Cognitive decline & the cult of the blithering idiot: how Trump and his #MAGA mob won infallibility as the world burns

Reuters

{Daily Beast 29 May} Noted speech expert declares that Trump is in cognitive decline.

And where are all the media and general public that were hand-wringing and panicking over President Biden’s (real or perceived) feebleness now? Once again, this orange motherf**ker gets a pass from the American populace. The most privileged American to have ever lived – and who, precisely, is responsible for allowing that? As H.L. Mencken said all the way back in 1920: “On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” Another quote of his: “The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” Even he’d shudder at today’s cult of a blithering idiot, where white masses worship a conman and rage at any hint of dissent.

Ten bloody years, the remaining sane folks of this country have been harangued and harassed by this conman and his legion of followers. Not one single person in the entire history of this polyglot nation has ever been granted such consistent immunity from accountability. Indeed, no other person would have ever gotten away with fomenting an insurrection. And he got away with it because, I believe, the halls of power are scared to death of a violent uprising by rednecks, hillbillies, theocrats, and other assorted right-wing factions. Nobody has ever been more coddled than Trump, and the ordinary goobers who dominate these former United States, who are all around us, are to blame. When this is all said and done, I pray every last one of them faces some measure of accountability for being so deluded, even if their leader never does. —Arthur Newhook, 29 May 2025. 

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Jonah Goldberg: “The right yearns for—and the left wants to escape from—a culture that didn’t exist.”

FTA: “On the right, there are a lot of people who lament that we’ve lost a common culture. I agree with that to a considerable degree. But they often point to the popular culture of a bygone era as if that popular culture reflected the common culture. On the left, there’s a lot of scorn for the old popular culture because it was supposedly a tool of the Man deployed to impose conformity to an Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle. Both critiques have large elements of truth, but they miss the point that a lot of that 1950s suburbia stuff was a kind of subculture, too. It was an aspirational and relatively novel subculture. 1950 was the first year in which a majority of Americans owned a home. In the beginning of the 1950s, only about a quarter of Americans lived in the suburbs—about the same proportion as Americans who lacked indoor plumbing. The nuclear family wasn’t a recent invention, as some feminists claim, but it was fairly new as a major culture benchmark and norm. 

“I don’t have the time or space to do a big debunking of the nostalgia and dystalgia (it’s sort of a word, meaning an overly negative view of the past) about the 1950s, but suffice it to say it was neither as great nor as terrible as some claim. But it was a time of remarkable economic growth, enjoyed by a recently victorious nation imbued with a new unifying sense of mission as a superpower (or at least elites broadly saw it that way). That’s where the sense of America’s once homogenous culture comes from. Some culture warriors who think popular culture is much more important and powerful than it is think that the alleged sense of national unity was enforced by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. 

“Sure, maybe, a little. 

“But you know what had a much, much more powerful homogenizing effect? A decade of the New Deal and half-decade of World War II. For nearly 20 years, Americans were pushed, nudged, exhorted, and sometimes literally forced into a regimented society that took its orders from big institutions and the central government. When they came out the other side of all that, it shouldn’t be surprising that they had a lot of shared attitudes and common desires for a good, peaceful, and prosperous life. Nor should it be surprising that they liked a popular culture about navigating the mostly benign, but also novel and confusing, world of suburban life. 

“Spend a big chunk of your formative years desperate for work, or working in a factory, or sleeping in a foxhole: You might want some boring normalcy and conformity, too.  And it shouldn’t be shocking that Hollywood and Madison Avenue catered to that. And in the case of Madison Avenue, let’s be honest, wouldn’t you want to target audiences with rising amounts of disposable income rather than those left behind? Lots of people in Appalachia still lived like the Clampetts, and many others had cultural memories of what it was once like to live like the Clampetts, but they only wanted to see that subculture when the Clampetts are dumped in Beverly Hills. 

“However much you think the lived culture or the popular/shared culture of the 1950s was homogenous, that homogeneity was pretty unusual—and it was short-lived. By the 1960s, Dragnet gave way to Mod Squad, Ozzie and Harriet went dark and Love, American Style emerged. 

“I’m sure I am missing things as I think out loud—or think as I type—but I think there’s an important point lurking in here. The forces of nostalgia crave a past that never was while the champions of, what “diversity,” “transgression,” “non-conformity,” fear “going back” to a past that may have existed in some concrete ways (Jim Crow was evil and real), but it wasn’t as culturally monolithic as they think. The past was full of good and bad, because human existence is full of good and bad.”

{The Dispatch 29 May} https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/gfile/left-right-nostalgia-culture-subculture/

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

No heroes remain: decoding the GOP’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ – chaos, fear, and fiscal recklessness

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

NPR: House Republicans narrowly pass Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

In the short-term, the House-passed bill—now facing a contentious Senate battle, and not at all certain of final passage—is less catastrophic than many fear, though hardly any sort of triumph for its authors. Yes, partisan propagandists will weaponise scare tactics (left and right alike). Recognising that no political faction holds moral purity is the first step to finding our collective bearings.

Yet make no mistake: this bill is a fiscal and ethical gamble. Offloading Medicaid responsibilities to states will bring forth long-term instability and insolvency—especially with vague definitions of ‘able-bodied adults’ subject to work requirements, ripe for abuse. Meanwhile, it piles billions (likely trillions) onto an unpayable national debt.

The message to rank-and-file Americans from the Musk-Trump regime, the GOP, and their enablers is clear: “Expect nothing from your government or your society—and grovel with gratitude for the privilege.” That is unacceptable. —Arthur Newhook, 23 May 2025.

JP Morgan CEO: "I think there's a chance you'll have stagflation… I think global fiscal deficits are inflationary. I think the remilitarization of the world is inflationary. The restructuring of trade is inflationary.” {Business Insider 22 May}

The ‘American Dream’? A hellscape—unless one is rich enough to flee it. No vacation for you, mobility is now a premium commodity. {Business Insider 22 May}

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. THREADS - @arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Two dead in Israeli embassy massacre. As the gunman screamed 'Free Palestine' during his arrest, America's moral bankruptcy has been laid bare

AFP/Getty

VIDEO VIA BBC NEWS—the moment the Washington DC Jewish Museum shooting suspect is detained

Every remaining reasonably minded individual in the former United States who continues to value Israel and the Jewish people as friends—Democrat, Republican, or otherwise, all dwindling in number—must, at this very instant, forcefully reaffirm their unwavering solidarity. Antisemitism is running rampant across the political spectrum, and it is rapidly becoming perilous for Jews to merely exist in this dying nation. The West as a whole is being consumed by the same ancient hatred that birthed the Holocaust. Europe has been gradually succumbing to its Islamised hordes for the past two decades, yet until very recently America offered a safe haven, its populace overwhelmingly in support of Israel’s right to exist. A dramatic shift has undeniably occurred: a dark energy has taken root in hearts and minds. 

Increasingly, America’s useful idiots applaud as antisemitic mobs, or lone gunmen as was apparently the case in this incident, render the streets unsafe for Jews. It is 1938 replaying before our eyes. God will ensure that the former United States and its people are punished as severely as ordinary Germans were in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War; not solely for betraying the Jewish people, but for abandoning every value and tenet they ever purported to hold dear. Judgement invariably befalls nations that forsake the guardians of civilisation. —Arthur Newhook, 22 May 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. THREADS - @arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

UK announces stricter immigration policy

photo: AP

{Sky News 12 May} PM: 'Without strong migration rules, we risk becoming an island of strangers'

Sir Keir’s immigration crackdown announcement came with decidedly forced conviction—all stiff delivery and hollow passion, as is his wont. Seems to me, in eternal exile an ocean away, Britain has often been ‘an island of strangers’ throughout its history, at certain junctures more so than others. Make no mistake, this is a necessary declaration—and perhaps these moves might blunt ReformUK’s momentum and appeal to centre-right voters. At this perilous juncture—with fascism resurgent and commandeering history’s most destructive war machine—keeping parties like ReformUK and Germany’s AfD from power is vital. The regime in Washington is openly voicing support for the AfD, and are at least flirting with Nigel Farage, and Sir Keir and Labour tread a precarious tightrope.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-Twitter, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.