“We don’t need anybody,” may not be true at the moment. But it is useful to consider that in the view of his followers, it is aspirational. It also references a prominent, enduring theme in American culture.
I'll grant that "aspirational" is the right word to describe the "prominent, enduring theme in American culture." It surely does have to be understood. But that doesn't make it a reasonable aspiration, nor a reasonable world view, nor a logical one, given the situation as it actually is. Worked in 1796. Not so much in 1925. Nor now.
Reasonable, logical, workable? Probably not. Desperately wanted, longed for, the basis to the foundational premise, in a context where one is constantly told that he or she can achieve anything, if he tries hard enough? That’s a whole different register. This is not to justify it, so much as to shed light on where its energy comes from. The problem ges a lot deeper than one individual.
Yep. Agreed. But individuals make up groups, and groups are likeminded if they cohere and last. The problem indeed is that the "problem gets a lot deeper than one individual". And it's individuals acting in concert that comprise the stumbling block.
If you aren't aware of it...it's now a 20-plus-year-old book, James Webb's "Born Fighting: How the Scots Irish Saved America" is well worth your time. I think that if one understands the message of the book, they understand how what's going on came to be.
Indeed I did, Which is why I responded, to highlight an insufficiently considered background factor. It might not be true, but they wll go on wanting to ‘make it so.’ And there are a lot of them.
My brief moment of irony this mornings about interconnectedness. Normally I read your work in Ottawa which, I suspect, is often produced in Ottawa. So today you were writing in Australia and I am reading it over my breakfast in a Canberra cafe. Of course, both the ease with which I got here, and the ease with which I could have read it at home half a world away, demonstrate the premise.
Well, Mr. Gardner: Elect a clown (or, here, clowns); expect a circus. (Apologies to whoever uttered that invaluable aperçu, but I don't know who it was.)
It may, my desultory research suggests, owed to a Turkish proverb, holding that when a clown moves into the palace, he doesn't become sultan. Rather, the palace becomes a circus.
Excellent piece. Madness abounds. Canadian minesweepers cleared the way toward one of the two US invasion beaches in Normandy. Ancient history? Allied ships - NATO and others - have shouldered escort duties often in critical missions, including the Gulf. NATO force development over decades (very generally) focused most Allies on littoral or line-of-communications duties (destroyers, frigates, mine counter-measures, etc.), while the USN bulked out its all-ocean blue water fleet based around carrier battle groups, attack subs, and, for the Marines, amphibious ships. The French and British were very partial exceptions, but the burden sharing was essentially the USN controls the high seas while smaller ships of smaller navies work together the coastal waters, inland seas, and regional sea lanes. NATO still has substantial capabilities in this area, and two standing minesweeping flotillas; their origin dates to the 1970s in the English Channel. But, as noted, most ships belong to countries and within an alliance in whose collective orbitals DJT has serially urinated, so the likelihood of a bailout, short of a ceasefire, is rather low. "I hate you, your yard, your friends, your wife, and your dog, and laugh at your weakness and foreign mannerisms, but could you help a brother out by shoveling my driveway, you ungrateful so and so?" As usual, Dan, totally on target.
Besides being shameful and a matter of acute embarrassment for most (more or less) thoughtful Americans, Trump represents the closest thing to the embodiment of the triumph of the unalloyed, unapologetic, proudly aggressive STUPID that I’ve ever seen or thought I’d see in an American president. Full stop. Not only does he not know just how stupid he is, he couldn’t care less. If it were only his fellow Americans who had to pay the price for this stupidity, or the morons who voted for him (particularly the second or third time), that would be deserved, if still tragic. That the rest of the world might have to help clean up the huge mess he leaves behind (if he leaves anything) is unforgivably worse. If my most humble and sincere apology was worth anything, I’d offer it here. Instead, I’ll shut my trap.
Well said Mr. Gardner. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by folding to Trump. To borrow your metaphor, if you let him steal your lunch today, he will think you deserve to have him steal it tomorrow.
He has only one course of action left: to withdraw from the Iran conflict, declaring it a victory as America has achieved her (deplorable) goals.
Or to paraphrase the man himself, "...get this bitch out of here."
Great premise and truthful. You accurately capture the feeling of being threatened, bullied and attacked on one hand while being courted, coerced, and gaslit on the other. We are in the midst of this framing.
n.b. Many edits and grammar checks are required. Consider an edit repost.
Trump's "we don't need anybody" mindset echoes right through our House debates. I checked the latest Hansard. MPs flagged how his government hiked tariffs to 35 percent on Canadian goods not covered by CUSMA. Our auto and forestry sectors are taking the hit. It shows why pretending we can go solo just costs jobs on both sides of the border.
I wonder if, after he's gone by whatever means, we will be able to recover to any extent from this fever dream. Obviously the manner of his passing will matter significantly but we handed him outrageous power and let him take more than he was supposed to. After he's gone we will have lost more than we knew and far more than he ever could care about or imagine. And be assured that he doesn't care for what happens the first second after he's gone.
With approval ratings in the US, even from MAGA supporters, plummeting I wonder how he will react as the full realization dawns that he's cornered and set to lose Congress and the Senate. Aside from all the narcissistic lying and egregious behaviour will he stand down quietly? He has his ill earned crypto gains and plenty of money thanks to his presidency. I still shake my head in something like disbelief.
I was just thinking about Trump being incapacitated. And then Vance would become president and he get to support the war even though he's against it seems.
“We don’t need anybody,” may not be true at the moment. But it is useful to consider that in the view of his followers, it is aspirational. It also references a prominent, enduring theme in American culture.
Did you read the piece
See my comment below about James Webb's book.
I'll grant that "aspirational" is the right word to describe the "prominent, enduring theme in American culture." It surely does have to be understood. But that doesn't make it a reasonable aspiration, nor a reasonable world view, nor a logical one, given the situation as it actually is. Worked in 1796. Not so much in 1925. Nor now.
Reasonable, logical, workable? Probably not. Desperately wanted, longed for, the basis to the foundational premise, in a context where one is constantly told that he or she can achieve anything, if he tries hard enough? That’s a whole different register. This is not to justify it, so much as to shed light on where its energy comes from. The problem ges a lot deeper than one individual.
Yep. Agreed. But individuals make up groups, and groups are likeminded if they cohere and last. The problem indeed is that the "problem gets a lot deeper than one individual". And it's individuals acting in concert that comprise the stumbling block.
If you aren't aware of it...it's now a 20-plus-year-old book, James Webb's "Born Fighting: How the Scots Irish Saved America" is well worth your time. I think that if one understands the message of the book, they understand how what's going on came to be.
Indeed I did, Which is why I responded, to highlight an insufficiently considered background factor. It might not be true, but they wll go on wanting to ‘make it so.’ And there are a lot of them.
Well, sure, aspiration. It was the other comment I found odd, as I though I made it clear it as an “enduring, prominent theme in American culture.”
My brief moment of irony this mornings about interconnectedness. Normally I read your work in Ottawa which, I suspect, is often produced in Ottawa. So today you were writing in Australia and I am reading it over my breakfast in a Canberra cafe. Of course, both the ease with which I got here, and the ease with which I could have read it at home half a world away, demonstrate the premise.
Well, Mr. Gardner: Elect a clown (or, here, clowns); expect a circus. (Apologies to whoever uttered that invaluable aperçu, but I don't know who it was.)
It may, my desultory research suggests, owed to a Turkish proverb, holding that when a clown moves into the palace, he doesn't become sultan. Rather, the palace becomes a circus.
Who knows? Doesn''t make it less true.
Excellent piece. Madness abounds. Canadian minesweepers cleared the way toward one of the two US invasion beaches in Normandy. Ancient history? Allied ships - NATO and others - have shouldered escort duties often in critical missions, including the Gulf. NATO force development over decades (very generally) focused most Allies on littoral or line-of-communications duties (destroyers, frigates, mine counter-measures, etc.), while the USN bulked out its all-ocean blue water fleet based around carrier battle groups, attack subs, and, for the Marines, amphibious ships. The French and British were very partial exceptions, but the burden sharing was essentially the USN controls the high seas while smaller ships of smaller navies work together the coastal waters, inland seas, and regional sea lanes. NATO still has substantial capabilities in this area, and two standing minesweeping flotillas; their origin dates to the 1970s in the English Channel. But, as noted, most ships belong to countries and within an alliance in whose collective orbitals DJT has serially urinated, so the likelihood of a bailout, short of a ceasefire, is rather low. "I hate you, your yard, your friends, your wife, and your dog, and laugh at your weakness and foreign mannerisms, but could you help a brother out by shoveling my driveway, you ungrateful so and so?" As usual, Dan, totally on target.
Besides being shameful and a matter of acute embarrassment for most (more or less) thoughtful Americans, Trump represents the closest thing to the embodiment of the triumph of the unalloyed, unapologetic, proudly aggressive STUPID that I’ve ever seen or thought I’d see in an American president. Full stop. Not only does he not know just how stupid he is, he couldn’t care less. If it were only his fellow Americans who had to pay the price for this stupidity, or the morons who voted for him (particularly the second or third time), that would be deserved, if still tragic. That the rest of the world might have to help clean up the huge mess he leaves behind (if he leaves anything) is unforgivably worse. If my most humble and sincere apology was worth anything, I’d offer it here. Instead, I’ll shut my trap.
Well said Mr. Gardner. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by folding to Trump. To borrow your metaphor, if you let him steal your lunch today, he will think you deserve to have him steal it tomorrow.
He has only one course of action left: to withdraw from the Iran conflict, declaring it a victory as America has achieved her (deplorable) goals.
Or to paraphrase the man himself, "...get this bitch out of here."
Great premise and truthful. You accurately capture the feeling of being threatened, bullied and attacked on one hand while being courted, coerced, and gaslit on the other. We are in the midst of this framing.
n.b. Many edits and grammar checks are required. Consider an edit repost.
Trump's "we don't need anybody" mindset echoes right through our House debates. I checked the latest Hansard. MPs flagged how his government hiked tariffs to 35 percent on Canadian goods not covered by CUSMA. Our auto and forestry sectors are taking the hit. It shows why pretending we can go solo just costs jobs on both sides of the border.
I wonder if, after he's gone by whatever means, we will be able to recover to any extent from this fever dream. Obviously the manner of his passing will matter significantly but we handed him outrageous power and let him take more than he was supposed to. After he's gone we will have lost more than we knew and far more than he ever could care about or imagine. And be assured that he doesn't care for what happens the first second after he's gone.
With approval ratings in the US, even from MAGA supporters, plummeting I wonder how he will react as the full realization dawns that he's cornered and set to lose Congress and the Senate. Aside from all the narcissistic lying and egregious behaviour will he stand down quietly? He has his ill earned crypto gains and plenty of money thanks to his presidency. I still shake my head in something like disbelief.
We are witnessing in real time, the ongoing tragedy of American isolationism.
I was just thinking about Trump being incapacitated. And then Vance would become president and he get to support the war even though he's against it seems.