Charles P. Pierce: Why Trump Sounding 'Presidential' Only Makes Him More Dangerous

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53529/trump-congress-speech-authoritarian/

Why Trump Sounding 'Presidential' Only Makes Him More Dangerous

Pundits are fawning over the tone of last night's speech to Congress, but that only shows how low the bar is. Make no mistake: Authoritarianism coming and the Trump administration is only going to get better at it.
By Charles P. Pierce
Mar 1, 2017


Presidential, was it?

Even I didn't believe they could lower the bar far enough that an otherwise sensible fellow like Van Jones would take the indecent exploitation of a war widow's fresh sorrow and turn it into Lincoln's Second Inaugural. Even I didn't believe they could sink the bar far enough into Middle Earth that otherwise critical observers would look at a pile of deceptive leaves and see a coherent tree. Every day in every way, this administration and this president* taxes the far limits of even my cynicism. For example, it is not true that nobody profits from "lawless chaos." How do you think Vladimir Putin created the gangster's paradise that helped Rex Tillerson and Wilbur Ross get even more wealthy?

When one calls that speech "presidential," whose presidency are you summoning? Pierce? Buchanan? Rufus T. Firefly? Jesus, people, at least try to sound like you graduated middle school.

Hard to believe, but the second day punditry, after otherwise sensible folks had a night to sleep on it, is even worse than the instant analysis on Tuesday night. What Trump did with Carryn Owens was bad enough on the merits, coming as it did after he spent 48 hours fobbing off the blame of the botched raid into Yemen on everybody who walked past the White House in the past three months. But to hear it now described as a powerful, emotional evocation of the unifying power of the presidency, instead of one more rank attempt at deflecting the moral responsibility for the death of the person being mourned, is to abandon critical thinking and give your responsibility to the truth over to unthinking slobber.

snip//

To me, this was the money shot. Authoritarianism is bone deep in these guys. It is their instinct, their unconquerable reflex, to reach for the most repressive solution against the most vulnerable target at hand. It is the wellspring of everything else: the lies, the criminal exploitation of a woman's grief, the constant need for affirmation, the even-more-constant assertion of the president*s demonstrated greatness, and speeches like the one on Tuesday night, which really was nothing more than a list of banal solutions to largely imaginary problems.

That they're really bad at being authoritarians is not going to be enough to keep it at bay forever. They'll get better at it. They already are better at it, which is what all the bloviating about "tone" is really all about. That tone is nothing more than a bell tolling, deep in the national psyche, summoning us to act on our worst impulses and, by acting on them, ennoble them. It is a bell tolling, and it tolls for thee, motherfckers. It tolls for thee.

[cilla4progress]

1. This is why I

melted down last night.

[brutus smith]

2. Van Jones makes me want to puke.