I think I've found the best yet explainer for Trump and GOP strategy post November 3. They are engaged in a form of play therapy verywellfamily.com/what-is-play-t….
There are two main forms of play therapy, directive and non-directive. At present, Trump is engaged in the non-directive form of play therapy. verywellfamily.com/what-is-play-t….
When Trump summons aides to discuss his second-term goals and appointments, he is taking part in "imaginative play" that allows him to work through his own psychic challenges verywellfamily.com/what-is-play-t….
Play therapy assumes that most children will find their own solutions to most problems.
But with very mentally disturbed children, more intrusive forms of intervention are required.
Patient Trump may have arrived at that stage, and his guardians will need to act accordingly.
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Biden making the same error w/r/t Israel that he previously made with Ukraine: trying to micro-manage from a distance somebody else's defensive war by limiting categories of weapons. This error doesn't limit war. This error prolongs war, by denying the ally the means of success.
I often think the Biden foreign policy would produce more success if its architects were less clever. "Give the Ukrainians/Israelis enough that they don't lose, but not enough to win" is an idea to baffle all lesser minds.
The micro-management of Israel's war is one part of a much bigger scheme: an Arab force to police Gaza, reform of the Palestinian Authority, a Saudi-US defense agreement, etc. etc.
Less clever people would have arrived at a simpler plan: fight Hamas until it's beaten.
Every dictator who ever seized power justified his coup as an official act for the good of the state.
Between November 2020 and January 2021, Donald Trump attempted a coup d'etat. Fortunately, power is harder to seize in the United States than in other countries. Fortunately too the outcome of the 2020 election was too clear to be subverted. Fortunately also ...
Fortunately also Trump's coup was countered by constitutionally loyal Republicans like his own vice president. Fortunately finally, the would-be coup-makers were unusually stupid, crazy, lazy, and inept. But still - Trump as president attempted a coup d'etat.
The defendant's presence at his criminal trial is not an inconvenience or imposition, as Trump's partisans complain. The defendant's presence is a *right,* guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. 1/x
The right to be present at one's trial is precious. But it is not absolute. The Supreme Court has ruled that presence at a trial can be forfeited by persistently bad behavior. 2/x
In Illinois v Allen (1970), the Supreme Court considered three options for dealing with "disruptive, contumacious, stubbornly defiant defendants": binding and gagging them, holding them in civil contempt, or temporarily removing them from the courtroom until they behave. 3/x
No big deal, just the second-largest newspaper in French Canada caricaturing Jews as vampires. lapresse.ca/actualites/car…
The Jew as vampire is one of the deepest myths of western culture. The 1922 film Nosferatu that inspired the La Presse cartoon also inspired Nazi cartoonists of the Third Reich anumuseum.org.il/blog/myth-vamp…
La Presse has removed the image, here's a screen shot. It substitutes Benjamin Netanyahu's face in an iconic still from the 1922 movie, Nosferatu. That film was riddled with antisemitic images and themes and directly inspired antisemitic cartoons in the Nazi press of the 1920s and 1930s.