Is Trump a tyrant?

I think that many conservatives write off Trump's behavior as damnable but not all that serious.  I don't.


Is Trump a tyrant?  He is not Hitler, and he is not Caligula.  But I just finished a Netflix special about Caligula - "Roman Empire" season three.  It was very interesting, and it showed a man who was badly psychologically wounded and dominated in his youth, thrust into the position of Emperor of Rome (the third emperor after Augustus and Tiberius) and who started off courting popularity from the people and cooperation with the Senate.  That changed after he suffered a very serious illness of three months where he almost died, an illness that drove him into paranoia, madness, and violence. His behavior was debauched, and he slaughtered tens of thousands accused of treason. He ended up being assassinated by his uncle, Cassius after only three years of being an emperor at the age of 28.  Cassius went on to be what Caligula was not - a competent Emperor.


So what has this to do with Trump?  Trump is not an unfettered Emperor and although the Senate is doing nothing to curb his whims and abuses of power, there is an opposition press and opposition House of Representatives that are having some effect. And the judiciary has not been compromised by his commands.


However, there are some descriptions of Caligula by the historians in the film that are interesting to us in America today:


"Caligula did not know what he was doing.  You have this damaged individual that you now have thrust into power, with no skills, no background, nothing but his damaged psyche who you have now given all the power in the world to, and asked him to behave properly" 


Sound familiar?


"Caligula needed to make sure that the people knew that he was all powerful and could do anything.  So he built bridges, he built temples, he was putting up  statues of himself everywhere.  He tried to be worshiped as a God while still living."


Sound familiar?


The most frightening thing about the Caligula story was that after he had lost the adoration of the crowds he decided to lead Rome into war and conquer Britain, which was a total failure because of his incompetence, so he staged a fake victory and returned in a fake triumph. It didn't help him all that much. 


Hoping and praying that Mr Trump doesn't decide to become popular by attacking some country....


Of course, Trump has not slaughtered tens of thousands for treason, but he does accuse critics of him as being treasonous, doesn't he?  He hasn't built statues and monuments to himself, but he does put his name, TRUMP, on buildings and anything he can get away with, doesn't he?


The Romans didn't have the tools of impeachment and elections to replace terrible Emperors, and America does.  The only way they could get rid of Caligula, and indeed get rid of Caesar, was assassination. 


I hope my conservative friends recognize the danger that this incompetent, ignorant, erratic, and mentally unfit man is and support any and all challengers to Trump in the upcoming primaries.  And if that fails, I hope that they hold their nose and vote for his opponent in the general election.


The man is no Caligula, but not because he wouldn't like to be...

Conservartive calls for Trump primary upponent

Some conservatives are finally waking up to the damage of the Trump presidency and calling for a primary challenge to him in the upcoming election cycle. 


Joe Walsh, former Illinois Republican Congressman and Tea Party darling writes:


"At the most basic level, Mr. Trump is unfit for office. His lies are so numerous — from his absurd claim that tariffs are “paid for mostly by China, by the way, not by us,” to his prevarication about his crowd sizes, he can’t be trusted...At times, I expressed hate for my political opponents. We now see where this can lead. There’s no place in our politics for personal attacks like that, and I regret making them...I soon realized that I couldn’t support him because of the danger he poses to the country, especially the division he sows at every chance, culminating a few weeks ago in his ugly, racist attack on four minority congresswomen....he sides with Vladimir Putin over our own intelligence community. That’s dangerous. He encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he refuses to take foreign threats seriously as we enter the 2020 election....That’s un-American...We need someone who could stand up, look the president in the eye and say: “Enough, sir. We’ve had enough of your indecency."


Anthony Scaramucci, formerly briefly in the Trump White House, call for a primary challenger as well:


"my public criticism of the president has been mounting over the past two years. His response to the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville was repellent. I was appalled by the administration’s child-separation policy along the southern border. His ranting about the news media as the “enemy of the people” was dangerous and beyond the pale. But the final straw came last month when Trump said on Twitter that four congresswomen — all of them U.S. citizens, and three native-born — should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” ...like all demagogues, he is incapable of handling constructive criticism. As we lie on the bed of nails Trump has made, it’s often difficult to see how much the paradigm of acceptable conduct has shifted...I challenge my fellow Republicans to summon the nerve to speak out on the record against Trump. Defy the culture of fear he has created, and go public with the concerns you readily express in private."


Scaramucci is appealing to former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump.


"...OK, the guy's unstable, everyone inside knows it, everyone outside knows it, let's see if we can find a viable alternative,'"..."I predict in middle or late fall there will be a trove of people that will come together in unity to say this is what's going on. This is how the person's acting."


There has been a relentless parade of Conservative Never Trumpers, from George Will and Charles Krauthammer to Michael Gerson and Jennifer Rubin. These two are not pundits, and they are actively calling for conservatives to Replace Trump at the top of the Republican ticket in 2020.


That would make this country, and the world, a safer place.

America's Spirit needs to renew and awaken

I continue to struggle to understand the presidency of Donald Trump.  His flaws are pretty much all that he is - corruption, racism, bullying domination, lying, incompetence, ignorance, disloyalty - the list can be extended I am sure; these are just what comes off the top of my head. 


But why is he our president?  I want to look at it in a much broader scope than electoral constituencies and grievances. 


I think that Trump is a face of America that has always been there, and one that the rest of the world has always known.  It is one that blacks and browns and yellows and reds in America have always known.  It is a racist and violent face that I, and I think a very large majority of Americans, had thought was behind us.  I think we thought we were beyond the George Wallace, Jim Crowe South, white supremacist racist domination of the past.  It is a shock to me to see it take over the county.


But, even deeper than the horrors of racism, I think there is something underneath it holding it up - a toxic masculinity, a macho chauvinism, that is dying out and is making a last gasp effort to reassert its tyranny.  We are in the emergence of the Me Too movement that includes punishing sexual predators, but also includes the emergence of women as a political force.  And more than that, I think we are in the process of awakening more feminine energies and turning away from the twisted masculine energies of brutal domination and violence.


Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote that the Muslim extremists were violently reacting against the what they saw as the corrupt influences of the West, and especially they thought the West had lost control of their women, and Islam was not about to lose control over their women.


I think the emergence of Trump and the Trumpsters is a kind of a parallel to that desperate urge - they want to assert their control over women - and even more so they want to assert their control over the feminine energies - to make sure that force and domination and bullying are in charge of America, not the more feminine energies of caring, compassion, negotiation, win-win solutions, and respect for people who are different.


I am hopeful that this remarkably toxic president and his domineering and racist followers, by marching proudly into the light, lets America see them clearly and know we can no longer turn away and pretend they aren't there. 


I am hopeful that Trump and the Trumpsters are exposing themselves and the true Spirit and Soul of America is in the process of waking up and turning away from their toxic brew of bigotry, hate, and domination.


It is time for a renewed American spirit to emerge.  Or so I hope.

Ignorant Trade War

Donald Trump does not understand trade deficits. He thinks if we have a trade deficit with China it means that China is pulling money out of America.  It just means that our economy buys more from China than it sells to China.  If we lower the trade deficit with China we will just increase a trade deficit with other countries.  We buy more than we produce, so we have trade deficits.

And Donald Trump doesn't know history - especially the history that says that the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was a contributor to the collapse of the U.S. and world economy of the Great Depression of the '30s.  This has been explained to this poor hapless guy in the White House, who is in way over his head, many times by many people, but he is incapable of learning because he thinks he knows it all already. 


Or he just doesn't have the mental capacity to understand complicated things, as has been reported by a number of former staff who tried to deal with him. 


Or maybe he is under other influences?

So, Trump announced a ridiculous 25% tariff on China.  He thinks he is negotiating.  He thinks the way you negotiate is with sledge hammers. He only is capable of imagining using force, and incapable of imagining or using persuasion.  He can only see the world in win-lose terms, and hasn't a clue to what win-win is.   He is the worst negotiator in U.S. history, as far as I can tell.  So, China responds with its own draconian measure, dropping the value of their currency.  And today the stock market dropped 767.27 points. Is this a surprise to anyone?

That Trump is ignorant is obvious.  That Trump is incapable of learning is obvious.  That Trump is incapable of admitting a mistake is obvious.  

I just hope and pray that he doesn't complete his mission of plunging the country into a real depression. 

It is almost as if he were taking orders from a hostile foreign power waging war against America and having him do those things most destructive to America, and America's economy, and America's leadership and standing in the world, and America's power in the world.  

Did someone mention Russia?

Williamson and Yang

The Democratic contenders for president are all focusing on policy.  And, of course, that is what they would do.  The basic idea is that whoever is nominated will be a vast improvement over the ignorant and corrupt president Trump.  And they are right.  But....


Two of the contenders are focusing on problems much bigger than policy.  Marianne Williamson correctly runs on the idea that the country is in a moral and spiritual crisis, and what we need is what conservative commentator David Brooks calls "An Uprising of Decency".  He writes:

"It is no accident that the Democratic candidate with the best grasp of this election is the one running a spiritual crusade, not an economic redistribution effort. Many of her ideas are wackadoodle, but Marianne Williamson is right about this: “This is part of the dark underbelly of American society: the racism, the bigotry and the entire conversation that we’re having here tonight. If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.”

And she is right about this: “We’ve never dealt with a figure like this in American history before. This man, our president, is not just a politician; he’s a phenomenon. And an insider political game will not be able to defeat it. … The only thing that will defeat him is if we have a phenomenon of equal force, and that phenomenon is a moral uprising of the American people.”

I hope and trust that America will rise up and demand a leader who is simply a decent human being rather than the dark, twisted, deeply corrupt and toxic leader we now have.

The other visionary on the stage, also who has no chance of winning the nomination, is entrepreneur Andrew Lang whose message is that the exponential growth of computer and artificial intelligence capabilities are and will continue to eliminate jobs that human beings do.  This effect is obvious in manufacturing. As Yang pointed out in the debates this week it is robotic machines that fill up the auto plants in Michigan, not illegal immigrants.  We are heading toward a country without work where it is not just mechanical work being replaced but intellectual work as well - AI does better diagnosis than the best doctors in some instances, and what white collar or blue collar jobs will be safe against the exponential progress of technology?  I understand that the computers will need to be programmed and the robots will need to be repaired, but those jobs won't be enough to occupy the entire country.

His solution is paying everyone a monthly survival stipend. Not sure that is the answer.  I think we might be moving toward an economy based on services, entertainment, artistic expression, hands on medical care, for example - the kinds of things that it takes a human heart and human creativity to do. But Mr. Yang points out that jobs and careers that we know of are going to go away.

Interesting times.

Step one is get rid of the dark vortex of hate and ignorance that currently runs our government.