QUACK

We usually equate this term with the medical profession, and if so, there is some justification in calling Elizabeth Holmes the biggest quack in history. She didn’t know a thing about medicine or even biological science (chemical engineering was her “major” before she dropped out of college). She just had this “cool” idea that nobody in the medical profession thought was possible, but she hoped the “fake it until you make” con would convince investors who apparently wanted to help this “charismatic” young woman, who spoke in a faked voice and dressed like Steve Jobs, succeed in her absurd “dream” that a single drop of blood could be recycled for dozens of tests. But she didn’t listen to her own lab employees, who behind the scenes tried to tell her that it wasn’t going to work. Instead they were told to use third-party machines to “fake it”; Holmes just let her ego grow bigger and bigger with nothing but empty air inside it until a Wall Street Journal pin-prick blew it up.

Of course there are other examples of quackery, such as those that attempt to “rehabilitate” the reputations of the underserving. For example, there is yet another documentary on the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard U.S. trial, this time by the UK’s Channel 4 being aired on Netflix, which is more of the same like last year’s Netflix “documentary” on the case which received generally poor reviews and regarded as “evil” by many, in  being just another effort to put blinders on people’s eyes and tell them what they saw and heard in court wasn’t “the truth.” 

The “excuse” for yet another one of these pro-Heard documentaries is the “continuing fascination” with the case, but the truth is that gender politicians are frustrated that Depp has moved forward, his reputation largely restored (at least with the general public), while Heard’s own “acting” career is largely over. While she may no longer be taking advantage of Depp’s fame and fortune as her meal ticket, the jobless Heard seems to be living rather well in Spain with a child who is very likely her current “meal ticket.” Yes, Elon Musk is reportedly “stingy” about child support, but Heard is a “special case.” After all, Musk agreed to donate his sperm to create embryos for Heard’s use, so there must have been some “non-disclosure agreement” between them.

I actually hate talking about this, but these quacks come out of the woodwork all the time, and if no one counters the "new" recycled narratives,  people may forget there is something called “the truth.” Isn’t it odd how the mainstream media ignored the two-part “Surviving Amber Heard” documentary, in a which another former friend, Steve Crowley, revealed details of Heard’s abusive relationship with the more straight-laced Tasya van Ree (which she of course for political reasons remains silent about) and being a “professional” cocaine user often half out of her mind or unconscious, when at trial Heard claimed she only used cocaine “once” when she was 18.

Of course we won’t learn about how all of Heard’s free-loader friends were dumped after she couldn’t afford to pay for “friends” when Depp dumped her off his payroll. None of Heard’s former “friends” personally attended court to testify on her behalf, and all seemed irritated to testify at all in depositions, in which they had to accurately “recollect” some of the lies they told years previously. 

And of course we won’t learn about the “mystery” of why Heard’s driver’s license was suspended for four years since her “juvenile” arrest record is under seal, and or why her mother removed her from her high school because of “bullying” from fellow students who thought she was getting away with something that must have upset people. According to one “X” post by a person who was “there,” no one “in the know” wants to talk about it because they don’t want to cause the family of the other party any more pain, and they themselves might be targeted by fanatical Heard supporters.

Oh, hell, here we go again. There was the suddenly bruiseless Heard and “Rocky” Pennington laughing and joking while leaving the courthouse after her TRO was approved like a couple of naughty school girls who got away with lying to the principal, and  random images that Heard liked to take to either “embarrass” people (Depp napping) or to use as “evidence”—like those strangely unrandom bruises on both sides of her face that look suspiciously like they would be the natural locations of Botox and filler injections, which also cause bruising (we know that maintaining her “face” was important to Heard, because that is all she had to “sell”).

However, some bruising is real, as we see here:

 

Naturally, the people who knew the truth about Heard before she got her claws on Depp continue to choose to “not want to talk about it.” Heard calling Depp a “baby” in those audios for complaining about her abusive behavior indicates that contrary to her claims made in revenge against Depp, Heard thought of her own abusive behavior as natural as breathing. In the Musk biography where Heard is painted in dark colors by his associates, she is quoted as saying that if Musk wanted to “play with fire,” he should expect to be “burned.” Draw your own conclusions about what she is talking about.

I talked about Maïwenn’s film Jeanne du Barry a few weeks ago, and it is interesting to note that she felt compelled to correct the “misinterpretations” made concerning an interview for the UK publication The Independent, which frankly I’m surprised she agreed to do since her film received a 1/5 review from it. The subsequent article painted Depp in negative terms using words that Maïwenn claimed the “journalist did not want to grasp the subtlety of,” like “scary” when she should have used a word like “impressive” because of his star power.   

This is part of a statement Maïwenn gave to Variety last April about her frustration with these pro-Heard media shills:

Usually, my interview questions start with, “Maiwenn, how did the genesis of the film come about?” For the first time in a year, I did an interview where the first question was, “Maiwenn, what is your favorite film with Johnny Depp?” I should have been wary from the start as it was crystal clear but I was blind and naïve. As the interview ended, I realized I hadn’t been asked a single question about the film and it was clear this reporter was looking to make a fuss, to find controversy…

… Something is obvious to me: Charlotte O’Sullivan doesn’t give a damn about films and cinema, and she only wants to start controversies. She obviously doesn’t like cinema. While we are in the middle of the #MeToo movement, here is a woman journalist who only spoke to me about the men in my film or in my life – through the prism of men. As if I only existed thanks to men. Not a single question about the making of my film, nor my inspirations or anything else. And then they complain that there aren’t enough female directors. She did not want to talk about me or my work itself. This is what I personally call fake feminism!

Again, I want to be very clear: Johnny Depp is a huge actor. One of the greatest. He reminded me a lot of Brando – his genius and sufferings, his generosity and paradoxes. Even though we argued several times on set, he’s someone I totally respect and admire, and it’s important for me to correct my own narrative because I feel really betrayed by this interview with Charlotte O’Sullivan. 

But enough of that. More dangerously, quack “medicine” being offered on a national scale is another matter altogether, and the quack “doctor” in question is Donald Trump. Let’s start with his “qualifications” to “cure” anything. Trump claimed he only received $1 million from his father. The New York Times reported the truth, that Trump’s father Fred “gifted” him $413 million through “dubious tax dodges” and “outright fraud.” Trump and his father “avoided gift and inheritance taxes by setting up a sham corporation and undervaluing assets to tax authorities.”   

The Times pointed out that Fred Trump and his wife transferred $1 billion in assets to their children, which should have resulted in a half-billion dollars in inheritance taxes at the time. Instead, they somehow paid only 10 percent of that. Since his father was largely responsible for the fraud, Trump himself was not “legally” responsible, that is say, criminally. If any “family” deserves to be called a “crime family," it is Trump’s own (his son-in-law’s father Charles Kushner, lest we forget, was imprisoned for tax fraud, as well as illegal campaign contributions and witness tampering, and Jared seems to be doing well peddling his "connections" for Saudi favors).

It has been pointed out that Trump has done nothing to grow his wealth beyond what he inherited and natural inflation.  He wasn’t even very good at his “core” business of real estate; Wikipedia tells his history of bankruptcy:

The six bankruptcies were the result of over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York: Trump Taj Mahal (1991), Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino (1992), Plaza Hotel (1992), Trump Castle Hotel and Casino (1992), Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (2004), and Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009).

Being over-leveraged meant that Trump didn’t put any of his own money into those properties, relying on “suckers” who lost their shirts. This is why Trump never had to file for personal bankruptcy, because he wasn’t a “sucker” to invest in his own business ventures. Some people suspect that Trump’s anti-Hispanic “issues” has something to do with a resort and hotel deal falling through in Mexico, when his “partners” demanded that he put some of his own money into the project, angered that Trump seemed to think that his “brand” was worth “millions.”

By “brand,” of course, is Trump’s belief that putting his name on something was enough to sell a “product.” This is the thinking of a narcissist when many people only saw a clown and a self-styled “celebrity.”  Here is what the Trump “brand” was actually worth over the years:

Failed food products: Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Ice

Failed sports ventures: Tour de Trump, New Jersey Generals

Failed media: Trumped!, Trump Magazine, Trump Network (so far)

Failed “games”: Trump: The Game

Failed schools: Trump “University”:

 

Failed transportation: Trump Airlines, Go Trump

Failed financial: Trump Mortgage

Trump just couldn’t find his “niche” in business; the only thing he could “sell” was himself to himself, and to gullible fools who were taken in by his bravado and lies. No one ever seemed to learn from past history when dealing with this quack and fraudster. Why would anyone expect that anything “good” would come from Trump bringing his “experience” to the White House?

TIME noted that

The United States lost 2.7 million jobs during Trump’s presidency, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the pandemic months are excluded, he added 6.7 million jobs.

By contrast, 15.4 million jobs were added during Biden’s presidency. That’s 5.1 million more jobs than what the CBO forecasted he would add before his coronavirus relief and other policies became law — a sign of how much he boosted the labor market.

Both candidates have repeatedly promised to bring back factory jobs. Between 2017 and the middle of 2019, Trump added 461,000 manufacturing jobs. But the gains began to stall and then turned into layoffs during the pandemic, with the Republican posting a loss of 178,000 jobs.

So far, the U.S. economy has added 773,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s presidency.

But “business” was all about what Trump was supposed to be “good” at. What about politics, of which he had no experience? Let’s be serious, folks—Trump never expected to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, that was demonstrated by his remarkably restrained and timid post-victory “speech,” where he seemed “surprised” and “unsure” about what to do.  It reminded me of the final scenes in the film The Candidate when Bill McKay (Robert Redford)—after he been told he wasn’t expected to actually beat the incumbent U.S. senator, just put up a good fight—seems disturbed that he actually “won”:

 

McKay had lived his adult life contemptuous of the political games played by his father, a former governor. He was no politician, and never wanted to be one, but now he was one and he doesn’t know how to be one. He asks his campaign manager “What do we do now?” But McKay was an attorney devoted to liberal causes, and we would expect that he would be guided by doing right by the people, if on occasion he would have to sacrifice some of his principles.

But Trump—whose “celebrity” was self-created and only worthy of attention on slow news days, is someone who is just likes to whine and moan and express uninformed opinions about things and people he dislikes, and figure out ways to cheat the “system.” For example, does Trump really give a damn about migrants? He might have an ignorant opinion about them, and it gives him a sense of “power” to rail against people vulnerable to his “master race” impulses. 

But it seems doubtful that he thought he could win in 2016 spouting outrageous lies about them; Trump just liked the publicity it gave him, and bad publicity is better than none at all. And why did he choose to run at all? Because Barack Obama and others made jokes at his expense that he took as personal affronts that had to be avenged. Trump is nothing but a vengeful individual; if you don’t “love” him, you are his enemy for life.

It was all just some “game” to Trump, and it took a while for him to gain his “footing.” Remember when a bi-partisan group of senators led by Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham visited him in the belief that he had signed on to an immigration reform bill, and then he shocked them by suddenly attacking immigrants from “shit-hole” countries, although presumably not including India as such…

 

…and reverting to his “criminals’ and “rapists” rhetoric. Trump couldn’t allow himself to be “friends” with people who offered compromise; Stephen Miller and John Kelly got to him to “remind” him that the people who voted for him didn’t want immigration reform, they just wanted a group to hate on, and keep hating on. What other explanation could there be for his demonizing and dehumanizing rhetoric bolstered by outright lies? He’s had already courted an  “audience” fed by fear and paranoia, and they are fanatics who don’t want to hear anything else. The Republican “platform”—which is just a compendium of Trump campaign slogans—is for the “Forgotten Americans" as if that is anything "new"...

 

...which is merely a less offensive term than “white nationalists.”  Unfortunately, the “medicine” of hate doesn’t “cure” anything; it just make the sickness worse.

So much of what Trump supporters think are “problems” are really creations in their own minds, and Trump’s mindless slogans can be “interpreted” in any way which suits them. There are problems certainly, like the environment and global warming—except that Trump supporters don’t think that those are “problems.” Thus Trump’s quack “cures” to “make America great again” is simply rhetoric that doesn’t “cure” anything, it only makes the body politic sicker and less likely to respond to real medicine. In Florida, what was Ron DeSantis supposed to be “curing” by vetoing funding for the arts in Florida? This is supposed to tell us how “cultured” the far-right is? Everyone knows that the pathetic DeSantis vetoed the funding because of his juvenile need for revenge against what he considers the “liberal” and educated “elite,” but he didn’t expect his actions to receive bi-partisan condemnation, so he had to dig through the list and find something called the “Fringe Festival” to “justify” his typically ignorant and small-minded actions.

Meanwhile, Trump’s quackery extends to international affairs; why did he cancel the Paris climate agreement, and the even more absurdly the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, if he was so “concerned” about China other than another one of his personal gripes, maybe because he couldn’t get them to agree to some business deal like he did in Russia?  Trump surrendered the U.S. economic leadership to China by vacating the trade agreement with Pacific Rim allies.  But like his reaction to all of his failures, he tried to take a sledgehammer to it by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports; whether that has “helped” consumers and the U.S. economy is a matter of opinion.

Trump doesn’t do anything for a well-thought out reason—he just didn’t like Obama after he “humiliated” Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondent’s dinner, pointed out the absurdity of his “birther” claims and what celebrity to “fire” for failing the cooking test.  Seth Meyers adding his own more on-target critiques, which Trump took even less “well.” The Washington Post had invited Trump to the event, and in the Post’s Roxanne Roberts’ version of the story, she saw the need to “apologize” on behalf of the newspaper for the “embarrassment” at least Meyer’s comments caused Trump.

But her defense of Trump fell flat in the light of his own actions. The temperamentally juvenile Trump clearly nursed a grievance against Obama; that is his nature. When he got his chance, he got his revenge on Obama by at least cancelling those programs that he could destroy by executive action; of course he failed to undo Obama’s signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, which he may still try to do if elected again, and is one of the goals of Project 2025. Again, Trump doesn’t give a damn about people, he only cares about his pathetic grievances, and the people who vote for him share those pathetic grievances, if not necessarily for the same reasons.

Trump’s follies in international affairs goes beyond abrogating sensible agreements that help the country and the planet to move forward. This quack’s “cure” for “fixing” the Iran problem was to vacate the nuclear agreement. This not only didn’t stop Iran from continuing it nefarious activities abroad, it only made them worse, since now Iran’s so-called “moderates” lost all credibility.

And then there was North Korea. Trump was criticized for agreeing to greet Kim Jong-Un in a photo-op as if they were “equals,” before there was an agreement to sign, inspired by a “lovely letter” Trump claimed Kim sent him; Trump is such a fool for flattery. Kim apparently thought he could get something for nothing for him, which obviously would leave Trump open to being looked upon as a fool. What did Trump do? He simply walked away, making the mistake of making Kim look like a fool for “trusting” him, resulting in making him even more unruly and dangerous.

And of course Trump has a softer spot for dictators like Putin and Orban than for our democratic Western allies. Why? Because they are of a mind against U.S. interests? In that secret sit-down with Putin, or with the Russian ambassador in the White House, did Trump pass on secrets—as intelligence agencies believe he did when the CIA felt obliged to “extract” two informants from Russia? And people should not be concerned about what Trump planned on doing with all those classified documents he “stored” so carelessly so anyone who wandered in could look at it them, even the servants? John Bolton said “The damage Trump did in the first term is reparable. What he would do in a second term would do damage that is not reparable, especially in a White House surrounded by fifth-raters.”

A Putin spokesman said he didn’t bother to watch the presidential debate. Should we be surprised?  Putin and Kim would rather have critics killed than “debate” them. Along with others who fell out of windows, or poisoned, or murdered on the streets by “unknown assailants” or died in prison camps, Yevgeny Prigozhin—who was “useful” to Putin as long as the Wagner Group helped fight his war in Ukraine--met his expected demise after he turned on Putin for failing to keep his “army” properly armed and supplied: down went his private jet in a “mysterious” explosion. Trump is probably envious of Putin's power to arrest as "traitors" thousands of "disloyal" critics of his war in Ukraine, and some of them not making it alive past a year. Journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza was imprisoned last year and he has already been transferred to a prison hospital.

As for Kim, he had his own half-brother assassinated, as detailed in this chilling video:

 

 

What is the cure for violence on the streets? How about more violence? The Founding Fathers certainly didn’t “envision” a society where homicides were an hourly event, or that single-shot muskets would develop into mass killing machines. The Second Amendment is little differentiated from how James Madison defined it: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”

What is Madison saying here? Is he saying between the lines that a “well-regulated militia” composed of the people, not people in general, have the right to bear arms in defense of country whose democratic government is in imperil? What does  Clarence Thomas, who was once ignored as part of the fringe, but the now the fringe is the majority, want to do now? He wants to rule against an Illinois state law forbidding the possession of military-type weapons. Thomas wants the right to “define” what a “military-type weapon” is. Should we be concerned?

Another example of quack “medicine” is Project 2025, the brainfart of the Heritage Foundation, just this side of the Federalist Society which personally selected Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees, which wants to unify all branches of the executive, meaning that the Justice Department will fall under the control of the president. Uh, weaponizing the Justice Department, anyone, something that Republicans have been railing against?

Establishing literal concentration camps throughout the country to detain any and all undocumented persons in the country regardless of circumstances is also on the table, which in practice means anyone who looks Hispanic better have their “papers” ready at hand. Of course this doesn’t included “favored” groups who either overstayed their work visas or whose  supervisors of the same nationality and culture forged their paperwork.

The “project” also calls for “impounding” funds approved by Congress, the “streamlining” or government agencies, and even the elimination of the FBI and the Department of Education. Calling the government bureaucracy “bloated,” it calls for the elimination of thousands of permanent government positions (meaning a lot of black people in D.C. will lose their government jobs)—and rebloat the government with the old style “patronage” system, meaning “loyalists” will receive jobs as  “rewards”  and be paid for doing mostly nothing. And we know if there is anything Trump appreciates more than anything else, it is “loyalty”—i.e. looking the other way when he commits his crimes.

And of course like any other “forward-thinking” far-right extremist group, in regard to the environment, it can’t see any further than the brain fog right in front of their faces. Money for renewable energy will be eroded, and the “war against oil” will be ended. Like Prince Prospero in his castle on the hill believing himself and his rich friends to be safe from the travails of the world, there will be a price to paid for that kind of thinking, sooner or later for future generations, if a livable world even continues to exist.

Of course Trump and his evil minions like Stephen Miller claim that it’s a lot of hooey that they take Project 2025 seriously; Miller, however, has difficulty in “explaining” how he is featured in ads promoting the “project.” It’s also as eye-rolling as those who claim we shouldn’t be concerned about what psychopaths like Trump and his minions will do with their new “immunity” powers if they get into the White House again; the far-right majority on the Supreme Court didn’t exactly spell out that political assassination wasn’t protected as an “official” action. Common sense says otherwise, you say? In the Age of Trump, that’s a fool’s errand; as Obi-Wan Kenobi would say, who is the bigger fool—the fool or the fool who follows him?

How to avoid suffering the poison pill of far-right quackery? One way seems to be is simply for the anti-fascists to realize they have a common cause to stop them. That is what happened in France in the snap election that Emmanuel Macron rather foolishly called after fascist parties made major gains in the EU parliamentary elections.  After the first round of elections it was suggested that Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally party might win a majority of seats in the Assembly by splitting the vote of other parties. 

But Macron’s center-right party and the leftist parties worked together to eliminate three-way races to give either of their candidates a better chance to defeat fascist candidates. Although the NR failure in the second round of voting was less “dramatic” than it first appears—it’s candidates still received the highest percentage of total votes (37.3 percent) and gained more than 50 seats—and Macron’s party lost 95 seats, the strategy of liberals and centrists to work together to stave-off a fascist takeover of the country is something this country can learn from.

And what does a country ruled by the current strain of right-wing ideology look like?  Here John Oliver…

 

 

…tells how the UK has suffered for the past 14 years, with that country's version of Trump’s “America First”—Brexit—being an economic disaster for the country. Immigration was made an issue by the Tory Party of course, but most voters saw through that for what it was: a distraction. While tax policies favoring the rich has dealt crushing blows on the country’s poorest, the underfunded health care system is in such a poor state of “health” that  many in the country travel to Lithuania as “medical tourists.” And oh yes, one of Project 2025’s stated goals is to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, which most in the media still call “Obamacare,” perhaps to undermine its legitimacy.

We hear now that major Democratic donors are urging Biden to quit. But people need to know what the alternative is; sure it is a “tough” decision to vote for someone whose age has slowed him down a bit. I tell you what, I saw Biden at UTK in 1987 or 1988 when he was first running for president and that guy was just exchanging wise-cracks like he was still some smart aleck college student. He’s more “mature” now.

We can say that voters in this country deserve what they get for voting for a dangerous fraudster and quack who acts on impulses motivated by hate and greed. But that would be dangerous for all of us, because once that Pandora’s Box is opened, no one is safe from that pandemic.