Jon Stewart exposes the over-the-top stupidity and arrogance of the president, and also the embarrassing sycophancy of the Republicans who fawn over him, but is it enough?
I think I’ve had enough of comedians covering this crisis with funny voices and schtick. When will people get serious about this horrible man? It’s clear that the rot has consumed the senate, the house (with exceptions: Sanders and AOC are not treating this as a joke), and the supreme court, but all we have left are the court jesters? I appreciate that they’re speaking up, but we desperately need someone, many someones, serious to deal with this ludicrous lump with way too much power. Laugh at him, please, but at some point we need to kick him off his throne and embarrass all the suck-ups he is surrounded by.
In the next step, this absolute clown is going to follow the lead of the Chinese president, who is even more of an authoritarian than our president. Chinese billionaires don’t get to rest easy.
The Alibaba founder [Jack Ma] had accused Chinese banks of operating with a “pawn-shop mentality”. He had also claimed that the authorities were trying to “use the way to manage a railway station to manage an airport” when it came to regulating the new world of digital finance.
These statements angered the banking establishment and reportedly reached the attention of President Xi Jinping.
Soon Ma and his close colleagues were summoned for a meeting with the regulators, and Ant Group’s flotation was halted in its tracks.
Shares in Ma’s companies fell, wiping nearly $76bn (£54bn) off its value.
After that meeting, Jack Ma was nowhere to be seen.
I don’t like billionaires, I want them taxed until they squeal, but disappearing anyone, whether they are a student protester or a bloated billionaire, is not acceptable…but that’s the direction we’re going in. It’s making me think back to my old history classes, learning about Roman emperors who would tell rich and powerful people to fall on their swords so their estates could be confiscated, and they would do it. Probably while satirists wrote comical poems and plays and scribbled graffiti on the walls, but they were still dead.
It really is time to stop laughing and stop trying to appease the tyrant. Tyrants are never appeased.
This is true but it isn’t quite that bad.
.1. A lot of congresspeople besides Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have been speaking up. Senator Patty Murray of Washington is one, most of the senators from the west coast states.
.2. Chuck Schumer and the old guard Democratic party leaders are doing a great job at imitating a tree stump or a deer in the headlights on a road at night.
Out of touch, too old, and cowards.
If someone primaries Schumer, I’m donating to their campaign and he will probably lose.
.3 Most of the Federal judges have pushed back on the obvious, blatant illegality of just ignoring the law and the constitution.
At some risk to themselves.
They are all getting the usual death threats from Magats.
.4. A few of the Democratic governors and a lot of the Blue state Attorney Generals are suing the Federal government over everything.
.5. At the national demonstration on April 5th, 5.2 million Americans showed up. I was one of them.
Things have changed and we are in a new era, the era of Fascist dictatorship. It is taking a lot of people time to figure out that this isn’t normal business as usual.
It’s not just the people in the USA. The entire world has been slow to figure it out as well.
The Canadians get it.
The Chinese get it, probably because they are also an authoritarian dictatorship.
The EU is slowly figuring it out.
The latest headline is that even Harvard has found a spine and some gonads and is now rresisting Trump’s cuckoo demands.
.1. To state the obvious.
If we oppose the MAGAt’s dictatorship, we might well win and keep something resembling our old democracy.
If we don’t oppose them, we are guaranteed to lose.
The cost-benefit is obvious here.
.2. We are the majority.
Trump didn’t even get 50% of the vote.
And his support has been dropping rapidly as Trump, Musk, and the GOP destroy everything good about the USA.
Even a few of the MAGAts who voted for him are waking up.
Who voted to invade Canada for no good reasons or to destroy Social Security and Medicare, which they depend on for their own existence?
.3. There have been a few elections since the disaster of Trump’s election on November 6, 2024.
The GOP lost them by a lot.
It is possible they are going to lose the House and Senate in the elections of 2026.
I get where you’re coming from. I’ve grown tired of watching the late night comics and satirists like Jon Stewart and John Oliver, as well as the anti-Trump talking heads on YouTube, who are all giggling on the grave of our democracy. Oh, look at what he’s doing now — he’s violating every provision of the Constitution. Hahaha! If you’re an American citizen who robs a 7-11 you could end up in the El Salvador gulag. How funny is that? He’s taking over private universities to advance a Christian nationalist agenda and undercut scientific inquiry. Next thing you know, it’ll be illegal to teach evolution. Whee! What a crazy dude. I was born in Europe to an American father, my country of birth is on my passport, and now I worry about being hassled by border control agents when I fly back to America. You know what, I’m not laughing.
Amen. The comedians and late night hosts are still using the fash to generate laughs, and it has to stop. Not sure what to make of Stewart’s admission that Bluesky told him so and he just didn’t believe it. Was that also supposed to be funny?
Melanie Stansbury, Democrat Rep from New Mexico, is also speaking out forcefully on the House floor, in hearings, and in social media about the crazy state of governance right now. I actually hear more from her than AOC or Bernie, but that’s probably the result of the algorithm.
I heard yesterday that the Supreme Court ordered the return of Kilmar Ábrego García. Of course, the Trump henchmen are refusing to comply with the order. That could set up a battle, even impeachment, but of course, Mike Johnson and John Thune aren’t going near that.
I watch about 10 minutes of late-night talkshow comedians. Yeah, the schtick gets tiring and it’s not going to change a damn thing. But, a few minutes of levity relieves some anxiety now and again.
Some of us did try to warn peope before the election remember? Some of us pointed out that the ONLY way to stop Trump’s Fascism was unifying behind and supporting Kamala Harris and voting for her. Doing our absolute utmost to help her win.
Not that that’s much use now. Wish we hadn’t been proven so horribly right, so very quickly – but here we are.
Where are the “both parties are equally bad” klowns now?
We also have Tim Walz, our governor, who is pushing back. We have two Democratic senators. We just need more unified opposition.
I think that clip of Trump’s cabinet going around the table to sing his praises is damning enough, but I don’t want to see that over and over again on the campaign trail. It makes me sick. But if it works, I’ll suppress my rising gorge.
@1 Raven – I think you underestimate the rate at which other countries (the EU at least) “figured it out”.
Remember that responsible adults respond to what he actually does, not what he says. Unlike Trump our politicians are not generally performing for reality TV (with populist exceptions, but then IMO Farage and his ilk are traitors). They won’t go on TV to say what they really think of Trump and his regime – that has never normal behaviour for responsible leaders, Vance and Trump’s public insults of other countries is an aberration.
There were signs that our own (UK) government were well aware of what Trump is and prepared accordingly. I also suspect that much of what non-US governments are doing in response to his deranged performance are not being widely reported on in the USA. (A trade deal between Japan, China and South Korea – their shared histories weren’t exactly conducive to that)
Business as usual is already dead. I think most of us already know this.
Some people seem to confuse “laughing at” with “making light of”. Humour is a very important tool (one of the important tools) in combatting the unfolding obscene bullshit. You can be sure that Trump, Musk, and their minions are furious at the steady drumbeat from Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers et al. If you actually watch these folks, you can see real anger beneath their ‘schtick’.
Mileage varies, but watching them is therapeutic for me. Helps fend off despair.
“Where are the “both parties are equally bad” klowns now?”
Such stupidity and blindness shall not go unrewarded. Maybe you could ask the 30000 dead Palestinian children of their opinion of the Democrats? Oh, damn, you can’t anymore. Or how about the Dems who confirmed Marco Rubio, like, you know, all of them?
Duopolys are scams to make you think there is an alternative, when in reality there isn’t. Look at Australia, look at Germany, look at the UK. Neoliberalism has done this, the voting landscape is not what it was 40 years ago. Wake up.
The problem with Roman Empire comparisons is that the Roman Empire wasn’t anything like a modern nation state in terms of the reach and impact it had on ordinary people’s lives. It didn’t have anything resembling a coherent economic policy, it didn’t run the kinds of social programmes we expect from our governments, and its bureaucratic footprint was absolutely tiny by the standards of modern countries. Most Romans were entirely beneath the interest of the Imperial court, save the few who wrote to the Emperor petitioning for a favour or judgment. Who was on the throne mattered very little to the vast majority of people in the Empire – a new face on the coins and statues, but that’s about it.
The people it did matter to, of course, were the rich and powerful elites, most especially in Rome itself. These are the people who tended to write the histories we are familiar with – people like Tacitus and Suetonius and the very unreliable collection of authors who wrote the Historia Augusta. This is the group for whom Imperial rule was utterly disruptive, the group who in prior centuries ruled the Republic in the traditional oligarchic manner. We have to be very careful with their complaints, because often they boil down to some version of “we’re not in complete control anymore”. The lurid stories of tyrannical emperors are often framed along the fault lines of these aristocratic people’s fears. The powerful, manipulative women behind the scenes (your Livias and Agrippinas and Messalinas) represent the aristocratic Roman male’s fear of female power as an inversion of the norms. The exaggerated torture and cruelty (a la Nero or Domitian or Commodus) prey on their fears that citizen status is no longer a guarantee that their bodily autonomy will be respected. The stories of indulgent, immoral teenage emperors like Elagabalus represent the fear that older men will have to bow to younger men with their lack of life experience.
We should not be putting ourselves in the position of oligarchic elites (whom the Emperors had to reach an accord with anyway, because they needed people to run their administration come what may). It is wise to remember that the Senatorial class also sanctioned extrajudicial killings long before there were emperors – Cicero had Catiline and his conspirators put to death without charge, and Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were both murdered by mobs given the Senate’s ultimum consultum as authority. Stories of abusive aristocrats stretch right back into the early centuries of the Republic, the most prominent being Appius Claudius and his attempts to kidnap the Plebeian Verginia as his slave-wife.
As for the comedians, for obvious reasons the published ones tend to mock social mores rather than politics. Juvenal’s satires do take aim occasionally at lustful empresses (Messalina again) or the placated populace (Bread and Circuses), but mostly they take on the general malaise and cultural decline of Roman society as Juvenal saw it – xenophobia, misogyny, greed, indolence.
Stewart’s schtick is meaningless. He’s always been a both-sider centrist who’d accuse the left as being just as “insane” as the right, ensuring that quo is status.
Hell, it just about a month ago thar he refused to call Trump a fascist just because he won the majority of the vote.
rorschach@10,
Showing that most of the Democrats are evil is easy. Showing that the party is as bad as the Republicans is impossible. Incidentally, German electoral politics is very dubiously described as a duopoly – the SPD and CDU/CSU got 45% of the vote between them, and only just over half the seats (328 when a majority is 316). And the UK duopoly has been decaying (not quite monotonically, but not far off) since its peak in 1951. In the election of that year, the Tories and Labour between them got 96.8% of the vote. Last year, they got 57.5%. The era of neoliberalism has seen the decline of duopolies in both these cases.
“The era of neoliberalism has seen the decline of duopolies in both these cases.”
Now I’m confused. And who is supposed to have benefited from this alleged decline? Greens in Germany? Dead in the water (after a good run, it has to be said). Greens in Australia, no chance in hell, a few Independents might go through in the upcoming election and maybe we get a minority government that has to make some compromises. Are there even Greens in the UK? All duopolies in the major Western countries, all fucking us over. Even if I have been back to Germany for 5 years now, I still closely follow Australian politics, and the Labor party colludes with, and is just as bad as, the Liberals on a regular basis. In charge there are the oligarchs, like almost everywhere else now.
rorschach, #14,
The UK has had a Green Party since 1990. They currently have four MPs in the House of Commons and about 800 local councillors. I voted for them in the last general election and the one in 2015.
“The UK has had a Green Party since 1990. They currently have four MPs in the House of Commons and about 800 local councillors.”
We’re getting a bit off topic, but what I would ask you is, how many government ministers have the Greens in the UK had? Germany had a Green foreign minister in 1998. I’m only mentioning the Greens because if you’re not Nazi-inclined, they seem to be the most plausible alternative to duopolies. (Not in the US, different story entirely)
Who has benefitted from the decline in duopoly?
The electorate.
Or for parties that have benefitted, in the UK that’s the Liberals then the LibDems, the SNP, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and most recently Reform. There are currently ~100 MPs that aren’t in the Lab/Con duopoly (not counting NI), compared with the 9 there were a few decades ago.
“Who has benefitted from the decline in duopoly?
The electorate.”
But surely not the people incarcerated by the duopoly on that concentration camp barge Bibby Stockholm, and certainly not the asylum seekers stuck on the Nauru island hellhole for 10+ years by both Labor and Liberal Australian governments. Sorry, not buying, even if you want to argue that there may have been some benefits on the council level.
More cheerful news.
“Trump Taking Three Daily Medications To Prevent Heart Attacks And Strokes”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=LoEstFEAcb8
Not even tryrants can keep away the BLOKE WHO SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Maybe Trump will follow the example of emperor Chin Shi Huang-Di and invest fortunes in finding the elixir of immortality. He is certainly surrounded by a lot of grifters with the appropriate integrity.
Bill Maher the “comedian” has recently kissed the ring of Trump alongside his pal Kid Rock and of course Jerry Coyne has performed a second order osculation upon Maher’s own act.
Maybe we could disappear the billionaires . . . to The Hague?
It’s not “alleged”, it’s a simple matter of fact, and that’s all I was pointing out@13. If you get basic facts like that wrong, your analysis is bound to be inadequate. The decline of the duopoly has opened up political space for other parties – unfortunately, most of that space has been seized by far-right, fascist 2.0 parties, due to the near-monopoly of the right in the media, the surrender of “centre-left” or “social democratic” parties to neoliberalism, and the failure of socialists andor Greens to develop a sufficiently coherent and attractive left alernative. That must – and even, perhaps, can, be remedied; if it can’t, or isn’t, we’re stuffed. But meanwhile, pretending there’s no difference between existing parties, whether or not there’s a duopoly still in place in a given country (that in the USA is clearly the most deeply entrenched), is both factually wrong and politically disastrous.
Actually, since 1990 it’s had three:
The Scottish Green Party, of which I’m a member, is considerably to the left of the Green Party of England and Wales (its statement of principles defines it as ecosocialist), let alone the German Green Party. There’s currently an internal debate about whether to cut ties with the European Green Party, due to the failure of the German Greens and some others to condemn the Gaza genocide.
The Scottish Green Party had two ministers in the Scottish Government (powers roughly equivalent to the governments of German regions, I think) until recently. Not the same as having them at UK level, certainly, but when we get independence… The SNP First Minister did us a favour by putting an end to the coalition, in my view, as there was increasing discontent within the party with the SNP’s behaviour, and a membership vote on whether to leave, which would have been very divisive, was in the offing.
“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than that to hang a robber, or kill a flea.” – John Adams
I’m sure all those 2nd Amendment types will be coming to the rescue any time now…
@9.Rob Grigjanis :
Quoting for truth, seconded and same for me too here.
.***
As for the Greens and other parties, I’m a member of and voter for the Australian Greens. I’m so glad I live in a nation where you can vote for Greens and / or other parties and then still get the ALP (the less bad major party) elected on preferences. Already stated a lot here that the USA badly needs reforms including preferential (ranked choice) voting. Australia has it and it works pretty well. We also have mandatory voting which might be another idea worth considering despite the, well, mandatory nature considering the USA’s disgraceful abysmal voter turn-out which then becomes an issue it in itself. Alternatively the USoA could have run-off voting like France does where its elimination and after the first round you get a run-off election to decide between the two leading candidates after the others have been eliminated.
Sadly, it is a stark, simple fact that until the USA changes its system, third parties can ONLY be spoilers and cannot win and Americans have to choose between two – and ONLY two options. This absolutely sucks but is the current reality. Or former reality given I doubt you’ll see free and fair elections occur again for an indefinite period of tyranny which the likes of Jill Stein, Cornell West and the counter-productive voting and arguing klowns like beholder have now given you by failing to support and vote for Kamala thus imposing Trump on the entire planet with catastrophic global consequences.
@10. rorschach
Maybe you could ask the Abandon Biden / Harris mob how they feel about Trump’s Gaza riviera plan versus the ceasefire and support that Kamala was working towards? Maybe you could ask Netanyahu who he preferred to win giving him the total greenlight for everything and anything versus at least some criticism being allowed and done? At least some calls for restraint and weaponry denied as opposed to none at all under Trump. I wonder how many of them now realise that the blood of Palestinians massacred and soon to be displaced under Trump is on their hands too. That by undermining and attacking Kamala, they helped Israel annex the remaining parts of Palestine that could’ve become their state and destroy their own cause? That Genocide Don is many times worse and more anti-Palestinian than Joe Biden or kamala Harris ever could be,
Wake up yourself. Australia is a multi-party nation with coalitions and independents and NOT a “duopoly” or Two party state like the USA. Ditto German and the UK. Your statement there reveals your own ignorance on the subject you are discussing.
Oh & of course things have changed since 40 years ago and will keep changing constantly too. Time and political evolution, how does it work again? What we need to do is try to push to make the changes for the better rather than the worse. What are YOU doing about that?
That’s :
Maybe you could ask the Abandon Biden / Harris mob how they feel about Trump’s Gaza riviera plan versus the ceasefire and support for a two state solution including a Palestinian state that Kamala was working towards?
natch.
I finally gave up on joke speckled political comedy at the start of the last election. Not because I found it wrong, dismissive or distasteful, but that Trump’s apparently immunity to parody and mockery has rendered it meaningless. For a man so notably thin skinned when it comes to personal slights, his political hide is such that he overcame criminal convictions, national security scandals and flaccid, yet nonetheless disturbing attempt at insurrection, to be back with more power than even a sane and rational would-be monarch should possess, much less a kleptocratic, far right baiting narcissist with a death drive that could engulf the planet.
The voices of Stewart and his ilk were a useful balm during the Bush era insanity when the media landscape was still largely centralised and the blogosphere was only just cranking up, but now it just feels like gen X nostalgia. A way to confirm that your thinking might be in the right place, while your arse is firmly planted on the couch rather than actually doing something. Thanks for the yucks, but its time for something else.
One thing you can do is help people register to vote. As the Republicans deliberately make it as chaotic and hard as possible – and as some states do not notify people they have been removed from the list of voters – you need to help people jump through the hoops. Especially the elderly, sick or people with shortcomings in education that makes registering in a confusing voting system a challenge.
.
Another thing is to “primary” the ass of any accomodist Dem politician whose main concern is preserving the status quo. The hearts of such politicians are probably not in the fight.
This news about contempt of court is moderately positive.
.https://meidasnews.com/news/judge-boasberg-finds-probable-cause-to-hold-trump-administration-in-criminal-contempt