An unconventional choice
Well here’s a classic of normalizing language – in the Washington Post’s story on President Pussygrabber’s nomination of reactionary retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to HUD chief:
President-elect Donald Trump nominated retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an unconventional choice that underscores Trump’s willingness to forgo traditional policy expertise in some Cabinet positions to surround himself with allies.
Normalizing and grossly euphemistic, would be a more thorough description. Make that: a shockingly random choice that underscores Trump’s determination to appoint completely unqualified inexperienced people to Cabinet positions.
That determination, in turn, underscores Trump’s contempt for the very concepts of knowledge, relevant experience, expertise, competence, and the like.
That contempt, in turn, underscores Trump’s frightening anti-intellectualism and amateurism, which in turn underscore the logical underpinning of such a view: that only force and power count.
In other words Trump seems to think that there is no such thing as relevant knowledge and expertise, and thus that it’s all random, and thus that winning and losing are all there are.
In other words Trumpworld is wholly arbitrary apart from force and money. There is no such thing as argument, or careful thought, or analysis, or weighing opposing views. There is only fiat.
That’s what makes Trump a fascist. That’s fascismworld, and we now have to live in it.
Actually, I suspect Trump views this more in terms of Reality TV (and doesn’t recognize how divorced from reality that is!). He views the world in terms of contestants and finalists, culminating in the big grand pick based on some totally arbitrary rules that have no grounding in qualification and competence. He views Carson as a good pick because he has a base of support that he feels he can get behind him, so he doesn’t get voted off the island.
We’re screwed.
I’m trying to decide which will be worse: the Trump Clown Car, or the Pence Theocracy which will replace it after the establishment gets fed up enough bring on the impeachment.
Steve Watson @2: I think the best strategy for the Democrats on that front is to leave Trump in charge long enough to taint the entire administration. Pushing for impeachment starting in the 2018 campaign season seems about right–by then, there should be enough of a record that it’ll be difficult for anti-impeachment GOPers to defend their position. And yet, Pence will be left holding the bag for all the anger and and resentment.
On the rest of it, I’m still waiting for the first big round of “You’re Fired”s to hit the cabinet. It’ll be interesting to see how the establishment reacts to that–after all Trump’s made his career in large part by trampling those foolish enough to work for him.
Trump is hiring the most competent people he can find.
Trump simply defines “competence” as “a person’s ability to recognize and praise the greatness of Donald J. Trump.”
Maybe property-tycoon-elect Trump thought there was something about Carson that would appeal to the “urban voters”, you know, in the “inner-cities”. Where the “urban decay” needs profitable urban redevelopment. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
So, let’s see if this analogy works. Trump and his cabinet picks are travelling in a vehicle. They don’t know how the vehicle runs (and studiously avoid advice from people who do know how it runs), but have unrealistic expectations of its performance and their own abilities to control it. They think they’re in a car, but they’re actually in a plane, using postcards instead of a map for navigating. They can’t distinguish fantasy from reality and the place they’re trying to get to does not exist.
Impeachment? What a quaint notion.
Mike Pence will convene the Cabinet at his earliest convenience to invoke the relevant portions of the 25th Amendment, finding Trump unfit to serve as President.
At that point, we’ll be thoroughly in the soup, because Pence is a True Believer in every last right wing tenet.
Ben – or as John Oliver put it, a plane being flown by a wallaby. The only problem with the analogy is that wallaby’s are great, but I don’t want one behind the wheel of a vehicle I am traveling in; the Trump cabinet are NOT great, and I don’t want them behind the wheel of any vehicle I’m traveling in.
What happened to Carson not being qualified?
My only hope out of this is that at least some of these people will quickly realise how out of their depth they are and will end up relying on the bureaucrats in the departments to advise them and run things (kind of a US version of Yes Minister!). At least they are less likely to be actively harmful then.
Well, a guys got to hope…
@10 But does the US bureaucracy have that many Sir Humphreys?