Political Theatre category archive

Jay Bookman laments the Trumpling of the rule of law.

. . . the Trump administration is claiming the right to do whatever it wants, while telling the judicial and legislative branches to go to hell.

Follow the link for his reasoning.

My local rag, which has a long history of trying to do a good job (that does not mean I always agree with them, by the way), has just implemented yet another 10% reduction in force because the ad revenues just aren’t there.

Timothy Egan writes about something I’ve mentioned before. Lies don’t work unless persons believe them.

A snippet:

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans cannot name a single branch of government. When NPR tweeted out sections of the Declaration of Independence last year, many people were outraged. They mistook Thomas Jefferson’s fighting words for anti-Trump propaganda.

Fake news is a real thing produced by active disseminators of falsehoods. Trump uses the term to describe anything he doesn’t like, a habit now picked up by political liars everywhere.

But Trump is a symptom; the breakdown in this democracy goes beyond the liar in chief. For that you have to blame all of us: we have allowed the educational system to become negligent in teaching the owner’s manual of citizenship.

In my local rag, Phil Terrana savages the nihilists–you know, those folks who want to tear everything down hoping that out of the rubbish will rise whatever cockeyed paradise they desire. He gives an example of how that works:

What historian couldn’t go on for hours talking about the wonderful days that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire — a time commonly referred to as the Dark Ages — when Vandals, Visigoths and Dragons tried to turn the collapsed empire into a better place?

At Psychology Today Blogs, Christopher Lane discusses a recent report on the tactics of Twitter twits and Facebook frolickers, who, armed with bots and weaponized blather, to promulgate propaganda, tarnish truth, and gull the gullible.

Read it.

Donald Drezner is cautiously optimistic. A summary of his argument would seem to be, “It could be worse.” A nugget (emphasis added):

It seems appropriate to consider just how well the republic has handled President Donald Trump. My tentative conclusion is that, so far, the system is working.

This is, to be clear, no thanks to Trump himself. One way the system could have worked was if the president learned the norms and rules of the presidency and adapted to them. That hasn’t happened — if anything, the opposite has occurred. Trump’s behavior has gotten worse. He clearly views himself as a monarch more than a president, taking credit for anything good and claiming he has powers that he does not. He has tried to cajole the FBI and Department of Justice to investigate his political opponents.

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Image via Job’s Anger.

Thom discusses the analogy of government as father and how it can help our understanding of conservative and liberal worldviews.

Jay Bookman thinks that Republicans have got it backwards. A snippet:

The Republicans keep telling themselves that current political problems are caused by their failure to keep promises to voters.

I think it’s even more basic than that: Their current political problems are caused by the fact that their promises suck . . . .

Follow the link for his reasoning.