Just Another Pathological Narcissistic Announcement

 

The U.S. Treasury announced Thursday that trump's signature will appear on all new American paper currency, a first for any sitting president in the nation's history. Starting with $100 bills in June, his name will replace the Treasurer's signature for the first time since 1861, erasing an unbroken 165-year tradition. That, apparently, was just another thing standing between trump and a mirror.

It gets worse. A federal arts panel, stacked with trump appointees, recently signed off on a 24-karat gold commemorative coin bearing his image, timed to America's 250th birthday. Here's the kicker: the people who spent years screaming about "trump derangement syndrome" have now branded the nation's entire currency supply with one man's face and autograph, which is about as deranged as it gets.

George Washington refused to appear on the first U.S. silver dollar specifically because putting a leader's face on money is what kings do. A member of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee said it plainly: only nations ruled by kings or dictators put a sitting ruler's image on their coins.

The administration calls this a patriotic tribute to the Semi-quincentennial. But trump has already plastered his name on the Kennedy Center, Navy battleships, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. The presidency, for trump, has always been less about governance and more about brand extension. The Founders warned us exactly what this would look like. Turns out they were right.

-The Other 98%

No Kings Day

 

Let us continue to rebel against his autocratic abuse of presidential power, his felonious behavior, his constitutional ignorance, his obstruction of justice and concealment, his lawless demagoguery, his pathological narcissism, his grandiose delusions, his anti-social personality disorder, his malignant arrogance, his moral relativism, his white nationalism, his perfidious nationalism, his hateful racism, his infectious nihilism, his outrageous iconoclasm, his ruthless competition, his puerile dereliction, his embarrassing stupidity, his provocative transgressions, his mocking disrespect, his impetuous vulgarity, his sexual predation; his belligerent intimidation, his incessant lying, his conspiratorial gaslighting, his obsessive vindictiveness, his hypocritical cowardice, his compulsive xenophobia, his callous misogyny, his insufferable bigotry, his disgusting buffoonery, his histrionic rallying, his sociopathic bullying, seditious behavior and dangerous fascism... .

-Glen Brown

Trump is "feeling 'bored' after starting a war that has killed thousands of people, created chaos across the Middle East, and raised prices for US consumers"

 

…In a social media post, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) called the president “beyond despicable” for feeling “bored” after starting a war that has killed thousands of people, created chaos across the Middle East, and raised prices for US consumers.

“Donald Trump is now ‘a little bored’ with his ‘little excursion’ in Iran, as if war is nothing more than passing amusement to him,” said Beyer. “War is not a game. It’s not a spectacle. It’s not something you pick up and drop when it stops entertaining you.”

Beyer then highlighted the human costs of Trump’s war, which he launched at 4 a.m. on a Saturday morning without any authorization from Congress.

“Real people have paid the price of this war,” he wrote. “We’ve already lost 13 Americans killed in action, with many more seriously wounded. Civilians have been killed throughout the Middle East, including the US missile strike that killed more than 150 schoolchildren.”

Trump and allies such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have signaled that after the US is finished with Iran, they will next attempt to topple the government of Cuba, where the White House has caused a catastrophic fuel shortage in recent weeks with its ramp-up of the blockade that’s been in place for decades. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this month that “the embargo is tied to political change on the island.” […]

-Common Dreams

"The sense among ordinary Americans has been that the law does not apply to members of the ruling class in the way it does to everyone else"

 

Here’s a litmus test for Democratic presidential contenders in 2028: Where do they stand on elite impunity and bringing justice to lawbreaking Trump officials and the “Epstein class”? 

Back in 2009, after nearly a decade of Republican misrule, there was a lot of talk about “accountability.” With the economy in shambles and the country embroiled in two quagmires, many were hopeful the Barack Obama administration would reverse George W. Bush policies and hold those responsible for the devastation accountable.

Writing for The Nation, attorney and Watergate-era Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman implored the new president to investigate the rife “constitutional and criminal misbehavior” of his predecessor. “To fully restore the rule of law and prevent any repetition of Bush’s misconduct,” she said, “the abuses of his administration must be directly confronted.”

In The New York Times, prominent human rights attorney Michael Ratner argued, “Unless government officials know that consequences follow from such abuses, they will break the law again.” High-ranking members of the president’s party in Congress similarly called for investigations and “truth commissions” to look into the many alleged constitutional violations and human rights abuses that had been sanctioned by senior Bush officials over the previous eight years. 

Nothing ever came of these demands. Under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, the Obama Department of Justice failed to criminally prosecute any of the high-level government officials involved in authorizing illegal torture and surveillance programs, just as it failed to prosecute a single Wall Street executive after the 2008 financial crisis. 

Despite widespread demands for accountability, the Obama administration ultimately chose a posture of forgiveness and closure. Fast-forward almost a decade, and the folly of Obama’s “look forward” doctrine is unmistakable. By declining to pursue accountability more aggressively, the Obama administration did not close a dark chapter in American history; it simply left the door open for even more egregious abuses in the future. Just as many critics had warned at the time. Few imagined just how egregious those abuses would be, or how faithfully the next Republican president would embody George W. Bush’s worst instincts. 

While the parallels between the Trump and Bush administrations have been evident for some time, President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a war with Iran earlier this month effectively cemented his place in history as the second coming of Bush. In “politics as well as policies,” observes Michael Lind in UnHerd, “the Trump administration increasingly looks like a continuation of the post-2000 Republican norm: pro-war, pro-business.” 

The main difference between the two administrations is not in policy or politics but in style. As Lind notes, Trump’s “bizarre and abrasive style … couldn’t be more different than that of the Bush dynasty.” The president and his top officials are also far more brazen and shameless in their misconduct than the “Bushies” ever were.

Compare Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to the self-styled secretary of war, Pete Hegseth. While Rumsfeld authorized war crimes behind closed doors and then denounced those crimes as “un-American” after they were brought to light, the current defense secretary has openly endorsed war crimes in his public speeches, vowing to show “no quarter” and “no mercy for our enemies.” 

Hegseth hasn’t just advocated war crimes in his blustery speeches. His alleged order to kill all survivors of the shipwrecked boats struck by American drones in the Caribbean last year was a brazen violation of international and U.S. military law. He also bears responsibility for the bombing of a school in Tehran that killed 175 civilians, most of them young girls.

As ProPublica reported, the secretary shut down a program to reduce civilian harm last year as he made “lethality” the military’s top priority, reorganizing national security around the principles of “more aggression” and “less accountability.” The former Fox News host has deplored “stupid rules of engagement” and called for “maximum lethality,” advising U.S. soldiers that their job is to “kill people and break things.” 

Hegseth has shown little concern about exposing himself to legal risk by publicly endorsing and privately ordering war crimes. And why should he? No senior U.S. official has ever been criminally prosecuted for war crimes or human rights abuses, despite the large body of evidence implicating past officials like Rumsfeld. The defense secretary flaunts his lawlessness, confident that he will never face any kind of consequences for his actions. 

This sense of inviolability is evident across the entire Trump administration — from the Pentagon to the Homeland Security Department to the Justice Department — and ultimately reflects the president’s own belief that he is above the law. 

The sheer scale of criminality and corruption on display in the U.S. government today would have been inconceivable in an alternative timeline where powerful government officials had actually faced repercussions for their actions. The Obama administration’s unwillingness to prosecute the architects of the Bush‑era abuses bred a dangerous moral hazard, much like the failure to punish white-collar criminals for their role in the financial crisis. 

Trump’s own evasion of accountability for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election continued this trend of injustice. 

While the Biden administration at least pursued criminal charges — a meaningful departure from the Obama precedent — the case was ultimately doomed due to the apprehensions of main justice and the “maddeningly slow” pace of the investigation. Under Attorney General Merrick Garland, who waited nearly two years to appoint a special counsel to investigate the former president, the DOJ approached the case with little sense of urgency and a “wariness about appearing partisan.” As one commentator later observed, it was clear that Garland had “little desire to investigate and potentially prosecute Trump.” 

America’s accountability crisis has entered its terminal phase, with the rule of law itself on life support.

Since Trump’s reelection, America’s accountability crisis has entered its terminal phase, with the rule of law itself on life support. While the Justice Department has been weaponized against the president’s foes, the administration has further undermined any efforts to hold political and economic elites — the so-called Epstein class — accountable (unless those elites find themselves on the president’s enemies list, of course). 

Trump himself has mounted a one-man assault on the rule of law, employing his pardon power to further entrench elite impunity. Just one year into his second term, he has already issued twice as many individual pardons as Joe Biden did throughout his entire four-year presidency, not including his mass pardon of the Jan. 6 rioters.

The recipients of Trump’s pardons have mostly been elites, whether corrupt politicians or white-collar fraudsters. Altogether, over half of Trump’s second-term pardons have been for white-collar crimes like money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud. In just one year, these pardons have wiped out as much as $2 billion in fines and restitution for victims.

One thing is clear at this point in Trump’s second term: As long as the president and his circle remain convinced of their own impunity, their abuses will grow more audacious. This makes it all the more urgent for Democrats to show their real commitment to holding officials like Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem accountable this time around.

Last month, author Cory Doctorow proposed that congressional Democrats form a “Nuremberg Caucus” to signal their seriousness about accountability. In Doctorow’s conception, this caucus would maintain a public archive documenting the full body of evidence for any future prosecutions of Trump officials: “Each fresh outrage, each statement, each video-clip — whether of Trump officials or of his shock-troops — could be neatly slotted in, given an exhibit number, and annotated with the criminal and civil violations captured in the evidence,” Doctorow wrote. 

Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, the sense among ordinary Americans has been that the law does not apply to members of the ruling class in the way it does to everyone else. The Jeffrey Epstein revelations have hardened that perception, with Trump standing as the most recognizable face of this untouchable elite. Almost 20 years after Obama’s ascent, the Democratic Party needs a new kind of promise — not hope, but accountability.

-Conor Lynch, Truthdig

Soulless Trump

The most profound realities of human existence are often the ones that can never be measured or quantified. Wisdom. Beauty. Truth. Compassion. Courage. Love. Loneliness. Grief. The struggle to face our own mortality. A life of meaning. But perhaps the greatest conundrum is the concept of a soul. Do we have a soul? Do societies have souls? And, most basically, what is a soul?

Philosophers and theologians, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Arthur Schopenhauer, have all grappled with the concept of a soul, with Schopenhauer preferring to define the mystical force within us as will. Sigmund Freud used the Greek word psyche. But most have accepted, whatever the definition, some version of a soul’s existence.

While the concept of the soul is opaque, soullessness is not. Soullessness means something inside of us is dead. Basic human feelings and connections are shut down. Those without souls lack empathy. I saw the soulless in war. Those so calcified inside they kill without any demonstrable feeling or remorse.

The soulless exist in a state of insatiable self-worship. The idol they have erected to themselves must be constantly fed. It demands a never-ending stream of victims. It demands abject obedience and subservience, publicly on display at Trump cabinet meetings.

Psychologists, I expect, would define the soulless as psychopathic. I write this not to get into an esoteric debate about the soul, but to warn what happens when those without souls seize power. I want to write about what is lost and the consequences of that loss. I want to caution you that death, our death — as individuals and as a collective — mean nothing to those without souls.

This makes the soulless very, very dangerous.

Those who lack souls have no concept of their own limitations. They feed off a bottomless and self-delusional optimism, giving to their cruelest deeds and bitterest defeats, the patina of goodness, success and morality. Those without souls — as Paul Woodruff writes in his small masterpiece “Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue” — do not have the capacity for reverence, awe, respect and shame. They believe they are gods.

The soulless cannot respond rationally to reality. They live in self-constructed echo chambers. They hear only their own voice. Civic, familial, legal and religious rituals and ceremonies that transport those with souls into the realm of the sacred, into a space where we acknowledge our shared humanity, forcing us, at least for a moment, to humble ourselves, are meaningless to those without souls. Those without souls cannot see because they cannot feel.

The soulless, enslaved by narcissism, greed, a lust for power and hedonism, cannot make moral choices. Moral choices for them do not exist. Truth and falsehoods are identical. Life is transactional. Is it good for me? Does it make me feel omnipotent? Does it give me pleasure? This stunted existence banishes them from the moral universe.

Human beings, including children, are commodities to the soulless, objects to exploit for pleasure or profit or both. We saw this soullessness displayed in the Epstein Files. And it was not only Epstein. Huge sections of our ruling class including billionaires, Wall Street financiers, university presidents, philanthropists, celebrities, Republicans, Democrats and media personalities, consider us worthless.

Thucydides understood. Reverence is not a religious virtue but a moral virtue. Woodruff went so far as to define it as a political virtue. Reverence for shared ideals, Woodruff writes, is the only thing that can bind us together. It is the only attribute that ensures mutual trust. Reverence allows us to remember what it means to be human. It reminds us that there are forces we cannot control, forces that we will never understand, forces of life that we did not create and must honor and protect — including the natural world — and forces that allow us moments of transcendence, or what in religious terms, we call grace.

“If you desire peace in the world, do not pray that everyone share your beliefs,” Woodruff writes. “Pray instead that all may be reverent.”

Trump’s celebration of himself is made manifest in his stunted vocabulary of superlatives and his rebranding of national monuments. He tears down the East Wing to construct his gaudy and oversized $400 million ballroom. He proposes a 250-foot-tall memorial arch, adorned with gilded statues and eagles, in honor of himself, an arch that will be bigger than the Arch of Triumph erected by North Korean dictator Kim II Sung in Pyongyang. 

He is planning a “National Garden of American Heroes” that will include life-size statues of celebrities, sports figures, political and artistic figures deemed by Trump to be politically correct, along with, of course, himself. His face adorns the sides of federal buildings on huge, well-lit banners. He changed the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. He added his name to the headquarters of the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has announced a new fleet of U.S. naval vessels called Trump-class battleships.

These are monuments not only to Trump, but to a perverted ethic, to the insatiable self-worship that defines the inner void of the soulless. Monuments, houses of worship and national shrines dedicated to justice, self-sacrifice and equality, which demand from us humility and introspection, which require the capacity for reverence, mystify the soulless.

The soulless have no sense of aesthetics. They have no sense of balance, symmetry and proportion. The bigger, the gaudier, the more encrusted in gold leaf, the better. They seek to shut out everything and everyone else, to herd us with offerings to the feet of Moloch.

When the soulless wage war it is part of this perverted drive to build a monument to themselves. When war goes badly, as it is going in Iran, the soulless, unable to read reality, demand greater levels of violence and destruction. The more they fail, the more they are convinced everyone has betrayed them, the more they descend into a tyrannical rage.

Trump, potentially facing a humiliating debacle in Iran, will lash out like a wounded beast. It does not matter how many suffer and die. It does not matter what weapons, including nuclear weapons, must be employed. He must triumph or at least appear to triumph.

“Fathers and teachers, I ponder, ‘What is hell?’” Father Zossima asks in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” “I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” This is the plight of the soulless. They seek, in their misery, to make their hell our own.

The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. "The Emperor Has No Soul" by Mr. Fish.

Trump's Clusterf$!k

 

Iran dismissed a US ceasefire proposal on Wednesday and responded with its own negotiation plan as intermediaries sought to keep diplomatic channels between the warring countries open.

Iranian state TV quoted an anonymous official as saying Tehran had rejected the plan it had received via Pakistan, saying it would “end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met”, and until then would continue fighting across the region. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, later said the proposals had been “passed on to the country’s senior authorities” but Iran had “no intention of negotiating for now”.

Gulf states have expressed doubt over Donald Trump’s claims that talks are happening. In a notable departure from Qatar’s role as chief mediator in the region, a Qatari government spokesperson, Majed al-Ansari, said on Tuesday that Qatar was not involved in any mediation efforts, before adding: “If they exist.”

What is the toll? The US-Israel war on Iran has killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon, more than 1,500 in Iran and 16 in Israel, according to each country’s authorities. More than a dozen deaths have been reported in the West Bank and Gulf Arab states. Experts warn there has been a collapse in healthcare access.

-The Guardian

Trump's war on Iran and its impact

 

Most people have little understanding of what is big or small in the federal budget, in large part because the media have made a conscious decision to not inform people. Rather than taking ten seconds to indicate what share of the budget a particular item is, they just write huge numbers in the millions or billions, knowing they are completely meaningless to almost everyone who sees them.

With this in mind, I thought it would be useful to write a piece pointing out that the $200 billion (2.9% of the budget) Trump plans to ask to cover the cost of his war in Iran is, in fact, a big deal. While this is still less than what we spend on huge social programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, it is far larger than most of the items that are subject of major political debates.

Just to mention a few, we can start with the fraud in Minnesota in social programs that the Justice Department has uncovered. To date, this comes to $250 million. Trump has claimed there is $19 billion in fraud, but Trump also has claimed he has arranged for $18 trillion in foreign investment into the country and that he will reduce drug prices by 1500 percent. Numbers don’t have the same meaning for Trump and his team as they do for the rest of us.

While it is likely that the total figure for fraud will go higher, it almost certainly is not the earth-shattering scandal that Team Trump has claimed. After all, a childcare center refusing to let a random clown with a camera crew film the kids are not evidence of fraud. 

Where there is money on the table, whether in the public or private sector, some will be misspent or stolen. Trump has chosen to make a big deal out of the fraud in Minnesota because at least some of it involves Somali immigrants, but that is evidence of Trump’s racism, not a massive fraud problem.

The next item is the $550 million in annual funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Trump apparently felt it was important to save taxpayers this money rather than helping to fund Big Bird and National Public Radio. This spending comes to a bit less than $4 a household.

Then we have the Biden childcare agenda that would have cost $42.4 billion a year. This set of proposals would have made childcare affordable for the vast majority of people in the country. The last item for comparison is the extension of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies that was the basis for the government shutdown in the fall.  This would cost roughly $27 billion for a single year.

If you’re wondering where the bars are for the Minnesota fraud or funding for public broadcasting, I didn’t forget them. The bars are too small to be visible next to Trump’s Iran war budget. The childcare programs and Obamacare subsidies are visible, but an order of magnitude smaller than what Trump is asking for.

The point here is that the war is a really big deal in terms of the budget. The biggest impact is, of course, the lives lost and put in danger by the war. And the economic impact on the United States and world is enormous. 

But this is also a huge budget issue. It is the sort of expenditure that a president would ordinarily feel they have to make a serious case for and not just demand the money from Congress.

But I suppose Trump thinks that since his mandate was almost as large as Hillary Clinton’s in 2016, he has more authority than most presidents. Congress and the country need to bring some reality to this story.

This first ran on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog. Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.