my latest is on the president’s abuse of emergency powers and his psychological and practical interest in crisis government. gift link. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/o…
— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) August 13, 2025 at 5:50 AM
Following up on Betty’s post, while we await further news from Alaska… Gift link:
… “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” said President Trump in a stark attack on the nation’s capital. The solution? Military force. “We’re going to put it in control very quickly, like we did in the southern border.” The president later described Washington as more violent and dangerous than some of “the worst places on earth.”
None of this is true. The Justice Department itself announced in January that crime in the capital is, according to data from its Metropolitan Police Department, “the lowest it has been in over 30 years.” The M.P.D. cites a 26 percent decrease in total violent crime so far this year compared with the same period a year earlier. And the areas around the White House, where the president has made a point of stationing National Guardsmen, are not known for crime or disorder (unless you count the Jan. 6 rioters, pardoned by Trump in one of the first acts of his second term). Despite several high-profile incidents — including an assault on a young member of the “Department of Government Efficiency” — there is no evidence to support the president’s hellish depiction of the District.
But his claims are less reason than pretext. Trump is simply enthralled by the image of a crackdown, especially on those he’s deemed deviant. Recall that he wanted to use the Insurrection Act during the protests of the summer of 2020, asking his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, if soldiers could shoot protesters “in the legs or something.” In addition, and perhaps more than anything, he wants to appear in charge, whether or not he’s accomplishing his goals.
The president’s action in the capital — the first time a president invoked the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 to take over the city’s police — is just the latest in a long list of so-called emergencies he has conjured up to claim unilateral authority over the American people.
In January, alleging an “invasion” of the country, Trump declared an emergency on the border as pretext for the use of federal troops for immigration enforcement. In March, he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 with the claim that a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, was conducting “irregular warfare against the territory of the United States,” a definition of “warfare” that cuts against legal precedent and the plain meaning of the word. Trump used this emergency to unleash immigration authorities on anyone deemed a “gang member,” removing them to the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador.
And in April, he announced a theretofore nonexistent national economic emergency, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to “address the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit.” With this, Trump claimed the power to impose broad tariffs at his absolute discretion, beginning a trade war with much of the world.
In addition, Trump has invoked emergency powers to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court; to punish Brazil for its prosecution of its former president Jair Bolsonaro; and to threaten our northern neighbor, Canada, with import duties…
In a nation made supposedly of laws, we have gambled on the discretion of men to keep the use of crisis authority in check. With Trump, we played a bad hand. Rather than treat emergency powers as a dangerous tool to be wielded with care and caution, this president has used them with reckless abandon as a toy — a means through which he can live his fantasies of strength, domination and authoritarian control.
Beyond the psychological impulse, there is a practical reason that Trump has embraced emergency powers and crisis government through pretense: He can’t do anything else. Look past his boastful claims of deal-making prowess and you’ll see a president who struggles to hold his own in a negotiation of equals and is too acutely solipsistic to persuade a skeptic of his own view. Even his much-vaunted (by subordinates and admirers) trade deals and agreements with institutions of higher education are less exchanges than a form of extortion, in which he uses threats of pain, punishment and legal action to impose a settlement.
Every occupant of the Oval Office is tempted by the immense powers of the presidency. A president with neither the disposition nor the ability to do the work of ordinary democratic politics — of deliberation, negotiation and compromise — is bound to abuse them. And this is all the more true for a president who doesn’t want order as much as he does submission and revenge…
He is abusing lawful authority, as well as outright breaking the law, so that he can construct something above the law — an emergency government that imposes upon and runs roughshod over American freedom. And with every exercise of this ill-gotten power he desires more, proving the minister Jonathan Mayhew’s observation, made a short year before the Stamp Act crisis, that “Power is like avarice, its desire increases by gratification.”
The president’s most famous attribute is that nothing, for him, is ever enough. He has never had enough real estate, or enough wealth, or enough praise, adulation and worship. We should have realized, after his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, that he couldn’t have enough power, either. He still can’t. And only time will tell what that means for our efforts to govern ourselves.
I suspect that, as Trump inevitably works to extend his personal dominion over the entire country, we’ll find renewed value in the insights of our revolutionary forebears. We may even decide to put them to use.
Baud
Two female presidential candidates told us.
Steve LaBonne
It’s exhausting, and there will continue to be heartbreaking damage along the way, but he and the Heritage Foundation clowns pulling his strings don’t begin to have the nous to build anything enduring.
PJ
@Baud: Well, there’s your problem.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: “I’m tired of mommy scolding me. I’m going to misbehave just to spite her.”
PJ
@PJ: Both Hilary and Kamala trounced Trump in their debates, and pointed out on the campaign trail just how bad he would be, but for most Americans, it’s just so much annoying high-pitched buzzing.
Hildebrand
Trump has political/social Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome.
trollhattan
Holy shit, he objectively wants to kill us.
Ned F
It seems he gave up on taking over Panama and Greenland, not flashy enough to arrouse MAGA world.
JML
I’m amazed that the somnolent and complicit NYTimes allowed this opinion to be published. But Bouie nails it.
Steve LaBonne
@trollhattan: This is their approach to any news that contradicts their ideology, as with economic data. Stalin would applaud.
Hildebrand
@Baud: There are far too many folks who will still pretend that misogyny and racism had nothing to do Trump’s victories.
Mike E
@PJ: Hillary/Kamala/Jamelle, thy name is Cassandra!
Steve LaBonne
@JML: I suspect he’ll go the way of Krugman pretty soon.
mappy!
He sees himself as a crime boss Don, making deals with other Dons. the projection, threats of pain and punishment if he doesn’t get that concrete for free. There’s a reason he’s stuck in an eighty’s loop.
XeckyGilchrist
Same reason W wanted a war. Power grab.
Steve LaBonne
@Hildebrand: No, no, it’s economic anxiety. I am preparing a very long comment with few if any paragraph breaks to explain this.
Jackie
Posted on last thread… It’s gonna be a multiple threads day in quick succession, isn’t it. 🤷🏼♀️
Per Kyle Cheney of Politico:
It’s posted on Xitter.
XeckyGilchrist
I mean, Congress could do something about it, NYT. We might as well explore that before “revolutionary” innuendos are necessary. Why don’t you bring that up instead?
Hildebrand
@Steve LaBonne: Please remember to be very clear that said economic anxiety is only felt by the white working class. The common clay must be celebrated now and forever more.
bbleh
Remember also that Fat Lord Fartleroy has said he doesn’t do plans; he “wings it.” He twists and turns (and throws fistfuls of cash that other people earned and handed to him) and wiggles out of things. That’s been his MO his entire life. When he actually jumps into something that requires commitment — real-estate deals, marriages, running casinos or branded retail businesses, etc. — he inevitably fks it up (probably because he’s just too damn stupid to manage anything).
But the one thing he’s really good at is creating a spectacle that captures media attention — the WWE thing. Put the two together and “perpetual crisis” was the nearly inevitable outcome.
He had competent people around him during his first term who managed to contain most of it, but this time around it’s nothing but grifters and sycophants, who are inevitably far from first-rate intellects. It’s Fartleroy Unbound. So ain’t none of this much of a surprise. And … we’re only seven months in.
NaijaGal
They arrested the sandwich throwing DC guy in his upscale condo building, sending 20 officers dressed for a war zone so they could get video of the arrest of this top threat (instead of letting him surrender as he offered). The doorman politely letting them in made it even weirder.
NaijaGal
@XeckyGilchrist: Because Jamelle Bouie knows that the Republicans who control the House and Senate are just fine with everything Trump is doing. Wonder how much longer he’ll be at the New York Times before Trump demands that Bouie be fired. Or maybe he just figures no one important reads a black man’s op eds.
hueyplong
@NaijaGal: Sandwich thrower was a much higher priority for law enforcement than the Epstein perps, especially the big, greasy one with the clown “hair.”
Now NG members can walk the streets free from concerns about coming under the fire of deli projectiles.
WaterGirl
I guess the shorter version, that read simply “because he’s a sociopathic toddler”, didn’t make it past the editor.
hitchhiker
It’s not great to see every single crappy aspect of your country on display, day after day, and know what a joke we’ve become. It’s the cringe aspect that gets to me — I could take it better if some evil genius had maneuvered his way into the authoritarian position.
But this crusty old thug wannabe flashing his stupidity like some pathetic dude opening his trench coat and enjoying the fuck out of all the shocked faces?
Seriously, it turns out that living in a farce is unbearable.
Omnes Omnibus
@XeckyGilchrist: Congress could, but will a GOP controlled Congress do do more than fuck all? I tend to doubt it. Also, pointing out that Trump’s behavior matches things cited in the Declaration of Independence is not “‘revolutionary’ innuendo”. It is a factual statement. Knowing where we are is necessary to figuring out what needs to be done next.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NaijaGal:
Considering what the Ukrainians recently did in their country to prevent bad legislation that would’ve curtailed the independence of government watchdogs, I seriously wonder if we’d pulled something similar here at the US Capitol building that it could’ve halted the “One Big Beautiful Bill” in its tracks like it did to the legislation in Ukraine; or knowing the GOP/Trump, they would’ve simply escalated to what they’re doing now even sooner
zhena gogolia
@hitchhiker: Yeah, he’s not exactly a youngish Jonathan Pryce in a black turtleneck, is he?
XeckyGilchrist
@Omnes Omnibus: My point exactly, so why doesn’t the NYT report about what a POS Congress currently is?
The innuendo part is that last sentence.
Mr. Bemused Senior
According to Paul Krugman facts win in the end. I, an optimist, believe this. Waiting for “the end” is hard.
Old School
aka):
In my opinion, not a chance it would a difference.
jimmiraybob
@NaijaGal:
You can bypass the NYT and look him up on Bluesky (definitely worth a bookmark).
PS You do not have to sign up to read content.
MazeDancer
Confused as to how any Epstein files still exist.
Didn’t Bondi have them disappeared?
Is it because the 1000 FBI witnesses purging Trump from them can’t be removed?
How can Trump be at ris?
p.a.
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I’m waiting for step 1: one of these fucking judges charging tRump’s lawyers with contempt and taking them into custody and jailing them then-and-there.
IANAL and don’t give a shit if it’s not legal or customary: somebody has to start to pay. Somebody has to be made to think twice.
jimmiraybob
“the insights of our revolutionary forebears”
Wow. And this is what I, a white person and howling dog, got raked over the coals for the other day. No hard feelings. We all live and learn.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@hitchhiker: It’s a small thing but Trump whining to Norwegians about “his” Peace Prize is deeply embarrassing not just for him, but for us.
NaijaGal
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They’re in full fascism mode – remember all those trips to Hungary to try to learn and pull off what Orban did in a shorter timespan. Plus a 900 plus page explainer of what they planned to do, ignored by a plurality of voters. Don’t think the Ukraine strategy would have worked here, unfortunately.
jimmiraybob
You can argue as to what name to call his authoritarianism (e.g., fascism, communism, dictatorship, mad-emperor syndrome, man-child tantrum, etc.) but there’s no denying it is authoritarianism. And, there’s a playbook they all use. And stoking fear and chaos is on page one.
At the Office of the Historian on the State Department website, that will probably be disappearing shortly, there is this quote attributed to Adolph Hitler in 1932:
“The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger. Yes, danger from within and without. We need law and order. Without law and order our nation can not survive”.
Substitute “far-left liberal Democrats are threatening us with their …” for “Russia is threatening us with her …” and we can see fairly quickly where Trump and his administration get their talking points.
So, speaking of playbooks, it looks like the Don’s first wife, Ivana Trump (mother of Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric), was right when she claimed that he kept a copy of “Mein Kampf” (actually a book of Hitler’s collected speeches “My New Order”) next to the bed.
NaijaGal
@jimmiraybob: I follow him directly on Bluesky. Ended my NYT subscription last year.
Steve LaBonne
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Some facts at least. People know what they’re paying at the supermarket.
topclimber
@jimmiraybob: Not all our forbears.
jimmiraybob
@NaijaGal:
I haven’t ended my NYT subscription yet but likely will in the not too distant future. And I have been building a library of BlueSky accounts ever since I was tipped off to it here.
jimmiraybob
@topclimber:
Technically they are not my blood ancestors either. But maybe in a philosophical, constitutional sense.
TEL
@JML: I’m wondering if they’re slightly more willing to publish actual anti-Trump opinions because I’m pretty sure the NYT subscriptions are way off, despite what they publicly claim. I’m basing this on my NYT games app (I’m not a subscriber, just play the free daily stuff), which has offered 75% off at least 3 times this year for weeks. I’ve been using the app for years, and have never seen them do that more than once per year before.
Omnes Omnibus
@XeckyGilchrist: It’s a fucking opinion piece. And that particular columnist has written a lot about how much the GOP Congress sucks. I am sorry that this particular column which was about something else wasn’t about what you wanted it to be about.
TEL
@Hildebrand: There are plenty of regular commenters on this blog that will argue that the gender differential in R vs D voting is due to men being more likely to choose who they vote for based on “economic uncertainty”.
Omnes Omnibus
@jimmiraybob: Climb down off your cross. We need the wood.
jimmiraybob
@Omnes Omnibus:
Are you a pilgrim looking to burn witches? Everybody here is on one cross or another.
hueyplong
I saw something short on youtube talking about the announced closure of a bunch of Walmarts. The two people interviewed said they were “done with” Walmart.* Neither interviewee’s comments (at least as edited) mentioned Trump at all. Wouldn’t be surprising to find the same with regard to evil grocers who have failed to Make American Produce Cheap Again despite the wishes of Der Fuehrer.
*Well, yeah. The whole point was that there would no longer be a Walmart anywhere near the interviewees.
Mike E
@jimmiraybob: oh please no, we need the sorcery more than ever now! Messaging ain’t cutting it so let’s try incantations/spells/sacrifices since nothing else is making a dent. I’m only half kidding.
Omnes Omnibus
@jimmiraybob: It wasn’t the Pilgrims who did the Witch Trials. It was the Puritans who came a little later. Also, one does burn witches. One hangs them. It’s heretics that are burned.
cain
@trollhattan:
Later on – “this has never happened before. Nobody could have seen this coming. I will fix what Biden has clearly mismanaged.”
cain
@Ned F:
I don’t know he is busy with other things or maybe his advisors keep shunting him elsewhere.
cain
@Steve LaBonne:
The new york times are seeing a surge of subscriptions being the anti trump.
jimmiraybob
@Omnes Omnibus: OK, let’s just say colonial white Protestant Christian of strong Calvinist or Lutheran bent. And yes, I concede, they were much more civilized in the mid to later 1700s than their earlier European forebears in that they used hanging, pressing and drowning.
trollhattan
Thanks for clearing that up, you murdering fuck.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: One does NOT burn witches…
Sister Golden Bear
Trump Makes It Easier To Get Gun Permits In DC
Not sure they thought this all the way through….
hueyplong
@Omnes Omnibus: They seemed rather keen on the idea in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but they weren’t in Salem.
jimmiraybob
@Omnes Omnibus:
But, how does one use science to determine who is a witch?
Omnes Omnibus
@jimmiraybob: How about this…. No one is oppressing you here. Some people forcefully disagreed with you. You have been around long enough to know that this happens.
jimmiraybob
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m not feeling oppressed. I am doing what everybody else does here in expressing my ideas and pushing back a bit when I think it’s appropriate.
Soprano2
@Steve LaBonne: More like “I hate it when mommy tells me what to do, I’m going to do the opposite because I know better than she does. Plus, her high voice is shrill and unpleasant”.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: sick burn, bro! Or sick hanging–which is it now?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Well, are you a witch or a heretic?
Archon
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Facts do win in the end it just may not be in our lifetimes.
Jackie
@trollhattan:
Is this the formal admission FFOTUS will (again) refuse to relinquish his power and declare himself President for Life?
zhena gogolia
@Jackie: That’s how I read it.
NaijaGal
@Archon: That’s the problem. It’s human nature to want to see truth and justice prevail within one’s lifetime. Obviously, things don’t always happen that way.
I know I wouldn’t want to have the last name Trump in 2040. A lot of explaining to do no matter what corner of the globe you find yourself in with that name.
Jackie
Heh. Does this mean JD is disqualified from being VP? He didn’t bother cheating…
NaijaGal
@Jackie: He’s 79 and his dad lived to 93 but was pretty far gone from dementia by then. I’d be scared if he was in his fifties or even sixties.
Threatening Norway with tariffs if they don’t award him the Nobel Peace Prize makes me think he’s already heading the same way his father did.
Professor Bigfoot
@Mike E: You gotta find the secret for what kind of messaging can be heard by white people.
Jews, Black people and LGBTQIA+ folks seem to hear Democratic messaging just fine.
Obligatory #NotAllWhitePeople
NaijaGal
@Professor Bigfoot: Personally experiencing what Hillary and Kamala warned about and then reframing the discovery in the right bro-approved language is key, I’ve heard.
Sure Lurkalot
Michael Harriot, truth:
bsky.app/profile/thefarce.org/post/3lwhdlbyy7a2k
Professor Bigfoot
@NaijaGal: Would that I’d seen any examples of bro-approved messaging that actually works on white people.
Obligatory #NotAllWhitePeople
Jackie
Per Caitlin Collins, CNN, FFOTUS and Putin will no longer be meeting one on one. FFOTUS will be accompanied by Steve Witkoff and Marco Rubio.
Interesting.
Gin & Tonic
@Jackie: At the very least, we won’t have a repeat of Helsinki. But Witkoff knows nothing at all, and Micro Rubio barely anything more than that. Will there be US interpreters? I can’t actually watch any of this myself, you understand.
MazeDancer
Trump waiting on the red carpet, clapping his hands in excitement at Putin’s arrival.
American troops next to red carpet snapping to for murderous dictator.
Won’t link to video coverage. It’s too nauseating to watch.
Jackie
@Gin & Tonic: I’ve no clue. I’m just catching snippets, and Collins’ announcement was one such snippet.
zhena gogolia
@MazeDancer: I would have my head in the toilet if I watched.
zhena gogolia
I really hate the fantasies I now have on a regular basis.
Raoul Paste
@Sure Lurkalot: Glad you contributed that. The facts are sometimes awful, but we need to hear them.
Archon
@Professor Bigfoot: I’ll tell you the message young white men hear. Right wing youtubers tell them this daily “If you aren’t getting laid, don’t have the career or money you want, if life isn’t what you expected NONE OF IT IS YOUR FAULT. Its due to a wicked brew of feminism, liberalism and institutional anti-white racism”.
danielx
Facts always win in the end.
But the damage in the meantime….
Marc
@Gin & Tonic: Why should there be US interpreters? They can too easily be forced to testify before Congress. Russian interpreters are fine as far as both Trump and Putin are concerned, if they fail to communicate what is needed in either language or fail to keep their mouths shut, there are so many windows to choose from.
Jackie
@MazeDancer: So far it’s been amusing, while nauseating. There was a tug of war over who was going to deplane first. Putin finally stepped out first, with FFOTUS stepping out a few seconds after. <rolling eyes emoji>
MazeDancer
@zhena gogolia: When the friggin American honor guard snapped their heels and rifles, as one, for the war criminal, I gasped.
zhena gogolia
@MazeDancer: WHY, WHY, WHY??? WHY, AMERICA?
Scout211
@Jackie:
Yes, interesting. Better than just Putin and Trump with “interpreters.“ But that’s an extremely low bar.
MazeDancer
@Jackie: Yes, but Trump waited for Putin to walk towards him
Clapping his teeny, tiny hands in excited applause.
MazeDancer
@Scout211: That’s kinda remarkable to have witnesses.
Of course, Putin and Trump rode in the same car together off the tarmac. So time for the threats and pay offs then.
Marc
@Professor Bigfoot: The only bro-approved messaging is based on their own fantasies. It’s hard to subvert such messaging, except perhaps, by a campaign of deception.
Professor Bigfoot
@Sure Lurkalot: Boy, that man just preached a sermon right there.
Chatterton is yet another typical American white man with blinders he cannot take off because, as is typical with his demographic, he is completely unaware of them.
As a demographic, white men really just don’t do introspection.
Obligatory #NotAllWhiteMen
Professor Bigfoot
@Archon: Ain’t a single thing in that message that the Democratic base would stand for.
Fuck those guys, sideways, with rusty farm implements.
**
Obligatory #NotAllWhiteMen
Professor Bigfoot
@Marc: But we keep getting told by white men that the useless, feckless Democrats have a messaging problem, and that’s why they lost to Trump and his white supremacist minions.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
**
Obligatory #NotAllWhiteMen
Old Man Shadow
@Professor Bigfoot: Well, I think most of the fuckers are convinced that if white people ever aren’t the majority in the United States, then the darker hued folks will start treating them the way they and their ancestors treated the former minorities.
Somehow, you have to convince the fuckers that not everyone is a petty asshole and a lot of Americans would like to smash the goddamned hierarchies to pieces.
Frankly, I’m not even sure that would do it, because some shitty assholes get off on hierarchies and bossing people around and being cruel fuckwads.
Marc
@MazeDancer: No need for direct threats or payoffs, assuming everyone who matters gets their cut.
I still suspect the reason Epstein got kicked out of Trump’s circle was that he denied Trump his expected share of Epstein’s cash flow. Art of the deal and all that.
Professor Bigfoot
@Old Man Shadow: In the case of Evangelical Christians, it’s built into the religion– a hierarchy with God above Man above Woman; Black above White; Christian above Muslim or Jew or god forbid atheist with a side order of conert-them-or-kill-them handed down from On High.
Marc
You missed the parts about white people enjoying the benefits of this treatment for generations, losing control to political correctness, black people, and baby killers during the 60s, and are now in a position to restore righteous white government. Most are hearing exactly the message they want.
mark
The National Guard as police. There isn’t a group of people more unqualified for the job. Young people with maybe a high school diploma, no job skills to speak of, doing what they can to get by. The low military pay is going to do a number on their finances.
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne:
[sigh] Oh
godyes! Overgrown toddlers.planetjanet
@jimmiraybob:
There is a difference between the idea of fighting tyrants, which Bouie is implying here and your argument that the founding fathers thought we should pursue equality. Maybe some did but it was far from a consensus opinion.
Quiltingfool
@zhena gogolia:
I hear you, sister. I constantly repeat to myself the saying, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it,” which I think expresses the concept of Unintended Consequences, but damn.
I want so many of these foul creatures gone. Many, many of them.
jimmiraybob
@planetjanet:
I get that 100% I am just saying that there is a philosophical social-political foundation that was passed on. I have no stake in what people think of the founders themselves. And, if I bring up equity, as in E, as in fair, impartial and without bias, that is the framework that I am saying makes D and I possible and necessary. But, like any principle, it is a goal and at the same time a weapon. Dems should own them not the fascists. Maybe I’m wrong.
Miki
I keep waiting for the Gong Show giant hook to grab Trump around the neck and drag him off stage. It happened with his daily Covid pressers after he pushed bleach and UV light treatment.
Each time he doesn’t show up now is another hook, wielded by someone we don’t know, but at least he’s off stage. That’s still one of the best ways to neutralize this asshole.
jimmiraybob
@planetjanet:
Also too, I had an interesting exchange with an actual MAGA white supremacist yesterday at a friend’s FB pub’s comments section. I asked him if he supported the constitution and law. He said, yes, that he supported equal application of the law but when I brought up that equal application was different than equity in the law he had no response. I may also have used DEI is as American as apple pie.
So, I got a MAGA white supremacist to shut up ….. at least till he spouts off more BS again.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@jimmiraybob: how do you use science to prove a witch?
Simple: you tie her up & toss her in a pond. If she doesn’t drown, she’s a witch, so you fish her out & hang her. If she does drown, you can now give her body Christian burial as it’s now been proven she wasn’t a witch.
I bet you thought you were joking when you posted that. If only.
blogs.loc.gov/law/2022/02/swimming-a-witch-evidence-in-17th-century-english-witchcraft-trials/
@Marc: word. I’ll bet that’s exactly what it was.
Anne Laurie
Worse still: Chatterton identifies as Black (he’s biracial). If you listen to his haters (of which there are many), his career success is based not on his literary talent, but on being One of the Good Ones, performing for right-wing audiences :
Matt McIrvin
@Archon: A lot of it isn’t their fault, it’s because they were lied to by rich malefactors and peddlers of toxic masculinity and they never figured out this shit doesn’t work, but the blame is being applied entirely in reverse.
Eyeroller
@Omnes Omnibus: Huh? “Witches” were always burned in Europe. They weren’t hanged. It’s true that the Salem witches were hanged, but the settlers were not Catholic so burning at the stake wasn’t really part of their practice. (The one man in Salem accused of witchcraft who was pressed to death was being tortured to confess, not being executed at that point.). AFAIK nobody was ever burned at the stake for anything in the US. Maybe you are objecting to the popular idea that the Salem witches were burned, and that certainly was not the case.
There also isn’t a lot of theological difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans, just the former being Separatists with the latter wanting to reform the Church of England. Both were fairly extremist Calvinists, a theology that has reached its reductio ad absurdum in “prosperity gospel.”
Matt McIrvin
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?
ruckus
@Marc:
Epstein’s cash flow may have fallen because of all the news attention. If nothing else his customers didn’t want to be exposed as being customers. It may have upset their home and business lives.
ruckus
@MazeDancer:
They didn’t do it for asshole, they did it because they were ordered to. Their duty is to follow orders. Now if an order is obviously illegal then one didn’t have to follow it. But coming to attention as an honor guard is the basic principle of the job.
They are military and their duty follows rules that would never apply to civilians. It was that way when I served, it had been that way for at least decades before then and I’d bet money that it hasn’t changed in all the decades since. And I served in the USN Shore Patrol full time for my last 2 months in. You do what you are told, or pay the price, no matter if you want to or not. Now if it is an illegal order, like shoot someone the person in charge doesn’t like for doing absolutely nothing wrong, it is your duty to NOT obey.
jimmiraybob
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: “I bet you thought you were joking …”
Technically, I was making reference to a Monty Python skit that was riffing on weighing a suspected witch against a duck to see if said suspect might float or not. I guess you had to be there.
ruckus
@Old Man Shadow:
Well, I think most of the fuckers are convinced that if white people ever aren’t the majority in the United States, then the darker hued folks will start treating them the way they and their ancestors treated the former minorities.
And after many decades, hell, centuries of abuse and death for the color of their skin, including some current day to day bullshit, lack of jobs for many and ongoing mistreatment and resentment of an at the very least minimal percentage of white people still being racist some will still deserve it.