OU BOUM: "Crazy" and "nuts," four socialites said!

MONDAY, MARCH 17, 2025

"Oopsie" and "Boom," two jailers replied: At one time, dating back three decades, Edwin Chemerinsky was frequently seen, on American TV, as a highly regarded legal analyst.

Since 2017, Chemerinsky has been dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. On March 7, his guest essay for the New York Times. appeared online.

It appeared in print on Monday, March 10. Headline included, Chemerinky's guest essay said this:

The One Question That Really Matters: If Trump Defies the Courts, Then What?

[...]

Thus far, the Trump administration has given conflicting signals as to whether it will defy court orders. On Feb. 11, Mr. Trump said, “I always abide by the courts, and then I’ll have to appeal it.” And that same month, the acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, wrote in a footnote in a brief to the Supreme Court: “The executive branch takes seriously its constitutional duty to comply with the orders of Article III courts.”

But just one day prior, Mr. Trump posted on social media, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” A week earlier, Vice President JD Vance posted, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” implying that the president decides what is “legitimate.” This follows a history of assertions by Mr. Vance suggesting that the president need not comply with adverse court rulings...

Trump and Vance had been broadcasting hints, Chemerinsky said. For the record, Trump is the one who was said to be the child of "a high-functioning sociopath." Vance is the one whose beloved grandmother—she was the stable one in the family—once poured lighter fluid on her husband while he slept and set the man on fire.

(More on the relevance later.)

More on the relevance below! For today, it starts to look like the executive conduct has hit the fan regarding Chemerinsky's fashioning of "The One Question That Really Matters." We refer to the remarkable conduct which occurred, over the weekend, under the cover of various forms of darkness.  

Various facts in the garbled case remain in dispute. As we type, the dual headline above the long news report in the Washinton Post is telling Post readers this:

White House official says 137 immigrants deported under Alien Enemies Act
Trump officials said the deportations don’t violate a judge’s order barring use of the Alien Enemies Act for removals—but also questioned the order’s validity.

Paraphrasing those Trump officials very broadly, the deportations don't violate the court order—but so what if they did?

Putting it a different way, Chemerinsky's question has perhaps been called. Along the way, the American nation now stands in thrall to the open mockery of jailers and other masked men. As part of their lengthy report in the Post, LeVine et al. report this:

White House official says 137 immigrants deported under Alien Enemies Act

[...]

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Saturday temporarily blocked Trump from using the act to swiftly remove immigrants without a hearing and instructed officials to return any airplanes carrying them to the United States. He ruled after advocates sued saying the administration was denying immigrants due process and putting them in danger.

But early Sunday, Trump administration officials shared video footage from El Salvador that showed shackled immigrants being forced off airplanes at night and into a new mega-prison.

“Oopsie, too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted on X, referring to the judge’s decision, followed by a laughing emoji. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposted it, and a White House spokesman responded with a meme saying, “Boom!”

Bukele said the United States sent his country 238 members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang and more than 20 members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang. He released a three-minute video that showed the alleged gang members escorted off three planes by heavily armed men wearing camouflage as dramatic music played. The men were loaded onto buses and taken to the prison, where their heads were shaved. El Salvador said the United States will pay for the prisoners to be jailed.

“Thank you for your assistance and friendship, President Bukele,” Rubio posted on X. 

The American nation is now subject to the open mockery of a Central American tinpot-adjacent jailer. A nameless figure inside the White House added his or her own analysis:

"Boom!" So the masked spokesperson said!

("Ou-boum" was the crucial sound described by E. M. Forster in A Passage to India, a 1924 novel about the terrible difficulties which may be involved in the clashes which may occur between different cultures. You can search right here.)

"Oopsie, too late," the Central American strongman said. He added a mocking emoji.

"Boom!" said the nameless American functionary, with Rubio playing along.

In this way, the Trump administration seems to have called The One Question That Really Matters. These various actions will be described in vastly different ways depending on where American citizens go for their information and for their tribal messaging.

Under current arrangements, there's no real chance that the large array of basic facts involved in these matters will ever get sorted out. In their lengthy report, the Post reporters do attempt to sort out the facts concerning a basic question:

Did the Trump administration continue to send planes to El Salvador even after the court had said that they must stop?

The facts there will be endlessly juggled. Along the way, the Post reporters also tell readers this:

In exercising this wartime power, Trump called for the swift removal of Venezuelans allegedly involved in Tren de Aragua, stripping them of their right to an immigration court hearing. The act has been used only three times before to bar citizens of hostile enemy governments from the United States, and only during a declared war.

[...]

The Justice Department has said that most, if not all, of those deported under the proclamation were serious criminals, but it did not release their names publicly so that claim couldn’t be independently verified...

The high-profile actions make it clear that the administration will deploy force and fright to remove immigrants from the United States, even if they have to devise extraordinary new ways to do it, such as sending them to a country that is not their home country and putting them in jail.

The White House’s online mocking of the judicial order by the chief federal judge in Washington added to the concern among advocates that Trump’s determination to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history would sidestep legal and humanitarian norms.

That's where the news report ends, with a bit of editorializing possibly inserted. At any rate, one key word there is "allegedly." Two more key words are "has said."

Along the way, the reporters refer to the "online mocking of the judicial order" by the White House. They add that to the undisguised mocking of the American nation's legal order by the Central American strongman.

Were the people who were sent away really "involved in Tren de Aragua?" Such facts will never be clear. 

(The endless errors by the DOGE "engineers" may not inspire complete confidence.)

Also, if some of those people have in fact committed crimes, why weren't they arrested and placed on trial? In the conceptual chaos which is certain to follow, such questions will be addressed in some regions, will be swept away in others.

Along the way, the American nation is now being openly mocked by a Central American strongman! He joins the ranks of strongmen around the world with whom the American nation, for better or worse, is increasingly being aligned.

So it may go as cultures die in an Information Age.  In a related matter, a second event took place last Friday night. 

That evening, on the PBS program Washington Week, Jeffrey Goldberg—he's plenty sharp—had assembled a three-person panel to help him discuss such events. At one point, he turned to Stephen Hayes and the exchange shown below occurred. 

We were struck by what was said—and by what was withheld. At issue was the latest of President Trump's highly unusual orations about making Canada the 51st state. 

For the full transcript and videotape, you can just click here:

GOLDBERG (3/14/25): Steve, I want to find a diplomatic way of saying this. But, I mean, it's nuts.

HAYES: Crazy.

GOLDBERG: Okay. I mean, it's like, we have our ally, we've had a stable relationship with this ally with a long—we have a huge trade relationship, obviously tourism and interaction, like, across a three thousand mile peaceful border. It seems like a totally extracurricular kind of project. 

Maybe it's diversionary. Maybe it's a way of talking about things that he wants to talk about. But what's the—tell us the— 

What's the secret? You've got two minutes to tell us the secret. 

What is the impulse here that makes him do—say a thing that no American president in our lifetimes, or really any lifetime, would ever imagine?  Seizing Canada, taking Canada as a state? 

The notion is "crazy," Hayes said. Goldberg said it was "nuts."

"What the secret?" Goldberg now said. What's "the impulse here?" What's the impulse which leads the sitting president to behave in the ways he does?

What's the secret? Why does he do it? 

For better or worse, none of the players on the program was willing, or was perhaps sufficiently skilled, to move beyond the merely colloquial with respect to those questions—with respect to the person who allegedly suffered the misfortune of being born to a badly dysfunctional father.

Over here in Blue America, the socialites keep playing it safe. Over the weekend, the strongman—in this case, the strongman Down There—was openly mocking their failing culture as it continued to be disappeared.

Tomorrow: "Ketamine," Goldberg said. But who was he talking about?