Trump seems to be tacking left a bit. He has, of course, sewn up the votes from the dangerously extremist far right. Now he has to try to convince some rational, non-cult members to vote for him, too, so he’s starting to pretend all that “pander to the crazies” was just something special he did for them. He’s really a centered, down-to-Earth guy, right? To that end, he came out disavowing Project 2025. He claims he knows nothing about it. HE didn’t write it. He has no idea who is behind it. (Like he’s never even heard of the Heritage Foundation.) He even said that some of the stuff in Project 2025 is “ridiculous and abysmal.”

I’ve written about Project 2025 a couple of times before. Essentially, it’s a 922-page plan created by the Heritage Foundation and many of Trump’s own former senior administration officials to create a government loyal NOT to America, but to Donald J. Trump. It’s sweeping, and it’s evil. So, Trump is pretending he doesn’t know the plan, never heard of the Heritage Foundation, and doesn’t know any of his former senior administration officials. Yeah, plausible…

Nope. Remember, this is Donald Trump. He’s LYING! He has publicly praised the President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, twice and his website actually links to the Heritage Foundation under his Section on ‘Agenda 47,’ his own, horrible plan to do terrible things to people, the nation, and the world. Remember, if Trump is speaking, he’s lying…

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I have a friend who is MAGA. That’s true. How do we do it? Mostly, we don’t talk politics. But the recent ‘make the president a king’ ruling from the SKCOTUS was a momentary exception. I started it, I confess. I didn’t mean to. It was just an off-handed quip I made. “No,” I was assured, “the ruling did NOT make the President a king.” Then I heard something I’ve heard before. “Read the decision.” So I did.

No, that’s not true. I looked up the decision. I found a copy in the Guardian. The first thing I noticed? It’s a 119-page decision. My friend is a VERY busy guy. I’m certain HE didn’t read the 119-page decision. But, hey, that seemed an unfair conclusion, based on nothing but the total number of pages, so I started digging in. I didn’t have to go too far. The details of the ‘make the president a king’ thinking are in the summary – on page one, fercrissakes.

Here, for your edification: “Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no
immunity for unofficial acts.”

Based on that ONE short exchange I had with my friend, I suspect MAGA is being told the left is just pearl-clutching and that there’s no such provision in the ruling. I suspect the MAGA deceivers are telling the MAGA deceived to tell people to ‘read the decision’ because the word “king” doesn’t appear anywhere in it. I’m going to stipulate to that. Yeah, they didn’t use the word.

Interesting sidebar: when one is learning to write fiction (like that SKCOTUS decision), one of the lessons taught is that one should not tell the reader a thing. They should use their words to show the reader the thing. As an example, “It was a dark and stormy night” tells the reader it was a dark and stormy night. But better writing is to describe a dark and stormy night – no lights, no moonlight because of the cloud cover, the effects of the wind and the rain. The reader then takes those pieces and puts together the idea, it was a dark and stormy night.
“What the hell is he talking about?”
“Hang on, he’ll tie it together…”

The SKCOTUS didn’t tell us they were making a king. They showed us the power of a king and claimed said power is inherent to the American Presidency. (It very specifically is not.) One had to be able (or willing) to infer and understand. MAGA most definitely, is not. If one reads about lack of light and wind and rain and comes away thinking it’s a bright and sunny day, they missed the point entirely. They clearly weren’t reading too closely. Most likely, they didn’t read the thing at all.

So, if you try to debate with your favorite MAGA on the topic, don’t be too surprised to find they know nothing of the reality of the situation. The Deceived are merely parroting what they’ve been told by the Deceivers…

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Hey, it doesn’t seem like much but maybe, just maybe, it’s a harbinger of better things. We’ve all watched MAGA rise in this nation. We may NOT have noticed the rise of conservatism around Europe in general but, OMG, is it happening. Conservatism has taken hold wherever one finds an internet outlet cons can lie through. The cons aren’t just doing it to the US. They’re doing it to all of Europe, as well. The US is just their biggest prize.

But in the UK, cons have been running things for quite awhile – and running them into the ground. It’s the conservative way. So, finally, after more than a decade of failure, the cons have been replaced by thinking people in the UK. That’s a good thing. I suspect Britain’s future is looking up.

I know. It’s one election. Right across the Channel, in France, the cons are making great strides and claiming a huge segment of the French government. So expect a campaign of cruelty and failure in France coming soon. It’s the conservative way. But maybe the victory for rationalism in the UK can spread in the same way con misinformation spreads.

Hope springs eternal, I guess…