Outside the Beltway

Comments

1. Michael Reynolds says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 07:11

   So many brave men dead, for a country that has committed suicide.

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2. Rob1 says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 09:08

   @Michael Reynolds:

   The MAGA “patriot” poseures’ agenda of selfish defilement of everything Memorial Day has traditionally commemorated, is particularly galling to those of us who families have served to preserve the framework of civil society and liberal democracy. I will not be flying my flag, in protest of the treasonous mob who have bullied their way into power.

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3. Charley in Cleveland says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 09:49

   A glimpse into Trump’s addled mind comes from Stephen Miller and JD Vance, who are telling anyone who will listen that because Trump campaigned on removing “illegal immigrants”* and won, the courts cannot stop him from doing “what the American people elected him to do.” So it appears that Trump gets his childlike grasp of presidential power from Nazi adjacent “thinkers” like Miller. (Vance is a power hungry chameleon who will literally say anything if he thinks it will advance his personal quest for power & prestige.) Naturally, Miller et al. pump up the margin of victory every time they spread this manure, attempting to give more heft to the alleged will of the people when it conflicts with due process, free speech and the other niceties of the Constitution.

   * “Illegal immigrant” is not a legal term, it is the product of a Frank Luntz focus group session.

   5
4. becca says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 10:28

   @Charley in Cleveland: I agree. I think Stephen Miller is the trump whisperer these days. POTUS is blithering more and more, sounding a bit high or spaced out. I don’t say that to pile on dementia angle, it’s just evident. Trump reportedly attends few daily briefings, but Miller attends them all. Miller gave the go ahead on that Houthi hit. The grotesque deportations are certainly his passion. I get the feeling he just kinda winds djt up and points him in the general direction.
   On a more personal level, he’s the most skin crawling of them all, even with Hegseth (ick) in the mix.

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5. CSK says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 10:58

   @becca:

   Stephen Miller is a live definition of the word “loathsome.”

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6. Moosebreath says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 11:05

   @CSK:

   “Stephen Miller is a live definition of the word “loathsome.””

   There needs to be a stronger word than that. “Loathalot”?

   1
7. CSK says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 11:08

   @Moosebreath:

   Sir Loathalot?

   1
8. Steven L. Taylor says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 11:40

   @Charley in Cleveland:

   * “Illegal immigrant” is not a legal term, it is the product of a Frank Luntz focus group session.

   I am pretty sure that term well predates Luntz, although its usage now has almost certainly been poll-tested.

   IIRC, “illegal immigrant” was at one point considered a less offensive term than “illegal alien.” The abbreviation “illegals” has long been seen as pejorative and hence, “undocumented.”

   1
9. CSK says:
   Monday, 26 May 2025 at 12:05

   Former NY Rep. Charles Rangel, 94, has died. RIP.

   2
10. charontwo says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 13:00

    Interesting piece at Progress Pond on how Trump came to power.

    Here is the conclusion at the end:

    But I also know what happened after 1934. Trotsky was wrong about many things, but he saw quite clearly where Nazism was headed, and why.

    “Martin Longman” which quotes from this:

    https://yalereview.org/article/trotsky-hitlers-national-socialism

    Trotsky watched the rise of Nazi Germany from exile, and one year after Adolf Hitler took power in January 1933, Trotsky wrote an essay called Hitler’s National Socialism that is really very interesting to read over 90 years later. It’s a diagnosis of how the communist or socialist (as they called them) revolutions in Europe, especially in Germany, failed in the aftermath of World War One and why fascism took their place as an engine of change.

    This was no small thing in 1934, when Trotsky wrote the essay. The split between he and Stalin was based on a disagreement over whether socialism could succeed in the USSR if the more advanced economies of the world didn’t come along for the ride. Once it became clear that, at least in the short term, this was not going to happen, Stalin shrugged it off and advanced the idea that socialism could exist and thrive solely in one country. He became less interested in promoting communism abroad and put his focus on making it succeed at home. Trotsky felt that communism in the USSR would ultimately fail if it didn’t take root in Western Europe and America. So, for him, understanding why it hadn’t taken root in those places was of the utmost importance.

    Unsurprisingly, Trotsky’s analysis utilizes Marxist terms and concepts, none more central than the petty or petite bourgeoisie. The term describes people who don’t neatly fit as either capitalists or laborers. This is because they’re mainly self-employed as small-business owners or artisans. They were thought of as kind swing voters who could take the side of either big business or labor depending on the prevailing economic conditions. And the prevailing economic conditions in Germany in the lead-up to Hitler’s ascension to power could hardly have been worse.

    From the outset of his essay, Trotsky is at pains to argue that it was mistake to attribute Hitler’s success so far as mainly attributable to his unique skills.

    …the leader is always a relation between people, the individualistic supply to meet the collective demand. The controversy over Hitler’s personality becomes the sharper the more that the secret of his success is sought in himself. In the meantime, another political figure would be difficult to find that is in the same measure the focus of anonymous historic forces. Not every exasperated petty bourgeois could have become Hitler, but a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petty bourgeois.

    What he’s suggesting here is that Hitler was a product of or response to a demand, and so more of a follower than a leader. Later on, he makes this point clearer:

    “PNG”

    As you read it, I think you’ll readily see how well it describes the rise of Donald Trump.

    Certainly, Trump began his political career almost inadvertently by becoming the leader of the Birther Movement that questioned whether or not President Barack Obama had truly been born in Honolulu. The idea was that he had actually been born in Kenya, like his father, and was therefore ineligible to serve as president.

    This false and absurd theory absolutely required a bold, self-assured temperament and loud voice.

    His willingness to take on this role made him a darling of everyone who held Obama responsible for their dissatisfaction with the status quo. But Trump didn’t, as yet, have any program or clear political agenda. These things developed as he interacted with the people who responded positively to his Birtherism. These were folks who were dismayed that America had elected a black president and saw it as a sign that the country was slipping away from them. So, as Trump made his appearances, he began to improvise and respond to the approbation he received from his audiences. He would try out material and keep and emphasize what had resonated, while dropping what had not.

    Much of the material that resonated was related to race and immigration, and the way the browning of America was seen as an almost irreversible loss. There was also material that touched on the hollowing out of industrial America and traditional labor jobs, or the pinch small businesspeople (the petty bourgeois) felt from the pressures of globalization.

    As Trump listened to the “oratorical acoustics” of his own speeches, he began to form more concrete political thoughts. The slogans followed, beginning with “Make America Great Again,” Still, his political thoughts were shallow. He attacked free trade deals, for example, but not the monopolists most responsible for the “ruined and drowning people” of America’s Rust Belt.

    As he turned toward an actual political career, his speeches were attuned to the pitch of the types of dissatisfaction he heard in response, but his consolations were still little more than formless and sentimental nostalgia for a long-long past.

    What emerged was kind of beggar’s sack of grievances all bound up in MAGA. This is how his program consolidated. This is how the “leader” took shape out of the raw material. When he discovered that people loved it when he said he will build a wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it, he kept saying it at every stop. Soon it was an actual policy, however insulting and unrealistic it might be in practice.

    Before long, he realized that being insulting and unrealistic was actually at the heart of his appeal, and so he went searching for new ways to insult people and make impossible promises. This proved to be an unstoppable strategy and new force in American politics, but it was very much an example of “an individualistic supply to meet the collective demand.” It’s true that Trump found a segment of America that “wanted to thump with their fists on the table,” and also true that we was better than anyone else at the job. But he has only led the masses in the direction they were pushing, not the other way around.

    Just as importantly, while Trump’s harangues sound like commands and prayers to his admirers, he has never had a clue how to cure the evils he promises to address. Formless, and even forlorn, sentimentality combined with ignorance and endless conspiracy theories dressed up as erudition won’t solve complicated problems.

    The similarities between Trotsky description of Hitler circa 1934 and the Trump of 2015-2016 don’t stop here.

    While the Nazis acted as a party and not as a state power, they did not quite find an approach to the working class. On the other side, the big bourgeoisie, even those who supported Hitler with money, did not consider his party theirs. The national “regeneration” leaned wholly upon the intermediate classes, the most backward part of the nation, the heavy ballast of history.

    Trump’s whole first term in office could be described the same way, with traditional monied Republicans (big versus petite bourgeoisie) contributing to Trump’s successful campaign but very much not feeling that his party was theirs. It was too boorish, too provincial, and essentially an embarrassment. But from a policy perspective, it was the workers and the small business owners who were sold out, and that’s even more true now in Trump’s second term.

    How is it that they seem not to notice? When it comes to the petite bourgeoisie, Trotsky has an answer:

    Political art consisted in fusing the petty bourgeoisie into oneness through its solid hostility to the proletariat (working classes). What must be done in order to improve things? First of all, throttle those who are underneath. Impotent before large capital, the petty bourgeoisie hopes in the future to regain its social dignity by overwhelming the workers.

    The Nazis call their overturn by the usurped title of revolution. As a matter of fact, in Germany as well as in Italy, Fascism leaves the social system untouched. Taken by itself, Hitler’s overturn has no right even to the name counter-revolution…the party that stood at the head of the proletariat returned the power back to the bourgeoisie.

    German Fascism, like the Italian, raised itself to power on the backs of the petty bourgeoisie which it turned into a battering ram against the working class and the institutions of democracy. But Fascism in power is least of all the rule of the petty bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is a most ruthless dictatorship of monopolist capital.

    This is why we see Trump straining to perpetuate his 2017 tax cuts for the rich and pay for it with the health care of the working classes. It’s why Trump is working overtime to curry favor with the very monopolists who are crushing small business owners and artisans. But this intermediate swing voter class that is being crushed under Trump is largely still on board.

    There is a lot more at the link, but this is already getting pretty long.

    Trump and Hitler both look like Darwinian examples of the “Steam Engine Time” theory of history – guys who, partially by luck and partially by merit happened along to fill a niche that opened up.

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11. CSK says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 14:09

    Trump says Putin is “crazy” and the Kremlin responds that Trump is suffering from “emotional overload.”

    1
12. Kathy says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 14:53

    That was some vacation…

    The TL;DR version: Wednesday we had to take mom to the hospital. She had complications from knee replacement surgery (which is another long story), namely the prosthesis got infected (@Micheal Reynolds, this is a common risk in such surgeries; please take care). By Thursday she was moved to the ICU, which scared the s**t out of us, but proved not to be quite necessary. She was out of there by Friday, but she has to remain in the hospital until at least next Thursday.

    Prognosis: if we’re lucky and the IV antibiotics over weeks clear the infection, well and good. If not, the prosthesis has to be removed and eventually replaced (third long story). The surgeon is optimistic, the infectious disease specialist less so. the surgeon wants to try everything else first, and keep additional surgery as a last resort.

    Right now mom is basically ok, for her age, with normal heart rate, blood pressure, O2 levels, no fever, etc. Except for the infection. And for being cooped up in the hospital.

    And I thought working the first Saturday until 1 am would be the worst part…

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13. gVOR10 says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 15:11

    @charontwo:

    The Nazis call their overturn by the usurped title of revolution. As a matter of fact, in Germany as well as in Italy, Fascism leaves the social system untouched. Taken by itself, Hitler’s overturn has no right even to the name counter-revolution…the party that stood at the head of the proletariat returned the power back to the bourgeoisie. – Trotsky

    A few days ago I quoted Ignazio Silone, actually a pseudonym for an Italian novelist and politician, “Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.” You quote Trotsky saying the same thing. Trump is saving us from being the most prosperous, freest people in the world.

    I’ll also note the stereotypical MAGA is some small town blue collar worker, but the real core of MAGA is the small business people, contractors, and so on. Trotsky’s petty bourgeoisie.

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14. CSK says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 15:12

    @Kathy:

    Very sorry to read this. I hope your mother gets well quickly.

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15. Kathy says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 15:31

    @CSK:

    Thank you.

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16. Kathy says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 15:36

    With internal enemies like these, who needs more external enemies?

    TL;DR: the felon rapist and the lush are proving to be potent recruiting tools for the Islamic State.
17. Kathy says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 17:55

    I’m re-reading some of Clarke’s works. Currently it’s Rama, the original 70s novel.

    It’s interesting, well written, etc., but also somewhat disappointing. Not because we don’t learn much of what Rama is or what it does, but there’s too little description of the interior*.

    And yet, my main complain about the sequels is that I found the purpose of Rama too pedestrian to justify spending any wonder on it.

    Speaking of which: in an attempt to come up with aliens that are really alien, I came up with a species that’s deeply xenophobic, but it’s not aggressive or violent about it. They don’t think other sentients, humans included, are inferior, or dirty, or sacrilegious, or monstrous, or anything like that. They just have on interest in aliens.

    This extends to themselves, too. They have active social lives, but members of their own species who colonize other worlds and develop different customs, foods, etc. are considered too alien to be worth any notice.

    Humanity’s first interaction with them is an encounter with a huge, massive, heavily armed, heavily armored warship. The ship’s captain warns them they are close to their space and they are not allowed to enter. So please stay on this side of the divide and we won’t trouble you at all.

    *I’m convinced Clarke had no idea what Rama is, who built it, who launched it, what it’s for, where it came from, where it’s headed, etc. And quite possibly he didn’t care.
18. Mikey says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 18:23

    Today I remember Specialist Clarence Cash, because I was there when he was killed.

    https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/45150849/clarence-allen-cash

    I didn’t know him, or maybe we had exchanged hellos the day he died, but I saw his Bradley take the tank round that killed him and wounded the others.

    So every Memorial Day, I think of him. Rest easy, warrior.

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19. Rob1 says:
    Monday, 26 May 2025 at 19:33

    @gVOR10:

    “Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.”

    Pretty much nails it. You know, the whole D.E.I , “woke,” transgender junior high school forced surgeries, were not really a “thing.” But, “boogymen” certainly do serve their purpose.

    America’s “exceptionalism” is thatin curious. speaking, we are exceptionally gullible, and extraordinarily incurious.

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