The Spiral of Madness Speeds Up

Christ, this day (via Fred Imbert at CNBC):

Stocks plunged on Friday after President Donald Trump ordered that U.S. manufacturers find alternatives to their operations in China. Apple led the way lower.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 623.34 points lower, or 2.4% at 25,628.90. The S&P 500 slid 2.6% to close at 2,847.11. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 3% to end the day at 7,751.77. The losses brought the Dow’s decline for August to more than 4%.

The major indexes also posted weekly losses for the fourth straight time. The Dow dropped about 1% this week while the S&P 500 pulled back 1.4%. The Nasdaq lost 1.8%.

Trump tweeted on Friday: “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” However, it is not clear how much authority the president has on this front...

trump doesn't really have any authority to tell companies what to do. A President can hold companies accountable through the law, to prevent fraud and monopolistic practices, to keep the industries honest, but dictate actual corporate policies? If anyone else ever did this - especially Obama, but also Dubya or Clinton or Bush the Elder or Reagan or any other in the White House - the media outrage would have been immediate and Congress reacting with fury. If it was a Democratic President doing this, Congressional Republicans would have filed impeachment proceedings within an hour.

Here? Not a goddamn peep. Even as trump delves into behavior and statements that rational people would think ought to trigger 25th Amendment shutdowns, the rest of the government is just treading water while the ship of state sinks faster.

The madness of trump - his obsessions, his failure to comprehend basic rules of trade (hint: trade wars ARE NOT GOOD AND EASY TO WIN), his blinkered belief he's beloved and worshiped - is getting worse... and the signs are growing daily.

James Fallows at the Atlantic documented this yesterday, before the economic disasters of today:

But now we’ve had something we didn’t see so clearly during the campaign. These are episodes of what would be called outright lunacy, if they occurred in any other setting: An actually consequential rift with a small but important NATO ally, arising from the idea that the U.S. would “buy Greenland.” Trump’s self-description as “the Chosen One,” and his embrace of a supporter’s description of him as the “second coming of God” and the “King of Israel.” His logorrhea, drift, and fantastical claims in public rallies, and his flashes of belligerence at the slightest challenge in question sessions on the White House lawn. His utter lack of affect or empathy when personally meeting the most recent shooting victims, in Dayton and El Paso. His reduction of any event, whatsoever, into what people are saying about him.

Obviously I have no standing to say what medical pattern we are seeing, and where exactly it might lead. But just from life I know this:

If an airline learned that a pilot was talking publicly about being “the Chosen One” or “the King of Israel” (or Scotland or whatever), the airline would be looking carefully into whether this person should be in the cockpit...

If Donald Trump were in virtually any other position of responsibility, action would already be under way to remove him from that role. The board at a public company would have replaced him outright or arranged a discreet shift out of power. (Of course, he would never have gotten this far in a large public corporation.) The chain-of-command in the Navy or at an airline or in the hospital would at least call a time-out, and check his fitness, before putting him back on the bridge, or in the cockpit, or in the operating room. (Of course, he would never have gotten this far as a military officer, or a pilot, or a doctor.)

There are two exceptions. One is a purely family-run business, like the firm in which Trump spent his entire previous career. And the other is the U.S. presidency, where he will remain, despite more and more-manifest Queeg-like unfitness, as long as the GOP Senate stands with him...

And the Senate are cowards. They already sold out their self-respect for self-interest, they've already sold off this nation to every crook able to put them on payroll.

This was me, early on before the rest of the day just into the rubber-padded walls of trumpland:

I wrote this later on Facebook, recognizing the madness of trump for a darker, twisted version of a man's madness from the 19th Century:

trump goes onto Twitter and rants about China, then issues a "I Hereby Order" to U.S. companies to stop doing business with China. Which immediately triggers YET ANOTHER stock market meltdown (there have been FIVE this year caused by trump tweets already).

Other than the reality that Presidents do not directly control what businesses do - outside of enforcing laws to prevent acts of fraud and other such duties - these statements by trump reflect an imperial mindset that you do not want to see in elected officials. I cannot recall any President in my lifetime - not Obama (Fox would have thrown the most epic conniption of all time if he had), not Dubya (MSNBC would have dedicated an hour each night to it), not Clinton (see Fox), not Bush the Elder, not Reagan, not Carter (I would have been too young to have noticed Ford or Nixon).

The only historical figure I ever saw who even wrote/talked like that was Joshua Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States, who issued decrees from San Francisco in the 1860s through 1880s dealing with everything from the then Civil War to overseas trade, religious freedom, investing in railroad patents, and building bridges (one of them actually got built).

Thing is, nearly every decree Norton I issued as emperor was rational, at least within reason, and were grounded in practical necessities. Even his edict barring political parties make sense.

In short, Norton I Emperor of the United States was *sane* compared to the current rantings and decision-making of donald trump.

The biggest difference between Emperor Norton and Emperor Shitgibbon is that Norton's decrees were sane. trump's decrees are about feeding his ego, destroying his enemies, ruling over an empire of ash.

This disaster of a theme park ride is spiraling faster. It won't stop until the rails collapse from the stress.

We are so very royally fucking screwed.