MONDAY, JULY 6, 2026
Jeffrey Rosen's concern: Yesterday, we tried to click our way through the sitting president's speech.
(You can start by clicking here.)
We refer to his rain-delayed public address of July 4th of this year. Due to the lightning the gods sent down, he wasn't able to start until 11:16 p.m. local Washington D.C. time. When he finally started to speak, the sometimes-invaluable Rev lets us see that he started by saying this:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (7/4/26): Good evening, America! You think that was easy? It wasn't.
AUDIENCE: Applause
The president was referring to the chaos of the rain delay. Then, as he proceeded, he tossed out a number--a number he may have made up:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (continuing directly): And I want to thank everybody because they did the right thing...
And they estimated they had 375,000 people before everybody had to leave. And they now have 150,000 people. It's the craziest thing anyone's ever seen. At least!
When the president describes some alleged accomplishment or some event, the accomplishment is routinely said to be something "no one has ever seen before." An invented number will often be present, perhaps to be embellished at some later date.
The initial number may be replaced by an even larger number! And so it went on this occasion, as Mediaite reports:
‘422,000 People!’ Trump Makes Wild Claim About Crowd Size at His July 4 Event
On Sunday, President Donald Trump revised his initial claim that 375,000 people gathered for the America 250 celebration on the National Mall before the crowd was forced to evacuate due to weather.
“We’re here, we’re here, we’re here. There’s no way we can be deterred. They estimated they had 375,000 people before everybody had to leave and they now have 150,000 people. It’s the craziest thing anyone’s ever seen,” Trump said during his speech that began after 11 p.m. Saturday.
Trump revised that [first] number upward on Truth Social Sunday afternoon.
“The Crowd at 7:05 in the evening was 422,000 people! All were forced to leave because of the weather, the event was cancelled, and everyone was gone because of lightning,” Trump wrote.
By now, the initial crowd was said to be substantially larger. To peruse the Truth Social post, you can just click here.
Back in real time, back in the actual speech on Saturday night, astounding flattery of us the people quickly began after that. He was flattering us the American people. Here's how the fluffing began:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (continuing directly from above): And I want to just thank you, and I feel so badly about some people they left, and they couldn't get back.
But you're very special people, and we have a very special country. Thank you very much.
Those who stayed were "very special people." That's how the fawning began.
That might have seemed like a sensible word of thanks directed at loyal followers. But as the president's speech continued, the delusional flattery grew.
By the time it was 11:18, the president was saying this:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: For two and a half centuries, our American Republic has stood as the crowning achievement of human history...And we're doing better now than we've ever done before.
No people have done more good, shown more courage, made more progress, righted more injustice or achieved more greatness than you, the American people. For 250 years, the United States of America has been the hope, the promise, the light, and the glory among all of the nations of the world.
All over the world, they try and be like us. Nobody can be like us. And with God's help, we will always be this, or even better.
Nobody can be [as good as] us, the president had now said. Later, on several occasions, he traveled that road again:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Americans must never forget that we are a historic and heroic people with a heroic spirit and a heroic purpose on this beautiful earth of ours.
We are made of the courage and the fire and the flesh and the blood of the best and the bravest people this world has ever produced. We are the bravest and the best.
Tonight we pledge allegiance to the flag they gave us, and we say, "God bless the immortal patriots of 1776 and long live the cause of independence." May it reign forever and ever and ever. We will always be on top. We will never let our country fall. We will always be the best.
"We will always be the best," the president said. As he continued, he turned to this:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (continuing directly): Our founders not only won our liberty, they secured it with the most righteous political document ever conceived. It's called the Constitution of the United States. Very special.
And it's because of their genius that we remain the finest people on the planet after 250 years.
We're the finest people on the planet! So this severely challenged, disordered person now said.
The people who stayed to watch the speech heard themselves praised in such ways. Much later, the president added the strangest claim he's ever made--the strangest in a fifteen-year public career of extremely strange public assertions:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: After two and a half centuries, this American republic still stands tall and strong and we love each other.
Say what? Do we the people love each other? American citizens, please!
As you can see by clicking this link, we love each other so much that this very same sitting president did this the very next day:
Trump also posted a doctored picture of ex-President Barack Obama and ex-First Lady Michelle Obama boarding Air Force One; the pic showed “BLM” and Obama’s slogan “Yes We Can” spray painted onto the plane, as well as some Arabic writing.
Another doctored photo--and how strange! In the rendering posted by the apostle of love, Arabic writing had been spray-painted onto the side of President Obama's Air Force One!
You can see that post if you click that link. (If you do, you will also read about the latest insults the sitting president has directed at Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister.)
As we've noted, we tried to click our way through the entire July 4 address. Eventually, what we took to be a succession of (tasteless) acts of "stolen valor" persuaded us to stop.
We thought we were watching extremely tasteless behavior. Presumably, many of our fellow citizens didn't see it that way at all.
Way back when, President Lincoln almost seemed to wonder if a nation constructed like ours could hope to "long endure." His famous speech started like this:
PRESIDENT LINCOLN (11/19/1863): Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure...
That nation has endured, right up to the present day. The population has actually grown, from something like 33 million back then to something like 345 million today.
Lincoln's nation has endured, in the most obvious sense. But in a recent essay for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Rosen suggests the possibility that the nation President Lincoln described may not endure much longer.
Who the heck is Jeffrey Rosen? And why is he saying such things?
We think his thesis is very strong. We also think it will be ignored, except right here at this site.
Tomorrow: Who is Jeffrey Rosen?
President Lincoln was not talking about tastelessness when he wondered whether our nation might endure. Somerby says:
ReplyDelete"We thought we were watching extremely tasteless behavior. Presumably, many of our fellow citizens didn't see it that way at all.
Way back when, President Lincoln almost seemed to wonder if a nation constructed like ours could hope to "long endure."
But when we read the quote, we see that Lincoln was talking about the civil war, where people were shooting each other on a battlefield, not about tasteless flattery.
This is mainly a problem of Somerby grabbing Lincoln's famous words and applying them in service of his own complaint about Trump, out of context and despite being irrelevant to what Trump was doing. This kind of thing looks ridiculous and Somerby shouldn't do it. It makes a mockery of the criticism he himself just made, appropriately, of Trump's ridiculous behavior in his speech. And that negates the mockery, leaving a question about whether Somerby was sincere in his criticism of Trump, or just engaging in it to establish a minimum of liberal cred before his real purpose in writing today's post, to bash liberals and our unfounded faith in democracy. Here is what is said at the link to Rosen's Atlantic article:
"American Democracy Wasn’t Designed for This
Can our 18th-century institutions survive 21st-century technology?"
Lincoln made the federal government bigger, more expensive, more intrusive.
Delete"President Lincoln was not talking about tastelessness when he wondered whether our nation might endure". Somerby didn't say he was, dumb ass.
Delete"that negates the mockery, leaving a question about whether Somerby was sincere in his criticism of Trump" Only in that dumb-ass brain of yours
2:22, when has Somerby ever mocked Trump? He routinely urges us to pity him and show sympathy for his purported afflictions.
DeleteSomerby trying to conflate his goofy concerns for the nation with Lincoln's is just laughable.
DeleteLincoln - the first Republican president, in freeing the slaves, did resoundingly defeat the South, and many right wingers/racists are still pissed to this day, you can see that with the dumb comment at 1:17.
Lee Atwater, a top Republican strategist and one of the main architects of the modern Republican Party laid it all out for us shortly before he died:
"You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites."
Oof.
Rosen said (at that link):
ReplyDelete"The American experiment would “decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”
Conservatives and liberals answer that question differently. Digby today has an article about an ethnographic study of the beliefs of conservatives, in which researchers embedded with conservative families and had in-depth, frequent conversations with them about their core beliefs. Mike Lofgren describes this at Salon:
https://www.salon.com/2026/07/05/abundance-politics-may-not-win-over-conservative-christian-voters/
Quoting the study itself, Lofgren says:
"Most participants believe that the cultural conditions necessary for a viable democracy no longer exist. A ‘true’ democracy of untrammeled majority rule would require a population with shared values, shared realities, and the capacity for self-governance conditions they feel America has lost.
Part of their rejection of democracy is the fact that they know they would be outvoted in a straight-up, ungerrymandered system: “Kyle (mid 20s, WY), a delivery driver, extends the logic: ‘Every single small town would be outvoted by every single city. We wouldn’t be able to feed people cows. We’d all be eating seaweed.’”
This is something Somerby himself has stated here several times before. We the people are not up to participating in a democracy, we need gatekeepers to tell us how to think, we aren't built for thinking seriously about our community needs, we are a babel and multi-culturalism makes that worse, so we cannot agree about how to run our nation without the kind of civil war Lincoln mourned. (Somerby quotes Lincoln a lot.)
Today, Somerby quotes Rosen because he too questions whether democracy is workable, but due to technology, not human frailty. Somerby ignores that part in order to use Rosen's ideas to support his own claims that we are not capable of participating in a democracy while diverse. This is also a theme among right wing extremists such as Curtis Yarvin and a theme on the right.
And, this is support for the conclusion that Somerby is essentially a conservative, promoting right wing talking points at this blog, and knocking the left while pretending to be liberal -- a concern troll. Somerby's core belief about the viability of democracy as an institution is closely similar to that expressed by the conservatives. As the study says:
"The most fundamental issue the researchers attempted to resolve is the relationship their subjects had with what is commonly thought of as the American secular faith in democracy. What the study found is that the respondents either had a notion of what constituted democracy that greatly differed from what is taught in Civics 101 — when such a course is even offered — or rejected outright the very concept of democracy. In fact, the latter view was the majority opinion:
14 out of 21 participants in this study had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy . . . Sarah (mid 30s, WY), a homeschooling mother, put it plainly: “I don’t like the word democracy.”
Let that sink in. It’s what many of us expected, but it’s still surprising to see it in print, given the almost phobic avoidance by major media, academia and think tanks of any discussion of whether Americans actually believe in the nation’s unofficial civic religion of democracy. It may also explain why ordinary, non-elite conservatives are untroubled by Donald Trump’s assertions that he would be “dictator on day one” or that he intended to “terminate” parts of the Constitution. On the contrary, that’s what they want."
And that seems to be what Somerby wants too, based on his return to this subject over the years since 2015 and his frequent assertions that we humans are not built to participate in our current form of government, that assures us of the freedoms we value and that had been the envy of the world prior to Trump's election.
"And [dictatorship] seems to be what Somerby wants too"
DeleteOr perhaps it's not what he wants, but what he despairs will happen.
Maybe, DG. One thing you probably shouldn’t do is to urge pity for the man taking us to dictatorship, or to oppose his impeachment, or to complain about prosecuting him, or deride his opponents, the democrats, all things Somerby has done.
Delete11:37 is spot on.
DeleteAn excellent paraphrasing of the ideas I have been posting here for years, albeit my attempts are not as elegantly put as 11:37 accomplishes.
Somerby is typically fairly indirect with his prescriptions (or even descriptions), but on the stance of being skeptical/cynical about democracy and the need for a caste of ruling elites, Somerby is much less indirect.
Lincoln would not agree with Somerby on many things, so it is gross the way Somerby misuses quoting Lincoln to push his own right wing agenda.
12:20 - Why shouldn’t you urge pity for someone afflicted with a mental disease?
DeleteJesus said, “Love your enemies!” I think that’s good political advice.
DeleteRosen says: "As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the biggest question for our democracy is whether a system designed for the communications technologies of the 18th century can survive those of the 21st."
ReplyDeleteRosen describes the usefulness of the well-developed newspaper system of the late 1800s to a democracy like ours. But that was diminished by radio and TV well before the internet arrived with social media. Further, his contention that the newspaper system existed during the revolution is incorrect. A system of broadsides and pamphlets spread info and people congregated in pubs to discuss them. The few newspapers in large cities did not foment the revolution. Travel was so difficult that news took a very long time to arrive across the colonies. Our system of democracy was NOT developed based on newspapers but based on representation elected by the people, located in cities, statehouses and a national legislature. That continues to exist no matter how individuals communicate their ideas to each other in order to form opinions.
Somerby has argued that the internet has broken the TV method of communication of news. He doesn't seem to fully understand how the internet, social media and substacks work, much less podcasts and youtube. But anything that denigrates democracy, he's for it. Gerrymandering is also a flaw of democracy and Somerby has eagerly grabbed that discussion to push his idea that people cannot participate in democracy, so it needs to be shut down in favor of those who know best how to run things. He doesn't say that is Trump but what would replace democracy? History says it is despotism.
Jeffrey Rosen was a member of Trump's first administration.
DeleteSomerby says: "We think his thesis is very strong. We also think it will be ignored, except right here at this site. "
DeleteArticles in The Atlantic (Somerby's new favorite source) don't tend to be ignored. They are deliberately written to be controversial and thus are the magazine-equivalent of clickbait. Somerby has called The Atlantic liberal, but Rosen doesn't seem to be. Why would someone who cared about our democracy ever work for Trump?
DeleteAlong with his unimportant lies about the size of the audience, Trump told an important truth: No people have done more good, shown more courage, made more progress, righted more injustice or achieved more greatness than , the American people.
ReplyDeleteThis is obvious, if one only considers the spread of democracy, civil liberties, the enormous amount of charitable giving all over the world, and the defeat of three of the most evil regimes in history, the USSR, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. No other nation comes close in what was done to benefit the world.
Speaking truths that others were ignoring has been one reason for Trump's popularity ever since his first Presidential campaign.
It seems unfair for Trump to be taking credit for the good works done by other people. We all know that Trump is not one of those doing good, showing courage, making progress, righting injustice and achieving greatness. He does the opposite of those things. He impedes them. He got rid of the people doing that stuff by having DOGE fire them.
DeleteWhen Trump got up and praised the things he himself has destroyed, he engages in stolen valor. Trump hasn't defeated any regimes -- he had bone spurs, remember?
If David is suggesting that Trump spread a feel-good image of America, that may be so, but it doesn't mean his people and his government has done anything except tear down America since taking office.
Note that Somerby himself criticized Trump's speech on July 4th.
Matt Labash says:
Delete"Have a question about when, exactly, we can stop celebrating America’s 250th birthday, a “party” that has seen no end for about six months now? Don’t ask Matt, ask Donald J. Trump (the “J” stands for “jerking your chain”), who is much fonder of gaudy bread’n’circus spectaculars than he is of effective governance. Turns out, it’s hard to give people affordable healthcare and lower their costs of living, as falsely promised. Much easier to put on UFC fights, to infect the Reflecting Pool with algae blooms, and to lie about Fourth of July crowd sizes. "
https://mattlabash.substack.com/p/proud-to-be-an-americant
David calls Trump's lies about crowd size "unimportant." Defending truth is important to fighting autocracy, according to both Timothy Snyder and Hannah Arendt. No lie is trivial when the goal of a tyrant is to convince people that there is no such thing as truth and that all statements are meaningless.
DeleteSomerby has argued that here for decades. He says anything is possible, there is no way of knowing what is true or right or correct. He used to say "your mileage may vary". He states something, then says "I have no way to know if this is right" or "I could be wrong" as if there is no way to investigate or verify anything. He never fact-checks anything. That is all destructive of the concept of truth, just as Trump's constant lies are, making it possible for Trump to justify anything he wants simply because he says it.
Truth matters.
Dickhead in Cal is a liar. He admires other liars. Dickhead is a liar. A fucking liar.
DeleteDiC: Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost the election in 2020 (he claims he didn’t, but I guess you think that’s an unimportant lie, DiC). He barely won the popular vote by 1.5% in 2024, getting less than 50% of the vote. His current approval is 37%.
DeleteIn what sense is he popular, DiC?
Also, will you ever have anything to say about his world historical corruption? That undercuts everything positive that you foolishly ascribe to him.
@11:57 - you make a good point. Trump is taking credit for things he didn't do. In fact, he is also giving credit to you and me and other Americans today for things we didn't do. That may be unfair, but it also might be beneficial. Positive aspirational goals are a good thing IMO.
DeleteToday, it's popular to focus on bad things done in the past by Americans, such as slavery and Jim Crow. Focusing on the bad is valid. Americans certainly did do bad things. But, I don't think its healthy.
When I was young, I was told about Jews like Albert Einstein and Irving Berlin. I wasn't told about mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. IMO that helped me develop healthier life goals.
@2:17 - It may be hard today to realize how remarkable Trump's 2016 victory was. He had zero political experience. He had little qualification for the Presidency. The media detested him. The Republican Party was lukewarm at best. Yet, he defeated a strong group of Republicans in the primaries and a very well qualified Democrat. He must have done some things right to overcome all these weaknesses.
Delete@12:05 wrote, "Defending truth is important.... Truth matters."
DeleteGive me a break. Truth about Trump is not important. Lies that malign Trump are totally acceptable. People who spread these lies are treated as heroes.
Consider the "fine people" hoax. The injected bleach hoax. And, many others. @12:05, I suspect that you did not dispute these lies or castigate the people who spread them.
https://ozeunleashed.substack.com/p/the-top-40-media-hoaxes-about-donald
The media detested Trump? The media loved him; the media made him! Without Apprentice he would've been just another failed "businessman". The media gave him life and rarely called him on his bullshit.
DeleteIt isn't Fox that we should be blaming for giving this psychopath life. It's CNN and ABC (or whichever network his idiotic show was on). The media propped up a conman and a grifter, and in the end he came back to bite them.
David, one people has done the most for the world. That people has lived not merely 250 years but 3000 years. That people, which has given us faith and morality, is the Jewish people.
DeleteI sort of agree, Ilya. But, I would interpret as, "Trump played the media." Especially during the primaries, Trump made outrageous statements. The media blasted him for these statements. All that media attention is how Trump became the most popular Republican Presidential candidate.
DeleteI think the media did blast Trump for his bullshit. As I recall, the ratio of positive to negative media coverage was enormously in Trump's disfavor in all three of his Presidential races.
@12:05 raises the question of how important various lies are. IMO, some of the anti-Trump lies are more important.
DeleteE.g., the lie that Trump called neo-Nazis and white nationalists "fine people" when he actually said they "should be condemned totally" is a more important lie than the exact size of some group. YMMV
Got to go back to Charlottesville to find one is duly noted.
DeleteMeanwhile, he fucked up the World Cup with his interference.
"That people has lived not merely 250 years but 3000 years. That people, which has given us faith and morality"
Deletewhat a dumb ass. as if faith and morality didn't exist before 1000 bce and outside of the sphere of jewish influence. and as if "faith" is necessarily a good thing. "faith" is a euphemism for believing something without having sufficient evidence. i wouldn't count that as a positive thing. additionally, jewish "morality" encompasses such gems as "don't beat your slave so badly he dies" and "if a bride is found not to be a virgin, stone her to death."
I could be wrong, 2:40, but I think that comment was meant ironically.
DeleteDiC,
Deletethe Charlottesville rally was organized by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Who were the 'fine people' who attended that rally, not to protest, but in support of its point of view?
there's so much dumb assery in the original post, one scarcely knows where to begin. maybe here...does this dufus know enough about world history to make such absurdly sweeping claims? just one teensy counter-example: europe was ahead of the u.s. in terms of abolishing slavery and establishing worker rights
Deleteor maybe here...the u.s. was late in joining WWII. and they only did so after a vicious surprise attack and years of smaller attacks by german u-boats, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
or maybe here...nazi germany would have been defeated without the u.s., it just would have taken longer. the russians were responsible for nearly all (89%!) german casualties in WWII. does that mean they're a great people too? or did they do what any people would have done in the circumstances?
or maybe...all countries contain good and bad people. if (IF) the good people in the u.s. have had an outsized positive influence on the world, is it really because they're uniquely better than everyone else? or is there more to the story -- like geographical location, resources, and unprecedented wealth, power, and cultural reach?
with regard to charitable giving, again, is it because americans are inherently better somehow than non-americans? or is it because they're the wealthiest people in human history . . . or because our tax code incentivizes charitable giving?
but the biggest dumb assery in all of this? trump and his supporters aren't part of the good strain of american history. the trump era is already viewed by historians as an era of backsliding on many of the criteria listed by the original dumb ass commenter. rule of law, democracy, freedom of the press, human rights, environment, gap between rich and poor, etc. -- the u.s. is worse off on all of these and more. and needless to say, its largely agreed that there has never been an administration so utterly corrupt as the trump administration.
much more could be said. but there's only so much dumb-assery one can respond to in a day
Hector - The nature of the attendees is beside the point. The point is what Trump said. His words are crystal clear. The false version is the exact opposite of what he said. Even Snopes finally conceded that the fine people’s hoax was indeed totally false.
DeleteHector - BYW I recently learned that my friend Charlie was one of the people who contributed indirectly to the white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Charlie donated money to the Southern Poverty Law Center. As we now know, the SPLC secretly helped to fund this rally.
Delete@5:00 - I didn't say the US was perfect. I said we had done more good things than any other country. If you disagree, please identify the country you think has done more good.
DeleteThe SPLC secretly funded the Berlin Wall.
DeleteI’m a medium, and I detest Trump.
Delete"The nature of the attendees is beside the point."
DeleteI can see why you want to argue that way, but my question remains:
who goes to a rally organized and advertised by white supremacists and neo-Nazis and still gets to be considered one of the "fine people'"?
The answer is no one. This was just Trump falsely equating the two sides, precisely as he was accused of doing.
Why do we have an influx of really stupid trolls?
DeleteDavid, this isn't a contest. All countries should be doing good and not seeking conflict, cooperating with others and working to improve our planet.
DeleteTrump makes it into a contest because everything in life is viewed as winning vs losing by him.
Delete@5:00 thank you for your resonse
Delete@6:56 All PEOPLE should be doing good and not seeking conflict, cooperating with others. Nevertheless, I can acknowledge a person like MLK who did more good than most.
DeleteDavid, the Jewish people have done the most good.
Delete@5:56 - the idea of the US being better than other countries predates Trump. E.g., in my youth, Dinah Shore sang the advertising jingle
DeleteSee the USA in your Chevrolet
America is asking you to call
Drive your Chevrolet through the USA
America's the greatest land of all
That was before Reagan, Bush, and Trump steered all the money to the top 0.1% paving the way for insurmountable deficits, Project 2025, and the fascist Republican party in bed with their corrupt plutocrat leaders.
DeleteHector, wouldn't the fine people be the people who were there only to protest the removal of the Robert E Lee statue?
DeleteHow's that surrender to Iran coming along idiot DiC? Can you believe this moron not only surrendered to the Taliban, but now is surrendering to the Ayatollah? It would be funny except for the horrific loss of life and treasure. Nazi Republicans, the forever war party.
DeleteAre we the dumbest country in the world or what? What other nation allows the erection of statues of fucking treasonous insurrectionists who broke their oaths to their nation? Fuck those slave owning fucking America hating pigs.
DeleteOne should distinguish between bad people vs. bad acts. E.g., Trayvon Martin did some bad things, resulting in his suspension from school. Was he a bad person? I would not say so.
DeletePeople in that demonstration were doing something I consider bad. But, that does not prove that they were all bad people.
Hey DiChead, I watched the idiots 250 speech. Did you know in WWII we defeated COMMUNISM??? What a bunch of idiots you Trump cultists are.
DeleteJFC you weirdo, Martin was assassinated 14 years ago. Old fascists are fucking weird.
DeleteMartin had a knife in his backpack at a zero tolerance high school. He didn't brandish it or fight with anyone. He just brought it in his backpack. My husband has done that at baseball games, forgetting he had a pocket knife when he went through ballpark security.
DeleteBelonging to a Nazi organization to the point of traveling to attend a rally in costume does mean you are an inherently bad person because you are a major racist and Nazi. That is way worse than buying skittles and getting shot for scaring a guy in a truck.
People protesting the removal of Confederate statues are racists and that is bad, against American values, a kind of hate speech. This is not about history. It is about reassuring black people that they do indeed get to vote and have rights in our country.
Delete"When I was young, I was told about Jews like Albert Einstein and Irving Berlin. I wasn't told about mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. IMO that helped me develop healthier life goals."
DeleteThat is why you are such a fucking immoral POS. I was taught Jew mobsters are horrible murderous criminals who were properly shot up and imprisoned by the coppers. Sadly, their descendents continued to wreck havoc as they developed the infamous Jewish Space Laser. The Jew bastards.
Why are you guys entertaining this moron Trump supporter that supposedly thinks the SPLC funded the KKK but also is fine with Trump saying the Charlottesville KKK were "fine people", which he absolutely did say it is on video for Christ's sake?
DeleteRemember Trump was raised by a man that supported both the KKK and the Nazi German Bund, but even that man found Trump so repugnant that he shipped him off to military school.
Then Trump went on to inherit $450 million which he threw away on multiple bankruptcies all the while he was sexually assaulting multiple women, including his own wife who later died mysteriously, as well as several girls.
Few humans in our entire history are as vile as Trump is.
But David is also vile for being an apologist for this demon.
They are both headed for that Lake of Fire.
Btw, talking about numbers, employment in the US right now is a total disaster, thanks to Trump.
John D Rockefeller helped fund the NAACP.
Delete"I didn't say the US was perfect. I said we had done more good things than any other country."
Deletei didn't say you said the u.s. was perfect, dumb ass. my various arguments weren't intended to demonstrate that america isn't perfect. one intention was to show how cartoonishly over-simplified some of the implied reasoning is: if the u.s. donates more money than other countries, it must be because the american people are just more gooder than all other people in the world, by golly. it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that we're the wealthiest country in the world, with more millionaires and billionaires than any other country, who have tax incentives to "be generous"
another intention was to show your oversimplification of history. the u.s. did not do the heaviest lifting in defeating nazi germany. Russia did. does that mean russia is the bestest of all the countries of all time in the entire universe, amen? i doubt you'd conclude that. and yet that's the infantile line of reasoning implied in trump's and your statements.
and of course there's the point somerby and others have made: trump and his supporters are basking in others' glory, while undermining the very legacy those others fought and died for -- including the post-WWII order
https://jacobin.com/2026/07/chait-dsa-socialism-harrington-democrats
ReplyDeleteTrump is, in every sense, the Ugly American. Blustery, stupid, ignorant, and yet, somehow full of himself believing he has all the answers, and others are, as Kipling described them, "lesser breeds." The UK's empire began its sharp decline once such people became prominent.
ReplyDeleteHe's that fucking useless Midwest Sales Manager making millions off the hard sales efforts of those below him.
DeleteAnd rapes girls in his free time.
DeleteMakes disgusting Roy Moore seem tame in comparison.
"The initial number may be replaced by an even larger number!"
ReplyDeleteHow horrible! Excuse me for I'm so shocked I need to lie down now.
The initial number was bunk. We know how many people can fit onto the mall from previous gatherings there where crowd sizes were more carefully measured.
DeleteI get it that you think it doesn't matter about the crowd size, but it obviously matters to Trump or he wouldn't throw a fit when accurate estimates contradict his own lies. One of the facts of Trump's current situation is that his support is decreasing and his attendance numbers have been pitiful lately.
But don't you want a president whose word is good, who can be relied upon to be truthful? You deserve better than Trump. Most people are not sociopath and compulsive liars like Trump is. We can elect one of them soon.
12:02: Trump’s lies about crowd size are a window into his delusions (according to Bob) and/or his sociopathy, whereby he wants to manipulate facts that don’t line up with his megalomaniac view of himself. He is unfit.
DeleteIf size does not matter why were Trump and Rubio arguing about who had the bigger erection when raping children?
DeleteThey keep having to revise the employment numbers down.
DeleteWay to go Trump and his supporters, y'all have made America shitty again!
When a psychopath, such as Trump, has become mentally diminished due to old-age dementia, do they become less of a psychopath? Discuss amongst yourselves.
ReplyDeleteToday there are reports that Trump has thrown objects in a fit of anger while with foreign leaders. Trump needs to be removed from office.
DeleteYes.
DeleteI’m incapable of self-government. I need a great leader.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you chose Trump as your great leader is proof you are incapable of self government.
DeleteNo. I chose Netanyahu as my great leader.
DeleteThere was already enough proof.
DeleteHere’s a hundred proof. Long live the great leader!
DeleteNetanyahu?
DeleteThis is not funny.
DeleteThis whole blog is funny.
Delete