Donald Trump’s motley cabinet is getting a bum and a dumb rap

You cognize America is circling the drain erstwhile a insignificant TV sitcom property and D-list comedian-turned-podcast big is considered a formidable governmental unit susceptible of offering a sitting president trenchant geopolitical advice.

Some of you, beloved readers, whitethorn deliberation that opening sentence, laced, admittedly, arsenic it is with condescension, is meant to offend the legion of mostly mixed-martial-arts-addicted men who perceive religiously to Joe Rogan for his trite beingness lessons and juvenile soliloquies astir each sorts of superior matters from pandemics and planetary heating to statesmanlike politics.

It is not. It is, instead, not lone a connection of fact, but persuasive grounds of however stupidity has go the main prerequisite for occurrence successful a decaying state that, agelong ago, abandoned the thought that governance required intelligence.

The earthy effect of the primacy of idiocy successful what could charitably beryllium called the “public discourse” is the absurd conception that Rogan is qualified to suggest that President Joe Biden – a decrepit aged antheral who, it indispensable beryllium said, volition beryllium remembered chiefly for being the bosom-hugging buddy of a wanted Israeli warfare transgression – whitethorn beryllium courting World War III by permitting Ukraine to people Russia with US-supplied longer-range missiles.

“There should beryllium immoderate benignant of intermission for important actions that could perchance commencement World War III,” Rogan precocious implored Biden.

Such is the measurement of Rogan’s influence, that his plea was reported by respective “sober” quality organisations, including the fast-fading-into-irrelevance Newsweek magazine.

As of this writing, Rogan has not been appointed by president-elect Donald Trump to his furniture of conspiracy theorists, cablegram quality speech amusement “stars”, and assorted charlatans, racists, Islamophobes, alleged intersexual assaulters, and confirmed thugs successful suits.

I fishy that Rogan was not inclined, rather sensibly, to instrumentality a hefty wage chopped from his lucrative gig.

Many others person abandoned their comfy perches connected Fox News and the rancid fever pit different known arsenic the far-right-media “ecosystem” to instrumentality up the urgent telephone to service their beloved leader.

But alternatively than recoil from the spectacle of Trump’s clown car furniture erstwhile it takes the helm aboriginal adjacent year, I program to dip into a well-deep vessel of popcorn and bask watching America implode by its ain glorious hand.

Remember, astir 79 cardinal Americans – adjacent to 50 per cent of the voting electorate – formed their ballot for a felon who has been described by his erstwhile main of staff, among a parade of the president-elect’s erstwhile “inner circle”, arsenic an “idiot”, a “dope”, and a “moron”.

Whatever different conclusions tin beryllium drawn by the results of the 2024 statesmanlike campaign, this overmuch is clear: Most Americans person a debased to adjacent non-existent barroom for precocious office.

Still, dissimilar the frothing, apoplectic members of America’s alleged “left-leaning” commentariat who look connected CNN, MSNBC oregon pen columns for The Washington Post oregon The New York Times, I americium not blinded by gooey nostalgia.

As a blessed result, I americium not hankering for a instrumentality to the sensible aged days erstwhile the unindicted warfare transgression and, apparently, new-found absorption leader, Dick Cheney, was the vice-president of a transgression authorities that acceptable up torture “dark sites” aft having trafficked successful trumped-up “intelligence” to warrant the calamitous penetration of Iraq.

That is humanities revisionism of the astir instructive order.

Speaking of sprawling, administration-wide transgression enterprises, I fishy that if Tricky Dick Nixon were inactive sulking around, helium would person been invited connected CNN and MSNBC to articulation the rehabilitated Cheney successful condemning Trump arsenic posing an existential hazard to the regularisation of instrumentality and the US Constitution.

But I digress.

I bash not clasp that stocking an enforcement subdivision with buttoned-down, think-tank types similar the precocious Donald Rumsfeld oregon firm executives, aka, Robert McNamara, needfully means that America volition beryllium led by thoughtful, temperate doyens.

America’s disastrous quagmires successful Southeast Asia, Central America, Southern Africa, and, of course, the Middle East are impervious of that.

I americium besides aged capable to callback when, for 13 days successful October 1962, a young, Harvard-educated John F Kennedy (JFK) was prepared to motorboat all-out atomic warfare and incinerate the satellite successful defence of America’s parochial strategical interests, including the staging of obsolete US-made Jupiter missiles successful Turkey and Italy.

The Soviets had stationed atomic weapons successful Cuba successful effect to pretty-boy Kennedy’s resoluteness – astatine the urging of the CIA and the Pentagon – to motorboat the catastrophic Bay of Pigs penetration of Cuba to “neutralise” Fidel Castro.

Oh yeah, those shining “Camelot” years were ever truthful peachy.

As for unsafe and legally prickly intersexual liaisons, JFK had fewer rivals. One of the joined president’s conga enactment of mistresses was a Mafia-linked prostitute. And the serial philanderer leveraged his presumption and powerfulness to “seduce” a 19-year-old intern nether his charge.

The “left-leaning” commentariat’s grating revisionism is borne of an amnesia that translates, again and again, into glaring treble standards that they volition not admit oregon admit.

Before his determination to recuse himself arsenic Trump’s lawyer wide nominee, Matt Gaetz was excoriated for readying to sic the Department of Justice and the FBI connected the president-elect’s governmental enemies.

The presumption astatine the halfway of these fears is that the Department of Justice and the FBI person ever been models of probity whose hallowed ngo statements would beryllium sullied beyond repair by a servile lawyer wide bent connected exacting the president-elect’s all-consuming revenge connected his existent oregon perceived adversaries.

Forgive me, but bash the names Robert F Kennedy (RFK) and J. Edgar Hoover ringing adjacent a distant bell?

As lawyer general, RFK was JFK’s “nepo baby”. And, with the assistance of the autocrat who ran the FBI for decades arsenic his idiosyncratic fiefdom, RFK spied connected loyal, law-abiding Americans who, astatine sedate risk, organised marches and sit-ins to marque their location a fairer and conscionable place.

In aboriginal October 1963, past lawyer general, Robert Kennedy, authorised wiretaps connected civilian rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. – ostensibly due to the fact that 2 of King’s associates were considered communists.

It was a flimsy fig leafage meant to camouflage the then-head of the FBI’s determined, covert schemes to destruct King and the civilian rights movement.

Just past week, the property of Malcolm X – who was changeable 26 times portion delivering a code successful a Manhattan ballroom successful February 1965 – filed a $100m suit against the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, and the New York Police Department for their roles, the household is convinced, successful the civilian rights leader’s assassination.

The suit alleges that, astatine Hoover’s direction, respective arms of the US authorities “went beyond specified allegedly amerciable surveillance of Malcolm X, actively conspiring to trim his extortion and leaving him susceptible to an onslaught they knew was imminent”.

Wiretaps, assassinations, ruinous invasions and near-nuclear warfare – yes, I’d reluctantly say, Donald Trump’s motley furniture is getting a bum and dumb rap..

So far, they look similar a clump of [sheet white] lad scouts and miss guides successful examination to the mostly Ivy-league trained men successful tailored suits who preceded them.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.