The blitzkrieg of Donald Trump’s furious if not führerish opening days has salt-pillared his party and as if disappeared Democrats in concrete walls.
More revolting still, it’s turned supposed beacons of liberalism like the New York Times into a 1950s-style servant of his establishment, reporting and analyzing his demolition of democratic norms at home and restoration of imperial aggression abroad as if each were a minor policy memo from an undersecretary of state in the Eisenhower administration.
America is comatose, and the president is pulling a Josef Mengele on the patient.
To start a sentence with words like nowhere is that more true than… would be naive because there’s no hierarchy of folly. No sooner does he order one monstrosity–eliminating foreign aid except for Israel and Egypt, denying transgender human beings the right to exist, launching a Chritian crusade against ruins of the church-state wall, backdooring apartheid by taking Zyklon-B to DEI–than he outdoes it with an atrocity.
Let’s take one: the proposal to ethnic-cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, transfer them to Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries, and apparently annex Gaza’s 141 square miles (about the size of Palm Coast and the barrier island combined) to the United States, or at least rezone it as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump’s grasp of the Middle East is roughly equivalent to that of a third grader at Old Kings Elementary: He knows the word middle. He might know the word east, though perhaps as a street sign rather than a cardinal point.
As with every one of his executive orders or policy proposals, this one had the thoughtfulness of a chicken scratch on a flea’s tit. He sees Gazans as so many more tenants to expel from 100 Central Park South, as he did in the mid-1980s so he could build Trump Park East. He thinks of Arab countries as empty neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, and Gaza as just another land without a people for a Riviera without a dock. (It was American evangelist and Christian Zionist William Blackstone who in 1881 coined one of the founding myths of the non-existence of Palestinians by describing Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land.”)
This is what the late Israeli terrorist Meir Kahane–whose OpEd, “For a Jewish State, Annex and Expel” ran in The New York Times on Oct. 18, 1983–and settler terror cults like Gush Emunim (“a cancer in the body of Israeli democracy,” in Yizhak Rabin’s words) and the more contemporarily violent Hilltop Youth have been preaching. “For me, the moral answer lies in annexation of all the lands and the completion of an exchange of populations begun in 1948,” Kahane had written in that OpEd seething with euphemistic lies: there was never an “exchange,” only expulsions, massacres and expropriation. He continued, “let us carry out the second stage: The removal of the Arabs in the Land of Israel to their own Arab lands.”
Now the president of the United States is normalizing a terrorist dream.
Trump’s pin-up hero Andrew Jackson did something similar while defying a Supreme Court order. He expelled most Native Americans from east of the Mississippi. Jackson’s Indians are Trump’s Palestinians.
Working out the math, the crime, as all population transfers are under international law, would be the biggest population expulsion and land expropriation since Stalin’s internal deportations and killing of 6 million Soviets in the 1930s and 40s. The comparison can be applied in style and purpose to Israel, with its expulsions and ethnic cleansing of the late 1940s, 1967 and in regular wars since, up to the recent genocide in Gaza. But it’s been on a different scale. Trump would Stalinize the cleansing: Gaza’s population before Israel’s latest razing was 2 million.
The Israeli press, always freer and more honest than America’s when Israel is the subject, is calling the atrocity by its name. “Even if Trump disregards international law,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz editorialized Thursday, “it’s crucial to remind Israelis, that the forced expulsion or transfer of civilians violate international humanitarian law, constitute a war crime and amount to a crime against humanity.” Gur Megiddo, one of the paper’s columnists, called Trump’s idea “crazy, deranged, perverse and unfeasible” before he got to “crime against humanity on a historic scale.”
As of today The New York Times hasn’t thought it worthy of an editorial. The paper has treated the premeditated crime as another news story owed its share of front-page analysis and reactions from both sides, journalism’s poison of fake balance. The normalization of the proposal, which Israel’s prime minister and architect of the latest genocide called “thinking outside the box,” normalizes not the dehumanization of the Palestinian people–Israel accomplished that since 1967–but their obliteration.
Until now Israel has denied the Palestinians the right to exist, thus ensuring that flower-child ideals like the two-state solution never had a chance. The solution was incinerated with the assassination of Rabin in 1995 by an Israeli extremist, ceding the way to Palestinian extermination by a thousand cuts and 700,000 colonists that Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu enacted since. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat had the last near-miss of a breakthrough in 2000. Sharon ensured its demise with his intentionally provoking visit to the Temple Mount, the site sacred to Muslims and Jews, triggering the second intifada, or uprising.
Now Netanyahu has an American partner in his image: expulsions and population transfers have been Americanized. So has the myth of non-existent Palestinian identity. They’re all Arabs, after all, that mass of people between Persia and North Africa that all sound alike and look alike and are naturally interchangeable with Palestinians. Slave-traders thought likewise of Africans, as did Abraham Lincoln, who had enthusiastically embraced Black-population transfers back to Africa.
Trump’s plan has zero chance of success. But like Gen. Westmoreland’s pacification of Vietnam, the second Bush’s democratization of Iraq, or America’s 20-year futility in Afghanistan, it will exact a catastrophic price if attempted. And Gaza is just a template of what’s ahead for us here as this unwell man denies human beings their identity, ignores the law and reduces policy to pop up-books. Pity the nation.
Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive. A version of this piece airs on WNZF.
JimboXYZ says
This is a head shaker, even comical, calling it a crime against humanity in the Gaza ? Every war that they’ve ever had, every decade since Israel has existed, is a crime against humanity. Leaving a strip of land mines for kids to play in, a crime against humanity. Taking it away from 2 sides that don’t play well with others is a bigger crime against humanity. Turning it into a resort, managing what none of them have demonstrated being the adults in the room have ever been able to do ? Maybe they become Dubai, they don’t seem to be too miserable in Dubai with all that wealth ?
Just read an article, Pacific Palisades, not even a month removed from the fires/arsons. A property that became scorched Earth has a buy for $ 1M. The Hawaii-like land grab has begun, Newsom reimagines LA, CA. No outrage over that ? Palm Coast & Flagler County continues to develop in it’s own miserable growth plan. Covid was the excuse, 5 years of financial hardship for inflation & property flipping. The world we live in as the human race is a crime against humanity, full of opportunistic parasites ?
BillC says
Trump is a degenerate.
Depressed says
If this country survives this madman, it will be a miracle. Everyone I know is deeply afraid, disgusted, and depressed.
Pogo says
@As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=arab+americans+for+trump
R.S. says
Why pick on Mengele? We have had our own: John Charles Cutler in Tuskegee and in Guatamala. The ethnic cleansing that the Russians conducted in East Prussia might also count toward egregious acts against humanity. When I visited Theresienstadt [Terezin], I was told that the camp didn’t miss a beat at the end of the war: filled with ethnic Germans, it kept right on trucking as did Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen under Soviet guards. The mentality of the oppressor is human, all too human! And it’s resurfacing now; you are quite right, Pierre.
Thomas Hutson says
Crime Against Humanity
Pierre, you once again have written an outstanding and very informational article; A real shame many Americans will not see it or if they do will not bother to read it. “PITY THE NATION”? No Pierre!! “Pity the WORLD”, pity the cult followers that voted for a candidate they felt could do the most them. In everyday things to make their life easier like interest rates, food cost, gas prices, home prices. I personally do not feel they were in the market for renaming the Gulf of Mexico or getting a “RIVERA” in Gaza for the King’s new casino, or making Canada our 51st state, annexing Greenland or taking over the Panama Canal. The followers thought they were voting for a President, boy oh boy, they got their President! A President who then ordained himself “KING”. Thanks to that group in the High Tower lead by Roberts and the Housemaid and the other members of the high tower, they created this new “KING”. Not only do we now have a “KING” President elected and who is above the law thanks to the high tower. “They and WE” non-members of the “King’s cult also known as “MAGA” have a self-appointed non-elected assistant to the King, a “Pseudo KING”. The King appointed him over his “Knuckle Dragging” side kick. This Pseudo King has so much money just a threat from him of using that money against elected members of the House and Senate causes them to quiver. Just the thought of losing their elected positions in 691 days. Boy! whatever you do, you don’t make them mad. How about that infamous 2025, the King has denied knowing about it. Strange how some of the same characters have now found themselves running our government. King has proven that if you cannot lie with a straight face, you must be a “Marxist” or much worse a “WOKE” Liberal. The King showed his childish behavior for the world to see by revoking former President Biden’s security clearance, who by the way is NOT a convicted felon. Hey what about the mouth of the reds, not a word, or that senator who always has something good to say, not a word. Oh well, Americans can start to remedy this self-induced “PITY” in 691 days. King or not, things can change. Remember “WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND”. While this “King” is above the “LAW” his “PSEUDO KING” and the rest of the cult are not. Pity no way! You get what you asked for, no one to blame but ourselves. Bet anyone that by the time midterms comes around the mouth and senator and all of their red cult members will be crying the loudest then. After all that damn Biden and the stolen election caused all this. But, wait! The High Tower still has to talk, just don’t hold your breath hold your nose when they talk.
Gene Perez says
How incredible it is that some of you don’t understand what Trump is doing! By making an outrageous sounding proposition, such as the Gaza comment, he draws attention to the matter. Then things get done and the outrageous proposal never happens.
Meanwhile he and his cohort are uncovering the unbelievable amount of corruption in the federal government. Instead of focusing on Gaza, where atrocities are a way of life, try focusing on the good that is happening all over the world since Trump got elected. In a year you won’t recognize the federal government because it will more closely resemble what the founders created. We will all be better off.
Laurel says
Gene Perez: Dreamy world you’re in. Here we go again with it’s just his *bluster.* So, is he joking when he talks, do we take him seriously or not? Is it the “weave?” When exactly should he be believed if he is stating outrageous things that never happen? Do we really need you Magas to interpret for him? To tell us what he really means? Do you really believe we don’t see “the big picture”? Is his”outrageous” behavior your “common sense?”
You say he, and the non-elected civilian, “…are uncovering an unbelievable amount of corruption in the federal government.” Please, tell me exactly what corruption. You have the names, actions, dates and times, correct? Or are you just buying more bullshit, and passing it on?
Look, I get it that you want change. You just picked the very wrong guy to do it. He tried to overthrow the government in 2021 (notice that when he loses, it’s “rigged”, but it’s not rigged when he wins?) so now he’s in and he is continuing to overthrow the government, with your blessing.
No, Pollyanna, I’m not going to look on the bright side of what he is doing. Not when our best allies, and closest neighbors are literally booing our National Anthem. He is f**king us up so bad in the world, and I am afraid that you are not seeing “the big picture.”
I’ve got a book for you to read: “The Diary of Anne Frank” by Anne Frank. A young, Dutch, Jewish girl writes about her experience hiding from the Nazis, for two years in an attic with her family. With all the hate and destruction going on around her, she still managed to forgive. But, not for one minute, did she think that what was happening was “the bright side.” Meanwhile, people, very much like the Magas, were turning a blind eye to the overhaul of their government, and the death that ensued. Someone turned Anne and her family in. They were murdered.
This is reality, buddy, this is not a joke or bluster.
Marlee says
to Gene Perez says …..
and…. then… you didn’t mention that Rump takes credit for everything and is the “Master Liar in Chief” !
Sherry says
Right On Pierre!
trump is playing right into Netanyahu’s hands! Getting rid of the Palestinian people and taking over Gaza’s coastline has been on ole Bibi’s agenda for many years. After all, the Palestinians are simply cattle or pawns (although trump obviously cannot play chess). Just another distracting outrageously vile idea to throw, like so much shit, against the wall. trump’s strategy may be to throw his BS so fast that no one can possibly file those lawsuits quickly enough to keep up. Hopefully, the challenges and lawsuits will keep coming fast and furiously! Have no doubt there are millions of us who are courageous enough to protest loudly to our representatives, along with speaking out in the public forums like wonderful Flaglerlive.
We need you Pierre! Thank you again and again for speaking truth to power!
Common sense says
This country as we all know it has been in decline since the advance of the internet and within social media. As all the major societies , decline comes from within caused by delusion driven by grandeur and greed. Our government elected to represent no longer does efficiently or with real purpose that serves its people. Unfortunately there is no return or anything that will help our children and grandchildren. The majority of individuals in this country are delusional no matter what side of the aisle they stand on. This article gives legitimacy to a statement that carries zero worth or value. Reality is no longer reality , we all have our own reality’s but we all use to have a common reality as well.
Pogo says
@Make what you will
As stated
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-s-ally-to-send-new-mercenaries/ar-AA1yE2xs?ocid=nl_article_link
Atwp says
The Republicans got what they voted for. His next proposal will be to rid the country of judges that block part of his agenda. My opinion.
Corpsman says
I have served this Country for 13 yrs, A Naval Corpsman and a Federal Employee.
As a Corpsman I was deployed in 2006 for both Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was with Military Sealift Command.
Here is what I saw Israel would go after its neighbors, it would refuse Muslims/Islams from going to the Temple Mount. The Palestinians have been located where they are at because we helped Israel in the 60’s to push the Palestinians out what is known today as Israel. Why did the US do that because they believe that Christ was Jewish. Actually it is wrong Christ wasn’t Jewish he came from a different country (tribe). He was all over the Middle East, Europe (met with the Druids), went to India, went to the Library of Alexandria to read scrolls from Joseph of Armethia. He went against the taxes of the Romans, he was condemned by the very forces who still says they do not recognize Christ which are the Jewish Faith.
Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire which has been there in Centuries and we pushed them out of Israel and now they are Faced with a Threat by the US by ethnic cleansing.
The Israeli people wants to stop Ben from killing more Palestinians. They want him removed from office, they rallied in the streets, they were threatened by their own Government.
Trump and is TINY brain wants to Annex Palestine remove the Palestinians to place them in other countries so he can make a Middle East Riveria. He is collecting undocumented and documented migrants but wants the Riveria for all the world’s people.
He is a Danger to this Country and if he isn’t careful a country will attack us like they did on September 11
Endless dark money says
Voted for fascist and got it. Millions will suffer from his treachery. Sad America died the way it did.
Al says
Another hit piece on Trump. We voted for him to go in and kick ass, he’s doing that. The left has been reduced to a circus act of Chuck and Maxine trying to dance.
The deportation are going on and the cry is these are law abiding citizens. First they are not citizens and second coming into the country illegally is a crime. If you don’t like the law being enforced then don’t complain when your house is broken into or your car stolen. It’s only a big deal when it effects you so why should we worry if this happens to you. A friend of mine got upset because I voted for Trump saying I didn’t think about her feelings or her family. The only reply I could give is this was about my country not about your feelings snowflake.
You hate us conservatives all you want but a politician once said elections have consequences. Get with the program cupcake.
Laurel says
Al: Seeing that you like to use the terms “snowflake” and “cupcake” it is clear to me that you like bullies. However, bullies are the real snowflakes and cupcakes. This is well known. There is no bigger snowflake, or cupcake than President Bonespurs.
You would have loved Germany in the 30’s.
Wow says
Felon 47 doesn’t see people only $$$$.
Ed Danko, former Vice-Mayor PC says
Poor liberals, suffering from TDS again! Well, we have had enough of your failed Obama/Biden policies, enough of your DEI transgender stupidity, enough of your Green New “Steal.” And, we have had enough of your weak foreign policies that only produce wars. With or without you we will clean up your mess, make the world safe, and Make America Great Again! If you don’t like it, you might consider going to Canada, but that’s probably gonna become our 51st state!
Laurel says
…so far gone…just one big bag of talking points…
Do us a favor and stop running for something. You make Republicans look bad.
Endless dark money says
Look at all the pain and suffering one shit stain can cause. Look forward to the retribution against the gop terrorists. one cure for nazis . The mentally ill magatards killed the usa.
Sherry says
@gene. . . please post all those “credentialled facts” proving that trump/musk/doge has “uncovered an unbelievable amount of corruption”. They have exposed millions to the possibility of “Identity Theft” by allowing people with NO experience, NO training, and “NO Security Clearances” to have access to system containing our Social Security Numbers! You know, the Social Security Number that is too often used to access our bank accounts!
Ripping apart our federal government, firing thousands of “experts” in their fields, and replacing them with unvetted/untrained/inexperienced trump loyalists is NOT the way to make government more efficient!
Meanwhile, you obviously voted to put an actual “Convicted Criminal” and adjudicated “Sexual Abuser” in the white house. How is that acceptable to you? How should that be acceptable to any of us?
Laurel says
Sherry: You know Gene, or any other Magas, will not post credential facts.
It’s like watching Darth Vader trying to pull people over to the dark side, and being surprisingly successful!
So, demons do have influence.
Nicki says
Trumps supporters think he is doing things to help them. He is only doing things to help himself and his pocketbook.
This is this countries home, we have no right kicking anyone out. What if they said they want to do that to our country? We need to mind our own business and take care of us right here.
DaleL says
Pierre, I wish to remind you of whom Palestinian Americans voted for in 2024. According to the Voice of America, 11/7/2024:
“In a historic shift, Muslim and Arab Americans broke with two decades of Democratic loyalty, splitting most of their votes between President-elect Donald Trump and third-party candidates in Tuesday’s presidential election, according to preliminary findings of two prominent advocacy groups.
The exodus, fueled by anger over the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, helped Trump win key battleground states, especially Michigan, as he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to win a second term in the White House.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/in-historic-shift-american-muslim-and-arab-voters-desert-democrats/7854995.html
We came to know Donald Trump during his first administration. The insurrection of January 6, 2021, should have put an end to him. What is amazing is how Democrats managed to turn off so many traditionally Democrat aligned voting groups.
Rant away, but Palestinian Americans helped elect this guy.
Sherry says
trump is actually a ” solipsist”. . . A very interesting read from the publisher of Harper’s Magazine:
Two weeks into the Trump administration, I’m still being asked by foreigners about the new president’s “political vision”.
Some of them, especially the French and the British, might be excused for excessive politeness toward a country that in many respects they still envy and admire. But on most of the news programs and podcasts to which I’ve been invited, I’m still encountering earnest interviewers struggling to understand Trump from a conventional political perspective, no matter how contradictory, irrational, or stupid his statements and actions may be. How can this be and what does it augur?
The investigative psychiatrist Robert J Lifton once explained to me that Trump is a solipsist, as distinct from the narcissist that he’s often accused of being.
A narcissist, while deeply self-infatuated, nevertheless seeks the approval of others and will occasionally attempt seduction to get what he wants (I think of the French president, Emmanuel Macron). For Trump the solipsist, the only point of reference is himself, so he makes no attempt even at faking interest in other people, since he can’t really see them from his self-centered position.
Trump’s absence of external connection is self-evident: his treatment of the “other” – from his own family to his tenants, his political rivals, the victims of the Los Angeles fires or the displaced people of Gaza – displays not only a lack of empathy, but also an emotional blindness. How else could he tease out loud about dating his own daughter, Ivanka? How else could he so cruelly insult former president Biden in his inauguration address, with Biden seated just a short distance away?
Trump’s solipsistic character was on full display on 20 January in the Capitol Rotunda. After stating, absurdly, that houses had burned “tragically” in Los Angeles “without even a token of defense”, the president seemed to turn philosophical and then appeared to ad-lib: “Some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country … they don’t have a home any longer. That’s interesting.”
What could be better for a solipsist than to be criticized across the full spectrum of America’s limited ideological bandwidth?
I suppose it’s better than his reaction to a 2018 fire in Trump Tower that killed a resident, Todd Brassner. Trump’s tweeted response: “Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!” No condolences for the dead man or his family. That’s also interesting.
None of this is to say that Trump’s policy directives don’t suggest disturbing political predilections that need to be discussed and challenged. He is the president, after all, not just a coldhearted landlord. His firing of 17 inspectors general, attempt to end birthright citizenship and temporary halt of “all federal financial assistance” are certainly causes for concern, and possibly alarm. So, also, are his threats to slap high tariffs on Canada and Mexico, friendly nations that normally are happy to kowtow to their vastly more powerful neighbor no matter who occupies the White House.
But this misses the point of Trump, malevolent though he may be. He delights in being attacked because it keeps him at center stage. What could be better for a solipsist than to be criticized across the full spectrum of America’s limited ideological bandwidth?
In an editorial, the New York Times denounced Trump’s “first assertions of executive power” that “blatantly exceed what is legally granted”. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal ridiculed an unprovoked “trade war” that “will qualify as one of the dumbest in history”. Already, Trump has changed the script by “pausing” the tariff increases, but he got the Journal worked up enough to pay him a lot of attention. Federal judges blocked Trump’s two most obviously unconstitutional orders, but the Times still got into a dither about his threats to the constitution.
‘Humor, sarcasm and ridicule can be useful tools, though as we learned from Barack Obama’s famous roast of Trump in 2011, they can also motivate the target to run for president.’ One can’t just ignore Trump’s blathering, but like parents dealing with an ornery child, editors, reporters and columnists need to temper reprimands and raised voices with self-restraint, calmness and even studied indifference. Humor, sarcasm and ridicule can be useful tools, though as we learned from Barack Obama’s famous roast of Trump in 2011, they can also motivate the target to run for president.
Covering Trump, like bringing up children, is an art, not a science.
Of course, none of Trump’s tariff actions or anti-immigrant edicts will bring factories back from Mexico (the cheap labor and investment protections under our current trade agreement with Mexico and Canada are too good for a rational businessman to pass up). Neither will they quickly raise wages for working-class citizens, since creating a labor shortage through deportations will take much longer to affect pay scales than if Congress simply raised the federal minimum wage, or legalized the “illegals”. Also, ironically, Trump’s tariff threats and military border bluster may backfire and encourage fentanyl production to move to the United States from south of the border.
However, it’s a fair bet that Trump the solipsist doesn’t care if his policies fail to help the ordinary people who voted for him, and we anti-Trumpers should fear his supporters’ rage if they conclude that they’ve been duped by their hero. The backlash is more likely to be felt by liberals than by Trump, who will retreat safely to Mar-a-Lago and resume cheating at golf.
While I do tend to mock, rather than fear, Trump’s sound and light show, I don’t mean to make light of his most reckless impulses. There’s always collateral damage when somebody starts a war.
On the eve of the inauguration, in the Watergate Hotel, I attended the “Coronation Ball”, where “populist” and royalist rightwingers packed the Moretti Grand Ballroom to drink and dine on French champagne and red wine, as well as Gallic cuisine that included amuse-bouches. I was there at the invitation of an open-minded business consultant, an unfanatical Trump partisan who may not have understood that I wanted to cover the event, though he knows the world of journalism.
It was indeed amusing to meet a guy wearing a Gen Douglas MacArthur button. So was hearing Steve Bannon’s rip-roaring speech, which flattered the black-tie and evening dress crowd as the “vanguard of a revolutionary movement” that was “just in the top of the first inning”. Bannon warned his rightwing Jacobins not to “flinch” or “question” Trump’s mission of ending “any of these forever wars” and accomplishing “the deportation of all 15 million illegal aliens”.
And when Bannon called for “no mercy, no quarter, no prisoners”, he apparently was including Rupert Murdoch and Fox News: “Murdoch sent a memo: ‘We’re going to make [Trump] a non-person’ … and [Trump] knew it. And he still came back like Cincinnatus from the plough, who saved his country.” (Bannon might have mentioned that the Roman patrician, according to legend, was twice dictator of the Republic, but I quibble.)
It wasn’t all amuse-bouches, however. Later in the evening, when the jazz band took a break, the far-right personality Jack Posobiec launched a diatribe against the cliques surrounding the former presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden, who, he said, would never return to power “because they’ll have to come through us”. Meanwhile, a lot of political prisoners would be freed, and not just the martyrs of January 6. “Derek Chauvin will be freed!” he declaimed.
Two guests in military dress uniforms standing nearby looked at me, laughing with incredulous astonishment. “You’re going to tell us who he is ?” one said. Once I found out from other journalists in the crowd that it was Posobiec – he of “stop the steal” fame and other conspiracy theories dear to Trump and Maga – I could better appreciate the foreign journalists’ difficulty understanding the president. With no political vision, no long-range goals, it’s quite possible that it never occurred to Trump to pardon George Floyd’s murderer. But now that an influential courtier has serviced the monarch with a concrete idea – an idea guaranteed to slake a solipsist’s thirst for attention – we should all be worried about the short-term whims of the king.
John R MacArthur is president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine
Laurel says
Thank you, Sherry, that was interesting.
Yes, clearly Trump sees himself as the center of the universe. When the left started pointing out his orange makeup, he slapped it on even darker. His followers see this as a revolt; Trump realizes this generates more pictures of himself. Marketing is a natural for him!
Being solipsistic would explain his belief that he is above the law, since it’s his reality. He is the only thing real. Not one once of guilt for anything, we consider unacceptable, that he does. That actually makes him uninteresting. What is interesting, is that people form a cult around him. That they actually believe that this egocentric personality is working for them! All he has to do is say so.
What is also interesting, is people who are good, by society’s standards, and work to help others, sincerely, are often vilified, or even killed. So the question is: why is that? “Only the good die young”? Do humans promote the evil in others to justify our own shortcomings?
Laurel says
Not one OUNCE of guilt for anything…
JW says
Let’s not forget the long history of religious wars in the Middle East (and beyond!). It’s based on biblical references in the Torah (quoted by Netanyahu) and in the Old Testament (for Americans who never heard of it in church): the Amalekites (compared with the Palestinians today) living on the territory of current day Israel before the Jews were moved from Egypt.
Please research yourself! It is all about the same, reflected indirectly in some of the comments on this article.
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
This post sure brought out the kapos and the brown shirts. When Hitler’s reich finally fell a whole bunch of nazis ended up in Argentina and Central America. My advice is to brush up on your spanish.
Dennis C Rathsam says
SO sad the hatred in your hearts, losers….Pierre, as usual…..Best 100 days ever…. after reading the crap I wonder, is there that many morons in P/C? What’s a matter, you don’t like all the deportion, America does! Yall forgot we the majority! TRUMP has the hammer. I guess you folks didn’t see all the millions pissed away in USAID! How many billions to Hamas? Transgenter surgeries ect! I don’t approve of my tax money going to this shit! You folks don’t understand… the party,s over! There’s a new SHERRIFF in town, Its AMERICA,S choice to clean up Biden corruption & cover ups. Bondi will get to the truth, you can bet your life on that. When she does, all you sore losers will have nothing to say. GLORY GLORY HALLALLUA!!! THE TRUTH COMES MARCHING IN!
Foresee says
@Danko did you forget that you were voted out of office for your ideas and politics?
Ray W, says
Maybe now is a good time to offer to FlaglerLive readers an excerpt from the August 28, 1944, “On Freedom” radio address delivered by Churchill to the Italian people shortly after their government overthrew Mussolini’s first fascist government (not the second one he later set up with Hitler’s support):
“… It has been said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The question arises, “What is freedom?” There are one or two quite simple, practical tests by which it can be known in the modern world in peace conditions, namely:
“Is there the right to free expression of opinion and of opposition and criticism of the Government of the day?
“Have the people the right to turn out a Government of which they disapprove, and are constitutional means provided by which they can make their will apparent?
“Are their courts of justice free from violence by the Executive and from threats of mob violence, and free from all association with particular political parties?
“Will these courts administer open and well-established laws which are associated in the human mind with the broad principles of decency and justice?
“Will there be fair play for the poor as well as the rich, for private persons as well as Government officials?
“Will the rights of the individual, subject to his duties to the State, be maintained and asserted and exalted?
“Is the ordinary peasant or workman who is earning a living by daily toil and striving to bring up a family free from the fear that some grim police organization under the control of a single party, like the Gestapo, started by the Nazi and Fascist parties, will tap him on the shoulder and pack him off without fair or open trial to bondage or ill-treatment?
“These simple, practical tests are some of the title-deeds on which a new Italy could be founded. …”
FlaPharmTech says
Trump voters, congrats to you, you now have blood stained hands. Cultist deplorables, do you ever question your allegiance to the orange whataheck? Truly, WTF???!!
You are NOT American!
jake says
The “Crime Against Humanity” occurred on October 7th, against Israel.
Joey says
Trump is a crime against humanity !!!!
Kennan says
Well done Pierre.
Unfortunately with all the historical, political,and most importantly factual equations…. There are many who will not be able to get out of their own way when it comes to Gaza.
Biden simply passed the torch to Trump to finish what he started in Gaza. Trump fails with precision as he tries to frame himself as a peacemaker in the Middle East moving Palestinians out of Gaza. An already occupied territory and their home. He says with a straight face he wants to move Palestinians out of the danger and bloodshed of Gaza and the West Bank. Hoping that anyone with eyes and a brain will forget that Israel has created the bloodshed. Killing innocent Palestinian civilians that are mostly women and children with weapons from the U.S. and billions of dollars in aid.
As Trump profusely lies at a press conference, the man to his right simply laughs gleefully because he knows the Ethnic cleansing can continue. That man is Benjamin Netanyahu. The man who never ever wanted a “ two state solution “ and can more freely admit that he never wanted Palestinians to have their own territory.
There were very few guardrails under the Biden administration. There will now be none.
Let me be frank. For those of you who wonder why other Middle Eastern countries won’t take more Palestinian refugees? The question you ask only highlights your own ignorance. The Middle East is well aware of the genocide that has been administered on Gaza, with pin point precision I might add. To flush those people out of their own homeland only hastens the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. A history. A people. A culture is blown away in the wind like the fluffy petals of a dandelion. A civilization. Human beings erased.
80% of the planet knows Netanyahu is a war criminal. The international criminal court, international court of justice call for Netanyahu’s arrest.’s answer to that was to deflect and ultimately ignore it. Trump’s answer is to sanction the ICC.
The rude awakening for America is this: when every human rights organization worldwide knows that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide; the ICC, the ICJ, the UN, Human Rights Watch, The World Health Organization, Amnesty International as well as almost every breathing, thinking, and above all “seeing” citizen of the world has witnessed a live streamed genocide as well as the most well documented 21st century Holocaust on Palestinians, and the U.S. tells the rest of the world they got it wrong????? That is nothing less than authoritarian behavior. The law does not apply to the United States and Israel.
As an American I urge people to understand that even though we are 7,000 miles away our administrations canyon of hypocrisy between what we say we are and what we do is nothing short of TOTALITARIANISM. This is pursued by a current leader with no ideology at all. A grifter who will do nothing more than sell himself to the highest bidder.
Laurel says
He wants to build resorts in Gaza and Moscow, and get even with Scotland’s windmills. Americans are asleep at the wheel.
R.S. says
You said: The deportation are going on and the cry is these are law abiding citizens. First they are not citizens and second coming into the country illegally is a crime.
So why aren’t you writing this in Algonquin or Arapaho or Lakhota, you illegal squatter?
R.S. says
When was America [presumably you mean the US] ever great to become so again? If you clowns could fixate on a time or a year or a decade when US-America was great to be worthwhile enough to go back to again, specify it. Maybe I’ll be inclined to follow. But this is just posturing and sloganeering without substance or thought. And you were really a municipal politician? I’m glad you’ve been stopped in that career, Sir. Your own background appears a bit undesirably checkered to invoke again, no?
R.S. says
Arab-Americans didn’t help to elect “that guy”; Arab-Americans pointed out very clearly that this two-party system shoehorns the voter into an either-or predicament, which should be anathema to any decent democracy.
R.S. says
Correction: The “Crime Against Humanity” occurred when Mr. Balfour said to Baron Rothschild: “Y’all come; this ain’t my land, but I’ll give it to ya.” And when “y’all” engaged in the Deir Yassin massacre back in 1948 and stuffed all the refugees into Gaza.
The dude says
“ Everyone I know is deeply afraid, disgusted, and depressed.”
But seriously… enough about MAGA…
Say, do you think they’ll provide towels and flak jackets poolside at the new Trump towers Gaza location?
Trying to figure out what to pack…
Meanwhile, ever the little lawn troll that he is… of course little Eddie Danko our “firmer” vice something or another is here to troll… as is his way.
Protonbeam says
If Biden had proposed it we would be calling it “a brave choice” and a “visionary plan” – let’s be brutally honest
– there was never a nation of Palestine not a Palestinian people – they are displaced Arabs and Persians . There is no such thing as a “Palestinian language, nor is there a Palestinian history before the 1920’s see below and now genetic people group –
-“Palestine” was among former Ottoman territories placed under UK administration by the League of Nations in 1922. All of these territories eventually became fully independent States, except Palestine, where in addition to “the rendering of administrative assistance and advice” the British Mandate incorporated the “Balfour Declaration” of 1917, expressing support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
– from the inception, through yassar Arafat whose entire family lived in France and he “amassed” a personal fortune worth 5 billion – though today – these people are marginalized and subjugated to avarice and greed by terror groups, authoritarians and their own people – it provides a great context for the political persecution of Israel and a way to have a massive cash stream
– we had all doubts that aid to Gaza and the Arabs living there was largely used for terror infrastructure, weapons, tunnels and personal gain of “leaders”
102 years has done absolutely nothing to settle the issues in the slightest – why not reimagine what could be and also give the people of Gaza a chance to be repatriated back to the Arab communities they came from and have a home and a future –
R.S. says
You said: 102 years has done absolutely nothing to settle the issues in the slightest – why not reimagine what could be and also give the people of Gaza a chance to be repatriated back to the Arab communities they came from and have a home and a future –
And does it not follow logically that then all the Jews are repatriated to Ur in Chaldea, whence they came; and all the Iraqis living there now back to whence they came: and ultimately, all of us back to Kenya, whence Australopithecus aferensis came; and then we all disappear into the Naledi cave in South Africa, whence all of humanity came. Problem solved!
What a hoot this remigration and repatriation game, merely because of some old records of a migratory bedou tribe that people have dubbed biblios [book]. How about simply acknowledging that we all have rights and should respect one another without that outdated notion of ethnically purified nation states. Bad enough that it ever started to gain traction in the past! It surely does not need to mar humanity’s future.
Ray W. says
Earlier today at the Dubai-hosted World Governments Summit, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson talked of his recent work visit to Mar-a-Lago and how he now realizes that “[i]t’s an absolutely fantastic place if you want to resettle millions of people there.”
Who says political humor is dead!
Eat the rich says
True amerikkkan savages! Todays republicons will watch people starve to death for a dollar! Fun fact you could take 99.999.%of the money from the ten richest people and they would still be millionaires.
But don’t worry billionaires are looking out for you right? lol!!
William s says
amerikkka needs to finish the state sponsored genocide right?
Sieg heil
Common Sense says
Our government has not just become corrupt it has been since its conception. The elite establishment has always been the elite establishment. No matter what color flag you wave that party is just as corrupt as the others. It’s a business not a system of representation. They are all within each other’s pockets. The level of delusion from politicians to regular folk is mind blowing in this country. The great delusion divide between dumb and dumber grows ever bigger. The proverbial phrase pull your head out of the sand is now pull your head out of your phone.
Common Sense says
Our government has not just become corrupt it has been since its conception. The elite establishment has always been the elite establishment. No matter what color flag you wave that party is just as corrupt as the others. It’s a business not a system of representation. They are all within each other’s pockets. The level of delusion from politicians to regular folk is mind blowing in this country. The great delusion divide between dumb and dumber grows. The proverbial phrase pull your head out of the sand is now pull your head out of your phone.