The list of awardees of the Presidential Medal of Freedom is kind of a mixed bag already — for every Anthony Fauci there’s an Antonin Scalia, for every Toni Morrison an Irving Kristol, for every Jesse Jackson a James Watson. It’s political, it’s by whim and by credible honor, it’s a mess. It’s nice to see someone you favor get the recognition, but it’s never been anything but a too-freely given token that a president liked you.
Now it’s that much more meaningless. Donald Trump is handing one out to Jim Jordan, the cowardly hack who looked the other way as student athletes were sexually molested, the political leech who is one of the far right hard cases who still insists that Trump won the last election, who even now refuses to admit that there was no “steal”, and whose ambition far exceeds his ability. He’s the perfect Trump apparatchik, in other words.
Boy, Trump is determined to leave a thick layer of slime over everything as he exits, isn’t he?
Yes, he does, and as you say meaningless. I mean giving out medals to his golfing buddies? The guy’s completely cheap, totally self-referential, and juvenile–and of course rotten to the core.
Who was it who pointed out years ago that everything Trump touches dies?
I’m just waiting for The Vicar to appear and claim that Anthony Fauci is just as bad as Antonin Scalia, Toni Morrison as Irving Kristol, Jesse Jackson as James Watson.
I was so glad when when my congressional district boundaries changed, and that cheap prick Jordan wasn’t representing me anymore. True, I got another loser republican instead. I wish somebody on the floor of the House would publicly draw a comparison between Jordan looking the other way when a crime is committed under his nose, both at OSU and in the present.
stroppy@#2:
Who was it who pointed out years ago that everything Trump touches dies?
Everyone who has ever worked for Trump?
Well at least Belicheat has his limits.
Hopefully his protege TB@TB can vanquish the Saints…long shot.
Seems the PMOF is the amurican version of the English honours system .
He has also given the medal to the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, a failed advertising executive referred to by various names such as ScoMo, less politely Scummo and a real insult to sex workers, Scum Ho. He is also a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian whose mentor and church founder is a pedophile. He has not been backwards about using taxpayers money to fund his church either. They have received several million in government grants which have bypassed the usual formal application and vetting process. During the 2019-2020 bushfire season, the worst in history which decimated small coastal and country towns he decided to holiday in Hawaii only to return to Australia when the criticism got too hot. There are several videos of him trying to shake hands with reluctant and traumatised victims who want nothing to do with him and of fire fighters exhausted from days risking their lives on the fire front telling in the strongest possible terms to fuck off. All round a version of Trump-Lite .
Advice from 1804:
When Napoleon wanted the support of the students at Polytechnic University to allow him the right to award the Legion of Honor, they refused: The cross given without investigation and without control would in many cases become the reward of charlatanry and not real merit.
@ ealloc
Re: médaille de la légion d’honneur going into a serious depreciation
As one 19th-century artist told another one, who just declined the honor:
“Good of you to turn it down, but it would have been better if you didn’t deserved it in the first place!”
That is part of it.
The other parts are worse.
Trump is burning down whatever he can on his way out.
That pile of ashes and charcoal in front of the US Capitol building is…what he could torch of our democracy.
He is also leaving some dead bodies here and there.
Like those people he is having executed as part of his good bye to us or those dead in the Capitol attack.
And, don’t forget the 380,000 dead in the Covid-19 pandemic, 95,000 Benghazis or 6.6 American Vietnam war’s worth.
A suggestion to stop narcissists and psychopaths from reaching important posts.
Stanford researchers have figured out which parts of mouse brains are active during feelings of empathy.
If this research can be translated to humans, it can be used as a diagnostic tool to spot monsters that have learned the social skills to appear charming when they are not busy slicing and dicing bodies with a chain saw.
I suspect a lot of politicians and businessmen are stone sociopaths.
@11Raven ,Gotterdammerung is a good word for what he is trying to do.
I just heard a slime ball rep (R) use the term cancel culture during his allotted speaking time in the impeachment 2.0 live stream.
I missed his name but I think he is from VA.
I think it’s time to institute a basic competency test in order to be eligible to hold office. The word salad that just issued from the female trumplican from Georgia included democrats are evil and trying to take away their guns. She further claimed that the democrats policies are pro invasions of immigrants and the death of manufacturing in America. Is this the same fool who thinks she is exempt from metal detectors and the policy of no guns on the house floor?
@12- birgerjohansson
Could there be a difference between facultative and obligate sociopaths? Car salespeople and mortgage brokers (to the extent they had a clue what they were doing to people) seem to be able to switch it on and off per transactional context.
If what I think I understand of Critical Theory is true, being immersed into a market based society where commodification and objectifying people as means is rampant may lead to people without innate sociopathic potential to lean further into horrible treatment of others because profit motive and winning are burned into the social orientation circuitry as an effect of socialization.
Also I had thought being inured or numb to consequences as much a component of sociopathy as alleged lack of empathy. Good manipulators can model minds of others and see things from a victim’s POV. This makes schadenfreude so delicious and may add spice to a sadist’s experience.
Compassion and sympathy may be more important than empathy to shutdown manipulation or brutalization, but perhaps antisocials and sociopaths lack consequential fear that dissuades most people from doing what they do to others. I had seen something on TV where some behavioral scientist was brain scanning violent prisoners for differences in amygdalar size.
@14- Tethys
I think you are talking about the loon from Colorado Boebert who wants to tote her precious Glock.
Not a bad idea, in a way. Most jobs require some kind of evidence that you can do the job. But, imagine such thing being enacted or modified by a highly conservative, religious administration? Imagine Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) helping define the criteria for such a test. She’s the new rep who said she would carry a gun in the Capitol and set off a metal detector yesterday when she entered the Capitol.
The election is the test that says the constituents have consented to some person as their representative. There are specific reasons elected officials can be ousted from office, but I’m against the notion of “competency” test, since it’s not even clear to me what it entails. The goal is government by consent of the governed. That requirement supersedes other considerations, assuming you go by the definition of legitimacy in the Declaration of Independence (which is my working definition anyway).
We should work on improving the governed, both as citizens and as critical thinkers, through public education. I know that feels like a losing proposition, particularly now, but there is no shortcut that is consistent with democracy.
Thanks! I knew others here would have caught all the names. I am currently distracted by grandchildren.
I suggest using the same test we currently administer to people in order to become American citizens. It’s clear some of the current crop couldn’t pass 5th grade civics.
PaulBC @ #18 — Yep, “competency” tests are problematic. Competency tests for voters have ben enacted in the past, specifically to deny the right to vote to people who can’t read. Practically this was a handy way to deny voting rights to people of color who were denied the education to attain basic reading competency.
Working on improving the governed has something of the same problem, of course. Who determines what kind of improvement needs to happen. To some it might be verifying that you believe in god, accept Jesus as your savior, and go to church three or more times a week.
KG @ #3 — A troll who’s trolling works even when not actively trolling a thread is a very successful troll indeed.
Tethys@19 Sometimes when ignorance is exposed, like Gary Johnson asking “What is Aleppo?” it can harm a candidacy. (On the other hand, there is Rick Perry forgetting the existence of the Department of Energy and being rewarded by being put in charge of it.) Maybe the solution is more public exposure, but that doesn’t mean candidates won’t get votes anyway. If you really wanted to administer a test, you’d probably need a change to the constitution (IANAL). If you start applying similar tests for the right to vote, you’re back to Jim Crow tactics, and they certainly would be used to suppress votes, not “improve standards.”
I believe that people have the right to vote for idiots. What can we do to make it less likely for them to win?
robro@21 I’m sure he’s enjoying that… vicariously.
We do have a list of preexisting criteria to hold high office. The office of President can only be held by a natural born citizen, at least 35 years old, never been convicted of a felony, etc..
It has been revised over the course of history. I believe male and landowner were also included at one time.
Basic knowledge of civics and history as a minimum requirement to run for congress at all would be something that is taken for granted. Sort of like being able to pass the drivers test before you can have a drivers license.
robro@21,
Good point – I’ll restrain myself!
Heh, well testing for knowledge of civics could conceivably have kept Trump out of office.
I was just listening to very infuriating parts of the “debate” that were so bad I had to turn it off. Some of those Republicans are very skilled at thought terminating rhetoric, the kind of sticky slime that gets sprayed into your brain, and then takes hours to scrub out– and that’s even if you’re even inclined to make the effort.
What an evil mess.
@21
There is still merit to feeding the trolls. This forums policy used to be just that actually. Some trolls are there to spread misinformation. Addressing the troll can help stop that by giving potential readers the correct info or better argument/reasoning.
That is also the one in trouble now for supporting the terrorist attackers.
She is the one who tweeted out Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts, within a minute of when the attackers got into the US Capitol.
If they had found Nancy Pelosi, someone(s) would have been dead and it might have been the third most powerful person in the US government.
I would’t trust Lauren Boebert with a gun and I would never turn my back on her.
BTW, she has a long criminal history in Colorado, most of it so far minor but stupid stuff.
Xpost Patheos.
Laeren Boebert clearly she feels entitled to ignore the laws and police and do whatever she wants.
She is definitely on the creepy side.
and not paying her bills.
A large number of Republicans are joining her in flouting the metal detectors and ignoring the police who try to stop them. This will not end well, as we’ve seen in NY and SF with Askew’s murder of Davis in 2003, and Dan White murdering Moscone and Milk in 1978.
But of course asking Republicans to abide by rules that airports and school and other public facilities must follow is TYRANNY™ I tells ya!
Ridana@30 If there’s one big reason I’m seriously considering retiring abroad, and sooner rather than later, it’s the increasing presence of guns. Sorry, but an armed society is not a polite society, and I think we’ve seen enough evidence of that. Assassinations have been part of the backdrop of US politics since the founding, but today explicit, organized intimidation is becoming the norm of politics. And there are too many idiots with guns out there and too many opportunities to be caught in the crossfire. I don’t see any evidence of the pendulum swinging back and I don’t even know what it would take. We’re well on the way to becoming a failed state if we’re not there already.
That repeated “75 million” is a means of cheerleading themselves. It’s rhetoric because it seems better than 75/300+ million. That kind of thing seems to work for me. What messages are they using to cheerlead themselves?
Also Switzerland seems stable in relation to us.
raven @ #29
Boebert’s also being sued for blocking people from the Twitter account she uses for official communications. She acts tough with the gun and calling impeachment “bullcrap”, but like Trump and my late unlamented Senator Corey Gardner, she’s racist and chickenshit. We have three Republicans left who hold national office, including her, and they’re all already on the list to defeat in 2022. I’ve been Unaffiliated for about 20 years because I don’t think much of political parties in general. That used to be more of a drawback because I could only vote in general elections. Now unaffiliated voters can choose to vote in primary elections for candidates from one party, but, since I’ve concluded that there’s no way I would vote for any of the current Republicans I might be able to (except for ratfucking), I’m going to change my registration to Democrat. I’m going to suggest that others do the same. If it becomes a trend, it might be politically significant. And to he who must not be named, suck my dick.
PaulBC @23 I see what you did there . . .