The latest nonsense emanating from the keyboard of Our Shameless Tweeter

DT's Tweet on Democrats failing to pass gun control
DT’s Tweet on Democrats failing to pass gun control

is a good chance to parse out what he really means when he says or posts something. I’ve watched what he does pretty closely for the past 2+ years, and I’ve spotted some patterns worth sharing. Let’s start with five that show up in this Tweet:

  • He blames his failure to act on others
  • He deflects by bringing in unrelated issues (DACA, this time)
  • When he creates a mess, he blames others—and almost never accepts responsibility or offers a meaningful apology (DACA wasn’t a problem until HE yanked the rug out from under those kids—and oh yeah, it was none other than DT who revoked the Obama restrictions on people with mental illness acquiring guns))
  • If he feels criticized, he defaults to bullying or name-calling
  • He sees anything connected to Obama as hopelessly tainted

And plenty of others:

  • He takes credit when others accomplish something
  • He attacks randomly at the first whiff of criticism—lashing out even at those who’d thought of him as a friend or ally—and his wrath extends both to individuals and entire populations (women, people with disabilities, Mexicans, Muslims…)
  • Having lived his entire life in extreme monetary privilege, he has zero understanding of the hardships people at the bottom of the ladder endure, and zero empathy for those who endure them
  • He loves to waste taxpayer money on grandiose, useless (or even harmful) projects like the border wall , the politically suicidal move of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, or the massive military parade he demanded recently
  • Driven by Id, he acts impulsively, often in direct opposition to the few of his advisors willing to risk giving him honest advice—and doesn’t mind risking a war or other extreme negative outcomes in the international arena
  • He acts in a vacuum, without studying trusted journalistic sources or even reading intelligence briefs
  • He appoints people with little or no relevant experience and charges them with destroying the agencies they are supposed to run
  • He shows no understanding of checks and balances, freedom of the press, the reasons why government officials aren’t allowed to take money from foreign governments, or of constitutional law generally; he seems to think he should have absolute power and that he can use the presidency to enrich his personal fortune
  • He has freely borrowed memes and slogans from the most tyrannical and murderous dictators in history (including Hitler)—and emulates Hitler’s rhetoric on issues like the role of the press and suppression of dissent
  • He has a long and sordid personal history. Here’s the tip of the iceberg:

In short, the man has a disgraceful personal reputation as a serial liar, molester, and fraud—before we even look at his terrible handling of domestic and foreign issues as president.

Will someone please write a guide for me now? Please explain how this backstabbing, hypocritical incompetent cheater can still find people who thinks he is doing a good job.

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Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain
Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain
Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain

Once again, yesterday, I came across the tired old canard that the only way to fight bad things and bad people is to put weapons in the hands of good people. We hear it after every mass shooting.

And not only is it not true, it’s a very destructive thought pattern. Too often, when good people get guns, they turn into not-so-good people. Lord Acton’s famous dictum, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely” seems to hold very true. Dictators were often first hailed as liberators; as one of hundreds of examples, think about Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

Gandhian techniques were actually very effective against the Nazis. The scholar Gene Sharp documented this extensively in The Politics of Nonviolent Action trilogy. And frankly, the Brits in India were no saints. They were brutal and violent, though lacking the organized killing machine (gas chambers, etc.) the Nazis built. You may be familiar with the King of Denmark very publicly wearing the yellow star. That’s just one example of hundreds. Many of these incidents had better outcomes than a lot of gun-based responses.  And even when they didn’t, the reprisals were directed against those who acted, and not—as so often happened when partisans killed Nazis—the entire community.

The segregated American South was also quite brutal and violent, as shown very effectively in the recent movie, “Selma.” Martin Luther King considered Gandhi a mentor. Gandhi in turn learned from (and actually corresponded with) Tolstoy. Mandela, I’m sure, studied both Gandhi and King, and in turn influenced the Arab Spring.

None of this happens in a vacuum. We can trace nonviolent resistance in a reasonably straight line at least back to Christ, and of course there are several incidents of Gandhian tactics in the Old Testament. My personal favorite is the refusal of the midwives Shifra and Pu’ah to carry out the Pharaoh’s command to kill all the Hebrew boy babies, though Abraham’s argument with God over the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is a close second.

Tweet: Could nonviolence stop Nazis? https://ctt.ec/f753a+

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