The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

[Strelnikov]

Politico talks to anonymous Trump "Whitest House" staffers, finds that three months in, it's a paranoid environment where everyone is terrified the "deep state" (CIA/NSA/military intelligence) is trying to take them down.

.....In an interview, one White House aide described the elaborate steps he was taking to shield himself. Once he gets home in the evening, he turns off his work phone and stores it in a drawer because, he said, he believes it could be used to listen to him even when it’s off.

It sounds funny, but the idea of smartphones and TVs being turned into permanent listening devices through CIA-created malware is a real one and allegedly codenamed "Weeping Angel."

They've gone from baffled and exhausted to utterly paranoid; the Trump administration sounds like an psychology experiment run by evil versions of Milgram and Zimbardo.

[Flip Flopped]

Politico talks to anonymous Trump "Whitest House" staffers, finds that three months in, it's a paranoid environment where everyone is terrified the "deep state" (CIA/NSA/military intelligence) is trying to take them down.

.....In an interview, one White House aide described the elaborate steps he was taking to shield himself. Once he gets home in the evening, he turns off his work phone and stores it in a drawer because, he said, he believes it could be used to listen to him even when it’s off.

It sounds funny, but the idea of smartphones and TVs being turned into permanent listening devices through CIA-created malware is a real one and allegedly codenamed "Weeping Angel."

They've gone from baffled and exhausted to utterly paranoid; the Trump administration sounds like an psychology experiment run by evil versions of Milgram and Zimbardo.

I think the Samsung television hack requires that an agent physically access the television with a USB stick.

The White House staff in that story reported being afraid of surveillance by each other. It's a dysfunctional environment. I'm shocked so many people want to work there.

[Larkin]

Politico talks to anonymous Trump "Whitest House" staffers, finds that three months in, it's a paranoid environment where everyone is terrified the "deep state" (CIA/NSA/military intelligence) is trying to take them down.

.....In an interview, one White House aide described the elaborate steps he was taking to shield himself. Once he gets home in the evening, he turns off his work phone and stores it in a drawer because, he said, he believes it could be used to listen to him even when it’s off.

It sounds funny, but the idea of smartphones and TVs being turned into permanent listening devices through CIA-created malware is a real one and allegedly codenamed "Weeping Angel."

They've gone from baffled and exhausted to utterly paranoid; the Trump administration sounds like an psychology experiment run by evil versions of Milgram and Zimbardo.

I think the Samsung television hack requires that an agent physically access the television with a USB stick.

The White House staff in that story reported being afraid of surveillance by each other. It's a dysfunctional environment. I'm shocked so many people want to work there.

Kellyanne Conway looks ill with stress to me. That would be right about the USB stick. Not quite sure what one has to do with a microwave. Can you believe you can bug a vibrator. Can this be what is really worrying Trump?

[Flip Flopped]

It's been widely reported that the original source for Trump's wiretapping lie was a piece in Louise Mensch's website HeatStreet, itself quoting two anonymous sources in US counter-terrorism (ironic given Trump's complaint about anonymous sources).

It's curious therefore that Mensch's Wikipedia BLP doesn't notice this website, although it does an earlier failed site, nor does its History indicate any attempt to insert a mention.

Can't be arsed ourselves . I'll have a look through the site to see what she has to say about Gorka and report back anything of interest.

Added: Nothing there about Gorka.

Today Forward published an exclusive "Nazi-Allied Group Claims Top Trump Aide Sebastian Gorka As Sworn Member" by Lili Bayer and Larry Cohler-Esses. If Gorka is a member of the Hungarian group that claims him as a member, then his applications for immigration and citizenship may be able to be examined in court.

The whole article is worth reading.

[Larkin]

It's been widely reported that the original source for Trump's wiretapping lie was a piece in Louise Mensch's website HeatStreet, itself quoting two anonymous sources in US counter-terrorism (ironic given Trump's complaint about anonymous sources).

It's curious therefore that Mensch's Wikipedia BLP doesn't notice this website, although it does an earlier failed site, nor does its History indicate any attempt to insert a mention.

Can't be arsed ourselves . I'll have a look through the site to see what she has to say about Gorka and report back anything of interest.

Added: Nothing there about Gorka.

Today Forward published an exclusive "Nazi-Allied Group Claims Top Trump Aide Sebastian Gorka As Sworn Member" by Lili Bayer and Larry Cohler-Esses. If Gorka is a member of the Hungarian group that claims him as a member, then his applications for immigration and citizenship may be able to be examined in court.

The whole article is worth reading.

Thanks again for this Flip. I see it's been picked up by Buzzfeed. I've linked it on our top-secret Twitter feed as before, this time drawing it to the attention of Louise Mensch who seems to have quite a following. Also I made a courtesy share as well quoting your thread.

I thought the Forward piece very well done. I can't see how Gorka can survive this degree of scrutiny. When Michael Smith and others first called him out he was able to roll out some supporters, but I should imagine they will now move to distance themselves as Trump's presidency collapses. What a loathsome little toad Gorka is.

[Flip Flopped]

It's been widely reported that the original source for Trump's wiretapping lie was a piece in Louise Mensch's website HeatStreet, itself quoting two anonymous sources in US counter-terrorism (ironic given Trump's complaint about anonymous sources).

It's curious therefore that Mensch's Wikipedia BLP doesn't notice this website, although it does an earlier failed site, nor does its History indicate any attempt to insert a mention.

Can't be arsed ourselves . I'll have a look through the site to see what she has to say about Gorka and report back anything of interest.

Added: Nothing there about Gorka.

Today Forward published an exclusive "Nazi-Allied Group Claims Top Trump Aide Sebastian Gorka As Sworn Member" by Lili Bayer and Larry Cohler-Esses. If Gorka is a member of the Hungarian group that claims him as a member, then his applications for immigration and citizenship may be able to be examined in court.

The whole article is worth reading.

Thanks again for this Flip. I see it's been picked up by Buzzfeed. I've linked it on our top-secret Twitter feed as before, this time drawing it to the attention of Louise Mensch who seems to have quite a following. Also I made a courtesy share as well quoting your thread.

I thought the Forward piece very well done. I can't see how Gorka can survive this degree of scrutiny. When Michael Smith and others first called him out he was able to roll out some supporters, but I should imagine they will now move to distance themselves as Trump's presidency collapses. What a loathsome little toad Gorka is.

Thanks, Larkin. Mensch does seem to get a lot of Twitter eyeballs.

Here's a Twitter moment by Judith Kaufman called "Seb Gorka: The RISE and FALL of an 'Alpha Male'." It seems to be a compilation of news articles on Gorka. He's a mess.

[Larkin]

Here's a Twitter moment by Judith Kaufman called "Seb Gorka: The RISE and FALL of an 'Alpha Male'." It seems to be a compilation of news articles on Gorka. He's a mess.

Judith Kaufman is retired NYSDEC I see. My conspiratorial whiskers twitching .

[Larkin]

Here's a Twitter moment by Judith Kaufman called "Seb Gorka: The RISE and FALL of an 'Alpha Male'." It seems to be a compilation of news articles on Gorka. He's a mess.

Judith Kaufman is retired NYSDEC I see. My conspiratorial whiskers twitching .

Slate has now picked up on the story, while Gorka has responded to the Forward piece with what he would call a strawman argument (he used the expression beloved of Wikipediots to Emily Maitlis) that he was not antisemitic (but that's not what Forward accused him of), without affirming or denying he belonged to Vitezi Rend.

Hard to see how he can survive. I for one shan't shed a tear for him.

Added: Heatstreet now on the case as well.

[Strelnikov]

From Counterpunch: Our Two-Party System is Dead, Andrew Levine

Quotes:

....The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) famously proclaimed the death of God. Following this far more momentous precedent, it would now be fair to proclaim the death of the debilitating, semi-established duopoly party system that disables progressive politics in the United States.

The analogies are many.

Nietzsche claimed that it would take centuries for the Divine body to decompose.

By this, he did not just mean that it was no longer possible, without self-deception, to believe that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being who created all that is and with whom human beings can have personal relationships. Materialist philosophers a century earlier could have said that, albeit not in as colorful a way. Nietzsche took it for granted.

His deeper claim was that ways of thinking and being – and forms of civilization — that rested on belief in God were finished as well.

This included quite a lot – not literally everything, but nearly everything of fundamental importance. In his view, prevailing notions of truth and morality were among the first casualties.

He insisted, however, that it would take a long time for all the consequences to take effect. Therefore, the churches would likely remain full for generations. The synagogues too, though Nietzsche’s view of synagogues was, to put it mildly, ambivalent; and, though he knew little and cared less about them, the mosques as well.

They might even seem to thrive. But they would not be what they were because, with the divine corpse decomposing, their foundations were gone.

That, from time to time, there would be periods in which parts of God’s decomposing body would flourish therefore does not embarrass Nietzsche’s claim. Church, synagogue, and mosque attendance might rise from time to time; and, for any number of reasons, some people some of the time might rally around the old, essentially defunct, religions. But, at its core, it would all be a sham because, whether “believers” know it or not, superseded ways of thinking and being cannot be replicated except in ironic ways.

The implication was that the sooner people realize this, the sooner they see the world as it is and not as they would like it to be, the better the world will be.

It will be better not because people will be happier or because they will have an easier time navigating their way through life’s tribulations, but because it will be more honest. Like Aristotle, Nietzsche was what we would today call a “virtue ethicist.” Honesty – and authenticity more generally – was high on his list of virtues.

He was also a critic of democracy and egalitarianism and other emanations of Enlightened thought.

And he was a master ironist. It was in that capacity that — to use a word that Stephen Bannon and other Trumpists have besmirched — he called for the “deconstruction” of the God idea and all that rests upon it. This was how he would have humanity realize the goal of Enlightened thinking, as described by Immanuel Kant and philosophers in the classical German tradition: it would free humanity from its “self-imposed nonage.”.....

...The Reaganites did all they could to set Wall Street free to make money with other peoples’ money, and they encouraged the exportation of jobs to parts of the world where labor was cheap. They reset the political agenda. But, at first, they were not able to implement much of the agenda they established – in large part because Democratic majorities in the House and Senate wouldn’t allow it.

It therefore fell to opportunists in the Democratic Party to consolidate and expand the Reagan Revolution by bringing the opposition along. This is the principal “legacy” of the Clinton presidency.

Bill Clinton was the best Reaganite President ever, better than Obama, better than both Bushes put together, better than the villainous old Gipper himself. He did it because he could; not because he believed in “trickle down” economics or other Reaganite nostrums. He did it to help himself and his paymasters, by working both sides of the street.

It was a slow process but, in time, on the Republican side, the inmates took over the asylum; while, over the course of the eighties and nineties, the Democrats became Republicans in all but name.

However, to this day, the old duopoly structures, like the churches and synagogues and mosques, have remained more or less unchanged. In recent years, they even seem to have thrived.

Throughout the long nineteenth century – from, roughly, the War of Independence to World War I – the American party system was comparatively fluid; the Republican Party itself was a product of its transformations.

Since World War I, third party activity has played a far less significant role in American politics. Third party organizing, on both the left and the right, has come to very little; indeed, most efforts have failed outright. Even parties that have survived for several election cycles – the Greens, for example, or the Libertarians – have never had more than a marginal impact on the larger political scene.

It could have been different last year. Disappointed Sanders supporters could have either brought the Greens out of the margins or forged a new electoral presence on their own. It never happened, however; thanks, at least in part, to Sanders’ defection to the Clinton camp.

And so for the time being, same as it ever was, Democrats and Republicans are all we have. Nevertheless, the two party system is defunct. The party machines remain, the apparatchiks are still there, and “politics,” for most Americans, is still about electoral contests between Democrats and Republicans. But like Christianity, on Nietzsche’s telling, it is all built on a foundation of bad faith.

Those who think otherwise are deceiving themselves; trying, in vain, to defy historical currents that are bound to prevail. This is happening even now, before our eyes. It can sometimes be hard, as it were, to see the forest for the trees, but the evidence is there: each year, the ranks of “independents” grow, and levels of satisfaction with the major parties declines.

Where, not long ago, people identified as Democrats or Republicans, hardly anyone does nowadays; not even people who can be counted on to vote reliably for candidates from one or the other side....

...Republicans need Trump to get their agendas through; Trump needs them because neither he nor his people are capable of governing. It is a marriage made in hell. (Bolding mine. - S.)

But, sooner or later, as scandals surrounding Trump mount and as more and more Trump voters realize that they have been conned, Republicans will come to the realization that they are better off without the Donald, after all.

And Trump, desperate to hold onto his credibility by keeping, or appearing to keep, the promises he made while campaigning, will find it expedient that he would be better off without Republican deficit hawks tearing those promises to pieces.

Many, probably most, Trump voters could care less about the Republicans’ several agendas. They didn’t vote for Trump because they were pro-Republican or even because they liked him. They voted for Trump because they were fed up with the Democratic Party, and because they were inclined to think that a rich businessman who says whatever is on his mind would be a better “change agent” than a money-grubbing Washington insider who talks in weasel words.

Being in thrall to unjustifiable and patently false, but quintessentially American, beliefs about the essential goodness of rich businessmen, they thought that Trump was beyond feathering his own nest, and that he would know how to shake things up and make change – for the better — happen.

Boy, were they wrong!

As a rule, people resist admitting their mistakes. But with Trump and his band of dunces calling the shots, it should not take much to convince the voters Trump duped that the man is more like the Wizard of Oz than the Ayn Rand hero they imagined him to be.

The problem, though, is that those voters were right last November about Clinton and the Democrats; and, except for some hand wringing about the need to be less dismissive of the sad sacks Trump duped, nothing much in that department has changed.

What has changed, however, is that, outside the Democratic Party and at its fringes, an anti-Trump resistance movement is taking shape.

As long as Trump and his minions remain preposterous, that movement will not subside the way that, for example, Occupy Wall Street did. That condition is sure to be fulfilled; Trump and the people around him were born preposterous. They cannot help themselves.

If the Democratic Party holds fast to its ways, the anti-Trump resistance will sweep them aside – either directly, by leading voters out of the morass that the Democratic Party has become, or, on the Tea Party model, by taking the Party over and transforming it beyond recognition.

Either way, the Democratic Party’s days are numbered.

The Republicans’ days are too. Indeed, it is a miracle that the GOP has survived for as long as it has under the weight of its cultural contradictions. And yet, that jumble of yahoo theocrats, rightwing libertarians, conformist suburbanites, High Finance buccaneers and well-heeled members of the Country Club set has so far managed to hang together. Could that hideous mélange long survive Trump and the Trumpists too? The chances are slim.

Nietzsche asked: “what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”....

[Flip Flopped]

Here's a Twitter moment by Judith Kaufman called "Seb Gorka: The RISE and FALL of an 'Alpha Male'." It seems to be a compilation of news articles on Gorka. He's a mess.

Judith Kaufman is retired NYSDEC I see. My conspiratorial whiskers twitching .

Slate has now picked up on the story, while Gorka has responded to the Forward piece with what he would call a strawman argument (he used the expression beloved of Wikipediots to Emily Maitlis) that he was not antisemitic (but that's not what Forward accused him of), without affirming or denying he belonged to Vitezi Rend.

Hard to see how he can survive. I for one shan't shed a tear for him.

Added: Heatstreet now on the case as well.

A couple of Congressmen, both Democrats, have asked two congressional committees to look into the suspicion that Gorka did not report his membership on his immigration form. Hopefully, Gorka's days in the administration are numbered.

Here's today's eviscerating Foreign Policy piece by Daniel Nexon, "Dr. Sebastian Gorka May Be a Far-Right Nativist, But for Sure He’s a Terrible Scholar: A closer look at the doctoral dissertation of President Trump’s expert on 'radical Islamist terrorism.'" Nexon doesn't fail to mention that Gorka reminds everyone that, "It's DOCTOR Gorka," at all times. Nexon also highlights Gorka's absence of publications.

Mensch does good work. I enjoy her Twitter feed with the caveat that it is designed to appeal to a wide audience.