Furthermore, I see your argument in the same vein as “US military action creates Islamic extremists”. It’s an argument framed to use US actions to prevent future US actions based upon a lie. Does US action generate some blow back? Sure some. But is it the prime mover? Of course not. Did the lack of US action for decades eliminate terrorist actions against civilians the world over? Did US actions cause the Barbery pirates to take US ships and hostages for ransom? Of course not. Islamic terrorists will do what they do because that it is their religion, not because of any US action. It’s simply a frame to keep me in check. To make me docile. I see your frame in the same way and I reject it.
I stand by what I said. As someone inside the mess, rather than an outsider, either you can’t see the wood for the trees, or you simply don’t want to.
Example: “The left embraces power, it consolidates it and executes power to their aims while the right still holds to rules the left no longer abides by or even acknowledges.”
That is a completely ridiculous statement to make after watching, if not actively cheering on, this administration systematically ignoring / tearing up every normal mode of behaviour in every department of Washington that every Presidency and administration, left or right, has adhered to over the preceding hundred years.
I could rattle on for a page and a half listing examples from right across the purview of Trump appointees who have no real qualifications for their posts other than they are shameless sycophants often from a media or sports background - Hegseth, McMahon, Duffy, Lutnick, Turner, RFK Jr, Patel. There was a time when Idiocracy was implausible satire; Trump made it real.
The most recent obvious example of the Right - well, Trump / MAGA anyway - being even worse than the ‘Rats was in the banning of entire CREWS - the camera operators, the boom mike operators, and the technicians, as well as the front-of-camera folks - from the White House Pool. Not because the personnel have ever been accused of doing anything wrong, but because they’re employed by “fake news”.
The pool is NON PARTISAN. Always has been. At the general agreement of the entire journalistic industry (partly because if they all had to attend every function, ride in every motorcade, pay for their seats on every helicopter or private jet ride, and spend 200 days a year in hotels, they’d all go broke), there’s a rota and whichever one covers an event on that day hands over the entire unredacted and unedited footage to all other participants in the pool INCLUDING their rivals.
Trump has replaced the Pool with an infomercial channel spun up by a guy whose only claims to fame are (a) he makes pillows and (b) his lips are sewn to Trump’s ass.
Same beat as the other Trump appointments. Decorum, standards, probity, independence are the ANTITHESIS of how Trump likes things run. He only cares about one thing - are the people doing his bidding completely incapable of ever thinking or doing anything - even if it’d be in the national interest or their own self-interest - if it’s something Trump Wouldn’t Like?