“Trying to speak reason to the ignorant is like administering medicine to the dead”
—Thomas Paine 1737-1809,author of Common Sense
The Fox News punditry is going bonkers over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mimicking of the Orange Felon. Trying to criticize him for doing exactly the same kind of absurd mockery that seems to inspire the MAGA set with talking points derogatory against anyone who is left of center politically. Newsom’s strategy is the opposite of when they go low, we go high. It’s when the bully punches you, you punch back, and it’s what the Dems have been waiting for since Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. You can’t talk reasonably or rationally to people who are cult followers and who have drunk the Kool-Aid. Their leader must be exposed as naked and powerless, if not inept and a fool, rather than a brilliant businessman.
So, congratulations to Gov. Newsom. Keep swinging at the sandbox bully. The strategy keeps California’s governor in the news cycle, especially among the far right, and threatens their dominance over daily news and commentary. And he’s doing it on their favorite playgrounds — X and other social platforms — which, from my perspective, have devolved into “uncivil” media, where every opinion carries equal weight, even those from the ill-informed, the ignorant, or folks paying attention only to lost dogs, gas prices and groceries.
In a Pew survey from 2016 to 2023, the percentage of Americans paying attention to the daily news cycle has declined from 58% to 38%. Everybody else is probably listening to their favorite influencer, who may or may not be better informed than they are.
What I find most aggravating is the Sunday morning political news shows where the commentators bring in a Republican who spouts the party line and then a Democrat to rebut it as if both sides were equal or that there were only two sides. Never fact-checking nor challenging the absurdities that this regime is espousing, and the Dems only retaliating with faint-hearted replies. Put Bernie Sanders back on the weekly pundit rotation to take down the Orange Felon and then give us some true progressives who will poke holes in these rightwing fascists who pretend they are working for the people while they rob the nation blind.
Tell me how anyone can think of this president as being on the side of the working class while his entire cabinet is full of billionaires and sycophants. He has fired thousands of government workers (many illegally), invaded our cities with the military (on false pretenses), he has chased down hardworking immigrants with no criminal records, and then cut police funding in the budget passed by Congress on July 4. This hypocrisy, combined with his economic war on the world through his tariff policies and his willful facilitation of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, can’t go on. If the above weren’t enough, he’s been lobbying hard on his own behalf for the Nobel Peace Prize.
And do you remember he was going to get Russia to agree to a cease-fire in Ukraine sometime before Vladimir Putin whispered in his ear about getting rid of mail-in ballots?
If you don’t remember the lies he spread a week or a month ago, you may be suffering from Trump delusionism.
While waiting in line for a sandwich this week at a local deli, I engaged a young deli clerk in conversation and asked him what he thought about the state of affairs. He replied that it’s difficult to understand what’s going on because he can’t trust the news. Well, that’s kind of the idea about how fascism operates: first, you attack the media, then spread false facts and claim that truth is false and good is bad, and when the masses are confused enough, they will trust whoever speaks the loudest, appears the strongest, or says the right buzz words.
This president has overstepped his executive powers so many times that any reasonable Congress would have started impeachment proceedings months ago. However, his latest move is really quite telling. He wants to fire a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, after accusing her of mortgage fraud by designating two different properties (in Michigan and Georgia) as her “primary residence” to secure favorable mortgage terms — something far less lucrative and sinister than what the Orange Felon was convicted of himself when New York Judge Arthur Engoron last year ruled that he and his organization had engaged in persistent financial fraud — by inflating real estate asset values to secure more favorable loan and insurance terms. Even the Republican appointed majority of the Supreme Court went out of its way earlier this year to protect members of the Fed from presidential meddling. Like a staggering number of people he’s already fired from the federal government, she is Black. And it comes as no surprise that the immigrants he wants to deport are all people of color, while he embraces White Christian Nationalists. What does common sense tell you about this man?
Then, of course, there’s Texas’ mid-decade gerrymandering of districts at the request of the OF. The Texas Republicans line up right behind it, but in California, where Governor Newsom has taken up the battle, state Republicans are calling foul for doing exactly the same thing in Texas.
Yes, my friends, it is going to be confusing, but don’t let yourself be distracted by the Orange feather toy; it’s only a diversion from the Epstein files that might actually take down the bully in the Oval Office.