DONALD TRUMP - THE FIRST TEN DAYS

What follows is as complete a list as yer old pal Jerky is capable of putting together (without more time) of all the shitty things that Donald Trump and his administration have done in the ten days since he officially became President. Please keep in mind that this list is far from comprehensive. Also remember that most of these actions and policies have ongoing effects, both intended and unintended, creating an unimaginably vast and evolving fractal web of deception, injustice, and suffering. Please forgive the lack of graphics and the paucity of links. I don't think this entry really needs it. - YOPJ

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 19 - THE PRELUDE

On this day, as he and countless city workers in Washington DC prepared for the next day’s inauguration festivities, Trump served up an ideological appetizer of sorts to his fanatical Redcap followers by announcing his intentions to cut off funding for the following programs and organizations:

• The Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division
• The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division
• The Justice Department’s Violence Against Women programs
• The National Endowment for the Arts
• The National Endowment for the Humanities
• The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
• The Minority Business Development Agency
• The Economic Development Administration
• The International Trade Administration
• The Manufacturing Extension Partnership
• The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services
• The Legal Services Corporation
• The Overseas Private Investment Corporation
• The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• The Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability
• The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
• The Office of Fossil Energy

So basically, women, minorities, teachers, artists, the environment and Big Bird were all told to go get fucked. Which, again, I’m sure played great with Trump’s target audience.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 20 - GROUND ZERO HOUR

Of course, it goes without saying that the very worst thing that happened on January 20th, 2017 is Donald Trump becoming the 45th President of the United States of America. Everything about the process itself was wretched: the weather, the attendance, the entertainment, the mood, the ceremony, Trump’s incredible speech… just everything, wretched through and through. But that’s already been chronicled in detail right here in these very pages, so let’s here’s some of the other awful shit that went down on this day:

• Trump ordered a “total freeze” on enacting federal regulations… and I know this might sound good to some of you, but check back soon because yer old pal Jerky’s gonna try to convince you why it shouldn’t.
• Every American diplomat serving abroad was suddenly removed, many still currently without successors, ten days later.
• Displeased that someone at the National Parks Service re-tweeted a photo comparing the size of his inauguration attendance to Obama’s, Trump imposed a stupid and dangerous nationwide gag order on all NPS social media. The gag was only lifted when the NPS Tweeted an apology.
• During protests in Washington DC, roughly 230 protesters were arrested and many are now facing historically unprecedented felony riot charges. Among those swept up during illegal police “kettling” were legal observers, journalists, and medics.
• Trump issued an executive order declaring that all federal departments had to “minimize the economic impact” of Obamacare, whatever that means.
• Trump issued an executive order cancelling an FHA mortgage premium cut that had saved thousands of lower middle class American home owners millions of dollars during the last few years.
• Trump signed a waiver allowing retired General James Mattis to become the new Secretary of Defense without having to wait the usual seven years before doing so.
• Trump issued an executive order declaring the day of his inauguration to be a "Day of Patriotic Devotion", which is totally normal and not at all creepy.
• The White House website was updated, taking down the previous administration’s pages on civil rights, healthcare, LGBTQ issues, and climate change and replacing them with sweet fuck all. 
• The White House website’s Spanish language version was taken down.
• The White House telephone comments line was shut down, and has been replaced with a Facebook page. So people have begun calling Trump’s hotels, instead.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 21 - TRUMP DAY 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

On his first full day as President--chronicled, along with his third day, in this update--more than three million women in the United States marched in solidarity against Trump and his policies. The following also took place:

• The Justice Department waived nepotism rules so that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner could draw a salary as a White House employee.
• A delay was requested in the lawsuit over a Texas law requiring voters to present specific types of government-issued photo ID at polling stations.
• Twitter signed a bunch of people up to recieve messages from Donald Trump’s account, even after many had made efforts to keep that from taking place.
• Trump's choice for CIA director, Mike Pompeo, declared himself open to "revisiting" limits on "interrogation techniques", including waterboarding.
• Trump issued his first Presidential tweet, in which the first multisyllabic word was misspelled: “I am honered to serve you” etc.

This was also the day when White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held his first ever press conference, a spectacular disaster during which time he:

• Lambasted the press over their (accurate) reporting on the size of the attendance at Trump’s inauguration.
• Declared that Trump’s inauguration had the largest audience of any in history, “period.”
• Lied about “Secret Service magnetometers”.
• Lied about how many people took Washington DC public transit on Friday.
• Lambasted the press some more over an innaccurate report that the bust of Martin Luther King Jr had been removed from the Oval Office--a reporting error that, despite being swiftly retracted and corrected when proven wrong--was seized upon by the entire Trump administration who bellowed about it for days, declaring it proof positive that everyone except FOX News and Breitbart (two outlets that almost never even bother to correct their copious errors) are “fake news”. 
• Capped off his debut performance as Press Secretary by not taking a single question and storming out of the briefing room in a huff.

Meanwhile, across town, Trump headed over to CIA headquarters where he gave a speech before the wall commemorating those who’d fallen in the line of duty. During this speech, Trump:

• Brought along group of 40 cheerleaders to cheer for him and laugh at his jokes during a speech that consisted mostly of complaints about the media.
• Forgot to give the “at ease” command before beginning his speech, leaving the assembled audience standing for his entire speech. He would later describe this to ABC interviewer David Muir as “a standing ovation”.
• Bragged about how awesome his inauguration was, particularly the record-setting attendance.
• Expressed regret that the US hadn't just taken Iraq's oil, then mused: "Maybe we'll have another chance."
• Came thisclose to asking how many in attendance had voted for him, before musing aloud that probably “almost everybody” had.
• Bragged about his superior intellect, which he apparently thinks that he inherited from an uncle.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 22 - TRUMP III: in 3D

On Sunday, according to Catholics and most Protestants, God rests. And apparently, so does Donald Trump, because Day 3 in Trump’s America was surprisingly uneventful, until:

• Administration officials floated the possibility of moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
• The White House continued its semi-official blackout of CNN by refusing to send any representatives to take part in its Sunday magazine shows.
• On Meet the Press, senior White House advisor Kellyann Conway defended Sean Spicer’s lies on Saturday as “alternative facts”. You could hear heads exploding from coast to coast.
• Trump indicated that he would not be keeping his promise to release his tax returns once an IRS audit was completed because, according to him, "Nobody cares."
• During a meeting with the FBI, Trump appeared to blow a kiss to director James Comey. The two then hugged and patted each other’s backs. Odd behavior, indeed.

MONDAY, JANUARY 23 - DAY FOUR BRINGS A NEW LOW

On Monday, Trump and company really rolled up their sleeves and got down to the nitty gritty business of fucking shit up with the kind of devastating speed normally associated with category 4 hurricanes, or tropical typhoons, or tornadoes… not unlike the ones that took place on this day in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, killing twenty. Not that Trump noticed. As officials from those states begged desperately for help, it was all for naught. It turns out Trump already had his hands full doing the following:

• Enacting an “enhanced” version of the so-called global gag order, which defunds international organizations that even mention abortion as a medical option. Clearly, Saturday’s Women’s March was still nagging at him.
• Ripping up the already dead TPP, and making some noises about potential changes to NAFTA.
• Declaring that that the US will not tolerate China’s expansion onto islands in the South China Sea, essentially threatening war with China.
• Giving a group of business leaders 30 days to “come up with a plan” to help stimulate the American manufacturing sector.
• Instituting a federal hiring freeze (military excepted), causing chaos at the FDA and VA, shitting up a number of important ongoing federal programs, and generally making it obvious he’s got no idea what he’s doing.
• Being hit with a ethics lawsuit alleging him to be in breach of the Constitution’s emoluments clause for allowing his businesses to accept payment from foreign governments.
• Telling a number of lawmakers in a closed door session that he now believes up to FIVE MILLION people voted “illegally” in November’s election, thus costing him the popular vote.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24 - DAY FIVE

On Tuesday, a most interesting and vexing day, we learned that Donald Trump:

• Had a portrait of Andrew Jackson--formerly the craziest maniac ever to serve as President--hung in the Oval Office.
• Threatened to impose martial law on the city of Chicago over Twitter because of something he saw on The O’Reilley Report, on FOX News.
• Resurrected plans for two controversial oil pipelines, Keystone XL and Dakota Access, which had been rejected by the Obama administration. 
• Underlined his approach towards environmental issues by ordering the EPA to remove climate change pages from its website.
• Further ordered all EPA employees to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press.
• Put a freeze on all EPA grants and contracts.
• Ordered the USDA to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press, and to stop publishing any papers or research. 
• Declared that, henceforth, all scientific studies and data collected by the EPA or the USDA would have to undergo “review” by political staff prior to publication.
• Asked James Comey, his kissy-huggy buddy who released unsubstantiated allegations concerning Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign, to stay on as FBI Director.
• Tweeted a picture from his personal Twitter account of a photo he says depicts the crowd at his inauguration, and which he intends to hang in the White House press room. The photo is dated January 21st, 2017, the day AFTER the inauguration.

But the President wasn’t the only busy boy on Tuesday! Here's more of what took place:

• White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed that, yes indeed, President Trump does believe the lie that 3 to 5 million people voted “illegally” in the election, thus costing him the popular vote. This, despite the fact that there is ZERO evidence of any such voter fraud, which contrasts vividly with the mountains of evidence proving widespread disenfranchisement of minority voters in the swing states, where Trump's razor-thin margins secured his electoral "win".
• Republican House members presented HR7, a bill that would prohibit federal funding not only to abortion service providers, but to any insurance coverage, including Medicaid, that provides abortion coverage.
• Tom Price, nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Service, characterized federal guidelines on transgender equality as “absurd.”
• North Dakota state congress began considering a bill that would legalize hitting and killing protesters with cars if they are on roadways.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25 - DAY SIX, SIX, SIX

If you thought Day Five was bad, wait’ll you get a load of Day Six! Because even before that evening’s exclusive White House interview with ABC News’ David Muir, that was the day when Trump:

• Continued to double down on his delusion that up to 5 million votes were illegally cast, calling for a “major investigation” into the matter, which observers quite legitimately fear will be the pretext upon which a whole new wave of voting restrictions will be implemented to make sure even fewer minorities and poor people get to cast their vote.
• Signed an order directing the Department of Homeland Security to build a wall along the border with Mexico.
• Announced the creation of an “Office for Victims of Crimes Committed by Removable Aliens”. 
• Announced that this new Office will publish a weekly report chronicling crimes committed by immigrants, regardless of their status, apparently.
• Began referring to human beings as “removable aliens” (just in case that slipped past you).
• Announced a reduction of “at least 40 percent overall” in funding of international organizations, including the United Nations.
• Issued a moratorium on multilateral treaties, calling for a review of “all current and pending treaties with more than one other nation”.
• Announced plans to allow the DACA program, which provided protection to undocumented immigrants who arrived in America as children, to expire.
• Announced his intentions to wage war on American sanctuary cities, where undocumented immigrants are shielded from intimidation by federal agents.
• Signaled that a raft of legislation aimed at singling out and stigmatizing Muslims in the United States of America would, indeed, be put forth.
• Announced plans to bring back the use of torture, black site prisons, and extraordinary rendition.

And that was all before Trump’s batshit crazy first official White House interview, with ABC’s David Muir, during which he:

• Claimed, of his much maligned speech before the CIA, quote: “They said it was the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Superbowl and they said it was equal.” 
• Failed to explain who “they” were, and how “they” went about making such a comparison. 
• Repeated his assertion that America should have just taken Iraq’s oil, regardless of international law.
• Called those who criticized his call to steal Iraq’s oil “fools”.
• Bemoaned the unfairness of ISIS being allowed to “chop people’s heads off and put ‘em on camera and send ‘em all over the world”, while Americans aren’t allowed to have any fun at all.
• Declared his faith in the power of torture and war crimes.
• Blamed the recent rise in Chicago’s crime rate on “political correctness”.
• Used the platform to plug FOX News a couple times.
• Continued to insist that up to 5 million votes were cast illegally in the election, each and every one of them going to his rival.
• When informed that the author of a study he used to support his voter fraud theory insists that his study proves no such thing, Trump accused him of "grovelling".
• Continued to insist that attendance at his inauguration set records.
• Spoke the following words:

"The world is a mess. The world is as angry as it gets. What? You think this is gonna cause a little more anger? The world is an angry place. All of this has happened. We went into Iraq. We shouldn't have gone into Iraq. We shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. The world is a total mess. Take a look at what's happening with Aleppo. Take a look what's happening in Mosul. Take a look what's going on in the Middle East. And people are fleeing and they're going into Europe and all over the place. The world is a mess, David."

Dear God yes, David, is the world ever a great big fucking mess.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26 - DAY SEVEN (DIRECTED BY DAVID FINCHER)

Wow. Day Six took a lot out of me. How about you? I wonder what Day Seven was like. Let’s see now… ah yes! On Day Seven:

• Despite still unaddressed concerns about massive conflicts of interest, Trump Hotels revealed plans to further expand the company’s operations in the US market, while simultaneously shelving projects in China... which shouldn't be as disturbing as it is.
• Steve Bannon, Trump’s top adviser and the man widely believed to be the actual author of all those executive orders the White House has been shitting out, called up the New York Times to declare the media an “opposition party” that should "keep its mouth shut."
• Trump threatened to cancel a meeting with Mexico's President Pena Nieto after learning that Nieto had been critical of Trump announcing his intention to go through with building a border wall, but Nieto called his bluff, said "fuck it", and cancelled the meeting his own damn self.
• About that wall: White House Secretary Sean Spicer announced that a 20 percent import tax was being considered to help pay for it. 
• That announcement was promptly walked back, however, when too many people figured out that any tax on Mexican imports would come out of American taxpayer pockets.
• A couple of pipelines experienced massive spills just days after Trump ordered the completion of the KeystoneXL and Dakota Access pipelines.
• The sources Trump cites to support his false "voter fraud" claims were all revealed to be either not what he thinks--the Pew study--or completely made-up bullshit: i.e. the friend of a Bavarian golf pro's friend who told Trump that he knew some people who saw some people who "didn't look like" they should be allowed to vote, and yet somehow they were allowed to vote! Oh, the humanity!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 27 - EIGHT DAYS A WEEK

It was on Friday--a day upon which a so-called "Pro Life" march on Washington attracted approximately one tenth of the previous week's Women's March--that the crap really started overspilling the bucket. Because it was on this day that the Trump administration:

• Declared their support for House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's plan to deal with "obstructionist Democrats" by using the "nuclear option" of changing House rules to allow for a simple majority vote to install Trump's pick for the Supreme Court vacancy, which he plans to announce next week.
• Issued a Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that made no mention of Jews.
• Signed an executive order that blocks people from seven countries--Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan--from entering the United States for the next 120 days. 
• Odered a 120 day suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which is basically the entirety of the US refugee program. 
• Imposed an “indefinite” ban on refugees fleeing Syria.
• Capped the number of refugees allowed into the US from other countries at 50,000, which is less than half the goal set by the Obama administration.
• Ordered that refugee claimants be prioritized on the basis of “religious based persecution”, but only if the individual is of “a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.” So, basically, a religious test favoring refugee Christians over refugee Muslims coming from majority Muslim countries.
• Made the mind-boggling decision to include Green Card holders in the preliminary travel ban, sparking mass chaos as many people on their way back home from holidays abroad were turned away at airports, while others were informed mid-flight that they would be deported immediately upon landing, and still others were handcuffed, held incommunicado, had their electronic devices confiscated and examined, with some even being questioned about their feelings towards Dear Leader Trump.  

I think it also merits pointing out that on this awful day, with world tensions increasing and the American situation becoming more volatile with every tick of the clock, we also found out that the State Department purge of most senior staff was not quite as voluntary as first reported.

SATURDAY, JANURY 28 - NINE DAYS IN HELL

On Saturday, as it became obvious that the previous day’s executive orders were causing a worldwide travel disaster, outraged Americans began congregating by the thousands at the nation’s airports to protest and demand the release of people being detained there. It was a beautiful show of defiance in the face of an increasingly extreme and radical regime. Meanwhile, on Planet Trump:

• Trump spokeslizard Kellyanne Conwoman spat out a condescending sneer of a tweet, telling people to "Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact. Promises made, promises kept. Shock to the system. And he's just getting started."
• She later went on FOX News and managed to avoid coughing up a cockroach while hissing: "I don't think Washington is accustomed to somebody who's just been a brilliant businessman, who's accustomed to delivering and producing results, who's accountable to, in this case, the people." 
• Trump had a nice cozy chat on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two apparently vowed to team up in order to defeat ISIS, and agreed that restoring economic ties was a darn good idea.
• Trump issued an executive order giving the military 30 days to come up with a plan to defeat ISIS.
• Late in the day, Civil Rights groups succeeded in having a nationwide stay put into place halting Trump’s executive order targeting Muslims. Jubilation broke out at the airports that complied with the judicial order, while protests continued at airports that didn’t.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 29 - AND THEN THERE WERE TEN

Phew! Are you sweating, too? Don't worry, we're almost done, because we're on Day Ten, the day on which:

• We found out the details of the executive order adding revolutionary chaos agent Steve Bannon to the National Security Council.
• Bannon was also added to the Principals Committee, a small group of the national security officials that consider policy issues affecting national security. 
• In order to make room for Bannon, Trump turfed both the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who will now only attend by invitation, and only when it is deemed that “their responsibilities and expertise” are needed.

I just want to make sure that this sinks in, because it's a doozy: Trump just kicked the Joint Chiefs out of the National Security Council. To make room for Steve Fucking Bannon. Of Breitbart.com. 

Folks, if I missed anything, please let me know and I'll update this list. In the meanwhile, yer old pal Jerky is tired, and he's gonna take a nap. But if you go out into the big bad world today, maybe try engaging with a stranger or two. Hell, go all out and make a new IRL friend. I have a feeling real, meat-world relationships are going to be incredibly important in the coming weeks and months. 

Start making those connections. Start linking those chains. There's no more time left to waste.

HEY GOOGLE, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?

As I continue to work on my list of everything Trump has done since the inauguration, I decided to take a look at what other bloggers and observers have come up with, to see how my list stacked up against theirs. Imagine my surprise when I typed in my search query only to see Google's auto-fill prompting suggest... well... take a look for yourselves.

Really, Google? "GOOD things" that have happened since Trump was elected? "POSITIVE things" that he's done?! Fucking "GREAT THINGS" he's already done?!?

I can guarantee you that there is NOTHING in my Google search history that could conceivably be responsible for causing these suggestions to show up as legitimate auto-fill suggestions. So either some of Trump's shadier associates--like, maybe, say, Erik Prince--is holding one of Sergey Brin's beloved family members hostage in exchange for some direct interventionary fuckery, or else there are some serious SEO shenanigans going on somewhere that need looking into.

Because you know, Sergey, you can say that Google's unofficial motto is "Don't be evil." But if you somehow let evil people do evil stuff that transforms Google into a de facto vector for evil propaganda... isn't that pretty much the same thing?

SUGGESTED READINGS AND QUOTE OF THE DAY

1. Canadian Naomi Klein--sort of a younger, spunkier, more photogenic version of Noam Chomsky--says we should all Get Ready for the First Shocks of Trump's Disaster Capitalism. The article, published by The Intercept, begins:

We already know that the Trump administration plans to deregulate markets, wage all-out war on “radical Islamic terrorism,” trash climate science and unleash a fossil-fuel frenzy. It’s a vision that can be counted on to generate a tsunami of crises and shocks: economic shocks, as market bubbles burst; security shocks, as blowback from foreign belligerence comes home; weather shocks, as our climate is further destabilized; and industrial shocks, as oil pipelines spill and rigs collapse, which they tend to do, especially when enjoying light-touch regulation. 

All this is dangerous enough. What’s even worse is the way the Trump administration can be counted on to exploit these shocks politically and economically.  

Speculation is unnecessary. All that’s required is a little knowledge of recent history. Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” a history of the ways in which crises have been systematically exploited over the last half century to further a radical pro-corporate agenda. The book begins and ends with the response to Hurricane Katrina, because it stands as such a harrowing blueprint for disaster capitalism. 

That’s relevant because of the central, if little-recalled role played by the man who is now the U.S. vice president, Mike Pence.

The rest of it is well worth reading for a number of reasons, whether you just want to have a better understanding of the ideological underpinnings of those who currently find themselves at the Commanding Heights of this radical new American regime, or just want to give yourself a series of terrifying nightmares. 

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2. This Economist article tries to explain why Russia is about to decriminalize domestic abuse. If you don't like giving clicks to the Economist, here's the most important part:

The debate began in 2016, when the government decriminalised battery, the least violent form of assault on the Russian statute books. Russia is one of three countries in Europe and Central Asia that do not have laws specifically targeting domestic violence. Instead it is treated like other forms of assault, ignoring the fact that spouses and children are more vulnerable than other victims. But when it decriminalised battery last June, the Duma decided to exempt domestic abuse, instead making it subject to the same two-year maximum sentence as racially motivated offences. 

That pleased civil-society groups that had been pushing for tougher rules. But the Russian Orthodox Church was furious. Scripture and Russian tradition, the church said, regard “the reasonable and loving use of physical punishment as an essential part of the rights given to parents by God himself”. Meanwhile, conservative groups worried that parents might face jail. They argued that it was wrong for parents to face harsher punishment for hitting their child than a neighbour would. 

Under pressure from such groups, deputies have put forward a bill that makes the first instance of poboi—battery that does not do lasting harm—an administrative violation carrying a fine of 30,000 roubles ($502), community service or a 15-day detention. It also returns the crime to the realm of “private prosecution”, where the victim is responsible for collecting evidence and bringing a case. Repeat offences would be criminal infractions, but only within a year of the first, giving abusers a pass to beat relatives once a year.

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3. "I Was Trained for the Culture Wars in Home School, Awaiting Someone Like Mike Pence as a Messiah". Quite a mouthful, isn't it? It's a title that brings to mind both classic "Red Scare" propaganda, as well as those "I Was a Teen Age Whatsis" drive-in science-fiction flicks of the 1950's. Unfortunately, there's nothing funny about Kieran Darkwater's description of her rising anxiety on Election Day, nor about the reason for her anxiety. As she explains: 

I grew up in the far-right evangelical conservative (Christofascist) movement; specifically, I was homeschooled and my parents were part of a subculture called Quiverfull, whose aim is to outbreed everyone for Jesus. I spent my teen years being a political activist. I was taught by every pastor I encountered that it was our job as Christians to outbreed the secularists (anyone not a far-right evangelical Protestant) and take over the government through sheer numbers. I was part of TeenPact, Generation Joshua and my local Teenage Republicans (TARS).

When the Tea Party rose in 2009, that was my culture. The Tea Party was step one. I was laying the groundwork for those elections in 2006. These people didn’t come out of the blue like it seemed. This plan, this Christofascist takeover of the US government, has been in the works for decades. When evangelical conservatism started becoming popular and more mainstream around the 1970s, the foundation was being laid for the tragedy playing out right now.

Evangelical conservatives started taking over their local republican parties and founding organizations like Operation Rescue, Homeschool Legal Defense Association, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, just to name a few.

From that point on, Kieran goes into some deep history, providing plenty of links and evidence to back up her claims, some of which may be startling to those of you who haven't been reading the Dirt, in its various iterations, over most of the past 2 decades. So I suggest you click through, read it, and help spread it around. When you do, I think you'll have to agree with her conclusions about the only proper reaction to all this:

They will not be won over with sit-downs and respectability politics. This kind of dogma cannot be reasoned with; it must be fought against. Trying to convince them to come to the other side is a waste of time unless they’ve already started on that journey themselves. The ones in power, actively harming our lives, are past this point. We can only fight back.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"It’s like being actually led into the Promised Land by Moses."

- Representative Tom Cole (R-OK) talking about guess who.

DDD EXTRAS

• As always, if you're interested in historical oddities, trivia about secret societies, political assassinations, paranormal events and other assorted weirdness, be sure to check in with our sister-site, the Useless Eater Blog, for a daily rundown!  For instance, did you know that it was on this day in 1987 that CIA director William J. Casey stepped down after six years spent managing Black Ops, Wet Ops and Psy Ops for the Bush/Reagan regime? It was quite the lucky break for Poppy Bush that, only a short time later, Casey should die two days before he was scheduled to testify in the Iran/Contra hearings!
• If you missed our link to Vic Berger's latest video editing masterpiece, which we ran earlier today, then by all means be sure to go back and check it out! As a matter of fact, you might do well to open up the entire Daily Dirt Diaspora website by just clicking on our graphic banner. Do so, and you'll soon have ten days' worth of Dirt served up on a single page!

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: TRUMP'S INAUGURATION

Vic Berger's video remixes for Super Deluxe are all pretty great, no matter the subject matter. However, his latest work, exploring more of the disturbing subtext (and supertext) of Donald Trump's inauguration "celebration". For those of you who like your satire served cold, this one's for you.

WHILE I COMPILE TOMORROW'S DDD OFFERING, ENJOY THIS LOVELY IMAGE

MELANIA'S WASN'T THE ONLY BAD REACTION

By now you've all seen it. The moment at his inauguration when, during comments by Reverend Franklin Graham, Donald Trump turns to his smiling wife, Melania, and says something curt before turning his back on her as her smile turns into... something else. That look has haunted millions of people across the globe who've been replaying those few frames of video over and over again, trying to read Melania's expression. It's clear she's been chastened, on this of all days, so perhaps she's disappointed. But isn't there more than just a hint of fear in that look? Of dread? 

Yer old pal Jerky went back to the videotape and sought out another angle, to see if there were any more clues to be gleaned. Guess what? There were. Because the CBS news cameras captured that moment from an angle that makes it seem as though perhaps it wasn't Melania who was the target of Trump's no doubt withering tongue-lash, but his youngest son, the tragically-monikered Barron, who was standing immediately to Melania's right.

Just look here. This first image captures the split second after Trump has turned back towards his family, before he's said anything. The people around them--let's call them Blondie, Fat Man, and Fat Man's Wife (mostly obscured by Barron in this image) are all wearing beaming smiles, ostensibly befitting the occasion. Even Barron is trying hard to act like a normal happy kid, God bless him.

This image captures the exact moment when Trump's brief, obviously cutting comment registers with Barron, causing him to flinch visibly.

Seemingly pleased with himself at having exerted his Will to Power over a 10 year old boy, Trump turns back to the crowd. You can't see Melania from this angle, but this is the moment when the smile fell from her face. Blondie's expression has notably soured. Barron seems to have absorbed the insult (if that's what it was) and is stewing in it. Soon, his head will drop, and will only raise again intermittently.

Blondie sneaks a surreptitious peek in Barron and Melania's direction. Checking to see if they're okay? Fat Man is also looking towards Melania.

Barron's head drops. The Fat Man's formerly jovial countenance is now noticeably grimmer. Blondie looks like she swallowed a bug. Now it's the Fat Man's Wife's turn to check in on Melania.

Blondie once again sneaks a peek at Barron and Melania. Is it curiosity or concern? The look on her face says "Jesus Christ... who knew?!" Fat Man and Wife are basically frozen.

Trump, perhaps sensing a temperature drop in his immediate vicinity, defensively puffs up. Blondie stares into the middle distance, while she, Fat Man and Barron look like they'd rather be anywhere else.

Blondie, obviously embarrassed, decides to stare at the floor for a while. Barron seems to have gone to his "happy place", maybe daydreaming about Mine Craft or something.

Another sideways check-in from Blondie, no poker face she, whie the Fat Man's face goes from grim to grimmer as he, too, stares down the middle distance.

Back to staring morosely at nothing for Blondie (who you will recall was beaming with joy just a few short seconds ago). Fat Man seems to have decided on a face style I am hereby christening: "Steadfast Resoluteness".

It's difficult to make out in a still image, but Blondie gave a nervous toss of her head, at this point, as though trying to follow Taylor Swift's edict to "Shake it Off".

Yet another glance from Blondie. She just can't help herself. She keeps returning to those two poor people like a tongue that can't help but probe a bad tooth.

And four times is the charm. From this point on, Blondie can only stare at her shoes in embarrassed discomfort. Barron looks like he's used to this kind of shit.

And so, as Blondie flees ever deeper into herself and away from the trauma of having witnessed a tiny sliver of the One True Trump, Fat Man pulls a full on introspective grimace, looking for all the world like a man who is thinking "My God... What have we done?!"

That's the way yer old pal Jerky sees it, anyway. We're still no closer to knowing what it is, exactly, that Trump said to his "beloved" wife and child, but if anybody knows who Blondie and Fat Man are, maybe we could ask them?

In the meantime, did you hear about how on Saturday, Trump personally got on the horn with the National Park Service leadership and demanded they find photographs to corroborate his erroneous belief that his inauguration was the most widely attended in history? Funny, right?

And did you hear about the purge of all high ranking career diplomats--including people who've been working there since the 1970's--at the State Department?  How about his decision to start publishing a weekly list of crimes committed by "aliens", meaning immigrants, no matter their status?

Not so funny, right?

Folks, after Wednesday's interview on ABC, maybe it's time to stop laughing. Trump is a textbook narcissistic megalomaniacal psychopath, and the party he leads is jam-packed with Armageddonist Evangelical Jihadists, and Free Market Absolutists who wouldn't bat an eye at the return of slavery and probably even cannibalism if that's what "the markets" will bear. So if you've got any bright ideas, now might be the time to spill, because I'll be honest... I'm drawing a fucking blank about how to deal with this shit.

TRUMP DIARY + EXTRAS!

It reads, in part: "Swearing In Ceremony of President Donald J. Trump - January 21st, 2017"

TRUMP DIARY - DAYS 4 & 5

Folks, yer old pal Jerky is many things, but perfect ain’t one of them. And so it is with the utmost humility that I beg your forgiveness if and when I miss something important.

Like, for instance, we’re about to delve into the diary for Days Four and Five in Trump’s America, and yet yesterday I forgot to point out that on Sunday we found out Trump never really intended to release his tax returns. All that talk about waiting for audits to be completed? Just more of Trump’s gold-plated bullshit.

Which brings us to Monday, January 23rd, Day Four in Trump’s America. By Trump's own reckoning, this was the real "Day One" of his administration, and he spent most of the morning signing executive orders--ditching the TPP, imposing a government hiring freeze ("JOBS!"), reviving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines--while surrounded by his milky-white Sausage Squad, his wraith-like dogsbody, Kellyanne Conwoman, hovering on the periphery like a scarecrow Smurfette all the while.

It was also a day on which we learned that Republicans, not content with simply laying the groundwork to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, have decided to get ambitious. Now they want to replace Medicaid with “block grants”, which is a terrible idea on so many levels, it’s enough to make you suspect Republicans just flat out hate the people they’re meant to represent.

Speaking of hate, it has now been established beyond any reasonable doubt that the GOP has long been waging war against women; in particular, a woman's right to control her reproductive destiny. This is even more true of the alt.right “manosphere”, the motley crew of pick-up artists, testosterone cream salesmen, and other so-called "men's rights activists" who helped Trump eke out his narrow (and likely rigged) electoral victory.

Well, if Trump didn’t hate women before--a bet no sober man would take--perhaps it’s in the context of Saturday's massive, coast-to-coast street protests that we should view his reinstatement of the so-called “global gag rule”. This onerous piece of legislation, beloved by Republican administrations since Reagan’s, forbids NGOs receiving US funds from providing, recommending, or even mentioning the word “abortion”. 

But Trump didn’t just reinstate the gag rule; he radically expanded it. The gag now covers all US government departments and agencies, a change that is virtually guaranteed to result in bloody, painful, easily preventable deaths, all around the world, beginning immediately. 

But for Trump, Monday wasn't all fun and games! Yes, brutalizing half the world's population with legislation designed to remind them of their proper, biologically predetermined station in life can be a hoot, but there was also work to be done. Work like, for instance:

• Strapping the muzzle on employees at numerous federal agencies in order to prevent them from promoting or discussing any work they might be doing in relation to climate change. 
• Making sure that, against precedent, convention, and the tenets of basic human decency, even more journalists mistakenly rounded up in Friday's illegal police kettling were hit with felony riot charges, meaning they potentially face ten years in jail.
• Watching a Bill O'reilly "special report" about crime in Chicago on FOX News, then going on Twitter and threatening to impose martial law there if "Chicago" doesn't "do something about" it.
• Attempting to humiliate the press by threatening to hang a huge panoramic photograph--which he claims "proves" his inauguration had record breaking attendance--in the White House press hall, only to have it all go wrong, like a mock epic version of a Jacobean revenge play.
• Issuing this hilarious press release to every accredited journalist in the White House Rolodex:

Well, that's all I've got for today, friends. Join me tomorrow, won't you? I'll be explaining why any Republican who isn't currently working on helping to have Trump peacefully removed from the Presidency due to his obviously deteriorating mental state is now thisclose to being guilty of the capital offense of treason. Toodles!

***

SUGGESTED READINGS

1. With his latest for Esquire, a short-but-sweet, down and dirty bit of clear-eyed polemic entitled "This is Our Most Dangerously Retrograde Government in 150 Years", Charles P. Pierce has once again knocked one out of the park. Furthermore, his warning--"It's fun to laugh at Spicer and the infighting, but a regime is forming"--is a vitally important one.

2. Thank Godzilla (or Cthulhu, or that really big new version of King Kong or some other vast and teetering monstrosity) for that longest running of Conan O'Brien comedy bits, the brilliant Robert Smigel's Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog! In this edition, Triumph does Trump, as the cigar chomping sock-puppet pooch attends Traitor Trump's inauguration.

3. You've probably heard Charlie Sheen's Trump story. You know, the one about the platinum cufflinks? It's a funny story, yes? But did you know that Trump has been pulling that same con for as long as he's been in the papers? Check out this New York Post overview, which--considering that paper's "conservative" editorial slant--seems oddly unimpressed with the Bogus POTUS. I guess that's just familiarity breeding contempt.

***
QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Oliver Wendell Holmes famously summed up Franklin Roosevelt as a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament. Trump has a third-class intellect and a third-class temperament. The frightening surreality of what has happened to the United States has only begun to sink in."

- In his New York Magazine essay, titled "Donald Trump's Presidency is the Twilight Zone Episode About a Terrifying Six-Year-Old", Johnathan Chait hits the nail on the head.

DDD EXTRAS

• Check out the Useless Eater Blog, updated every day with new freaky shit! Also, if you're a Kubrick fanatic, maybe try going deep on my Kubrick U blog, which, despite having a lot of fluff, ephemera, and links to other people's stuff, does contain some original content of my own. All in the name of Stanley Kubrick! 

THE TAKEAWAY

Okay, so after some quiet deliberation, and based upon my experience of wasting Godzilla knows how much time chasing down exact dates and times before being willing to begin "composing", from hereon out, yer old pal Jerky ain't gonna to be so finicky about the dates anymore. General ballpark oughta do posterity just fine.

DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR JAN/24/2017

TRUMP'S AMERICA, DAYS 2&3

Okay, so where were we?

Oh, right! Saturday, January 21st, otherwise known as Day Two in Trump’s America, the day on which the President set a new world’s record for being rejected by the most women in a single day!

Yeah, those women’s marches were something, weren’t they? By some estimates, an unprecedented 3.3 million people--that’s one full percent of the American population--took to the streets in cities large and small, from coast to coast, to declare their opposition to the Trump administration. It quite possibly was the largest single day demonstration in the history of the United States of America.

In Washington DC alone, the march drew roughly three times the number of people that showed up for The Donald’s coronation, or, as I like to call it, “the worst episode of Game of Thrones ever.”

At first, however, it was difficult to tell whether Trump even noticed. He certainly sounded a chipper note when he issued his first Tweet in days, describing the previous day as: “A fantastic day and evening in Washing ton DC. Thanks to @FoxNews and so many other news outlets for the GREAT reviews of the speech!”

And then, once again, shit got dark, real fucking fast.

You know what I’m referring to. That speech to the CIA. Jesus Fucking Nailholes… that SPEECH!

As with Trump's inaugural address, you really have to watch or read it in order to fully appreciate the horrifying humiliation of it all. Trump’s comments while standing before the star bedecked, white marble memorial commemorating the 117 members of the CIA who fell in the line of duty wasn't really a speech, per se, so much as it was a rambling fever dream of incoherent blathering.

In a scorching, must-read essay for the New Yorker, veteran Mideast correspondent Robin Wright called Trump’s comments a “vainglorious affront”, and she wasn’t exaggerating. His performance fully earned those fancy, five dollar words.

Considering the magnitude of the intelligence community’s current predicament--if they get some really dangerous information about Putin, and he asks who the source is, do they tell him?--you would think the purpose of Trump’s visit would be to set their minds at ease.

Instead, the 400 agents and analysts who assembled to hear him speak were forced to endure his petulant whining about the media, some textbook gaslighting, and a gorilla dose of bog standard braggadocio.

According to Trump, any insinuation of a rift with the intelligence community--whom he twice recently referred to as “Nazi Germany”--was entirely the fault of the media, “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.”

As Trump’s vast touring entourage applauded, hooted and hollered on behalf of his stunned and silent audience, Trump continued, bizarrely: “I know maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted, and you’re going to get so much backing. Maybe you’re going to say, Please don’t give us so much backing. Mr. President, please, we don’t need that much backing.”

Trump then mused aloud about his suspicions that “almost everybody” in the CIA had voted for him, “because we’re all on the same wavelength, folks.”

No matter the topic of conversation, Trump would invariably bring it back to himself. Here’s how he described Mike Pompeo, his pick to lead the CIA: “Number One in his class at West Point. Now, I know a lot about West Point. I’m a person that very strongly believes in academics. In fact, every time I say I had an uncle who was a great professor at M.I.T. for thirty-five years, who did a fantastic job in so many different ways, academically--was an academic genius--and then they say, Is Donald Trump an intellectual? Trust me, I’m like a smart person.”

If you find any of the above behaviors strange, troubling, or even disgusting… know that you are not alone. In fact, former CIA director John Brennan--a legendary figure in the agency, who served in high level capacities for both Republican and Democratic administrations--called Trump’s performance “despicable”, and said that he “ought to be ashamed of himself.”

The White House response to Brennan’s comments was to sic RNC PR BS artist Reince Priebus on him, to issue thinly veiled threats of reprisal.

Which brings us to another one of the Trump administration’s yappy little lapdogs, Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

How disastrous was Spicer’s first appearance in the White House Briefing Room that Saturday afternoon?

Right out of the gate, and one hour late, Spicer spent his first daily briefing burying the assembled press under a blizzard of bullshit. He raved about white plastic ground coverings, “Secret Service magnetometers”, and pulled some Metro DC transit numbers from out of his ass, before angrily accusing “the media” of lying about attendance numbers, earning the dreaded Four Pinnochios with his claim that “this was the largest audience ever assembled to witness an inauguration PERIOD!”

Really? Wow. I didn't even know it was Melania's time of the month! Maybe that explains the look on her face.

Anyhoo, after throwing his little tantrum Spicer climbed down from the dias, turned tail, and scooted out of the press room just as fast as his tiny little feet could take him. He refused to answer even a SINGLE QUESTION on his first day as Press Secretary.

And so, to answer the rhetorical question posed a couple paragraphs back: How disastrous was Spicer's first appearance? Apparently, Trump is already looking for a replacement. Kinda makes you wonder what a guy's gotta do to earn a raging narcissist's loyalty these days, don't it?

It's enough to make you wonder whether one of the reasons for Trump's success up until now--a substantial, self-deputized constituency willing to act as ad hoc propagandists for his cause without a need for leadership from above--is fast becoming his greatest weakness. Because the general population is paying closer attention, and it's becoming plain as mud to see that all the competing narratives popping up simultaneously are now negating each other.

“It WAS the biggest crowd ever to attend an inaugural, PERIOD! And the only reason it wasn’t is because either a) Leftist Libtard SJW protestors blocked the real Americans from being able to attend, b) Trump fans actually work for a living, or c) Secret Service magnetometers messed with the cameras or something! Besides, the media that you trust LIES! Look at this here media that I trust!”

Remember what I wrote yesterday about cognitive dissonance being the byword of this administration? Well, that approach may well have worked on a critical mass of the American public as part of an aggressive short game--at least, it worked well enough to allow Trump to cheat, slime, and lie his way to victory on technicalities--but as a long game strategy, it's a proven loser. It's only been four days, and the whole shady construct is already beginning to shake apart.

In any case, Day Two in Trump's America ended not with the bang of the White House Briefing Room's door hitting Spicer in the ass on the way out, but with the whimper of muted Tweets. Because it was on Saturday night that Trump, enraged that one of the National Parks Service's Twitter accounts had re-tweeted the now-famous image comparing his inaugural crowd size with Obama's, ordered the NPS Washington Support Office to issue an unprecedented and potentially dangerous agency-wide gag order on all related Twitter accounts. The force of this edict was felt far and wide:

Until further notice, all park road condition updates will provided on the Mount Rainier Facebook page https://t.co/JwFuETkGnM.

— MountRainierNPS (@MountRainierNPS) January 20, 2017

Eventually, after it was pointed out that shutting down the NPS Twitter updates was fucking dangerous, and could conceivably lead to people dying in any number of gruesome ways, they were allowed to get back to work, but not before issuing a grovelling apology, complete with a lovely buffalo at sunset:

We regret the mistaken RTs from our account yesterday and look forward to continuing to share the beauty and history of our parks with you pic.twitter.com/mctNNvlrmv

— NationalParkService (@NatlParkService) January 21, 2017

Thus ended Day Two in Trump's America.

Day Three wasn't much better, because on that day, Sunday, January 22nd, we found out that 217 people arrested on inauguration day--including non-protesting passers-by and journalists who got caught in a “kettle sweep”--were hit with felony riot charges, and potentially face up to 10 years in prison.

Meanwhile, Trump's blacklist of CNN continues, with the White House refusing to allow any official representatives to appear on that network's Sunday programs.

Considering main Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conwoman's performance on NBC's Meet the Press--where she angrily defended the previous day's pathetic performance by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer (see above), infamously describing his blatant lies as "alternative facts" before threatening to cut off NBC's White House access as well--maybe being blacklisted is CNN's good fortune.

To label Kellyanne's neologism "Orwellean", as many in the media have done--even as sales of Orwell's 1984 have soared--is underselling how cutting edge it actually is, owing far more to Putin's sinister public relations adviser Vladislav Surkov's "Nonlinear War" than it does to Orwell's Newspeak.

And there's that cognitive dissonance again.

Well, that's it for today, folks. Be sure to join us tomorrow, when we catch you up to the very latest goings on in Trump's America. In the meantime, always remember, and never let them forget:

OTHER STUFF

• Formerly entertaining, currently pathetic psycho goofball Alex Jones is apparently going around telling anyone who will listen that Donald Trump has told him his "InfoWars" organization is going to be "the main operating system in the rebirth of the American Republic". No shit.
• Trump's speech patterns are so garbled, nonsensical, and grammatically incorrect that he's driving his official translators nuts.

***

SUGGESTED READINGS

1. Thanks to Tim Heidecker for showcasing one of the most wonderful marriages of words, music and imagery that it's been my pleasure to watch in a very long time, indeed:

2. Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ajay Singh Chaudhary and Raphaelle Chappe's essay "The Supermanagerial Reich" presents the reader with a historically informed and theoretically rigorous look at the current state of world affairs, coming to some conclusions that may give some of you a somewhat uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomachs... and possibly not in the way you're thinking right now. It begins:

POPULAR CULTURE IS REPLETE with cartoonish depictions of Nazism. Hitler seems to emerge suddenly, as if he had been waiting in the wings as a fait accompli. One moment it’s Weimar decadence, really good art, and Stormtroopers and communists fighting in the streets. The next, Hindenburg is handing Adolf the keys to the kingdom and it’s all torchlight parades, Triumph of the Will, and plaintive Itzhak Perlman violins. Hitler rises above a reborn Reich as a kind of totalitarian god. All aspects of life come under his control through the Nazi party’s complete domination of German life. Of course, this is not really how it worked. 

Before Hitler achieved his genocidal powers, there were years of what we would now call “intense partisan bickering,” decreasing prosperity, and violence in the streets. In the end, Hitler cobbled together a rickety coalition of business-minded technocrats, traditional conservatives, military interests, and his own radical ethno-nationalists into a plausible government. As the new government consolidated its power, thousands of communists and trade unionists were subjected to harsh suppression and were among the first to be shipped away to what would eventually become the concentration camps. And yet for a time, life for the overwhelming majority of Germans — even briefly for German Jews — went on largely as it had in the Weimar era. There was clearly a new regime in town, but most Germans got up in the mornings in the mid-to-late 1930s and went to work, just as they had in the 1920s. January through March of 1933 was not 1776, 1789, 1791, 1917, or even 1979. Far from the world turning upside down, things were strangely continuous for many Germans as though nothing much had happened at all. For a few Germans, things were astoundingly better.

You might think you know where this is going. And you might be right. But I doubt it. Read the rest of this essay. It's totally worth it, and it's guaranteed to give you food for future thought and stay with you for days, if not for the rest of your life.

3. Our old pal Keith Olbermann again, this time with another calm and collected message for anybody who has supported Traitor Trump up until now:

***
QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English."

- one of America's greatest living authors, Philip Roth.

DDD EXTRAS

If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on the 24th and 25th days of January, check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog, where you will find out what year it was that the last Japanese World War II hold-out was found hiding out in the jungle on Guam, and what historic event took the spotlight away from Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba in 1998!

THE TAKEAWAY

It's two... TWO days in ONE! Because I'm lazy. And you don't pay me.

DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR JAN/23/2017

TRUMP: THE FIRST DAYS

And so it begins.

As I contemplate the research materials that I’ve gathered for this, my first true editorial effort since Trump's inauguration just over 72 hours ago, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the vast banquet of idiot delights spread out before me. I face, as ever, the Fat Man's Quandary: Where do I start?

Even though I want to, there’s no possible way I’ll be able to document every outrage, every deviation from the norm, every lie. There’s no way I’ll be able to communicate everything I want to say to you, dear readers, among whom number a select few who’ve been reading my words for the better part of two decades.

I guess it's best to start at the beginning--the TRUE beginning--with the inauguration ceremony.

But first, a few words about the sad prelude of Thursday’s pre-inaugural festivities. Much has already been written about the desperate depths to which Team Trump were willing to stoop in order to secure A-list entertainers. They pulled out all the stops, even going so far as to dangle potential ambassadorships to top industry bookers.

And yet, the cry rang out across the land: “Not for any price!”

The “celebrity” President, a man who lorded imperiously over teams of celebrities begging for his approval on a TV game show, which he hosted, entitled Celebrity Apprentice--a man who styles himself the World’s Greatest Deal Maker--was incapable of convincing a Bruce Springsteen cover band to perform a paying gig at his inauguration as President of the United States of America.

Friends, this is cognitive dissonance on a galactic scale. And we’d better get used to it, because I have a feeling that cognitive dissonance is going to be both a hallmark and the byword of the Trump administration… for however long it may last.

Which brings us to 11:47 AM on Friday, January 20, 2017: the moment when Donald Trump, the most widely loathed President Elect in the history of opinion polls, before a surprisingly thin crowd assembled beneath somber, drizzling sky, stood face to face with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, plopped his tiny, shrimp-like hand atop two bibles, and took the oath of office.

And, just like that, Donald J. Trump was suddenly in breach of the emoluments clause, thus simultaneously sparking a Constitutional crisis while laying the groundwork for his inevitable impeachment. Also, at that very same moment, every American diplomat serving abroad was suddenly out of a job (many still currently without successors).

That’s when shit got dark.

You know what I'm referring to. That speech. Jesus Fucking Nailholes… that SPEECH!

Trump’s inaugural address was, to understate things, fucking bonkers. You really need to see or read it for yourself to fully grasp its horrific portent. Clocking in at a brisk 15 minutes, it still felt like a forced march through a waking nightmare towards the black and bleeding Heart of Darkness, as Trump bade us see America through his eyes and bear witness to "American carnage".

Lurching ominously from counter-factual depictions of the nation as a post-Apocalyptic dystopia, to boasting that bordered on the auto-messianic, his address was described by observers from a broad spectrum of political inclinations as unprecedented, dreadful, shocking, and disappointing.

In his overview for Time Magazine, historian and author David Von Drehle was particularly critical of Trump’s shameless and (it is to be hoped) historically ignorant echoing of the infamous German-American Bund slogan “America First!” as he bemoaned the sorry state of the nation being peacefully handed over to his administration’s tender mercies. Meanwhile, at The Guardian, Michael Goldfarb couldn't help but note the inaugural's distinct Teutonic chill.

What makes Trump’s rhetoric so genuinely disturbing is the fact that, by every rational, reasonable, historically accepted metric… THERE IS NO CARNAGE. The economy is in a far better place than it was 8 years ago, in the wake of Preznit Dubya's two disastrous terms. Unemployment is way down, corporate profits are way up, and fewer people are relying on welfare. 

Yes, the middle class is shrinking, and wages are stagnant across the board, and yes, there are aspects of the US economy that remain sub-optimal. But if you think Traitor Trump and his Billionaire's Club cabinet give a thimble full of spit about any of that, you're two dead brain cells away from asking George to tell you about the rabbits.

What about those intolerable crime levels Trump seems obsessed with? With the exception of a small handful of cities, crime rates are less than half what they were in the early 90’s, and Americans are far safer now than they’ve been at any time since the mid-freaking-60’s! And even in those "exceptional" cities, like Chicago and Baltimore, crime rates still haven’t surpassed that late 20th century maximum.

Is there a crime problem in some American cities in the midst of economic decline? Of course there is, but it’s nowhere near the crisis that Trump insists on portraying every time the subject of race pops up.

Look, we've already spent too much time going over Trump's despicable speech, and we haven't even touched on the international reaction yet. Suffice it to say that, with the notable exceptions of Russia (for obvious reasons) and Israel, where they've already begun building new settlements in East Jerusalem, Trump's speech went over like a bloody nose in a Liberian emergency room. 

So what else--other than massive protests--happened on Day One?

Well, after bidding the Obamas farewell, attending an inaugural luncheon, and performing the traditional review of the Armed Forces, it was time for the Iaugural Parade from the Capitol building down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

And oh, what a glorious parade it was! As Trump’s motorcade sped swiftly past quiet pockets of sedate onlookers, down a seemingly endless tunnel of empty bleachers, even some devoted Redcaps voiced their disappointment.

“It’s almost like a funeral” mused air conditioner salesman Scott McGrady, a regular inaugural parade attendee who had positioned himself at the location where previous Presidents have traditionally stopped the motorcade so they could get out and do a little glad-handing before heading to the White House. It turns out that’s not Trump’s style. As the limos rolled past, Trump could be seen staring grimly into the distance, refusing even so much a wave or a smile to his well-wishers.

One has to assume Trump’s mood perked up a bit upon arriving at the Oval Office, where he quickly set to work signing a raft of executive orders, including:

• ordering all federal departments to “minimise the economic impact” of Obamacare, whatever that means.
• cancelling an FHA mortgage premium cut that had saved thousands of lower middle class American home owners millions of dollars during the last few years.
• a totally normal and not at all creepy North Korea style proclamation declaring Janurary 20, 2017--the day of his inauguration--a "Day of Patriotic Devotion."

Then the time came for Trump to show off his “cyber” chops by unveiling the all new White House website, which replaces the previous administration’s pages on civil rights, healthcare, LGBTQ issues, and climate change, with sweet fuck all. Also purged was the website’s Spanish language version, with representatives refusing to address the question of whether or not it will ever make a comeback.

Oh, and the White House telephone comments line has been shut down, too. They replaced it with a Facebook page, apparently.

And that was it, as far as doing the Work of the People was concerned. No doubt congratulating himself on a job well done, Trump capped off the day by attending the Inaugural Ball with his beautiful porn star mail order bride. It must have been a better than average "date night" for the First Couple, too, seeing as Trump didn't Tweet until Saturday, late afternoon.

And so ended Day One in Trump's America. 

Day Two was marginally better, only because Day One was the day Donald Fucking Trump became President of the United States of America, so something pretty fucking awful--on the order of a megatsunami or an invasion of Moon Nazis--would have to happen to beat it.

To Be Continued...

OTHER SHIT

• A pro-Trump rally of Biafran separatists in Nigeria left 20 dead and the whereabouts of 200 more are still unknown after police arrested people en masse after the event turned violent. 
• Yahya Jammeh, the embattled President of Gambia who once insisted that he would rule for "a billion years", has gone into exile after initially refusing to accept the results of a recent election, which he lost. Apparently, he took most of the nation's money with him. 
• On Friday, it emerged that people were being added to Trump's Twitter account without asking for it. Even people who were subscribed to POTUS (formerly Obama, now Trump) and who made a conscious decision to unfollow that account have been put BACK on the account a few hours later! Yes, it's a "little thing", but considering everything else that transpired this week... what are we to make of this?

***

SUGGESTED READINGS

1. If you're anything like yer old pal Jerky, you've spent the last couple months almost as freaked out and exasperated by many of the people you figured ought to know better--people who fancy themselves tolerant, socially conscious, historically aware, well read, liberal folk, but who seem to so fucking "woke" they tripped right back into the dream again--than you have been by Trump's True Believing Redcap Revolutionaries. After all, the latter at least have the excuse of belonging to a brainwashing cult! Anyhoo, if you're up for some light reading, find out how The Nihilistic Purity of the Far Left will Kill Us All! 

2. Again, if you're anything like yer old pal Jerky, one of the human beings whom you hold in the very highest of esteem is the late, great Robert Anton Wilson, aka the Notorious R.A.W. And if you're aware of the man and his works, it's more than likely that you've been feeling as though you might be trapped in an alcove of the Chapel Perilous over the last few months. Well, you're not alone. There's this fella named John Higgs, and at his blog, he suggests that the alt.right may have taken a page from RAW's book and adapted parts of "Operation MindFuck" for their own use and abuse. He buttresses his argument with lots of links and evidence, including video, and it's convincing. Less convincing, unfortunately, is his suggestion for how to fix things, which he calls "Operation MindFix". Still and all, well worth the read, even if only for diagnostic purposes.

3. Jaki Leibezeit, drummer for and founding member of the influential Krautrock band Can, died yesterday. He was 78 years old. His bandmates said he played as though he was half man, half machine. Some call his work on Can's Tago Mago the best of his career, but yer old pal Jerky is particularly fond of "Yoo Doo Right", from Monster Movie, which I hereby invite you to listen to, below, as part of the Fascist Disco Playlist (to be expanded and explicated at some later date).

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"When you have a spokesperson for the president of the United States wrap up a lie in the Orwellian phrase "alternative facts"... When you have a press secretary in his first appearance before the White House reporters threaten, bully, lie, and then walk out of the briefing room without the cajones to answer a single question… When you have a President stand before the stars of the fallen CIA agents and boast about the size of his crowds (lies) and how great his authoritarian inaugural speech was…. These are not normal times. The press has never seen anything like this before. The public has never seen anything like this before. And the political leaders of both parties have never seen anything like this before."

- Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather isn't fucking around.

DDD EXTRAS

• If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on the 23rd day of January, check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog, where you will find out about the Song Dynasty troops defeated the fucking War Elephant Corps of the Southern Han!

THE TAKEAWAY

Dear Future Historians: We're not kidding when we tell you it was like this from Day One... IT WAS LIKE THIS FROM DAY FUCKING ONE!!!