John Ganz at The Nation writes about how Trumpworld offers "gangster Gemutlichkeit." The big man gives you a wink, slaps you on the back, and you feel part of the "family." You're not a made man, and he'll feed you to the wolves on a whim, but you feel like you're in the social club back room, where the action is, laughing with the lads at the prissy "prosecutor" and the eat-your-peas libs.
Oh, and, of course, one of Trump's main motives for running again was to keep HIMSELF out of jail.
Yup. Trump has always been a wannabe mob boss. I’ve idly wondered how much of his popularity is due to our culture glamorizing (more or less) the mob, from The Godfather to Goodfellas to The Sopranos to Penguin. We just love our mobsters!
It's a certainty that there'd be no Gaetz in the room unless the prissy Reps in the house decided he was a childmolesting/enslaving/pimp (just barely) too far. The speaker sounds so flustered about it all with his Very Serious Hope no one releases the transcripts and the backgrounders...
The one outlier worth watching is the sense that OF COURSE he'll be struck down by the Senate, which will then cover them sufficiently for consenting on all the other magaminions in queue. Gaetz is eminently overboard-heavable – the entire nation would line up for the opportunity – so it's easy to take credit for it whilst shoving thru all the rest without an advise nor consent fare thee well...
Imagine the Senate giving up its 240-year-old constitutional power to take credit for nominations, or take pride in killing them, over MATT F GAETZ.
What a thought. Does he have kids in public school? Does the family participate in the traditional watermelon-pit-spitting competition? I have a picture of all these Russian ex-Mafiya inhabiting American suburbs. Some of them I even kind of like (in my fantasies), like Lev Parnas.
Oh, if only we had seed-spitting contests here in this hotbed of social rest!
I actually have never seen the guy, tho the missus and other friends have seen him many times (mostly out in the shrubberies, crouched over his phone). Our (old, esteemed architectural pile of an) apartment complex is genuinely complex, and the side he (and his wife – don't know about kids) lives in has a separate concierge desk and separate, fobbed entrance to personal elevators.
Your fantasy reminds me of that day long ago when I first recognized what a haven for Russians the San Francisco bay area had become. Was walking the strand along Half Moon Bay one weekend afternoon and suddenly realized everyone I passed was conversing in Russian. Couples, groups, kids...just out for a walk by the water....
I was chuckling at the plane story, too. Of course it went down this way. Someone, John Scalzi, I think, has dubbed it “Trump’s Razor”: the stupidest explanation is probably correct.
I was reading earlier the scoop about Pete Hegseth's alleged sexual assault of a few years ago and the tone of what I was reading seemed to contain a hope that this might sink his ship and all I could think was that it only cemented the fact that Trump would now hold the entirety of the federal holdings in the Redwood Forests hostage for pulping timber to get him in.
John Ganz at The Nation writes about how Trumpworld offers "gangster Gemutlichkeit." The big man gives you a wink, slaps you on the back, and you feel part of the "family." You're not a made man, and he'll feed you to the wolves on a whim, but you feel like you're in the social club back room, where the action is, laughing with the lads at the prissy "prosecutor" and the eat-your-peas libs.
Oh, and, of course, one of Trump's main motives for running again was to keep HIMSELF out of jail.
Of course
Yup. Trump has always been a wannabe mob boss. I’ve idly wondered how much of his popularity is due to our culture glamorizing (more or less) the mob, from The Godfather to Goodfellas to The Sopranos to Penguin. We just love our mobsters!
You are correct.
It's a certainty that there'd be no Gaetz in the room unless the prissy Reps in the house decided he was a childmolesting/enslaving/pimp (just barely) too far. The speaker sounds so flustered about it all with his Very Serious Hope no one releases the transcripts and the backgrounders...
The one outlier worth watching is the sense that OF COURSE he'll be struck down by the Senate, which will then cover them sufficiently for consenting on all the other magaminions in queue. Gaetz is eminently overboard-heavable – the entire nation would line up for the opportunity – so it's easy to take credit for it whilst shoving thru all the rest without an advise nor consent fare thee well...
Imagine the Senate giving up its 240-year-old constitutional power to take credit for nominations, or take pride in killing them, over MATT F GAETZ.
Should probly add here that Boris is my neighbor…
What a thought. Does he have kids in public school? Does the family participate in the traditional watermelon-pit-spitting competition? I have a picture of all these Russian ex-Mafiya inhabiting American suburbs. Some of them I even kind of like (in my fantasies), like Lev Parnas.
Oh, if only we had seed-spitting contests here in this hotbed of social rest!
I actually have never seen the guy, tho the missus and other friends have seen him many times (mostly out in the shrubberies, crouched over his phone). Our (old, esteemed architectural pile of an) apartment complex is genuinely complex, and the side he (and his wife – don't know about kids) lives in has a separate concierge desk and separate, fobbed entrance to personal elevators.
Your fantasy reminds me of that day long ago when I first recognized what a haven for Russians the San Francisco bay area had become. Was walking the strand along Half Moon Bay one weekend afternoon and suddenly realized everyone I passed was conversing in Russian. Couples, groups, kids...just out for a walk by the water....
I was chuckling at the plane story, too. Of course it went down this way. Someone, John Scalzi, I think, has dubbed it “Trump’s Razor”: the stupidest explanation is probably correct.
I was reading earlier the scoop about Pete Hegseth's alleged sexual assault of a few years ago and the tone of what I was reading seemed to contain a hope that this might sink his ship and all I could think was that it only cemented the fact that Trump would now hold the entirety of the federal holdings in the Redwood Forests hostage for pulping timber to get him in.