Fraser Sherman's Blog

Ain’t happening. Though apparently some people were convinced Musk would be a moderating influence (I don’t have the link handy). Here’s a quick roundup of some er, fun stuff. Then more links:

He’s refusing the court order to let the AP into the briefing room because they refuse to use “Gulf of America.”

We’re closing dozens of embassies — but I suppose all we need is one in Russia so the administration can get its marching orders.

The DOJ wants to pay reparations to the J6 terrorists. But deporting a genuinely innocent man is no big. Because returning him to the US would ruin the Felon’s plans to deport American citizens. And no, contrary to Commisar Bondi, we are not sending El Salvador the worst of the worst.

CBS hurt President Snowflake’s fee-fees. CBS must pay!

More cuts at NOAA, because worrying about climate is bad.

“The offices that ran the Sickle Cell Data Collection Program, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System and the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer were scrapped. So were teams that reported the levels of lead in childrens’ blood, alcohol-related deaths, asthma rates, exposures to radon and other dangerous chemicals and how many people who use injectable drugs contract infectious diseases.”

RFK also lies about the effectiveness of the measles vaccine.

Jefferson Griffin lost the race for the NC Supreme Court. Like a lot of Republicans he’s turned to the courts to hand him victory anyway and it’s going well for him.

“The recent experience of the United Kingdom constituted good advice the American electorate refused to take.“

The Felon’s willing to pay Greenlanders $10,000 apiece a year from our tax money if they’ll submit to his conquest. Great fiscal restraint, Felon.

To end with some upbeat notes:

“After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential race, Republicans who control the Wisconsin Assembly hired Gableman to review how the election was conducted in the swing state. Gableman falsely claimed the election was stolen, consulted with conspiracy theorists, kept shoddy records and unsuccessfully sought to jail mayors and local election officials who he contended weren’t cooperating with him. He publicly urged lawmakers to try to revoke the state’s 10 electoral votes, even as he privately acknowledged doing so was a “practical impossibility.” Gableman’s law license has been suspended for three years.

South Korea has dismissed President Yoon from office after his impeachment for attempting to impose martial law. It can be done.

Harvard has politely told the Felon to go to hell.

That is how someone — I don’t know who — described the current state of Republican thought: “mental gestures resembling ideas.” Like The Felon’s claim pre-election he had “the outline of a plan” for health insurance. In that spirit, let’s look at some stupid gestures.

Nobody gestures like Sen. Tommy Tuberville who claims “We have entire men’s teams across this country now that are turning trans. Women’s teams, they’re turning trans.” It’s not only a lie, it’s stupid gibberish.

Or consider Pete Hegseth, SecDef, who in addition to purging all mention of nonwhite nonmale heroes from his department is apparently looking to fire anyone who doesn’t contribute directly to “lethality.” Sure, that could be a simple matter of removing a lot of paper-pushers, but the military has lots of civilian employees who handle logistics, family support, etc. I’m not optimistic he can tell the difference.

I’ve often thought the problem with FOTUS is that he’s an old fart, grumbling about low-flush toilets, paper straws and wind farms like the crabby old uncle at the family dinner. This blog post points out he remembers the days of industrial America, assembly lines, blue collar factory work, and he wants it back regardless of whether many Americans are interested or capable of it. Nor does he care that relocating manufacturing and supply chains to the US, even if possible, would be ultra-expensive. The Felon’s reality is immune to fact. Hence, tariffs.

And despite the EU, Canada and China retaliating with tariffs on our goods, the idiot in the White House insists it’s going wonderfully! Record numbers of companies relocating manufacturing to the US! Foreign leaders begging to make a deal! He’s got no names or examples but what do you want from him, facts? He knows his strategy is brilliant! And cutting most of the tariffs (but not all) was his master plan all along. Businesses are totally not suffering!

I’m sure he thinks the same about his desire to conquer Canada and Greenland (and shame on Reuters for talking about “Greenland-acquisition negotiations” as if this were something Greenland or Denmark were open to discussing. Say no to sanewashing). He’s made it clear his snowflake fee-fees can’t stand even a slight demurral from his big, beautiful plan.

(I will pause here and note that Dems who think we shouldn’t make the administration’s crimes and horrific policies into a campaign issue are also making futile mental gestures. This is not the time to reach for unity, not with fascist criminal scum. See also.).

Bill Ackman, big-shot in finance, has one idea — kiss The Felon’s ass. Ditto the Republican Party. A lot of them don’t like the tariffs but they’d sooner beg for exemptions than challenge their god-king’s power and risk his wrath. And other er, thinkers, are also pretending the Felon’s strategy is absolutely brilliant (at the link, an explanation why it isn’t).

Here’s a great mental gesture: Felon backers who figured Elon Musk was smart enough to rein the Felon in. So many bad ideas in that thought.

Or FOTUS thinking he can resurrect the coal industry — presumably part of his nostalgia for the days of massive manufacturing and manly American workers.

As I’m not covering the Felon’s every stupid yap and tweet, that’ll be all for now.

Two recent events of note: first, conspiracy theorist and Muslim-hater Laura Loomer convinced The Felon to fire members of the NSA for being insufficiently loyal or having the wrong politics. Second, Christian supremacist Joel Webbon and his podcast co-hosts anticipated the government shutting down Christian churches for doing things like marrying gays or allowing women to preach (Webbon is a complete misogynist).

For all their whining and lying about cancel culture (more here) and political correctness, the right-wing are enthusiastic practitioners. As Vaclav Havel said 50 years ago, when a government claims its entitled to rule because its ideas are true, dissent is seen as a threat. Governments that say they represent the will of God have never tolerated people saying “Well I think God prefers X.” Even if they have no power, aren’t resisting the government, just want to do their own thing, proposing an alternative vision of truth is seen as a threat. Webbon despises independent women and gays so he’s convinced himself they need subjugation (as I’ve said before, religious conservatives misogyny is a poisonous tree).

It’s no surprise that so many organizations are capitulating to the Felon of the United States (here’s a recent example) but it’s a foolish gambit. People who kow-tow to tyranny hope that their expression of loyalty, their cooperation with specific demands or stances, will save their butts. In reality, it’s never enough because the restrictions inevitably grow more restrictive with time.

As Fred Clark at Slacktivist puts it, it’s a game of musical chairs because the standards are constantly shifting and the range of acceptable beliefs keeps tightening. In the first round of Webbon’s fantasy theocracy, anyone who’s too pro-women or pro-gay loses their chair. In the next round, it’ll be women who make rape accusations (if there’s no conviction, Webbon wants them put to death) or black people who advocate for equality. Eager as they are for federal support for their own church projects, the right wing has little interest in religious organizations that support refugees or protecting their rights.

After that, who knows? People who think infant baptism rather than adult baptism is the way to go? Young Earth creationists vs. Old Earth creationists? Plus dissent from the Felon’s whims will always be grounds for taking a chair. Court prophet Kenneth Copeland claims if you don’t vote Republican, Jesus will punish you. How long before that becomes a measure of whether you’re a real Christian entitled to real religious freedom?

Part of that narrowing passage is because power corrupts: I’m sure plenty of megachurch pastors advocating for a Christian state imagine themselves as the new American pope (though a protestant one). Even those who don’t lust for power are bound to realize that if the government decides who’s Christian, they’re safer running the government than facing a tribunal run by other churches.

Another factor is that, as I said, the rules keep changing. Anti-vaxxers existed fifteen years ago but nobody would have held up anti-vax views as a litmus test. Now we have a raging anti-vax nutjob purging the government of anyone whose activities contradict his idiocy. Being POC or a woman and getting respect for military service now gets you shat upon. We’ve gone from the Felon promising an economic boom to a new right-wing orthodoxy that collapsing the economy is good. By this time next year, not believing in the sinister weather-control conspiracy may be a heresy. So may thinking the Felon is not the divinely ordained king of Canada. Amy Coney Barrett’s a Christian conservative but voting against the executive branch in a recent court case makes her “so ungrateful, so disgraceful, spitting in the face of the Constitution” according to Putin sock puppet Benny Johnson.

If they can come for trans people today, tomorrow it’ll be people who don’t want death for trans people. Or people who’s haircuts are too androgynous for the Commissar of Gender Conformity. We can’t be sure what the new rules will be but there will be new rules.

As JFK once said, our religious freedom is safest “where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.” The same is true of all our liberties. The people who’d cheer on Webbon’s ban on churches that are too pro-gay or pro-women may turn around tomorrow and discover their own faith is now heretical.

Even if they don’t, taking away someone’s chair — whether the chair is the right to speak, the right to vote, the right to run a business without paying kickbacks to the Felon — is always wrong. Even if it only affects one small group and nobody else. “They came for the Jews and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. And then they didn’t come for anyone else.” is not how things work out, ever. Even if they did stop, decent human beings need to speak up for the Jews. Or the Muslims. Or whoever the target is.

Unfortunately too many people don’t want to stop the game of musical chairs. It’s so much fun seeing Jews/sexually active women/blacks/trans kids lose their chairs, and who knows? Maybe you’ll be the last one with a chair! Give it a chance! Sure, everyone else in the game thinks the same thing, and most of them will end up losing but why change the rules when you might get the winner’s chair?

Pushing back against “musical chairs is good!” is part of the fight ahead. Hence this post.