The Three Ring Circus of the Trump Administraton

[Perknose]

Your guide to the always entertaining machinations at the Clown College Collective.

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Gasp in excitement as they pour out of the tiny little car!

Some excerpts from the article:

President Donald Trump was only going to be away for a daylong trip.

[...]

In any normal White House, this would have been an in-and-out trip that should require the accompaniment of only a few advisers. But the Trump White House is not a normal White House. Senior staff members know that their safety within the squally West Wing often relies on being physically in the president’s presence. Otherwise, as Politico reports, they don’t know if their colleagues will bring them up in conversation in order to throw them under the bus. “Everybody’s terrified of being undercut,” one Republican strategist with ties to the White House said.

And so when the president boarded Air Force One on Wednesday, so, too, did the entirety of his senior staff. Two by two, like animals herding onto Noah's Arc, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Jared Kushner, Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller, Sean Spicer, and even Hope Hicks made their way on board.

[...]

The hallmark of Trump’s campaign, and now his White House, is that he keeps his inner circle small. There are only a handful of people who have his ear, and an even fewer number of people who have proved their loyalty to the president. That is perhaps why Kushner, an unquestionably devoted 36-year-old with no government experience, enjoys the most security, and is tasked with securing Middle East peace, creating jobs, and solving the nation’s infrastructure problems.

Though the circle may be small, it is filled with people on the fringe (like Bannon and Miller) with questionable ties (like Flynn and Gorka) and those with their own agendas (Ivanka and Priebus). The circle, then, becomes more like a three-ring circus, whose individual sideshows threaten to take the spotlight off the main act at any moment. The problem is that Trump is not a ringleader, and his team is in desperate need of one. If it doesn’t find one fast, these constant slip-ups threaten to divert attention away from promoting his agenda. The show within the show will become the legacy, and the supporting actors the main players.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Reminds me of this clown and all the outrage over it. My have times changed!

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blog...-his-job-and-america-loses-its-sense-of-humor

 

[fskimospy]

Reminds me of this clown and all the outrage over it. My have times changed!

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blog...-his-job-and-america-loses-its-sense-of-humor

What the fuck did I just read:

It is unfortunate the culture has been changed in this way, for comedy's sake as well as the nation's well-being. It may be a naturally defensive posture to take given that the Alinskites who worship Obama and all that he stands for use public shaming as a rather effective bludgeon against anyone who gets in their way.

It's simply amazing the kind of shit that some people on here apparently read with regularity.

 

[Perknose]

My have times changed!

Yes, yes . . . yes they have.

Pray tell, any concomitant changes -- say, in our country's leadership -- that you may have noted as a driver of this debasement in our national political discourse? Anyone come to mind? Don't be a pussy, grab hold of an answer and tweet forth!

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

What the fuck did I just read:



It's simply amazing the kind of shit that some people on here apparently read with regularity.

It's an opinion piece...and yes, I know it's really hard for you to deal with anything outside your bubble. Sorry about that.

 

[fskimospy]

It's an opinion piece...and yes, I know it's really hard for you to deal with anything outside your bubble. Sorry about that.

That piece says way more about you than it does about me.

My great uncle was a member of the John Birch society and used to drive around with a bumper sticker that said "I don't believe the liberal media". He was normally a great, fun-loving, lovable guy but whenever politics came up this stream of weird conspiracies, allusions to an Alinskyite fifth column, and all sorts of other dark plots hatched by liberals used to come out. I always wondered what sort of media he read/watched/listened to that made an otherwise great person think those sorts of loony things. Apparently you guys shared some reading habits, haha.

 

[Moonbeam]

Reminds me of this clown and all the outrage over it. My have times changed!

If I read your intention correctly, you are saying, not that times have changed but that they are the same, only the partisan targeted by shame has changed and further that when one side is the target they react with outrage but when situations reverse they are fine with it, that we are hypocrites in how we view shame. Here we are to presume, then, I gather, that a clown wearing an Obama mask at a real rodeo event and asking the crowd if they want to see him run over by a bull is equivalent to likening the Trump administration to a clown car in a doctored photographic cartoon thingi. I understand that I am partisan, that I see Obama as a highly dignified individual and I see Trump as a coarse and arrogant bully but I can't get behind the notion that these two examples are equivalent because one was a public display that, among other things, exposes children to viciousness.

Furthermore, when I look at the property of shaming, a complex behavior I don't want to spend a lot of time detailing, I see it as I see most things a synthesis of opposites. On the one hand we shame children for inappropriate behavior and we shame them for who they are and are very careless about drawing the distinction. We can't have one of our children eating all the food at the table for example, on the excuse that he or she is hungry and we can stop that by reminding the child of the needs of others or by calling the child a pig, for example. We can also accuse children with slower metabolisms that would perhaps survive a famine that they are also pigs.

In short, then, shaming are not all equivalent. They can be used to hurt people and make them hate who they have been or they can be used to encourage dignified and socially positive behavior by pointing out what isn't.

The bottom line then is that while am aware of much hypocrisy in the world, I can't agree that the two examples we are looking at are equally deserved or appropriate.

The one question I do have is whether the fear of back biting and being undermined by one of the others in the car accounts for their cozy togetherness,

I wonder, rather, if the high concentration of secret service around the President might be the reason they stay close.