Tag Archives: Trump

Taking Credit

What do scolds like yours truly mean when we bemoan low levels of civic literacy ? Rather obviously, it’s an accusation of  lack of knowledge of America’s legal/philosophical framework–the Constitution and Bill of Rights, an understanding of what is meant by the “rule of law.” But it’s also, increasingly, a reference to citizens’ lack of historical knowledge and worrisome ignorance of the realities of the governing and economic environment they inhabit.

Civic ignorance isn’t all the fault of individuals who simply don’t care or don’t pay attention. For many years, high schools have neglected civics instruction and whitewashed America’s history. And the fragmented nature of our information environment positively encourages misunderstanding –or often, offers politically-motivated mythology–about the performance of Presidential administrations.

We’ve just emerged from an election in which Trump benefited handsomely from that latter ignorance, as voters blamed Biden for an inflation that was worldwide, even though, under his administration, the U.S. brought it under control far more quickly than other nations managed to do.

Trump’s narrow win points to a major problem posed by Americans’ low levels of civic literacy–the erroneous assignment of credit and blame.

Simon Rosenberg recently considered that problem.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris inherited one of the worst first days an American Presidential Administration in our history. Trump left us a dadly bungled pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die unnecessarily, an economy in deep recession and a global economy teetering, a Capital City and our democracy that had just been attacked by Trump and his mobs. What Joe Biden and Kamala Harris walked into on January 20th was without doubt one of the worst first days an American Administration has ever faced.

Trump and Vance will inherit one of the best. The Biden-Harris job market has been the best since the 1960s. Wage growth, new business formation and the # of job openings per unemployed persons have been at historically elevated levels. Inflation has been beaten, gas prices are low, interest rates are coming down and our recovery from COVID has been the best of any advanced nation in the world. The dollar is strong. GDP growth has hovered around 3% for all four years of Biden’s Presidency and the stock market keeps booming. The uninsured rate is the lowest on record. Through historic levels of domestic production of renewables, oil and gas America is more energy independent today than we’ve been in decades. Crime, overdose rates, the flows to the border and the deficit have come way down. Biden’s big three investment bills are creating jobs and opportunities for American workers today and will keep doing so for decades if Trump doesn’t gut them. We’ve begun stripping away the requirement of a four year college degree for government employment and other jobs too. We’ve lowered the price of prescription drugs, capped insulin at $35 and this year all seniors will enjoy a $2,000 Rx price cap. The Iranian-Russian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis in the Middle East has been deeply degraded. The Western alliance has been rejuvenated…..

Rosenberg morosely itemizes what we know is coming: Trump will take credit for Biden’s accomplishments. If he doesn’t manage to tank the stock market, its health will be due to him.

The economy will be strong due to him. Crime will be down due to him. Seniors will have their prescriptions capped at $2,000 due to him. Bridges will be built due to him. Record domestic gas and oil production will happen due to him. Gas prices will be low due to him. Iran and Russia will be weakened in the Middle East due to him…….

Rosenberg writes that Americans need to engage in a “long and deep conversation” about why the story of the Biden-Harris administration failed to resonate with the public–why so many Americans simply failed to understand its really remarkable performance–and dramatically mis-remembered the chaos and ineptitude of the prior Trump administration. As Rosenberg writes,

There has been one big story in American politics since 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell – Democrats have made things better for the American people, Republicans have made them worse. We’ve repeatedly brought growth, lower deficits, rising wages, American progress. Republicans have brought 3 recessions in a row, higher deficits, American decline and now unfathomable MAGA ugliness and extremism.

Americans’ confusion of celebrity with actual accomplishment is responsible for some of the phenomena I lump under “civic illiteracy.” If Joe Biden had the glamour and oratorical skills of a Barack Obama, perhaps the successes of his administration would have been more widely understood.

Trump will take credit for Biden’s accomplishments. Those of us who know better need to be loud and persistent truth tellers.

Comments

Can We Talk?

It’s a new year, and Americans need to talk. But communication is hard. It has always been hard, even between people who speak the same language.

It isn’t just the crazy, although in the era of Trump, crazy seems to dominate. A recent article in the Atlantic,  titled “Let’s Talk About Trump’s Gibberish,” noted the insane stuff that comes out of his mouth and then becomes subject to the media’s “sane-washing.”

For too long, Trump has gotten away with pretending that his emotional issues are just part of some offbeat New York charm or an expression of his enthusiasm for public performance. But Trump is obviously unfit—and something is profoundly wrong with a political environment in which he can now say almost anything, no matter how weird, and his comments will get a couple of days of coverage and then a shrug, as if to say: Another day, another Trump rant about sharks.

The article quoted one of Trump’s frequent departures from rationality. In a campaign speech, his digression focused on a fanciful encounter with a shark. “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’”This bizzare detour from the ostensible subject of the speech went on–and on– with Trump clarifying that–assuming he had his choice, he’d rather be zapped than eaten. 

Evidently, people who voted for Trump simply discount his looney-tunes digressions (along with yesterday’s list of appalling behaviors). More to the point, the proliferation of disinformation, distortion and click-bait has desensitized us to “communication” that ought to alarm us–or at least signal that the speaker is mentally ill.

What, if anything, can we do about an information environment rife with intentional lies and propaganda and the purposeful “flooding of the zone”? (I believe it was Hannah Arendt who observed that propaganda isn’t intended to make us believe X rather than Y–it’s meant to destroy our ability to believe anything.)

Countering the ocean of disinformation we swim in was the subject of a December article in Common Dreams.

It’s a crisis. America is now among 11 nations deemed most threatened by both mis-and disinformation.

Little wonder that almost 90% of us fear our country is on the “wrong track.” And, President-elect Trump has led the way with 492 suspect claims in just the first hundred days of his first presidency. Then, before the 2020 vote, in a single day he made 503 false or misleading claims. By term’s end he’d uttered 30,573 lies, reports The Washington Post.

Now, he is joined by his promoter Elon Musk who is flooding his own platform X with disinformation—for example, about the bipartisan end-of-year funding deal.

Irish philosopher Vittorio Bufacchi distinguishes between lies, which are about a particular event, and “post -truth,” which is a “shift to another reality” –one where facts simply don’t matter anymore. 

The article tackles the important question: what can we do to restore the centrality of fact to our discourse? 

One key will be more independent and public journalism, including PBS and NPR, driven not by narrow profit or partisan agendas. As local journalism—perhaps easiest to hold accountable—has suffered a sharp decline in the past decades, state and local governments can step up with financial support and incentives. Here, many peer nations can inspire us.

The article points to an experiment from New Zealand, which it calls a “unique approach.”

Since 1989, its Broadcast Standards Authority has offered an easily accessible, transparent online platform for any citizen to call out disinformation. The authority is tasked with investigating and requiring removal of what is both false and harmful material.

The BSA seems to have been both cautious and effective.

In the early years, complaints were upheld in 30% of cases. But by 2021-22, those upheld had shrunk to just under 5%. That’s a big change. And, a possible implication? Knowing one can be exposed for harmful lies can discourage perpetrators.

Such a mechanism would help the ordinary citizens who cannot afford the financial cost of a lawsuit for defamation, which is our (expensive) remedy for such harms. Requiring courses in media literacy in the schools is a longer-term but important effort.

The problem–as I have repeatedly noted–is our very human proclivity for confirmation bias. People who share Trump’s hatred for “others” and don’t want to believe he is unfit for public office will gravitate to sites that characterize his “shark” episodes as humor and his ugly attacks as “locker-room jokes.”

If “post truth” is “pre fascism,” as Timothy Snyder asserts, we’re in a lot of trouble.

Comments

George Packer On How We Got Here

I consider The Atlantic a truly indespensible source of information and commentary.  The publication is a welcome island of thoughtful and penetrating articles in our ocean of superficial punditry and outright propaganda. I subscribe to the old-fashioned print magazine, and the last issue included an introductory essay by George Packer that I found particularly insightful. (Okay, honesty compels me to admit that I found his essay so “on target” because he essentially agreed with my own analysis. I’m not immune to confirmation bias…)

The essay is titled “The End of Democratic Delusions.” I think the following paragraph tells us how America has come to this unfortunate place.

This new era is neither progressive nor conservative. The organizing principle in Trump’s chaotic campaigns, the animating passion among his supporters, has been a reactionary turn against dizzying change, specifically the economic and cultural transformations of the past half century: the globalization of trade and migration, the transition from an industrial to an information economy, the growing inequality between metropolis and hinterland, the end of the traditional family, the rise of previously disenfranchised groups, the “browning” of the American people. Trump’s basic appeal is a vow to take power away from the elites and invaders who have imposed these changes and return the country to its rightful owners—the real Americans. His victory demonstrated the appeal’s breadth in blue and red states alike, among all ages, ethnicities, and races.

If we look back at history, at other periods of rapid, dizzying change, we see similar reactions and upheavals. The Industrial Revolution sparked labor uprisings, anarchist movements, and clashes between traditional monarchies and then-emerging democratic and socialist movements. The Protestant Reformation fractured the Catholic Church’s authority, reshaped Europe’s religious and political map, sparked religious wars (think the Thirty Years’ War), and devastated large parts of Europe. There are plenty of other examples.

As Packer notes, reaction is insular and aggrieved, and it “paints in dark tones.” It’s characterized by an intent to undo what most of us see as progress and “reverse history, restoring the nation to some imagined golden age when the people ruled.”

When Democrats lose a presidential election, they descend into a familiar quarrel over whether the party moved too far to the left or to the center. This time the question seems especially irrelevant; their political problem runs so much deeper. The Democratic Party finds itself on the wrong side of a historic swing toward right-wing populism, and tactical repositioning won’t help. The mood in America, as in electorates all over the world, is profoundly anti-establishment. Trump had a mass movement behind him; Kamala Harris was installed by party elites. He offered disruption, chaos, and contempt; she offered a tax break for small businesses. He spoke for the alienated; she spoke for the status quo.

As Packer also notes, we are at a time when the parties have once again switched identities. The GOP of Lincoln was anti-slavery and the Democratic party of the time (and for many years after) was the party of White supremacy; in the 20th Century, they essentially traded places. More recently, another major switch made Democrats rather than Republicans the party of institutionalism. As Packer points out, that realignment has been going on since the early ’70s:

Democrats now claim the former Republican base of college-educated professionals, and Republicans have replaced Democrats as the party of the working class. As long as globalization, technology, and immigration were widely seen as not only inevitable but positive forces, the Democratic Party appeared to ride the wave of history, while Republicans depended on a shrinking pool of older white voters in dying towns. But something profound changed around 2008.

Packard points to three of those profound changes: a growing “conviction that the political and economic game was rigged for the benefit of distant elites; a sense that the middle class had disappeared; and the absence of any institutions that might have provided help, including the Democratic Party.”

Packer is hardly the only political scientist who has reminded Americans that the reactionary period we are experiencing is global. He spends much of his essay focusing on the challenges posed by what he calls “The Trump Reaction,” which he also says is more fragile than many believe, thanks to the fact that Trump has surrounded himself with ideologues, opportunists, and crackpots who will inevitably turn on each other–and the even more obvious fact that Trump has absolutely no interest in governing.

Prior eras of rapid change have also sparked chaos and irrational reaction. History tells us that “this too shall pass.”

We really need to figure out how to speed that passage.

Comments

The End Of Ethics?

Americans were recently treated to the official results of the U.S. House’s ethics investigation of Matt Gaetz. The concluding paragraph of the 37 page report says it all:

The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.

This was the person Trump initially chose to head up the Department of Justice. (I’ve lost a lot of respect for Merrick Garland due to his timidity and what has evidently been an overly zealous desire to avoid politicizing DOJ, but the contrast between a compulsively ethical Attorney General and a thoroughgoing degenerate is representative of the difference between today’s Democratic Party and the cult of Trump–aka the GOP.)

Because it isn’t just Gaetz. Trump has chosen nominees who mirror many of his own numerous legal and ethical failings–a clown show composed not only of ignoramuses and conspiracy theorists, but sexual predators, racists and businessmen with falsified resumes and glaring conflicts of interest. Long gone are the days when political figures were held to a high moral standard–when those aspiring to leadership positions took care to project an ethical and probative public persona, even if their private behaviors were somewhat less exemplary.

To be fair, the Trumpian mafia being assembled to run the Executive branch has its counterpart in the current, rogue Supreme Court;  Rolling Stone, among others, has reported on recent, added discoveries of highly unethical behaviors by the Court’s “usual suspects.”

A new 20-month Senate investigation into ethical conflicts and legal violations at the Supreme Court has uncovered and underscored a raft of dubious behavior by justices both living — and dead.

The new 95-page report reveals that deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — who expired in 2016 on a “free” quail hunting trip, paid for by a benefactor — was a conflicted mess, and effectively patient zero for the corruption now dogging the court. The arch conservative justice accepted “at least 258 subsidized trips” from wealthy patrons, including “several dozen hunting and fishing trips with prominent Republican donors.” Scalia accepted more such gifts “than any other justice,” the report states, and failed to properly disclose them “in violation of federal law.”

The report, issued by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also excoriates current conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for violations of federal law over undisclosed travel, including luxury fishing and yacht vacations. It targets Thomas in particular for having “accepted lavish gifts from billionaires with business before the court for almost his entire tenure as a justice,” adding that “the number, value, and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history.

Dick Durbin, chair of the Judiciary Committee, issued a statement underscoring the effect of these ethical lapses, saying that “justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.” 

Disclosure of the repeated failures of Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from cases affecting the interests of the billionaires whose largesse they’ve enjoyed comes at a time when trillionaire Elon Musk has assumed a de facto role as “co- President,” and as Trump is preparing to install a cohort of shady billionaires with massive conflicts of interest in important government positions–positions for which most of them are massively unqualified. 

As ABC News recently reported,

President-elect Donald Trump has shown no qualms about making or sticking by picks for his Cabinet no matter the baggage they carry — even some accused of sexual assault.

It’s a far cry from the days when much smaller-scale scandals, such as marijuana use or hiring an undocumented worker as a nanny, sunk candidates put forward by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, experts said.

“We’re in untested waters,” Jonathan Hanson, a political scientist and lecturer in statistics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, told ABC News.

I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us. After all, American voters just elected a mentally-ill convicted felon who has also been found liable for sexual abuse by a  civil jury. 

Apparently, MAGA’s version of “Making America Great Again” is limited to its (very obvious) goal of “Making America White Again.”

Ethics? They don’t need no stinkin’ ethics! 

Comments

The Mump Regime

Well, I see where Elon Musk has recently praised Germany’s neo- Nazis. That’s not a big surprise–anyone who has followed the remaking of Twitter/X into a platform filled with racism, anti-Semitism and other assorted bigotries promoted by the world’s richest man can hardly be shocked by an explicit admission of his already-obvious political preferences.

What has been shocking–at least to me–has been the growing evidence that Musk used his riches to purchase the Presidency. The last few days–as our dysfunctional Congress struggled to avert a pre-Christmas government shutdown–Americans have been introduced to a stunning reality: for his expenditure of a quarter-billion dollars to elect Trump, Musk evidently expects to be a co-President. 

Despite the old adage, there really is something new under the sun…

Timothy Snyder–author of a best-selling book about tyranny–has summed up the situation in his Substack.

How to call this thing that is coming to America in a month?

“Administration” seems inaccurate, since it assumes that the elected president just administers a government for four years, whereas Trump clearly wants to rule indefinitely. It also seems wrong since the people he has appointed will chiefly break things rather than run them.

And so “regime” rather than administration. But whose?

As Snyder points out, the correct answer to that question might be Musk. Compared to Musk, Trump is a poor man. He’s also a man who owes Musk a lot more than he owes his voters or even his other ultra-rich donors. And as Snyder predicts, “Looking ahead, it will be Musk, not Trump, who pays for all the lawsuits to quiet the rest of us, or for the campaigns to primary dissenting Republicans.”

As he says, given that reality, any effort to accurately describe the upcoming regime should probably put Musk’s name first. Snyder dubs it “The Mump Regime.” It’s a title that does double duty.

And that recalls a very essential element of the collapse. One weakness of democracy in the United States has always been public health. The lack of a national health system brings us shorter lives, greater anxiety, and less freedom.

Now, with RFK Jr., we face the rollback of vaccinations, and thus a return, precisely, of mumps. And rubella and measles, which are halted by the same vaccine. And much else. The rest of oligarchical cabinet will weaken government by law through incompetence, spite, or avarice. But RFK Jr. will break society by making us sick.

And, thus, another reason to call this thing the Mump Regime. Get ready.

The chaos of the past few days hasn’t just highlighted the inability of Republicans to govern. (Anyone who’s been following the GOP clown-show in the U.S. House already knew that.) It has introduced us to an unprecedented display of the power of wealth.

However, it has also foreshadowed what is likely to be an epic clash of egos.

Musk and Trump share a couple of obvious attributes: massive ignorance of the way government works, and huge egos that prevent them from recognizing their own limitations. The outcome of Musk’s effort to throw a monkey wrench into the original bipartisan bill (itself a stopgap measure that displayed the inability of House Republicans to legislate) was a bill that defied most of their demands. It was also something of a PR disaster for Trump–and if there’s anything that is really important to Trump, it’s hogging the limelight.

The likely implosion of the Mump administration–an epic, forthcoming battle between two massive egos– may save the country from at least some of Trump’s “promises” that would vastly increase inflation, harm millions of Americans, and reverse the strong economic progress made under the Biden administration.

It’s probably too much to hope for, but the antics of these man-child know-nothings might also help undercut the widespread, mistaken belief that very wealthy people are rich because they’re smarter than the rest of us. That belief–that unwarranted respect for those who have managed (for Musk and Trump, via inheritance) to be richer than most people–has been critical to Trump’s support. His wealth and bluster have allowed him to escape public accountability for multiple manifestly stupid acts and pronouncements. The same is true of Musk. (Because they are rich, observers often assume that there must be a method to the madness.. )

By a very slim margin, American voters elected one rich ignoramus. They didn’t elect the other, richer one, although he is acting as though his “investment” entitles him to a “co-Presidency.”. A “come to Jesus” moment can’t be far off.

Pass the popcorn…..

Comments