RalphHightower · RalphHightower · Nov 8, 2024 · Nov 8, 2024
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+---
+layout: post
+tags: [Donald Trump, autocracy, kleptocracy, united states]
+categories: [2025 president-elect]
+date: 2024-11-08 3:47 PM
+excerpt: "In 2016, we could all pretend that Trump was an aberration. Not this time. People knew exactly what they were voting for. Democracy just isn’t that high on the list of priorities. The likely chaos of the last two years of Trump’s upcoming term may become fertile ground for a populist demagogue. A billionaire who flouts the laws that apply to everyone else and hands out pardons and special deals to his cronies while ordinary people suffer is a tempting foil if you want to whip up popular anger. For 250 years we have had this quaint notion that democracy was an end in itself. But all good autocrats know that democracy is just a tool to be discarded when it’s no longer useful."
+#image: 'BASEURL/assets/blog/img/.png'
+#description:
+#permalink:
+title: 'Goodbye Democracy! I Pray That We Survive Trump!'
+---
+
+
+## [Opinion: Goodbye, democracy — it’s Trump’s America now](https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4978969-trump-election-impact-democracy/)
+
+Story by Chris Truax, opinion contributor. November 8, 2024.
+
+- **Election Result**: Donald Trump has been re-elected as President of the United States, despite concerns about his approach to democracy and rule of law.
+- **Voter Sentiment**: The article suggests that voters were aware of Trump's controversial traits and still chose to support him.
+- **Future Concerns**: There is a fear that this election result could lead to increased demagoguery in American politics, potentially affecting both parties.
+- **Democratic Trust**: The author expresses concern that the cycle of political retribution and distrust may continue, undermining democratic principles.
+
+Donald Trump is a wolf in wolf’s clothing. 
+
+- Trump disdains the rule of law and democracy[^11].
+- Voters knew about his dark impulses.
+- Voters knew about his lust for retribution. (How could they not? “I am your retribution” was one of his slogans.)
+- Voters knew about his conspiracy theories[^12].
+- Voters knew about his lies[^13].
+- Voters heard the warnings from his own past advisers that Trump wanted to rule as a dictator.
+- Voters heard from his past advisers that Trump was “fascist to the core.”
+- Voters were okay with all this. Many of them relished it. 
+
+[^11]: @RalphHightower: The only times that Trump prefers law and order is when it suits him.
+[^12]: @RalphHightower: Trump spread fears through conspiracies during [FEMA](https://www.fema.gov/home)'s recovery operations in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, undermining government's recovery operations. [@MTG](https://greene.house.gov/) out-Trumps Trump in crazy, conspiracy theories.
+[^13]: @RalphHightower: Trump is a pathological liar.
+
+Kamala Harris reached out to centrist voters and ran a good campaign with a clear message about defending American democracy.
+
+In 2016, we could all pretend that Trump was an aberration. Not this time. People knew exactly what they were voting for. Democracy just isn’t that high on the list of priorities[^31].
+
+[^31]: @RalphHightower: 
+
+The likely chaos of the last two years of Trump’s upcoming term may become fertile ground for a populist demagogue. A billionaire who flouts the laws that apply to everyone else and hands out pardons and special deals to his cronies while ordinary people suffer is a tempting foil if you want to whip up popular anger. 
+
+For 250 years we have had this quaint notion that democracy was an end in itself. But all good autocrats know that democracy is just a tool[^51] to be discarded when it’s no longer useful. 
+
+[^51]: @RalphHightower: People are tools to Trump. 
+
+Trump is very open about his belief that the only fair election is an election he wins; his running-mate, JD Vance, has said much the same thing. Assuming Trump does not run for a third term — an idea he has floated in the past — Vance is likely to be the Republican nominee in 2028. Given the amount of power Trump plans on accumulating as president, it’s hard to imagine Trump and the people around him shrugging their shoulders and walking away from the presidency simply because they lose an election. 
+
+@RalphHightower: Elected Trumper legislators have chosen *"Party Over Country."*
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+---
+layout: post
+tags: [personalities, Donald Trump, Melania Trump, JD Vance, Usha Vance]
+categories: [2025 President-Elect, 2025 VP-elect]
+date: 2024-11-08 1:41 PM
+excerpt: 'Trump is angry and vitriolic, while Melania is purse-lipped and stoic; he is emotionally incontinent, while she often appears to be in emotional rigor mortis; he is behaviorally uninhibited and says whatever he wants, while she is studiously reserved, perhaps because she has very little to say.'
+#image: 'BASEURL/assets/blog/img/.png'
+#description:
+#permalink:
+title: 'The Vapid Wives of Trump and Vance'
+---
+
+
+## [Why Melania Trump and JD Vance's wife Usha have a lot in common](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/melania-trump-book-jd-vance-wife-usha-rcna177936)
+
+By Jill Filipovic, author of "OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
+Oct. 31, 2024, 6:00 AM EDT
+
+Who, exactly, is Melania Trump? 
+
+1. sphinx-eyed former model came onto the political scene alongside her husband, former President Donald Trump, 
+2. she’s been something of an enigma: often 
+3. seemingly apolitical and 
+4. largely silent 
+5. has opaque motivations.
+6. doesn’t believe Trump’s politics were a deal-breaker — after all, she remains married to the guy. But she
+7. didn’t exactly seem enthusiastic about being in the political crosshairs, either. 
+8. her very short memoir, with an all-black cover interrupted only by “MELANIA” printed in neat white block letters, promised to offer some insight:
+    1. “into the life of a remarkable woman who has navigated challenges with grace and determination.”
+    2. however, her autobiography offers no such insight
+    3. difficult book to remark on 
+    4. it contains nothing remarkable. 
+    5. This is a book you can judge by its cover. 
+        1. “Melania” isn’t just boring
+        2. it’s vapid. 
+9. Perhaps Melania is vapid also
+10. Journalists have tried to profile her.
+    1. interviewing 
+        1. friends
+        2. family members 
+        3. people she grew up with
+    2. trying to find anyone who can help them decode this cipher.
+    3. Melania may be more stick figure than hieroglyphic; 
+    4. there seems to be no complex code to crack. 
+11. Melania is exactly who she seems to be:
+    1. a beautiful woman who has spent a long time trying to be beautiful
+    2. found a rich man to take care of her.
+    3. loves her son, Barron
+    4. loves her parents (her mother recently passed away).
+    5. likes expensive clothes and other luxuries.
+    6. may not be an aggressively cruel person like her husband,
+    7. doesn’t seem to be an ardently compassionate one, either. 
+12. And that would be all fine and good had she
+    1. stayed on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her wealthy if boorish and allegedly philandering husband. 
+    2. But Trump’s foray in politics has dragged her in
+        1. her decision to stand by his side.
+        2. (even if she didn’t go to the trial stemming from his alleged dalliance with porn star Stormy Daniels during their marriage)
+        3. is at the very least a symbol of her acceptance of his vulgarities and goals.
+13. She did get some headlines
+    1. good and bad
+        1. for using her memoir to voice public support for abortion rights just weeks before an election in which abortion is one of her husband’s weaker issues.
+        2. this, too, seems less a statement of true independence and more one of cynical political game-playing
+            1. her husband needs to rope in more female voters,
+            2. many women are angry that he appointed Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. .
+    2. In this sense, perhaps Melania and Donald aren’t so different.
+    3. Neither are politically sophisticated or particularly attentive to policy.
+    4. Neither evince much in the way of compassion or even interest in other people.
+        1. Trump is angry and vitriolic, while Melania is purse-lipped and stoic
+        2. Trump is emotionally incontinent[^13-4-2a], while she often appears to be in emotional rigor mortis[^13-4-2b];
+        3. Trump is behaviorally uninhibited and says whatever he wants, while she is studiously reserved, perhaps because she has very little to say.
+        4. But with both Trumps, what you see is what you get: There’s just not all that much there. 
+
+[^13-4-2a]: @RalphHightower: *"emotionally incontinent"!* That’s absolutely, fucking hilarious, and accurately describes Trump.
+[^13-4-2b]: @RalphHightower: *"emotional rigor mortis"!* Emotionally dead and stiff! Absolutely, hilarious!
+
+The Vances — JD, who is running for vice president, and Usha, who would be the second lady — are far more fascinating. But they, too, may be more transparent than the public would hope.
+
+Usha:
+ 1. high-achieving daughter of highly educated immigrant parents
+     1. who married a man whom she academically outperformed.
+         1. JD, *"Jon Boy"*, was attracted to her intelligence; 
+         2. PJD even reportedly considered taking her last name
+         3. being the primary caregiver for their kids.
+             1. Now, he’s a different kind of guy
+                1. one who rails against childless cat ladies
+                2. “refer[s] to his children as belonging to Usha” (“She’s got three kids,” he recently said on a New York Times podcast).
+    2. “often describes Usha as a ‘working mother’ – JD 
+        1. without implying that he himself has anything to juggle.
+        2. He has come a long way from the would-be stay-at-home dad who put his wife’s career first.”
+2. Usha has clerked for conservative judges, including..
+    1. federal appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh, now Supreme Court Justice
+    2. John Roberts, but she doesn’t seem particularly conservative (or political) herself.
+
+3. JD Vance once compared Trump to Hitler
+    1. now he’s Trump’s highest-level lackey and
+4. Voiced his respect for ambitious women; 
+    1. now mocks professional women who delay or — for whatever reason — don’t end up giving birth. 
+5. Vance did a little bit of time in the world of corporate law after law school 
+6. Then moved into bigger-money venture capital
+7. published a finger-wagging memoir about his working-class Appalachian roots, writing about rural America il 
+    1. that appealed to moneyed coastal conservatives who wanted to believe that the poor and miserable immiserated themselves.
+8. When he decided to run for the Senate in Ohio, he was barely living in the state and had to quickly rebrand as a real working-class man — and one sympathetic to the MAGA movement.
+9. As VP, Vance's wife Usha hasn’t adopted many of the aesthetics of the MAGA female
+    1. but she has quit her job, joined her husband on the campaign
+    2. stood by her man even as he demeans the sort of smart, well-educated, ambitious female archetype she very recently embodied.
+
+The public wants the people in high office — and most people in the public eye, whether they are in politics or are celebrities of another kind:
+
+- to have depth. We want them to be decipherable, but we want 
+- to believe they are special. 
+
+When they seem insubstantial or fueled by some silly and transparent motivation, we may assume there’s something they’re obscuring. If they’re at the top of their game, then there must be something there, right?
+
+Maybe with these four — the Trumps and the Vances — that’s simply assuming too much. Perhaps they are exactly who they appear to be: 
+
+1. The Trumps are superficial, intellectually shallow and money-obsessed.
+2. The Vances have principles that seemingly bend to their grand ambitions. 
+
+All four of these people have had enough time to show the public who they are. I suspect that what we see is exactly what we get.
+