Baffled European

Author: baffledkim

  • A kick up the arts

    Until recently, the Kennedy Center was a venue for performing arts. Opera, classical music, jazz, folk, theatre, poetry, stuff like that. These things don’t have huge popular appeal, but they all have an audience. The Center attempts to present a snapshot of the wide spectrum of culture in the USA.

    At least they used to. The president fancies himself as a connoisseur of the arts, a man with a finely-tuned sense for cultural taste. In order to enforce this, he removed the leadership of the Center and replaced them with maga fanatics to make appropriate adjustments to the programme.

    The first major alteration was to add a faith group, in order to reflect the artistic input that religion offers. So far, only Christianity is being promoted. Maybe other religions will get some attention in the future. At any rate, the new leadership is asking staff to pray before business meetings.

    Their first production will be Les Misérables, their patron’s favourite musical. No problem with that, but the new ticketing system is causing a stir. It’s all being arranged in the style of an election fundraiser, allocating corporate hospitality with “donors” buying blocks of seats. Corrupt hucksterism is the watchword.

    Ticket sales and attendances have collapsed. All this has alienated the existing audience, without appealing to a new audience that exists largely in maga’s imagination. They are asking for a five-fold increase in federal subsidies to cover the shortfall.

    These people are useless at everything.

  • Angling for civil war

    Friday’s protests were peaceful, according to the LAPD. For the most part, they were. The LAPD recognise a punch-up when they see one and they are not afraid to run away. On the other hand, it’s their city and they don’t want it to turn into a war zone. They are keen to deescalate. The crowds have gone. All that remains are clouds of tear gas released by panicking ICE agents.

    Thousands of miles away in DC, a collection of alpha machos are outbidding each other for the most manly response. The president has ordered thousands of National Guard to California to do something about the currently peaceful situation. Hegseth has put the marines on high alert, ready to respond. It’s illegal for the US army to operate on US soil, so what, who cares. Miller is raving about invaders.

    What happens the next time? Will the army be sent in? Will they refuse to obey orders? Will they actually shoot at civilians? It’s only the start of June, there are three months of hot summer coming. We will doubtless get the answers to these questions.

    Disturbances in New York as well. Similar story, but smaller scale. ICE agents are armed yobbos wandering the streets, hassling people at random and everybody hates them. It’s not random though is it really? It’s racism again.

    This deportation policy – let alone the implementation – cannot possibly do any good. Yet they are obsessed with it.

  • Deportation policy

    TACO. That’s been doing the rounds in the last couple of weeks. He always chickens out. He knows about this hashtag and unsurprisingly hates it.

    He’s blinked again though. The government is bringing Abrego Garcia back to the USA. It always seemed unlikely that there was absolutely nothing they could do to bring him back, especially since they were paying El Salvador for his incarceration.

    He will now stand trial on two criminal charges, as announced by Bondi herself. To no great surprise, the government’s case has already fallen to pieces. All they’ll have left is to blame activist judges for freeing Garcia. It’ll be interesting to see the consequences for this shameful, appalling episode.

    It’s kicking off in LA. ICE decided to show their power by going round in paramilitary gear to harass and abduct people. They’ve moved on from plain clothes and unmarked cars, they’ll show everybody who’s boss.

    This aggravated the locals, who quickly swamped the agents with sheer numbers. ICE escalated the situation they had created by firing tear gas into the crowd. Some officers were chased away in a hail of water bottles and stones. LAPD were called in to deal with the situation.

    ICE are furious and are blaming “political rhetoric” for causing the trouble. Sure, but it is their political rhetoric that is responsible for their terrible policy and inhumane actions.

    It’s going to be a long, hot summer.

  • Totally out of his depth

    $290million. That’s the money that Elon Musk paid for the election last year. He has spent more since. Was it worth it? Did he get value for money?

    He did get four months of power, which he used to destroy the machinery of government, while failing to find the waste and inefficiency he was supposed to be looking for. Then he was sacked.

    Following this, his many enemies put lurid stories of his ketamine addiction into the newspapers. Then a series of critical articles describing the death toll caused by all the cuts he made in government. And then yesterday a big argument with his former boss, each man taking to his own social media platform to insult and threaten the other for the entertainment of the whole world. Men can get so emotional sometimes.

    He is strikingly oblivious to what is going on and his part in it. The government grants that he depends on will disappear. Just like the grants he so gleefully cancelled for spurious “woke” reasons. Steve Bannon, causing trouble, has called for him to be deported. Funny. Musk however believes that law, due process and the constitution will save him and remove the president.

    All those bad things he did to other people: those things are going to happen to him soon. It’s a shame he rejects empathy, otherwise he might not have done them in the first place. Maybe he will learn – this lesson cost $290million.

  • More trade wars

    Last week, the Court of International Trade in the USA ruled that the Liberty Day tariffs were illegal. The government immediately announced it would appeal to the Supreme Court, and is keeping the tariffs in place until the case is heard.

    Not just keeping them in place, but expanding them. Steel and aluminium is not included in the ruling. As such, the president impulsively decided to raise tariffs to 50%. Just like that.

    There was a big splash last month, as the USA announced a trade deal with the UK. Whether this is still valid, or whether the USA is already reneging on an agreement is not clear.

    What the Supreme Court will do is anybody’s guess. On the one hand, they allow the government to do virtually anything on procedural grounds. On the other, this policy is extremely damaging.

    They recently ruled that the president could sack basically anybody, but not the Chair of the Federal Reserve. There was no particularly good reason for this, but they know that sacking this person on a whim will cause economic armageddon. They know they are dealing with a bad man and will take the necessary steps to stop him from making too much of a mess.

    In this sense, the Supreme Court is doing an excellent job of protecting capital and property, while doing nothing to protect humans from the ravages of the villains in charge. I think this might be the root of the problem in the country.

  • Forgive me, godfather

    Typically, my complaint about closing Dupont Circle to spoil the pride celebrations only lasted one day. It will remain open. As compensation, Pete Hegseth has personally ordered the USNS Harvey Milk to be renamed because woke. He deliberately chose pride month to do it. It’s bad luck to rename a ship, Pete, everybody knows that.

    Since I’m looking for forgiveness, let’s see how this works in the USA.

    About 1500 people have been pardoned for their role in the 6th Jan 2021 uprising. Releasing a group of convicted traitors is supposed to lead to “national reconciliation”, whatever. Corruption and bribery cover most of the rest.

    Dread Pirate Roberts stands out. He’s been a folk hero to the Bitcoiners since before he was unmasked – the tech bros must have been pushing for his release. Once you’ve established that Mexico and Canada are responsible for all the drugs in your country, Ulbricht must just have been some helpless innocent, caught in the middle of it all. And such a visionary.

    It’s striking, the way they seem to regard all of these convictions as being political in some way. That somebody is being convicted for being maga rather than say, for stealing lots of money or beating up a policeman.

    “No MAGA left behind,” says Ed Martin. He’s the one who reviews pardons and then puts a piece of paper in front of the president to sign. He’s got a blank cheque, hasn’t he?

  • No pride

    The FBI is officially ignoring white collar crime. Prosecutions for various forms of fraud – including consumer scams, identity theft and insurance fraud – have dropped by a half, tendency still falling.

    Only natural. The administration has been disbanding anti-corruption units and directing all its resources to immigration. Ignoring actual real crime in order to criminalise people who have done nothing wrong. It’s the way things work in the modern USA.

    It’s not just immigration though. The administration attempted to ban gender affirming treatment for trans people and withdraw all funding. The usual. This was slapped down by the courts as being illegal, like everything else this government does. As a result, the FBI is now charged with investigating “abuse” or “mutilation” concerning trans people and their treatment. There is nothing to investigate of course – this is a means to harass doctors and patients, nothing to do with crime.

    There has been a surge in violent crime against trans people, a result of the increasingly hysterical hatred of maga. This is not to mention the cases of cis women being attacked when trying to use the toilet. Maga has done a really good job of stirring up mindless hatred, you have to hand it to them.

    They are only getting warmed up with their persecution. It’s Pride this month, so they have closed the Dupont Circle park in DC to stop the party. There will be more of this sort of thing.

  • Following orders

    ICE really are the bad guys. It’s depressing reading about all of their shenanigans, although that’s nothing compared to the people who have been caught up in all of this.

    Their prime weapon is fear. Fear and surprise. Pretty much everything they do requires deception of some sort. A common tactic is to wait outside courtrooms, usually masked, and wait for asylum seekers to leave their hearing. If asylum is not granted, ICE jumps in, arrests the person and deports them. This tactic has drawn so much criticism, ICE have started refusing access to public court buildings, so nobody can see what they are up to.

    They have extended this to disguising themselves as utility workers in order to gain access to people’s homes. Then deportation etc. Even if this is not successful, it means that every knock at the door causes fear. That’s the point.

    This is escalating. They raided a restaurant, looking for “illegals”. Big guns, paramilitary gear, flash-bang grenades to clear the restaurant. Maybe they’ve been getting pushback from the public and they aren’t taking any chances. This works until the other side tools up as well.

    Local cops and the FBI are being pulled into this as the regime seeks to deport 3000 people per day. This should hit a target of a million per year.

    And then what? Does the USA suddenly become blissfully happy? If not, why not? What is the point of doing all this?

  • Man’s crisis of identity in the earlier half of the 21st century

    Tim Burchett, a Republican representative from Tennessee, does not drink through a straw. Only women do that. I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t. Just put it in your mouth and suck a little, sweetie. Nobody is going to be marking you for technique and style.

    This revelation came in order to prove that he is definitely a macho manly man. Fox News reckons that real men don’t talk about how macho they are, they show it by not eating soup or crossing their legs. Obvious, really.

    This is not to mention the enthusiasm that all members of the administration have for cosplaying as soldiers. The impression they give is that of an alpha gorilla beating its chest to show its dominance, but the rest of the world just boggles at their aberrant behaviour.

    I guess the problem is that there is not much difference between men and women in reality. There’s no advantage either way for jobs like these. What they need to do is create artificial differences. Men are macho warriors, women are simpering bimbos. They constantly need to emphasise this, in order to prove that only men can perform these jobs.

    It’s not a new problem, nor is it confined to maga. They do make a big point of it however, and it would be better for everybody if they would just behave like normal people instead of oddballs and freaks. But then we wouldn’t have this problem.

  • Where will this lead?

    As well as a “word of the year”, Germany also has an “unword of the year”. The latter is a word or expression that undermines human dignity and democracy, or discriminates against groups, usually with some form of euphemism. Think “collateral damage”, which means “killing civilians”.

    The Unwort des Jahres 2023 was “Remigration”. This is a neutral-sounding replacement for “Ausländer raus” for the AfD and other identitarian groups. The idea behind it is to ruin the lives of millions and create a state of fear for many more, all to satisfy the paranoid hatred of racists. Nobody benefits from this insanity, but what else can you expect from blindly following baseless superstition?

    The German government of the 1930s spent a lot of time working on remigration in order to get rid of the undesirables in their population. After scratching their heads over the logistics for a number of years, they decided that murdering everybody and burning the evidence was the most cost-effective option.

    The State Department in the USA has found the resources to set up a new Office of Remigration. At a stroke, the US government places itself on the same level as the most extreme and radical neo-nazis in Europe. They have the same imaginary problem as 1930s Germany: millions of undesirables that the regime detests for no good reason. It’s only natural for them to form a group of ignorant racists to find some modern 21st century answers.

    I’m not optimistic.