S4 E15 — So Maybe Ulysses S. Grant Wasn’t Wrong After All

The January 6th Insurrection exposed the very concrete acts of violent authoritarianism and domestic fascism operating in the US — as if our Constitution had been shredded and replaced by a regime more like one run by autocrats and demagogues.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

“3” Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Everyone has faults and it would be a waste of time to address them all. What’s relevant to the current situation? What can be improved and how? You’ll put your energy into making a good thing better.” Aries

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s 15th Episode in Season 4 of “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 26th day of March in the spring of 2022.

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year.

Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

S4 E14 — Lies and Lost Causes and Repeat and Repeat; S4 E13 — Was Trump Putin’s Puppet?; S4 E12 — Why Did Trump Sue Deutsche Bank?

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E15 — Wait, Did I Say That Out Loud?; S3 E14 —How!; S3 E13 — Why?; S3 E12 — You Can’t Cure Stupid, but There’s a Cure for Ignorance

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E15 — Behaving Badly, Why Big Sur made “Fodor’s Travel NO List”; S2 E14 — Reading Tea Leaves Bottled and Set Adrift; S2 E13 — Slipping on a Bar of Dove Soap and other Ripple Effects; S2 E12 — Too Anxious to Meet and Eat;

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E15 — Day 15 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E14 — Day 14 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E13 — Day 13 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E12 — Day 12 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

What else could go wrong?

During his one term administration Trump embraced and praised authoritarian thugs all over the world like:

- Erdogan in Turkey
- Duterte in the Philippines
- Xi in China,
- Vladimir Putin
- Kim Jong-un

“Why is the president so attracted to autocrats?” asked Anonymous, later revealed to be Miles Taylor in his book, “A Warning” written from his inner circle perspective.

“The president sees in these guys what he wishes he had: total power, no term limits, enforced popularity, and the ability to silence critics for good.”

Other than having things his way by following the “Autocrat’s Playbook,” what else could go wrong?

Sure, as Taylor said, “Trump’s affinity for autocrats means we are flying blind through world affairs. The moral compass in the cockpit, is broken.”

“There is only the ever-changing negotiating positions of a grifter in chief, which will not be enough to win what is fast becoming the next Cold War. Our enemies and adversaries recognize the president is a simplistic pushover.”

Basically, Taylor agrees with what a lot of the outsiders (late night TV show hosts) have been joking, he can be played and moved by flattery.

More importantly our competitive enemies like Xi in China believe he is weak, can take advantage of him or simply ignore him.

Or he exposes sensitive discussions we have with them, and he tries to bully them into submission.

The world depends on the United States to shape history.

But, Taylor asks if President Trump decided we are on the wrong team. We should be in a small club of thugs instead a big club of free nations?

The cult of Trump converged on Washington, D.C. to fight the new and improved “Lost Cause.”

Raskin reiterates strands of the messaging that brought them to:

“Destroy corrupt politicians of both parties, traitorous police officers, lying media, agents of George Soros, defenders of the Clintons and the Obamas, other sinister, shadowy forces identified by conspiracy theorists in QAnon and by Trump’s authoritarian polemicists like Steve Bannon.”

And this wasn’t their first Rodeo.

Footage gathered on the storming of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing on April 30, 2020 showed.

Rioters and militia groups armed with AR-15s showed up in response to Trump’s call to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” with plans of disrupting legislative renewal of Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 stay-at-home policy order.

Heavily armed and masked, wearing combat fatigues, and striking the poses of gangsters or terrorists, attempt to physically charge the Michigan State Capitol.

“… the Democratic Party, whatever its faults, is the party of democracy and that the Republican Party is the party of Trump — authoritarianism, corruption, and insurrection.“

No, it didn’t happen overnight. But, the following quote does seem prescient —

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” —Ulysses S. Grant

Evidence

However, Ulysses was no Steve, unless that’s what his middle initial stood for. And there is no legitimate Holiday Tau for us, so we turn to swiping yours.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“3” Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Everyone has faults and it would be a waste of time to address them all. What’s relevant to the current situation? What can be improved and how? You’ll put your energy into making a good thing better.” Aries

I’m struggling with this one, because on a national political level I feel the Republican enablers chose Trump over their oath to the Constitution and relied on sentiments like these to excuse him. But then there’s Miles Taylor one of the many people in his administration that wrote a book. And, on a personal level, I subscribe to the wisdom captured within the TauBit.

“4” Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “The best way to get the attention you need will not be to ask for it directly. That would be like a comedian standing onstage and asking people to laugh. You’ll think in terms of playfulness, entertainment and enticement.” Taurus

Haha. Laugh dammit.

“4” Steve Nash, 45: “People remember their first time in a place. The chance to show someone around is an opportunity to make a memory. So, what kind of memory do you want to make? You have the power to make a little magic happen here.” Aquarius

So out of context for this episode, but I feel the TauBit for Nash is worth remembering. Make magical memories.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

- @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12252 this week to 12344 organically grown followers.
- Orange County Beach Towns 234 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

- “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.”
- David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
- “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy within almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected President.
- “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

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