With his SCOTUS list, President Trump says the quiet part a little louder

When President Trump announced his shortlist for the Supreme Court during the 2016 campaign, it was a clear signal to conservatives to get on his bandwagon, filled as it was with Federalist Society-approved names. Now that his re-election prospects are sketchy, Trump has released a new shortlist. It worked the first time, after all.

The interesting thing about the 2016 list is that it still had the quality of being -- for Trump -- subtle. Unless you pay enough attention to the endless ideological maneuverings to control the courts, the names on the list (and its FedSoc provenance) might not've meant much to you. But if you were aware of those things, invested in those fights, and conservative, the list was a good reason to think Trump might not be a squish on issues important to you.

This time around, though, Trump is taking no chances with subtlety when it comes to motivating the base. It's one reason he's even more plainly appealing to white racism during this campaign. But the boldface names on his new SCOTUS list -- Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley -- are meant to get the attention of the most casual conservative. They're known culture warriors who appear regularly on cable news, not the coy legal eggheads known to insiders. Trump is fairly screaming that he'll appoint anti-abortion judges this time around. The man is known for saying the quiet parts out loud. The closer the election gets, it seems, it's saying the out loud parts even louder than he once did.

@TheWeek: "The most destructive single decision ever made by an American president"

My colleague David Faris:

It struck me anew how unfathomable it is, or should be, that the person entrusted with the presidency, whose actions and inactions can have terrible and unforeseen consequences for millions of people, purposefully concealed his own knowledge about the coming of one of the worst crises to afflict humanity in close to a century. The selfishness and the bad faith are staggering. While Trump couldn't have stopped COVID-19 from getting here, his lies and inexcusable inaction sent a lot of people to their graves and caused millions of others to this day not to take this virus seriously.

How all the latest news makes me feel

I think I'd help myself professionally, as a part-time pundit, if I weren't so publicly emo. The model for column- and opinion-writing is generally to have a take and to be confident in it, to be prepared to argue and generally look strong and authoritative. At least, if you're a man. None of that is my strong suit, and I'm fairly sure I invite some contempt for it. (Then again, maybe that's all in my head.)

So. Let me tell you how all the news today -- 

...about the fires in California...

...about the president's lying to Americans about COVID...

...about the White House ordering security officials to downplay threats from Russia and white supremacists...

...and so much more...

-- makes me feel.

It makes me feel helpless. 

I don't have a smart or analytical reaction. Mostly, I just feel (in the case of the fires) that we're reaping what we've sowed, climate-wise, or that too many of my fellow citizens like what our president is doing. Mostly I know that what is happening is bad and that there's almost nothing I can do to stop it or make it better.

And that feeling is even worse because I have a son who is going to have to live with the consequences of what happens now. We're giving him a terrible, terrible world, and I cannot protect him from it.

God help us.

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.