Six volumes down to one is a lot of cutting.
For those who skipped the link, the piece does not say that trump is literally an honest person, but rather that he's just dumb as a bag of hammers and unashamed of the boundless asshattery he personifies, and which the writer believes he intrinsically represents, being standard fare as head of the US government .
Caitlin Johnstone said:[...] Obama could have made this look normal. Bush would have looked a little bit goofy, but nothing that would make you spit your coffee on your screen. Hell, Bill Clinton would have looked downright at home, like he was born in Buckingham Palace and spent his whole life sipping champagne and groping the maids while he waited for this photo to be taken. It took the badly-dressed awkward posture and golf bod of a reality TV star who became president via 4chan prank to expose that whole absurd royalty display for the risible self-parody that it deserves to be seen as.
Trump’s entire presidency has been like this. Blatant, tactless, and completely unmasked.
Journalist gets literally butchered in an embassy by the Saudi government? Yeah well we don’t want to do anything about that because they’ve got an arms deal with us worth billions of dollars. He just comes right out and says it. When they want to stage a coup in Venezuela, they don’t limit it to CIA covert ops and behind-the-scenes manipulations; the whole administration is on Twitter saying they’re going to keep starving everyone with sanctions until the nation’s president is replaced with the guy they prefer. It’s all right there, right in your face, as closeted and secret Flavor Flav’s fondness for clocks.
His whole cabinet is basically human versions of the departments they represent. His Secretary Treasurer was a Goldman Sachs executive. His CIA Director literally tortured people. His National Security Advisor is an Iraq-raping Bush-era neocon. His Secretary of Commerce is a former Rothschild executive. His EPA Administrator is a former coal lobbyist. His Secretary of State came straight out of the CIA. It’s like he designed a convenient labeling system for everyone who’s unsure of what it is that each department in the executive branch of the US government actually does. [...]
Caitlin Johnstone said:[...] The most aggressive anti-Trumpists have no interest in real change, they just want things to go back to the way they were before Trump, which is actually just wanting to go back to the conditions which gave rise to Trump. They’re not interested in waking up, they’re interested in smoothing an uncomfortable wrinkle in their bedsheets so that they can go back to sleep.
And if that happens, fine, whatever; it’s not like they were taking any meaningful action against the ugly face of empire anyway. But at least things got shaken up with a little honesty for a while. A little corrupt, blood-spattered, button-popping honesty.
Oh, and as to my remark:
One, six, doesn’t matter. He will never open it. Watch for it on eBay if he thinks he can make a buck.
Trump is going to back down on mexico tariffs.
I'd bet on it.
I do still agree with the concept that one of the core human rights is the freedom to leave a country if you no longer wish to live there. Free countries observe this right for the most part. Despite the limitations the USA has imposed via the passport requirement (fugitives, people on bond, IRS issues, some much more questionable calls), for the most part the vast vast majority of USA citizens still have the right to leave if they wish. Finding a country to take them is harder but it is between them and their targeted country. I would expect the same of Mexico as I indicated in my first post on this subject. It is wrong to expect them to block this right of their citizens. For practical purposes it is best to coordinate this right of departure with the immigration system of their targeted country (most often the USA) as much as possible, but ultimately Mexico should not prevent the right of their citizens to leave whatever the limitations USA imposes on their ability to enter.
I do still agree with the concept that one of the core human rights is the freedom to leave a country if you no longer wish to live there.
Noise.
I don't really see the sticking point of what Trump is asking of Mexico to do as being a "right to leave" though that may eventually be the issue.
The more pressing issue is freedom of movement within the country.
Trump fails to comprehend (No! Say it isn't so!) that Mexico has the same freedom of movement within their country that Americans enjoy in theirs, the same freedom of movement most Western democracies share.
that too
Ultimately I don't think Trump really believes in freedom of movement within the US either. Unless you can afford your own plane, anyway.
The problem is that you are under the mistaken idea that Trump thinks anything he says through.
Not so much what he says, no. But he does have some core beliefs.
The problem is that you are under the mistaken idea that Trump thinks anything he says through.
Not so much what he says, no. But he does have some core beliefs.