“The nightmares I had been fending off had come home in the form of the Trump administration: a white supremacist kleptocracy linked to a transnational crime syndicate, using digital media to manipulate reality and destroy privacy, led by a sociopathic nuke-fetishist, backed by apocalyptic fanatics preying on the weakest and most vulnerable as feckless and complicit officials fail to protect them.”
Source: Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
“When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.
"C'est grand!"* say the historians, and there no longer exists either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que c'est grand, and his soul is tranquil.
peating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas.("From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.")
And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.”
Source: War and Peace
“America is Troy. Trump is a Trojan Horse.”
“Weakness is still what I see: weakness in the sense of a great gap between what is expected of a man (or someday woman) and assured capacity to carry through. Expectations arise and clerkly tasks increase, while prospects for sustained support from any quarter worsen as foreign alliances loosen and political parties wane.”
Source: Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan
“Trump's MAGA minions live in a Fox News bubble.”
Source: How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book
“Hitler loved to describe any newspaper that exposed him for what he was as Luegenpresse, which is German for Fake News.”
Source: How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book
“Y'all fucking around. From what I'm seeing, Trump will be reelected President of the United States of America. Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?”
“I'm not a state or federal employee, so the shutdown only indirectly affects my family and I. I have, however, been out of work before. I know how it feels to pay bills all the while watching what little I managed to save, dwindle. In your hands, Mr. President, America is Troy.”
“Power I defined as personal influence of an effective sort on governmental action.”
Source: Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan
“The United States was no longer the overwhelming military power in the world, no longer sure of never losing wars. no longer confident of having learned how to maintain employment and to check inflation, no longer reveling in resource independence, technological supremacy, favorable exchange rates, and the privileged life abroad. (xiii)”
Source: Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan