Abby Zimet: Weird Drivel and Loser Shit | This Looks Like Terrible

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Our authoritarian theater lurches on amidst the forging of a police state by an avenging “Peace President,” equally deranged and malignant, who conflates lies, raves, phantasms – see wacko AI videos – with reality. The five-time draft-dodger, with his neo-Nazi Secretary of War Crimes, just rabidly urged a roomful of silent generals to join a “war from within” against their own citizens, for now in Portland. Reviews of his new reality show: “Fat Man and Little Boy bombed.” Also, “The commander-in-chief is not okay.”

Despite his manifest unfitness and underwater approval ratings- “People hate this mad king shit” – he and his vile cohorts are busy erasing rights and building an internal legal and military force aimed at silencing skeptics, opponents and “terrorist networks,” aka most of us, in the time-honored name of “national security.” This week he also got to play peacemaker with a war criminal, spewing “fatuous bleats” as he proclaimed “one of the great days ever in civilization” at the signing of a Gaza “peace plan” that included no Palestinians, leans hard into Israel’s genocidal vision, and puts a bloody ”stamp of legitimacy” on their effort to ”achieve through politics what the war of extermination could not achieve on the ground.” Hamas must take it or leave it: “There is no negotiation here. There is an American plan.” If Hamas rejects it, Israelwill “finish the job” thanks to the plan’s convenient loopholes; Trump eagerly affirmed they’d “have our full backing to do what (you) have to do.”

Mostly, the alleged master of the art of the deal has just been refusing to negotiate at home. The current shutdown is the unsurprising result of a so-called president who in response to queries about discussions of differences, said one official, “read (sic) all the shit they’re asking for, and said, ‘On second thought, go fuck yourself’“; then he reversed himself, talked to Jeffries and Schumer, but seemed unaware of the ACA health insurance stalemate that largely triggered the crisis. The last few days, as his party literally ran away from the fray “on vacation” rather than try to hammer out an agreement, he helpfully contributed to the discourse on keeping government open by posting a series of what-the-actual-fuck, “straight-up-Orwell’s-1984” deep fake videos, each more bizarre and offensive than the last, thus confirming the widespread belief that, ”Donald Trump has always lived in his own world of lies and ignorance and growing misinformation – he has no idea what reality is.”

Thus, his batshit post announcing, “MEDBED HOSPITALS: THE NEW ERA IN HEALTHCARE,” offering us all magic, imaginary “medbeds” that cure cancer, reverse aging, regrow body parts, and keep a zombie JFK Jr. alive. The news grew from a longtime QAnon conspiracy theory that government elites have been hoarding this medical marvel in tunnels for themselves so, say, after a hard day of trafficking children out of a pizza parlor, Hillary Clinton can go home, lie on her medbed, and regrow her missing limbs. No more: Now, “Every American will soon receive their own MedBed card,” with grifters selling $11,000 “medbed generators.” This, to be clear, as Trump and the GOP actively work to gut health care protections for millions. His post was deleted after about 12 hours, long enough for many to wonder, “Is it bad when the leader of a country is so cognitively impaired he can no longer determine what’s real?” and for Gavin Newsom to re-post with, “DONALD TRUMP HAS LOST IT.”

That was premature. There was more. Soon after, there was Trump’s re-post of a video titled, “The Great Replacement is no longer conspiracy theory!” Based on a Newsmax segment, it blamed Dems for encouraging hordes of undocumented migrants to come here to vote, with over two million getting illegal Social Security numbers. That was followed by a now-infamous, grotesquely racist, staggeringly juvenile post, “one of his most demented ever” and National Embarrassment #742, featuring a deep fake (Jewish) Schumer and (African-American) Jeffries, with inexplicable Mexican music, sombrero, waxed moustache, telling reporters,. “We have no voters left because of all of our woke, trans bullshit.” Etc. America: “This is sick.” Jeffries: “Next time you have something to say to me, say it to my face.” He noted House and Senate Dems “are here, on duty, ready to fund the government. Bigotry will get you nowhere. Do your job.” Then he posted a photo of the pedo besties with, “This is real.”

Speaking of: In more weirdness, pardoned Jan.6 QAnon shaman Jacob Chansley sued Trump – also Musk, Israel, the NSA, IMF, World Bank etc – for $40 trillion, claiming he’s the rightful president, and at this point why not; he also trashed Trump for not releasing the Epstein files. Meanwhile, Trump’s so out of it he thought Whiskey Pete’s Warrior Fest was for other countries’ top brass: “Isn’t it nice people are coming from all over the world to be with us?” Then he veered to “It’s just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily.” Maybe that’s because Kegseth is reportedly both ”crumbling” and out of control: Spooked, paranoid, “even more manic, dude is crawling out of his skin” since Kirk’s killing; into vain “total princess shit”; throwing “full-blown tantrums” if challenged – on his “pussy-ass-bitch” Department of War name swap, extra-judicial killings of fishermen in the Caribbean, critics deeming his ideas for change “myopic and potentially irrelevant.” Each time, “He just WENT OFF.”

So sure, great to see a loose cannon and “drunken freak” Secretary of Bravado with the power to unilaterally summon to Quantico from around the world, at the cost of millions of dollars, over 800 U.S. generals and admirals with much-decorated decades in the service and unequaled command expertise to serve as extras for a MAGA pep rallED talk/ lecture about meritocracy, “warrior ethos” and “a return to the highest male standards” from a greasy, wildly unqualified former Major in the National Guard and ex-host of a Fox News weekend program with a messy history of alcoholism, incompetence, sexual infidelity, rape, and threatening national security by butt-dialing classified information to a reporter – all of which could have been “accomplished,” a term doing a lot of lifting here, in a simple email or leaked Signal chat. No wonder, standing before a gaudy massive flag like a knock-off of George C. Scott in Patton, the ignoble Pete “gave off a lot of small dick energy.” 

Once he opened his mouth, it got worse. Lamely citing Trump’s “Liberation Day” for his botched tariffs, Hegseth declared. “Today is another Liberation Day – the liberation of America’s warriors.” Rattling off a list of tired culture war grievances, he vowed no more DEI, identity months, “frivolous complaints” about ethics or misconduct, “dudes in dresses,” “climate change worship,” “stupid rules of engagement…We are done with that shit!” “Every day, we have to be preparing for war, not defense. We’re training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not defend,” he raved. “We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy…We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.” In short, no more Mr. Nice Legal Guy. “You kill people and break things for a living,” he snarled. “You are not politically correct, and don’t necessarily belong (in) polite society.” So: Let your bigot flag fly. Make war crimes, sexual assault, hazing great again.

And if you don’t like it, resign. Given the stony silence, many didn’t, especially once he went after the beardos – usually Black and/or Muslim men – and the fatsos, warning of new physical fitness standards: “If the Secretary of War can do regular, hard (work outs), so can every member of our joint force.” The reviews – this is a reality TV show, right? – were brutal. “Hegseth brought the generals before him to fat shame them (and brag that he can do push-ups)…I fucking want my money back, asshole,” read one. Also, “Pete will always be a National Guardsman assigned to a civil affairs unit who got a bunch of Crusader tattoos in his 40s because he wants you to think he’s a cool, war-criming operator instead of an online wife-beating loser saying what it means to be a WARFIGHTER to a roomful of legit guys who all outrank him,” and, “I would posit it’s more unacceptable to see a Christo-fascist, tattoo-festooned Fox dunk-tank clown in the halls of the Pentagon, frankly, but maybe that’s just me.”

Military critics called his appearance “embarrassing,” “ridiculous,” “shocking,” “insulting,” “offensive,” “self-aggrandizing.” Jamelle Bouie called it “some of the most loser shit I have ever seen.” A veterans advocate noted “people (who) have served 20 or 30 years in uniform do not need (Hegseth) to tell them about warrior ethos” or “lethality”: “He’s barely qualified to host Fox News. Has he no honor?” Navy commander Bobby Jones tore into a sleazy “Sec bro” who thinks push-ups can replace “critical thinking under pressure…honor, courage and commitment.” On his bigoted, divisive views on race, gender, DEI: “WHAT?! You’re kidding me. You have the nerve to think you have the right to be the arbiter if someone of color or a woman deserves to be there? When you weren’t even good enough to make my rank? And you try to erase their history? You need to take the example of the people you tried to lecture today and hopefully live your life more like them. The world will be better off.”

You’d think it couldn’t get more cringe after Hegseth ended with a histrionic, Dr. Strangelove-like, “WE ARE THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR! GODSPEED!” (Cue, “There’s no fighting in the War Room!“) Improbably, it did when the world’s most famous five-time draft dodger, criminal and pedophile lumbered onstage to join “a middle manager dry drunk cosplaying tough to lecture US generals on the Constitution and loyalty.” “A drunk and a rapist walk into a bar…” noted one online sage. Another: “Hegseth: No fatties in the chain of command! Trump: Waddles onto stage.” The seemingly heavily sedated Private Bonespurs spoke slowly, slurring words in “an unusually meandering speech,” “a disgraceful and unnerving performance” and “a nakedly partisan appeal that violated every standard of American civil-military relations.” It was also “an inexcusable strategic risk (to) convey an inane message” and “a waste of time for people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing.”

He insulted Biden 11 times: “They looked at him falling down stairs every day,” with a long weird detour about stairs and how Obama – “I had zero respect for him” – would “bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, bop, bop.” There was his love of the word “tariff,” America becoming “rich as hell,” “PEOPLE COMING IN FROM INSANE ASYLUMS,” the wars he ended and “millions and millions of lives” he saved, the rigged election, the autopen, the fecking Gulf of America, “the concept of battleships” like in Victory At Sea, the “beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper, with the real gold writing” when he signs things: “Everyone loves my signature,” Most significantly, he “told a roomful of silent generals to join a war from within,” that “we’re under invasion,” it’s a “big part of war now,” “we should use some of these dangerous (blue) cities as training grounds for our military,” and their first priority is “defending the homeland,” which has a vague Germanic ring to it we can’t quite place.

Takeaways: “The president told the military American citizens are the enemy and he wants them to practice war on them. I think this is called Treason.” “We want you to wage war on your fellow Americans. Also in 13 hours you aren’t getting paid.” “Bad actors, bad movie. The director should be ashamed. 0/10.” “He billed the taxpayers millions to fly every general to Washington to hear this weirdo drivel.” “The commander in chief is not okay,” wrote Tom Nichols of his “farrago of fantasy, menace, and autocratic peacocking.” “It’s one thing to serve it up to an adoring MAGA crowd, but another to aim this kind of sludge at military officers” used to treating presidents with respect, and assuming they’re “basically normal. You have to wonder who will shield them from the impulses of the person they just saw on stage.” He cites a famed 1973 moment when an Air Force nuclear-missile officer asked in a training, “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?”

One of many cartoons about Hegseth’s Warrior Jamboree. From Democratic Underground

And here we are. The stoic, professional top brass in Quantico sat dead silent, stone-faced, through the madness. At its end, some limply applauded but most remained silent; in the limited images released, they look pissed, as if “‘Bitch, please’ were a photo.” Still, with or without their approval, the regime’s “war from within” goes on apace. On Sept. 27, Trump announced he would “provide all necessary Troops to protect War-ravaged Portland” and any ICE Facilities “under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists” with “Full Force, if necessary.” He was reportedly hepped up from watching an earlier bogus segment on Fox showing two hostile scenes in Portland that turned out to be from 2020 BLM protests. But who needs facts? “I didn’t know that was still going on,” he yammered. “Portland is unbelievable – the destruction of the city. These are paid agitators…What they’ve done to that place…They just burned the place down. It’s just, it’s like living in hell.” JD nods along.

Hours after announcing the deployment of 200 National Guard to hellish Portland, city and state officials sued Trump, Hegseth, and ICE Barbie to block their “patently unlawful” move based on “wildly hyperbolic pretext…Their characterization of Portland as ‘war-ravaged’ is pure fiction.” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson on their “fruitless show of force: The number of necessary troops is zero, in Portland and any other American city…The president will not find lawlessness or violence here unless he plans to perpetrate it.” The threat drew several hundred protesters – far more than the handful that have been turning up for months – overseen by federal snipers on rooftops. “We are average, everyday citizens tired of (Trump’s) illegal actions,” said the wife of a veteran, who called the deployment “a moral injury.” Around then the addled, reality show nitwit who makes policy based on what he sees on biased, bigoted, fantastical Fox News was dumbfounded to learn that he, and they, might be wrong.

In an interview, he described talking to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, who tried to set him straight. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?‘” he exclaimed. “My people tell me different. They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.” Reality bites, and #WarRavagedPortland bit back. Last weekend, Portlanders – “Stay safe, stay weird” – flooded social media with images of their hellish life: Gardens, picnics, drummers, runners, street fairs, cherry blossoms, food, bikes, dancing, Taco trucks, dystopian bread lines, pastry-filled farmers markets, blissed-out dogs rolling in grass: “Here’s our dog writhing in agony on the killing fields of war-ravaged Portland.” There were trees wrapped in multi-hued knitting – “We knit at dawn” – marauding hordes amidst sun-dappled roses – “Oh, the demise of humanity!” – and a brave beer in a koozie: “It’s unsafe to even walk your beer down the street without protection!”

Chilling tales emerged of violent kittens attacking toilet paper – “WAR AND DEVASTATION HAPPENING IN PORTLAND! KITTENS DESTROYING VERY EXPENSIVE TP !” – long lines for brunch – “Hellscape doesn’t begin to describe it” – and “leaves not staying on the trees anymore from so much violence. Good God, it’s horrific.” At an outdoor fair, “kids were chasing geese, people were selling tie-died shirts, and one sick son of a bitch was selling Nepalese food. It was crazy.” Video revealed an empty, silent ICE building “under siege” – “By that definition, my house is under siege”; one from Sen. Ron Wyden showed the same placid scene, with a few protesters across the street. One harried victim described “sipping my iced pumpkin latte and strolling past historic Victorians, boutiques selling $300 clogs, women in Eileen Fisher cardigans debating olive oil varieties (and) too many options for artisanal cheese, and so many dogs who eat better than I do. I couldn’t help but wonder – if this is war, where do I enlist?”

Survivors from other cities sent thoughts and prayers: From “war ravaged DC,” “post-apocalyptic Los Angeles,” “the liberal hellscape of Denver, where they’re eating the dogs!” Many sent moral support – “The Portlish are a strong and noble people. We stand with you” – and one eager citizen said she “can’t wait for the National Guard to come clean up Seattle – there is litter everywhere.” There were searing war dispatches. “We barely survived today. Everything is in chaos. We began the day with huckleberry pancakes…They were terrifyingly delicious.” “Dearest Mother, I write to you from the front lines (where) our battalion bravely holds the line between the artisanal kombucha stand (and) the enemy, armed with reusable tote bags and passive-aggressive signage. Our oat milk rations are low.” “My dearest wife, These barbarians will not yield…We have severed the cords of their latte machines but they are making cowboy coffee in their camps…A Golden Retriever has stolen my ammo belt.”

On Wednesday, Trump announced 200 National Guard troops were “now in place” at a small protest at Portland’s ICE facility, and they have “begun restoring LAW AND ORDER.” But NBC News affiliate KGW reported “none can be seen,” and lawmakers said they’d been told troops still need a few days to prepare, maybe by wending their arduous way through the artisanal breads. Guard officials say the deployment, expected to cost at least $3.8 million, is to ”protect federal facilities,” a slight discrepancy from a White House release declaring troops would “crush violent radical left terrorism” in the tranquil city. “I know this isn’t easy,” Oregon’s adjutant general told Guard members of a mission neither they nor residents seem enthused about. “We don’t get to pick and choose.” For now, five Portlanders, some in bathrobes, held a pastry protest – “We’re here for the hellscape” – as other stalwarts struggled to endure the war’s hardships. “They have forced us to listen to music and revel in community,” they said. “Pray for us.”

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First published in Common Dreams. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Abby Zimet has written CD’s Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.