“You don’t have to like me, but — please — listen to me.”
— Michel Cohen, former Trump lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen’s First Anti-Trump Ad Drops and It Is Scathing
*****
“There were apparently photos that reflected the Falwell-Granda arrangement in some fashion, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer, in 2015 was involved in making them go away and so got his hands on them. He also brokered Falwell’s endorsement of Trump. How exactly all that transpired is unclear, but it seems likely that Falwell’s endorsement was related to his desire to make sure the story of his unusual marital arrangement did not become public. As Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo put it: “Trump Owned Jerry and Jerry Knew It.””
— Heather Cox Richardson Letter From An American (8/24/20)
*****
“I was watching the other night the great Lou Dobbs [of Fox News], and he said, ‘When Trump took over, President Trump,’ he used to say, ‘Trump is a great president.’ Then he said, ‘Trump is the greatest president since Ronald Reagan.’ Then he said, ‘No, no, Trump is an even better president than Ronald Reagan.’ And now he’s got me down as the greatest president in the history of our country, including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Thank you. We love you too.”
— Donald Trump, How Donald Trump canceled the Republican party
*****
“For all his volatility and incompetence, then, Trump is the default choice — even the safe choice — for a critical mass of white voters and business owners. The deaths of nearly 170,000 Americans to COVID-19 won’t change that, in part because the victims are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, people of colour and poorer workers.”
— Here’s how Trump could win again — without cheating
*****
“Now because of the president’s actions, we may well experience a fall and winter of civil unrest like we have never seen. I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all for President Obama to say that there’s a concern about the fabric of our republic. Donald Trump has taken the scissors to the fabric of our republic and he’s cutting it into little threads.”
— Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump, Ex-Trump official warns president will spark ‘a winter of civil unrest like we’ve never seen’ if he loses
*****
“For all the high-minded rhetoric, everyone on all sides of this situation — and I mean literally everyone — knows that Democratic politics today is more about brand and pantomime than about power and legislative action. You may not say it out loud, you may not like thinking about it — but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, because somewhere deep down in there, everyone senses the fraudulence at hand.”
— David Sirota, You Don’t Have To Be Excited
*****
“The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitude.”
— Attributed to Aldous Huxley
*****
“A hyper-nationalism always infects a dying civilization. It feeds the collective self-worship. This hyper-nationalism celebrates the supposedly unique virtues of the race or the national group. It strips all who are outside the closed circle of worth and humanity. The world instantly becomes understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us. These tragic moments in history see people fall into collective insanity. They suspend thought, especially self-critical thought. None of this is going away in November, in fact it will get worse.”
— Chris Hedges, America’s Death March (8/10/20)
*****
“Remember your history, know your future.”
— Chinese saying.