verycleverboy

[verycleverboy]

A little cross-disciplinary reading

How this made it onto a blog that, when it shows up, is usually about modern American politics (especially a particular head of state) is something I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. But Erich Fromm's aside in The Art of Loving that narcissism is a form of buried self-loathing got me to thinking about (ahem) certain elements of the present moment.

Which brings us to Dr. Les Carter’s brief but useful article from Surviving Narcissism. It isn't about US presidents, past or present. It definitely is about a personality type where the person "must appear dominant and powerful because inwardly they dread being exposed as fraudulent and weak".

Here's how he begins:

Consider some of a narcissist’s most egregious tendencies:  contempt, easy anger, inability to manage conflict well, lots of criticism, defensiveness, dishonesty, condescension, and much more.  Each of these inclinations reveals a lack of internal peace.   Narcissists are an unhappy, dissatisfied lot.  They desperately want to blame their dysfunctions on you, when in fact their dysregulated behaviors arise from within.  Though they won’t admit it, narcissists are hindered by a fragile ego.  Unsure about the wisest ways to maneuver through life’s challenges, they look outward for solutions because they suffer from psychological ineptitude. Plainly, narcissists do not like who they are, which explains why they are so insistent that you must give them narcissistic supply.  They are dependent upon you for regulation because they cannot sufficiently regulate themselves.  They will erect a façade of confidence or superiority, yet it is merely window dressing.  

(Continue reading (And yes, there are bullet points on the other end of the link.))

[verycleverboy]

CalMatters from the anti-ICE protests:

Another demonstrator, J, didn’t want to give his full name. He’s been riding the Metro from South Los Angeles out to the downtown protest blocks with his 50/50 U.S./Mexico flag every day since Saturday. “The news — they kinda lie about everything, in my opinion,” said J. “There’s only like a few bad things that happen, but they make it like a big thing. We’re all being peaceful out here.” With his flag draped over his shoulder, J bumped his fist against his chest as passing drivers honked their horns at him in support. “The news makes it worse for us,” he said. “Respectfully, those guys over there and those guys down there,” he gestured toward LAPD officers grouped across the street and pointed at the National Guard soldiers farther down the block. “They make it worse for us.”

(full article at CalMatters)

[verycleverboy]

Ever since he was ignominiously blocked from shooting George Floyd protesters, Donald Trump has been itching to sic the military on U.S. citizens. Seizing California’s National Guard and sending U.S. Marines into Los Angeles to deliberately escalate violence brings his long-festering fever dream closer to life. Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has recounted how, during a White House meeting in 2020, Trump looked at Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and asked why he couldn’t just shoot protesters, adding, “It was (both) a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue hung very heavily in the air.” Milley pushed back on that suggestion and other illegal Trump impulses, eventually leading Trump to call for Milley’s execution and revoke his security detail. During Trump 1.0, Trump apparently suggested shooting protesters enough times that Esper issued a public statement opposing the use of the Insurrection Act against protesters, enraging Trump. Trump made sure that would not happen again in his second administration by appointing a dangerously unqualified defense secretary with few moral qualms. As a Fox News host, Pete Hegseth echoed Trump’s desire to deploy the military against protesters. He defended war criminals who ‘killed the right people in the wrong ways,’ advocating “total war against our enemies… All of ’em, you stack bodies, and when it’s over, then you let the dust settle and you figure out who’s ahead.”

A trillion-dollar defense budget to kill whom, exactly?

Even though the U.S. is not at war, and Trump has shamefully abandoned our NATO military alliances, Hegseth waxes hard on “lethality,” and rails against “woke” laws that punish soldiers for indiscriminate killings. Trump/Hegseth seek a trillion-dollar defense budget, not to defend America from foreign enemies who are now Trump’s mentors, but to attack “enemies within,” i.e., Americans who oppose Trump’s agenda. None of this, including Trump’s deliberate escalation of violence in LA, was unforeseen. Who can forget how Kamala Harris was panned as histrionic when she said Trump would sic the military on U.S. citizens, following his promise to do just that? In October, 2024, Trump said he’d use the military against the biggest threat to America — Americans who don’t support him.

(continue reading via no-paywall MSN mirror)

[verycleverboy]

A.R. Moxon on yesterday's attempted flex:

The world's biggest spoiled child threw himself a special-boy birthday party in the nation's capital yesterday: A tank parade showing off all the toys of death he now controls, and a demonstration that he now controls them. So the tanks rolled down the streets, possibly damaging them on the way, past an assemblage so diminished you could hear the squeak of the wheels. Soldiers marched in what appeared to be rather desultory fashion down Constitution Avenue, lined by crowds that stood one (or in some places none) deep. The birthday boy watched from his special viewing stand and made his strong-boy scowl. All his favorite TV people were with him, mostly because he had appointed them to his cabinet. Secretary Gin-For-Breakfast, the war criminal and blow-dried TV propaganda ghoul who now controls the armed forces he someday hopes to use to murder U.S. citizens, sat right next to the birthday boy, which was nice of him. The Secretary's appointment stood against the public good and all common sense, but it did what it was supposed to do, which is prove that the birthday boy gets his way in all things. Proving this same thing appears to also have been the main reason for the tank parade. He got to say a few words, the birthday boy, and it must be admitted that he does still know a few. He's been wanting this parade for year, the birthday boy. Perhaps he thought it would fill the hole in himself where a human soul normally is. Maybe for a few minutes it did. Who knows? It was apropos to drive tanks over something named for the Constitution. It's a perfect metaphor for what the birthday boy and his gang of thugs do every day. They're kidnapping a lot of our friends and family and shipping them off to slave gulags and places unknown, and doing many other things that are even more against the public good and all common sense than his cabinet appointees, and against laws both codified and moral, and against the Constitution itself. And the birthday boy is able to do it, because he controls not only the tanks but to a large degree our highest court, and most of the billionaires have kowtowed and offered the services of the platforms of influence that they own, and his party enjoys majorities in both branches of the legislature, two allegedly august bodies that now serve at his pleasure like two tamed apes who huddle by his feet and wait to dance for pennies when he whistles. This is why the people were elsewhere yesterday. They gathered, millions of them, in the nation's many cities, to convey the very clear message "fuck the birthday boy, and fuck all his evil works." There they were, the people, by the tens of thousands, in Philly and San Francisco, in Chicago, in San Diego, and Boston and New York, and Los Angeles, and hundreds of other cities, towns, and municipalities. The police were there too, very uniform and precise, conveying the message "we will control you, and we will be extremely deadly to you if you won't be controlled." The other day a sheriff offered to kill the people "graveyard dead" if he was given the slightest pretext for doing so, which is against the law and the constitution, but appears to be something he feels perfectly justified in saying and doing.

The people meanwhile are great. They aren't uniform and precise. They aren't trying to control people, or be deadly to people who won't be controlled. They're just being themselves, and that is an extraordinarily diverse and powerful thing. It's all sorts of things. Millions and millions of different things. It's everything. The people are the country, by the way. I mention this in case you didn't know. Some don't know.

(source)

[verycleverboy]

Lutnick's Phantom Army

"The authoritarian character worships the past. What has been, will eternally be. To wish or to work for something that has not yet been before is a crime or madness. The miracle of creation--and creation is always a miracle--is outside the range of his experience." --Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom.

Which brings us to the big question: whose version of the past are the current authoritarians talking about anyway? Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's fantasy of "the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones" coming to America gives you the answer: management's version. Preferably before organized labor.

But who's going to work on that all-American assembly line? Not Lutnick's family, and definitely not Trump's, of course. But even when you look outside of leadership, you're still going to have trouble finding soldiers for this phantom army. Tej Parikh for the Financial Times:

The allure of onshoring manufacturing is, then, clear. But to support the president’s plans, one must also believe that America can, and should, bring back labour-intensive factory jobs, and that tariffs are the best way to do so. [...I]f the goal is to recreate the scale and specialisation of the developing world’s factories, the US will need workers and capital. But few Americans want to go into industrial work. A 2024 Cato Survey found that only one in four believe they would be better off in a factory over their current employment. (Much of Trump’s “middle class” work in non-goods-producing sectors today.) The administration is also hostile to immigration.

(full article)

There's a lot of pieces to fit into this puzzle (which is my way of saying "read the whole thing"), but let's jump to Parkih's conclusion:

Building economic resilience and agility — to enable post-industrial communities to respond to and benefit more from the forces of international trade — is not easy. Nor is working with trade partners to deal constructively with disputes. But persevering at least preserves the growth-enhancing effects of global supply chains. Trump’s plan instead amounts to moving America back several decades. If that’s what his supporters want, they must also be content with making the nation as a whole poorer.

[verycleverboy]

John Bunyan knew the score. A person who takes up a cause for the world will throw it away for the world.

The Right has a cesspool of race-to-the-bottom influencers. #knownothingism

Dumb commentary for dumb people.

[verycleverboy]

Abuser's mentality? Never heard of it.

(and yes, it's real)

[verycleverboy]

(original post)

(the slightly longer version of today)

[verycleverboy]

"The bull market is dead"

That's Emily Bowersock Hill, CEO and founding partner at Bowersock Capital Partners, commenting on day two of the post-"Liberation Day" Dow Jones Industrial Average freefall. The last 48 hours indicate what most observers had been warning about: economic suicide.

And now we're trapped inside the collapse. Yay.

Per CNBC:

The stock market was pounded for a second day Friday after China retaliated with new tariffs on U.S. goods, sparking fears President Donald Trump has ignited a global trade war that will lead to a recession. Here’s a tally of the stock market damage:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,231.07 points, or 5.5%, to 38,314.86 on Friday, the biggest decline since June 2020 during the pandemic. This follows a 1,679-point decline on Thursday and marks the first time ever that it has shed more than 1,500 points on back-to-back days.

The S&P 500 nosedived 5.97% to 5,074.08, the biggest decline since March 2020. The benchmark shed 4.84% on Thursday and is now off more than 17% off its recent high.

The Nasdaq Composite, home to many tech companies that sell to China and manufacture there as well, dropped 5.8%, to 15,587.79. This follows a nearly 6% drop on Thursday and takes the index down by 22% from its December record, a bear market in Wall Street terminology.

The selling was broad with only 14 members of the S&P 500 higher on the day. Major market indexes closed at their lows of the session.

China’s commerce ministry said Friday the country will impose a 34% levy on all U.S. products, disappointing investors who had hoped countries would negotiate with Trump before retaliating. Technology stocks led the bleeding Friday. Shares of iPhone maker Apple slumped 7%, bringing its loss for the week to 13%. Artificial intelligence bellwether Nvidia pulled back 7% during the session, while Tesla fell 10%. All three companies have large exposure to China and are among the hardest hit from Beijing’s retaliatory duties. Outside of tech, Boeing and Caterpillar — big exporters to China — led the Dow lower, falling 9% and nearly 6%, respectively.

(continue reading)

I've been told that watching the CNBC talking heads react as their worst economic nightmare unrolled in real time was a rare viewing experience, but you could say the same thing about a home video of a tornado touching down on a packed elementary school playground, and I sure as hell wouldn't watch that for fun either.

[verycleverboy]

"And Now: Goodbye"

Yesterday, a toxic ego made flesh declared a scorched earth trade policy he labeled "Liberation Day," one of many bridges to the outside world that he's gleefully burned in his first few months back. But who's getting liberated from whom?

German art historian Florian Illies has thoughts, in the form of a breakup letter:

Thank you for Andy Warhol. Thank you for the Big Mac and the iPhone. Thank you, too, for Francis Ford Coppola, for Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino. Thank you for Angela Davis, Joan Mitchell and Susan Sontag. Thank you for F. Scott Fitzgerald, for Aretha Franklin, Edward Hopper and also for Levi’s 501s. And now: Goodbye. Yes, it was a grand American epoch, one that afforded us here in Europe with a hundred years of security, pleasure and stimulation. But every good thing must come to an end. Now, we can finally abandon our meek submission. 

(full article...and because it's not hosted on a predominately English news site, the "nächste seite" button is German for "next page". There are three pages. Don't skip out early.)

And as the ship sinks, the band plays on...

[verycleverboy]

2001-2024: Never Forget

2025:

The Trump administration fired hundreds of staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), including those at the World Trade Center Health Program who treat 9/11 first responders and survivors. The cuts, advocates and New York officials said, will cripple the program’s ability to adequately monitor and provide care to survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as well as people newly diagnosed with illnesses such as cancers and respiratory illnesses. "It’s an insult to those who died," John Feal, a 9/11 survivor and advocate, told USA TODAY Wednesday morning.

[verycleverboy]

When the walls of a vacant public building in Salt Lake City became a canvas to commemorate victims of police violence, the 8.5-acre area of town known as Fleet Block gave a “sense of cultural inclusion” to the city, which is predominantly white. “It’s for the wrong reason — death at the hands of officers — but it was a place for us to mourn and show respect for the lives lost,” said Mona Robinson, who lives in a Salt Lake City suburb. That space for respect is gone now, she said, as Fleet Block and its 26 red and magenta murals — including likenesses of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor — were demolished over the course of several weeks to make way for housing, small businesses and open public spaces. The demolition of the murals is not related to President Donald Trump’s executive order to roll back what he calls “divisive” documentations of American history in public parks and museums, but this action, “in some ways, shows what matters to us doesn’t matter to them — whether here or anywhere else in America,” Robinson said. 

(continue reading)

[verycleverboy]

Liberation Day, you say...

President Trump has been dropping teasers about something called "Liberation Day" for a few weeks now, without letting anyone outside of his inner circle in on even the smallest details. We figured it was more tariffs, but who's the next target?

The answer was somehow stupider than anyone could've anticipated: EVERYONE.

The summary from CNN's ongoing coverage:

Sweeping tariffs: President Donald Trump declared a national economic emergency and announced tariffs of at least 10% across all countries, with rates going even higher for 60 countries deemed the “worst offenders,” according to White House officials. China hit hard: China, the second top importer to the US behind Mexico, will now face a 54% tariff under the new policy. Beijing, along with the EU, Japan and South Korea have already threatened retaliatory tariffs. Here’s what some world leaders are saying and this is a breakdown of tariffs by country. Markets rattled: US stocks plunged in after-hours trading as investors digested Trump’s sweeping tariffs. The past few weeks of constantly changing and conflicting trade policy have triggered volatility, frozen business decision-making and put consumer spending on pause.

(source)

It's a basic rule of thumb that a country's citizens let a lot of questionable crap slide if its leadership gets the economy right. My creeping feeling is that a lot of this has to do with the people who conflate the benefits of "freedom" with spending power. Of course, spending power isn't an actual right at all, it's a privilege of a certain way of doing business. So even if one of them is a little concerned about corruption, failing infrastructure, or whether black lives really matter, that type of person looks at all the dead presidents in their wallet and shrug it off. Because it's all going to work out as long as the money's good, right?

That theory has never been tested by a dangerously stupid (and possibly senile) commander-in-chief intentionally crashing a post-recession recovery while also willfully destroying vital government departments, orchestrating illegal power grabs and committing civil and human rights violations in broad daylight. If this omni-tariff is allowed to stand, it's going to be an education for all of us, one we're going to pay through the nose for in every facet of our lives, but it's a hard lesson that we kind of deserve.

[verycleverboy]

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[verycleverboy]

A little something to have in your hip pocket for the long slog ahead: a project that maps something as coordinated as a hurricane and as well thought-out as a plague of locusts, the DOGE path of destruction.

That's where the cuts stand at of the end of March, 2025. And of course, something very predictable when you shift the focus to rehires, unfrozen funding, and judicial actions (since most of this is highly illegal).

Damn, that's practically naked.

[verycleverboy]

Elon is emotionally devoid malware.