Behold: a callow clueless indifferent man gives women’s rights away.

Take the recent controversy over parkrun, the mass‑participation 5km fun run that has become the latest target in the cross hairs of the radical trans‑exclusionary police.

By “the radical trans‑exclusionary police” he of course means women protesting the destruction of women’s sports and prizes and rights at the hands of men in lipstick. No skin off Jonathan Liew’s nose, is it.

In recent weeks parkrun has been doggedly pursued by protesters and the media, unhappy at its policy of allowing trans women to identify as female.

No, stupid; angry at its policy of allowing men to compete as women.

And really the telling part of the parkrun row is the way the anti-trans movement in sport has begun to broaden its focus beyond the Olympic 800m, or national swimming trials, or suppressed testosterone levels, into areas of identity and belonging. The proposed parkrun ban is – short of genital inspectors in the token queues – basically unenforceable. The cruelty is the point here: the desire to forcibly out trans women, even when it might threaten their safety.

The cruelty? What about the cruelty of invading everything belonging to women? What about the desire to forcibly enter women’s spaces, even when it might threaten their safety?

The great shame is that for its many devotees parkrun’s appeal lies in its simple purity: a holistic, community‑driven vision of sport untainted by commercialism or top-down power, free of politics or culture wars. So of course, like the National Trust or the BBC, it needed to be defiled, made a contested space, made a more toxic and less welcoming space.

And he’s so blinkered, so oblivious, so indifferent to women that he doesn’t even manage to notice that men taking over women’s everything makes everything more toxic and less welcoming for women.

That’s gotta sting.

I caught a glimpse of this the other day but didn’t follow it up; I should have. Vancouver police claim they “don’t know” what sex a guy accused of rape is.

The Metro Vancouver Transit Police say they “don’t know” if the primary suspect in a skytrain sexual assault is male or female despite having recovered semen during the investigation.

On February 8, the Transit Police issued a press release pleading for help to identify the suspect. While photos and videos showed what appeared to be a male with long hair, some basic information on the suspect was curiously omitted from the release. No pronouns were used, and no information on the suspect’s sex was included.

In a recorded phone call with journalist Amy Hamm, Constable Amanda Steed said the information had been intentionally left out because the Transit Police were unsure of how to refer to the suspect.

They put out a press release asking for help in identifying the suspect and they omitted crucial information about the suspect. Are we stupid enough yet?

“We’ve left it out for a reason; it’s because we don’t know. The video evidence shows someone who… would appear female, who is female presenting, but the physical evidence is that of a genetic male,” Steed said. She later confirmed in an email to Reduxx that the physical evidence is in fact the suspect’s semen. 

Despite claiming that the Transit Police “didn’t know” what the sex of the suspect was, Steed admitted that they “believe” he has a penis.

You are the police. Stop fucking around. The guy reportedly sexually assaulted a woman; it doesn’t matter how he “presents” – i.e. that he has long hair. You know perfectly well what sex he is and by pretending you don’t and so omitting that fact from your request for assistance in finding him, you’re refusing to do your job and treating his victim like garbage. Stop doing that!

According to their website, The Metro Vancouver Transit Police is “the only dedicated police service in Canada focused on reducing crime and disorderly behavior in and around the public transportation system.” They also describe one of their four operational priorities as “reducing sexual offences.” In 2018, the police force launched an “Anti Sex Offence Campaign,” which consisted of a poster campaign and a number for victims or witnesses to text or call the transit police.

But if the suspect is a trans laydee don’t bother, Metro Vancouver Transit Police aren’t interested.

H/t NightCrow

Comedy:

The Soho theatre is investigating a complaint about a comedian who allegedly abused a Jewish audience member who refused to applaud a Palestinian flag…The incident reportedly took place on Saturday near the end of a one-hour Shtoom show by Paul Currie in front of an audience of 200 people at the central London theatre.

According to a witness who gave an account to the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), Currie placed a Ukrainian and a Palestinian flag on the stage, and invited audience members to stand and applaud. The witness, who asked to remain anonymous, told the CAA: “When we all sat down again, [Currie] looked towards a young man sitting in the second row and said: ‘You didn’t stand, why? Didn’t you enjoy my show?’ The young man, who we discovered soon after was Israeli, replied: ‘I enjoyed your show until you brought out the Palestinian Authority flag.’”

The audience member claimed Currie told the man: “Get out of my show. Get the fuck out of here. Fuck off, get the fuck out of here.” Other members of the audience allegedly joined in, shouting “Get out” and “Free Palestine” until the young man left, the witness said.

The theatre put out a statement:

Beyond the Fringe it ain’t.

Trouble at the Garrick:

One of London’s last remaining gentlemen’s clubs, the Garrick, has taken the highly unusual step of expelling a member, amid rising tensions over the club’s unwillingness to change its men-only membership rules.

Former theatre producer Colin Brough, a member for 40 years, was expelled from the club after sending a series of angry emails to fellow members expressing his conviction that women should be admitted immediately.

Gentlemen don’t display anger. It’s ungentlemanly.

The long saga of the Garrick’s refusal to admit female members attracts regular interest because its membership includes a roster of influential establishment figures and household names. Current members include actors Stephen Fry, Hugh Bonneville and Brian Cox as well as the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, and many judges, including the former president of the supreme court David Neuberger.

And you see this is why clubs of this kind shouldn’t be excluding women. They’re centers of establishment power and influence, so systematically excluding categories of people excludes those people from power and influence.

Michael Beloff KC, who had initially advised the club in 2011 that its rules prohibited female members, decided in November 2022 that he had made a mistake in his original advice and wrote new guidance concluding there was no legal justification for excluding women. He added that the club was likely to face “an expensive lawsuit” if it continued to bar women.

Beloff notified the club’s management of his error and sent them revised advice, but this guidance was not shared with members before a November 2023 poll on attitudes towards admitting women. Of those members who participated in a postal vote, 51% indicated that they were in favour of admitting women, while 44% were opposed, but the club needs a two-thirds majority to trigger a rule change.

Their hands are tied, you see. Regrettable but what can you do? Besides hiding the legal advice that is?

Brough wrote that some fellow members had admitted nervousness about the potential “reputational damage” they would face if it emerged publicly that they were members of a club that banned female members.

He quoted a supportive message from Fry, who acknowledged he felt “ashamed and mortified by the continuing exclusion of women from our club”.

Fry’s email continued: “I fear that I’ve been lax about either resigning, campaigning or making any kind of a noise about this. It’s a mixture of indolence and reluctance to get involved in fusses, allied with a natural incompetence at and fear of political infighting, committees, round robins and all the antagonism and heat they generate.”

Oh buck up Stephen. You’re a manly man in a men’s club, so you could at least skip the whining.

Previous attempts to force the club to allow women have been unsuccessful. When Joanna Lumley was proposed as a member in 2011, prompting the club to take legal advice on the issue, some members scrawled expletives on her nomination card, and one wrote: “Women aren’t allowed here and never will be.”

So don’t let them tell you it’s just tradition yadda yadda. It’s not. It’s that other thing, the m word, that we’re all so tediously familiar with. Women aren’t allowed here coz we hates’em.

Just a little more on Dr Gina Gwenffrewi: what you learn if you click on the Research button.

The study of global transgender female identities and their representation in the arts and media. This includes a particular focus on trans female identities excluded from mainstream trans narratives in the Global North, and their relationship with structural inequalities connected to socio-economics, nationality, and race and ethnicity. Methodologically, I draw on Lacanian/post-Lacanian thinkers, from Jacques Lacan to Julia Kristeva, Jacqueline Rose, and Judith Butler. However, my work currently is hugely informed by and indebted to perspectives gained from the scenes of trans artists of colour especially in North America, including persectives on race and socio-economics from writers/artists such as Jamie Berrout, Janet Mock, Fabian Romero, Reina Gossett, CeCe McDonald, and generally the output of Oakland-based editor and artist Nia King.  Increasingly, and complementary to my focus on race and socio-economics, my work is influenced by the insights on intersections of trans/queer experience with race and class of Joao Gabriell, Sara Ahmed, Michelle Davies, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and specifically in relation to global economics and their impact on trans communities, of William Davies and Naomi Klein.

That’s the Research summary. Under Current research interests we find:

Currently, one new area of my research is informed by the global backlash against trans rights and the discourses of trans-exclusionary ideologies. My current research on the period especially of 2017-2021, focuses on Scotland, the U.K., and the broader Anglophone Global North. This includes the media furore surrounding Gender Recognition Act reform, and the media storms involving the social media output of the writer JK Rowling. More broadly, my research area of Trans Media Studies interrogates the interplay of patriarchal trans-exclusionary ideologies within the national media and politics, and the gender-critical movement. On a further, related area, an increasingly significant area of focus for my research is the impact of online radicalization on trans-exclusionary ideologies. My research accordingly draws on the work in Trans Media Studies of TJ Billard, as well as Julia Serano and Talia Mae Bettcher. Somewhat separately, and building on my PhD thesis, my future research will also continue to focus on the impact of neoliberalism on trans bodies. This includes via the works of disempowered QTPOC communities, and the output of activists such as Jamie Berrout and CeCe McDonald, and the gap between more empowered LGBT+ institutions, which reflect white, middle-class issues, and the politics of prison abolition, defunding the police, anti-imperialism, and leftist-driven social justice movements with a more intersectional focus dealing with multiple sources of oppression. Accordingly, my research draws on the academic work of Dan Irving, Dean Spade, Tourmaline, and Eric Stanley, as well as Angela Davis, Sara Ahmed, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.

Sounds like research in the archives of Twitter, doesn’t it.

Pathetic. Utterly wall to wall pathetic.

One, replies are closed. Two…they don’t even bother to say what they object to. That’s a pretty striking omission for a “statement” intended to shape public opinion. “We don’t like it that Fanshawe is the new Rector. We can’t explain why. We stand around.”

Yet again we see that trans ideology makes people stupid.

The Telegraph on the worked-up “controversy” over Simon Fanshawe.

In 2019, Mr Fanshawe signed an open letter accusing Stonewall of undermining “women’s sex-based rights and protections” and “demonising” anyone who dissented from its gender policies as transphobic.

Transgender rights campaigners at the university are attempting to drum up support for an open letter calling on the university to axe the appointment and find “a true advocate of equality, accessibility, diversity and inclusion” instead.

They claim Mr Fanshawe’s appointment  “creates a hostile environment for the many trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming students studying at the university”.

No it doesn’t. The presence of people who have thoughts that are different from yours does not create a hostile environment for you. If that were true then all environments would be hostile and nobody could do anything. News flash: everybody has thoughts that are different from yours, just as you have thoughts that are different from other people’s. 100% agreement on all subjects is not possible. Cope.

While Mr Fanshawe was not a co-founder of the LGB Alliance, which was set up by two lesbians and is critical of transgender ideology, he has supported the organisation and spoken at its events.

Jonathan MacBride, a staff member at the university and an officer at its staff pride network, told STV News that Mr Fanshawe, who now works as a diversity consultant, had an “excellent history of supporting gay and lesbian rights.”

But he added: “But he speaks negatively and just offensively, to me and many people I know, about trans people. That is upsetting that the University of Edinburgh feels like this is someone suitable to have as our Rector.”

Show us. Show us on the doll where he speaks offensively. Until you show us I’m going to decline to believe that claim.

Mr Fanshawe, who won the Perrier Award for Comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe in the same year he founded Stonewall, has responded to criticism of his appointment by offering to meet with those who are unhappy.

He said: “I am delighted and honoured to have been named Rector. I will do all I can to advance the university and its staff and students and fearlessness in the exchange of ideas.”

It is a university after all, not a church or a nursery school.

The BBC reports the Simon Fanshawe news with more restraint than usual.

Writer and activist Simon Fanshawe has been named as the new rector of the University of Edinburgh.

The former comedian, who now works as a consultant on diversity and inclusion, will take up office on 4 March following an uncontested election.

Second sentence in they admit he’s a diversity and inclusion boffin, which kind of pre-empts claims that he’s a right-wing fiend. Good job.

After a lot of neutral factual detail they get to the pachyderm in the parlor.

Mr Fanshawe has a long history as an activist for LGBT rights but has in recent years become a critic of Stonewall, the organisation he helped found.

In a newspaper article in 2022, he said Stonewall had become a “propaganda machine that preaches extreme and divisive gender ideology under the guise of ‘factual’ information.”

He said the organisation’s views on transgender rights had become ideological and were “fast eroding women’s rights and their protection in female-only spaces, as well as posing a potential risk to children, who might be led to believe that irreversible medical intervention is the solution to common adolescent insecurities about identity.”

I wonder how many outraged junior BBC staff are fuming at that reasonable account of his views.

University of Edinburgh lecturer in Trans Studies Dr Gina Gwenffrewi condemned the appointment. Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, she said: “This is an outrageous declaration of contempt by the University of Edinburgh for trans people.”

That’s the harshest paragraph in the piece, and it’s clearly Gwenffrewi speaking rather than the Beeb. I wonder what she talks about in her lectures.

Final paragraph:

Women’s rights campaigners For Woman Scotland congratulated Mr Fanshawe and described him as a “lovely, thoughtful man who will be an asset to Edinburgh University.”

Has the BBC turned a corner at last?

Now here’s a brilliant thoughtful rebuttal of claims that Trump’s attack on Nato is a bad thing.

Last year, Marco Rubio co-sponsored a law preventing presidents unilaterally withdrawing from Nato. On Sunday the Florida senator, whom Trump ridiculed and defeated in the 2016 primary, also dismissed Trump’s remarks about Russia.

“Donald Trump is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,” Rubio told CNN, referring to a Washington thinktank. “He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now.”

Ahhh right, that’s ok then. Trump is a brainless ignoramus, and we’ve already figured that out, so it’s fine that he wants to trash Nato. Thanks Mr Rubio.

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting take on Trump in this conversation, saying he didn’t do all the authoritarian things he said he was going to do.

FS: So the authoritarian rhetoric didn’t materialise. Do you think that’s because it was always just talk, part of a tough guy image? Or do you think he just wasn’t capable of executing it?

AS: I don’t think he actually likes the exercise of power. He’s not that interested in controlling the lives of everyone around him, or indeed most Americans. He’s concerned primarily with his own ego, with his own glory, and with his own sense of being right in a particular moment. And so when it comes to difficult things, like rounding up 11 million people, he didn’t even try. There was some increased enforcement from ICE, but not much. We know how much wall he built, which is about a few hundred feet; we know how much Mexico paid for it, which was zero.

Hmm. I hadn’t thought about it that way before. He’s lazy. That may be the thread that saves us. He’s lazy and very easily bored. Talking about himself, bragging, threatening, that’s the fun stuff, but actually doing complicated things is work, and he doesn’t want to work.

FS: Some people have accused you of “Trump derangement syndrome” for the level of your concern. In retrospect, do you feel like you had a mild case of it?

AS: No. The former President Donald Trump is himself deranged, that is where the source of the derangement is. All we’re doing is responding to what he says and what he does. And what he said was: I intend to upend the entire Constitution of the United States and run it as a dictator. He didn’t do it. Now, the question is, why didn’t he do it? And some people say, well, he was checked by others. And he was. But my sense is he doesn’t actually want that kind of control. It’s too much responsibility.

And way too much work.

Let’s hope so.

A bit of academic news:

Simon Fanshawe OBE has been named the Rector of the University of Edinburgh following an uncontested election.

He will take up office on 4 March 2024. 

Simon is a consultant and practitioner in the field of diversity, author, broadcaster and activist.  

He was formerly Chair of the Governing Council of the University of Sussex from 2007 – 2013.

He will replace Debora Kayembe, who has served as Rector since 2021.

[whispers] He knows men are not women.

Simon was one of the six original co-founders of Stonewall in 1989. In 2011, he co-founded the international charity Kaleidoscope, which campaigns for the human rights of LGBTI+ people around the world. 

In 1989 Simon won the Perrier Award for Comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe and he served on the Board of the Fringe Society from 1986 – 2012.  

And he knows people can’t change sex.

Gather round everyone, it’s time to CATASTROPHIZE.

Ten days after random thing happens, unrelated thing happens in another part of the forest. BE APPALLED. Also, here’s this fella, that someone in Ireland said was something. ARE YOU APPALLED YET?

You’ll be surprised to learn that the person who composed that ridiculous sentence has a PhD. You’ll be less surprised now that I tell you it’s in “transgender studies.” What is there to study? Besides rampant narcissism and entitlement?

Anyway, the point is, it’s never the right time to do anything, because The Trans CommuNinny is always traumatized, so just shut up forever, all of you.

Oh oh oh the horror, people argue that it’s risky and abusive to push children to try to stop their own puberties via dangerous chemical interventions. It’s much better to urge children to mess up their bodies and thus their minds before they’re old enough to evaluate the risks.

And to sum up:

Magdalen Berns! So soon after a random murder trial! Add them all together and you get the magic secret cryptic number!

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The president he so admired.

(Third story: his enemies lie about him. This one is handy for wiping up any lingering cognitive dissonance.)

Usually listening to Trump for any length of time is proof enough that he’s a narcissistic, bullying, thin-skinned, know-nothing, blowhard who shouldn’t be put in charge of a lemonade stand, let alone a government, but that’s just me. Maybe he’s actually brilliant, and all I’ve seen are Deepfake clips manufactured and strung together to make him look like a complete fucking moron. That nobody seems to be claiming this gives me some confidence that this is not the case, and that his manifest self-centered cruelty and stupidity is real, and neither manufactured nor some elaborate, long-form performance-art piece designed to highlight and mock the lethal weaknesses of the Americamn political system to the allure of a celebrity, would-be, populist dictator.

Of course it doesn”t help “our” side when at least some of the media really are lying to the public about gender ideology It is truly corrosive of public trust and a danger to democracy. It’s a journalistic own goal, an unforced error that they won’t or can’t admit that they’ve made. “If they’re lying to me about this, what other lies are they feeding me?” How do we answer that. It’s infuriating. It’s another example of the maxim I have stated before:

“Any movement that is, at its very foundations, so fundamentally reliant upon lies and the secrecy required to maintain them, will inevitably and unavoidably corrupt any individual or organization that embraces and supports it.”

Or, in its short form:

“Every organization that embraces trans ideology turns to shit.”

Unfortunately, the press has willingly fallen victim to this to a very great extent. They didn’t have to. Nobody told them they had to use “preferred” pronouns; there is no power that could compel them to if they chose not to. There is no reason consistent with the public interest that says they should conceal the sex of any person of interest in a news story. “Humans have only two sexes” and “Humans can’t change sex,” are not hateful or even controversial statements, and should not be presented as such; to do so is to deny reality and take the side of a reality-denying movement. And so on. What the media gets for championing this “cause” I will never know, but I do know it can’t possibly be worth the price they have paid in doing so.

Foxy Jo tells women what we should be doing instead of what we’re already doing that he doesn’t like.

He’s right you know.

A little frivolity break. A story via Facebook (public):

I’ve been so busy between getting home and staying warm and skijoring and doctor’s appointments…I forgot to tell you the story of our journey home.

Well, our original flight was to be early February but the Alaska Airlines flight with the blown door changed everything. Flights were canceled and then the weather came in and more flights were canceled and then there was so much backup that Alaska Air would not fly the dogs for fear of delayed flights and the dogs getting stuck somewhere. I do appreciate that Alaska Air keeps a good eye out for the animals on their flights.

So, I had three canceled flights and was getting to have more adventures in California, however, I was anxious to get home.

Finally, we were cleared to fly on the 22nd. I did all the things, vet checks, and a long hike the day before to balance the stress for Artie & Moon. All seemed well as I checked in and made my way to my gate. I watched the dog kennels loaded onto the plane through the tall plate glass windows as I waited to board. My habit is to board the plane last because I want to be cramped on a plane as little as possible. Finally it was time to take my seat, everyone had boarded.

I walked through First class and I heard, unmistakably, Moon, howling her Siberian head off in the hold right beneath me. A few moments later Artie joined her chorus, “AWWWWOOOOOOOO, AWWWWWOOOOOOO!!” Passengers in first class could clearly hear them too. I stopped. I believed they were shouting their connection howl, sounding out to find out where I was. I really had no choice, so I got down on my knees and prepared to answer their call, I knew they would hear me.

Just then a flight attendant came up behind me and asked if I had dropped something. I turned and told her what was happening, and I asked her if it would be ok for me to howl down to my family in the hold. She did not bat an eye, so quick was she to measure the situation. She said, “Wait one moment, people are really on edge and I do not want them to get disturbed, I will make an announcement and then you can howl.”

I was very impressed. She got on the microphone and told the plane that they might hear 2 dogs howling in the hold and that in a moment, their owner was going to howl to them so could we all be quiet one moment so that these dogs could get their message? Wow, now I had to perform and everyone was straining to watch. Moon let out another pitiful and long howl and then I turned toward her and Artie down below, and ignored where I was, imagining I was calling to them from the boreal forest back home. I knelt down, cupped my mouth, and let out my best and loudest howl….And, Moon and Artie went silent, and the plane laughed. Then, the flight attendant got back on the microphone and said, “Would anyone else like to join in one more howl to let these dogs in the hold know that we care?”. And I swear, most of that plane load of fabulous people, HOWLED.

After that, it was a pretty upbeat flight with lots of chatter and visiting and we all made it back to Alaska to pick up our lives and reunite with loved ones, and remember to communicate our love.

When in doubt, howl.

The Journal of Gender Studies presents:

(Re)producing sex/gender normativities: LGB alliance, political whiteness and heteroactivism

Do pause to drink it all in before moving on to the abstract. It’s so…how shall I say…predictable. Formulaic. Conformist.

The author is Helen Clarke of Oxford Brookes University. We are told:

Helen’s research explores how decolonial feminism can be used to create alternative practices of solidarity, tackling trans-hostility in cis lesbian communities. She is involved in various feminist projects, working at creating more inclusive and supportive activist environments for all women, non-binary folk and gender diverse people.

Weird, isn’t it, claiming to be a feminist who specializes in feminism while she deletes women from feminism.

So, the abstract:

LGB Alliance, as a prime example of gender-critical feminism, argues that the ‘sex-based’ rights of those who are ‘same-sex attracted’ are threatened by the inclusion of trans individuals, and trans lesbians especially. In seeking to exclude trans women from gay/queer spaces by presenting them as a threat to (cis) lesbians, LGB Alliance can be understood as deploying strategies of heteroactivism and political whiteness. Sex/gender normativity is discursively framed through specific configurations of gender, race and class, including visual codes determined by biological and cultural standards that are, ultimately, a product of colonial/racial science. Trans lesbians, gay men and bisexuals whose bodies are not regarded as sex/gender normative, who are perceived as queering the male/female binary, and who are understood as falsely and dangerously claiming a label of homosexuality, are subjected to suspicion and surveillance, their bodies rendered inferior and denied social and cultural recognition. Although LGB Alliance claims its advocacy is intended to support and advance the interests of the (cis) lesbian, gay and bisexual community, the article argues that the organization can be read as (re)producing and engaging in harmful discourses related to heteronormativity, racism and classism, and which, overall, seek the restriction and limitation of broader LGBTQ+ equalities.

Scare quotes on “sex-based” and “same-sex attracted” – so we are meant to think those are mistake-words in some way. In what way? In the way that if you don’t scare-quote them and hold them at arm’s length you must be a terf and therefore evil. This is the new “feminism.” In other words she lets us know from the outset that by feminism she means trans “activism.” She means feminism is not for or by or about women, but instead for men who pretend to be women.

Then the bit about seeking to exclude men from lesbian spaces “by presenting them as a threat to (cis) lesbians” – as if male lesbians are the only real lesbians, and the female kind are a stupid parenthetical wannabe subgroup. Then accusing them of “deploying strategies of heteroactivism and political whiteness.” How are the strategies “of heteroactivism”? How is it heteroactivist to understand that lesbians are women and men are not women and therefore not lesbians? And how does the “political whiteness” get in there? As anything other than a brainless taunt and an insidery wink to equally brainless colleagues?

Then we learn that knowing which sex is which is a product of colonial/racial science. Cue a wave from Judith Butler. Then she accuses the LGB Alliance of “engaging in harmful discourses related to heteronormativity, racism and classism.”

It’s so formulaic and predictable it’s hard to see what the point is, other than adding “an article” to the resumé.

Tom Nichols at the Atlantic is eloquent on Trump’s NATO lunacy.

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the presumptive Republican nominee, said earlier today that he would side with Russia against NATO and encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to brutalize our allies…

Trump issued this unhinged threat while telling one of his “sir” stories, a rhetorical device in which some unnamed interlocutor shows Trump great deference while humbly seeking his advice.

And we all recognize the pattern. We’re all familiar with the childish boasting, the infinite sea of conceit, the relentless focus on precious self at the expense of any other concern.

Trump’s feelings about NATO are well-known. He is gripped by the stubbornly ignorant belief, even after four years in office, that NATO is some sort of protection racket, in which our European allies come to Washington like quivering shopkeepers and make an offering to the local mob boss from their weekly receipts. NATO funding doesn’t work that way, of course…

But leave aside (if we must) Trump’s record as a serial liar who lives in a world of his own fantasies. Trump’s comments today are a lot more dangerous than most of his unsettling puffery, and Americans should refuse to let this statement pass as if it were just another distasteful lump in the rancid stew Trump regularly serves up to his faithful.

Instead, we should concentrate on the more terrifying problem, a reality that exists independent of Trump’s imaginary “sir” conversations: The leader of one of America’s two major political parties has just signaled to the Kremlin that if elected, he would not only refuse to defend Europe, but he would gladly support Vladimir Putin during World War III and even encourage him to do as he pleases to America’s allies.

Well when you put it like that…

Trump’s spokespeople will likely try to clean up his remarks by saying he was merely playing hardball with recalcitrant European freeloaders. But anyone who’s watched Trump and his servile fascination with Putin long enough knows the truth: Donald Trump would make the United States a friend to the Kremlin and an enemy to NATO. Putin knows it, and after today, so should every American.

We’re doomed.

Ya gotta pay your bills (unless you’re Trump of course):

Donald Trump has said he would “encourage” Russia to attack any Nato member that fails to pay its bills as part of the Western military alliance.

At a rally on Saturday, he said he had once told a leader he would not protect a nation behind on its payments, and would “encourage” the aggressors to “do whatever the hell they want”.

This is money we’re talking about. Money is all that matters. Not alliances, not resistance, not peace; just money.

Addressing crowds during the rally in South Carolina, Mr Trump said he had made his comments about Russia during a meeting of leaders of Nato countries. He recalled that the leader of a “big country” had presented a hypothetical situation in which he was not meeting his financial obligations within Nato and had come under attack from Moscow.

Mr Trump said the leader had asked if the US would come to his country’s aid in that scenario, which prompted him to issue a rebuke. “I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’… ‘No I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You gotta pay.'”

It’s the landlord school of strategy. You gotta pay or you gotta get out…unless you’re Trump, in which case you can refuse to pay your workers and contractors.