The American Human: July 2017

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Trump's Morning Joe Tweet Trifecta: He's Callous, Creepy, and (Again) a Liar

It may be that we'll never get over our "president" being an unrepentant liar, but the creepiness that accompanies his untruths and his callous disregard for all sense of decency calls into question his very fitness for office. But we knew that.

Mika Brzezinski at Mar-a-Lago on the night in question. What bleeding?

CNN's Brian Stetler -- whose job it is to report on the media and accuracy -- tweeted a picture of Mika Brzezinski during her now-infamous visit to Mar-a-Lago about which Donald Trump tweeted his "bleeding badly from a face-lift" remark, and clearly Trump was lying yet again.

Commenters on Stetler's tweet both condemned Stetler's playing into Trump's hands and supported his effort to call out Trump's outright deception. I fall on the side of call-out-the-bastard-always-and-repeatedly because the narrative should be that falsehood is at the core of Donald Trump's hopelessly flawed character.

BTW, Trump's outed fake cover of Time that decorates the walls of several of his golf courses is a near-perfect caricature of his abiding insecurity. What a little phony!

Truth is resistance. Repeat after me: Trump is an insecure, lying phony. But there's a small, pitiable caveat: Trump's M. O. is a feature, not a bug, for his legions. What does that tell us? Something we wish we didn't know about a deeply ingrained facet of our American character.

My General Principles

1. Civilized societies require the rule of law.
2. Science is my preferred method for examining and understanding reality.
3. Religion is superstition.
4. An educated society is a healthy society.
5. Democratic governments are by their very nature socialist.
6. Market economies are by their very nature capitalist.
7. Markets are not (entirely) efficient or rational and thus require regulation.
8. Don’t confuse politics with public policy.
9. Civil discourse requires rational argument, even if yelling or stomping your feet or name-calling is more fun.
10. If you consider making stuff up a viable tactic, you are disallowed from civil discourse.
11. Puritanism is America’s original sin.
12. Income redistribution is good for society, hoarding is not.
13. Everybody, from time to time, needs help.

About the American Human

The American Human is written by Calvin Ross, a retired teacher who at various points in life has been a musician, woodworker, restaurateur, narrator, English teacher in Japan, novelist, technology journalist, and private tutor to Japanese children here in the U.S.

Happily residing in the wine country of Sonoma County north of San Francisco, Calvin has lived in the Philippines, the Netherlands, and the aforementioned Japan, as well as in Chicago, Colorado, Georgia, and many different towns in California, including, of all places, the Mojave Desert.

Calvin, you may note quickly, is a liberal progressive who doesn't think being called a socialist is all that bad, especially since he sort of would like living in Denmark if it weren't so cold. He blogs because he can.