Why so many ridicule or criticize Natalie Harp so harshly?
Everyone is endowed by Nature with a combination of certain abilities. She, like her critics, just wants to use them to gain the most benefits. She swoons over Donald Trump the president of the United States, the guy who wagged his finger and half of the White House complex, the proud symbol of America for years, disappeared, or even kisses his ass, so what? What wrong with it? Honestly, nothing wrong with it.
In life, especially fast-moving American life, where to aim your arrow is essential for success. If luck gives you a chance and puts you next to the president of the United States, if you pay attention to your detractors and are reluctant to kiss his ass (and kiss it publicly if that gives you more benefits) that would be a fatal mistake of your on-the-make-life that would kill your one-in-a-life chance to succeed – to find your place in the sun as Sammy Davis had hollered for years.
Look at the big boss. Didn’t he know he did not say correctly about a lot of things? Of course, he did but why should he care if his lies are pleasing like singing an oldies song to the ears of the over-65-year-old voters? Are you, righteous critics, sure that sticking to the high road with ethical and moral principles is the sure way to success? Since 2026, or even before, MAGA has shown you that to be wrong. They saw them as unimportant or have probably turned them into being unimportant. Nothing succeeds like success and if you fail to gain power, I repeat, you are irrelevant.
Criticizing success is, frankly, nothing but jealousy babbling. If Ms. Harp succeeded in banning some media outlet from the White House press corps as rumored, it would be euphoria and proof that she is competent in doing what she has been doing – dropping effective words into power’s ear and moving the world. And lugging the duffle bag next to the big boss only enhances the perception of being powerful.
I have said it first, proudly, before Peter Thiel, in a post on X that the president’s people, many of them, have exhibited incompetence. So, when the billionaire/investment genius/political thinker/social and political influencer/advisor-to-president Mr. Thiel said the same thing on September 24 on MD Meet podcast, then there is a common observation of such incompetence.
But somehow, such incompetence blends in well with the current American
political landscape and makes incompetence normal and acceptable. Imagine the mistakes committed by the intelligence agencies and the defense department under, say Leon Panetta, it would have caused uproars so deafening that heads would have rolled off those agencies instead of walking about nonchalantly.
MAGA has determined for itself that the U.S., or even the world, should not be what it has been. They don’t want to improve it. They want to remake it into something different. So, incompetence may be unimportant or perhaps the weapon to achieve the goal of turning society upside down, destroying it to build a new one just like bulldozing the East Wing to build a new what-ever.
Putting the name of President Donald J. Trump on a building specifically built and named after President John F. Kennedy to commemorate him was clumsy and weird but has served the purpose of whoever wanted to do it: as long as MAGA is the boss of the town, the Kennedy Memorial apparently stops being one; clumsy or not, three to four years may help the public to forget its name.
Caveat populus: you have a choice with your votes: to enable and continue the MAGA world where there is no such a thing as human society but only mortal combatting clans, and act like a true MAGA member: everyone for themselves. Or ask like John F. Kennedy what you can do for your country but not what your country can do for you – your clan.
JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

In only two years and a half, MAGA has remarkably achieved many of its goals – easily.

For years, the U.S. clamored for other NATO’s members to increase their defense budgets as the U.S. carried some 62% of the total NATO defense spending. Faced with MAGA’s policy of “America First”, EU has been pushing for strategic autonomy, independent from the U.S. In other words, they are not relying on the American umbrella of security, economic and military, anymore. MAGA has got its wish: no more European piggyback on American expense.

The seemingly erratic declarations or statements insulting to its allies, the exorbitant tariff hike, and the effort to transform the U.S. into a police state have built a wall around it. It is now separated from the world, MAGA can do whatever they have wanted to do to transform the U.S.A. into a dictatorship. With or without a king, MAGA has run the country like a kingdom, treating Congress, let alone Democrats, like a side show.

It has decidedly defeated Woke politics and dreams: no more world influence or pressure on America politics to promote and protect minority groups, no more social ideology according to the world’s wisdom. There is now only one block, a solid block of influencers or deciders in American politics and society: the white block – white extremists or supremacists. The US Supreme Court sees to it that the Voting Rights Act will not hinder the Republicans from increasing their seats in Congress, potentially keeping Congress a long-time if not forever puppet. The rationale of the Louisiana v. Callais decision: Louisiana must act COLOR-BLIND.

When President Trump appointed several women to important cabinet positions, it led to the belief that the macho MAGA finally recognized that misogyny was wrong and women would be treated equally by MAGA.

Tulsi Gabbard looked serious in white. Kristi Noem with her rolled-up sleeves, hair flying with every step she took, was an unusual image of the head of a security agency that was supposed to be macho – unusual but still unknown and therefore acceptable.  Pam Bondi was (and still is) beautiful, poised, ramrod straight, sharp mind, and sharp tongue, all the attributes of an Amazon woman ready and able to confront chauvinism, giving hope that she would prove to be a formidable contribution to the women’s effort to assert their right to be treated fairly and justly.

Then, things unraveled in unexpected ways.

Ms. Bond stated early and openly that she was ready to release the Epstein files, all of them. She had just reviewed them and obviously was outraged by what she saw and read. There were only two groups of human beings in the files: young litle girls and men, much older and much more powerful men. There was only one game, if it could be called a game: the little girls trapped within the walls (brick, mortar, and other kinds of walls) and the men just did to them whatever and whenever they wanted, sadistic, sordid, base. The action called for was clear for Pam: inform the public then prosecute the wrongdoers.

Then, the AG dragged her feet. She postponed the release, and when she did, she released the files, redacted, selectively, as if her decision were influenced, not by what was right or wrong or women needed to fight back, but by some things or some ones else. If that were the case, everyone could guess the gender of these some ones.

    But her responses and attitude at Congressional hearings seemingly supported men’s entrenched belief that did serious damages to the Equal Right Movement: Women do not have equal substance.

    Congressional hearings are supposed to be a forum for the witnesses to provide answers or information to Members’ questions. The witnesses do not always answer all the questions, and not answering a Member’s question is not exactly difficult requiring high art. Her predecessors, Merrick Garland and William Barr avoided answering questions they did not want to answer with aplomb. But at her Congressional hearings, she behaved and spoke as if she were in an irate-neighbor-fighting-her-neighbor’s dog-messing-her-lawn. No grace under pressure, even though as a woman she should possess more grace than, say, her boss president Trump.

    The second woman cabinet secretary, Kristi Noem was asked by a Congress’ member a simple question if she had sexual relations with Corey Kowandowski. Her response was: “I am shocked that we are going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today.” And “That kind of garbage has been refuted for years, and it is offensive that you have brought that up.” She should have learned from the master. On 60 Minutes, the President stated simply and succinctly, “I am not a pedophile”.

    What was missing in her answer was the “I”: It was refuted but “I” did not refute. The Occam Razor answer “No, I did not” would have done perfectly well for her. A listener could not help thinking that her dodging of the question indeed confirmed her extra marital affair.

Such lack of grace under pressure and roundabout talking, as read by their detractors, are signs of psychological weaknesses.

After they were gone, one could argue that MAGA had executed a Machiavellian maneuver to deal the Equal Right Movement a severe blow and bolster the misogynists’ prejudicial and sadistic position that the right place for women would be at home, in the kitchen, and in bed.

But their best and most striking achievement is to show how vulnerable and weak Democracy is and how to subvert it without having to fire a shot or even to violate the law.

JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This Article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)