Tag Archives: Trump

The 60s Redux?

I had an interesting inquiry from a friend the other day. He wanted to know how I thought the upcoming few years would compare with the turmoil of the late 1960s–and whether I thought American divisions are as deep now as they were then.

As those of you who are regular readers of this blog may recall, when Trump “won” the election, my first prediction was that we were going to see a replay of the 60s, but on steroids. So yes–as I said in response to my friend’s inquiry– I think the country’s divisions are every bit as deep as they were then.

But I also think those divisions are different in kind; I think they run along different lines of demarcation.

When I was doing research for my book “God and Country,” I learned about a phenomenon called paradigm shift—times in human history where social/experiential/intellectual change is so profound that people on either side of the shift can no longer communicate with each other. The phrase was coined by Thomas Kuhn, a physicist and philosopher who, as a student, read Aristotle and realized he didn’t understand him. Kuhn concluded that neither he nor Aristotle was stupid (!), but that the nature of the realities they inhabited had changed so dramatically that they no longer spoke the same scientific language.

Kuhn concluded that competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality. Today, I think urban and rural Americans, and educated and uneducated Americans (to grossly and unfairly oversimplify the categories) live in those incommensurable different realities.

Election data strongly suggests that a significant percentage of Trump voters harbored sexist and racial resentments. When your world is changing, when technology is confusing and new norms are disorienting and your formerly privileged status is no longer so privileged, it is comforting to have someone to blame for that bewildering new reality. Trump obligingly provided those people with scapegoats: Muslims, African-Americans, women, Mexicans, Jews.

Meanwhile, educated people in urbanized environments, people occupying the new paradigms, comfortable with diverse populations and new technologies, have increasingly embraced that paradigm’s more cosmopolitan and inclusive worldviews.

So — yes, the divisions are certainly as deep as they were in the 60s. On the other hand, while history may “cycle,” it doesn’t actually repeat itself.

The wild card, as I see it, is that Trump is so obviously deranged and dangerous he makes Nixon look normal. Nixon was a much more conventional bad actor, and he did know how government worked, did understand foreign relations. He even championed policies that today’s rightwing would consider unacceptably liberal; he established the EPA, wanted national healthcare, went to China…

Trump is a very different kettle of fish. Moreover, he is pursuing all sorts of “policies” (if you can call his ego tantrums “policies”) that enrage multiple different constituencies. America has never seen anything like Trump, and my guess is that only hard-core neo-Nazis and other White Supremacists are going to stick with him for very long. Furthermore, Nixon did actually win the popular vote, albeit by a very small margin, while Trump started in a three-million vote hole that would have been even deeper but for GOP vote suppression.

Bottom line, in the 60s, not only were the “sides” more equally balanced, the so-called “country club Republicans” were firmly in the anti-flower-child camp. Today, those Republicans– Chamber of Commerce business people, responsible conservatives, mainstream Christians, officials from prior Republican administrations–are appalled by Trump, not by those who oppose him.

The critical unanswered questions are, first, whether several decades of persistent assaults on our constitutional and electoral institutions (gerrymandering, vote suppression, abuse of the filibuster, etc.) has weakened them so badly that a minority of lunatic Republicans can continue to keep control of the federal government despite the fact that majorities of Americans disapprove and are finally engaging politically; and second, if our time-honored checks and balances do fail, what happens then?

Comparisons to the 60s only take you so far. We’re in uncharted waters….

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The Big Lie Era

The expression “the big lie” was coined by Adolf Hitler; in Mein Kampf, he defined it as the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

These days, Americans are so swamped with lies, big and small, that nothing surprises us. Our problem is that we are increasingly reluctant to accept anything as the truth.

Fake news. “Post-fact” analyses of issues. An unremitting war on science and evidence. “Alternative facts.” Self-serving lies by politicians to obscure the reality that they are carrying water for donors and special interests. Big business enterprises peddling confusion and dangerous disinformation (as the tobacco companies famously admitted, “doubt is our product”) to protect their bottom lines.

The debates over Obamacare provide recent examples. Aetna made big news when it announced that it was pulling out of all but four of the 15 states where it was participating  in the Obamacare exchanges because it was losing too much money. A federal judge ruled that was a blatant falsehood— Aetna made its decision primarily in response to a federal antitrust lawsuit blocking its proposed $37-billion merger with Humana. Aetna had threatened federal officials with the pullout before the lawsuit was filed.

Obamacare has its flaws, but rather than fixing them–rather than providing the tweaks that all new programs require as implementation discloses problems–our lawmakers also chose to lie, in order to escape blame for denying twenty million Americans continued access to healthcare.

The Trumpists have indeed scrubbed the White House’s page detailing the accomplishments of the Affordable Care Act. The previous White House, knowing this was coming, took the precaution of archiving it and saving it for posterity, and for everyone who knows better to have it to point to.

But make no mistake, the theme from the Trump lie machine is going to be that Obamacare was doomed to fail, as Charles Gaba points out. Republicans started this back in December, figuring out how to make the disaster they create when they repeal the law without a replacement all Obama’s fault. And they’re moving forward with that plan.

Today, peddling “big lies”–about Obamacare, about global climate change, about “terrorist threats” or American “greatness”–is much easier than it was in Hitler’s day, because we not only have “alternative facts,” we have “alternative” news sources. A friend who decided to sample news coverage of the massive, spontaneous airport protests following Trump’s horrific Executive Order discovered that Fox News simply didn’t cover them. People who get their (mis)information exclusively from Fox wouldn’t even be aware that the protests occurred.

Steve Bannon, who is effectively running the country while the delusional “President” watches movies and tweets compulsively, ran a propaganda “news” organization prior to his fortuitous (for him) elevation to power. He clearly understands–and embraces– the power of the Big Lie.

Unfortunately, that isn’t his only area of agreement with Hitler.

There has never been a time when real journalism–and the ability of ordinary citizens to distinguish between truth and lies, propaganda and reality–has been more important.

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This is a Test..

Many years ago, there was a television mini-series about the Holocaust. My mother came over and watched the final episode with me and my (very young) children, and I still remember her firm declaration after it concluded, to the effect that she couldn’t understand the “good Germans” who kept quiet, went along and declined to get involved. She was adamant that she would not have been one of them–that she would have resisted.

I remember telling her that I wished I could be so certain. It’s easy to watch injustice and horrific behaviors from the safety of the sofa and reassure ourselves that we would be among the “good guys,” the ones who did what they knew was right no matter the consequences.

Incredible as it seems, it appears we’re going to have a chance to find out what kind of Americans we really are. Will we be among the apologists who dismiss what is happening (after all, the President isn’t coming for people like me…) and characterize the shock and anger displayed by millions of Americans as “hysteria” and “over-reaction”? Will we be like the pious “Christians” who evidently believe that morality only involves what happens below the human waist, and who evidently skipped over all those biblical references to taking in the stranger and caring for the poor and weak? Or will we go along with the self-proclaimed “patriots” we have elected–the ones who always wear a flag pin and ostentatiously carry copies of a Constitution to which they give lip service but which they read selectively, if at all?

Several readers noted that the unAmerican Executive Order refusing to admit refugees and “certain others” wasn’t even the worst thing Trump did yesterday. While that order got most of the attention, he placed his chief political strategist, Stephen Bannon, on the National Security Council, and limited the roles of both the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bannon–the White Nationalist and neo-Nazi sympathizer who ran Breitbart, the far-Right propaganda site– will now be a regular attendee of the Cabinet-level forum that deals with national security. The Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, however, won’t be.

It is hard to believe the extent of Trump’s assault on American values and institutions in just ten days. And it is dispiriting to see the cowardice of our elected officials in the face of that assault.

It is telling that neither Ryan nor McConnell have spoken out.  No profiles in courage there, or among most GOP Senators and Representatives. (Credit where credit is due: Lindsay Graham and John McCain have spoken out, and strongly.)

So much for checks and balances.

I have no idea what will happen to this country I love over the next few months and years. We are in uncharted territory. But I do know one thing: this assault on the rule of law will challenge the strength of our democratic institutions, our American commitment to liberty and equality, and the willingness of each of us to stand up for those principles.

This is our test, and it’s pass/fail.

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How Long Can This Last?

Sentient Americans of all political persuasions knew that Donald Trump was unfit to occupy the Oval Office. We knew he was unstable. But even those of us who were terrified by his election have been astonished by the speed with which he is harming critical American interests and plunging the country–and world– into chaos.

Trump’s most recent Executive Order, banning refugees, is as astonishing as it is inhumane. As the Huffington Post reported,

Trump approved the refugee ban amid the biggest refugee crisis in history and on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which honors the millions of people killed during World War II, many of whom tried to flee to the U.S. but were turned away.

It’s not the blanket ban on Muslims that Trump advocated for during his campaign, and it does not single out any country by name other than Syria for its refugees.

But Trump did say earlier in the day that he would prioritize helping Syrian Christians. He also mentioned “radical Islamic terrorists” while signing it. And in the text, it carves out an exception for admitting refugees who are religious minorities even while nearly all others will be barred for 120 days.

The order–which exempts countries where Trump does business or has hotels (business uber alles, evidently)–has caused chaos at airports around the world. It has kept students from returning to their universities, scientists from professional meetings. It applies even to longtime holders of green cards–people who have lived and worked legally in the U.S. for years.

It affects tens of thousands of people: not just refugees already “extremely” vetted and on their way to the U.S., but foreign nationals, immigrants and tourists from the designated countries and Americans whose families will now be unable to visit. It also affects thousands of Iraqis who risked their lives helping this country during the Iraq War.

Like all of Trump’s actions in the days since assuming office, it was hasty, ill-considered, and based on “alternate facts.” As USA today noted,

While Trump has claimed that most Syrian refugees coming to the U.S are single, military-age men, the State Department said those numbers didn’t add up. As of Nov. 2015, 77% of Syrian refugees who entered the U.S. were women and children. Only 23% were adult men, and only 2% were “single men unattached to families.”

As Senator Chris Murphy pointed out, not only does this profoundly unAmerican order not make us safer, “Trump has now handed ISIS a path to rebirth. They can and will use his announcement today as confirmation that America is at war with Muslims, especially those Muslims living in desperate circumstances.”

Even Dick Cheney says this order “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.”

It has been a little over a week since this delusional and dangerously ignorant man has been President. In that time, he has poisoned relations with Mexico, a neighbor and important trading partner; continued his inexplicable, fawning relationship with Vladimir Putin; and pulled the U.S. out of the TPP, rather than addressing fixable problems that had been identified with it– an action that will allow China to become a dominant influence in the economies of not just Southeast Asia, but also East Africa and even parts of Europe. He’s announced his support for the use of torture. He has declared war on the media. He has ignored and trashed the Constitution. His insistence that “millions” of illegal votes were cast is both ridiculous and an affront to America’s democratic institutions.

And that’s just week one.

How long will the Republicans in Congress continue to enable this dangerous madman?  How many of Trump’s corrupt and ill-equipped Cabinet nominees will they obediently confirm? How long will their self-serving partisanship trump patriotism?

If there is a silver lining in any of this, it is in the horrified reaction of everyday Americans–the millions who marched, the multiple Resistance groups that have sprung up in the wake of the election, the throngs of protestors that spontaneously descended last night on the nation’s airports: the millions of Americans who know that we are better than this.

We the People cannot allow this to continue.

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Russia Abroad, Theocrats at Home

Welcome to the Trump/Pence Administration.

Per Right Wing Watch

Last month, it was reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team was giving Religious Right activists, especially the members of his presidential campaign’s evangelical advisory board, unprecedented input in shaping his administration,

Earlier this week, one of the members of that board, Richard Land of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, appeared on the “Point of View” radio program, where he told host Kerby Anderson that he has been shocked by how much influence he and other Religious Right activists have had over the make-up of Trump’s administration.

“Some of my conservative friends and I, we have been pinching ourselves, are we hallucinating or is this actually happening?” Land said. “I know a good number of people on the transition team and I can tell you right now, about half of them, Kerby, think I’m liberal. I mean, these are very conservative people.”

Land went on to say that he had personally been solicited several times for names of potential appointees, something that had never happened with prior administrations. He predicted that the Trump/Pence administration would have more conservative Christians in it than any administration he’d had contact with, including the Reagan Administration.

Hoosiers who suffered through four years of his administration can see Mike Pence’s fingerprints all over these appointments.

Americans now have a President who has neither experience with nor interest in government. He still hasn’t filled most staff positions, he hasn’t educated himself about the challenges he’ll face, and he’s given no evidence that he understands what the job of President entails. Instead, he has engaged in the same petty, self-aggrandizing behaviors we’ve come to expect: arguing about the size of inaugural crowds, lashing out at the women and men who marched in opposition to him, threatening the press, and generally acting like a five-year-old spoiled brat.

Meanwhile, reports of his campaign’s Russian connections continue to grow.

It shouldn’t surprise us that, in the absence of any interest in actually governing, Trump would hand off pesky details like staffing to his Vice-President. After all, when Trump Junior approached John Kasich about the Vice-Presidency, he reportedly promised Kasich he could run the country while Trump spent his time “making America great.”

If it were Kasich making the decisions, I would actually feel a lot better. Giving Mike Pence that authority is another matter. Pence is equally uninterested in the boring details of policy (ask anyone who observed his performance as Governor of Indiana), but unlike Trump, who is concerned only with himself, Pence does have an agenda–a theocratic one.

Pence is a Christian culture warrior. His priorities are outlawing abortion, defunding Planned Parenthood, taking money from public education and directing it to Christian schools (Betsy DeVos was deeply involved in Indiana’s voucher program), insuring that Christians can discriminate against LGBTQ citizens and a variety of other measures that would legally privilege fundamentalist Christianity. (He seems to have skipped over those passages in the Christian bible that counsel caring for the poor, refraining from judgment and abstaining from public prayer…like most culture warriors, his is a highly selective reading of the bible.)

So this is what voters in white, rural America have given us: an unstable child-President with mysterious ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the various oligarchs who funded his projects after American banks declined to do so, and an equally vacuous Vice President who is a True Believer intent upon imposing his crabbed version of God’s Will on the rest of us.

Worse, if we somehow got rid of both of them, we’d get Paul Ryan, whose deepest desire is to throw grandma off Medicare…..The next few years are going to be very trying….

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