Tag Archives: Trump

Supreme Dysfunction

In a recent issue of The American Prospect, columnist Rick Perlstein dismissed concerns about recent polling and reminded readers that considerably more is at stake right now than the “horse race” that media disproportionately focuses on. As he says, that all-too-typical approach to political campaign coverage is increasingly irrelevant.

This year, hearing the political reporters on NPR every morning yammering on about stuff like that, it sounds like the drone of the adults in a Peanuts cartoon. It’s so far down the scale of factors determining how the world might go in 2025 that I cringe, tune out, and wait for the next story to start.

If that typical coverage is “down the scale,” what does Perlstein count as more weighty? He suggests that speculation about how many electoral votes each candidate will get is less significant than concerns about the number of people who might be willing to take up arms to “avenge” a Trump loss.

And then there’s the conventional coverage of the Trump trial. Perlstein points out that the attacks being made by Trump’s GOP sycophants–largely ignored or minimized by the media– are part of Repubicans’ ongoing assault on the rule of law. As he says, “what is actually on trial in New York? Trials themselves.”

Every time the man who once took an oath to faithfully execute America’s laws and may next year do so again acts in ways that would bring criminal sanction to any other defendant, by brazenly and deliberately intimidating witnesses in direct defiance of Judge Merchan’s orders, Donald Trump imparts a lesson to his millions of supplicants: One of the three allegedly coequal branches of constitutional governance in the United States is illegitimate, should its decisions not break Donald Trump’s way.

The attack on the rule of law has, of course, been aided and abetted by the current disaster that is the U.S. Supreme Court–a Court that has been intentionally packed with far-Right ideologues.

It is, of course, a crisis now long in the making. Six mortals with lifetime appointments, five of them named by Republican presidents who never won a popular majority, routinely abandoning even the pretense of intellectual coherence and procedural norms to press changes in how the nation is governed, so right-wing they could never stand democratic scrutiny.

For instance, by seeking to strip the power of nonpartisan experts to adjudicate highly technical regulatory questions. Or to control the split-second decisions of doctors in emergency rooms about how to keep women alive. Or to usurp judgement of municipalities and states to decide who can carry concealed weapons of war—reserving those rights instead to, in order, the 535 members of Congress, the nutjob Republican majority in the Idaho legislature, and the made-up fantasies about the beliefs of powder-wigged men from back before bullets had been invented.

Perlstein went on to describe the truly bizarre arguments that have been advanced for Presidential immunity–and the even more grotesque musings of Justice Alito– in what he called the “aptly named” case of Trump v. United States. 

So here we are.

In a very real sense, it is Trump and his cult versus the United States–at least the United States envisioned by the nation’s Founders. Not only does the MAGA movement pose an unprecedented threat to America’s democratic norms, it does so at a time when the multiple threats posed by climate change promise (at best) enormous social upheavals.

Perlstein argues that the political situation in which we find ourselves was “seeded” in Bush v. Gore, and from a legal standpoint, he may be right. But historians tell us that there has always been a portion of the American public that rejected the philosophical underpinnings of America’s constituent documents–citizens who have resisted every expansion of the civic equality and individual liberty at the heart of those instruments. Today, that resistance is most obvious in the hysterical backlash against women’s rights, “woke-ness” and efforts at racial inclusion.

Reactionaries have always been with us, but for most of our history, they’ve been on the fringes of political life. What is new–and arguably unprecedented–is that they have captured one of America’s major political parties. They have a Supreme Court majority, including two Justices who repeatedly and flagrantly violate judicial ethics. They have made no bones about their plans for 2025 and beyond, should they win in November.

Perlstein is right: treating the upcoming election as a typical horse-race ignores reality. A very dangerous reality.

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Using The Jews

The sudden concern over anti-Semitism being expressed by far-Right politicians is jarring to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the GOP fringe’s historic hatred. When Christian Nationalists suddenly express a desire to “protect” their Jewish neighbors, it’s not just disconcerting–it’s ominous.

Granted, there has been a sharp and troubling rise in anti-Jewish incidents, and there are good-faith efforts to address that phenomenon. Even those good-faith efforts can be misplaced; as Congressman Jerry Nadler explained in the Washington Post, despite being an observant Jew, a strong supporter of Israel and a member of Congress who has spent a career fighting antisemitism, he voted against the recent Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.

I voted against it, as did several other Jewish members of Congress. While I support the sentiment expressed by its sponsors, this bill does nothing to fight antisemitism in any meaningful way. Instead, it merely tinkers with definitions and could ultimately make investigating antisemitism on campuses more difficult in the future. In addition to trampling the free-speech rights of students and professors, this bill was disingenuously designed to split the Democratic caucus and score cheap political points.

Nadler’s final sentence refers to the fact that the far Right’s sudden, pious concerns over anti-Semitism are anything but good-faith. As the New York Times recently reported, several of the prominent Republicans who have labeled campus protests “Leftist anti-Semitism” have mainstreamed anti-Jewish rhetoric for years.

Debate rages over the extent to which the protests on the political left constitute coded or even direct attacks on Jews. But far less attention has been paid to a trend on the right: For all of their rhetoric of the moment, increasingly through the Trump era many Republicans have helped inject into the mainstream thinly veiled anti-Jewish messages with deep historical roots.

The conspiracy theory taking on fresh currency is one that dates back hundreds of years and has perennially bubbled into view: that a shady cabal of wealthy Jews secretly controls events and institutions contrary to the national interest of whatever country it is operating in.

The current formulation of the trope taps into the populist loathing of an elite “ruling class.” “Globalists” or “globalist elites” are blamed for everything from Black Lives Matter to the influx of migrants across the southern border, often described as a plot to replace native-born Americans with foreigners who will vote for Democrats. The favored personification of the globalist enemy is George Soros, the 93-year-old Hungarian American Jewish financier and Holocaust survivor who has spent billions in support of liberal causes and democratic institutions.

The linked article provided a number of examples, including Trump’s 2023 email to supporters containing “an image that bears striking resemblance to Nazi-era cartoons of hook-nosed puppet masters manipulating world figures.” The Times review found that just in the last year some 790 emails from Trump to his supporters invoked Mr. Soros or “globalists” conspiratorially, a meteoric rise from prior years, and that House and Senate Republicans increasingly used “Soros” and “globalist” to evoke anti-Semitism, “from just a handful of messages in 2013 to more than 300 messages from 79 members in 2023.”

The lengthy Times article provides numerous other examples. An equally in-depth article in The Guardian is titled “Campus protest crackdowns claim to be about antisemitism – but they’re part of a rightwing plan.” The article acknowledged the legitimate discomfort of Jewish students on campus, but noted that it has been used to justify “a powerful attack on academic freedom and First Amendment rights that long predates the student encampments – part of a longstanding rightwing project to curb speech and reshape the public sphere.”

The pro-Palestine movement has also provided cover for the right to expand its attack on protest – a project advanced significantly after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020….Alongside this effort to tar protest as terrorism, the right is seizing on the emotions inflamed by Israel’s war to make headway in a longstanding offensive on education. Over the past several years, the GOP has sought to meddle in the academic freedom of universities, which they allege are indoctrinating students into “woke”, leftwing ideology. This is perhaps most dramatic in Florida, where, in a bid to control access to history and information, Governor Ron DeSantis has all but remade the public liberal arts college New College in his image, and has introduced the Stop Woke Act, curtailing what teachers can teach on topics of race and gender.

I’d love to believe that Rightwing politicians like Indiana’s Jim Banks have suddenly awakened to the dishonesty and danger of anti-Semitism, but Jews are clearly being used as a convenient tool in their ongoing attack on an open society–and like most Jews, I know that I am only safe in a truly open society.

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Can We Spell “Quid Pro Quo”?

A number of media sources have reported on a recent meeting between Donald Trump and fossil fuel company executives, at which Trump–often described as a “transactional” personality–offered a deal: if the industry would put a billion dollars into his campaign, once elected, he’d get rid of government efforts to combat climate change.

These reports triggered a couple of immediate reactions for me: (1) “Transactional” is a nice word for acting like a mob boss. And (2) the reports should ease Democratic anxieties about young people potentially deserting Biden; the younger generation is (quite properly) the population most concerned with climate change.

Even the New York Times–which has been the traditional news source most likely to normalize Trump’s behaviors– reported on the proposed “transaction.”

Former President Donald J. Trump told a group of oil executives and lobbyists gathered at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month that they should donate $1 billion to his presidential campaign because, if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hampered their industry, according to two people who were there.

The executives who attended were from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry. According to the Washington Post, the dinner was organized by oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who has for years helped shape Republican energy policies.

Mr. Trump has publicly railed for months against President Biden’s energy and environmental agenda, as Mr. Biden has raced to restore and strengthen dozens of climate and conservation rules that Mr. Trump had weakened or erased while in office. In particular, Mr. Trump has promised to eliminate Mr. Biden’s new climate rules intended to accelerate the nation’s transition to electric vehicles, and to push a “drill, baby, drill” agenda aimed at opening up more public lands to oil and gas exploration.

Over a dinner of chopped steak, Mr. Trump repeated his public promises to delete Mr. Biden’s pollution controls, telling the attendees that they should donate heavily to help him beat Mr. Biden because his policies would help their industries.

“That has been his pitch to everybody,” said Michael McKenna, who worked in the Trump White House but did not attend the event in Florida.

Mr. McKenna said the former president’s appeal to the fossil fuel industry could be summed up as: “Look, you want me to win. You might not even like me, but your other choice is four more years of these guys,” referring to the Biden administration. He added, “The uniform sentiment of guys in the business community is ‘We don’t want four more years of Team Biden.’”

When asked for comment, a Trump spokesperson attacked President Biden, accusing him of being controlled “by environmental extremists” and “forcing Americans to purchase electric vehicles they can’t afford.” Actually, although Biden has pursued a robust climate agenda, he has balanced climate concerns with accommodation of America’s energy needs.

Mr. Biden has frustrated the fossil fuel industry by pursuing the most ambitious climate agenda in the nation’s history. He has signed a sweeping law that pumps $370 billion into incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles and has enacted a suite of tough regulations designed to sharply reduce emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal.

This year, the Biden administration paused the permitting process for new facilities that export liquefied natural gas in order to study their impact on climate change, the economy and national security.

But the fossil fuel industry has also enjoyed record profits under the Biden administration. Last year, the United States produced record amounts of oil. And even with the pause in new permits for gas export terminals, the United States is the world’s leading exporter of natural gas and is still on track to nearly double its export capacity by 2027 because of projects already permitted and under construction.

Mr. Biden has also approved several oil and gas projects sought by the fossil fuel industry.

He has authorized an enormous $8 billion oil development in Alaska known as the Willow project. He also granted a crucial permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project championed by Senator Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat, despite opposition from climate experts and environmental groups. Last month, undeterred by opposition from climate activists, the Biden administration also gave approval for an oil export project in Texas known as the Sea Port Oil Terminal.

That’s clearly not enough for our fossil fuel overlords, who may well accept the “deal” Trump is offering.  As one wag posted on X (formerly Twitter):

A second Trump term may involve suspension of the Constitution, the purging of the civil service, and the military deployed in American streets. But what will it mean for gas prices?

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Doonesbury Nails It

Stinging humor has been one of the more notable characteristics of what I devoutly hope will NOT be known as “the age of Trump.” Late-night comedians have gone where GOP politicians terrified of their MAGA base (and Democrats persuaded to  “go high” when Republicans “go low”) have failed to go. 

The result has been a situation in which the most biting–and frequently, most accurate–commentary has come from stand-up comedians and the Sunday funnies. Last Sunday, Doonesbury used a fictional psychiatrist to echo observations and conclusions that have been discussed for several months by real mental health professionals: Trump is rapidly slipping into dementia.

Elias–Doonesbury’s fictional “resident psychiatrist”– points to the symptoms: repeatedly mixing people up (not just forgetting names, which happens to all of us, but calling Biden Obama or Haley Pelosi); phonemic paraphasia (“freestyling” off the stem of a word); slurring; semantic aphasia; and tangental speech. The last panel of the cartoon is a warning, showing nonsense words coming out of the White House.

In all fairness, I didn’t find the Sunday strip funny. I did find it educational–and terrifying.

Trump’s “word salads” have been the subject of innumerable Facebook jokes and memes, but mental health professionals and pundits agree that his more recent speeches and outbursts have changed in nature. The Doonesbury labels appear to fit.

Phonemic paraphasia, for example, is defined as a disorder in which incorrect phonemes are substituted. For example, one may say “spot” instead of “pot.” Literal paraphasia could also be switching syllables or creating reverse compound words such as “markbook” instead of “bookmark.” There are differing types; according to Wikipedia,

Wernicke’s aphasia is characterized by fluent language with made up or unnecessary words with little or no meaning to speech. Those who suffer from this type of aphasia have difficulty understanding others speech and are unaware of their own mistakes. When corrected they will repeat their verbal paraphasias and have trouble finding the correct word….

Phonemic paraphasia, also referred to as phonological paraphasia or literal paraphasia, refers to the substitution of a word with a nonword that preserves at least half of the segments and/or number of syllables of the intended word. This can lead to a variety of errors, including formal ones, in which one word is replaced with another phonologically related to the intended word; phonemic ones, in which one word is replaced with a nonword phonologically related to the intended word; and approximations, an attempt to find the word without producing either a word or nonword. These types of errors are associated with Wernicke’s aphasia, among others. Phonemic paraphasias are often caused by lesions to the external capsule, extending to the posterior part of the temporal lobe or internal capsule.

Wikipedia defines “semantic aphasia”as a “progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of semantic memory in both the verbal and non-verbal domains. However, the most common presenting symptoms are in the verbal domain (with loss of word meaning). Semantic dementia is a disorder of semantic memory that causes patients to lose the ability to match words or images to their meanings.”

Tangential speech is a communication disorder in which the train of thought of the speaker wanders and shows a lack of focus, never returning to the initial topic of the conversation. (Full disclosure: my kids will tell you I have this one…although usually I do– eventually– return to the initial topic.)

Quite obviously, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. Neither is Gary Trudeau, the Doonesbury cartoonist. That said, Trudeau hasn’t created this diagnosis out of thin air or political pique–increasing numbers of mental health professionals have raised alarms. It began during his first term, with “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” in which 27 psychiatrists evaluated concerning aspects of his personality; and has accelerated with psychologists warning of the dangers posed by  more recent evidence of his mental decline. (One example: Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University who has been critical of the former president’s mental health since he was first elected, said Trump was showing clear signs of onset dementia.)

It doesn’t correlate with age. Some people “lose it” at sixty; others are mentally sharp at 100.

And it isn’t simply the bone-chilling prospect of a single, truly demented head of state. The Trump presidency has illuminated a challenge going forward. It has become standard for candidates to share their medical evaluations with the voting public; is it time to require aspirants for high office to be screened for mental illnesses? 

And given some of our past Chief Executives, where would we set the bar?

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Don’t Confuse Me With Facts!!

During a recent get-together, discussion turned to a predictable topic: what on earth explains support for Donald Trump? How can (presumably rational) citizens look at this obviously mentally-ill buffoon spouting bizarre word-salads and facing 92 indictments, and come away thinking “Yep, that’s the guy I want to put in charge of the nuclear codes”? 

A recent essay on a seemingly unrelated issue may point to at least a partial answer.

In an article about recent efforts to revitalize local news media, Doron Taussig of the Columbia Journalism Review reported that Republicans are as mistrusting of local news outlets as they are of national media outlets.

She began by citing arguments from proponents of local news asserting that– while national media sources are increasingly seen as partisan– local news enjoys widespread trust. “After all, what do high school sports and Girl Scouts building a sensory garden for shelter dogs have to do with Joe Biden and Donald Trump?”

The data doesn’t support that argument.

But if money and energy are going to be poured into local news with the assumption that local journalists are and will remain trusted across partisan lines, we’re going to be in for an unpleasant surprise. Yes, polling shows that local news is more trusted across the political spectrum than national news, but only 29 percent of Republicans surveyed by Gallup in 2021 said they trusted their local news, down from 34 percent in 2019. This is consistent with what I’ve heard from journalists who work for local outlets (mostly but not exclusively in Pennsylvania) and conservatives who read or have stopped reading them. In fact, the striking thing when you examine the relationship between local news and conservative audiences is that, in spite of all the differences between the Bucks County Courier Times and the New York Times, their alienation from conservatives sounds dishearteningly similar.

It would seem that MAGA Republicans have adopted Earl Landgrebe’s infamous position, uttered during the Watergate hearings: “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up.” He went on to say “I’m going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” (The next day, Nixon resigned.) (Landgrebe was, sadly, a product of Indiana, a state that’s been described as so Red, voters will elect a rutabaga if it has an “R” next to its name.)

Clearly, in order to continue supporting Donald Trump, it’s prudent to shield oneself from information, facts, and reality.  

That allergy to inconvenient information, however, has multiple negative consequences–and those consequences aren’t limited to ongoing support for a lunatic would-be autocrat. People who refuse to engage with probative information are ripe targets for propaganda, as Heather Cox Richardson recently reported.

Richardson cited a Washington Post article on a secret 2023 document from Russia’s Foreign Ministry calling for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures that attack “‘a coalition of unfriendly countries’ led by the United States.”

Those measures are designed to affect “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” of Russia’s perceived adversaries. 

The plan is to weaken the United States and convince other countries, particularly those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that the U.S. will not stand by its allies. By weakening those alliances, Russian leaders hope to shift global power by strengthening Russia’s ties to China, Iran, and North Korea and filling the vacuum left by the crumbling democratic alliances (although it is not at all clear that China is on board with this plan).

Russian propaganda aims to bolster the most isolationist right-wing and extremist forces in America, “to increase tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan,” and “escalate the situation in the Middle East around Israel, Iran and Syria to distract the U.S. with the problems of this region.” 

That effort has been particularly successful with the looney-tunes GOP flank elected to the House thanks to gerrymandering. As Richardson reports:

Earlier this month, both Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, warned about Russian disinformation in their party. Turner told CNN’s State of the Union that it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.” When asked which Republicans had fallen to Russian propaganda, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.” 

What it takes to support Trump, echo his “Big Lie,” and parrot Russian propaganda is chosen ignorance–a rejection of all contrary information by folks who don’t want to be confused by the facts.

There are a lot of them.

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