Airplane crashes and more: turnabout may not be fair play, but Trump and Musk deserve it. By Hal M. Brown

 

So far it doesn’t appear that mistakes by air traffic controllers or anybody else can be blamed for the airplane crash that happened in Canada. Everything now points to it being an unavoidable accident. I am not an expert, but I think it’s possible that failure for air traffic controllers to close the airport and reroute planes due to the danger of ground level wind sheer could be considered to have been a factor.

Even if Canadian investigators from their version of our FAA, Canadian Transport determine it was an unavoidable accident it increases focusing more attention on air traffic safety and the Trump/Musk firing of probationary employees of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Trump and his GOP minions have always blamed everything that has gone wrong in the country on President Biden, and before him on President Obama. Whether it’s a single incident of an illegal immigrant murdering someone or the rise in Fentanyl overdoses and deaths, it is blamed on Joe Biden. You name it, if it is or was bad in the last four years they blamed Biden.

It’s an old trope that airplane crashes come in groups, often in groups of three (see article). With so many planes flying there are bound to be accidents. Some will be minor and some will be more serious. A very few may be catastrophic. 

It doesn’t matter whether or not the causes of any of them can be blamed on the cuts to the FAA. They will be a reminder that Trump and Musk have no regard for the safety of, not just the flying public, but the public in general.

There are other things besides airplane crashes that they can’t control. For example, if outbreaks of the bird flu and measles make the news, Trump’s pick of RFK Jr. to head HHS will be criticized no matter whether or not anything he did was a causative factor.

If there’s a life threatening outbreak of a food borne disease we’ll see stories about cuts to the USDA and FDA. If a drug rushed through the approval process turns out to have fatal side effects look for the blame to be put on FDA cuts.

If ICE agents inadvertently shoot a child, Trump, with his selection of the macho posturing Tom Homan, will be blamed by the progressive media.

If there’s a radiation leak at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state, which is 248 mile north from where I live in Portland, it may have nothing to do with the firings of their expert employees and, when they realized their mistake, their inablity to reach them to tell them to come back to work. As unlikey as this is to happen, if it does Trump will be forced by our side to take ownership of this.

If there are even worse wildfires in California, or in states Trump doesn’t hate, the DOGE firing of fire fighters will be blamed. There could be other natural disasters, some devastiing to red states, where understaffed agencies will cause more death and disruption because of cuts to FEMA.

We’re a Willie Horton - George Floyd - Luigi Mangione society. All it sometimes takes is something done by or that happens to one person to move public opinion, for good or bad. 

I doubt somebody who couldn’t get service at the VA or who had their Social Security benefit cut will self-immolate themselves in front of a federal building, but it could happen. 

The elimination of USAID funding for most of their life saving programs is the most egregious and heartless exmaple of DOGE deaths. Unfortunately these are faraway consequences easily ignored by those who don’t want to have their Christian values challenged. The results of Trump’s cruelty has to hit close to home for it to lead to a signficant number his supporters to turn against him. In fact, close to home probably isn’t enough. It has to be literally in the homes of these people whether on TV or better yet, in their own lives. 

It may be unsavory, it may be wrong at some levels, because just because somebody did something unfair to you, you can say that this doesn’t morally justify doing it back to them when you have the chance. It may break Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” dictum. Even so, I think there’s a case to be made for, in some cases, you can apply the tenets of situation ethics. This leads me to sayng that turnabout is fair play.

Addendum:

There’s another cliche that applies to this:

This is a follow-up to yesterday’s Substack:

A tale of the DOGE destruction disruption and more unintended consequences. By Hal M. Brown

"

Ready, fire, aim," is how David Ignatious put it on "Morning Joe" today talking about the unintended consequences of the DOGE cuts. 

This pretty much sums up what has happened because of Trump's manic rush to initiate everything that is laid out in Project 2025 and make himself into a dictator. The authors of Project 2025 were sane, so a other things that the authors of the blueprint for autocracy hadn't thought of were added by Trump: Greenland, Panama, making Canada a state, Gaza, and a social media post justifying being a Napoleonanic dictator, for example. 

Here are some illustrations from various websites and photos I took while I had MSNBC and CNN on while I was writing this:

I wonder how many viewers and readers of far-right media even know about any, let alone, all of these. Some of them may not be disabused of their belief that Trump walks on water until, if they depend on Medicaid for crucial medical treatment, they look at their monthly payment and don’t understand why it’s been drastically cut. Others may have personal connections to the fired federal workers. A few may be friends with, or employed, immigrants who have been deported, or are fearful of being deported. Some may be parents of unvaccinated children who get the measles. The list goes on.

When an aggressor army is actually invading a country shock and awe is often effective. The Nazi blitzkrieg is an example of a success. Putin tried it against Ukraine but failed. Trump is only figuratively invading a country called Democratic America. He didn’t have to come on like gangbusters.

Trump could have avoided shooting himself in the face if he was prudent instead of reckless when he went about trying to become the dictator he aspires to be. He could have stiffed Musk after what was supposed to be a reward for his donations. He could have kept him out of the Oval Office and never allowed DOGE to exist. But Trump gets something about having the richest person in the world (or the second richest after Putin whose net worth is hard to determne), someone reviled by his enemies, as his co-president. He enjoys all the mockery coming from liberals about this. Trump is happy when he thinks he owns the libs.

It would have been difficult to find them, but he could have found competent loyalists to nominate for Cabinet positions and top jobs. Instead we have RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabard, and Pete Hegseth.

He could used strategic instead of mass firings.

He could have actually made sure that the only immigrants deported were violent criminals. He could have told Thom Homan not to be such a macho asshat and to stay away from Dr. Phil.

He could have just ignored the plight of Eric Adams.

He definitely shouldn’t have posted his Napoleon message. I expect that even some of his allies on the Supreme Court think this will make it harder to rule in his favor in certain cases. He just told them that if he disagrees with any other their decisions he can ignore them.

If Trump had just stuck with Greenland, Panama, and Canada, he’d have been better off. He could have moved slowly on everything else. He could have been judicious, a concept that shouldn’t even be in the same sentence with Trump.

Thankfully for democracy in America, he’s so thrilled by his reckless ride into a Caligula like monarchy that he can’t stop himself. He hasn’t had visceral feelings like this since Stormy Daniels agreed to go to bed with him.

I call it Munchausen masculinity, By Hal M. Brown

 

Here’s the link to the RawStory article about Trump and his duputies wielding power with a ”macho hand.”

This is an excellent article well worth reading. Here’s just one excerpt:

There is a method to all this maleness, experts say.

"The emphasis on a rigid gender binary is an outgrowth of a nostalgic patriarchy that wants to return to a mid-20th century understanding of gender relations, with white, heterosexual men at the pinnacle of a hierarchical identity pyramid," said Karrin Anderson, a communications professor at Colorado State University.

Trump, of course, is at the heart of the movement.

Shortly after his return to power on January 20, the president ordered an end to passports with a gender-neutral "X" option and moved to restrict gender transition procedures for people under the age of 19.

The 78-year-old billionaire, who has promised to "protect" women "whether the women like it or not," also signed an order banning transgender athletes from participating in women's sports events.

At the signing event, he surrounded himself with women and young girls.

I call what we see in these people “Munchausen masculinity.” The real life Baron Munchausen “became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career.”  Wikipedia  A cinical syndrome was named for him, technically called Factitious disorder imposed on self.  

Basically, these modern men inflate their self-worth by exaggerating their masculinity. They brag about their prowess and some of them, like Hegseth, spend lots of time body building When they have the authority to do so, they sometimes bully people because, to them. beng able to impose their will on others equates with being masculine.

It's all a confusion delusion about the meaning of masculinity. The dictionary tells us masculinity is the “quality or attributes regarded as characteristic of men or boys”. These are some of the synonyms: virility, manliness, maleness, vigor, strength, muscularity, ruggedness, toughness, and robustness. Note these are attributes or charateristic which are “attributed.” They are cultural and societal. A woman can have any of the characteristics just like a man can have characteristsistcs considered by some, often in a disparaging way, to be feminine.

Aside from physical differences between men and women, concepts about masculinity and femininity are just that, concepts. To the extent they exist in reality they are a manifestation of social norms and expectations followed by some, but not all, people.

Consider the two heroes in the DC universe who fans consider to be the strongest, Wonder Woman and Superman, and how they are depicted. Wonder Woman has a shapely figure and Superman has rippling muscles. Fans even speculated about who would win a fight between them (here).

Only in the manosphere would anybody even think of pondering such a battle.

Addendum:

The term toxic masculinity has been used to decribe the personality of some men when it becomes harmful to others. I won’t go into this because it has been addressed in numerous acticles (here). I’ll just offer a brief definition from Wikipedia:

Toxic masculinity is thus defined by adherence to traditional male gender roles that consequently stigmatize and limit the emotions boys and men may comfortably express while elevating other emotions such as anger. It is marked by economic, political, and social expectations that men seek and achieve dominance.