Trump Is Destroying Everything He Touches
POSTED BY: JJ
UPDATED: Friday, September 11, 2026 17:41
VIEWED: 85257
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“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.” - Niccolo Machiavelli
This Machiavelli quote suggests that most people are easily fooled by outward appearances and lack the ability to look deeper to find the truth. He argues that while everyone can see, very few have the "gift of penetration" - the rare insight or wisdom to discern the reality beneath the surface. This observation is a core theme in his work, especially in discussions about leadership and public perception.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.” - Niccolo Machiavelli
This Machiavelli quote suggests that most people are easily fooled by outward appearances and lack the ability to look deeper to find the truth.
Yes.
He is describing you and Ted.
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For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
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Quote:Trump’s Plan Is Now Out in the Open (but invisible to 6ixStringJack)
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.” - Niccolo Machiavelli
This Machiavelli quote suggests that most people are easily fooled by outward appearances and lack the ability to look deeper to find the truth.
Yes.
He is describing you and Ted.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
It’s getting ever harder to avoid connecting the authoritarian dots.
By Peter Wehner | October 31, 2025, 6 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/trump-authoritari
anism/684773/
Give Donald Trump this much: He has never tried to hide his malice, his lawlessness, or his desire to inflict pain on others. These were on vivid display when he engaged in a multipart conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and stood by as a mob of supporters sought to hang his vice president. These were displayed, as well, every day during his 2024 vengeance campaign. Yet more than 77 million Americans decided that he was the man with whom they wanted to entrust the care of this nation.
For more Americans than not, and for many more evangelical Christians than not, Trump is the representative man of our time. His ethic is theirs. So are his corruptions. And for those of us who, in our younger years, revered America as a shining city upon a hill, a nation of nations, the “last, best hope of earth,” this is quite a painful period. America has lost its moral bearings; as a result, it has also lost its moral standing in the world.
A curtain of darkness is settling over our nation. And it’s getting ever harder to avoid connecting the authoritarian dots.
Trump is in the process of building his own paramilitary force. He is invoking wartime powers to deport people without due process, even suggesting that American citizens may be sent to foreign prisons. He has deployed National Guard troops to cities over the objections of local officials. In a speech to American troops in Japan, he warned: “If we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard.”
Trump has signaled that he is open to invoking the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows the president to deploy the military in the United States. And he has claimed, without legal justification, that he has the right to order the military to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America. (The administration has yet to provide evidence to support its claims that the individuals who have been killed were cartel members or that the vessels were transporting drugs.)
My colleague Tom Nichols, a retired professor at the U.S. Naval War College, warns that eventually what Trump is doing will become a new principle for the use of force: “He is acclimating people to the notion that the military is his private army, unconstrained by law, unconstrained by norms, unconstrained by American traditions.”
Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired the senior judge advocates general, removing the officials who could obstruct the execution of unlawful orders from the commander in chief. Their dismissals will also have a chilling effect on those who remain. The firing of the JAGs is just one element of a broader purge of the military, which started at the beginning of Trump’s second term. In February, five former defense secretaries, including James Mattis, who served under Trump in his first term, wrote a letter to lawmakers, saying the dismissals “raise troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military and to remove legal constraints on the president’s power.”
Speaking of which: Trump views himself as the final arbiter of the legality of anything he does
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President for Life
Donald Trump is trying to amass the powers of a king.
By J. Michael Luttig | October 28, 2025
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/12/trump-third-term-
authoritarianism/684616/
In the normal course of history, the president of the United States is a figure who inspires optimism in the American people. The 47th president prefers to stir feelings of fear, vulnerability, hopelessness, and political inevitability—the sense that he, and only he, can rescue the nation from looming peril. Since his second inauguration, Donald Trump has seized authoritarian control over the federal government and demanded the obedience of the other powerful institutions of American society—universities, law firms, media companies. The question weighing heavily on the minds of many Americans is whether Trump will subvert next year’s midterm elections or the 2028 presidential election to extend his reign.
With his every word and deed, Trump has given Americans reason to believe that he will seek a third term, in defiance of the Constitution. It seems abundantly clear that he will hold on to the office at any cost, including America’s ruin.
The Founders of our nation foresaw a figure like Trump, a demagogue who would ascend to the presidency and refuse to relinquish power to a successor chosen by the American people in a free and fair election. Writing to James Madison from Paris in 1787, Thomas Jefferson warned that such an incumbent, if narrowly defeated, would “pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government.” Were that moment ever to come, the Founders believed, it would mark the demise of the nation that they had conceived, bringing to a calamitous end the greatest experiment in self-government ever attempted by man.
Trump proved in 2021 that he would do anything to remain in the White House. Even after the violence of January 6, his second impeachment, and the conviction and incarceration of scores of his followers, he reiterated his willingness to subvert the 2024 election. That proved unnecessary. Yet since his victory, Trump has again told the American people that he is prepared to do what it takes to remain in power, the Constitution be damned.
In March, Trump refused to rule out a third term, saying that he was “not joking” about the prospect and claiming that “there are methods which you could do it.” He was asked about the idea of Vice President J. D. Vance running for the presidency, getting elected, and then passing the baton back to him. “That’s one,” he said. “But there are others, too.” As he so often does, Trump later claimed that he wasn’t being serious. But also in March, Trump’s ally Steve Bannon said that he is “a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028,” adding that he and others are working on ways to do it, which would require circumventing the Twenty-Second Amendment. (Bannon later told The Economist: “Trump is gonna be president in ’28, and people just ought to get accommodated with that.” He added, “At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there’s a plan.”) In September, after meeting with congressional leaders about the looming government shutdown, Trump posted photographs on Truth Social in which Trump 2028 hats rested prominently on his Oval Office desk. In October, when discussing the possibility of a third term, Trump said, “I would love to do it. I have my best numbers ever.”
We Americans are by nature good people who believe in the inherent goodness of others, especially those we elect to represent us in the highest office in the land. But we ignore such statements and other expressions of Trump’s intent at our peril. The 47th president is a vain man, and nothing would flatter his vanity more than seizing another term. Doing so would signify the ultimate triumph over his political enemies.
I am not a Pollyanna, nor am I a Cassandra. I was at the forefront of the conservative legal movement that began in 1981 with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. I have had the privilege of spend
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.” - Niccolo Machiavelli
This Machiavelli quote suggests that most people are easily fooled by outward appearances and lack the ability to look deeper to find the truth. He argues that while everyone can see, very few have the "gift of penetration" - the rare insight or wisdom to discern the reality beneath the surface. This observation is a core theme in his work, especially in discussions about leadership and public perception.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Social media is making humanity lose its ability to think, study finds
https://spzh.eu/en/news/85465-social-media-is-making-humanity-lose-its
-ability-to-think-study-finds
Agreed SECOND. Just look at what it has done to Jack.
T
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T
FOOD STAMPS SHREDDED AT GREAT GATSBY PARTY
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Agreed SECOND. Just look at what it has done to Jack.
Statements like this are meaningless when I'm right about everything and you're always wrong.
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For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
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Democrats destroyed in Pennsylvania as well. Pa. election results: All 3 Democratic Supreme Court justices win retention races, and it continues.
T
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Enjoy the only silver lining that you've seen in nearly an entire year tonight, Theodore. One which could only be brought to you by the off-year election that is the only way Democrats can win anymore.
Back to pain for you after this. 
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For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
