UNHINGED

 

 

Was Tim Walz the “best” choice for vice president for the country? Maybe; he certainly has a "folksy" appeal that may play well with "normal" people when they choose to be normal, and unlike Donald Trump he is not insensitive about people suffering from heat stroke at his rallies. Another "plus" was, according to CNN, that despite his admitting he was not a “great” debater and that he wasn’t from a swing state, Walz didn’t have “presidential ambitions,” and that he would be a “team player.” 

Like Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s choice for VP, he wouldn’t “overshadow” Kamala Harris and have people looking past her to see who else was available. Mark Kelly wouldn’t do, because he was a “rising star” and had an impressive background, and Josh Shapiro, as some have noted, has a charismatic “Obama” vibe—and even sounds like him—so he wouldn’t do either.

The problem is that Walz was probably the last person whose name was being bandied about for the post, and hardly anyone outside of Minnesota has otherwise ever heard of him, so a minus to the selection is that Fox News and the far-right can “invent” a “backstory” for him, and they already have, portraying him not a “progressive” but a far-left radical who would give illegal aliens citizenship. Of course that isn’t true, but you can bet Elon Musk can find a way to make lies and misinformation “true,” as his Grok chatbox on X appears to be doing.

Still, Trump and his Fox News Team have been flailing about trying to invent a “narrative” for Walz, and so far the best they can to do is employ the usual juvenile name-calling, like “Tampon Tim,” which some suggest may actually backfire on Republicans, being seen as more evidence of gender “insensitivity.” It's bad enough that Trump's "advisors" on Fox News can't even keep him on "message":

 

It would be nice if we could return to a world where normal is actually “normal” and not where “unhinged” is not the “new” normal. But it’s hard when someone named Sara Lonelin in Fortune is bragging about how “Women will soon have more money than men for the first time in history—and they are following the Mackenzie Scott and Melinda Gates playbook.” The stench of the cynicism behind that statement obviously escaped her, since both are the beneficiaries of the exceptionally generous divorce laws in the U.S., and are in the “business” of spending or giving away their ex's money, not making it. 

Still, it would have been “justice” to see Musk’s two ex-wives take more of his money than they did (about $20 million each, and one “suspects” that Amber Heard will rake-in at least as much by the time her—or their—daughter reaches 18). He just has too much money to  worry about what people think (save for the advertisers on X he is suing). We wonder why Musk has devolved into fascism; watching this video, we learn that his unhinged pronouncements and allowing X to become a cesspool of far-right extremism, conspiracies, AI-generated misinformation and “scientific” racism is his way of making up for his embarrassing lack of social skills, and that his leadership abilities are practically zero…

 

 

…he may be a good entrepreneur, but his personality and social skills suggest that since he cannot communicate with people on a personal level, he devolves into mean-spirited conspiracies and fantasies as a defense since he cannot properly enunciate any coherent response that suggests that he can “compete” with other people on a basic human level. 

So what does he do? He attacks those he has chosen to be his “enemies”—in this case those on left—because to him they represent the “intellectual elite” who make him look foolish. He may talk a big game, but what does he actually know? He has “smart” people around him working with already proven technology, which is good because he doesn’t have the silver tongue of Elizabeth Holmes to make the unreal “real.”

Thus the emotionally immature Musk uses unhinged far-right and racist rhetoric that he shares on his personal X accounts that shows that he cannot intellectually come up with his own “facts,” so he relies on the fantasies of the unhinged without the slightest effort to “vet” their truthfulness. His Grok chatbox, whose “intelligent” output of “facts” comes from inputs from X,  has been accused of spreading election misinformation and faked videos, and is proof enough that X has been overrun by far-right conspiracies and lies since Musk bought Twitter. That Musk felt “pressured” to buy Twitter after he tried to pull out of the buyout suggests that since he was “forced” to buy it, it’s his “right” to use and abuse it any way he wishes now.

In short, as the video shows, he essentially a weak man on a human level, but on X where he isn’t confronted by his weaknesses, he is free to say anything when he is not, like a cowardly bully, trying to work out his angst and feelings of personal devaluation by “challenging” people to literal fist fights, which we know he does because he doesn’t actually expect his targets to take him up on it. But Musk insists he is smart, and to prove it he has created a pro-Trump super-PAC whose mission is to pretend to help people to register to vote, but instead is intended to collect “personal information” to use against them if there is any way to take their right to vote away, obviously targeting Democratic-leaning voters. Well, maybe not so smart as the “America PAC” is itself currently under investigation for election fraud. 

It is easy to see as “unhinged” the way people have embraced lunacy of a dangerous kind in this country. Before the 2016 election, many Republicans renounced Trump in the expectation that he was sure to lose the election, and they did not want to be “tainted” by him. “We are not him,” they said. How quickly they changed their opinion when they realized that Trump owned the party, or at least the voters who were looking for someone to make themselves feel “good” about having bad thoughts.

It is remarkable how fear and hate “trumps” morality and ethics in this country. In Germany, most voters are aware enough to realize that a threat to return to a fascist past is unthinkable, and check the polling numbers to see what they must do to avoid it, regardless of their own political slant. In this country, there have been hints of what a country controlled by the “morality” and “ethics” of the right could be; the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals showed that certain Republicans with executive power think little of employing immoral, unethical, criminal and even treasonous actions to overcome the law or the Constitution. Yet here we are, trying to decide what is the “right” thing to do this election.

We don’t expect voters like Kyle Rittenhouse to do the “right thing.” We remember him as the 17-year-old thug who decided to take his military assault rifle from his home in Illinois and cross state lines to Kenosha, Wisconsin where he joined armed “protectors” of businesses in town from BLM protestors after the police shooting there of Jacob Blake, but then decided to detach himself from the group and wandered amongst the protestors in an apparent effort to be a “big man” and intimidate them. He was just your typical armed punk; maybe he didn’t intend to shoot anyone, but having wandered away alone from those who would give him “protection,” he left himself “vulnerable” to those who justifiably would think he was a lone nut who might shoot someone just for fun.

Did the protestors believe he was a threat? Why wouldn’t they? They had more reason to feel threatened than he did. One man tried to wrestle the weapon from him and was shot dead. Why did a jury believe that Rittenhouse “justifiably” felt his life was threatened? He was the one tramping around with an assault rifle, he was the one who shot people. After killing one man he was justifiably seen as an “active shooter” by others. In order to stop him, another man tried to disable him by hitting with a skateboard. He was shot and killed. Why would a jury not see either of these actions in context, from the point of view of the victims?

Rittenhouse then wounded a third person, who had observed the previous two shootings. This person was armed with a Glock and pointed his weapon at Rittenhouse; he apparently did not shoot the gun, merely to “threaten” the real active shooter on the scene to stop, and even he had shot Rittenhouse, in “normal” circumstances he would have been justified in doing so. But we live in unhinged times. Again, why would a jury not see this in context? Because this is Trump World; everything Trump says is to “unite” people—such as believing the El Paso mass shooting was “justified” because “Mexicans” are just “bad” people anyways and everyone is “united” in “knowing” that.

Rittenhouse received support from the right-wing media, and no doubt anger not at the shooting by police that instigated the protests but against the protests themselves influenced the jurors to accept the defense story. After his acquittal of all charges (apparently the jury did not even consider an “involuntary” manslaughter charge), the unhinged MAGAverse feted him. Interviews on Fox News led to a personal meeting with Trump, who Rittenhouse was a “big fan” of. He became a “spokesperson” for First Amendment rights, “co-authored” a book about the incident and trial, his likeness and name used on clothes, gun products and even as a “shooter” in a video game. Several state bills in his “name” were passed in which if a shooter was acquitted in similar cases as his, the state would be forced to “compensate” him. That’s our unhinged world for you: make mass killing a roll of the dice, and if the right numbers come up, you win the lottery.

But then Rittenhouse did something that was “unhinged” to his supporters:  he decided, via a message on X, that he would not support Trump for president, instead vote for Ron Paul as a right-in candidate. Why would he do this? He claimed that Trump was “bad” for gun rights. Huh? That’s apparently his sole motivation for doing so; if we needed any more evidence that this guy is a nut and should be in jail as a killer, than I don’t know what. What followed was an avalanche of vitriol from the MAGAmaniacs on social media, much of it the kind of juvenile scatological verbiage that we expect from those of low character and intelligence. 

Within hours Rittenhouse reversed course and voiced full support for Trump (so much for his “principles”). No surprise there; Nikki Haley called him “unfit” and J.D. Vance once likened him to Hitler, but people can “learn” from their “mistaken” thoughts. 

Of course we could turn this country into another Russia, as some Republicans seem to desire. Former “liberal” politician and brief stand-in president Dmitry Medvedev (before Putin decided to discard the Russian constitution and become dictator-for-life), has gone full MRGA, apparently to stay “relevant.” He currently serves in the invented post of  “deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia,” in other words just a propaganda mouthpiece to justify the war in Ukraine and spout invective against the West. In an article in Foreign Policy, it was noted that it was once “hoped” that

When Medvedev was inaugurated as president in 2008, after Putin’s first two presidential terms in office, it reinvigorated hopes in Russia and the West that reform was still possible. Medvedev cut a markedly different figure from his predecessors. At just 42 years old, he was largely untainted by the Soviet political system, having graduated from law school just a few years before the fall of the Berlin wall. He talked the talk, calling out the country’s “weak democracy” and “ineffective economy,” and he appeared to embrace the tech optimism sweeping the world. 

 And The Guardian “remembered” that

Back in 2008, when he became Russia’s president, he promised modernisation and liberalisation, and frequently spoke of his love for blogging and gadgets. He even visited Silicon Valley and received a new iPhone 4 from Steve Jobs.

But “Now, he is an enthusiastic participant in the macho posturing and genocidal rhetoric that have become the main currency of political discourse in wartime Moscow.” Medvedev is responsible for the most out outrageous statements coming out of Russia, “officially” or not:

People often ask me why my Telegram posts are so harsh. The answer is that I hate them. They are bastards and scum. And as long as I’m alive, I’ll do anything I can to make them disappear. 

Whoever can he be talking about? He isn’t just threatening the lives of the “traitor” Russian journalists who were recently released in the prisoner swap. Medvedev has threatened various forms of “revenge” against West for its economic sanctions, making threats (like Putin) about the use nuclear weapons, such as bombing the capitals of the U.S., UK and France. But he has also some rather more unhinged claims, such as Germany and France going to war with each other in some near future, which will lead to another “world war” in which Europe will collapse.

People both in Russia and abroad eventually came to realize that Medvedev was a fraud while in office, with Putin as “prime minister” calling all the shots. People knew he was a phony, just a temporary public relations figure to con the West into believing that Russia was a “real” democracy just wanted to be “pals,” which of course all changed when Putin pushed Medvedev aside and invaded the Crimea in what was just a test run for the full-blown invasion of Ukraine; Putin felt “compelled” to do this once Russian operatives couldn’t poison enough Ukraine nationalists to install a Russian puppet regime as exists in Belarus.

Medvedev has of course parroted Putin pan-Russia propaganda, claiming Baltic States “belong to Russia,” and suggesting that Poland is only “temporarily occupied.” No surprise there, as Medvedev has been prone to making what to “normal” people sound like, well, unhinged statements. He has gone on to claim  that protestors against Russia’s recent bogus elections where any candidate opposed to Putin or his war was barred by Russia’s “independent” courts from running for office are “traitors” who took their marching orders from Kyiv and  Western governments.

Of course this sounds like the kind of country Republicans who take their marching orders from Trump and his fanatical followers want to create; If Ron DeSantis had his way, he’d be doing the same thing; if you can’t shut up your critics, then just arrest them—which was DeSantis’ intent with making “unlawful” protest groups of more than a few people, before the law doing so was struck down in court. But we won't worry about that right now, since the far-right on the Supreme Court is doing its part by “immunizing” Trump and some of the January 6 insurrectionists from any ill-effects as might occur from their “vision” of America.

Still, I can’t help but observe that we should have something to worry about. Harry Litman in the Los Angeles Times pointed out after the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision (and let’s be frank here, the far-right on the court also gives itself immunity  from consequence for its criminally moral and ethical decisions) does not even give consideration to motive for doing things, such as taking bribes, overturning a lawful election to stay in power, or intentional efforts to subvert the Constitution, which I am sure the “framers” never intended the president to be allowed to do, since it would create what it had intended the government not to be—a “kingship,” since “dictatorships” were not yet in the lexicon. Littman says

This could authorize some of the most vicious and problematic presidential conduct. There is no apparent reason, for example, that it doesn’t encompass what had been taken as a devastating hypothetical offered by Judge Florence Y. Pan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit: a president’s use of Navy SEALs to assassinate a political rival. If the reason for a president’s use of commander-in-chief powers is outside the bounds of inquiry, such conduct is indistinguishable from a conventional military mission.

Motive is the soul of the criminal law. It’s what divides conduct society accepts from conduct for which we put people in prison. The declaration that it has no role to play in determining a president’s criminal liability is nearly tantamount to making him a king. Yet the court’s decision goes considerably further. It immunizes not just core constitutional functions but also any conduct within the outer perimeter of executive authority — the same capacious standard that already applies to civil lawsuits over presidential conduct.

Trump, as we have seen in the numerous criminal and civil cases against him, sees himself above the law, and does only what he wants to do; as he used his underlings in business, he expects his loyal followers to simply “find a way” to break the law and he doesn’t care how they do it as long as he personally isn’t “implicated.” Kind of sounds like Hitler. 

But the presidency isn’t a “business”; the president has to answer to 300 million people in this country who want to know what he is doing and why. Some support what he is doing, most of whom don’t care if he is breaking laws to do it, and some think he should be behind bars for doing it now or in the future. It is the unhinged state of affairs in this country that what is or isn't lawful is a matter one's political persuasion and, well, let’s be honest, compared to Trump and J.D. Vance, Harris and Walz at least do seem “normal,” and not “weird.”