...clown shoes are preferable to jackboots.

November 14, 2024 4:16 PM

Refuge In Kakistocracy "... in a month with few bright spots, here is a glimmer of hope: Team Trump’s most human failings may thwart some of their most evil plans."
posted by kirkaracha (48 comments total)

Waiting for Trump to decide between Bernie Madoff and SBF for Treasury Secretary.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:27 PM on November 14 [6 favorites]

I remember that people in the 1920s regarded Hitler as a clown and a buffoon. A funny little man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache. But with the aid of a club-footed anti-semite, a vainglorious heroin addict, and an overly nerdy racist chicken farmer, they killed millions and devastated a continent.

Elites like to comfort themselves with the pettiness and incompetence of their opposition. But petty incompetents can run concentration camps too- just look at Amon Goethe.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 4:47 PM on November 14 [78 favorites]

The clowns are there to distract you from the jackboots.
posted by notoriety public at 4:59 PM on November 14 [22 favorites]

I wouldn't let any one of these bozos run a sidewalk lemonade stand without adult supervision...
posted by jim in austin at 5:06 PM on November 14

Elites like to comfort themselves with the pettiness and incompetence of their opposition.

I mean, the point of the article is not that it won’t be bad, just that these particular malevolent clowns aren’t the worst case scenario. If the Nazis hadn’t been largely backbiting grifters fueled by idiotic resentments and bargain basement fantasies, the middle of the 20th C could have been a whole lot worse. That’s not the same as “this is going to be fine.”
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:12 PM on November 14 [19 favorites]

Yeah, but despite their claims, they're not trying to build something huge, complex, and beautiful. They're just out to fuck shit up. You don't have to be very smart to be good at that.
posted by Naberius at 5:16 PM on November 14 [11 favorites]

I wouldn't let any one of these bozos run a sidewalk lemonade stand without adult supervision...

I suspect they have plenty of adult supervision. And a lot of it is coming from outside the country, from people who have very clear plans and goals in mind of how to benefit from the US crashing and burning.
posted by notoriety public at 5:23 PM on November 14 [17 favorites]

Also, we’ve seen his first term. Half of the guys weren’t even in office long enough to do anything.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:23 PM on November 14 [4 favorites]

I remember that people in the 1920s regarded Hitler as a clown and a buffoon.

That would make you well over a hundred years old, so no.

And they didn’t, so that’s an extra no.
posted by Galvanic at 5:34 PM on November 14 [6 favorites]

And a lot of it is coming from outside the country, from people who have very clear plans and goals in mind of how to benefit from the US crashing and burning.

I find myself constantly wondering what signs of distress in the US China will be looking for before moving on Taiwan. I’m certain will have to be, in part, some sort of massive sacking of Pentagon officials.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:36 PM on November 14 [6 favorites]

I wonder how much working for Trump increases one's chances of being convicted of a crime. Like, yeah, he sometimes pardons his cronies, but he's an old man, and I wouldn't want to bet on a Vance pardon.
posted by surlyben at 6:02 PM on November 14

Right now, if I were a NATO country, I would be planning as if the US won't get involved - Trump was pretty insistent that they pay us for protection the last time. Taiwan is just straight up screwed. Hell, he probably won't do anything if Best Korea decides to nuke Friend Korea. Or Japan.

I don't see Trump doing anything that isn't in his own best interest, certainly not the US's best interest, unless he won that state in the election.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 6:30 PM on November 14 [3 favorites]

After just now checking it out, I have to present today's Jimmie Kimmel's monologue not so much for his mordant takes on Trump's cabinet picks as for when he calls a Waymo to take his Aunt Chippie to the show. Now that is the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.
posted by y2karl at 6:36 PM on November 14 [4 favorites]

Trump will not be the next president.

Start planning for that.
posted by dsword at 7:50 PM on November 14

You think it’s gonna be… Vance? Literally, or Cheney style?
posted by atoxyl at 8:31 PM on November 14 [2 favorites]

Ken White is a man who repeatedly conveys that he knows he will be absolutely fine in the circumstances that are making many others fearful and panicked.

He has completely failed to learn the lesson of the past eight years: that idiot clowns can still be incredibly dangerous.

I would really like to stop hearing from Ken White.
posted by AlSweigart at 8:45 PM on November 14 [9 favorites]

AlSweigart, I don't think that's at all what this article is conveying.

But as always, if you don't want to read about the subject of a post, there are plenty of other posts available for you to read and comment on.
posted by teraflop at 9:25 PM on November 14 [6 favorites]

I would really like to stop hearing from Ken White.

No one is forcing you to read a literal blog post on his personal blog.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 10:14 PM on November 14 [4 favorites]

So I'm wondering, how does this post relate to gallows humor? As long as we are talking about finding comedy within tragedy.

I am reminded of 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs' when James Franco's character, who escapes one noose and finds himself in a second noose, asks another prisoner beside him on the gallows, "First time?" That's what this re-election feels like to me.

This post is more like the author is on the gallows jerking his thumb at the executioner and guards and saying, "These guys, they're really not up to snuff. They make all kinds of mistakes. They probably aren't even good at their jobs."
posted by panhopticon at 11:28 PM on November 14 [8 favorites]

He has completely failed to learn the lesson of the past eight years: that idiot clowns can still be incredibly dangerous.

Well, this is all for reasons that Upton Sinclair laid out a century ago. And honestly, I'm pretty much done with the free speech "absolutist" set that White has been at the vanguard of for the past decade or so, as in my view they were part of how we got here, with how they made excuse after excuse for why we have to allow the spewing of hate and bigotry, why we have to treat such as somehow a legitimate response.

I also remember reading his response to the Alex Jones trials, where for the first time he couldn't just dismiss the testimony of those who wound up having their lives ruined purely due to the words of one man - in large part because they were testimony, a format that he was professionally trained to not be able to dismiss outright. As I recall, he seemed haunted by it, as if for one moment he finally was facing the thought that maybe he hadn't been on the side of good with his "advocacy". Pity it didn't last.

No one is forcing you to read a literal blog post on his personal blog.

You're missing Al's point, which is that White comes across as someone very strongly sure of his beliefs and positions, while lacking introspection in such. Not to mention that for a good decade at least, he is someone who has been pushed as a thought leader (particularly with regards to free speech) even while he would openly argue things like "the Yale Law students are horrible for protesting that the university would allow the platforming of people who want to criminalize homosexuality."

It's less a complaint about the posting of the article, and more a statement that given that part of how we got here was how he and his compatriots argued for hate to have a seat at the table, perhaps he should be reflecting on how his positions helped us get here.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:08 AM on November 15 [12 favorites]

I don't take any comfort at all from the incompetence of the picks, especially when at least half of them have ties to Russia. As far as I can tell the entire point is to run an incompetent government.
posted by subdee at 12:30 AM on November 15 [8 favorites]

Apropos of nothing, here are some of the actual jobs Hitler's top guys had before he put them in charge of Germany:
Von Ribbentrop - wine salesman. Added the 'von' to his name cos he wanted to be an aristocrat
Goebbels: Bank clerk
Himmler: Chicken farmer/ manure processing plant worker
Eichman: Door to door salesman
Striecher - schoolteacher
Walther Funk - newspaper editor
So next time YOU think you're 'just' a chicken farmer, remember! A genocidal maniac could appoint you into a position of unmitigated power over the lives of millions! Dream big!
posted by rory at 4:09 AM on November 15 [11 favorites]

Also, we’ve seen his first term. Half of the guys weren’t even in office long enough to do anything.

Trump’s mental condition is visibly deteriorating. I wouldn’t count on him being the main person running the show, at least not for much longer.
posted by eviemath at 4:30 AM on November 15 [3 favorites]

I have one terrible hilarious hope(?)
Trump well, bites it from age. And the infighting begins. Because you think vance et al is gonna let DOGE happen

But you say any of his idas are stupid and every trumpist throws a fit....

Though then again then you might have a competent faction fill that bubble

Whoever wished for more interesting times on the monkey paw, this is your fault. My only minor sliver of hope is these buffoons will squabble openly for 4 years
posted by AngelWuff at 4:40 AM on November 15 [2 favorites]

I am astonished that I had to read the entire article plus 13 comments before any mention of soon-to-be President Vance. I suspect the clown shoes will be buried along with Drumpf by February at the latest, and then the jackboots will seriously, expertly step on our faces.
posted by Watt C Madda at 4:40 AM on November 15 [8 favorites]

On the one hand I doubt trump will let himself be pushed aside that easily, on the other he does seem quite easy to manipulate these days.
posted by subdee at 4:55 AM on November 15 [1 favorite]

As far as I can tell the entire point is to run an incompetent government.

Or light so many things on fire and hope people are worried about fire fighting so you can walk out with more cash. Being in government has been a cash printing machine and one can point to how the net worth of congress members increases as an example that isn't the Trump family in case one is thinking Trump is unique beyond the grotesque nature.

Kinda like if you had rooms with paper docs which need time and skill to figure out what crimes have been committed. Paper removed or altered - might get detected. Light fire to the room - questions would get asked. But if the building got wrecked - people will switch to how the building got wrecked and most will focus on the wrecking VS what fraud crimes those rooms were trying to figure out. Wreck the rooms in a bold way you might have more fraud opportunities with your solutions to the wrecking.

Sadly the voice I've seen get more views about the linkage of Trump to Nixon searches for conspiracies (dark journalist) VS a guy who was key in the Nixon story and considered far more authoritative (bob woodward). Cohen, Stone and personal meeting with Nixon are boring*. Pointing out how Nixon got Powell on SCOTUS and the after effects is also boring but is another through line to the present day issues.

If one goes back to Powell/Nixon as a source of issues Trump isn't the footwear to be trying to correct for the longer term. If the will to examine those issues existed TYT would have more of a following VS Cenk saying "of course that is corruption" and broadly ignored.

Start thinking in terms of the Church committee for a framework.


* VS adding in a claim of alien powered energy equation hidden by Nixon needed to be gotten back to the public by Trump? Why hide that in the WH? The shared psychic Jean said that's how it had to be. Much more exciting VS old man who delays publishing info that should have happened sooner. Really want to worry about a Trump legacy - imagine the claimed clean energy patent represents a real, producible device and he uses the power of his office to get that in production for civilian usage.
posted by rough ashlar at 5:01 AM on November 15

They may not have thought Hitler a clown, but there were many who didn't take him seriously. His antisemitism in particular, was assumed to be just a way to attract the uneducated.

Even some Jewish Germans couldn’t take him seriously. A young Jewish man, reported the Post, “appeared at the office of a friend, wearing in the lapel of his coat a button showing a large number ‘1.’ Asked whether the button indicated membership in some singing or athletic society, he made the response: ‘Hitler says he’s going to kill every second Jew. I am, therefore, playing it safe.’ [“The New German Leadership” by Isaac F. Marcosson, May 16, 1931]

posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:11 AM on November 15 [3 favorites]

I don't take any comfort at all from the incompetence of the picks

Indeed, there will be armies of contractor from Haliburton or Palantir happy to take on whatever job and charge the government for doing to boot.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:15 AM on November 15 [2 favorites]

In one of the other threads, the incompetence and grift of Trump and those around him is also being talked about, in the context of the threatened mass deportations. But here’s the thing: sure, lack of resources and staff to run an immigration detention center might make /you/ avoid rounding people up and putting them in the half-built, non-functional detention center. But that’s not something that Trump and co (especially white supremacist advisor Stephen Miller) worry about. The family separations of Trump’s first term weren’t originally the plan, they happened because of incompetence, and that was the worse situation. Indian Residential Schools weren’t set up or planned to kill hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children due to malnutrition and inadequate (even for the time) hygiene and medical care, or to fully enable rampant physical and sexual abuse, that happened due to incompetence and grift/theft at various middle levels of administration. (Admittedly the emotional and cultural abuse was part of the plan in that case.) The Trail of Tears was an organizational clusterfuck, and that is a significant part of why it was so bad. Et cetera throughout both North American and world history. Most genocides and atrocities have occurred due to mismanagement, grift and corruption, and the venality of people who simply don’t care about others - they don’t care enough to see others as human, but nor do they care enough to actively hate in an organized way; they just don’t care and are only it it for their own personal benefit. The ratio of genocides and attrocities that have occurred due to outright, organized hatred on the part of their instigators to those that have occurred for entirely venal, banal reasons on the part of their instigators is probably about the same as the ratio of those motivated by organized hatred in Trump’s circle (eg. white supremacist Stephen Miller, maybe one or two others) versus those motivated just by personal greed who don’t see others as human and don’t care.
posted by eviemath at 5:42 AM on November 15 [14 favorites]

In other words, intent - whether you describe it as in/competence, or as grift vs organized hatred - doesn’t correlate with scale of harm, and is the wrong thing to focus on (here as in most other questions of morality or ethics).
posted by eviemath at 5:48 AM on November 15 [5 favorites]

White comes across as someone very strongly sure of his beliefs and positions, while lacking introspection in such.

Maybe he should get a MetaFilter account.
posted by box at 7:09 AM on November 15 [4 favorites]

They may not have thought Hitler a clown, but there were many who didn't take him seriously.

We've already seen how all Trump's court cases have preemptively tossed themselves away, and he isn't even President yet. The Behind the Bastards podcast has a two-part series on how the more liberal media outlets in 1930's Germany similarly capitulated (as we saw with all the sanewashing from our media). Part 1 and Part 2.

All this "he's too incompetent" and "his mental condition is deteriorating" and "the adults in the room will stop him" is more self-soothing fairy stories we're telling ourselves. Ken White is contributing to it with his terminal lawyer-brain takes. I found a post that explains the flaw in better words than I could come up with:

There are three types of people in this. Two understand that the Law is whatever those who are in charge make it. These groups are fascists and antifa.

The rest in the middle have an unexamined belief that there's some kind of magical forcefield protecting them and theirs. That the Law is some kind of natural law that cannot be violated, especially not towards them.

The first two groups are struggling to gain or maintain control of the Law, the first to control everyone else, the second to protect freedom for everyone else.

The group in the middle is the playing field, and that's who the fa have won over. My brother, my mom, fully trust in this magical forcefield to protect them from their choices in leadership.

But many of us who lack sufficient privilege, we've seen that the Law is not magic, and has been wielded against the innocent forever, and that this can get worse in the wrong hands. And it can get better in the right hands.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:33 AM on November 15 [14 favorites]

And that, for me, is why "binding our hands will never bind theirs" is such an important thing to learn. This idea that somehow we can stop their abuses by limiting ourselves does not hold up, and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can better fight back.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:21 AM on November 15 [9 favorites]

So much thread, so much heat, so little light.

As I was reading TFA it did occur to me to think what people have been pointing out, which is namely that Hitler's crew did not have exactly serious CVs before they went to work building the Reich. On the other hand: Matt Gaetz. We have seen enough of him to know that he does not have the makings of a Goebbels or Himmler. He's more like one of those guys who got taken out in the Night of the Long Knives. Which is a reminder of what stage we're at, if that's the playbook.

Anyway, while it is true that "All that is required for Evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing" it is also true that "All that is required for Evil to fail, often, is for good men to stay out of the way while Evil cuts its nose to spite its face, paints itself into a corner, nails its own feet to the floor, and finally shoots itself in the head from sheer frustration with the consequences of its own stupidity."

I'm thinking things are going to be bad and a lot of people will be fucked. I have family-by-marriage who are from Brazil, and have green cards and citizen-born kids, and I don't think they're safe. But I also think that our worst imaginings will not come to pass, and have hopes that we will still have elections that could mean something in the next few years.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:23 AM on November 15 [5 favorites]

Matt Gaetz. We have seen enough of him to know that he does not have the makings of a Goebbels or Himmler.

Matt Gaetz beat all allegations into his trafficking underaged girls for sex. He is still serving in Congress representing Florida's 1st district. He will now lead the Justice Department that he had been investigated by.

I think what those on the left forget is that, in politics, winning is not the best thing; it's the only thing.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:47 AM on November 15 [12 favorites]

Kakistocracy might save people from active harm, it exacerbates other issues like, I don't know, massive hurricanes and wildfires.

One could respond to this whole thing with, "No. See: Brexit"

What I really want is an article from him with the energy of the final Midnight Mass episode, looking out at the scene and going, "Wow, we really fucked that up"
posted by Slackermagee at 11:31 AM on November 15 [1 favorite]

We appear to be moving along to the Bargaining stage of grief ("It actually won't be that bad because they're too incompetent to pull stuff off!"). It's nice that most seem to have moved out of Denial. Or maybe this is still more of that. Anyway, it will be nice when people can face the reality head-on.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:45 AM on November 15 [5 favorites]

He is still serving in Congress representing Florida's 1st district.

Actually, he isn't - he resigned on Wednesday to preempt the report that was to be released today.

What I really want is an article from him with the energy of the final Midnight Mass episode, looking out at the scene and going, "Wow, we really fucked that up"

And for me, that would have him say things like "I really shouldn't have called students fighting against their humanity being out for debate 'nasty little Maoists'."

Or "actually, alcoholic judges undermining justice for the people before them facing public consequences is good."

Or "using lines like 'speech you don't agree with' is bad faith argumentation that I used because I couldn't actually defend what I was defending."

White has always been the advocate of "hate speech is the price of free speech", and what I would most like to see him say after seeing where that led us is "I was wrong - if we want actual freedom, then hate cannot have a place."
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:51 AM on November 15 [6 favorites]

None of us in this thread are lawyers against Matt Gaetz -we didn't have anything to do with the charges being raised or dropped.. None of us know Merrick Garland well enough to kick him in the butt and tell him to hurry up because this was a potential outcome. Maybe the people Democrats put in place to defend us were equally as incompetent, morally bankrupt, and lazy? It sure seems that way right now. We all trust the law because mostly it has done the right thing, and at reasonable speed. If the rule of law is subsumed, then we have nothing to defend nor any way to defend ourselves, except maybe be wealthy or join their cult.

That's pretty jarring.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:14 PM on November 15 [6 favorites]

"If the rule of law is subsumed, then we have nothing to defend nor any way to defend ourselves, except maybe be wealthy or join their cult."

This is only true of nonviolent options.
posted by schyler523 at 12:55 PM on November 15 [3 favorites]

I don't care how big their clown shoes are. These people, including hundreds of appointees and sitting members of Congress, are all unreconstructed Confederates in league with a hostile foreign power.. (An unacknowledged state of war has existed between the United States and Russia since 2014.) They are all accomplices in a criminal conspiracy against the United States. The best time to arrest and try them was 4 years ago. The currently available best time is right now This very instant. The President's dereliction of duty in this matter disgusts me.

Not that I'm bitter.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:20 PM on November 15 [10 favorites]

This is only true of nonviolent options.

The Paradox of Tolerance is not a paradox if you view it not as a moral position but view it correctly as a social contract: if you don't abide in tolerating people who are doing no harm, then you are not covered by the contract and shouldn't be tolerated.

Nonviolence is also a social contract.

This is not at all controversial in any legal or political context; everyone agrees with the right to self-defense when faced with unjustified violence whether you are an individual being assaulted or a nation being invaded.

Nonviolence is also a social contract.
posted by AlSweigart at 2:48 PM on November 15 [7 favorites]

He has completely failed to learn the lesson of the past eight years: that idiot clowns can still be incredibly dangerous.
posted by AlSweigart

The clowns can even be far more dangerous than the competent, because they don't understand or accept the real world limits of their power. They cannot do self-restraint and delayed gratification, and end up over reaching. Which never ends well.
posted by Pouteria at 6:42 PM on November 15 [4 favorites]

…especially white supremacist advisor Stephen Miller.

There’s a lengthy article about Stephen Miller (Trump advisor, speechwriter, and speaker since 2016) at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Here’s the intro:

Stephen Miller is credited with shaping the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump, which include the zero-tolerance policy, also known as family separation, the Muslim ban and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Miller has also “purged” government agencies of civil servants who are not entirely loyal to his extremist agenda, according to a report in Vanity Fair.

And during the COVID-19 crisis, the Trump administration’s decision to halt the issuance of new green cards is yet another example of its hard line on immigration.

Through the conscious use of fearmongering and xenophobia, Miller implements policies which demonize immigrants, regardless of their immigration status, in an apparent effort to halt all forms of immigration to the United States.

In response to seeing photos of children being separated from their parents at the U.S. border with Mexico as a result of the zero-tolerance policy, an external White House adviser, in a Vanity Fair report, said, “Stephen actually enjoys seeing those pictures at the border.” According to Miller, the administration’s decision to institute the policy was “a simple decision.”

Through his connections to the anti-Muslim movement, Miller landed his first job in Washington, D.C. as a staffer on Capitol Hill. In less than a decade, Miller would go from a congressional staffer to an adviser to the Trump campaign…

More details follow in the SPLC article and at Wikipedia.

Miller’s photograph reminds me of the infamous 1933 snapshot of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels by LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.
posted by cenoxo at 9:15 AM on November 16 [1 favorite]

That's not the first time he's been compared to Goebbels and I bet Miller takes it as a complement.
posted by VTX at 10:10 AM on November 16 [2 favorites]

(Most biographies of people in Trump's inner circle, even the critical ones, are nearly useless, good for a hate-read at best, but Jean Guerrero's 'Hatemonger' (Terry Gross interview with the author) about Miller, is a really good one.)
posted by box at 10:31 AM on November 16 [3 favorites]

Their cruelty is not the bug but the feature and goal, the gift that keeps giving to them as they stick it to the rest of us. This, Fort Sumter II, is just the tip of the spear as far they are concerned. Now I see sore winners popping out in Facebook Paleontological Groups -- of all places or maybe not -- honking off about woke this and dei that in the comments. It's like a dam broke upstream and a flash food of maggoty rancor has spewed forth all across social media. Or they are Russian bots. What's the difference? Where's Reacher when we need him? The only solace is that there are a lot of people out there with voter's remorse after seeing what they have enabled -- whether that is fact or goal has yet to be determined.
posted by y2karl at 4:28 PM on November 17 [2 favorites]