Finally Friday Reads: We have a Kakistocracy* coming. Let’s not keep it!

“Make America Garbage Again,” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

After sleeping through last week, I have finally decided that PTSD has kicked in, and I’m in survival mode.  At least I woke up to find the word that best describes what we’re watching unfold.  From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

*kakistocracy  noun

kak·​is·​toc·​ra·​cy ˌkakə̇ˈstäkrəsē

plural kakistocracies

:government by the worst people

Greek kakistos (superlative of kakos bad) + English -cracy

The Cambridge Dictionary is more blunt. It evidently was coined sometime in the 17th century.  Now we know how far we’re going to fall back.

A government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people in a state or country:

 

Who rules in a kakistocracy?

 

We are living in a new era of kakistocracy.

This is what we will have after January 20,2025, which is, ironically enough, not only the inauguration of the first felon to ever hold office but also the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King.  Somewhere, the Greek Muses have entered the realm of Greek Tragedy.  All we need is a chorus.

I turned to some TV news last night to watch the faces of the political class chatter about the proposed cabinet members with the look of teenagers stuck in a summer camp horror film. Yes, this all does feel like a very bad movie or dream that you want to be over when you awaken. However, it is more like the idea of the tyranny of the masses that Alexis de Tocqueville dreamed of while writing his book Democracy in America. He was very afraid of the unwashed masses, and now we know why.

The greatest danger Tocqueville saw was that public opinion would become an all-powerful force, and that the majority could tyrannize unpopular minorities and marginal individuals. In Volume 1, Part 2, Chapter 7, “Of the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United States and Its Effects,” he lays out his argument with a variety of well-chosen constitutional, historical, and sociological examples.

I love that last part because it comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a history class curriculum prepared for teachers on the topic.  Quick, go read it or get your copy of the book before both are banned and defunded. It’s an independent agency, like the Fed, and we’ll see how long into the kakistocracy that remains to be true for both.  I imagine I would never get grants to be funded as I did in 1982 to bring Kate Millet and Betty Friedan to Omaha and funds to expand our Women’s Festival to include black women presenters. That was even during the Reagan years.  He must have been damned woke or completely asleep, drooling on the Resolute desk to miss that opportunity.

“Matt is the man selected to hide all the criming, appropriate.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Okay, so let me really depress you now with some headlines. This is from Public Notice‘s Lisa Needham.  “Trump moves to burn down the rule of law. His cabinet nominations are obscene and augur dark days to come.”  And you thought I was being a bummer!

When the sordid history of the second Trump administration is written, should we all survive that long, it will be difficult to sort out which of his early cabinet picks were the most atrocious. And while handing over control of the military to a weekend Fox News host or putting an anti-vax creep in charge of America’s top public health agency are really bad, it will be hard to sink lower than Matt Gaetz being nominated as the nation’s top law enforcement official.

Let’s pretend, for just a moment, that Gaetz isn’t just being given this job because he’s a lib-triggering Trump crony and evaluate him on the merits. Gaetz’s legal experience, such as it is, seems to consist of a stint at a small firm in Florida, Anchors Garden, where he worked after graduating from law school in 2007. The firm currently has only nine attorneys, and Gaetz devotes precisely one line to the experience in his self-servingly weird House bio, saying, “Prior to serving in Congress, Matt worked as an attorney in Northwest Florida with the Keefe, Anchors & Gordon law firm, where he advocated for a more open and transparent government.”

Advocating for a more open and transparent government sounds pretty important, right? But while the firm does have a government affairs and public records practice, when Mother Jones did a deep dive into Gaetz’s experience there, what they turned up instead was that he working on things like debt collection and representing a homeowners’ association over a dispute about a beach volleyball net. It isn’t even entirely clear when Gaetz stopped working at the firm. His House bio skips ahead to his 2010 election to the Florida House, and his legal work is never mentioned again.

This is not the biography of someone you would hire to be an assistant district attorney in a mid-size American city, much less the head of the entire Department of Justice.

Compare Gaetz to Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general pick during his previous term. Sure, Sessions was so racist that he couldn’t get confirmed as a judge. But he also spent 12 years as the US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and two years as the Alabama attorney general before being elected to four consecutive Senate terms. During his time in the Senate, he served on the Senate Judiciary Committee, becoming its ranking member in 2009. Sessions was a repulsive and retrograde choice for AG, but he wasn’t a demonstrably unqualified one.

That’s a sunny note to start your weekend on. Wait, there’s more!  If you want to see real pearl-clutching, you must go to WAPO or NYT.  But they’re a  little too late for me.  Here’s something from The Bulwark. I’ve suddenly gone all in for the alt-press like I did in 1970 when I started writing for Omaha’s underground Newspaper, The Aardvark, to write terrible things about Richard Nixon. “Gaetz Begins Lobbying Lawmakers, Hoping He Hasn’t Burned All the Bridges/ The congressman and his team are trying to convince Senators to overlook a potentially damning ethics report and his history of political histrionics.” This analysis is coauthored by Mark Caputo and Joe Perticone.

Though Trump has made a slew of controversial picks (the latest being Thursday’s nomination of anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services), Gaetz stands out as a singularly polarizing figure because of the investigations into his conduct, the accusations against him, and his strained personal relationship with fellow Republican members of Congress he has torched, including allies of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose ouster he masterminded.

“We have 53 senators and we might not have 50 votes to confirm right now. It’s really up in the air,” said a member of Trump’s team briefed on its preliminary vote-counting. “Gaetz can be a real asshole. But he can be a great guy. The senators need to see the great guy and kind of hear the asshole apologize and tell them why all this stuff about sex crimes isn’t true.”

The push to confirm Gaetz is the latest test of his ability to survive crises that would have ruined any other politician. It also will provide an early indication of Trump’s ability to bend the Senate to his will. The president-elect has quickly moved to force votes on high-profile nominees that no other person in his position would have dared put forward. And as a fallback, he is pressuring incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune into giving him the right to bypass the Senate to make temporary appointments.

Doing so would get Trump’s cabinet in place. But it could come at a political cost if it perceived that the president is jamming through highly-controversial nominees. On Thursday, ABC reported that the woman at the center of the sex-crimes case had told House investigators that Gaetz had paid to have sex with her in 2017 when she was a minor. Gaetz was also allegedly implicated in paying other women for sex, which he has denied, and in illicit drug use.

The succession of nominations and reporting left Republican senators in an uncomfortable spot. Some, including those on the Senate Judiciary Committee—which would first vote on Gaetz’s nomination—said they wanted to see the House ethics report into Gaetz.

A quick look at several of the appointments finds quite a few rapists and serial adulterers. Trump obviously wants mini-mes.  The BBC has this list up to date and is waiting for more. “Who has joined Trump’s team so far?”  Some of the appointees are not getting sanguine coverage.’

This article is specific to Gaetz and was written by North American Correspondent Anthony Zurcher. “Trump picking Gaetz to head justice sends shockwaves – and a strong message.”

Donald Trump’s nomination of congressman Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general has arrived like a thunderclap in Washington.

Of all the president-elect’s picks for his administration so far, this is easily the most controversial – and sends a clear message that Trump intends to shake up the establishment when he returns to power.

The shockwaves were still being felt on Thursday morning as focus shifted to a looming fight in the Senate over his nomination.

Trump is assembling his team before he begins his term on 20 January, and his choice of defence secretary, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, and intelligence chief, former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, have also raised eyebrows.

But it is Gaetz making most headlines. The Florida firebrand is perhaps best known for spearheading the effort to unseat then-Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy last year. But he has a history of being a flamethrower in the staid halls of Congress.

In 2018, he brought a right-wing Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, and later tried to expel two fathers who lost children in a mass shooting from a hearing after they objected to a claim he made about gun control.

His bombastic approach means he has no shortage of enemies, including within his own party. And so Trump’s choice of Gaetz for this crucial role is a signal to those Republicans, too – his second administration will be staffed by loyalists who he trusts to enact his agenda, conventional political opinion be damned.

Gasps were heard during a meeting of Republican lawmakers when the nomination for America’s top US prosecutor was announced, Axios reported, citing sources in the room.

Republican congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho reportedly responded with an expletive.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said. “This one was not on my bingo card.”

Gaetz is playing Rocky and is already running up and down the Capitol stairs trying to find the few people that like him.  But even the New York Post is taking on the RFK appointment to HHS.  I know, I can’t believe  I’m doing this.   It’s even it’s Editorial Board.  “Putting RFK Jr. in charge of health breaks the first rule of medicine.”

The overriding rule of medicine is: First, do no harm.

We’re certain installing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services breaks this rule.

Maybe he’s sworn to focus narrowly on areas where he clearly can help — inspiring Americans to embrace healthier diets and more exercise, etc.

I wonder where eating roadkill and fish laded with mercury comes into that equation?

But wait! There are reasons to question every one of his appointments.  This is from The Guardian.  “Trump defense secretary nominee involved in 2017 sexual assault investigation, no charges filed – report.”

Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who Donald Trump nominated to be defense secretary, was involved in a sexual assault investigation in California seven years ago, but no charges were filed against him, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The incident happened in 2017 at a hotel and golf course in the city of Monterey, but there were few details of how Hegseth was involved, or what happened. Here’s more, from the Chronicle:

In a brief statement late Thursday, the city manager’s office in Monterey confirmed the sexual assault investigation, but provided few details.

The city said the incident was reported to have happened between almost midnight on Oct. 7, 2017, and 7 a.m. the next morning at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa on Del Monte Golf Course, less than a mile from Monterey Bay and across Highway 1 from the Naval Postgraduate School.

“The Monterey Police Department investigated an alleged sexual assault at 1 Old Golf Course Road,” the city said. It said the victim’s name was confidential and that the alleged assault was reported on Oct. 12, 2017. The city said no weapons were involved, but that there was a report of “contusions to right thigh.”

The city declined to release the police report, saying it was exempt from public disclosure, and said it would not make any further remarks on the probe.

The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office did not reply to a request for comment late Thursday, but an online database indicated no criminal charges had been filed against Hegseth in that county.

Vanity Fair reports that news of the allegation sent Trump’s transition team scrambling over the past few days:

Donald Trump’s transition team scrambled Thursday after Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles was presented with an allegation that former Fox & Friends cohost Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be Defense Secretary, had engaged in sexual misconduct. According to two sources, Wiles was briefed Wednesday night about an allegation that Hegseth had acted inappropriately with a woman. One of the sources said the alleged incident took place in Monterey, California in 2017.

According to the transition source, the allegation is serious enough that Wiles and Trump’s lawyers spoke to Hegseth about it on Thursday. A source with knowledge of the meeting said that Hegseth said the allegation stemmed from a consensual encounter and characterized the episode as he-said, she-said.

On Thursday evening, Hegseth’s lawyer Timothy Parlatore said: “This allegation was already investigated by the Monterey police department and they found no evidence for it.”

Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said: “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration. Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.”

That guy puts the sleaze in sleazy.  Plus, he was investigated for war crimes and would be in charge of dealing with war criminals. This is from Time Magazine. “Pete Hegseth’s Role in Trump’s Controversial Pardons of Men Accused of War Crimes.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense in his second term has already stirred controversy.

Hegseth, a military veteran, staunch defender of Trump’s “America First” agenda, and an outspoken critic of what he calls the military’s “woke” culture, has built a career around challenging the military establishment. He held an influential role in advocating for Trump to intervene on behalf of service members in three cases involving war crime accusations in 2019—cases that divided the military and ignited fierce debates over the limits of executive power and military accountability.

Now, if he is confirmed as the next Secretary of Defense, Hegseth will oversee 1.3 million active-duty service members and manage military strategy at a time of global instability, raising questions about how his past approach towards accused war criminals will impact his military leadership and discipline.

During Trump’s first term in office, Hegseth lobbied for the pardons of Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance and Army Major Mathew Golsteyn, and pushed to support Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, each of whom were facing charges or convictions related to alleged war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hegseth’s advocacy on behalf of the three service members appeared to pay off: in Nov. 2019, Trump granted pardons to Lorance and Golsteyn, and reversed a demotion of Gallagher, citing Hegseth and Fox News when he tweeted about his decision to review one of the cases.

Hegseth’s vocal defense of these men as victims of overzealous prosecution raised eyebrows in the military community, where such interventions by civilians are seen by some as a threat to the integrity of the justice system. “These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment’s notice,” Hegseth said on Fox & Friends in May 2019. “They’re not war criminals, they’re warriors.”

Lorance had been convicted by a military court in 2013 for the murder of two Afghan men during a military operation in 2012 in which he ordered his soldiers to open fire on a group of unarmed Afghan civilians he suspected of being insurgents. Lorance served six years of a 19-year sentence before Trump, after lobbying from Hegseth and others, granted him a pardon in Nov. 2019, arguing that he was unfairly targeted by military prosecutors and that his actions were justified in a combat environment where split-second decisions were often necessary for survival.

This is from Military.com. ‘He’s Going to Have to Explain It’: Surprise Defense Secretary Pick’s History Takes Center Stage.”

He has repeatedly called to ban women from serving in combat roles in the military.

He advocated extensively to gain pardons for troops accused and convicted of war crimes.

And he was one of a dozen troops turned away from serving on the National Guard mission to defend the Capitol, allegedly over tattoos that are popular with neo-Nazi and far-right groups.

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise pick to be the next defense secretary, has an extensive history of combat in the culture wars that have been brewing over the military for the past decade.

Prior to Trump’s announcement Tuesday evening that he was nominating Hegseth, the National Guard veteran was most known as a co-host on the weekend edition of “Fox and Friends,” one of Trump’s favorite TV shows. But in choosing Hegseth, Trump landed on a defense secretary nominee with a record of public statements that line up with the promises Trump made on the campaign trail to root out alleged “wokeness” within the military.

Senators from both parties tasked with considering his nomination responded Wednesday by saying that they have a lot of questions about Hegseth’s history and those past statements, but broadly insisted they were reserving judgment.

“I’m going to have to visit with him about those remarks,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the Senate’s first female combat veteran who was rumored to be in the running for Trump’s defense secretary, told reporters Wednesday when asked about Hegseth’s opposition to women in combat.

“Even a staff member of mine, she is an infantry officer. She’s back in Iowa now. She is a tumble. So he’s going to have to explain it,” Ernst added, though she did not answer when Military.com asked whether she would vote against Hegseth over the issue.

So, this is basically a band of misfits and less than mediocre wipipo.   But I’ll just let Muse tell it like it is.  Yes, there are a lot of f-bombs in the lyrics!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?