Fascist president issues official fascist threats via his official presidential fascist Twitter.

Kelly says Trump is telling whoppers about Mattis.

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said Thursday that President Donald Trump “has clearly forgotten” the circumstances of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s departure from the administration, breaking with his former boss to side with a fellow retired Marine Corps general.

Aka is telling whoppers.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Kelly contradicted Trump’s claim that he had fired Mattis. Kelly called Mattis “an honorable man” and described Trump’s Twitter attack on the former Defense secretary as “nasty.”

…

“The president did not fire him. He did not ask for his resignation,” Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff when Mattis departed the administration, told the Washington Post. “The president has clearly forgotten how it actually happened or is confused.”

Uh huh.

Sure, Don, sure.

Another portent:

The US has been downgraded from a “medium risk” to a “high risk” country in a civil unrest index by the global risk analysis company Verik Maplecroft.

As nationwide protests continue over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the firm finds that the “marginalisation of racial and religious minorities” is the single biggest driver of the unrest “because of the profound impact on the living standards of entire communities.” The conditions mean that direct acts of violence to express discontent “appeal to a broad range of community members.”

This is what I was just saying (or ranting) – George Floyd is not a one-off, George Floyd is part of the whole big picture of this country from the beginning. He’s part of the history of a former slave-owning nation that never did what it had to do after the formal ending of slavery. Slavery continued in all but name and we’ve never fully dealt with that fact, and the prison system is perpetuating it to this day.

The Guardian reports on Trump’s “press conference,” at which Trump took no questions, which makes it not a press conference but an announcement.

Trump has started his White House press conference, and the president opened the event by quickly veering from the jobs numbers to the George Floyd protests then back to the jobs numbers…However, the president unexpectedly shifted from the jobs numbers to the protests, bragging about the progress seen in Minneapolis this week after demonstrations last week turned violent.

Veering unexpectedly is what he does. He doesn’t do joined-up thinking, he does blurts.

He said we are “largely through” the coronavirus, which of course is not even slightly true.

Then the Guardian kind of threw up its hands in defeat.

Trump appears to have abandoned his prepared remarks, assuming he had any to begin with. The president has celebrated the jobs report, while mocking his critics.

Oh he had some, you can tell, because when he’s reading them he stares down and talks in a slow monotone. When he veers he looks up and babbles very fast and very disconnectedly. There’s always the impulse to take his elbow and guide him back to his room.

Trump described those who have criticized his response to the coronavirus pandemic as his “enemies,” and he characterized the policy goals of the Green New Deal as “baby talk.”

The president also enocuraged governors to allow him to send National Guard troops amid the George Floyd protests, saying he would send troops “so fast it’ll make their heads spin.”

Then he said the headline thing.

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying, ‘This is a great thing happening for our country,” Trump said of Floyd, who was killed in police custody last week. “A great day for him, a great day for everybody. This is great day for everybody.”

Not sure we can agree with you there, Don.

His campaign, on the other hand, thinks it was a gem.

What he said while staring down at the written speech:

Equal justice under the law must mean every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race, color, gender or creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement.

What he said when he looked up from the written speech to ad lib:

We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying, ‘This is a great thing that’s happening for our country.’ This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everbody. This is a great day for everybody. This a great, great day in terms of equality.

Then he babbled about the economy.

Golly.

It’s all much too familiar, and not in a good way.

The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.

In interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S. intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations.

“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

And others too.

Marc Polymeropoulos, who formerly ran CIA operations in Europe and Asia, was among several former agency officials who recoiled at images of Trump hoisting a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington after authorities fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the president’s path of protesters.

“It reminded me of what I reported on for years in the third world,” Polymeropoulos said on Twitter. Referring to the despotic leaders of Iraq, Syria and Libya, he said: “Saddam. Bashar. Qaddafi. They all did this.”

The impression Trump created was only reinforced by others in the administration. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper urged governors to “dominate the battlespace” surrounding protesters, as if describing U.S. cities as a foreign war zone. Later, as military helicopters hovered menacingly over protesters, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, toured the streets of the nation’s capital in his battle fatigue uniform.

So I’m not the only one who found the image of Milley in battle fatigues sinister.

Former intelligence officials said the unrest and the administration’s militaristic response are among many measures of decay they would flag if writing assessments about the United States for another country’s intelligence service.

But but but we’re special.

About that unrest…the thing is, the problem has always been there. Racism, white supremacy, generation after generation of suppression and oppression and neglect and ferocious separation and revenge have always been there. We never made any reparations for two centuries of slavery. We never made any serious effort to compensate for two centuries of slavery. Instead we blamed the descendants of slaves for the poverty that the slave-owning race had imposed on them, and we used that blame as justification for continuing the oppression and neglect and ferocious revenge. That monstrous deformation has always been there, all this time, so we’ve never actually been the city on the hill we like to boast of being. We talked a good game and it worked out well for a lot of people but there was always this huge festering wrong that we just fucking ignored.

So, yeah, it’s not actually all that surprising that now at last the curtain is pulled back and we see how rotten the whole thing has been all along.

Even this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lectured China about its efforts to prevent citizens of Hong Kong from holding a vigil to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

“If there is any doubt about Beijing’s intent, it is to deny Hong Kongers a voice and a choice,” Pompeo said in a statement that was met with derision on Twitter because it coincided with crackdowns urged by Trump in the United States.

I wonder how much attention Pompeo has paid to the effects of generations of state-enforced segregation over his career. I’m guessing zero.

That scamp Bari Weiss has been mixing it up again.

Hmmmyes that’s not at all oversimplified or crude.

But her colleagues say that’s not how it is.

The New York Times – in the wake of an almighty outcry – has thought again about that bright idea of giving a US Senator space to say let’s have the military go to war on the citizenry.

Fewer but better op-eds; sounds like a plan. Now if only they would send David Brooks on his way.

Trump has decided wellllllllllll maybe he won’t fire Esper after all because hey who needs the tsuris this close to an election am I right.

Trump had been [gone] ballistic, said people familiar with the situation, about a news conference Esper held where the defense secretary tried to distance himself from the president’s church photo op on Monday and said he didn’t support sending the military into U.S. cities at this time — a move Trump had said he was considering. The president was so angry he had told aides he was considering dismissing Esper, one of the people said.

But a day later, the view inside the White House was that the president was now unlikely to do so given how close it is to the election, those people said, with one senior administration official saying that removing Esper “is not worth the shakeup five months from an election.”

So because it’s a day closer to the election, he decided nah.

Yeah, sure, guys. What you mean is he had yet another ego-meltdown yesterday and by today he had calmed down a little, like any toddler. A tip: we’re not going to vote for him just because he didn’t fire Esper. Nope. That’s not going to happen.

Trump’s anger with Esper came as a string of former military officials began speaking out against the president’s handling of the demonstrations across the country. Esper’s direct predecessor, James Mattis, publicly slammed Trump’s response to the protests over the death of George Floyd, saying in a piece published in The Atlantic magazine on Wednesday statement the president “tries to divide us” and calling his “bizarre photo op” in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church “an abuse of executive authority.”

Has he smashed all his toys with a hammer yet?

Esper had not cleared his plans for the news conference with the White House beforehand, one person said.

Esper said that he was aware of the Monday night plan to visit the church — where Trump posed for photos holding a Bible — but had not known what would happen there.

…

He also said he did not support invoking a 213-year-old Insurrection Act, something Trump had been considering, to deploy active-duty U.S. troops to respond to civil unrest in cities across the country.

It’s a wonder Trump hasn’t fed him to the lions.

[Editorial note: you can’t be ballistic (unless you’re a weapon), you can only go ballistic. The idiom is going ballistic, not being it. You’re welcome.]

Christing fuck.

Play the second clip.

Adding: Doucette has a whole long thread of these.

What was Barr’s role?

Attorney General William Barr was part of the decision to expand the perimeter around the White House Monday, CBS News has confirmed, pushing protesters who were assembled there from the area before President Trump delivered remarks and walked across the street to survey a damaged historic church.

A Justice Department official told CBS News the decision was made late Sunday or early Monday morning to move the perimeter keeping protesters from getting close to the White House back one block. The official said it was a coordinated decision, and Barr advised it was the correct move.

…

The Justice Department official said the president’s movement’s did not have any bearing on the decision to extend the perimeter around the White House. Barr went to observe the scene at Lafayette Park after visiting a command center Monday afternoon and was surprised to see it hadn’t been moved as intended. The official said Barr then met with police to discuss moving the perimeter. Afterward, officers began pushing protesters from the park.

The decision was made to move the perimeter Sunday night or Monday morning, then later Monday Barr took a look and was shocked shocked to see that nothing had happened and told the police to hurry up and get it done. It was SHEER COINCIDENCE that Trump went marching up to that church moments later. Sheer coincidence I tell you.

Trump actually pumped his nasty little fist at the cops on Monday.

Barr held a press conference just now (or perhaps is still holding it).

Adding:

Andrew Coyne at the Globe and Mail says Trump just wants to watch the world burn, which I think is a good way of putting it.

It is hard to assess how much Donald Trump is the cause of his country’s disintegration, and how much the consequence. Suffice it to say that the times brought forth the man: the perfect embodiment of all the fears and resentments – of foreigners, of minorities, of liberal elites – of the Republican base.

They found in Mr. Trump a vehicle for their nihilism and their rage, perhaps the least suitable candidate for high office in the entire United States – a petulant, insecure man-child, so wholly lacking in intelligence, competence, integrity or emotional stability as to be disqualified in most states from driving a bus, let alone leading what was once the most powerful country on Earth.

Driving a bus, though, is a very skilled and high-stress job, if you think about it (and/or if you ride buses a lot). Trump is definitely the last person you want to see at the wheel.

That was the point: to invert every norm or expectation, not only of public life, but of ordinary human behaviour; to render those norms and expectations, by a combination of their callousness and his shamelessness, impotent. The point was to “send a message,” although as Mr. Trump and his enablers in the Republican political class intuited, the message was less of rebellion than credulity.

The results are all around us: the world’s worst death toll from the novel coronavirus; the worst economic collapse since the Depression; the worst race riots since 1968. Mr. Trump wasn’t the immediate cause of any of these, but he has made each measurably worse, whether by the incompetence of his administration, the incoherence of his policies or the toxicity of his rhetoric. Elect someone to blow up the system, it turns out, and you will be picking up the pieces for years.

The U.S. accordingly gives every indication of coming apart, torn along lines of race, class, ideology and region, with Mr. Trump gleefully pulling at each frayed seam. Every institution of authority that might have mitigated the damage has been attacked and undermined. Every belief or movement that might have exacerbated it – racists, gun nuts, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists of all kinds – has been cultivated.

And torn along other lines too. There are the lines of political orientation, related to moral orientation. There are the lines of egotism versus public-mindedness. There are the lines of being an absolute shit at all times versus not doing that. There’s the embrace of hatred and violence and domination versus trying to do better than that.

Worst of all has been the collapse of trust. It is true that Mr. Trump can be trusted to always do the worst possible thing in any situation – to do it not in spite of expert recommendations to the contrary, but because of them.

But even here the sense of bad faith is inescapable. He does things not because he believes in them – for he does not believe in anything – but because they make him feel good in the moment, or because they might benefit him in some way. He lies, not because he wants to be believed, but to advertise his disdain for the very notion of truth as distinct from falsehood. He gives orders, not because he has anything he wants done, but as tests of loyalty for his underlings.

I think that’s right. There’s no there there. Lots of pundits still claim he’s diabolically clever but I don’t think so – I think he’s random in the way Coyne describes, and that his randomness is what his fans love about him.

Jennifer Rubin collects a number of distancings and rebukes from military boffins:

We do not yet know precisely why Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper publicly broke with President Trump on Wednesday, renouncing the use of the Insurrection Act as a means to deploy the military against civilian demonstrators. We can surmise, however, that Pentagon brass was finally fed up and prevailed upon Esper to speak out.

It’s unnerving when it’s the military having to remind the civilian government that we’re not supposed to have military government.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who had accompanied Trump on his march across Lafayette Square, put out a memo on June 2, which read like a not-very-subtle rebuke of Trump’s attempt to use the military to suppress protesters:

1. Every member of the U.S. military swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the values embedded within it. … We in uniform — all branches, all components, and all ranks — remain committed to our national values and principles embedded in the Constitution.

…

3. As members of the Joint Force-comprised of all races, colors, and creeds — you embody the ideals of our Constitution. Please remind all of our troops and leaders that we will uphold the values of our nation, and operate consistent with national laws and our own high standards of conduct at all times.

I didn’t know he’d done that. Never mind about the combat fatigues then – I withdraw my suspicion that he meant to add to the intimidation factor by marching to the church in them.

Rubin cites James Miller’s resignation from the Science Defense Board and

Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, and Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the Air Force Academy, also spoke up this week in support of the protests for racial justice, with Silveria directly repudiating use of violence against fellow Americans.

In addition, Air Force Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel, who heads the National Guard Bureau, put out a statement Wednesday entitled “We Must Do Better,” denouncing the racism that has resulted in the deaths of so many unarmed African Americans, urging Americans to listen and learn and reminding us, “Everyone who wears the uniform of our country takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and everything for which it stands.” He declared that if they are to uphold their oath as service personnel and “decent human beings” they must uphold the oath.

And the biggest wallop of all was from Mattis.

Mattis’s unprecedented rebuke raises a number of issues.

First, he was widely and justifiably criticized for failing to speak out previously against Trump, not even to share direct observations that might persuade lawmakers and Americans that Trump is unfit for office. That failure remains, and we do not know whether speaking up earlier would have deterred Trump from further action. Nevertheless, no one should diminish the importance of his action, which may carry sway with other current military officials, Congress and the public. It is late, but it better than anything we have heard from any other former administration official. (Contrast Mattis’s action with the refusal of former national security adviser John Bolton, who chose to hold back direct knowledge of Trump’s alleged impeachable conduct for the sake of a book deal.)

Second, it remains unclear whether Mattis will hold any sway with Republican lackeys in the Senate who refuse to break with Trump — or worse, who try, as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) shamefully did, to outdo Trump in vowing to use the military against civilians. Most of them long ago tied themselves to Trump’s mast, willing to go down with the him — and take the country with them — rather than be on the receiving end of a Trump Twitter tirade.

There’s also the fact that some of them are every bit as evil as Trump is. They stick to him because they like his fascist leanings.

Hot times. Bloomberg yesterday afternoon:

Ex-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis condemned his former boss, President Donald Trump, over his aggressive rhetoric and strategy to quell protests that erupted after the death of an unarmed black man in police custody.

…

The sharply worded and unprecedented rebuke from Trump’s first defense chief will raise pressure on the president, who this week threatened to dispatch active duty troops to quash protests and drew widespread condemnation when the square in front of the White House was forcibly cleared before he walked to a historic church to hold a Bible for photographers.

The president responded Wednesday evening saying that he “didn’t like his ‘leadership’ style or much else about” Mattis. “His primary strength was not military, but rather personal public relations,” Trump wrote in one of a pair of tweets.

Oh, interesting, because Trump’s primary strength is not military or governmental or intellectual or policy-wonkish or diplomatic or judicial or public spirited, but rather fomenting rage and hatred.

Mattis’s statement, first published in The Atlantic, came on what had already been a rough day for the defense establishment.

Trump’s current secretary, Mark Esper, angered White House officials by publicly distancing himself from Trump’s potential use of the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy active duty forces to cities confronting protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

So Esper publicly distanced himself from Trump’s military takeover plans. Good!

It remains to be seen if Mattis’s denunciation will have lasting political power, but it strikes at the heart of what the president has pitched as one of his strengths: His fulsome praise of the military as part of his “America First” approach to the world, even while he frequently accuses the national security establishment of trying to undermine him and his administration.

Part of his Murka First approach yes but also part of his love of force and domination as opposed to argument and persuasion – part of his mindless love of violence and hatred and rage. He doesn’t have any serious understanding of the military, much less of foreign policy, he just loves the association with maximum violence.

Despite Trump’s praise of Mattis when he took office, by the end of the defense chief’s tenure, their relationship was shattered. Upon his departure, Mattis he issued a blunt resignation letter that amounted to a public reproach of Trump’s “America First” mantra.

“We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances,” Mattis wrote. “Because you have the right to have a secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”

What I’m saying. Trump doesn’t give an actual shit about our security, prosperity and values or the solidarity of our alliances. He just wants to order people killed and then watch the real-life war movie.

In his statement this week, Mattis took aim at Esper, too. Without naming the Pentagon chief, but citing the military jargon the Defense secretary and other top officials have used in describing the geography of the current protests, Mattis said, “We must reject any thinking of our cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate.”’

Esper had used the “battlespace” term during a call with governors on Monday, before U.S. authorities used smoke bombs and pepper-spray-like devices to clear out the peaceful protest outside the White House.

Jeezus. I missed that. Battlespace!

But since then apparently Esper has gone all squishy like Mattis so now he’s on the naughty stool too.

President Donald Trump confronted his Defense secretary, Mark Esper, after the Pentagon chief publicly opposed the idea of deploying the military to contain protests, according to people familiar with the matter.

Separately, the president later asked top advisers if they thought Esper could still be effective in his position, two people familiar with the discussions said on Wednesday night.

…

Esper met with Trump in the Oval Office after telling reporters at the Pentagon that active-duty military forces to perform law enforcement within the U.S. is “a matter of last resort” and that the National Guard was better suited to the task.

…

The defense chief also appeared to back away from his boss by saying that while he knew he would be joining Trump to walk into Lafayette Square in front of the presidential residence on Monday, he was not aware of specific plans, including what would happen when the group reached St. John’s Episcopal Church.

He said he knew they were going to the church but not that it was for a photo op.

(Well, given Trump, what else would it be? Hardly a quiet thoughtful visit to ask how everyone is doing.)

His remarks generated irritation at the White House, where three Trump aides who asked not to be identified said the secretary should have moderated his comments to draw less of a distinction with the president.

No, actually, quite the reverse. Everyone’s comments should draw a huge distinction between self and Trump, because Trump is a murderous violence-loving racist monster.

Meanwhile The New York Times has seen fit to publish an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton saying send in the soldiers.

This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s.

New York City suffered the worst of the riots Monday night, as Mayor Bill de Blasio stood by while Midtown Manhattan descended into lawlessness. Bands of looters roved the streets, smashing and emptying hundreds of businesses. Some even drove exotic cars; the riots were carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements.

…

Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.

I haven’t seen many “elites” doing that. What I’ve seen is mostly people pointing out that there are some people taking advantage of the protests along with some right-wing provocateurs and some lefties who like violence; in short it’s a mix.

The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, yet others refuse, and in some cases the rioters still outnumber the police and Guard combined. In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”

This venerable law, nearly as old as our republic itself, doesn’t amount to “martial law” or the end of democracy, as some excitable critics, ignorant of both the law and our history, have comically suggested.

Oh yes, very comical. Meanwhile there is absolutely no reason not to trust Donald Trump to do such a thing with the utmost caution and respect for the rights of all.

Yes but that was completely different because the people threatening the Michigan legislators were white. White, I tell you, white.

I retweeted this on Monday:

He shared them today. Jeffrey Goldberg introduces:

James Mattis, the esteemed Marine general who resigned as secretary of defense in December 2018 to protest Donald Trump’s Syria policy, has, ever since, kept studiously silent about Trump’s performance as president. But he has now broken his silence, writing an extraordinary broadside in which he denounces the president for dividing the nation, and accuses him of ordering the U.S. military to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens.

The full statement is at the end.

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

It is a wholesome and unifying demand – an entirely reasonable demand. Why doesn’t everyone just agree on that?

I suppose because it implies that we don’t already have equal justice under the law, and that must mean American hasn’t been made great again, or indeed ever, at least not great in the sense of providing equal justice under the law. Unquestioning patriotism outweighs equal justice.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

With military leadership standing alongside right after peaceful protesters were gassed out of the way. Not their finest hour.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

And that’s why presidents are forbidden to sic the military on the population.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

First step is getting Trump out. Without that it’s hopeless.

Oh come ON.

Excuse me excuse me. Slight problem with that. The bombing damage was caused by Nazi Germany. By an external enemy with large plans for global domination and genocide. Trump’s short walk was a short walk against fellow citizens who were demonstrating against violent policing. See the difference? Churchill: Nazis. Trump: fellow citizens demonstrating.

The White House is not just equating Trump with Churchill, it’s also equating US citizens (and residents) with Nazis.

Mind you, Churchill was perfectly capable of unleashing the police on his own fellow citizens. He was no fan of the 1926 General Strike, naturally, Tory that he was. But Churchill inspecting bomb damage during the blitz was not making war on fellow citizens; Trump was doing exactly that.

Carolyn Sale at the Centre for Free Expression on another shunning:

In late March, Kathleen Lowrey, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, was asked to resign from her role as the Department of Anthropology’s associate chair, undergraduate programs, on the basis that one or more students had gone to the University’s Office of Safe Disclosure and Human Rights and the Dean of Students, André Costopolous, to complain about her without filing formal complaints. All Professor Lowrey has been told is that she is somehow making the learning environment “unsafe” for these students because she is a feminist who holds “gender critical” views. 

Imagine, if you will, a black associate professor being asked to resign from a role as as the Department of Anything’s associate chair of undergraduate programs on the grounds that she is an anti-racism activist who holds anti-racism views.

It makes every bit as much sense. Feminism advocates equal rights for women, anti-racism advocates equal rights for black people. There’s more to it than that in both cases; both forms of activism are based on analysis of the roots of the existing inequality; nevertheless that’s the core. Students who want feminists with gender-critical views silenced want feminism silenced. You can’t have feminism that’s not allowed to be for and about women any more than you can have anti-racism that’s not allowed to be for and about people of color. White people don’t get to say what anti-racism can talk about, and men don’t get to say what feminism can talk about, even if those men say they are women.

Apparently, Lowrey’s very openness about her views is a problem. Should a course have gender or sex as a central theme, on day 1 she offers a summary of her views along with the declaration that no student need agree with her about any of it, as she did this year with her course “Anthropology of Women.” As she cleaves to a feminism that asserts the continuing importance of biological sex and feminist projects of resisting patriarchal oppression, her views put her out of step with much current thinking about the nature of gender, which from the seminal work of Judith Butler forward takes sex to be a social construct.

The “seminal” work of Judith Butler should not be made mandatory in universities. Agreement with Judith Butler should not be made mandatory in universities. Judith Butler should always be optional.

Lowrey refused to resign from her service role and insisted that if the University wished to dismiss her from it, it would need to put its reasons for doing so in writing. She subsequently received a letter from the Dean of Arts Lesley Cormack dismissing her from her service role without offering any specifics as to why. The letter simply declares that the Dean believes that “it is not in the best interests of the students or the University” for Lowrey to continue in it.

Honestly it’s as if trans ideology were plutonium in reverse – if you refuse to touch it YOU NEED TO BE SCRUBBED WITH WIRE BRUSHES AND BLEACH.

Having been disciplined without any concrete charges presented to her, Lowrey refers to what is happening to her as “McCarthyite.” As she has been confronted not with any specific complaint, but only with the broad claim that her views constitute an amorphous “harm,” we might find ex officio proceedings during the English Reformation an equally apt analogy for what she is experiencing; ex officio proceedings permitted those accused of supposedly heretical beliefs to be excommunicated, sometimes even executed, on the basis of secret disclosures to ecclesiastical judges of evidence never made public. Whichever analogy you prefer, this kind of disciplinary action against a professor, in which administrators refuse to offer any specific charges in relation to student complaints about a professor’s ideas, is inappropriate at a university in a democratic country twenty years into the twenty-first century. 

If the “harm” is amorphous then it’s not really harm.

At its most alarming, the University of Alberta’s position appears to be that where students have a “perception” that an idea or a set of ideas harms them, it does not matter what the precise complaints are in regard to the person holding the ideas (or indeed whether there is any precise complaint). Lowrey has been expressly told that it doesn’t matter if any of the claims students are making about her are true.

I wonder if this applies in any other discipline at the University of Alberta. Can students try that with economics? Physics? Computer science?

Asking that question is itself a crime, isn’t it.

This is not good.

Word is they’re required to identify. Without insignia and names they could be anybody – Proud Boys, KKK, Stephen Miller’s private army, anybody.

Oh hey it turns out Trump didn’t go to the bunker to hide from the meany protesters, he went to inspect it. Because that’s what presidents do: they inspect the various rooms in the White House. They inspect for rat turds, for termite damage, for mold, for leaks, for fire hazards, for slippery bits, for toxins, for toadstools growing up through the floor, for rust, for stains, for splinters, for spills, for scratching by cats or weasels or gerbils, for bats, for spiders, for sour milk, for canned goods that have passed their “best by” date, for light bulb failures, for crooked blinds, for ugly curtains…frankly it’s a never-ending job.

During an interview with Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday morning, Trump denied reports that he had taken shelter in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center out of safety concerns, claiming that he had gone down there for a mere inspection during the day on Friday before the protests turned violent that night.

“I went down during the day and I was there for a tiny little short period of time, and it was much more for an inspection,” he told Kilmeade.

Much more. Definitely. Presidents need to inspect the bunker because who the hell else is going to do it? Presidents also do all the cooking and the cleanup afterwards.

“Nope, they didn’t tell me that at all,” he replied when the Fox News host asked if the Secret Service had told him they needed to bring him down to the bunker for security reasons. “But they said it would be a good time to go down, take a look because maybe sometime you’re going to need it.”

“Sir, take a look, sir, because, sir, maybe you’re sir going to need it sir. You might sir need it sir, so right now would sir be a fabulous sir time to sir go look at it sir. Looking sir at it is crucial sir to its sir effectiveness sir.”

Trump claimed he’s visited the bunker “two or three times, all for inspection” (later in the interview, he said the visits were “two and a half, sort of, because I’ve done different things”).

He pissed in it? He raped a staffer in it? He drew on the walls in it?

The President insisted again that he was only down there “for a very very short period of time, very very short period of time.”

What I love about his use of language is the scrupulous avoidance of redundancy.

“I can’t tell you who went with me, but a whole group of people went with me as an inspecting factor,” he said.

Oh good, more eyes. Always good to have more eyes. You can’t have too many eyes inspecting the bunker.

The President also addressed his widely criticized photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church on Monday, which he had reportedly done merely to be seen outside the White House after having become upset by reports that he retreated to the bunker.

He denied ordering law enforcement to forcibly remove non-violent protesters and people at the church (including clergy) with teargas in order for him to stage the performance.

“I didn’t say, ‘Oh, move them out.’ I didn’t know who was there,” Trump told Kilmeade.

Oh really? Who did order it then? Who’s the freelance?