WHO certainly has its flaws but I fear loss of progress in dealing with childhood diseases (including polio), identifying and heading off potential pandemics, vaccine development and distribution, and more. The move may actually help China gain more influence and economic leverage in world health strategies (as suggested by a Washington Post article.)
It has only been about 24 hours for a new administration and I remain very much concerned about a war on applying good science to policy decisions. (And I’m horrified by the many Americans—including many people in my own community—who applaud a war on solid science and the expertise of scientists.)
WHO handled the pandemic a lot better than Donald “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero” Trump did.[1]
Having seen the anti-vax executive orders I’m now wondering if there are ‘deny climate change is real’, ‘teach ID’ and ‘the moon-landing was a hoax’ ones in the pipeline.
Added: …and now he’s signed an executive order to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America - even though it borders Mexico too. Maybe we should rename the continent “Canadia”, since Canada has more land area that the USA does.
I’m impressed by how Trump thinks that the bishop who asked him to have mercy on LGBTQ+ people and on immigrants, is supposed to have been “nasty” in her tone. And to owe him an apology. I listened to her speech. She just plain asked him to have mercy on them.
Yeah what a truly nasty thing to ask the president for. Mercy for the less priveleged. Jesus would have just … pulled a flamethrower on them, of course? She better apologize.
But hey, he didn’t put his hand on the bible when he was sworn in (which I’m sure is irrelevant even to the sycophant supporters of his that would normally be O B S E S S E D with that sort of thing. Imagine if Biden or Obama would have forgotten). Dear Leader can do nothing wrong.
I suppose this coming term he’ll simply be more honest about who he really is.
It’s not really Trump who concerns me most at this point. The real problem, it seems, is that a plurality of Americans are just A-OK with being led by a White Supremacist felon with aspirations to dictatorship, and the country’s judicial and political institutions, far from curtailing this, are aiding and abetting.
The last two times the Democrats won, the GOP didn’t just roll over and die. They refused to even accept the legitimacy of the electoral outcome, and obstructed the governing party at every step of the way. For some reason, the Democrats refuse to follow this example and, instead, say “Well, they won because they’re racists, so maybe we should be racists, too.”
When I was young the GOP was known as the party of “law and order” and were super-pro-police. So I never thought I’d see the day when a GOP President would release very violent convicted felons who had ruthlessly attacked police—especially those defending the Capitol, a favorite GOP “shrine of democracy.” I wish at times like this that we had a more diverse group on PS because I simply want to know what politically “conservative” people think about the bombshells of the past few days. How are they processing this?
I don’t think there are many Reaganite conservatives left, but I could be wrong. It seems like for the most part “conservatives” have made a pact with fascism because they think it can be controlled to serve their purposes (but we’ve seen how well that works out before).
They don’t exist anymore. In general, people no longer have principles. They’re all reactionary social-media programmed drones. Sadly it also goes for some portion of the left. Social media algorithms have rotted people’s brains, and there’s no going back. This will only get worse.
With the recent pile of pardons for violent thugs, I’m having flashbacks to the infamous prison releases of January 1933 [corrected typo!] in Germany—and then that following March when the broader amnesty from the Reichstag [perhaps I should say Bundestag, because I think it happened right around the time of the transition] released hundreds of violent insurrectionists.
Godwin’s Law be d@!*&d. [Although I entirely agree with Mr. Godwin’s original observation.]
It is difficult to avoid noticing the similarities to some patterns of long ago.
Many here will recall this ad from the 1988 election, put out by George HW Bush. One of the supposedly moderate and not-racist members of the old GOP that everyone is now all misty-eyed about.
I would somewhat agree—but having lived through that era of the 1960’s and 1970’s, I would say that the “law and order” slogan was a little more complicated than that.
Yes, for MANY (I mean millions of right-wingers of those days), it was basically code language (and dog-whistling) for the worst of traditional racist inclinations, ESPECIALLY in the deep south, as one generalization. But in many areas of the North, for example, it meant “I hate those dirty long-haired hippy radicals who are alway protesting the war [in Vietnam.]” Sometimes it even referred to “radical feminists” carrying out sit-ins.
Growing up I remember having to listen to all sorts of nasty conversations while waiting for my turn at the barbershop. A major target in discussions of “law and order” was “those campus radicals” (many of them privileged upper-class students at Ivy League campuses and more average students at places like the Berkeley campus) who were staging building sit-ins against “the war” [i.e. Vietnam.] Eventually the denunciations even aimed relatively close to home and our own state university campuses there in the midwest.
By the way, that gives me a sudden flashback to a forgotten memory of my undergrad days. Because taxpayers in that state were horrified by newspaper headlines of organized student protests even on our previously quiet state university campuses, the legislators and the university officials started issuing “contracts” to all recipients of scholarships. We had to annually sign an agreement acknowledging that ANY participation in any organized protest could be grounds for forfeiture of scholarship disbursements. I think it led to court challenges involving what were actually lawful assemblies and not violent—but those peaceful protests were sometimes very embarrassing to university and state officials. And that was enough to get them upset and talking about “law and order.”
So I entirely agree that “law and order” was OFTEN a racist reaction to any person of color publicly demanding equality. But it also applied to virtually ANYBODY carrying out even the mildest of “civil disobedience” or simple public protest in the name of equality or fairness.
What’s so mindboggling about the whole thing is you will get people that range from “He’s not white supremacist, that’s just leftist media hating on him”, through “him saying he’ll be a dictator on day one is just how he talks, don’t take it so seriously”, to “yes, and I want him to be a dictator and/or white supremacist”, and somehow all these people can coexist in the same voting block.
When you point them out to each other, they claim the other guy is a leftist trying to tarnish Trump’s reputation. It’s insane.
Dear Trump voters/fans/lickspittles. Quick question: The ~1500 January 6th insurrectionists, the ones Trump has now pardoned. They were FBI/Govt plants, and/or “antifa” and/or leftist Trump haters, right? Are they still, or are they back to being patriot heroes again now? Just curious.
