DCUM Weblog

Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump is systematically attempting to remove any obstacle to his autocratic rule. Congress is prostrating itself at his feet. He requires very little from the legislative branch in any case. A spending bill here or there and maybe an occasional debt limit increase. Otherwise, it is an irrelevant sideshow. Both traditional media and new media have largely welcomed their new Trumpian overlords. The Washington Post, which once took down a president, is now owned by a man whose primary goal seems to be to suck up to Trump, or perhaps test just how scantily his girlfriend can dress for state events. The courts have been a bit of a problem for Trump, but he is prone to ignoring rulings that he doesn't like and has expectations that the Supreme Court, dominated by conservatives including three justices who are his nominees, will eventually do his bidding. Still, the courts remain the best avenue for confronting and even stopping Trump. However, to go to court, you need an attorney. So, Trump seems to have come up with a solution for that. He is attacking the lawyers. Trump may well be hoping to intimidate law firms to the extent that they are unwilling to take the risk of challenging him.

In what seems to be turning into a trend, I woke up with plans to write about one topic this morning but changed my mind before I actually sat down to start the post. Today there was even a further complicating factor. So much is happening that I couldn't actually decide between topics. Therefore, I am going to touch on a few different items from the news. Collectively, these developments are warnings about the authoritarianism taking over the United States.

The first news item that I want to address is not actually happening in the United States. In yesterday's blog post, I explained how cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump, who had been elected partially because he was believed to be anti-war, has launched a war against Yemen on behalf of Israel. While we slept, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated his own war by breaking the ceasefire in Gaza and launching massive attacks on the territory. At least 350 Palestinians, as usual mostly women and children, have been killed already.

One of the main reasons that MAGA posters in the DCUM Political Discussion forum gave for supporting cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump was that former President Joe Biden had started multiple wars and that Trump would not only end those wars, but not start any new ones. Trump, according to these posters, would put America first and not spend American blood and money on foreign military adventures. This was always a strange way of thinking because Biden didn't actually start any wars. To the contrary, it was Biden who withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Ironically, this was an endless source of criticism of Biden from the allegedly peace-loving MAGAs. Nevertheless, while MAGAs may have voted for an isolationist president who would keep our troops at home, the president that they actually got has proven to be almost the exact opposite. Since his inauguration, Trump has threatened military aggression against Canada, Greenland, and Panama. He has even proposed that U.S. forces take over Gaza and expel its Palestinian population. Now, Trump has launched an unauthorized and illegal war against Yemen. Moreover, far from this being an "America first" policy, Trump has put Israel's interests first and is putting members of the U.S. military at risk in defense of the genocidal policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the vast majority of the governance problems facing this country are a result of the actions of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump, the Democratic Party is not without its share of responsibility. For the most part, the party is a leaderless, rudderless organization lacking both a purpose and a cause. Succinctly put, it is an opposition party that doesn't want to oppose. It is governed much more by fear rather than courage. Unless things unexpectedly change, today the Democrats will rubber-stamp efforts by Trump and Shadow President Elon Musk to continue their destruction of the federal government. Today on the Senate floor, Democrats will simultaneously warn of the threat that Trump and Musk pose to our country and vote to allow them to proceed.

At issue is a six-month continuing resolution that will fund the government until the end of the fiscal year. Without passage of this resolution, the government will not have funding and have to shut down as early as tomorrow. The resolution passed the House of Representatives with all Democrats but one voting against it. In the Senate, the vast majority of Democrats also oppose the bill. However, only a handful of Democratic votes are required to invoke cloture and, therefore, end the ability of Democrats to filibuster the resolution. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has announced that he will vote for cloture, and enough Democrats are expected to join him to allow the legislation to advance. Schumer and the other Democrats will then vote against the resolution, but since it only requires 50 votes to pass, their "no" votes will not matter. The Democratic enablers will likely hope that voters are uninformed enough not to know that, on the crucial vote, these Democrats — despite their rhetoric warning of the dangers of the legislation — will have voted to allow it to pass.

I woke up this morning with a blog post all planned out, but before I sat down to begin writing, I changed my mind. I was inspired by a tweet I read on X that got me thinking. I will quote that tweet in full because I think it nails something that hasn't gotten enough attention: "The government are going to spend billions contracting an AI that doesn't work, fire a bunch of people, and then hire a bunch more people whose job is to make it look like the AI works." This was written by someone named Tom Whyman of whom I have previously never heard. I believe that he is writing about the United Kingdom (he is Northumbrian), but the tweet very much fits our likely future here in the United States.

As is often the case, I feel the need to start with some caveats. I am just a guy who owns and operates a parenting website. I am not a philosopher, a technologist, or anyone with any special insight. I have thoughts and I have a platform on which to publish them. Readers are free to take them or leave them. With that said, it is impossible not to notice that we are currently at a critical point for artificial intelligence. Billions of dollars have been plowed into the technology and expectations raised, with no exaggeration, as high as Mars. But, AI has not been delivering. Sure, it can undertake a few remedial tasks. Maybe write a poem in the style of a famous poet or provide an error-filled response to a question that someone has asked on DCUM. But the technology has not yet reached world-changing functionality. Based on what I read in the press, the main use of AI these days is by college undergrads cheating on their assignments and college professors catching the students cheating, with the technology making errors in both cases. Welcome to our mistake-filled future.

Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump has never been shy about using his presidency to enrich himself or his family. He relentlessly exploits his office to extract every penny possible for his own personnel benefit, even overcharging the Secret Service to stay at Trump properties while providing protection for him. But yesterday, Trump took things to a new level, turning the White House lawn into a new car showroom and his social media feed into the Home Shopping Network. But this effort was not for Trump's own financial gain, but rather for the benefit of Shadow President Elon Musk.

In an event fully covered by the White House press corps, Musk lined up examples of various Tesla models in front of the White House. Trump, who the day before had promised to buy a new Tesla, gave what amounted to an infomercial extolling the virtues of Teslas before settling on a red Model S. Trump emphasized that he is not allowed to drive due to Secret Service restrictions. However, former President Joe Biden frequently drove various vehicles during his term. It might be the case that Trump doesn't know how to drive. While sitting in the Model S, Trump needed confirmation that one of the two pedals was the brake pedal. At any rate, it is apparent that Trump is not really in the market for a new car and that the entire event was meant to promote the sale of Teslas, an unethical if not surprising violation of presidential practices.

Generally, I believe that the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump is terrible in every way. My normal disposition towards the Trump administration is along the lines of the famous Dril tweet about ISIS, "you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’". There is one area where I may have to make an exception to that rule: anti-trust policies. Someday, I may write about those policies, but that day is not today. Today, I want to address Trump administration policies in the Middle East. I am not ready to concede that I have to hand it to Trump in this regard, but that is not as unrealistic of a proposition as it might seem.

From the viewpoint of someone like me who is strongly supportive of the Palestinians' aspirations for an independent homeland and who is concerned about Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry in the U.S., Trump is obviously not the ideal president. He is, after all, the sponsor of the Muslim ban implemented during his first administration. He has been unequivocally pro-Israel, having moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognized Israeli control of the Golan Heights during his first term. Just yesterday, my blog post was about the blatant attack on the First Amendment involving the Trump administration's detainment of a Palestinian green card holder accused of nothing more than exercising speech that Trump doesn't like. Yet, unlike the campaign of former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump reached out to Arabs and Muslims during the campaign and promised to do what former President Joe Biden had been unable to accomplish: secure a ceasefire in the Gaza war. This Trump was able to do, even before being inaugurated as president.

I had a post all ready to go this morning, but I am going to save that for later and address another topic. One way that fascists and authoritarians win is by starting on the margins and normalizing their behavior by acting against unpopular targets. This creeping authoritarianism then spreads and, sort of like the analogy of boiling a frog, one morning the country's population wakes up and realizes that it is no longer free but has no idea how it got there. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump and Shadow President Elon Musk clearly have authoritarian tendencies and deserve no benefit of the doubt. But, one administration official who was thought to be the adult in the room, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has now shown that he is not only willing to condone the impingement of freedom in the United States but is an active participant. This warning sign of danger comes in the form of the detainment and disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil, a student protester at Columbia University.

Almost every time that I have written about Shadow President Elon Musk and the U.S. DOGE Service, I have complained that Musk and his minions were using a meat cleaver where a scalpel would be more appropriate. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump apparently came to the same conclusion yesterday, posting on his Truth Social social media platform that, going forward, cuts to the federal workforce would be made with a scalpel rather than a "hatchet". This may well be the first step toward restraining Musk and DOGE.

Trump is not giving up on DOGE just yet, saying that "I think they’ve done an amazing job." But it is clear that Trump has changed his opinion about DOGE's slash-and-burn methods. DOGE's indiscriminate firings have been conducted with no regard for who was actually being let go or the particular skills and capabilities of those individuals. As a result, DOGE has often had to backtrack and try to rehire employees who had just been fired. This included employees tasked with overseeing the safety of nuclear weapons and combating avian flu. In both cases, DOGE only realized what it had done after the employees had been dismissed. This led to frantic efforts to locate the former employees and try to coax them back to their jobs.

On January 21, the day after cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump pardoned 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists, the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Edward R. Martin, Jr. signed a motion to dismiss the case of Joseph Padilla. Padilla had been convicted of assaulting two police officers on January 6, though his case was ongoing. Martin did not have to work very hard to identify Padilla's defense attorney because that individual was none other than Edward R. Martin, Jr. himself. Martin was, in fact, both the prosecutor and the defense attorney in the case, a clear violation of the Department of Justice's conflict of interest rules. This is Martin in a nutshell. A former defense attorney for January 6 insurrectionists who is now, temporarily at least, in charge of the U.S. Attorney's office that was primarily responsible for prosecuting the January 6 cases.