signalmankenneth
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If you're a burn-it-all-down, Freedom-Caucusing Trumpeteer, then here, in a NYT op-ed [2] from USC law professor Edward Kleinbard, is a comforting thought to start your week: "Sometime in October, the United States is likely to default on its obligation to pay its bills as they come due, having failed to raise the federal debt ceiling. This will cost the Treasury tens of billions of dollars every year for decades to come in higher interest charges and probably trigger a severe recession."
Kinda chokes you up, does it not? This is the sort of nihilism that undergirds the slaphappy recklessness of Trumpism; or, if you prefer, the recklessness that undergirds its nihilism. More than two-hundred years of fiscal stability whisked away in a thermonuclear flash of utterly mindless demagoguery — a Trumpian triumph of We don't need no stinking expertise. The self-described "king of debt" warned the nation last summer of his debt-ceiling notions:
"I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me," he brayed in a CBS interview [3]. "I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing." The interviewer asked, "How do you renegotiate the debt?" The aspiring king of 2016 answered, "You go back and you say, hey guess what, the economy crashed. I’m going to give you back half."
Again, kinda chokes you up, does it not? It sure as hell does me, in a gag-reflex kinda way. Trump's casual dismissiveness of millions thrown out of work — "the economy crashed" — so that his new business venture of the United States government can screw its debtors — "I'm going to give you back half" — is of course classic Trumpism: stupidity, ignorance, and cruelty to the core.
If those leadership "qualities" were concentrated merely at the very top, we'd be safe. But they're not; they are embedded as well in the House's Freedom Caucus. As Prof. Kleinbard notes, that particular gang of morons "has made it clear that if the House leadership balks on their demands for major [entitlement] cuts in the 2018 budget, they’ll refuse to vote on raising the debt ceiling." What's more, moronity at the top has its in-house enabler in OMB director Mick Mulvaney, who, shockingly, "has intimated that breaching the debt ceiling would not be that consequential … because the government can 'prioritize' its bill payments, so that interest on Treasury debt will be paid on a current basis, while other bills sit unpaid." But as Kleinbard further notes, "prioritization is default by another name"; "the Constitution does not contemplate that some claims are more senior than others."
Nonetheless, Trumpism lives in a happy world of total isolation from sane contemplation. Axios [4] relates two September scenarios, the second of which involves pure Trumpain madness. "Top Hill sources believe the most likely scenario is that a coalition of Republican leaders, Republican moderates and Democrats cobble together a bill that extends government funding for three months … and raises the debt limit…. But sources close to Trump say he's dead serious about building an impressive wall [which Congress isn't] and will go crazy when he realizes Congress has no plans to pay for it."
And there's the ineffable kicker: Trump will go crazy, as in has gone crazy, as in is crazy. This POTUS, as psychologically pressured from the Russia probes as Captain Queeg was on the witness stand, is likely to invite a debt-ceiling crisis just as casually as he attempted to alter military policy via a tweet. Anything to distract from the accumulating evidence of his crimes, both foreign and domestic, both high and misdemeanor, both collective and individual.
In short, his past criminal activities are less acutely troubling than his reigning sociopathic insanity — his carefree willingness to energize his diminishing base by burning it all down.
By P.M. Carpenter
Kinda chokes you up, does it not? This is the sort of nihilism that undergirds the slaphappy recklessness of Trumpism; or, if you prefer, the recklessness that undergirds its nihilism. More than two-hundred years of fiscal stability whisked away in a thermonuclear flash of utterly mindless demagoguery — a Trumpian triumph of We don't need no stinking expertise. The self-described "king of debt" warned the nation last summer of his debt-ceiling notions:
"I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me," he brayed in a CBS interview [3]. "I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing." The interviewer asked, "How do you renegotiate the debt?" The aspiring king of 2016 answered, "You go back and you say, hey guess what, the economy crashed. I’m going to give you back half."
Again, kinda chokes you up, does it not? It sure as hell does me, in a gag-reflex kinda way. Trump's casual dismissiveness of millions thrown out of work — "the economy crashed" — so that his new business venture of the United States government can screw its debtors — "I'm going to give you back half" — is of course classic Trumpism: stupidity, ignorance, and cruelty to the core.
If those leadership "qualities" were concentrated merely at the very top, we'd be safe. But they're not; they are embedded as well in the House's Freedom Caucus. As Prof. Kleinbard notes, that particular gang of morons "has made it clear that if the House leadership balks on their demands for major [entitlement] cuts in the 2018 budget, they’ll refuse to vote on raising the debt ceiling." What's more, moronity at the top has its in-house enabler in OMB director Mick Mulvaney, who, shockingly, "has intimated that breaching the debt ceiling would not be that consequential … because the government can 'prioritize' its bill payments, so that interest on Treasury debt will be paid on a current basis, while other bills sit unpaid." But as Kleinbard further notes, "prioritization is default by another name"; "the Constitution does not contemplate that some claims are more senior than others."
Nonetheless, Trumpism lives in a happy world of total isolation from sane contemplation. Axios [4] relates two September scenarios, the second of which involves pure Trumpain madness. "Top Hill sources believe the most likely scenario is that a coalition of Republican leaders, Republican moderates and Democrats cobble together a bill that extends government funding for three months … and raises the debt limit…. But sources close to Trump say he's dead serious about building an impressive wall [which Congress isn't] and will go crazy when he realizes Congress has no plans to pay for it."
And there's the ineffable kicker: Trump will go crazy, as in has gone crazy, as in is crazy. This POTUS, as psychologically pressured from the Russia probes as Captain Queeg was on the witness stand, is likely to invite a debt-ceiling crisis just as casually as he attempted to alter military policy via a tweet. Anything to distract from the accumulating evidence of his crimes, both foreign and domestic, both high and misdemeanor, both collective and individual.
In short, his past criminal activities are less acutely troubling than his reigning sociopathic insanity — his carefree willingness to energize his diminishing base by burning it all down.
By P.M. Carpenter
