Matt Taibbi: Trump the Destroyer

[demmiblue]

Trump has stuffed his Cabinet with tyrants, zealots and imbeciles – all bent on demolishing our government from within

Source: Rolling Stone

Morning, February 24th, National Harbor, Maryland, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Chin up, eyes asquint, Donald Trump floats to the lectern on a sea of applause and adulation. The building is shaking, and as fans howl his name – Trump! Trump! Trump! – he looks pleased and satisfied, like a Roman emperor who has just moved his bowels.

"Great to be back at CPAC," he says. "The place I have really ..."

The thought flies into the air and vanishes. Last year at this time, Trump was bailing on a CPAC invite because a rat's nest of National Review types was threatening a walkout to protest him. There was talk of 300 conservatives planning a simultaneous march to the toilet if the formerly pro-choice New Yorker was allowed onstage.

Whether Trump remembers this now, or just loses his train of thought, he goes silent.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-on-trump-the-destroyer-w473144

[hedda_foil]

1. Wow! Taibbi outdoes himself with this terrific analysis.

It's long but VERY illuminating on all fronts of this insane time in our history. Here's just another bite from the end of the piece.

Nearly two years into our relationship with Donald Trump, politician, his core schtick is no longer really a secret. The new president swings wildly between buffoon and strongman acts, creating confusion and disorder. While his enemies scramble to make sense of the outrages of a week before or yesterday or 10 minutes ago, and spend valuable energy wondering whether the man is crazy or stupid or cunning (or perhaps all three things at once), Trump continually presses forward.

We always assumed there was a goal behind it all: cattle cars, race war, autocracy. But those were last century's versions of tyranny. It would make perfect sense if modern America's contribution to the genre were far dumber. Trump in the White House may just be a monkey clutching history's biggest hand grenade. Yes, he's always one step ahead of us, and more dangerous than any smart person, and we can never for a minute take our eyes off him.

But while we keep looking for his hidden agenda, it's our growing addiction to the spectacle of his car-wreck presidency that is the real threat. He is already making idiots and accomplices of us all, bringing out the worst in each of us, making us dumber just by watching. Even if Trump never learns to govern, after four years of this we will forget what civilization ever looked like – and it will be programming, not policy, that will have changed the world.

[Blue_Tires]

2. Isn't Matt happy? After all, he was in that "Anyone but Hillary" crowd with all the cool lefty kids