Right - it feels good is all.

In the big picture, once someone is engaging in unlawful behavior, some part of society immediately tunes out and sides with authorities. The scenario that moves the Overton Window is one in which a person does everything right and still gets treated like a criminal.

My rule is: You can’t win a legal case on the sidewalk. If you’re being detained unlawfully and officers are not putting your life in danger, then comply and fight it out in court (legal and public opinion).

Basically, if Rosa Parks had punched her arresting officer, she would‘ve lost *the* battle.

What are we even doing here? How do people just go along with this? How is it that 99% of people in any position of power or influence either have no integrity or are willing to sell their soul for five more minutes of relevance?

this entire administration operates on repressed “Please love me, daddy!” trauma

UNITED SHTATESH OF AMERICA

AND he’s using this speech to riff about calling the army into US cities.

This is what he wants the international community to see.

That larger, nefarious, selfish reason? To have a pretense to label Venezuelans as enemy combatants so ICE and Border Patrol can fast-track brutal, heartless deportations.

As a Trump biographer, you more than anyone knows that when Trump does a generally agreeable thing, it’s not because of goodwill - it’s because there’s a larger, nefarious, selfish reason. And of course the media is always right there to hail him as a principled leader.

With all my soul I don’t want that to be the case, because I want to believe that our leaders have some compassion and empathy, but in this situation…there’s no other plausible explanation. And that makes me feel sick.

I’ve seen my country do a lot of evil things in my four decades on this planet.

The CECOT scandal is the most evil thing the US has perpetrated in my lifetime.

I don’t know where America goes from here, but one thing I do know is we won’t - and shouldn’t - survive if we can’t condemn this evil.

Through condemning any soul to CECOT - let alone innocent people - Trump, Noem, and Bukele have demonstrated that they are the most wicked form of mankind. I would argue that they’re deserving of punishment in CECOT but I have too much empathy for the human condition to even say they belong there.

3) I don’t say this lightly: That our country *knowingly* sent anyone to CECOT - let alone scores of men who did nothing of the type that a reasonable person would deem fit for punishment in a concentration camp - is unconscionable. It’s a level of moral depravity I can’t fathom.

con’t

2) In light of #1, it’s clear that Bari Weiss - or whoever pulled the segment - was operating in bad faith. The facts presented stand on their own, and there is no ‘other side’ that needs to be offered for context.

con’t

I say this with all sincerity: I once worked at a psychiatric hospital, and Trump’s mannerisms and affect tonight were indistinguishable from that of the hundreds of manic bipolar patients I helped treat.

If the GOP has any credibility, Trump’s address tonight will send the same shockwaves through their party that Biden’s debate performance did for the Democrats. This loud, manic, and unnecessary diatribe was a 20-minute own goal of epic proportions.

I don’t think enough people recognize the GOP’s plan:

1) Use gerrymandering to tip the House midterms to Rs
2) If that doesn’t work, claim election fraud and delay swear-in of Ds
3) If that doesn’t work, say the House can’t swear in new Ds because they’re “too radical” and “want to destroy America”