Tag Archives: Trump

The Id Takes Over

This Presidential campaign has been like turning over a rock and seeing the cockroaches scamper out. I really didn’t think it could get any worse.

And I never, ever expected to agree with Charles Krauthammer about, well, anything. But even he was appropriately appalled by Trump’s “lock her up” descent into banana Republicanism–and the hypocrisy of denouncing him only when the “groping” tape emerged.

His views on women have been on open display for years. And he’d offered a dazzling array of other reasons for disqualification: habitual mendacity, pathological narcissism, profound ignorance and an astonishing dearth of basic human empathy.

All true. But everything we already know about the Orange One really does pale before his “unshackled” version, which is unabashedly embracing every white supremacist fever dream and unhinged conspiracy theory floating around the sewer of the “alt-right.”

Donald Trump has indulged in conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birthplace, the FBI’s “rigged” probe of Hillary Clinton, the Federal Reserve’s “political” agenda and whether Ted Cruz’s father was linked to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

With his presidential campaign in full-blown crisis on Thursday, Trump was at it again, putting a new spin on a familiar tactic.

This time, there was a bigger, badder villain — “a global power structure” of corporate interests, the media and Clinton engaging in subterfuge.

As I read reports of his bizarre speech to a rally in West Palm Beach, I remembered a friend’s wry comment from our days in the Hudnut Administration. A neighborhood group had accused the administration of a conspiracy of some sort; after noting that we really weren’t capable of pulling off sophisticated plots, he remarked that simple incompetence explains so much more than complicated conspiracies.

Unless, of course, you are a bat-shit insane megalomaniac absolutely incapable of accepting responsibility for your own behavior.

“For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind. Our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven’t seen before,” Trump said…

A day earlier, Trump appeared to allege, without evidence, that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and other GOP elected officials who distanced themselves from him were involved in a mass scheme to undermine him.

“There’s a whole deal going on — we’re going to figure it out. I always figure things out. But there’s a whole sinister deal going on,” he said.

Trump charged that Clinton “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special-interest friends and her donors.” As Martin Longman put it, at Washington Monthly,

Yesterday, he might as well have put the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his teleprompter for all the subtlety he used in going after the media and international bankers. He will be the new Father Coughlin and he’ll make plenty of money.

“International bankers” thus joins the racism of Trump’s “birtherism,” the xenophobia of his rancid anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and his “Alpha male” misogyny. His anti-Semitism–previously a bit more subtle–has now become more overt.

Donald Trump’s supporters in the white nationalist movement have found who is to blame for the tape in which the Republican nominee brags about sexually assaulting women: “The Jews.” Trump’s racist supporters are claiming that Republican consultant Dan Senor leaked the tape, and are responding with anti-Semitic attacks.

Members of the “alt-right” and white nationalist movement have been heavily supporting Trump’s campaign, and the candidate and his team have been courting members of the movement, including by appearing in white nationalist media, refusing to denounce them, and retweeting their messages.

The Daily Stormer is a virulently anti-Semitic website that celebrates Nazism, purports to document the “Jewish Problem,” and attacks “kikes.” Editor Andrew Anglin wrote an October 11 post claiming that “we knew whoever leaked the tape was a Jew. And a #NeverTrump Jew advisor to Paul Ryan is currently being pointed at as being responsible. Dan Senor.” He called Senor “a #NeverTrump kike” and concluded:

If we lose this election, it is going to be because of this pussy-grabbing tape. And having it be known that it was a Jew is extremely important. One of the GOP’s Jews being responsible makes it all the better.

Because if we lose, this country is going to enter a new age of anti-Semitism.

The 35% or so of the country that is hardcore pro-Trump is going to know that it wasn’t “liberals” that defeated Trump, but traitors within the party who abandoned him. And they are going to want to know why that happened.

And there is only one answer:

The Jews did it.

Yes, we Jews–in league with the Clintons, the banks, the Republican establishment, the media, the Kenyan Muslim in the White House (and probably the aliens who landed at Roswell)….all of whom are expertly and covertly co-ordinating a conspiracy to destroy America by defeating Donald Trump.

We do not have enough mental health professionals in this country.

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And for the Department of Head in the Sand….

Another day, another reason to view Donald Trump as a threat not just to the United States  and the rule of law, but to the entire globe.

As has been widely reported, Trump has called global warming “bullshit” and he has said that, if elected, he would “cancel” the Paris climate accord and reverse President Obama’s executive actions on climate change. Now, he has announced that Myron Ebell will head up his climate transition team, should he be elected President.

And who is Myron Ebell?

Ebell certainly is not a climate scientist. He is instead a disinformation specialist on global warming, working out of the D.C. offices of the right-wing, Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute as chief of the Center for Energy and Environment. He is also chairman of Cooler Heads Coalition, a collection of propagandists that “question[s] global warming alarmism and oppose energy-rationing policies.” And now he’s been picked to head Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team.

The rest of this “environmental team” are equally frightening.

Also appointed by Trump: Mike McKenna to guide the Department of Energy transition team. He’s worked in the energy field for former Virginia Republican Gov. George Allen and in the George H.W. Bush administration. He’s currently a lobbyist for Koch Companies Public Sector LLC, Southern Company Services, Dow Chemical Co. and Competitive Power Ventures Inc. David Bernhardt, formerly with the U.S. Department of Interior, will be heading the DOI transition team. Bernhardt works the Natural Resources Department of the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Faber Shreck. Among other things, he has represented clients involved in energy development on American Indian lands and businesses accused of violating the Department of the Interior’s regulations.

There are two main categories of science deniers: those who place their immediate financial interests above the common good and their children and grandchildren’s futures; and people like Donald Trump, who live in a reality of their own construction.

As with other aspects of the real world, Trump and his ilk apparently believe that it is possible to ignore facts, science and empirical evidence if you simply put your fingers in your ears and go “la la la, I can’t hear you.”

The problem with childish responses to complex, adult problems isn’t simply that they don’t solve those problems. It’s that they make them much worse.

Whether the Donalds of the world want to believe it or not, climate change is not only occurring, it’s accelerating. The consequences–even if we begin to act responsibly–will be enormously costly, and will reshape global population patterns and politics.

If we don’t act responsibly, they will be catastrophic.

Another reason–as if we needed one– to reject the Orange Buffoon.

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Hoosiers, Of All People, Should Reject Trump/Pence

Well, tomorrow is the Vice-Presidential debate. Those non-Hoosiers who tune in–almost certainly not the “YUGE” number that viewed the Presidential face-off–will get a chance to see what Indiana citizens have been living with for three-and-a-half years. If the Mike Pence who shows up is the Mike Pence who has embarrassed us in prior media confrontations (George Stephanopolis wasn’t the only one), it will give Hoosier Republicans yet another reason to abandon the Trump/Pence ticket.

It’s worth noting that Pence’s wooden and inadequate public performances are the least of those reasons.

Recently, Pence was asked which Vice-President he would model himself after in the event the Trump-Pence ticket prevailed. His tone-deaf but undoubtedly sincere response was “Dick Cheney.”

As a recent post to DailyKos pointed out,

If Donald Trump wins the election, we know two things with certainty: 1) he’ll implement the most racist, xenophobic, militant immigration policy this nation has possibly ever seen; 2) he won’t have the attention span to preside over any other issues of governance.

That’s where Mike Pence comes in and if you haven’t been paying attention to what he’s been saying, you’re not getting the full picture of how wildly non-empathic, socially conservative, science-less, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ and downright scary a “Trump” administration would be.

Now, DailyKos has a lefty perspective, but it is very hard to argue with any of the quoted language.

Those of us who have watched Pence “govern” during what would pretty clearly have been  his single term in the Statehouse have noted his oh-so-“Christian” passions: his determination to de-fund Planned Parenthood (despite the fact that such action would leave thousands of poor women with no healthcare); his seething hostility to the gay community (that one would have been hard to miss); his campaign to fund religious schools with tax dollars taken from the public schools.

His antagonism to science, denial of climate change (and evolution, for that matter), and efforts to have Indiana avoid compliance with environmental rules, have been fairly high-profile.

And since he joined the Trump Train, we’ve learned how sensitive he is to racial issues. (Irony alert.) Asked in an interview about the string of police shootings of unarmed black men, Pence responded

“Trump and I believe there’s been far too much talk about institutional bias and racism within law enforcement”

Translation: Because if we don’t talk about it, people like us who encourage it won’t have to answer these uncomfortable questions.

During the 3 plus years he’s been in office, Hoosiers of both parties have come to recognize the Governor as an ideologue uninterested in the nitty-gritty of public administration, a man whose purpose in running for public office has been essentially theocratic–to use whatever power he can muster to impose his personal religious views on citizens who don’t share them.

During the Presidential campaign, it has become clear that Trump has even less interest than Pence in actually doing the day-to-day work of governing, if he even recognizes what that work entails. When Donald Junior approached John Kasich about the Vice-Presidency, several media outlets reported that the offer came with a promise that, if Kasich accepted, he would be given broad authority over the Executive Branch–essentially, he could run the show while The Donald preened for cameras and indulged his self-importance.

Kasich–being both honorable and in possession of his senses–said no thanks.

Pence–being neither–evidently accepted the bargain.

Enjoy the debate.

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Immigrants, Blacks, Muslims, Jews..

So who do you hate? Who do you consider to be “lesser,” unworthy to be included in that tribe we call Americans?

Whoever it is, isn’t it comforting to know that “political correctness” no longer restrains you from letting everyone know, from “telling it like it is”? It was so silly to disapprove of name-calling, race-baiting, and other forthright communications…

That’s the ugly genie that Donald Trump’s repulsive campaign has let out of the lamp, and I am very doubtful that even his (hopefully significant) loss will allow us to put it back in.

It’s bad enough that the so-called “alt-right”–the NeoNazis, the white supremacists, the Klansmen–have come out from under their rocks to enthusiastically endorse a vile and semi-sentient candidate who channels their fevered hatreds. What is worse–far worse–is that Trump has normalized a dramatically coarsened discourse and made expressions of raw bigotry acceptable in venues where they were previously muted.

A recent post at Washington Monthly by a Jewish commentator is just one example. He writes,

I often get rough messages from people who disagree with me in the thrust and parry of presidential politics and the politics of health reform. It wasn’t always pleasant. It comes with the territory.

None of this prepared me for 2016.

I and many others who write for fairly broad audiences are being deluged with antisemitic messages from Trump supporters. They come mostly on Twitter, but on private emails and blogs, too. Many alt-right messages bracket our names like so: (((haroldpollack))), to indicate that we are Jewish….

Many include four-letter words and colorful vocabulary that is quite familiar to me from my experience working on public health interventions for high-risk adolescents and adults. I block everyone who sends me these messages. For all I know, there are hundreds more.

Pollack shared one long, rambling diatribe, and it was, as he labeled it, hateful and sick. He says he usually doesn’t share such messages–why give them more air–but he does make an observation worth considering:

In a strange way, I’m almost–almost–glad that these anti-Semitic messages are out there. They remind many of us on the receiving end of a few basic realities that hang over our contested, pluralist democracy. They should remind us of what many others are facing, who have so very much more to lose if our nation jumps off the political cliff this November.

I would quibble with only one point: it isn’t only “many others” who stand to lose if this wave of tribal venom and ignorance persists. We all stand to lose something very precious: the ideal and promise of  America.

Granted, we’ve never lived up to that promise, but most of us, at least, have tried. And over the years, we have improved. We’ve become fairer, more inclusive, less intolerant. More adult. We’ve recognized that we’re all in this together (whatever “this” is), and thousands–millions–of us have worked hard to bend that arc of history toward justice.

Those efforts are  what made America great.  Not saber-rattling or bluster or domination of some by others.

It’s those efforts, those ideals, that Trump and his sneering enablers are attacking when they call Mexicans rapists, call blacks thugs, call women fat slobs. That’s the America–our America– that they want to erase.

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If Facts Matter….

I’m one of those people who has pretty much “checked out” of the day-to-day hysteria of the Presidential campaign. (I’m old, and there’s only so much I can take….). So I decided not to watch the first debate, reasoning–I think correctly–that my impressions would be irrelevant anyway.

What ultimately matters is the ensuing “conventional wisdom.”

The consensus from all the sources I’ve seen is that Hillary won pretty convincingly. I’m sure the twitter feeds of the white supremacists, and the Facebook feeds of the “deplorables” say otherwise, but reports from credible media, the prediction markets, and  TV news anchors have been pretty consistent.

One news segment was particularly telling. Frank Luntz is a longtime GOP “message mavin.” We have him to thank for the (mis)use of political language: “death tax” rather than estate tax, for example. He is also known for the focus groups he assembles; somehow, in these polarized times, he finds voters who are undecided, has them watch campaign events, and then questions them on their reactions.

The group he’d gathered for the debate was asked, on camera, who won. Five people said Trump; sixteen said Clinton. Luntz said the margin was the largest of any group he’d previously assembled.

For those of us who actually care about substance, there were a number of sites doing fact-checking. Anyone who wasn’t previously aware that Trump occasionally lies (but only when he’s talking) could scroll through the real-time corrections and compare the consistent challenges to Trump’s statements with the virtual absence of corrections to Clinton’s.

For us ordinary people who always, dutifully, did our homework, probably the most confounding element of the 90 minutes was Trump’s obvious lack of preparation–a lack that received a great deal of comment. The Orange One evidently couldn’t be bothered to study, to actually educate himself about the complexities of governance. He apparently believed he could “wing it.” Evidently, he believes Presidents can just “wing it,” too.

The real question, of course, won’t be answered until election day, and that is: how many Americans will base their votes on the best interests of the country, and how many will support an angry, delusional and demonstrably ignorant bigot who defends and deepens their resentment of a  world they find unfair and their conviction that those “others” are to blame?

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