Be John Dean or STFU
By 
Given that the nation’s political system is clearly crumbling and may in fact be on the way toward complete collapse, I’m a bit less concerned whether this is an internal coup than Paul. Norms and institutions? Well, they are nice but they are probably mostly dead and the fight is on to create even a decent country going forward. So I thought the anonymous op-ed to the Times was laughable. Here’s my some more specific thoughts:
1) Fuck whoever this is. This isn’t resistance. This is self-preservation and nothing more. The person is either a fascist or a facilitator of fascism. This person, be it Pence or Mattis or Sessions or whoever, is a clown. If you want to be a powerful Republican actually resisting Trump, you have a model. It’s John Dean. Otherwise, please jump off a boat.
2) I love this:
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.
“We all love every bill Donald Trump has signed, every judge Donald Trump has nominated, every regulatory reversal Donald Trump has ordered. And we will continue to love the fact that he will sign any bill that Mitch McConnell sees pass the Senate. But other than those small things, Donald Trump is terrible.” Oh, OK.
3) Oh c’mon:
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.
Yeah, clearly we aren’t in a constitutional crisis with a president wiping his ass with the Constitution every day. That’s some real resistance there! More likely, you all are afraid of Trump voters. Cowardice is resistance! And I’ll tell you one thing that is way beyond the pale for resistance and that’s delaying the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for even one day! Let’s not get all radical and lefty here.
4) And then this, this is just classic:
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.
Are we sure Bari Weiss didn’t write this? But hey, no doubt Chait approves! After all, those lefties are kind of mean sometimes!!
Seriously, the real downside of Trump is the loss of civility? Or just go away. I hope whoever did this gets indicted like everyone else involved in this clownshow of American fascism.
The image above is freaking brilliant by the way. Funny story about that though. I was getting ready to teach my graduate seminar this afternoon and I saw this on Facebook. Had no idea who made the image at the time and was rushing out, so I put it on Twitter and said whoever made this was is a genius. Because of this and not using some magic powers to figure it out, I am now a villain in some corners of the internet for stealing the guy’s meme. I had no idea it was even on Twitter and I never took credit for it! And when I found out, I immediately credited Terry as soon as I had a computer in front of me. Perhaps the greatest crime of Trump’s administration is people thinking the internet is actually important and forgetting to go outside and taking a walk or doing something valuable instead of being outraged over nothing. Hell, it’s more plausible than the civility gambit.
Also, this is second place in what I saw as reactions:
Check out my new piece "I am in the Manson Family and Sure I Killed a Couple of Drifters to Earn their Trust but I am Resisting from the Inside" in @nytopinion
— Ed Burmila (@gin_and_tacos) September 5, 2018
Under normal circumstances, this would win all Twitter threads. These are not normal circumstances.