Trump destroys country he promised to make great - Fintan O'Toole

Politics and Social Issues
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I dream of writing all sort of things and have tidbits on notes right and left because I’m so frustrated at the shallowness and misdirection in most of what passes for news these days. Only rarely do I read something that so totally resonates with my observations and conclusions as this spot on piece by Fintan O’Toole, so until I manage to squeeze out something to share, I’ll share these astute, informed observation on America’s pitiful descent towards 2nd nation status.

 

Fintan O’Toole: Donald Trump has destroyed the country he promised to make great again

The world has loved, hated and envied the US, Now, for the first time, we pity it.

Irish Times - April 25, 2020 - By Fintan O’Toole

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928

 

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However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic. …

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It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – willfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis,

demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated. …


 

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2nd nation, not hardly, guess 3rd world status is closer to where we’re heading at this rate.

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What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division.

They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

Irish Times – April 25, 2020 – By Fintan O’Toole

 

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Republicans abject surrender

(Not to mention the self-destruction of Jesus’s “christianity” - and it’s replacement with a malicious money making machine.)

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety. ...

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fueled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Irish Times – April 25, 2020 – By Fintan O’Toole


 

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What is so obvious to the rest of the world, and to you and I CC, still doesn’t seem to register with 40 % or so of Americans. T rump is not fulfilling his promise to MAGA. He is destroying America.

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More like the establishment is destroying the country; just like they’ve been doing for 30 years. Trump thought he could fight them but he was wrong.

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Good grief. There you go again with that narrative that “The Establishment” (?) is destroying the country, and that same “The Establishment” has been fighting T rump all along and is now defeating him.

I say, dress that narrative up with some gothic romance type plot twists, accompanied by a recurring sense of doom. Put it in paperback with a picture of a lady in Elizabethan garb, standing and looking out at the sea from the nearby edge of a great cliff. Sell it for $3.95 a copy (and for much more at airports).

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Why bother with that? Everybody under 50 can just watch the destruction in real time.

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But not with your flair for fiction.

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https://indivisible.org/resource/donald-trump-national-security-risk-here’s-current-trumpthreatlevel

From his tweets to his bluster to his white supremacist policies, Donald Trump poses a security risk to the United States. He is actively making us less safe with each day in office. Here is a running list of just some of the ways he has threatened our safety.
January 2017 - April 2019


 

Meaning this totally misses Trump’s many efforts to maximize the damage, misery and impacts of COVID-19.

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Guy, a question if you can face it,

 

The real question should be: "Why would any British People (or Americans) like Trump?"

A couple of his glaring shortcomings are missing from the list: No intelligence, and No moral values.

We see it as having no inner world, no soul. No one dares speak it, but it is widely assumed that Trump sold his soul to the devil long ago.

So, back to the question of why would anyone like Trump. His supporters seem to be a small percentage of the population who are not well informed, boorish and suffer from brainwashing by any of several groups: Nazis, White Supremacists, Radical “Christians” and greedy corporations. The biggest TV news outlet in the country, Fox, is unfortunately owned by a super-greedy, White Supremacist, who feeds Trump his twisted ideas and coddles his ego. Fox indulges in brainwashing its audience to fan the flames of hatred and keep Trump in power.

I am terrified of what Trump might do next.

https://coming42.livejournal.com/479179.html

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He’s not the only one.

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I don’t think most Brits care that much about Trump, and why should they? They have their own problems.

Personally, I couldn’t care less about what the British think about anything because its not a country I am fond of.

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Sooo, you are an isolationist?

That makes sense.

That makes me curious, is Ayn Rand part of your formative education?

A historic snafu in need of revisiting

AUGUST 2, 2008

A historic snafu in need of revisiting
Back in 2004, during the Vice Presidencial debates, the question of the moment was: America’s Right to “Go It Alone.” Cheney proclaimed: “America will not allow anyone veto power!” Senator Edwards (and by extension the Democratic Party) could respond no better than to mumble meaningless platitudes.

Why couldn’t Senator Edwards invoke the words of our United States Declaration of Independence? The last line of the first paragraph reads: “… a decent Respect to the Opinion of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to Separation.”

Our Declaration of Independence and its signers granted no one veto power, however they did recognize a higher arbiter of correctness and a requirement that they be able to justify their actions in the eyes of the world!

Why couldn’t the Democrat articulate that?
Why have we so easily misplaced our respect for the rest of mankind?

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More like the establishment is destroying the country; just like they’ve been doing for 30 years.
I could have swore you said it was the progressives.
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Sooo, you are an isolationist?
As much as is possible, yes.
That makes me curious, is Ayn Rand part of your formative education?
Rand is too liberal for me.
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I could have swore you said it was the progressives.
The establishment is progressive, just not far left.
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I could have swore you said it was the progressives. -- Lausten The establishment is progressive, just not far left. -- oneguy
I had a feeling something like was coming. I realize the term "establishment" has been undergoing change lately, but it is anything but synonymous with "progressive".
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Rand is too liberal for me.
How about Ann Coulter? Is she too liberal for you, also? Oh wait, she's a Boomer. You can't like her.
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I had a feeling something like was coming. I realize the term “establishment” has been undergoing change lately, but it is anything but synonymous with “progressive”.
I guess LGBT rights, antiracism policies, and censoring of non-leftist discussion in higher ed are all really conservative victories.