Starting to sense a pattern among Republican presidents

 Remember this?

History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

The dirty secret of the Bob Woodward book is...

 ...roughly 40 percent of the country does not care how terrible a president Donald Trump is. They buy what he is selling, for whatever reason, and even taped conversations in which he admits he was lying to the country aren't going to make a difference.

That, as much as anything, is why I feel despair about the country. 

Does Donald Trump discredit the doves?

 Jeet Heer with an excellent observation:

My worry is that: Because of his attempts to portray himself as something of a dove -- even though that's arguable at best -- Trump will make it more difficult in mainstream politics to challenge Washington's hawkish consensus. The president's foreign policy incompetence and general terribleness will mean that if there is another leader who legitimately shrinks from using the hammer of the U.S. military to treat all challenges as a nail, they'll be tarred by association with Trump's rhetoric.

Maybe that's too hopeful, actually. It's difficult to position yourself for president in this country without buying into that hawkish consensus. The peaceniks are forever at a disadvantage.

Rod Dreher* is opposed to "woke college football"

 There's never a right way to protest racism, is there? Dreher is warning that Southern football fans won't take well to LSU football players demonstrating for Black Lives Matter. 

It just seems to me that if you are a football player trying to build interest in and sympathy for Black Lives Matter, this is not the way to do it. In fact, it’s the way to energize opponents of BLM. And I have a sense that this is going to have some effect, perhaps not measurable, on the fall election — and beyond.

The end result of this logic is that Black people would never, ever protest racism because it would rile up whites. It's the logic of abuse. But I'm sure the "Camp of the Saints" guy is legitimately concerned with helping Black people effectively fight racism.

* Oh, hell. Maybe this IS a Rod Dreher shitposting blog. Please forgive me my minor obsessions.

Parenting in 2020: Using Donald Trump as a moral object lesson

Before bedtime, discussion with my son turned to talk of morals and ethics. I want him to aspire to both justice and compassion -- and sometimes (according to my Mennonite understanding of how the world should work) that means having compassion for people who act unjustly.*

*I don't expect other people, especially victims of injustice, to do this. It's how I roll.

Talk turned to Donald Trump, of course.

How do you have compassion for Donald Trump?

My usual approach -- when I am the person I want to be -- is to look for redeeming qualities in the person I find frustrating. Most people are a mix! Even many genuinely terrible people have some redeeming quality.

I cannot discern a redeeming quality in Donald Trump. Not as a public man. Not as a private person, at least from what I know of him that way. (Which is too much.)

Which means I don't know how to have compassion for Donald Trump. 

It's not a matter of him deserving it. It's a matter of me practicing an ethic that I aspire to. And he defies my understanding of how to implement my ethic.

So my answer to my son is: This is where I fall short of my values. I don't know how to have compassion for Donald Trump. All I can tell you is to aspire to justice, and try not to let your anger at injustice -- however justified that anger may be -- warp your soul.

Mostly, I would like not to have to have Donald Trump be an object lesson in my parenting.

If in Trump's America, "l'état, c'est moi," l'état might allegedly be a rapist

 AP:

The U.S. Justice Department is seeking to take over President Donald Trump’s defense in a defamation lawsuit from a writer who accused him of rape, and federal lawyers asked a court Tuesday to allow a move that could put the American people on the hook for any money she might be awarded.

After New York state courts turned down Trump’s request to delay E. Jean Carroll’s suit, Justice Department lawyers filed court papers Tuesday aiming to shift the case into federal court and to substitute the U.S. for Trump as the defendant. That means the federal government, rather than Trump himself, might have to pay damages if any are awarded.

Again: Trump is putting the US government on the hook to defend him from allegations about activities that allegedly occurred long before his presidency. Perhaps there's some bizarre legal theory that can justify this. But most people will justifiably understand this as further confirmation that Trump sees no distinction between is personal interest and that of the country. 

Racists going to do what racists do

 In his biography of Frederick Douglass, David Blight relays the following story about racist conspiracymongering as the Civil War came to an end.

What's the saying? History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.