A Carnival of Dunces
You know, the meritocracy at work.
So, in looking at some tweets I have saved over the last several days, initially for inclusion in the Tabby post, I am just struck by the combination of malicious juvenility and outright proud ignorance that is on display.
These are people with real power, in some cases quite a lot of it.
This, for example, is just gross and infuriating. He doesn’t care about due process. His quip about Laken Riley is a taunting non sequitur that mocks the rule of law and uses a murder victim as a slogan.
I guess I understand why people like Stephen Miller rail against universities, because clearly his political science degree from Duke didn’t cover how courts work.
Likewise Stanford and especially Yale Law failed Josh Hawley.
Check out the sycophancy of Putin here. Note that Witkoff, whose main experience is in real estate, has been tasked with negotiations in both the Israel-Hamas conflict and with Russia over Ukraine. He’s a very special envoy, dontcha know.
Our Monarch CEO posts like he is a 19 year-old in a dorm room somewhere (if not a high schooler).
Then there is this. There is some insulting going on, but it isn’t directed at Leavitt, it is coming from Leavitt.
As a bonus, here’s the woman who replaced Liz Cheney in the House.
Hawley and Miller had (have) no problem with “an entry level” federal judge in Texas issuing a nationwide ban on mifepristone, but when other district court judges attempt to stop an illegal, unconstitutional deportation scam they get labeled Marxist, tyrannical, “far left lunatics.” But more to Dr. T’s point, it’s beyond embarrassing to see asinine, childish and ignorant statements coming from elected and senior administration officials. It’s a reminder that no single person can wreak havoc….there has to be a cadre of asshats working alongside them.
@Charley in Cleveland:
“…cadre of asshats…”
That is one great phrase. I salute you.
All I can say is that I fear that those childish ignorant statements seem “authentic” to many voters. It seems like they are talking like “real people”.
I first read your subheading as “a mediocracy at work” but even that would have been too generous a title for that group.
@Charley in Cleveland:
I’ll second @CSK:, that’s a phrase I’ll steal. Especially as it captures that they can’t possibly be that stupid, they’re evil.
MAGA hates both journalism, the judiciary, and the universities because these are places you can’t just say any crap that comes to mind. All of the people you cite are crap artists, crapsters, the crappetariat, whatever else you want to call them. It’s all crap.
@gVOR10: Oh, some of them are stupid, don’t discount that.
There’s the stupid-by-way-of-carelessness option too. See: Pete Hegseth and VP Vance including a reporter on their group text discussing bombing in Yemen.
@Jay L Gischer:
That’s what the Palinistas loved about Sarah Palin: She talked like a “real” person. I.e., witless babble.
@Jay L Gischer:
This x 1,000.
The cult believes what they are told to believe, without questioning it.
Fox News has done to its viewers brains what we were told video games would do to our youth.
And I don’t see how that ever gets fixed.
I posted this over at LGM about the Goldberg/Atlantic/Houthi attack. That show was frighteningly accurate.
https://youtu.be/N5S9Vx3-QM0?si=XE9maGUQwpVzRSDn
They really don’t care and they really believe that not only are they right, the divinely right.
This one is worthwhile too.
https://youtu.be/-asb8zTiuZ4?si=HVcO81befdbt80FQ
Thanks for posting. Today’s bombshell Atlantic article certainly reinforces the idea that they are supremely overconfident in their abilities (per the first clip).
This (latest) Hegseth screw up is just so astonishing. I’m having a weird sort of stress response to how colossal this feck-up is, in that I think about it, I’m horrified, and then I start to laugh not because it’s funny (it isn’t), but because it’s so monumental and NOTHING WILL BE DONE ABOUT IT.
Hegseth should lose his job. Period, full stop.
Buttigieg has the right tone.
@Jen:
This is a guy who has 3 gin and tonics for breakfast. What do you expect?
Imagine, if you will, this crew in charge of D-Day? Your next stop, the Twilight Zone!
@Jen: “Hegseth should lose his job. Period, full stop.”
No doubt about it. One of my first thoughts was that we should be getting a new (acting) Sec of Defense, NSA, and Sec of State. And the outgoing ones should be answering investigators’ questions about this, and what other communications involving government information they’ve had using non-government channels. Because we know this isn’t the first time they’ve done it–they just got caught two months in.
The punishment for Vance will be, in a few years, questions like, “Candidate Vance, why should the American people trust you with sensitive national security information after you were found to have discussed classified war plans on a commercial application?”
And that Witkoff clip isn’t just one unflattering moment during his 90-minute interview. He proves himself to be a dunce and a Putin sycophant throughout, such as during this exchange just past the one hour mark…
@Jay L Gischer:
Brings to mind the related statement to the effect that: ‘he’s a guy I could sit down and have a beer with.’ Which to me begs the question: Why would I want to have a beer and talk politics with the alcoholic sitting at the end of the bar?
In politics, in this day and age, ‘real people’ has come to denote rude, crude, unfiltered people who will say whatever is on the mind regardless of time and place. Politicians like Tommy Tuberville, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor-Green, Sara Palin. At some point in the late 21st century the pendulum might swing back, right?
More winning.
@Rob1:
It never goes well when science gets subordinated to politics.
Lysenkoism might have done little more than set back the study of genetics in the USSR, but applying socialist ideology to agriculture got China famine and massive waste, ironically called the great Leap Forward.
I’ll skip the worst of the nazi meddling in science, and merely point out if they hadn’t hounded some of the most brilliant scientists of the time to leave Europe, and hadn’t branded particle physics as “Jewish physics,” they might have come closer to a nuke before Berlin fell to the Red Army.
And we’re seeing what antivax sentiment is doing to children via measles. There are other pathogens that can wreak havoc in an unvaccinated population.