Donald Trump’s White House is rapidly becoming a revolving door. Anthony Scaramucci lasted just ten days as Communications Director. Homeland Security secretary John Kelly replaced Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff. Press Secretary Sean Spicer quit because Scaramucci came in; does this mean he might come back? Trump fired FBI director James Comey; now he’s gunning for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or perhaps looking to scoot him into Kelly’s old gig as head of DHS. It’s getting to be like, you can’t tell all the players without a program.
Welcome to the White House. Now Get Out.
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Regardless of the national/worldwide consequences this dumpster fire is entertaining as all hell. Neither the congress nor the executive branch can get anything done … and that’s arguably a good thing.
Is there a chance that Kellyanne can move up to POTUS?
Mr Trump is a modern employer, who tweets his messages and offers employees zero-hour contracts. Keeping up with the times – what’s not to like ?…
Henri
I’m waiting for someone to explain to me how one can be fired before one has been hired officially.
Apparently you’ve never worked as a so-called part-time university faculty member. (The old joke: What do you call someone who teaches 60 units a year? A part-timer.)
An important point, Iburanen – I suspect that the so-called academic proletariat will play an important role in the unlikely event that we (H sapiens sapiens) survive long enough for meaningful political change to come to countries like the US and the UK….
Henri
Henri–
I couldn’t agree more, except to be somewhat more emphatic about the absolute necessity of the academic proles — both tenured/tenure track and “part-timers” — to the continued existence of the planet, never mind just to meaningful political change. I recently retired from working as a “part-timer,” after carrying a more than a full-time load for over three decades in a single institution, in part because it was literally killing me and in (related) part because I couldn’t bear to witness the general direction higher education is headed, much less be complicit in it — the literally-killing-me part precluded my being able to fight anymore. As one effective and cost-effective program after another was eviscerated, my former dean used to say, “We’re moving in a new direction!” Yes, backward, and downward.
Virtually the entire focus of higher education, at least in California, is now on the Graduation Initiative, which seems benign enough, and even laudable. Merely getting students to graduate, however, regardless of what they actually do in college, primarily to boost an institution’s ratings (the better to protect the sinecures of an already bloated administration), is anti-scholarly and anathema to much of what is generally seen as the value of education — like, f’rinstance, learning to think and not just fulfill minimal graduation requirements.
The connection to the revolving door recently installed in the White House may seem tenuous, but I think it’s all reflective of a larger trend towards seeing humans (even counting some of those who have recently been bounced by Herr Trumpf) as dispensable and disposable, for short-term, bottom-line, immediate gratification “reasons” — which, not incidentally, keeps people off-balance, insecure, and cynical about the future, fostering not apathy so much as paralysis and antipathy. This is hardly news, or new, but like so many other things it has become “the new normal,” simply the way things are and geez what can you do about it anyway, might as well indulge in various methods of self-medication to numb the psychic pain. Leastways, that’s how I deal with it.
@lburanen
“like, f’rinstance, learning to think and not just fulfill minimal graduation requirements”
Oh, hell, yeah – I saw that in my brief stint as a university student (My freshman class was the best three years of my life…) š
I had an engineering major. My 100 level classes had hundreds of people in them, there’s no way a prof could give any kind of test which would require more than five minutes to grade. This is for *introductory* classes – if an otherwise smart individual gets hung up on an elementary concept they won’t be able to progress. But the prof simply can’t give individual attention to hundred of students.
The CHEM 200 series was tailored not to teach chemistry but rather to thin the herd of pre-meds. Mostly math, very little “this is how it all works…”
Most of my 2/300 physics and engr courses were much the same way – heavy on math, light on meat. I learned more from two profs who actually had careers in the real world than I did from all the academics others combined.
But the icing on the cake was ENGR 495 “Senior Engineering Project” – on day one the prof said, “We’re not actually going to do a project here…”
How it relates to Turnip is that he benefited greatly from our declining educational system.
Ā«I couldnāt agree more, except to be somewhat more emphatic about the absolute necessity of the academic proles ā both tenured/tenure track and āpart-timersā ā to the continued existence of the planet, never mind just to meaningful political change.Ā» Well, Iburanen, from what I understand the planet is pretty well safe the next few thousand million years, but as for H sapiens sapiens – including the academic proletariat – I doubt it will make it through the present decade, much less the present century. Either we’ll blow ourselves up – short and sweet – or will boil ourselves to death, a somewhat more lingering process…..
Mr Trump seems more than willing to help us attain either of these goals, but in that he’s hardly unique – just look at the US Congress….
In my pessimistic moments, I think we’re fucked – in my few optimistic ones I also think we’re fucked but that the rest of the biosphere might just escape with something resembling the Permian – Triassic extinction event….
Henri
Henri–
Ha! I stand corrected — yes, the planet will be fine but the rest of us are fucked. Forgive a bit of hyperbole, but after all, it is the best thing ever! š