Capitulation

If there’s one word that captures what’s happened in the six weeks since the election to the institutional forces opposed to Donald Trump’s cult of personality, with all its authoritarianism, irrationalism, and open culture of pay to play corruption, it’s the title of this post.

From the whaddaya gonna do shoulder shrugging of top Democrats, to the craven temporizing of the elite media, the “resistance” to the Trumpist contagion is at the moment much more of a concept of a plan than an actual thing.

This WAPO story about how some shitty ex-Army doctor turned Florida Man congresscreature is about to be put in charge of the CDC because Brainworm Bobby wants him there is a reminder that no things are not actually going to be OK, at all:

Dave Weldon’s long record of promoting the disproven link between vaccines and autism raises concerns among some public health experts about his ability to run the CDC.

The world’s most respected infectious-disease agency needed a new leader. Anti-vaccine activists knew just the man: Dave Weldon, a Florida physician and former seven-term Republican congressman who had for years expressed concerns about the safety of vaccines.

The year was 2017.

Weldon didn’t get the job then, but, seven years later, President-elect Donald Trump has tapped the 71-year-old former Army doctor to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is charged with protecting the United States from health threats at home and abroad. That includes making vaccine recommendations — work that has come under fire from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the longtime vaccine skeptic whom Trump has picked to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which has oversight over the CDC.

Kennedy proposed Weldon for the job, according to a person involved in the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share a private conversation.

Yeah I realize I’m not doing anything at the moment but blogging either so don’t bother to point that out.

Trump is inviting a whole bunch of tyrants and dictators to his inauguration next month, although the custom has always been that heads of state aren’t invited to these things, which aren’t supposed to be goddamned coronations. I’m so old I remember when the imperial presidency was supposed to be more of a metaphor than a literal description, but it looks like American democracy is going down without a fight. And given what it’s produced, who would think it worth fighting for anyway?