As always Mr. Divine wreathes his latest essay in self-congratulation. He references an earlier comment that ‘sounded the alarm‘ about Trump in his self -description, using a Platonic lens. Just to make plain Plato’s own record of dubious political affiliation , even his propinquity for tyrants, see this video posted at ‘Open Yale Courses’  

https://oyc.yale.edu/political-science/plsc-114/lecture-6

4. The Philosopher-King [00:26:28]

The very idea of  The Philosopher King is not politically benign!

But Andy has more political territory and issues to pronounce upon. Trump’s sadism, etc. :

Tillerson was warned of his impending doom while on the toilet — a nice, sadistic touch.

McCabe was fired hours before his retirement, a public execution also fraught with venom. What kind of man is this?

Mike Pompeo, a man whose hatred of Islam is only matched by his sympathy for waterboarders. Pompeo has been replaced in turn by a war criminal, who authorized brutal torture and illegally destroyed the evidence, Gina Haspel. *

Larry Kudlow,  Jared Kushner

And then last night, we saw McMaster fall on his sword, replaced by John Bolton, an unrepentant architect of the most disastrous war since Vietnam, a fanatical advocate for regime change in Iran, an anti-Muslim extremist, and a believer in the use of military force as if it were a religion. *

trade war with China ,  proxy and inhumane war with Iran in Yemen, When the U.S. detonates the Iran Nuclear Accord, the Crown Prince’s boasting about Kushner being “in his pocket” are far from implausible., Robert Mueller’s cumulative legal cornering of Trump, Yesterday, we discovered that Guccifer 2.0, Roger Stone’s online pen pal, is actually a Russian agent., his continued refusal to confront seriously the threat Putin clearly poses to democratic elections in the West.

But clearly Mr. Divine comes to a realization that demonstrates that he isn’t without some insightful self-criticism, even if framed as conjecture, yet he is clearly an unrelenting political hysteric. Trump is clearly a Know-Nothing, driven by ego and opportunism, and in very concrete way directionless, and unable to confront his own incompetence. Yet how can an electorate redress this problem, when both political parties are so utterly corrupt?

Part of me, of course, has long worried and hoped that my assessment of Trump as truly the tyrant of Plato’s imagination is melodramatic overkill.

Mr. Divine believes everything he reads in a Press, in thrall to National Security State’s apparatus, and its panic over the Know-Nothing politics of Trump, that has now made alliance with the most unhinged faction in American political life, the Neo-Conservatives. In sum, an American fascism, that expresses its nihilism/necrophilia in a consistent war mongering, that obliquely frames itself in The Clash of Civilizations of its Alfred Rosenberg, Samuel P. Huntington. I have placed asterisks next to some of the quotations of Mr. Devine’s comments regarding Pompeo, Haspel and Bolton. These political actors used to be fellow travelers of Mr. Divine, who was a rabid supporter of the Iraq War, whose mea culpa could not raise the dead, nor return the status quo ante. Our political fate is that ‘Clash’ and the commentaries of a class of pundits, who resolutely refuse to wear the sack cloth and ashes of their repentance. And continue to opine on our collective political fate ‘as if’ they enjoyed credibility rather than a well deserved opprobrium.

Old Socialist

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/america-takes-the-next-step-toward-tyranny.html