Showing posts with label Turning Point USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Turning Point USA. Show all posts

Sunday, November 23, 2025

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 109th Edition. Lost love. Painting Targets. Piggy. Articles of Surrender. Voting in opposition of something that isn't going on.

Lost love

The big news this past week is that Marjorie Taylor Greene, who came to prominence as one of the most notable and frankly disagreeable figures on the far right, and then who moved away from Trump, is leaving the 119th Congress in January after her pension vests.

What's exactly going on here is really unclear, but Green's transformation was remarkable.  She used to come across like an ignorant howler monkey.  If  Eva_Vlaardingerbroek is the "Shieldmaiden of the far right", she was more like an buffoonish bouncer.

All of a sudden, however, she really came around to opposing Trump and in fact suddenly sounded like a different person completely.  That suggests her antics were always an act put on for her constituents.

Given her change, she was drawing the direct opposition of Trump who was opposing her in next year's Congressional election.  She already had stout opposition and may just be taking off because she doesn't want to spend the next year dealing with a pack of extremists.  Her transformation did not cause her to be loved by moderates who were baffled on her transformation, save perhaps for Thomas Massie, whom Trump also hates.  Trump is vicious to all who oppose him.

Well, as W. E. B. Dubois famously said, only a food never changes their mind.

The Seditionist accuses others of Sedition.

Oh horse shit.  No "great legal scholars" are venturing that opinion.  Pam Bondi probably would, if told to do so, but her sycophantry disqualifies her from being a great anything. 

Donald Trump is a seditionist insurrectionist.  He has not had his act of sedition excused by Congress, so he's actually ineligible to be President of the United States, and legally, isn't.

So that makes it all the more ironic and hypocritical that he's gone after a collection of Congressmen and Senators, all veterans, who reminded service members that they can, and must, obey an illegal order, under certain circumstances (they can't for instance, just assume an order may be illegal).

Some of this has actually already been happening.  Resignations of senior officers, and some firings, have hit the news, usually with a "gosh, I wonder why this is happening" sort of commentary.  It's happening because they're opposing illegal orders.  It's also the case that National Guardsmen have started a backchannel internet communication discussion that includes the same topic.

Trump seems to be in a full blown panic about this, and probably for good reason.  The US is currently murdering people on the seas in extrajudicial killings using military force that some regard as being on the edge of illegality.  Trump has sent National Guardsmen to cities with Courts repeatedly intervening to stop the deployments.  Trump is constantly rumored to be on the edge of using the Insurrection Act.  But as time goes on he gets more and more erratic.

The majority of American people already disapprove of Trump's presidency.  There's no national stomach at all for using the military against the population, but the administration has constantly flirted with it, and to some extent, already done it.  The legality of Trump's actions on all levels are in the Courts.  There's a reviving movement to impeach him, and his behind the scenes support may well be reaching the breaking point.  We still don't know what was in the Epstein files, other than that rich and powerful men feel they can get away with whatever they want, including screwing teenage girls.

Declaring the politicians who spoke to be seditionist is absurd.  They were no such thing.  But it does paint a target on their backs.  This was reprehensible.

It's also a sign of extreme desperation.  We'll note that below.

Piggy

One of the increased signs of Trump's dementia is his inability to hold his tongue.  Last week he called a reporter who asked a question he didn't like "Piggy".  It was a female reporter.

He's demented.

Any other politicians in the US who said such a thing would be howled down to the point they'd offer an apology.  Not Trump, of course.  The fact that he hasn't been is evidence of what redneck trash this country has become.  It's appalling.

It's also a sign that at this point Trump is so stressed by something that the wheels are really coming off of his psyche.

Articles of Surrender

One of the most notable things about Donald Trump is the degree to which he truly seems to abhor war.

Or does he?

It's actually a bit difficult to tell.

Regarding the Russo Ukrainian War, Trump has repeatedly issues statements that approach being homo erotic about the war and how it needs to end, due to all the "beautiful" young men it kills.  At the same time, of course, he doesn't mind killing South American men very much.

Going back to that, however, Trump has being trying and promising to end the Russo Ukrainian War for well over a year now.  He's flip flopped on positions, but one of those that he periodically occupies is acting as an agent for Russia.  We're back at that point again.

The West promised to secure Ukraine's sovereignty when it gave up its nuclear weapons.  The West has not fulfilled that promise fully.  President Biden did a good job of helping Ukraine right from the onset, but didn't go as far as he should have.  The various European nations have done far, far more than they've gotten credit for.  

Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize, and although he may have convinced himself that he ended "eight wars", so far, he's not really ended any, if we consider that the only real claim he could have made to that effect was the war in Gaza, where Israel conducted a bombing raid yesterday.  Most people who have really looked at the situation in Gaza don't expect the peace to hold permanently.

A real peace between Ukraine and Russia would be a major accomplishment, however.  The thing is, however, that the "peace plan" that Trump presented was basically that Ukraine surrender.  Indeed, it resembles the treaty that ended the Great War to some extent, in that Ukraine gives up land and limits the size of its army, which are two of the things Germany did at the end of World War One.

That worked out oh so well.

Of course, to realize that would require a sense of history, which Trump lacks.  That the plan smacks of the Munich Accords also would require that.

So, back to a couple of things .Why is Trump the only Western leader outside of Viktor Orban who  likes Putin?  It isn't because he's on the populist right.  Giorgia Meloni is on the populist right and she's not a Putin fan.  

But Meloni also is very intelligent and not trying to suck up unwarranted praise all the time.

It might be just because the Russians know that Trump is demented and a narcissist, and they play into that.  But it's hard to wonder if it isn't something else.

At any rate, member of the Administration are already attempting to walk the document back.  That's interesting, as Trump seemed very solidly behind it.  That suggest that there are some forces behind the scenes that can operate a bit independently of Trump.

Voting no on Socialism while Trump cozies up to it.

The House voted on a resolution to disapprove Socialism, which is just about as stupid of thing as they could done.  What on earth was that exactly supposed to prove?

The GOP has really gone off the rails on this topic in that it now asserts routinely that Socialism=Communism.  It doesn't.  All Communists are Socialist, but not all Socialists are Communists, and those who maintain the opposite need to go back to school.

Ronald Reagan's big French buddy Francois Mitterrand was a Socialist.  He was also completely democratic.

Of course, Donald Trump isn't completely democratic, but interestingly, some of his policies are socialist, and now he's had a fawning meeting with the new Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City.  He declared that they had a lot of views in common.

Look for the GOP to now propose joining the Comintern.  

Turning Point at CC

One of the things that the assassination of  Charlie Kirk seemed to do was to boost the creation of Turning Point USA chapters.  There's one at one of the local high schools now, and one at the local community college.

At that one, there was just an event at which the far right Secretary of State and a far right politician who wants less government but who is a major landlord, thereby occupying a role in society that only exists due the major support of the government, or else people would ignore your claim to property rights, spoke.  

Wyoming's far right is sounding more and more irrelevant, so its interesting how these things are a bit behind the curve.  Of course the Secretary of State, in order to try to keep ahead of the curve, has been sounding like a member of Greenpeace recently.  I thought this would have generated some news, but it doesn't seem to.

Interesting.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. Lost love.

Monday, November 3, 2025

Erika Kirk, and J.D. and Usha Vance.

I'm not going to link it in, as I think it's shallow on the solution, but pundit Ezra Klein has a current segment of his vlog in which he discusses how the Democratic Party is in such a mess, in spite of people really not being all that keen on Donald Trump's Fascist Roadshow, because they're really lost touch with average people at the street level.  I've been saying the same thing now for what's approaching a decade.

Well, actually more like two, or more.

Anyhow, yesterday I ran this item which was sparked by liberal/center left blather about J. D. Vance hoping that his wife Usha become a Christian:
Lex Anteinternet: Religion, J.D. and Usha Vance.: Because this blog is steadfastly horrified by Donald Trump and his administration, it'd be easy to assume that it's run by a rampagi...

One of the things this event shows, quite frankly, is the degree to which the left holds religion in contempt.  The fact that they so obviously hold religion in contempt is part of the reason that people who are serious about their faiths, and that isn't limited by any means to  Christians, do not trust the Democratic Party and, as long as it continues, aren't going to trust the Democratic Party.  As I warned would occur, this is leading to a massive exodus from the Party by Hispanics, who are largely Catholic.  If you demonstrate contempt for people's existential beliefs, they're not going to vote for you even if you promise all kinds of nifty social programs.

They also are not going to vote for you if you show childish glee over a made up sense of morality over an event that doesn't mean anything.

As people who stop in here know, I really don't particularly know what to make of the late Charlie Kirk.  I've expressed my views on that elsewhere and I'm not going to back into them here.  As little as I know about Charlie Kirk, and that's not much, I know even less about Erika Kirk.

The widowed Erika Kirk has been in the news a lot recently, as she's sort of taken up the mantle of her late husband's organization, Turning Point USA.  In that role, she's been very public and is making public appearances.  She's drawn criticism for that alone, as apparently those generally on the left feel, even if they don't, that she should be dressed in widow's weeds and moping around the house or something.  Quite frankly, if she was a figure on the left, the same people would be praising her for her bravery.

And now comes the embrace with J. D. Vance.

Vance was speaking at some Turning Point USA event.  He's probably a good choice for that, as Donald Trump is 750 years old and most Turning Point members aren't.  The populist right has to keep in Turning Point's good graces, moreover, as it's part and parcel of the Evangelical embrace of Trump, albeit one that wasn't initially certain about Trump.

Anyhow, Kirk made some comment about Vance and her late husband being similar.  I don't see that at all, quite frankly.  And then she went on to hug him after introducing him.

This is a big non event.

Indeed, if you see the whole video, the entire thing lasted just second from beginning to end.  You can only really make it a big deal, if you desire to, by screenshotting the whole thing as if it was an endless romantic embrace.*

Nonetheless, the left has reached out in shock and horror, certain after Vance's recent comments about hoping his wife converts, that he's about to ditch her as Kirk and Vance are now a couple.

Oh horseshit.  

This shows once again the degree of contempt for conservative views that people on the left hold. There's no evidence at all that Erika Kirk is happy that her late husband was murdered and has now moved on to Vance. There's no evidence at all that Vance would betray his wife.  Indeed, as he is a Catholic, and is expressing a Catholic view on his desire that she also convert, the better evidence is that he'd never do that.

This is, again, the very sort of thing that causes people on the right to regard the left and contemptuous and mean.  And that doesn't win votes.

Footnotes:

*FWIW, as an Irish American (and genetically, I'm more Irish than many Irish), with some Westphalian heritage, I'm in that category of people who abhor hugs from people I'm not extremely close to.  By that I mean I'll accept hugs from my wife and children, and I'm uncomfortable with them from anyone else.

This is a real northern European thing.  We aren't a touchy people, and any kind of physical contact of this type is an unwanted intimacy unless its a wanted intimacy, in which case, you're contemplating marriage.  Out in society, however, this just ain't so.

I've known people, almost invariably women, who are very touchy and it means nothing at all.  And for some reason, in recent years, it's become increasingly common.  I used to work with somebody, for example, that would do this routinely, particularly if you were at any sort of a function and she's had a drink.  She's latch on to an arm and not let go.  I took up using my wife as sort of a shield to avoid that.  Another female lawyer I know invariably will make physical contact.  There I am sitting at a hearing when all of a sudden there's hands on my shoulders so that I'll say "hi".  Couldn't you have just said hi?

To make matters worse, I'm 5'6" tall and that puts me way down torso wise on any woman who is inclined to hug me for some reason.  If they're short too it's okay, but if they're not, it's really awkward.

Anyhow, a flap like this reinforces my desire to avoid that sort of thing.  The irony is, the people complaining about this probably aren't bugged by hugs at all, and a lot of them probably aren't all that concerned about personal or sexual morality either.