On Donald Trump
Trump is fundamentally a student of his father’s, with advanced lessons from Roy Cohn. He’s learned the New York way of schmoozing, exaggerating, telling people what he thinks they want to hear, being very slippery and blatantly lying seemingly about even things there’s no reason to lie about, in order to show disrespect to people he wants to hurt. From Cohn, a strategy mix of intimidation, implicit blackmail, clandestine forbidden sex, hard partying, international intrigue, seduction, and hard-nosed threats.
And that’s worked remarkably, even unbelievably well for Trump.
Until now. The Presidency is not a real estate empire or a mafia family. The nomenklatura, or institutional bureaucracy or what Erdogan and Trump like to call “The Deep State” are notoriously entranched and hard to control. A far more proficient sociopathic President, Richard Nixon, found this out to his dismay, as did Bill Clinton to a degree. Though the latter, by his Elmer Gantry/Huey Long talents, survived.
Bill Clinton and LBJ were extroverted people persons and were great at gladhandling/manhandling people to get what they wanted from Congress and the bureaucracy. Obama, an introvert, was less successful.
But Trump as President of the USA is disastrous. He is not unintelligent within certain parameters, but his judgment seems to be impaired much of the time, he seems to have limited medium term recall which he covers for by lying and his credibility with the apparatus is less than zero. Calling them out by name to insult them doesn’t help either. And backstabbing the NRA live on TV? That was in a way delightful but at the same time I have to go whaaat is thaaat? I can’t think of a worse thing he could have done politically to undermine his base and get a lot of heavily armed people very nervous and defensive than by publicly suggesting that arms should be seized from US citizens by law enforcement. “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” I mean he actually said those words quote unquote. Is this a will to self-destruction like Hitler in his bunker? The entire world hopes not! Is it all a theatre of the absurd he simply does. not. care? Is he an agent provocateur dancing to the tune of Putin’s “chef?”
I don’t know.
But we are all going to find out.
Interesting times.
Copyright © 2018 Henry Edward Hardy
Vote for Hillary Clinton to continue these Bush-Obama policies
Vote for Hillary Clinton to continue these Bush-Obama policies:
Eternal, undeclared, illegal, aggressive war. In Libya, Syria, Iraq, Mali, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Nigeria, Philippines, Honduras, and Yemen. Universal surveillance. General Warrants. Secret courts. National Security Letters. Endless imprisonment without trial or charge. Effective abolition of the writ of habeas corpus, notwithstanding that it is in the US Constitution Article I, Section 9. Black sites. Rendition. Special Ops death squads. Assassination of US citizens without trial or charge. Including juveniles. Robot bombs sent to assassinate more than 2,000 civilians so far in neutral countries with which we are not at war. Mercantilist trade policies such as TTIP, TPP, NAFTA. Okay, Hillary was for TPP and helped write it, until she was suddenly against it a few months ago. Fracking. Bailing out Wall Sreet, AIG to the tune of $318 thousand million dollars, then also bailing out big banks like Citi, who were already re-insured by AIG. But Obama could not find $20 billion to bail out Detroit’s pension funds, nor $60 million for public works to replace all the lead pipes in Flint.
Copyright © 2016 Henry Edward Hardy
Barak Obama: This is the Day
I’ve been watching the coverage of Barak Obama’s Innauguration. I took notes as the pundits tonight on CBS said,
5:52 PM listening to the pundits on TV “a golden day for Barak Obama”
“Millions came to Washington… I’m glad I got to see it”
5:53 PM “The people were speaking to us and it would be prudent to listen to them”
5:54 PM “Washington can be a very corrupting place, I hope this signals a new era of honesty and authenticity”
Bob Schieffer said he had seen 12 Inaugurations and never seen one like this, “this was something special”.
Even the stolid Francis X. Clines of the New York Times was taken by the levity of the crowd:
‘Is there a problem in the nation? Hear ordinary Americans chant: “O-ba-ma!” One tedious, serpentine line outside the Mall, its restlessness surfacing, suddenly was prodded into happiness when teenagers broke into song: “We’re off to see Obama — the wonderful president of ours!”
Later in the article the ever-serious Cline’s joy starts to show through:
‘The Obama speech patterns became a separate source of celebration, the way John F. Kennedy imitators used to do “vi-gah” salutes. After the speech, a man happily walking a bridge back to Virginia as the best way home suddenly tried an Obama riff on his friends. “We must walk the bridge built by our ancestors! We will find it long and hard! And we will confront Exit 10 C — wherever it leads!” His friends laughed and shared the pleasure of having heard firsthand President Obama in his opening hour.’
But what brought tears to my eyes:
Actress Cicely Tyson, asked her reaction, bursting out with the words of the 118th Psalm: “This is the day which the LORD hath made: and we *will* rejoice and be glad in it.”
Communist folk singer Pete Seeger, 89 years old, belting out the words of “This Land is Your Land” on the steps of the Lincoln memorial with five hundred thousand people on the Mall singing along in such spontaneous, profound joy.
Pete Seeger Bruce Springsteen Obama Inauguration [Google Video]
Guardian Editorial, 20 January 2009: This week, the 89-year-old Seeger stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial singing Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land with Springsteen at the pre-inauguration concert. Seeger’s judgment on politics and music has not always been right, but he is a man of his times and he has been the troubadour of the American left for more than half a century. His return to the spotlight is another sign that things are changing for the better in America this week. In praise of … Pete Seeger
Rick Warren: “We know that today, Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting up in heaven.”
cf. Hebrews 12:1 (KJV): “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us…”
Aretha Franklin, whose fabulous hat looked like she was wearing a grey, diamond-studded clipper ship, testifying to all our hopes and dreams with her breathless rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”.
“From every mountainside
Let Freedom Ring!”
See:
In Washington on Inauguration Day
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead
Delicious Subversion
Reborn in the USA: America is great again
President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address by David Bergman
Copyright © 2009 Henry Edward Hardy
Yes, we can!
Yes we can!
Election night morning, November 5, 2008
I have never been prouder of my country than I am tonight.
I just watched Obama’s acceptance speech on BBC. How beautiful to hear the cadences of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King from this remarkable man. Yes we can.
God Bless you Barak Hussein Obama, and God Bless the United States of America.
Copyright © 2008 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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