The Decline

Ben Carson ran for president, lost, and was then asked to to run DHHS (a position you might be able to rationalize a nomination for, given his experience in medicine). He turned it down because he didn’t believe he was experienced enough to run a government agency. In case you don’t remember, Carson was a top neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins, one of (if not the) premiere hospital in the United States.

Ben Carson also happened to grow up in public housing, which has always formed part of his political appeal; in other words, the man is a walking Republican wet dream – a conservative black man who grew up poor and pulled himself up by those proverbial bootstraps to become one of the United States’ top surgeons. And now, a part of this inspirational tale is being cherry picked to justify a Cabinet-level position for a man (again, an accomplished physician who didn’t believe he was qualified to run a HEALTH-RELATED agency) who couldn’t identify a hammer in Home Depot, never mind oversee the construction of thousands of homes across the country. Carson has also referred to the Fair Housing Act – and Obama’s attempt to correct certain aspects thereof – as “communist” in nature.

I get Mattis. I do. I understand why you would appoint an experienced general who speaks his mind and has an almost deified position among ground troops as Sec Def. But Carson is a physician. He has no experience in urban planning, development, public policy, or construction, for that matter. Speaking of construction – in case you didn’t know, Carson also believes that Joseph – yes, from the Bible – constructed the GOD DAMN PYRAMIDS to (wait for it…) store grain.

The Pyramids – almost completely solid stone structures with a few tiny shafts leading out. To store grain.

And now he might be in charge of storing people.

A Yale professor lays out, in 20 simple points, the Liberal’s Guide to the Trumpocalypse.

This, Donald, is what makes people burn flags.

There’s still a couple months left until November 8th’s results start bearing “fruit”; unfortunately, what kind of tree it will be nobody can say. I hate to start this blog by re-litigating the arguments that have been flooding Facebook for weeks now – whose fault this is, what to do now, is it okay to riot, what kind of harm can this fool possibly do in four years… perhaps most importantly, is this the dawn of a second Fascist wave (if you’re paying attention to Europe,  very possibly)?

So far, Trump has been… well, Trump. He’s altered his transition team repeatedly, first by ejecting embarrassingly loyal lapdog Chris Christie. He’s backpedaled repeatedly on promises to his base, occasionally multiple times in a single interview. His policy shop… never quite existed. He also continues to juggle cabinet hopefuls; in fact, it seems that the only firm choice he’s made is Steve “Everything’s Alt Right” Bannon – a terrifying choice for any post, but particularly for Chief Strategist – a position that will guide White House policy for at least the next four years.

In short, if you don’t know Steve Bannon, you don’t yet know how truly, completely fucked we could be. Well, not myself, per se – being an upper middle class white male has always had its advantages, I just didn’t expect to see them to expand when the arc of history supposedly bends towards the progressive – and I don’t view it as a good thing.

Neither should you – regardless of skin color, religion, class, or sexual orientation. This can either be the last gasp of a dying White Nationalist underground, or the death of Multiculturalism as we know it.

For now, we’ll have to wait and see.