CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 142nd Edition, 25th Amendment Watch, 22nd Edition. Worry.

If you aren't afraid of what's going on with the United States government and Donald Trump's increasingly demented brain, you should be.  We've really entered the Twilight Zone on this one.

Tom Nichols, the columnist for The Atlantic, nailed it in this MS Now interview, in which he stated: 

Nichols: It’s almost like we have a relative in the room, and there’s something deeply wrong with him. And we’ve all agreed not to talk about it. But there is something deeply wrong with him.

His friends know it, his critics know it. His staff, I’m sure, knows it. The world knows it. World leaders know it. And most importantly, our enemies know it, which is why they don’t take him seriously.

Nobody hangs on his words. They kind of do, but mostly out of freakish curiosity to see what kind of wild thing he’s going to say next, not because his words have any inherent meaning or reflect policy.

You know, I spent years teaching students that when the president speaks, it’s policy, and you must pay attention when the president speaks because nobody can contradict him.

Now, you know, are we really cutting off all trade with Spain? Who knows? Maybe. Maybe not. It might have just been a stray electron, you know, careening around inside his brainpan. Who knows?

But this is really dangerous because in the middle of all this stuff—and we can laugh about, you know, the Islamic Republic of Japan and all of that—but he made several statements about an ongoing war that the United States is losing. And no one’s even trying to pretend that they can make any sense of it.

And I’ll just add one last thing that you just brought up.

If this were any other president, this would be a national crisis. I mean, Joe Biden got somebody’s name wrong, and it was headlines. The president gets all kinds of things wrong, completely, you know, is out to lunch at an important NATO summit, and, you know, it’s Wednesday.

This is a crisis.  

Trump's brain was really on full display over the past week while he was attending the NATO summit.

During a public meeting with Zelensky, he referred to him as Putin.  For that matter, he claimed:

We had 11 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan.

The same man who can't get out of the war claimed:

In one day, we could knock down every single bridge in Iran. There's not a thing they can do about it ... if we have to, we'll take them out. They have desalinization plants. We'll take them out if we have to ... maybe we'll take over Kharg

Attacking desalinization plants would likely be a war crime.

On the bogus Red Scare:

I would be the greatest communist in history. I'd be right up there with Leneeen.

On Spain, which he liked the next day or day after:

Spain is a wasted cause. We don't want to do any trade business with Spain anymore, by the way. I'd like to cut it off. Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. Cut off all trade with Spain, please. Including visits. We don't want anything to do. They're hopeless. Bad

And on IEDs.

The roadside bomb is a bomb that goes on when you're driving your little around, and it goes on and you have no legs, no arms, and no face.

The latter, I'd note, is typical for Trump in this stage.  He talks about something that everyone else in world knows more about than he does, and then gives it a toddlers explanation.  A week or two ago he discovered that the word dumb is spelled dumb.  He was so pleased to discover that. Apparently he really believed that most people thought it was spelled "dum".

That last item should worry us in and of itself  A President ought to have a trusted advisor to tell him, "look Donny, the entire f*****g world except you knows how that word is spelled.

Instead, we're on a roller coaster in control of a man who has the mind of a toddler.

July 11, 2026

On his recent trip to be ignored at the NATO summit, in Turkey, where the participants have tired of the raving octogenarian, Donald Trump switched airplanes as Qatari One lacks the full set of countermeasures that the two Air Force Ones have.  It took the Press about a day to figure that out, which wasn't all that difficult, particularly as the lame excuse was that it was going to a U.S. Airbase in the UK so the airmen there could admire it.  Nonetheless, the Administration is now suing over the story breaking.

The story further developed, basically, that the Iranians, after having their complete leadership killed in the first hours of the war might revisit the tactic on Donald Trump, which is the very reason that nations at war do not do this.  A more likely story, however, is simply that there's an intelligence assessment that it was a risk, which it obviously is.  When Trump was called on the real reason for the airplane's diversion he at first sort of brushed it off, but by yesterday he no longer was.

Now we're getting this:

This is flat out absurd and frankly nobody believes it.  Given the sort of missiles this would entail, it threatens what amounts to a nuclear strike on Iran.  

Frankly, this entire episode is a massive example of playing a stupid game and winning a stupid prize.  Trump made himself a target by assassinating or allowing the assassination of the Iranian civil government.  If they aren't targeting him, and frankly they likely aren't, it's because they deem it in their best interest not to, and not because the US would retaliate, but because it's in their best interest at this point to have the country lead by a distracted demented fruit loop.

For what it's worth, a President can't give a "if they kill me, do this" order.  Once the President dies, his role as Commander in Chief dies with him.  This could only occur if the next President authorized it.  If a President was assassinated by a foreign power, there'd be some sort of military retaliation, but this wouldn't be it.

The real danger here, however, is that Trump went from "m'eh" to absolute panic in the space of a day.  He's getting extremely erratic and he's not going to get better.  Normally if a threat like this was made parties would be getting ready to invoke the 25th Amendment.  We're now so used to this it's just another day.

July 22, 2026

Green New Scam where we were scammed. The whole country was, I wasn't scammed. I got it right from the beginning… they were saying wind was so wonderful, so wonderful, except you couldn't, watch your television, they wanted to watch the debate. Donald Trump against Sleepy Joe Biden. Nobody could watch it because the wind wasn't blowing. Remember that?

Everything about this Trump babble is completely erroneous.

Seriously, he needs to have the 25th Amendment applied to him.  That it isn't, is reckless in the extreme.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 142nd Edition, 25th Amendment Watch 21st Edition. The Vietnam Rag, Red Scare Editions.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Barack Obama, Communism, Conscription, Donald Trump, Red Scare of 1919, Red Scare of the 1950s, Socialism, The Madness of King Donald, Vietnam War, Vladimir Putin, Zeitgeist

25th Amendment Watch, 20th Edition. The Frontotemporal Dementia Edition.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Conspiracy Theories, Donald Trump, Introspection, J. D. Vance, Mental Health, National Conservatism, Science, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration

Thursday, July 22, 1976. Japan's last payment to the Philippines. A President has a sane day.

Japan made its final reparations payment to the Philippines for its actions in World War Two.

President Ford's day:

A couple of observations.

First of all, nice to see a daily Presidential agenda that wouldn't read like today's must:

7:15:  President had Coca Cola and goes into a hate filled Tweet rage

8:00:  President claims Joe Biden stole his Coca Cola.

8:15:  President falls asleep. . . 

Secondly, this was election season and Ford was contacting some state delegates, including some from Wyoming, none of whom I've heard of.

Last edition:

Tuesday, July 20, 1976. Viking I lands on Mars.

Labels: 1970s, 1976, baseball, Indochina, It was because of the Vietnam War, Mars, NASA, Outer space, Sports, Thailand, The Cold War

Trump's simply a very bad person, declining into senility. Who is backing him? Additional labels.

Trump vs. algae is the feud we deserve Congrats, America.

 

Trump vs. algae is the feud we deserve

Congrats, America.

King Donald's War, Part 8 and CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 140th Edition, 25th Amendment Watch Nineteenth Edition: L'arche De La Défaite Édition

Narva Triumphal Arch.  It's green, just like Trump's Arch of Defeat should be.  By Florstein - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19091231

Donald Trump, who can see the grim reaper at the door, and besides him when he goes to sleep and wakes up in the morning is desperately seeking a legacy that he won't achieve, that being some sort of serious man.  As part of that, he seeks a monumental arch, while actually having just lost a war. 

It ought to be algae green, just like the reflecting pool.

L'arche De La Défaite.  The first monument to spectacular defeat ever erected by the loser.  A fitting, if temporary, monument to the loser himself, Donald Trump.

Trump's second, and illegitimate, term is even two years old. With amazing speed, everything Donald Trump is touching is turning to shit.  

Usually with dictators there's progress at first, simply because they tend to come in during a time of crisis and address that immediate thing before everything starts to fall apart, which it inevitably does.  Arguably, in Trump's case that one thing was illegal immigration.  Decades of high immigration had angered blue collar and lower Middle Class Americans in general, and Joe Biden lost control of the border with Mexico in his term, his failure to act in part brought about by a sense of humanity which unfortunately didn't carry over to his policies on abortion.  Aided chiefly by that, but also fueled by anger over social changes that people simply didn't and don't support, Trump did the one thing he is good at, sold Trump.

But Trump was never popular with the majority of Americans, and, having no real existential or even political philosophy himself, he came with a pack of extreme ideologues will to advance their own agendas, as dictators always do, who don't care of people suffer as long as that extreme agenda is advanced.  Trump's idealogues, however, actually come from two different camps to start with, far right wing Evangelical Christians and National Conservatives, who really don't see eye to eye on everything, while agreeing on some things.

And then there's Trump himself.  Eighty years old and in declining mental and physical health, and unable to accept what he was, and is.

  

Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Царь хороший, бояре плохие*

Giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea, I think the president, unfortunately, is receiving bad advice on this deal.

Ted Cruz

These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ‘tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT”

Donald Trump, once again displaying his understanding of the world that if the stock markets are doing good, everybody is doing great.

The United States lost the war with Iran.  It was not a war that the US should ever have been in to start with.  Donald Trump was told by some of those in his own administration not to do it, but convinced by those who saw it as some sort of Evangelical Christian crusade, and coaxed along by Bibi Netanyahu, we went to war, illegally, with no plan on how to win it.  

Iran won.  They came out of the war stronger than they went in it, and now we're going to make them wealthier than they were before.

Some Republicans are finally actually reacting.  They can see the Trump era ending and don't won't to be remembered as the men and women who paid radical Islam.  Some can't quite bring themselves to do it, such as the cowardly Ted Cruz, who blames it on advisors.

Trump's not letting them do that.  He's sticking to his actions and embracing the GOP with the stench of the illegal war and the dimwitted settlement to it.  He's also trying to shove the final heavy lifting and excuse making off on J. D. Vance who is known to have opposed the war in the first instance.  A person has to wonder about that.

Vance was supposed to go to Switzerland to sign the formal instrument of surrender.  Something happened overnight, and now he's not.

Monuments to ignorance

I'm doing a great job on the Reflecting Lake. I got so into it. I've upgraded it like you wouldn't believe... It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be waterproof. It's going to be reflecting again.

Donald Trump.  It's a pool, of course, not a lake.  And, um, waterproof?

Algae came back to the reflecting pool immediately.  It was predictable that it would, but the dark blue Rhino Lining probably increased the temperature of the water and made the water even more conducive to algae than before.

Pretty predictable.

The entire cost of the effort grossly exceeded what Trump claimed it would cost, going from seven digits to low eight digits.  When the algae immediately appeared excuses were developed (it was the pipes), and the moronic MAGA conspiracy theories erupted.  The algae was planted by Democrats, some truly ignorant people maintained.

Nope, it just grows in hot water.

Now, compounding the disaster, gallons of hydrochloric acid have been poured in the pool.  It's removing the Rhino Lining.

That can't be ignored.  

Hopefully, it's just accepted and the Tide-E-Bowl blue lining will just be allowed to rapidly peel off.  A real solution that isn't something they'd use on cheap Texas hotel pool can be left for the next administration.

Perde i colpi**

She’s probably happy I talked to her. I didn’t have to talk to her. She begged me to take a photo with her. She wanted a photo with me so much. I wouldn’t have even done it, but I felt sorry for her.

Donald Trump.

Donald Trump's statements are completely made up. I am frankly astonished. I don't ‌know why ⁠the president of the United States behaves like this towards his allies, after all, it's not the first time it's happened. 

I can only say it is disappointing that he does not show the same determination with the enemies of the West and of the United States, whose leaders he instead treats with far greater indulgence. There is one thing he should remember: neither I nor Italy ever beg.

Giorgia Meloni

The serious and offensive words of President Trump towards Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offend all of Italy. For this reason, I have decided to cancel my visit to the United States scheduled for the next 21 and 22 June.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.

Trump's at the G7. They should have sent Vance to that.

Trump's mental decline is frighteningly apparent to anyone who cares to see it.  He gets angry easily and says anything that comes into his declining mind.  Included in that has been an increasing number of statements to and about women that are common amongst senile old men.

He has the deluded belief, it seems, that people really like him.  They don't.  And now people are making that plain to his face.

He probably doesn't notice.  The moronic things he says on a daily basis are probably often things he really believes.

Which takes us back to the first entry.  Death is hanging around Trump, but like many an old boomer for whom the Reaper is sharpening his scythe, he just can't accept that that means, but others can.  Republicans are starting to finally move on.  The Europeans not only have, but are starting to say "Va' a farti fottere"***.

He's not needed, except by the people who need him, and we should all be frightened by that.

June 20, 2026

On the white flag of surrender:

Capitulation Day

The dimensions of defeat, and the chance for recovery

Military action continues on between Hezbollah and Isreal in Lebanon.

On the green reflecting pool:

Algae clouded Trump's vision for the Reflecting Pool. But scientists aren't surprised -

On the latter, an administration tweet endorsed the insane conspiracy theory that Democrats are secretly putting algae in the pool.  A person would have to be a complete moron to believe that.

Cont:

Well, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the ongoing Israeli campaign in Lebanon.

The comedy of errors in this, keeping in mind that violent death is not comedic, just won't end.

Footnotes:

*"Good Czar, bad Boyers".  This was a popular excuse for Imperial loyalist as to stupid Romanov decisions.  It couldn't be the Czar, it must be the Boyers.

It was the Czar.

Fanatic adherence of lunacy continually do this.  "It's never been tried" is the popular one for Communist on why Communism has never worked.  Not really related, but on the Communist theme, during Stalin's early reign The New Republic wrote him to inform him that some bad things were going on in the Soviet Union.

Um, Stalin knew that.

**"His shots are wasted."  Applying to mental decline in Italy, a similar phrase in English for a lost cause would be "his bolt is shot", which refers to a crossbow bolt.

***"Go fuck yourself".

Cont:

Yikes.

June 21, 2026

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and J.D. Vance is back on the plane to Switzerland, after cancelling earlier.

June 23, 2026

Both houses of Congress have now voted to end the war.

This puts Congress and the White House on a clear collision course.

June 26, 2026

Iran fired on a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, for being outside the lanes it established.

This emphasizes that Trump's disastrous war made Iran a more powerful nation in the region, not a less powerful one.

June 27, 2026

The war is now 120 days old.

The US hit Iran with air strikes.

Iran hit Bahrain with drones.

June 28, 2026

And, you guessed it, more strikes.  Clearly this is the ceasefire that isn't as part of the peace that hasn't arrived to end the war we won, by surrendering.

cont:

And its getting worse. Now Iran is hitting Bahrain and Kuwait.  Apparently this has to do with routes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran claims a right to control.

And so the war that Trump won, but lost, isn't even presently over.

July 2, 2026

Iran has hit Iraqi kurds, our allies, with drones.

Things have really been quiet on this lost war the past few days, and no wonder.  Iran disregards the ceasefire when and where it sees fit.  King Donald has no way out and no plan to find one.  The only options really are completely pulling out, which would be an admitted major defeat, or invading Iran, which the country doesn't support.

With this grim reality, we'll end this edition.

July 4, 2026

A week of funeral processions commenced for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

July 7, 2026

The IRGC fired missiles at vessels in the Strat of Hormuz.

King Donny threatened to "finish the job" if Iran didn't come to an agreement.

And with that latest threat in a war that was supposed to last a few days, then a few weeks, then the US lost, we'll conclude this edition.

Related threads:

Iran Is a Bigger Defeat Than Vietnam

 

Iran Is a Bigger Defeat Than Vietnam

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 7. The White Flag of Surrender Edition

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Blog Mirror, Defeated people, Donald Trump, Historiography, King Donald's War, The Madness of King Donald, United States and Israel v. Iran, War, Yeoman's Fifth Law of History, Yeoman's Sixth Law of History

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 139th Edition: Um, I have to wash my hair that night.

Labels: 250th Anniversary of American Independence, Donald Trump, Music, The Second Trump Administration, White Trash, White Trash Nation, Zeitgeist

The 25th Amendment Watch Eighteenth Edition. The devalued currency edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 25th Amendment Watch List, Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump, Currency, Donald Trump, Mental Health, The Madness of King Donald, Yeoman's Twenty-fifth Law of Behavior, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 142nd Edition, 25th Amendment Watch 21st Edition. The Vietnam Rag, Red Scare Editions.

Donald Trump posted a picture of himself in uniform, purporting to be of himself at age 20, next to one of Barack Obama smoking a cigarette and wearing a panama at, when he was 18 years old.  In truth, Trump was 17 or 18 years old in the photo he posted and he's in the Ne wYork Military Academy, where he was a student from age 13 to 18.

He was sent there because his parents found him to be a bullying asshole.  At that time the thought was common that if you sent a kid to military school they came out a better person.  That was still the thought when I was young, although in the wake of the ongoing Vietnam War, that was getting hard to believe and the schools were dying off.

Put another way, military discipline hadn't turned William Calley into "a plaster saint" as Kipling would put it.

The New York Military Academy itself reflects this.  It's one of the oldest ones in the United States, but it went bankrupt in 2015.  It's been reorganized, but it's student body is a shadow of its former self.

I don't know anyone who went to a military school prep school, unless you count the mandatory high school JrROTC that my high school had before it was eliminated in the late 60s or early 70s (a net search says that was in 1968, which seems early, but which would also show how much the Vietnam War was impacting things everywhere).  I know one person who was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Nebraska as he was a difficult to handle kid. The school was probably Mount Michael, a Benedictine school which has a strong focus on science. According to that person, who later became a lawyer, it really helped him and he was grateful his parents sent him there.

If being sent to military school was more of a threat than a reality for most boys, being given the option of joining the military rather than going to jail was not  I know one person who did just that, and by  his account, it did straighten him out.  He opted for that right after the Vietnam War and part of the process on his end was to volunteer to be a Ranger so he didn't have to serve with the deadheads who were part of his regular advanced training cycle.  That may sound amusing, but when the Army was large that was more common than a person might think.  A major reason for soldiers to volunteer to become paratroopers during World War Two is so that they'd be serving with a better class of soldier.  Anyhow, in this person's case, while he knew he didn't want a military career, it did straighten him out as well.

Military school didn't serve to straighten Trump out at all.  The characteristics that caused his parents to send him to military school are still there.  A person has to wonder if he'd served in the Army if he'd be a less dismal human being.

Trump's draft card. His signature changed enormously between 1962 and when he signed it on a pornographic Epstein birthday card where it symbolized female pubic hairs.

Trump's draft classification is a bit more complicated than is generally acknowledged.  He was initially classified as 2-S, meaning he had a student deferment.  He was reclassified as 1-A after graduating from university in 1968, meaning he was fully eligible for the draft at that time, but he held that status only briefly.  In October 1968 he was reclassified as 1-Y, which meant he was only eligible in the event of a national emergency and in 1972, which was at the point the draft was really winding down, he was reclassified as 4-F.  It's the October 1968 and 1972 classifications which are the now famous bone spur classifications.

Student deferments started to become problematic during the war in 1966 and in 1969 they were hugely overhauled so that student deferments became much more problematic.  Of course, by 1969 Trump was beyond the student deferment classification anyhow.  An eligible person was very much liable for the draft at t hat time, and draft number for the years of the war are as follows:

1964 112386

1965 230991

1966 382010

1967 228263

1968 296406

1969 283586

1970 162746

1971 94092

1972 49514

1973 646

1968 was, accordingly, the high water mark of the draft, but nearly as many men were drafted in 69.

Was Trump's bone spur 1-Y nad 4-F bogus?  I have no way of knowing and neither does anyone else at this point.  I do know that bone spurs can make you ineligible to serve, but only in an odd way.  A soldiers I was good friends with in basic training was having pretty severe foot problems and went in to sick call as a result  He was diagnosed with bone spurs and given a medical discharge from the Army, although that still required him to visit his National Guard unit upon his return home.  He was almost done with AIT at the time.  When he went to the Guard and reported, they asked him how he was doing, he said fine, and they reenlisted him as prior service.  Ultimately, he went on to a career in the Army and retired as an officer.

Bone spurs don't go away on their own, but they can be asymptomatic, which is presumably what happened here.

Anyhow, Trump didn't serve in the Army.  If he had, he probably wouldn't have served in Vietnam.  Most of the troops in Vietnam were volunteers, something commonly forgotten about the wartime draft.

Anyhow, serving in the military would have done him good.  IT would have forced him into a world where money doesn't mean that much and isn't everyone's focus, and it would have forced him to deal with people who weren't rich, like himself.

Barack Obama turned 18 years old in 1979.  Conscription was over, and he was a university student.

Part of the reason that the photo of Obama was put up by Trump was the sort of hip appearance that Obama affected in the photographs.  People vary, but a lot of people really don't look the way they do professionally in their first year of college.  Trump in 1979 had already affected a young businessman look, which is what he was.

The last President with military service ws George Bush II.  His father was the last President with combat experience.  No member of the Trump family has ever served in the U.S. military.

One of the things I've really noted about the Baby Boom generation is that there's a lot of guilt felt by men who avoided the draft.  They were given a hard time about it when they were young, but defended it. At some point in the 1980s that began to change.  The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now came out in 1979, and they are definitely anti war films that a draft evader or draft protester could love.  But 1986's Platoon showed a marked shift.  It's an anti war film, but anti war.  It is pretty sympathetic to the troops and even the Army in a way that the earlier movies were not. Every Vietnam War movie since them took that point of view until We Were Soldiers which is about as rah rah Army as can be.  Somewhere in there the public view of the troops changed.

I've known a handful of men who either avoided the draft or felt like they did.  One I know avoided service in Vietnam by joining the Army Reserve, which is still military service.  He remained perfectly comfortable with his decision.  One National Guard officer I knew was upfront about that being his original reason for joining the National Guard.  He felt guilty immediately, and then ironically his Guard unit actually was one of the few that went to Vietnam.

More commonly, however, I've noticed that the men who felt they didn't go later developed almost sort of a hero worship of those who did.

Trump likes to portray himself as a hero.  He isn't.  He's really quite pathetic and his life is meaningless in al arger sense, as he's accomplished nothing of enduring value.  Barack Obama, whom I frequently disagreed with, will always retain a place in history as the nation's first black President, an accomplishment which seemed to suggest we were finally over the legacy of slavery and egregious racism.  It turned out not, and that helped bring Trump about.

Trump's casting about widely for some success to be measured by.  As his mind deteriorates he's attacking his own past, and that of others.

The man that Trump should be comparing himself to is Vlad Putin.

By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70906985

Both Putin and Trump unilaterally got their countries into wars with smaller powers that they expected to rapid win, and are losing.  Putin, this past week, started to be openly threatened by members of his own military.  Russia has a long history of supporting enormous military suffering and then suddenly rebelling.  When Russian soldiers show discontent, usually a revolution is right around the corner.  If there is one, and right now the odds of there being one are relatively high, Putin will be killed.

The United States has no tradition of military rebellion, but Trump has created the same national crisis.  Putin can't win the Ukrainian War and is losing it.  Trump can't win the Iranian war and is losing it.  The difference is that Putin has absolute control of his country, and Trump does not.  There's some suggestion that Trump is now upset with Steve Witkoff and his son in law Jared Kushner, two people whom he naively allowed to negotiate with Iran because Trump knows nothing about negotiating with foreign powers at all.  He knows that hasn't been working so now he's thrown J. D. Vance under the bus.  Both Vance and Rubio opposed the war.  Trump, whose been an asshole his whole life, is effectively requiring an opponent of the war to find a way out of it knowing tha t if he can't, that person's political career is over.

It'll be over, as Trump as an effective President will be over.  Right now, the House is slated to go Democratic in November and there's a decent chance the Senate will as well. Even Lindsey Graham appears to be in real trouble.  According to insiders Trump may want that as he likes being an asshole better than actually leading.  The irony here as been pointed out by Thomas Massie. The GOP controls everything and yet they're still running around all pissed off.

So it's time for a Red Scare.

The US has had two Red Scares, one post World War One and another post World War Two.  The second one actually made more sense than the first.  The first one resulted in illegal actions by the Federal Government.

Both of those scares were more genuine than the current one by a long measure.

The current one is trying to be ignited due to the recent success of Democratic Socialist in New York state.  Absent something really wild, New York will have a Democratic Socialist in Congress next year.  This is nothing new. There have been actual Socialist in Congress before, and right now there are seven members of Congress with Socialist affiliations.

M'eh.

Socialism is the same as communism by a long shot.  A person can be a strong believer in Democracy and, while it is regarded it its real form as antithetical to Christianity by Catholics (who also have strong criticism of Capitalism), there are Christian socialist.    Usually American socialism is so watered down economically that it's capitalism, but the supposed socialist supports child care or something.  Pretty tepid.

The US has had three Presidents whom you could accuse, or celebrate depending upon your views, who advocated or caused to be enacted socialist programs.  Theodore Roosevelt was the first, but it came in his last unsuccessful run when he advocated for what ultimately became Social Security and also for government regulation of large corporations as public utilities.  His cousin Franklin had a lot of socialistic programs, and enacted Social Security, although much of what he did was temporary.  Harry Truman advocated for national health care, but then so did Richard Nixon.  I guess that could bring us up to five, with the final entry, Donald Trump.

In some of his economic policies Trump is an outright Socialist.  He's advocated for government ownership of shares of companies and for seizing foreign oil as if the US owned it.  He frequently sees things as if the US is one big corporation and he's the dictatorial CEO.

That's Socialism.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 141st Edition, 25th Amendment Watch 20th Edition:. Sure, we lost a war to Iran, and the war in Lebanon continues on, and the $13 Rhino Lining treatment of the Reflecting Pool is coming up, but King Donny got a shiny new toy!

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 25th Amendment Watch List, Aircraft, Donald Trump, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, This is why we can't have nice things, Transportation, Zeitgeist