Thoughts

On the resistance inside the trump administration

I decided it would be fun to break down today’s incendiary New York Times Opinion Piece. I’ve gunned it through my finely tuned bullshit detector and translated it line-by-line from its original Republican. Here are the results:

 

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
The ship is going down, folks.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
We know he’s guilty. We know you hate him. We know we’re about to get our asses kicked.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I just thought everyone (including our foreign adversaries) should know that the Executive Branch of the Federal Government is in a perpetual state of low-grade coup d’etat, and the President of the United States is literally too stupid to recognize it.

I would know. I am one of them.
I’m a rat in a room full of ass-covering cowards.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
To be clear, we’re still a bunch of craven assholes. We want nothing more than the rich to get richer, and we’re totally cool with ripping babies from the arms of mothers if it means racist old white people will keep voting for us.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
Even ass-covering cowards need a sense of purpose, and we’ve found ours in continually preventing a narcissistic half-wit from accidentally starting World War III.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
Don’t you see? By being traitorous and disloyal to the worst human being to ever hold the office of President, that somehow makes us the good guys.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
The President of the United States is a psychopath. No, really. He’s an actual psychopath, and we don’t know if it’s better or worse that he’s also easily manipulated and painfully fucking stupid.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
I am either completely full of shit, or I have a childlike grasp of contemporary Republicanism and such crippling levels of cognitive dissonance that I refuse to recognize how Donald Trump epitomizes the ideals long practiced by conservatives: closed minds, rigged markets, and selfish people.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
We’re absolutely terrified that he’s gonna fuck up the economy and we’ll end up like the rest of the poors.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
Again, we’re totally cool with his dumbfuck military parades, as long as we get our blank check to fuck up the environment and those sweet, sweet tax cuts for the wealthy.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
Honestly, we’re amazed we got those tax cuts, because the boss can’t even tie his shoelaces.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
All of the narcissistic underlings that play golf with me will privately admit that even they aren’t as bad as the President. Most are working hard to protect their fiefdoms from the impending collapse of the administration.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
Oh, did I mention the President has an undiagnosed major neurocognitive disorder with paranoid features?

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
While I’m at it, here is further evidence effectively demonstrating to everyone (including our foreign adversaries) that the President of the United States is suffering from significant cognitive decline.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
Thank god we’re here to save you all from this man. Don’t you see we’re the good guys? Why are you all so mean to us? We’ve gone to such great lengths to mop up after a paranoid psychopath with dementia who happens to hold the most powerful elected office in the world. We want a cookie. Can we have a cookie?

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
We believe that we’re the adults in the room, which totally confirms that we also believe the President is non compos mentis.

The result is a two-track presidency.
The result is a shadow government.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
If you think Trump tickles Putin’s balls in public, you should see the kneepads he breaks out in private. It’s downright treasonous!

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
I am very likely either the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Attorney General.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
*twirls evil mustache* Then again, maybe I’m the Director of National Intelligence.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Whoever I may be, I am also a gaping asshole of such infinite magnitude that I would describe this shit show as the work of the “steady state.”

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
Oh yeah, I totally buried the lede. We had super secret cabinet-level meetings about removing the President of the United States from office, but then we figured, nah, let’s get those tax cuts.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
We’re not gaslighting you. You’re gaslighting yourselves!

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
We hereby nominate Senator McCain for Republican Sainthood — and let’s use the word “lodestar” for no particular reason, because that seems totally fine and not at all a thing that closeted Republicans wish could be their porn name.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit: ‘Murica.

Standard

36 thoughts on “On the resistance inside the trump administration

  1. Sab says:

    At this point all my empathy for america is gone. All the years of invading other countries, robbing, committing war crimes, and screwing with their elections, killing their civilians, bombing Doctors Without Borders, and inflicting misery on the poorest of the poor is finally coming back on them, albeit on the smallest scale. And it’s kinda too late to resist and persist and all that. Good luck.

    • Kylie says:

      Yep, & as another non-American, this loss of empathy for America (as a world power, not the American people) is a good thing. Same evil shit would be going on under President Jeb!… he’d just be getting invited to the dinner parties and state funerals, and our coward politicians would be falling over themselves to sign up for his imperialist wars 💀 May the socialists prevail everywhere.

    • Pound says:

      So it’s either Pence or someone using Pence’s fav word to throw everyone off the scent…who needs this the most? They obviously want to come out as the hero after this train wrecks…

    • Noq noq says:

      Here’s the thing for me. Lodestar is a religiously loaded term where I grew up. It reeks of kitschy Mennonite cross stitching. It wouldn’t surprise me if Pence had a wooden sled with shitty metal struts and Lodestar painted across the top. It’s a midwestern trucking company and their trucks were constantly driving through Indiana. I never saw him use the term. I didn’t even know people had compiled playlists of him saying it. But even I could tell you it’s his Xbox handle.

      The terrifying thing is that this means he’s gonna pull the trigger right before midterms and our chance to impeach goes out the window and shades the election with a republican “comeback” narrative.

      I will say this…if the word was a plant…fucking hardcore subterfuge. Class A.

      • wwaxwork says:

        My first thoughts too though I ended up concluding it was a plant, I mean if everyone can not working in cloud cuckoo land can grasp so quicky it’s pretty much Pences favorite word, the people working with him everyday must surely know it is.

  2. SH says:

    Excellent translation. Agree fully.
    Bury the “lede.” Inconsequential to the point though.
    I considered reading old comments to figure out if you and people here appreciate notes on this kind of thing, but it didn’t seem worth the time. Delete this if you like or don’t see any value add.

  3. T says:

    It’s all just scrambling to avoid blame and responsibility with an open admission that they are leaving us all (earth) in a very dangerous place every day bc they won’t use the mechanisms that exist to fix it. This letter shows they’re not just party over country, they are tribe over planet. Money over everything.

  4. Chris says:

    My favorite phrase from you here:
    ……a childlike grasp of contemporary Republicanism and such crippling levels of cognitive dissonance…….

  5. Chandra says:

    Thank you. This put it all my feelings about that Op-Ed into words in a much more succinct manner than I could have done on my own.

  6. cichlidhead says:

    I read most of this outloud to my labmates and cackled like a madwoman.

    Thank you so much for putting into words why my skin crawled as I read the OP.

  7. Bebe says:

    President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
    He is seen on almost all major networks as Hitler, Homophomic, etc., we all know the names, people screaming they want him dear etc, ad nauseam.You still believe in the fairy tale that he colluded with the Russians but has put yhe largest sanction on Russia ever. The mainstream barely reports the good things happening in our county or any other news. They are too filled with hate because the nation would rather have Trump than lying and being bought Hillary. Get over it. He won..

  8. Bebe says:

    2) You know he is guilty of what may I ask? So far there is no proof of any guilt and has no charges. The country was bitterly divided during the Obama years or have you forgotten. That didn’t happen with Trump. I have confidence that as more lies that come out of the Dems and more people are indited the people of this country will not want the corruption in power. I could be wrong, but so could you. We will see in November. They do not like all the obstuctionism going on by the Dems as they learn more and more each day.

    • The Coquette says:

      I appreciate that you read my work, and I’m happy to have all opinions represented in my comments section, but you’re wrong to the point of delusion. You also don’t seem to have a grasp of the facts, no doubt because your echo chamber is filling your head with so much right wing bullshit. I’m not sure how you made it to my little corner of the internet, but I would be happy to help you improve your critical thinking skills and start enjoying a healthier media diet that includes reliable journalism and not just propaganda.

  9. Bebe says:

    You are correct that obstructionist and swamp are fighting the Pres. agenda. I’m not sure what they hate more, the number of jobs with increased pay or the economics in the market which show the confidence in his leadership or the market would have tanked. Maybe it is his desire to not have open borders,get rid of ICE, are first line of defense or prosecuting illigals that break the law by drug smuggling, human trafficking or just plain run of the mill robbery, hit and run, murder, or intimidation of our citizens. Yes I remember the Dems being offended of calling the gang “animals”. People that machete other people are animals. We in KC have saved girls chained to the beds in dirty motels and have seen first hand at that mental and physical damage that occur. These are the same men and women that claim they are their children when they are caught at the border.

  10. Bebe says:

    Yes we all know that the left overs from the Obama administration In his is his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda which the American people voted for. Again, the Dems do not work for the White House, they work on their agenda. Sad. They could just resign if they are unhappy working there. They are the swamp from within. And they are gutless to go on record to show the world their name. The working people are happy with his promises that he did what he said he would do. But the Dems are not concerned with the dummies that cling to their bibles and guns.

    Yes ,you are a rat in a room full of ass-covering cowards. You can’t even make a public stand stand for what you believe in.

    Yes why to you hate the corporate “rich”. It is that money that builds new offices and service and manufacturing places, and employees more people and prospers all of a community in doing so.

    You still haven’t figured out that most did not start out rich like Google, Amazon, etc. That is the beauty of this free commerce system. Anybody has the way if they have the will, to succeed. Take a look at the socialist countries. Most of the young people don’t even know what socialism is. but the want it!

    You still haven’t figured it is the rich that give to charitable causes that help the many needs and medical research going on in the country.

    Think of the country with everyone having the same salaries. Who would work hard to make more money? Nobody. What would be the purpose of that. We’d just let the government take care of us and assign us jobs.
    Your resistance to the right is a resistance to destroy the prosperity that Trump has created.

  11. Bebe says:

    There is no steady state. It is a state of the resistance of policies that do not align with the rights agenda. You seem fixated that the supreme court will overturn Roe v Wade. We have a lot more SERIOUS problems facing the USA then worry about a current law and you still seem to miss the point that Congress makes the law and the Supreme Court interprets the law. The president is in charge of the administration and the military. Personally I think we should leave Afghanistan and put those solders on the border. We shouldn’t have to process them. We just need to put them on trucks and put them in front of the USA Embassy where they can apply for entry to our country for danger for their lives. Hell, half the word would be applying. We don’t have enough money in social welfare programs to take care of them. We could actually have enough people to inspect the trucks that have hundreds of people in them with no water and in deathly heat. OMG. Let’s not stop that.To date I don’t think Trump has approached Obama’s Ex-orders to bypass the Congress that actually makes the laws. And by the way, Trump would have never given Iran millions in the middle of the night by executive order. He has on his platform to protect the United States. Not fund the enemies of the USA.

  12. Bebe says:

    Trump’s mind is sound and he has the right to change his mind as information is presented to him after the fact. The President of the United States is not a psychopath. I shake in horror at the thought of Hillary Clinton being our president.

    Many of the Dems people are not trying to thwart the good that has been accomplished but the great things he could do in the future.

    As for the nation being divided, the Rep. are not stopping freedom of speech, we are not attacking teens for wearing a hat they don’t like, we are not stopping people from having dinner out, we are not rioting in the street and pillaging the shops, which the shop owners suffer, not the President.

    We are not stopping free thinking in our universities. Gosh, we wouldn’t want a true exchange of ideas the might actually change a perspective of a crazy student afraid they might hear the truth. We don’t beat up on campus students because the identify themselves as a Rep.

    We are not of the President changing the status quo. We welcome it. We have had no progress from Congress since they held the majority. Even good bills that would be good laws for the people of this country sat on Harry Reid’s desk gathering dust. In short, the Dems only care about their social agenda and not about the American. They want to change gender identity from him and her and they to words that make no sense and will try to make them an arrestable offense. Now that is progress. This is exactly what our nation needs.

    • Chris says:

      I agree the Dems are lame, but not that President Trump is capable for the position. He lacks significant understanding of how the government works, and is very old.

      His mind is sound, but for a septuagenarian, which is also why I’m not too keen on a 2020 Joe Biden run, seeing him flash those bright porcelain teeth while saying he’d punch Trump in the mouth. Seriously? You’ve been a senator for your whole life, Joe. I doubt you could have landed a good punch in your youth, and now you want to slug it out with an equally fake tough guy who also wears make-up? Give me a break.

      The Republican Party has gotten what it asked for by ostracizing great candidates like 2000 McCain, 2008 Romney (based on what he did in MA, not how he campaigned), 2008 Ron Paul, 2012 Jon Huntsman, and 2012 Gary Johnson. I didn’t have a preference for any of the ’16 candidates, though did enjoy a solo town hall I watched of John Kasich.

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