Cast Iron Brains is back after a one-week hiatus to discuss the protests happening all over the nation following the police killing of George Floyd, Donald Trump’s predictably horrific and absurd response, and some highly implausible solutions to the nation’s various foundational sins.

Here’s the text version of the opening monologue, for your read-along pleasure:

There is nothing extraordinary or surprising about Donald Trump's behavior, attitude, and actions in the last two weeks. Nothing different. Just more of precisely what has already been, for years and years. Outrageous and absurd and disordered and somehow also boring. Boring in its repetition and ceaselessness, and boring because his towering self-concern long ago appropriated his limited imagination to the work of reorienting everything his consciousness encounters back to itself. He is a petty little attention tyrant, a despot of the news cycle blessedly lacking the inventiveness, intelligence, and the nerve to really *do* anything but react. Basically, no one would even argue with this. It is both feature and bug. He is the turd in the punchbowl--the only argument--or maybe it’s just a four or eight years long stress-test--is whether or not the punchbowl itself should continue to exist.

Though the last two weeks offers nothing new to *understand* about The Trumppening, I feel no less compelled to point at the insanity. As dumb as it is for me to care about something so comically outside my control, as worthless as it is for me to point at it and scream in impotent exasperation--I do it solely for the sanity-maintaining shred of hope that in calling something what it is--simply chronicling things that happened--I inoculate myself against losing hold of reality. That's not much--it's all I have.

In the third week of May, Donald Trump said that given the opportunity to go back and change anything about his administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he wouldn't change a thing. That he would do nothing differently. That if you just ignore all the infections and death in New York and New Jersey, coronavirus actually wasn't that big a deal in the United States. He also threatened to withhold federal funding from Michigan and Nevada for enabling "voter fraud" by sending out mail-in ballots. Never mind that this is, itself, blatant election interference. Never mind that this is precisely the sort of thing for which he was impeached. In the third week of May, Trump also insisted, repeatedly, that a former congressman and current rival TV personality be investigated for killing a woman that he certainly didn't kill. He also held a taxpayer-funded campaign rally at a Ford plant in Michigan, where he claimed (again) to have once been awarded a "Michigan Man of the Year" award--an award that is not actually a thing, and he never actually won. At that rally, he also told the gathered auto-workers that they should be proud of Henry Ford's great bloodlines, as though the individuals in attendance were Ford's descendants, and as though it is a good idea to talk about the hereditary superiority of someone who frequently wrote about the scourge of the jew, and was a personal hero of Adolf Hitler's. He also, by retweet-proxy, called Hillary Clinton a skank, made fun of Stacy Abrams' weight and appearance, and disparaged Nancy Pelosi's looks.

All of this, and much more, in the third week of May, and his National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien, goes on the Sunday morning news talk shows and has only slathering, slavish praise for his dear leader, who he says is the picture of health, has boundless energy, works 18 hours a day, harder than anyone he's ever known, and is a profile in courage. Courage! Imagine the courage required to issue half-measure travel restrictions on your primary geopolitical rival in the face of...of...of Nancy Pelosi probably calling you a racist, I guess? Courage to protect the stability of the markets, as your administration takes no real action for the next six weeks, knowing full well that that courageous inaction and brave incompetence will make a whole lot of people really quite mad at you, and a not insignificant number of people, you know, dead? Courage! Courage.

In the fourth week of May, as protests spread from Minneapolis--where George Floyd was killed by police on Memorial Day--to hundreds of cities in every state in the country, Donald Trump took every opportunity to soothe a fractured nation by incessantly tweeting about Twitter censoring him, blaming "Liberal Democrats" for the violence swirling around the Floyd protests, preemptively delegitimizing any conceivable November election outcome, reiterating his murder accusations against Scarborough, and exulting about how his coronavirus response has been perfect, an infomercial pitchman proudly contrasting the mere 100,000 dead with the 2 million who would have died but for *his* strength. As American cities convulsed with violence, Trump threatened more of the same, reassuring a shaken nation that "WHEN THE LOOTING STARTS, THE SHOOTING STARTS."

All of this, and much more, in the fourth week of May, and his National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien, goes on the Sunday morning news talk shows for another public display of shameless propagandizing and humiliating fealty to the cult leader. After assuring ABC News that Trump and the administration stand with the protesters, unlike "authoritarian countries out there," O'Brien told Jake Tapper that there was no need for Trump to make a formal address to the nation about Floyd and the protests, because he says everything he needs to say to the American people through Twitter. Twitter--where just a day earlier, Trump called for a counter-demonstration of his MAGA supporters to meet the "radical leftists" in the streets outside the White House. Twitter--where he blamed the media for fomenting the unrest around the country, and blamed Democrats for being too soft and weak to put it down. Twitter--where he seconded Senator Tom Cotton's call for the 101st Airborne to be unleashed on the American people, and shown NO QUARTER. Twitter--where his commentary about the protests outside the White House included bragging about the vicious dogs and ominous weapons up on the grounds keeping Trump himself safe, as he huddled last Friday night five stories underground, and marveling at the youngest Secret Service agents at his disposal, who he said were salivating over the prospect of violent confrontation. Twitter is where Trump says everything he needs to say to the American people--and when he does, as a nation's cities burn, it's important to remember, the President says, that it's all happening to one man. That there is nothing else that matters, but how it relates to him.

Which brings us to Monday night, when Trump finally did offer a formal address to the nation. From the Rose Garden, he promised that he would unleash the United States military on the American people. He assured the nation that he stands with the peaceful protesters, even as a peaceful protest across the street was being broken up by riot police using smoke and/or tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. A peaceful protest dispersed with state violence so that Trump could toddle through the park and brandish a bible in front of a boarded-up church, a grotesque simulacrum of courage and strength and piety purchased by the president for the low, low cost of an internationally broadcast assault on the rights purportedly guaranteed by the United States Constitution. An assault ignored or applauded by his supporters, a cult that will defend anything he does or says, so long as he keeps reassuring them that the other side is entirely illegitimate. On Monday night, Trump said that we have "one law, one beautiful law" in this country. He didn't mean the Constitution, certainly--what happened in Lafayette Park *as he spoke* made that perfectly clear. He meant, as he said clearly, that the one law is DOMINANCE.

Nothing extraordinary, surprising, or new in these last two weeks. Boring in its repetition and incessant Trump-ward focus, but no less absurd for it, no less awful for it. A simple recitation of things that happened, in the hopes that looking right at reality, pointing at true things, my grasp on the real and the true won't falter.