We're rushing toward the breaking point

[yallerdawg]

Source: WaPo, by E.J. Dionne

*****

Susan Glasser, writing in Politico, offers frightening detail about how Trump’s stunning lack of knowledge and his indifference to his own obliviousness have led diplomats to label him “insane,” “catastrophic,” “terrifying,” “incompetent” and “dangerous.” Glasser concludes: “When it comes to Trump and the world, it’s not better than you think. It’s worse.”

And Evan Osnos’s carefully reported and much-discussed article in the New Yorker demonstrates how Trump’s policies — but also his pathological focus on himself, his ignorance, and his astonishing susceptibility to flattery — have profoundly weakened the United States’ position in Asia and played into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s reach for international power.

Osnos cites a Chinese think tank’s observation that the Trump administration is a collection of hostile “cliques,” the most powerful of which is the “Trump family clan.” And its analysis uses a term from feudal China, “jiatianxia,” to define Trump’s approach. It means “to treat the state as your possession.”

*****

On the second day of the year, Trump called on the Justice Department to “finally act” against Huma Abedin, a Hillary Clinton aide, and also against James B. Comey, the FBI director he fired. And by referring not to the Justice Department but to the “Deep State Justice Dept,” Trump continued to push back against all others investigating him, treating them as if they were a band of spies and traitors.

*****

The United States does have extraordinary gifts for self-correction. But we must face the fact that Trump is accelerating us toward the breaking point. No matter how confident we are in our resilience, we should not imagine otherwise. Not even Mueller has a button on his desk he can press to get us out of this without scars.

Read it all at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/were-rushing-toward-the-breaking-point/2018/01/03/7c3c75e8-f0d2-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html

[maxsolomon]

1. we have lots and lots of pithy opinions from the ej dionnes

but no one with any power to stop this is willing to act.

its all just so much hot air.

[yallerdawg]

3. Today, we saw a democratic election determined by drawing names out of a bowl.

We have legally prescribed due process for removing "presidents."

The problem is, it remains a "political" process.

When the will of the people overwhelms the politics - as it did with Nixon - then the people with the power will act.

We need more and more HOT AIR to blow this up and make it the will of the people!

[delisen]

2. Very true. Battle Lines Getting Clearer.

The task ahead will soon seem enormous. Let's hope by then that enough of us have seen the whites of their eyes.

[RandomAccess]

4. I hope more people will see this