I was listening to Blink-182 this morning on my bike ride (I ride to school with my son and his neighbor friend) home from school and was singing along, enjoying a band I used to love but barely listen to anymore. It was nostalgic and when the ending comes in Every Time I look at You, I started asking myself why I don’t listen to these guys as much as I used to….. this was fantastic music! Much better than the crap that’s put out these days.
And there lies the answer (to a question no one asked).
People wanted (emphasis on the past tense) wanted to make American great because what they remember from their younger days FEELS like a better time. It may or may not have been but it did FEEL better, simply because “that” was not whatever “this” is. At least this is how many felt going into Trump’s first and second terms.
But Trump isn’t turning back the clock at all. Not one bit. He’s transforming America into something else. The government’s stake in intel is a new frontier and has to be the closest thing to Socialism that we’ve ever seen in America. The tariff policy is fine but it’s reckless and unpredictable, changes week to week and Trump lies about every facet of any so-called deal that he makes. The stock market has been shockingly resilient but that’s partly because Fed Chair Jerome Powell has refused to cut interest rates – a move that would surely increase inflation and probably send markets into correction mode.
The DOJ is now out of control. It’s one thing to put Alina Habba in charge of an Attorney General office and the same goes for drunkard Jeanine Pirro, but he also got known cartoon villain Emil Bove confirmed as a judge and turned Pam Bondi into a worse version of Ray Cohn that we could ever have imagined. The rule of law is meaningless now. Trump’s pardons of January 6th rioters including those who were guilty of child sex crimes both before and after the pardons is particularly abhorrent. Trump himself was convicted of certain crimes in New York and was found liable for sexual assault (and basically rape). And then he won the election and suddenly all the charges were dropped and everyone involved who was just doing their job was fired. Some are now under investigation. Never mind that his handpicked District Court Judge Aileen Cannon ran interference for him on the most straight forward case of stolen classified documents ever. Trump literally admitted he took them, admitted he knew the documents were classified and then claimed he owned them. And to make matters even more concerning, the Supreme Court did everything possible to help Trump. They first utilized its discretion in nearly every opportunity to take up his appeals (Supreme Court picks and chooses which cases it hears) and then sat on them for months sometimes to delay the cases. And it worked. Trump ran out the clock on Jack Smith and when he won, the charges were toast. The Supreme Court can stop any injunction it desires in a matter of hours but couldn’t be bothered to decide questions of presidential immunity with a similar level of priority.
Immigration was a big problem under Democratic leadership, so I have space to give Trump the benefit of the doubt here. Biden and Harris were asleep at the wheel during their four years on immigration, lied about the size of the problem, and were far too late to the party with the immigration reform legislation near the election to be taken seriously. But what Trump has done with immigration is probably the worst of the worst. Masked, unidentified law enforcement agents snatching people off the streets. Videos of agents banging on doors without warrants, demanding they be let into legitimate, American owned businesses simply because they think an immigrant might be in there is truly Gestapo-like. You can’t argue against this. Shipping off AMERICAN CITIZENS to foreign countries, even if by mistake and then arguing that they’re not entitled to due process is particularly scary. Shipping immigrants to countries other than their own such as Uganda is awful. Shipping immigrants to their home country without due process is equally terrible. Finnally, ICE is just straight up profiling brown people and detaining them without an iota of reasonable suspicion other than the suspicion that the Latino might be here illegally simply because of their race. I suppose this is another example of how the rule of law has been perverted.
There are so many more examples (attacks on higher education, law firm settlements, security clearances, USAid, HHS cuts to vaccines, ect. ect ect.) but I’ll end with the recent raid of John Bolton’s home. First of all, I think Bolton is a pretty terrible person and a warmonger who I rarely agree with. But I also think he’s generally a political normie and obviously he’s often right about Trump and he’s not afraid to speak with the truth – which is real currency in my personal world. But I have no doubt that Bolton leaks to the press and I have no illusions that Bolton isn’t a grifter himself. So I don’t particularly want to defend Bolton here. He’s probably guilty of something related to his access. But that’s not how the justice system works in this country. I want the leaks to stop, and I want the press to stop incentivizing leakers by reverting to real journalism that is well-sourced and reliable. But that’s not happening because of the Bolton raid and frankly I doubt it’s ever going back. More importantly probably, I have zero faith that Trump cares nor will he do anything to “make the press great again.” Instead, we have a bare naked example of revenge, dressed up in the pretext of a classified documents scandal. How. Fucking. Rich. Especially in light of Trump getting away with murder . . . . or at least the equivalent in the context of a classified documents case.
When Trump won in 2016, I admit that American needed changes and in some areas, had lost its way. But we’re not going back to the past, under Trump or under any other President. We’re headed in a new direction, whether we know it, accept it or like it.
Blink 182 came out with a new album in the last twelve months. It’s actually really good! But no one listened to it, and most don’t even know it was released. I think Blink-182’s best days are behind them and that magic they provided so many of their fans just doesn’t have the same appeal. I think America is experiencing something similar. It’s unfortunate and I hope more people see where we’re headed. It’s not good and other than CatTurd2 and Stephen Miller, I’m not sure who really wants this.
The Reasonable Man Standard 