Is It a kind of World War III? I mean, not with soldiers and bombs, but now with tariffs and economic bullying?
ETA
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If, as some believe, poverty-wages (not a living wage) and obscene profit-taking are a kind of economic violence by the rich against the poors, then it’s been war for quite some time.
If we are talking about an international version of this (world war), then my guess is that Stephen Miller, Seb Gorka, and Steve Bannon have decided to leverage U.S. economic power in a such a way as to aid white supremacists and the far right political movement in France.
The French are apparently not giving in so easily to their far right campaigners:
I can imagine a scenario where the 
administration applies more pressure in countries, especially U.S. trading partners, where a divide between “immigrants” and nativists can be manipulated exploited through economic pain, just as you have observantly pointed out.
My hot take is that this is a means to an end. And that end, whether overtly stated in Project 2025 or not, is white [male] supremacy.
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Some people are trying. 80 law school deans just signed onto an open letter denouncing all this, and 50 bar associations have denounced it as well.
However, noticeably absent from this deans list . . . Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and most of the other T14 law schools (I have no idea why, but historically, the top law schools in the country have been the top 14. Not top 10, not top 15, but top 14, and they’re referred to as T14 schools).
Also, the bar associations making these statements helps, but it would be much better if the top Big Law firms in the country all told Trump to go fuck himself, and they’ll see him in court. These assholes need to grow a spine. They literally are the best lawyers in the country, and they’re acting like they’re scared of Donald fucking Trump. It’s pathetic.
ETA: I was very happy to see my law school’s dean (Seton Hall) had signed on to this, as well as the local to me University of Missouri-Kansas City. The latter surprised me a little because Josh Hawley used to teach Constitutional Law there.
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The fascists’ greatest friends.
A start. But nowhere near enough. Ultimately, if the courts will not enforce the rule of law (I keep banging on about it, I know, but WHEN will someone be dragged to jail for contempt?) then the courts need to be pressed with even more legal cases objecting to the law-breaking, but ultimately direct action is the only recourse. Refuse to implement what is demanded. Take action to protect those under attack. And eventually, yes, bring out the pitchforks.*
Cowardice and apathy will see the end of fair elections (as if they haven’t been unfair for a while) or any elections at all, the end of the rule of law, the abasement of all to one man’s whims, bolstered by his fellow-traveller oligarchs’ and christo-fascists’ wet dreams, and the slide into a fascist state. The only other choice is physical resistance.
And when they resort to armed enforcement with the police and armed forces agains that physical resistance, which way those armed by the state react will determine the outcome - that’s where the lines of the civil was will be drawn. Sorry for the pessimism, but I do not see another outcome given the way things are headed. Civil war or the end of the USA as we have known it and a new fascist state emerging.
(* a euphemism)
I think I’ll go out and tend my veggie beds and sow some seeds - it may cheer me up.
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The problem with that is that, in spite of what some legal scholar said, the only people with the legal authority to actually drag someone to jail for contempt in the event that a federal judge actually finds someone in contempt work for the Justice Department, which is controlled by Trump. Judges and courts have no enforcement arm of their own. They rely on the executive branch for enforcement.
Our Constitution operates under the principle that most people involved in government will be acting in good faith. So that if you ever end up with a President who isn’t, Congress would be able to remove them from office. Same for if a Congressional leader was acting in bad faith, or a Supreme Court Justice, or whoever. What the Constitution, and its framers, never imagined is that half the government would be acting in bad faith. The Constitution was not designed to deal with that eventuality, but that’s where we find ourselves.
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That’s my plans for the weekend. Therapeutic gardening.
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Understood - except that … can’t a judge issue a warrant and ask (expect? demand?) that local police execute it?
And even if the judge can’t get them enforced, a large number of contempt judgements / warrants against a large number of key people would send a strong signal, and might force a breaking point. Like making Trump try and sack a load of judges …
Trouble is, there’s always more legal lickspittles happy to accept an appointment and issue judgements he would want.
FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!
(Veggies, here I come.)
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MAGA without borders.
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Yet another horrid detail about that photo; seems very likely that it was orchestrated on the basis of: “if you’ve got an full upper body tattoo stand at the bars with your shirt off and you’ll get an extra helping at dinner” – it’s so clearly posed. It’s some twisted visual ‘justification’ to be presented on fox"news". …while the rest of us want to vomit. @#$!
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Yes indeed, but at least in the past we weren’t gleefully bragging about it on Twitter.
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#5 is the 187th Infantry regiment, which must have been his Army unit. That being said, the sort of folk who tattoo their unit crest definitely have a certain type.
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Fascism
Gangsterism
Although she has not been charged with any crime, the Department for Homeland Security has terminated Öztürk’s visa, accusing her of engaging in activities in support of Hamas. This appears to be a reference to an opinion piece that she and three other students co-wrote for their student newspaper last year, advocating that the university “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel”.
Those culture war warriors who have spent the past five years defending the absolute right to free speech have been conspicuously silent about Öztürk’s detention. Can there be a more egregious example of cancel culture than being abducted by the state for simply expressing an opinion?
In the ten weeks since Tяump took office, such infringements of basic civil rights have become common. Commentators, activists and opposition politicians have struggled to understand the nature of what is unfolding before them. Tяump has been called a dictator, an oligarch, and authoritarian and, most regularly, a fascist.
I think that last label is least convincing. ‘Fascist’ is an insult used by radicals in the same way that ‘communist’ is hurled at anyone disliked by reactionaries. More significantly, fascism is an ideology and, as any observer can deduce, Tяump has no ideological sensibilities.
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If his programme were ideological, he would have tribunes pushing his policies. As it is, the Republican majority in Congress is supine, nervously waiting to see what Tяump will do next, hoping that it won’t adversely effect their constituents. An ideological Tяumpism would give the Democrats something to get their teeth into, an opportunity to convince the American people of the logical outcome of the fascist administration’s policies.
Instead, Tяump acts on impulse, threatening action one day, lifting the threat another, making it harder for his opponents to make their criticisms stick. While he may claim he’s doing this in order to make America great again, his behaviour appears to be geared towards gaining advantage over competitors and leverage against opponents. And in Tяump’s mind, these two categories are synonymous.
His belligerent targeting of America’s closest allies is unprecedented and threatens economic stability. Why does he focus his ire on Canada, Mexico and the EU? Because they represent a rules based global order that prevents a nation like the US from throwing its considerable weight around. Trade deals are based on negotiation and fairness, two virtues that Tяump has little time for.
Though he is not driven by ideological zeal, it is not true to say that Tяump has no overriding purpose. In the past weeks we’ve witnessed him admonishing judges, lawyers, universities and liberal democracies. Any part of civil society that may hold him to account has come under attack. And where other politicians might secretly bend the rules in order to exact their revenge on opponents, Tяump wants everybody to see his retribution. Sure, it fires up his base, but more importantly, it cows potential opposition.
This rule by intimidation has a name: gangsterism, a term I feel better describes his behaviour than those more commonly deployed by his critics. The aim of gangsterism is to use fear to deprive people of their agency and reward loyalty through the corruption of the system. We can see this happening already in the Republican Party, where members of Congress privately admit that they fear for their lives and those of their families should they publicly take a stand against against Tяump.
This is the atmosphere that Tяump and his cronies are bent of creating. They seek to scare people by threatening to take Greenland or send anyone who damages one of Tesla’s yank tanks to Guantanamo Bay. Their move fast and break things approach to politics is designed to keep the public on edge, but that is not the only reason for their urgency.
Those enabling Tяump know that their claim to absolute power may be curtailed by the mid-term elections in 2027. If they are able, through intimidation, to successfully undermine the rule of law, pollute the public discourse with lies, chill debate by harassing dissenters and destabilise the democratic world order, then there will be less likelihood of any effective pushback when Tяump announces that the elections have to be cancelled in order to make America great again.
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To me the location of the line between fascism and gangsterism doesn’t seem worth debating.
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It’s been decades since my class in Russian, but I think keeping mixed pronunciation with the mixed Latin and Cyrillic characters that would be pronounced like “chump”
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But the other ones…
The internet was quick to respond to this compilation of images with charges of violent far-right ideology, if not outright white supremacism. Hegseth was equally quick to deny, with countercharges of anti-Christian sentiment. While we can’t ever know for sure a true intention or individual interpretation of symbols behind a tattoo, a closer look at the history of these particular images produces an undeniable picture of militant Christianity, drawing on a long history of iconography connected to the Crusades, one of the bloodiest periods of Christian history. It is also a fact that many of these symbols are ubiquitous among far-right communities, seen in events from the Charlottesville rally to the manifesto of the Norwegian far-right shooter Anders Breivik and the engravings on the gun of the Christchurch shooter.
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No doubts whatsoever about the other tattoos.
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