The Land of Nod
The riffing. The off the cuff ideas. The dangerous theories. The relentless lies. The madness. None of this is new. If you’ve forgotten how common this stuff was during the first Trump administration, you may want to jar your memory with an injection of disinfectants a heavy dose of UV light exposure. What’s different this time around is that any resistance to these often outlandish ideas within the administration has not only disappeared, it’s been replaced by often enthusiastic support. One good example of this bad new reality is Trump’s plan to develop Gaza. Tom Friedman in the NYC (Gift Article): What’s Most Frightening About Trump’s Gaza Ravings. “I can say with confidence that Trump’s proposal is the single most idiotic and dangerous Middle East “peace” initiative ever put out by an American president. Still, I’m not sure what is more frightening: Trump’s Gaza proposal, which seems to change by the day, or the speed with which his aides and cabinet members — almost none of whom were even briefed on it in advance — nodded their approval to the idea like a collection of bobblehead dolls.”
+ At times, the nodding represents such a shocking turnabout that all you can do is shrug. Consider the case of Emil Bove. “He has been leading an effort to identify everyone who worked on Jan. 6 cases and remedy what Trump called ‘a grave national injustice’ by rooting out “those who acted with corrupt or partisan intent” when they investigated Trump and Capitol rioters.” Before he started this effort, he “oversaw efforts to find and arrest Capitol rioters in the New York area.” Trump’s feared DOJ enforcer has a secret: He, too, investigated Jan. 6.
+ Even with all the news and the all the nodding, it’s critical that we don’t nod off and ignore what’s happening. Timothy Snyder with a rough one that relates to this story and one below. Crossing a line. “I am one American in a train at night in a foreign country at war, heading in the direction of the front, going to a city that is attacked by Russia. But I know that I won’t be crossing any lines … As I close my tablet and go to sleep, I am safer than every single one of you reading this in the United States, and indeed safer than I would be in the United States. My train will stop in five hours. But America will keep hurtling.”
