Tag: doublespeak

Sundaz Wandering Political Thoughts

The Trump Regime announced its foreign policy during this past week, quietly dumping it .

Donald Trump’s bleak, incoherent foreign-policy strategy

Trump’s security strategy slams European allies and asserts U.S. power in the Americas

Anyone who has been paying attention notices that Trump is pretty okay with Russia and is eager to abandon established international protections and orders. The Trump Corollary pretty well spells that out.

Several things are made much clearer for me now.

  1. The Trump Regime, embraced and empowered by the Heritage Foundation and IAW Project 2025, has decided that the only elected political office that matters is the presidency.
    • They’re pulling hard on the unitary executive theory. The POTUS can do whatever he wants so long as he declares it as a threat to the United States.
    • Reinforced by the Roberts Court shadow docket, they are confident that this will advance with little challenge.
  2. Trump and his minions will employ the United States’ military power and reach to do whatever they want.
    • This is along the lines of Russia’s thinking. It’s basically an imperial “we’re bigger than you” attitude, so go screw yourself.
  3. Bombing ships and killing the people onboard was their deliberate statement that the Trump Regime thinks it can and will get away with it.
    • They believe the POTUS is bigger than history and law, whether it’s national or international.
    • POTUS makes policy and executes wars as he sees fit, in the Trump Regime’s opinion.
    • The boat bombings of 2025 were a test as well as a statement to see how everyone else reacted.
  4. That the attacks are illegal and horrid and counter to law doesn’t affect the Trump Regime at all.
    • That they’re purportedly Venezuelan boats and citizens have everything to do with fossil fuels and Venezuela’s reserves, and nothing to do with whether drugs are onboard and destined for the United States.
    • The target and efforts were perfect test scenarios for them after they first flexed military power by bombing Iran under the guise of protecting Israel.
  5. The Trump Regime is aware of blowback from previous efforts to bully other nations and/or conduct regime change.
    • That’s one reason why they’re shutting down inroads and making the U.S. hostile to people coming to our nation.
    • By aggressively doing so and making migrants, immigrants, tourists, and foreigners less prevalent among our population, they can more easily keep tabs and more heavily surveil them when they’re here, and more swiftly and ruthlessly come down on them. In their minds, that probably equates to being less susceptible to terrorist activities.
    • They’re discounting what could happen to U.S. bases and corporations doing business outside of the United State, or what can happen to tourists beyond our borders. It’s another amazing example of how they think with blinders on. They think the threat of military retaliation will keep U.S. businesses and citizens safe in other nations.
    • That’s part of their ‘obey or else’ doctrine as Trump has warned others several times.
    • The Trump Regime is encouraged by how NATO and others responded to Russian aggression.
  6. Trump’s economic policies completely align with the Trump Corollary.
    • Trump claims that he wants to return manufacturing to the United States. That’s clearly just another promise to satisfy his base.
    • By breaking trade agreements and increasing tariffs, the Trump Regime has slowed the flow of goods to the United States.
    • Via this slowdown and tariffs, the Trump Regime can now manipulate what materials enter the country, affecting food supplies, consumer goods, manufacturing, construction, and prices. This becomes another weapon for Trump to coerce cooperation from states, businesses, and people.
  7. Putting U.S. national guard units in ‘blue’ cities along with attacks on the media and the persecution of his political enemies is a deliberate and orchestrated Trump Regime three-pronged strategy.
    • Their goals are clearly to mute criticism of Trump and his policies.
    • The strategy permits the regime to control the flow of information and to have boots on the crowd to quell public protests and outcry.
    • The Trump Regime knows that’s coming. Trump might not know of increasing unpopularity of him and his policies but his regime knows, are they’re expecting it to grow worse, and are planning against it.
  8. Dismantling the Department of Education and shifting focus from public education to private schools empowers the Trump Regime.
    • The Trump Regime is basically following the old communist game plan. Teach them young, and teach only the ‘facts’ which the Regime wants the young to hear.
    • This practice creates an easily malleable young population, perfect for expanding military forces.
  9. The icing on the strategy is ICE.
    • By establishing and heavily funding a huge paramilitary organization, the Trump Regime has created a de facto national police force.
    • They can then use that ICE force to curtail and restrict travel and enforce curfews in the name of ‘national emergencies’.
    • Trump, as POTUS, can declare a national emergency at will. Given the nature of the GOP-dominated Congress, Congress would only make mewling noises about it.
    • That would leave relief about Trump’s declared emergencies to the judicial system, where the Trump-friendly Roberts Court rules.

Can anyone say Iron Curtain? Through the ‘Trump Corollary’ and the Trump Regime’s already well-established practices, this administration is creating the Trump Wall. They, with ‘they’ defined as the primarily white fascist Christians of Trump’s base and the oligarchs courting Trump’s favor, believe that this policy will make the United States stronger and more successful by isolating it and using its military power to bully others. It completely discounts twentieth and twenty-first economic, cultural, political, and military history. It also belies the truth about how the United States advanced through education, opportunity, and international military, diplomatic, and economic cooperation. But remember that those successes and advances were often done when Democrats were in charge. This Trump Corollary is a reactionary throwback to a far different time, one well before computers and the vast technological communications systems that now exist.

The Trump Regime is on that, though. By developing relationships through business, profits, and grift with the techno brothers, they’re establishing the framework for shutting down and manipulating the social media information flow. AI will only enhance the Trump Regime’s ability to manipulate facts and the truth…just as foretold in 1984.

Bottom line, the Trump Corollary is a death knell for true freedom, democracy, and equality in the United States. Unless you have the money or power to procure them.

Good luck, people. Good luck.

    2

    Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

    A friend shared this on Facebook. I felt it deserved wider dissemination.

    Sec of Education (????) Linda McMahon and the Trump administration gave schools 10 days to gut their equity programs or lose funding. One superintendent responded with a letter so clear, so bold, and so unapologetically righteous, it deserves to be read in full. PLEASE READ, to see if this makes sense to you

    April 8, 2025

    To Whom It May (Unfortunately) Concern at the U.S. Department of Education:

    Thank you for your April 3 memorandum, which I read several times — not because it was legally persuasive, but because I kept checking to see if it was satire. Alas, it appears you are serious.

    You’ve asked me, as superintendent of a public school district, to sign a “certification” declaring that we are not violating federal civil rights law — by, apparently, acknowledging that civil rights issues still exist. You cite Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, then proceed to argue that offering targeted support to historically marginalized students is somehow discriminatory.

    That’s not just legally incoherent — it’s a philosophical Möbius strip of bad faith.

    Let me see if I understand your logic:

    If we acknowledge racial disparities, that’s racism.

    If we help English learners catch up, that’s favoritism.

    If we give a disabled child a reading aide, we’re denying someone else the chance to struggle equally.

    And if we train teachers to understand bias, we’re indoctrinating them — but if we train them to ignore it, we’re “restoring neutrality”?

    How convenient that your sudden concern for “equal treatment” seems to apply only when it’s used to silence conversations about race, identity, or inequality.

    Let’s talk about our English learners. Would you like us to stop offering translation services during parent-teacher conferences? Should we cancel bilingual support staff to avoid the appearance of “special treatment”? Or would you prefer we just teach all content in English and hope for the best, since acknowledging linguistic barriers now counts as discrimination?

    And while we’re at it — what’s your official stance on IEPs? Because last I checked, individualized education plans intentionally give students with disabilities extra support. Should we start removing accommodations to avoid offending the able-bodied majority? Maybe cancel occupational therapy altogether so no one feels left out?

    If a student with a learning disability receives extended time on a test, should we now give everyone extended time, even if they don’t need it? Just to keep the playing field sufficiently flat and unthinking?

    Your letter paints equity as a threat. But equity is not the threat. It’s the antidote to decades of failure. Equity is what ensures all students have a fair shot. Equity is what makes it possible for a child with a speech impediment to present at the science fair. It’s what helps the nonverbal kindergartner use an AAC device. It’s what gets the newcomer from Ukraine the ESL support she needs without being left behind.

    And let’s not skip past the most insulting part of your directive — the ten-day deadline. A national directive sent to thousands of districts with the subtlety of a ransom note, demanding signatures within a week and a half or else you’ll cut funding that supports… wait for it… low-income students, disabled students, and English learners.

    Brilliant. Just brilliant. A moral victory for bullies and bureaucrats everywhere.

    So no, we will not be signing your “certification.”

    We are not interested in joining your theater of compliance.

    We are not interested in gutting equity programs that serve actual children in exchange for your political approval.

    We are not interested in abandoning our legal, ethical, and educational responsibilities to satisfy your fear of facts.

    We are interested in teaching the truth.

    We are interested in honoring our students’ identities.

    We are interested in building a school system where no child is invisible, and no teacher is punished for caring too much.

    And yes — we are prepared to fight this. In the courts. In the press. In the community. In Congress, if need be.

    Because this district will not be remembered as the one that folded under pressure.

    We will be remembered as the one that stood its ground — not for politics, but for kids.

    Sincerely,

    District Superintendent

    Still Teaching. Still Caring. Still Not Signing.

    The writer ably exposes the Trump’s Regime regular use of doublespeak. They expose the flaws Trump and his minions use in their logic. They expose Trump’s tactics of bullying, his administration’s empty rhetoric, and his deliberate cruelty and lack of empathy.

    Trump’s United States is not my United States. I learned from teachers like the nameless superintendent who wrote the letter. I know more are out there. I hope they stand up and speak out.

    As they taught me to do.

    6

    Tuesday’s Political Thoughts

    TL/DR: The Trump/Vance mass deportation plan is morally abhorrent and fiscally disastrous, and Jamie Bouie has a column that effectively explains why.

    Mr. Bouie’s column several days ago, Oct. 4, 2024, was The One Thing Not Named Trump That Trump Cares About. He captured what I’d been thinking about and addressing with friends and relatives. Jamie Bouie did it with a style and insightfulness which I lack.

    The column begins, “The centerpiece of Donald Trump’s second-term domestic agenda is the mass deportation of what he and his campaign say are 20 million or even 25 million undocumented immigrants.”

    JD Vance — and the GOP — are in lockstep with this policy. Mr. Bouie pulls together the disparate segments about the topic of mass deportation: what it would do to our economy in terms of labor and labor costs in different industries; and what it would mean to actually carry out such a project in concrete terms of those important elements of time, energy, and money. Citing information from a new American Immigration Council repot, Mr. Bouie brings the details:

    “… a mass deportation plan designed to expel 13.3 million undocumented immigrants over about 10 years would crash the economy, immiserate millions of Americans and siphon nearly $1 trillion from the federal government.”

    “To deport one million immigrants per year, the report says, “would incur an annual cost of $88 billion, with the majority of that cost going toward building detention camps.” Even assuming some measure of “self-deportation,” the federal government would have to build “hundreds to thousands of new detention facilities to arrest, detain, process and remove” all targeted immigrants, at an estimated cost of $66 billion per year.

    “On top of that, the government would need to spend $7 billion per year to conduct the arrests, $12.6 billion per year to carry out legal processing for arrestees and an average of $2.1 billion to remove these immigrants from the country. None of this includes the cost of personnel, which could raise the overall price tag quite a bit. “Even carrying out one million at-large arrests per year,” the report says, “would require ICE to hire over 30,000 new law enforcement agents and staff, instantly making it the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government.” Assuming an average annual inflation rate of 2.5 percent, this deportation program would cost at least $967.9 billion over 10 years.“

    I added the emphasis about the $1 trillion price tag. The GOP speaks with gusto about being financially responsible. Just recently, many Republicans in Congress voted against more funding for FEMA as hurricane season continues because of their concerns over the debt. Adding $1 trillion to our commitments must have them in a tizzy, right? They plan to lower taxes, so how are they planning to raise the cash to pay for their deportation wet dream while not incurring debt?

    It’s critical to address this because this is typical of the lack of responsibility, increasing duplicity, and outright mendacity the GOP demonstrates under Trump. Lots of grand promises built on whipped cream pillars.

    The American Immigration Council report notes:

    • “The construction and agriculture industries would lose at least one in eight workers, while in hospitality, about one in 14 workers would be deported due to their undocumented status.”
    • …”mass deportation would remove “more than 30 percent of the workers in major construction trades,” nearly “28 percent of graders and sorters of agriculture products” and “a fourth of all housekeeping cleaners.” 
    • “The federal government would lose tens of billions of dollars in federal taxes, including contributions to Social Security and Medicare. States and localities would lose more than $29 billion in tax revenue.”
    • “Overall, the American Immigration Council concludes, “mass deportation would lead to a loss of 4.2 percent to 6.8 percent of annual U.S. G.D.P., or $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion in 2022 dollars.” For comparison’s sake, the country’s G.D.P. shrank by 4.3 percent during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.”

    Beyond the economic and business impact, Jaimie Bouie brings up a more critical aspect about the morality of such a move like mass deportation.

    “I’ve been discussing mass deportation as if it’s actual policy — as if it’s just one option among many for tackling the nation’s many challenges. But that’s absurd. Whether or not it works to fix the problems at hand, and it doesn’t, the mass deportation of 20 million to 25 million people — which is to say the forced detention and relocation of about 6 percent to 8 percent of the current U.S. population — is a human rights abuse. It would make the United States a pariah state. And it would violate the fundamental principles of the American creed, the core belief that “all men are created equal,” that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    Bingo. This is exactly why Trump is such a threat to U.S. democracy and freedom. To achieve his political ambitions, he’s willing to promote abdicating multiple basic tenets of our nation’s foundations.

    And it’s so grindingly typical of the modern GOP. They’re employing doublespeak. Those of us fervently following the election campaigns and Project 2025 read of their intentions and see that they’re suggesting that to go forward, we must go backwards; to be free, we must imprison others; to follow the path set out by our nation’s founders, we must turn our backs on them.

    Voting for Trump and this platform makes no sense unless you are backward, narrow-minded, bigoted, racist, and sexist, and lack critical thinking skills. Or you’re a one-issue voter, supporting, for example, ‘lower taxes’. So, tell me, or great thinker, how will the GOP accomplish their goals of mass deportation with lower taxes while reducing the debt?

    Well, we know what will happen. The GOP will lower taxes for the wealthy and corporations, cause they’re the ‘wealth creators’ (a wholly disproven and laughable position). And they’ll raise taxes on the poor and middle class through service fees and local taxes. See Ohio as an example of how this works out.

    The third and fourth reasons you might still vote for Trump is that ‘you like him’ (which, to me, goes back to being narrow-minded, bigoted, racist, and sexist), or as we’ve witnessing with too many voters these days, you’re not paying attention.

    Read all of Jamie Bouie’s column please. And vote blue in this election cycle.

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    Computer Coming Back

    My HP Envy is on the way back to my home. Although I’m happy, that’s not news, and it’s not prompting this post.

    What prompts this post is how it’s coming back. Sent Fed Ex 2-Day service, picked up on 5th, it’ll reach me on the 9th. That’s a sign of our times, that 2 days = 4 days without a wince of embarrassment. It goes right along there with logic that says the answer to gun violence is to arm more people with guns. That ketchup is a vegetable. That water boarding is not torture, and that torture rewards us with the truth.

    That America is the world’s greatest country. That corporations are people, my friends. That companies care about their customers above their profits, that market corrections will fix problems, that climate change can be ignored by legislating the words out of the public’s view, that charter schools run for profit will do better than public schools supported by taxes, that professional sports stadiums are good for the local economy and do much more than serve the wealthy owners, that things were better for everyone ‘in the good old days,’ and that the answer to war, is more war.

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