Here we are, not yet half a year into the Trump administration’s Demagogues and Dragons game, and the Dungeon Master is still creating characters for the campaign which is, believe it or not, barely getting underway. The dice have really botched the stats for the most recent additions to the party, but what’s worse, the DM seems to be choosing the worst possible character classes for them. You don’t pick your weakest character to be the warrior, or your least intelligent to be the mage, but that’s exactly what our DM is up to. Here’s the gallery of rogues, as it were.
Here we are, not yet half a year into the Trump administration’s Demagogues and Dragons game, and the Dungeon Master is still creating characters for the campaign which has, unbelievably, only just begun. The dice have really botched the stats for the most recent additions to the party, but what’s worse, the DM seems to be choosing the worst possible character classes for them. You don’t pick your weakest character to be the warrior, or your least intelligent to be the mage, but that’s exactly what our DM is up to. Here’s the newest gallery of rogues, as it were.
Trump signed yet another executive order earlier this month, this one forming a commission to investigate the miniscule amount of voter fraud that occurs in the United States. His pick to lead the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is none other than Kris Kobach.
Kobach, the Kansan king of voter suppression, seems like a counterintuitive choice if your goal is to make sure that the voting rights of oft-disenfranchised Americans are protected. It’s a safe assumption that Trump’s more honest intent is to deeply probe his fever dream that three to five million undocumented immigrants stuffed ballot boxes for Hillary Clinton in the election that he can’t seem to get out of his head. (The alternative is to make sure that only the “right people” get to vote. If you know what I mean.) When someone favors a system that purged the voter rolls of 1.1 million legitimate, minority voters on the way to rooting out four (4) fraud cases from among 7.2 million voters, his lawful evil alignment is unbecoming for one in such a position of authority and influence.
Next up is Sam Clovis, tapped by Trump as the next undersecretary of research, education, and economics at the USDA. In this role, Clovis will set the tone for the USDA’s scientific research. That’s why, according to the 2008 Farm Bill, this position should be filled by a scientist, chosen “from among distinguished scientists with specialized or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.” Clovis …isn’t. He’s never taken a graduate level science course, and has published very little in the way of academic papers despite holding a doctorate in public administration. But he was a conservative talk radio host, and that’s almost as good, right?
Clovis is a climate skeptic, which seems to be a requirement for almost every job in Washington nowadays. However, denying the scientific consensus on climate change while leading scientific research and ethics at the USDA puts him in a position that worries the actual scientists he’ll be overseeing, and it should worry you just as much. In the coming years, we’ll need responsible people studying major agricultural crops like wheat and corn in order to insure that the plants we rely on continue feeding us in a changing world. Will a mere political hack make the saving throw against an enemy he doesn’t believe in, at the moment we need it the most?
Finally, we come to Trump’s appointee as acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Keith Noreika. Noreika, who can serve for 130 days without bothering with the technicalities of Senate confirmation (or strict ethical rules, for that matter), will be overseeing national banks. How convenient that he brings with him the experience of helping banks fight consumer-friendly regulations, such as state laws that prevented banks from charging people unduly expensive fees. Noreika could also have a hand (or a knife) in dismantling Dodd-Frank, the law enacted after the Great Recession so that it would never happen again. Like so many other Trump appointees with a history of fighting against the interests of the people they’re supposed to protect, Noreika is a Drow within the party. Watch your back.
Who would set out on a campaign, let alone a Presidency, with such a party of (dare I say it) deplorables? Any DM worth his chainmail dicebag would at least have read the manual before leading an adventure of this magnitude. When you have a con man LARPing as President, though, you’re begging for a critical failure.
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