Triple-check my persona

[sovay]

spatch, reading a tweet from the White House: "'The United States and Italy are bound together by a shared cultural and political heritage dating back thousands of years to Ancient Rome.'"

Me, a classicist: "Oh! That'd be the fascism!"

Comments

[sara]

Specifically the court of Emperor Nero.

[sovay]

Specifically the court of Emperor Nero.

I agree that the public entertainer image is apt, but I'd really prefer to skip further fires!

[sara]

Too late, he's burning Kurdistan.

(I am so angry about that. We cannot impeach this shitbag fast enough.)

[sovay]

(I am so angry about that. We cannot impeach this shitbag fast enough.)

I do not disagree with you there.

[sara]

I have a couple of cousins who have spent a lot of time they can't talk about in any detail shooting people in that part of the world. It's my understanding that this was a very unpleasant and dangerous way to spend several years. The idea that this dickhead is now taking all their hard work and all the hard work of the Kurdish people and just pissing it away, and for what! Because genocide is a nice distraction from impeachment? What an absolute waste of space he is.

[sovay]

and for what! Because genocide is a nice distraction from impeachment?

I don't think he gets as far as thinking about genocide even enough to dismiss it. I don't think anything is real to him but his wants and his frustrations and his titanic self-absorption in the sputtering, petulant soup that passes for his thought processes. I believe there are people on his side who would use genocide that cruelly and calculatedly, although judging by the surprising Republican response maybe not in Syria. But I think he just doesn't care. He was never fit to be responsible for a single other person's life and he was given the money from birth to affect far too many.

[sara]

My cousins, and these Kurdish women I have read about, who keep trying to do things like set up courts and establish basic civil services, they are worth a thousand of him. He does not deserve to go among decent people.

My cousins are (although perhaps not in current circumstances) also Republicans, and I keep hoping that the part of the party that is people like them will address the part of the party that is people like him. But I have been very disappointed. The conservatives I know say things to me like, well nothing really has changed.

That is not how things are.

[rachelmanija]

I think it's because it's what Erdogan told him to do, and Trump will always do whatever it takes to cozy up to brutal dictators.

[sara]

Did you read the letter he sent Erdogan? It's practically illiterate. I can't believe this is what passes for presidential correspondence nowadays.

[rachelmanija]

YES. Apparently CNN contacted the White House to confirm that it was real because they thought it was a parody.

[sovay]

Apparently CNN contacted the White House to confirm that it was real because they thought it was a parody.

I don't blame them.

[sara]

I found it striking that the NYT reproduced it in its entirety, which is certainly...what passes for courageous critical commentary from them nowadays.