw who the nasty guy was nominating to various Department of Justice jobs He knew the attacks on Hunter would continue. Better for Hunter and the rest of the family to stop it all now. In particular Biden saw, as Oliver Willis of Kos reported, that the nasty guy nominated Kash Patel to head the FBI. For Patel to take that spot the nasty guy would have to fire the current director Christopher Wray, whom the nasty guy installed in 2017 and whose ten year term is supposed to protect the agency for political meddling. The nasty guy has complained that Wray has followed the law too closely, authorizing investigations into the nasty guy and his minions. There are two big reasons why Patel got the nomination. The first reason is the statements Patel has been making.

Patel authored a memo arguing that it was disloyal for then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper to oppose a request by Trump to deploy military troops against American citizens protesting police violence against Black people. After Trump lost to President Joe Biden in 2020, Patel pushed lies about the election being stolen and argued that reporters debunking Trump’s election lies should be targeted by the government.

Yeah, he wants to go after reporters debunking Trump’s election lies. And he’s big on loyalty. The second reason is that Patel wrote a trilogy of children’s books that are nasty guy fan fiction. The first is The Plot Against the King with the plotter being Hillary Clinton. The second was the battle against Sleepy Joe and the third was against “Comma-la-la-la.” These books are definitely propaganda. Patel would definitely find reasons to continue prosecution and persecution of Hunter. As for actually running the FBI, who said anything about qualifications? There was lots of commentary that Biden pardoning his son gave permission for the nasty guy to pardon the insurrectionists. But he is going to do that anyway. In the comments of a pundit roundup exlrrp posted couple memes about Hunter and Patel. The first is by Keith Boykin:

President Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, and I would have done the same thing under the circumstances. If Trump can be elected as a convicted felon, I’d be damned if I let my own son go to prison for the sake of a principle that only one side believes in.

The other meme:

Biden did not pardon Hunter until he saw the corrupt, incompetent, conspiracy driven, freakshow that Trump was nominating for the DOJ. The media might want to mention that.

Lisa Needham of Kos discussed what would happen if Republicans succeeded in dismantling the Department of Education. To answer that Needham lists what the DoE does. Republicans don’t like the DoE believing the federal government shouldn’t tell states what to teach. Surprise, it doesn’t. The DoE hands out Title I funding for lower-income families, which pays for teacher salaries. Some of that goes to urban districts in blue states. More of it goes to rural districts in red states, with Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Arizona most dependent on Title I funding. So will Title I funding be eliminated or go to a department that doesn’t know what to do with it? Also in the DoE is the agency that delivers federal funding for students with special needs. That about 15% of all K-12 students, or 7.5 million students. Federal money is supposed to pay 40% of the cost for special education, but has always fallen short. And many states don’t cover as much as they should. What will happen to this? The DoE also oversees student civil rights. That includes the rights of LGBTQ students and students of color but much more goes for the rights of students with disabilities. These are not things other departments could easily pick up. Project 2025 calls for turning all that DoE money into block grants without strings. Then the states could do what they wanted with it – including shifting all of it to private schools. Republicans have a lot of angst over the DoE’s 4% of the federal budget. Which implies this isn’t about the money.

What gutting federal education funding and oversight will do, however, is widen the gaps between well-off and low-income families, between well-funded and struggling public schools, and between blue states and red states. Trump voters may have believed they were casting a vote to hurt woke liberals, but they likely hurt themselves and their children much more.

There’s that social hierarchy again with the desire to oppress those lower down. Gutting the DoE also means the oppressed are more open to the claim that in the natural order of the world they’re supposed to be oppressed. Prairiecrat of the Kos community discussed an article in Baptist News in which a gay ex-pastor of a Baptist church surveyed people who had left the Baptist denomination. Most of the reasons were related to a distaste for conservative politics and the accompanying attitudes. Another big reason was the nasty guy. Those who left saw the vast contradiction between what the nasty guy and conservative Christians said and did compared to what Jesus said and did. They saw Jesus showed love and these people showed racism, sexism, and greed.

Indeed, according to the 2023 PRRI Census of American Religion, in 2006, white Evangelical Protestants outnumbered white Mainline Protestants among the population by 23% to 17.8% — a gap of more than 5 points. As of last year the gap is down to 13.4% to 12.2% — just over 1 point. It’s true that non-white Evangelicals are making up for some of the decline in white Evangelicals, but Evangelical populations are still declining nonetheless. Expect that with 4 more years of Trumpism, this trend will accelerate.

Peter Twinklage posted a thread that he thinks explains why some Democrats outperformed Harris and won their seats. They championed progressive policies while using conservative cultural coding.

Ryan campaigned with AOC in the Hudson Valley but made a point to highlight his military service in every campaign ad. Gluesenkamp Perez co-sponsored a bill to protect medication abortion while constantly talking about her history as a flannel-clad car mechanic. Gallego never apologized for his tenure in the House Progressive Caucus but aggressively pursued male voters with soccer and boxing match watch parties. All of them spoke proudly in defense of queer Americans while also never condemning constituents who lacked the language to voice their concerns about certain issues in a politically correct fashion. Having grown up on a farm with a Fox News family, I think this is the way.

Concert season begins tomorrow. I’ll be posting much less over the next two weeks. I’ve already deleted a few browser tabs of things I know I won’t get to or will be out of date by the time I can write about them.