Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Whether or not you think public shaming should be happening, it’s important to understand why it’s happening. It’s less a result of a breakdown in civility than a breakdown of democracy. Though it’s tiresome to repeat it, Donald Trump eked out his minority victory with help from a hostile foreign power. He has ruled exclusively for his vengeful supporters, who love the way he terrifies, outrages and humiliates their fellow citizens.

Trump installed the right-wing Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat that Republicans stole from Barack Obama. Gorsuch, in turn, has been the fifth vote in decisions on voter roll purges and, on Monday, racial gerrymandering that will further entrench minority rule.

All over the country, Republican members of Congress have consistently refused to so much as meet with many of the scared, furious citizens they ostensibly represent. A great many of these citizens are working tirelessly to take at least one house of Congress in the midterms — which will require substantially more than 50 percent of total votes, given structural Republican advantages — so that the country’s anti-Trump majority will have some voice in the federal government.

But unless and until that happens, millions and millions of Americans watch helplessly as the president cages children, dehumanizes immigrants, spurns other democracies, guts health care protections, uses his office to enrich himself and turns public life into a deranged phantasmagoria with his incontinent flood of lies.

The civility police might point out that many conservatives hated Obama just as much, but that only demonstrates the limits of content-neutral analysis. The right’s revulsion against a black president targeted by birther conspiracy theories is not the same as the left’s revulsion against a racist president who spread birther conspiracy theories.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The Trump administration appears to be headed for a trade war on three fronts. As far as anyone can tell, it is simultaneously going to take on China, the European Union and our partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement. The economic fallout will be ugly.

But that’s probably not the whole story: There’s also likely to be ugly political fallout, not just abroad but here at home, too. In fact, I predict that as the downsides of hard-line trade policy become apparent, we’ll see a nasty search by President Trump and company for people to scapegoat. In fact, that search has already started.

To understand what’s coming, you need to understand two crucial points.

First, the administration has no idea what it’s doing. Its ideas on trade don’t seem to have evolved at all from those expressed in a white papercirculated by Wilbur Ross, now the commerce secretary, and Peter Navarro, now the trade czar, in 2016. That white paper was a display of sheer ignorance that had actual trade experts banging their heads on their desks. So these people are completely unprepared for the coming blowback.

Second, this administration is infested — I use that word advisedly — with conspiracy theorists. In fact, it seems, literally, to treat belief in absurd conspiracy theories as a job qualification. You may remember the case of an official at the Department of Health and Human Services who was temporarily suspended after reports that she had worked for a conspiracy-theory website. Well, it turns out that she listed that connection on her résumé when she applied for government employment. She was hired not despite but because of her connection to paranoid politics.

So what will happen when cluelessness meets conspiracy theorizing?

About that trade blowback: Trump famously declared that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Never mind the goodness issue: It’s already becoming apparent that the “easy to win” part is delusional. Other countries won’t quickly give in to U.S. demands, in part because those demands are incoherent — Trump is demanding that Europe end the “horrific” tariffs it doesn’t actually impose, while the Chinese can’t even figure out what the Trump administration wants, with officials callingAmerica “capricious.”

Add in the enormous amount of ill will Trump has generated around the world, and the idea that America is going to get major concessions anytime soon is deeply implausible. In fact, I’m finding it hard to see how we avoid a series of tit-for-tat retaliations that end up taking us well down the path toward full-blown trade war.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

There needs to be an honest conversation about asymmetric expectations of civility. (Thread)

It is not “hateful” to point out the influence of systematic and institutionalized racism on public figures.

It is not “incivility” to object to inhumane treatment and dehumanization of children and babies. It should, in fact, be a common cause with pro-life activists, whose commitment to infants should not depend on country of origin or race.

Calling a white person “deplorable” is not the same as calling a person of color a racial slur that has been used for generations to justify widespread violence, enslavement, kidnapping, rape, and murder.

Missing out on your pasta course (but receiving your cheese plate for free) is not similar to party-wide chants supporting the imprisonment of political opponents or making laws that humiliate millions of LGBTQ citizens.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1011433470764167168.html

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]