Trump’s nominees
In The Washington Post, Catherine Rampell evaluated the naming of Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as heads of a new government agency: “How can you tell Donald Trump’s plan to improve ‘government efficiency’ is off to a promising start? Because his first step was appointing two people to do the same job.” (Gerard Farrell, Summit, N.J., and Bruno Momont, Manhattan)
Also in The Post, Ruth Marcus took in Trump’s galling choice for attorney general: “No mother says to her son, ‘Why can’t you be more like Matt Gaetz.’” (David Sherman, Arlington, Va.) Her Post colleague George F. Will called Gaetz “an arrested-development adolescent with the swagger of a sequined guitarist in a low-rent casino.” (Korleen Kraft, Portland, Ore., and Bill Tanski, Stratford, Conn., among many others)
Via Frank Bruni
Manly men
What’s with all the sociopaths, serial adulterers and accused rapists Trump wants in high office?
Is RFK Jr. a manly man while Mitt Romney is a soy boy?
Noah Millman has an hypothesis about what’s up, and I think it’s a good start on figuring out yet another division in how Americans view the world.
By the way: Trump is throwing out a lot of names that haven’t been vetted by the FBI. Is the Senate going to let him get away with that?
Three lessons from the Gaetz débâcle
Kimberly Strassel draws three lessons from the Matt Gaetz débâcle:
And so, Lesson No 1: Not all allegations against Republicans are partisan shams. That’s surely hard for Republicans to swallow …
The Trump transition team might have also read the insider room. Republicans are well versed in defending their brethren against nonsense attacks—even their unpopular brethren. There was a reason few if any Republican members rushed to Mr. Gaetz’s defense: They know him. Congress is a close space, and most all members had seen or heard something unpleasant enough to make them suspect fire accompanied the smoke. Ergo, Lesson No. 2: Take your lead from people who know, not MAGA Twitter insurgents.
The name of the Trump nominations game is clearly “shakeup”—and that’s to be applauded. Few doubt that Washington is in desperate need of some rattling. But note Lesson No. 3: The Gaetz fiasco is a reminder that there remains a bright line between a candidate who is aggressive, committed and professional and one who is unthinking, partisan and a liability … Mr. Gaetz was always clearly the latter—big on bravado, short on ideas and temperament. While not as discussed as the ethics question, it’s also an important reason his nomination was destined to fail.
(Bold added)
Essential workers
Another vulnerability that the novel coronavirus has exposed is the paradoxical notion of “essential” workers who are grossly underpaid and whose lives are treated as disposable.
Michael Pollan, The Sickness in Our Food Supply
Too good not to be true
Sometimes they lie to you because a story’s too good not to be true. (I hope I’m not doing that.)
[H]istory is well and truly back. Even Francis Fukuyama agrees.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil, from a letter to Georges Bernanos.
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 