The Great Spiritizing
Please clap…
Today was always going to be a strange day. But among many strange days recently this one turned out to be, as they say, a real doozy.
The government is, literally, on the brink of a shutdown, with politicians on both sides squabbling over who’s to blame ahead of the midnight deadline, while the president is apparently more concerned with posting insulting memes about his Democratic opponents than negotiating.
House GOP leadership, meanwhile had sent its members home, with Democrats accusing Speaker Mike Johnson of stalling the swearing-in of Rep-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Democrat who won a special election in Arizona last week to fill her late father’s seat. She would represent the crucial 218th vote to release the Epstein files.
But while thousands of federal employees are genuinely worried about their livelihoods – on top of those who took the recent buyout – and still more Americans fearful of cuts to their healthcare, President Trump “addressed” a gathering of senior military officers assembled at tremendous cost and risk at a hangar in Quantico VA by his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
After the president had called the hugely theatrical gathering a “great spiritizing”, both he and the former Fox News host appeared somewhat startled by the lack of applause or cheering during their airing of grievances.
After Hegseth railed against “woke”, beards and fat generals, Trump meandered through a version of his greatest hits in what was one of the most unhinged, disconnected, self-obsessed and inappropriate speeches of his second term. As damaging, likely, to America’s image in the world as his address to the United Nations earlier in the week.
“America is under invasion from within,” Trump told his audience. “No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out,” before talking about how America’s cities should become “training grounds for the military”.
He cited previous presidents who had “used the military to keep domestic order and peace” and said: “This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won’t get out of control once you’re involved at all.”
Trump also spoke about this week’s “peace plan” for Gaza, saying if it worked, it would mean he had solved “eight wars in eight months”. He then seemed to say he “didn’t want” the Nobel Peace prize, but that it would be “a big insult to our country” if he wasn’t to get it.
Shawn McCreesh at the New York Times wrote:
“There does not seem to be a clear point or purpose in President Trump’s address to military generals today. It’s a garden variety tear; he’s talking about tariffs, Joe Biden and the autopen, the southern border, CNN, his personal feelings about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his anxieties that he won’t be given a Nobel Peace Prize he feels he deserves. These are things he talks about almost every day regardless of audience or setting. Every so often he throws in a statistic or observation he has about the military.”
Fox News, of course, saw it slightly differently.
See Also:
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‘There Will Be Others’
In what seems to have become a regular occurrence, Donald Trump further shattered what remains of America’s norms this week. After pressing his Attorney General Pam Bondi to be more aggressive in prosecuting his perceived political enemies, the former Director of the FBI, James Comey – who ironically may likely have helped Trump win the 2016 election – was indicted on two criminal counts involving allegedly lying to Congress.
For MAGA, it was the first real taste of legal retribution. But some experts say the move could backfire.
The New York Times reported that the indictment
“represents the most significant legal step yet by the Trump administration to harry, punish and humiliate a former official the president identified as an enemy, at the expense of procedural safeguards intended to shield the Justice Department from political interference and personal vendettas.”
See Also:
Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people
Loyalty is the only currency (Nov 2024)
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Post-Season Gets Under Way
On top of everything it’s the first day of the baseball post-season, a small corner of sanity in a genuinely insane time. This headline isn’t about who you think, although you’d be forgiven for thinking every other headline was…
The full post-season schedule, right up to the last possible game on November 1st, is here.
Kate Feldman at CBS Sports has some predictions and there are some others via the staff at Sports Illustrated here.
Having just been at GABP for a couple of games, I kind of liked this statbox:
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This Week’s Game Notes
Sunday 28 September, Washington Nationals v Chicago White Sox, Nationals Park, Washington DC.
A vibrant celebration of Salvadoran Heritage Day AND Bark in the Park on a beautiful afternoon in the nation’s capital. Really couldn’t ask for better on what was my final game of the regular campaign.
This was one of only three series that wouldn’t have a relevant outcome this closing weekend but today was still a good watch, as the team rooted to the foot of the NL East hosted the worst team in the American League.
And it was the White Sox who finished runaway 8-0 winners behind a combined one-hitter led by starter Shane Smith, who took a perfect game into the sixth. At least it was a fine day for Nats’ broadcaster Bob Carpenter, retiring after 20 years, and for Sox outfielder Michael A Taylor, calling it a day 12 seasons after beginning his career at the Nationals, then being part of their 2019 World Championship team.
Over this rather disjointed season I’ve seen a total of 22 games in just four states, MD, PA, OH and VA, and on Sunday I was grateful to finish up in the nation’s capital alongside my friend Mike Uy to talk DC sports – but mostly DC’s other favorite pastime.
Mike did a really good Q&A with me a couple of years back (“It’s All Entertainment, Really…”) and I hope you’ll hear from him again in a new segment ‘Let’s Play Two’ which I’ll start up for the project’s final season, where I’ll circle back with some of the folks who featured previously and talk to them about how they think things have changed since then.
One thing that had changed from the last time I was here at Nationals Park was the scaled-down presence of National Guard outside the stadium. A few weeks ago there had been three groups of five deployed one either side of the main gate, then another group milling around between the restaurants on the approach. On Sunday, I saw just two uniformed soldiers on the sidewalk from the MTA station.
If your team’s in the post-season, best of luck to you. If not, enjoy the coming spectacle.
I’ll be spending the next few months getting the site ready for more content and reaching out to folks who might want to be new Q&A subjects - if you’d like to take part, drop me a note. I hope to catch up with many of you when Pitchers and Catchers roll around again.
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As always, thanks for reading.
During the season when I’m going to games, I aim to write a baseball-related post midweek and then a politics wrap at weekends. One is pretty much always more sane than the other.
I’ll go back to a single weekly post over the off-season.
This week became a little disjointed because I’d been waiting to see whether the government would stop just as the post-season started.
You can find a full States of Play archive here.
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Having just finished reading 1984 for the first time in my life (I know ...) I'm now onto Animal Farm. And the parallels with what's going on over there are extraordinary.