How to tell if Trump is creating an authoritarian tyranny

I believe the Trump administration has the potential to be a real threat to freedom in America.  This is ironic, because Trump has come to power under the banner of conservatives and the Republican Party whose ideology has freedom and independence at its core. As a friend pointed out to me, this is not about the old right vs. left ideological divide, it is about populist based authoritarianism.  This is happening not just in America.  

The problem is the very real potential that Trump is instituting an authoritarian regime.  How can we tell?  It turns out that many people who have suffered under authoritarian rule are trying to tell us what to beware of.  I reproduce some main points here so as to have them as a reference for myself going forward.  

This is a longer than normal post because there is a lot to be aware of.

First up is from Europe, actually from Poland which is dealing with this problem now - learnfromeurope.org.  They list strategies of authoritarian rule in Poland. I quote and condense below. Does any of this remind you of Trump and some of his team?

• ·         They will come to power with a campaign based on fear, scaremongering and distorting the truth
• ·         They will divide and rule.  They will call their supporters Patriots, the only “true Americans”
• ·         Through convoluted laws and threats they will try to control mainstream media and limit press freedom. They will ban critical press from their briefings, calling them “liars”, “fake news”. They will brand those media as “unpatriotic”, acting against the People
• ·         They will create chaos, maintain a constant sense of conflict and danger. It will be their argument to enact new authoritarian laws, each one further limiting your freedoms and civil liberties
•            They will distort the truth, deny facts and blatantly lie. They will try to make you forget what facts are
• ·        They will incite and then leak fake, superficial “scandals
• ·        They will propose shocking laws to provoke your outrage
• ·        In the meantime they will push through less “flashy” legislation, slowly dismantling democracy
• ·         When invading your liberal sensibilities they will focus on what hurts the most – women and minorities. They will act as if democracy was majority rule without respect for the minority
• ·         They will try to take control of the judiciary. They will assault your highest court
• ·         They will try to limit freedom of assembly, calling it a necessity for your security
• ·         They will distort the language, coin new terms and labels “thief”, “liar” or “traitor” will automatically mean the opposition, while a “patriot” or a “true American” will mean their followers
• ·         They will take over your national symbols, associate them with their regime, remake them into attributes of their power
• ·         They will try to rewrite history to suit their needs and will smear any historical or living figure who wouldn’t approve of their actions, or distort their image to make you think they would
• ·         They will alienate foreign allies and partners, convincing you don’t need them. They won’t care for the rest of the world, with their focus on “making your country great again”
• ·         They will eventually manipulate the electoral system. They might say it’s to correct flaws

What to do?  Counter distortions with truth, educate, illuminate the real facts, refuse to be divided from fellow Americans, stay alert, don't get worn out by the relentless propaganda and distortions and give up.

Next up is David Frum of The Atlantic.  It is a long thoughtful article and worth reading and keeping as a reference. His point is that modern authoritarian rule is unlike the 20th century dictators from Hitler and Mussolini to Mao and Castro.  They dominate in different, harder to see ways. Perhaps the biggest tool of the modern authoritarian like Putin is to create a nation of cynics who cannot distinguish fact from fiction. During the campaign there was actual fake news against Hillary - e.g. that Hillary ran a pedophilia ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C - patently ridiculous but believed by some!  Trump has taken over the fake news label and now applies it to real news that is critical of him.  This is the most dangerous thing he has done so far, and it has terrible consequences.

Here are some key highlights of that article.


"Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. If they work for the government, or for a company susceptible to government pressure, they risk their jobs by speaking out...“The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.”

What is spreading today is repressive kleptocracy, led by rulers motivated by greed rather than by the deranged idealism of Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Such rulers rely less on terror and more on rule-twisting, the manipulation of information, and the co-optation of elites.

It is essential to recognize that Trump will use his position not only to enrich himself; he will enrich plenty of other people too, both the powerful and—sometimes, for public consumption—the relatively powerless. Venezuela, a stable democracy from the late 1950s through the 1990s, was corrupted by a politics of personal favoritism, as Hugo Chávez used state resources to bestow gifts on supporters.

Polarization, not persecution, enables the modern illiberal regime.

Civil unrest will not be a problem for the Trump presidency. It will be a resource. Trump will likely want not to repress it, but to publicize it— The more offensively the protesters behave, the more pleased Trump will be.

“Get used to being stigmatized as ‘opposition,’ ” ... “The basic idea is simple: to delegitimize accountability journalism by framing it as partisan.”

 Mostly, however, modern strongmen seek merely to discredit journalism as an institution, by denying that such a thing as independent judgment can exist. All reporting serves an agenda. There is no truth, only competing attempts to grab power.

By filling the media space with bizarre inventions and brazen denials, purveyors of fake news hope to mobilize potential supporters with righteous wrath—and to demoralize potential opponents by nurturing the idea that everybody lies and nothing matters.

A would-be kleptocrat is actually better served by spreading cynicism than by deceiving followers with false beliefs: Believers can be disillusioned; people who expect to hear only lies can hardly complain when a lie is exposed. The inculcation of cynicism breaks down the distinction between those forms of media that try their imperfect best to report the truth, and those that purvey falsehoods for reasons of profit or ideology. The New York Times becomes the equivalent of Russia’s RT; The Washington Post of Breitbart; NPR of Infowars.

A survey by YouGov found that by December 1, 43 percent of Republicans accepted the claim that millions of people had voted illegally in 2016.

I’ve talked with well-funded Trump supporters who speak of recruiting a troll army explicitly modeled on those used by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Putin to take control of the social-media space, intimidating some critics and overwhelming others through a blizzard of doubt-casting and misinformation

Trump and his team count on one thing above all others: public indifference. “I think people don’t care,” he said in September when asked whether voters wanted him to release his tax returns. “Nobody cares,” he reiterated to 60 Minutes in November. Conflicts of interest with foreign investments? Trump tweeted on November 21 that he didn’t believe voters cared about that either: “Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!”

And the way that liberty must be defended is not with amateur firearms, but with an unwearying insistence upon the honesty, integrity, and professionalism of American institutions and those who lead them. We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered.

Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American."

The above by David Frum is profoundly important to understand, as far as I can tell.  It is not yet the destiny of this administration that it become authoritarian, but Trump and his minions have given us plenty to pay attention to and be wary of."

My conservative friends may angrily say that Obama was an authoritarian tyrant using presidential powers in dictatorial ways.  And I am sure they can cite examples of executive over-reach. Perhaps so, for example when he unilaterally decided to stop the deportation of the children of illegal immigrants, or established stricter environmental protections, etc.  However, Obama's over-reach was for what he considered to be the benefit of the country.  

I think Mr Trump's abuses will start out with policy to please his followers, but end up with the real goal of being much more about establishing himself as an American king, complete with the accumulation of fabulous wealth for himself and his cronies, and with the take over of the United States by his avid supporters in the Confederacy.  The South is trying to rise again, with too much of what that might mean to all but the favored white aristocracy.

I believe America has entered a new era that is creating a clarion call to patriotism - the patriotism of awakening of the fundamental spirit of America - the spirit of freedom, the spirit of refusing to be crushed by authoritarian rule. It is not to be allowed by a free people.

Trump's Unamerican religious ban on Muslim immigrants

Doesn't President Trump's executive order to ban Muslims from seven select Muslim countries violate the First Amendment?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Isn't imposing a religious test on immigrants a violation of the black letter language of the First Amendment? I'm sure he has some lawyers who can find a way to parse it out in defense of the constitutionality of his executive order, but it's intent and meaning are plain - keep Muslims out, just as he promised on the campaign trail.  I expect this to be overturned in the courts, maybe by the Supreme Court if it gets that far.

By the way, it is interesting which countries are included in the "ban".  Alex Nowrasteh of the conservative think tank, the Cato Institute, points out how many Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by the banned countries:

• Syria - 0
• Iraq - 0
• Iran - 0
• Libya - 0 
• Sudan - 0
• Yemen - 0
• Somalia - 0

And here are how many Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by majority Muslim countries not on Trump's list:

• Saudi Arabia - 2,369
• United Arab Emirates - 314
• Egypt - 162

Indeed, 98.6% of American terrorist deaths on U.S. soil happened on 9/11.  Our security apparatus has been remarkable in keeping America safe in the last 16 years.  Trump stokes paranoia and rode that fear of terrorists and immigrants to the presidency.  

Fareed Zakaria on his Sundayt GPS broadcast pointed out that "none of the Majority Muslim countries that have a Trump hotel, building, or office are on the list."  Coincidence?  Perhaps.

So, isn't it essentially unAmerican, and thus unpatriotic, to impose a religious test to keep out Muslims form these selected countries? 

The United States has many allies in these countries who are being banned by the Trump dictate.  We have many Iraqi allies who fought on our side against the terrorists, and they were promised sanctuary in the U.S. and who are to be turned away.  Isn't this just wrong?

How do we fight the terrorist branch of Islam without imploring the assistance of our natural allies in this fight, the rest of Islam - who are the primary victims of the Islamofascists?  

Isn't banning Muslims from U.S. entry adding power to the Islamofascist recruiting narrative that the U.S. and the West are fighting a war against all of Islam?  Isn't banning Muslims from U.S. entry a tremendous boost the the recruitment of Muslims into becoming Islamofascists?

I have been trying to focus on Trump's actions rather than his distracting statements and tweets. This is an action, and it is unconstitutional, unAmerican, and dramatically hurts our war against the Islamofascist element of the Muslim world.

Fortunately, Mr. Trump is not our King, and his unAmerican dictates can be overturned.

The Trump who would be king

The very start of Trump’s presidency could well be his favorite time. We have pictures of him sitting very seriously and very importantly at his desk signing executive orders in his very bold, angular signature.  With one stroke of his pen he changes the country and the world!  Or so he thinks.

I wonder.

For example, he will build the wall along the Mexican border! Well, I think it takes $15 billion to do that, and that is up to Congress to fund.  I understand he has some administrative funds at his discretion, but we shall see if the tight-fisted Republican Congress obeys his commands.

(No, wait!  News just came across the wire! – Trump will pay for the wall with a 20% tax on the food and goods imported from Mexico – yes, of course, Mexico will pay for the wall after all!  No, wait… Americans will pay for the wall by paying higher prices for Mexican food and goods. It’s going to take a lot of beer and tomatoes to pay for a $15 billion wall.)

Is this what he promised - to have Americans pay for the wall in higher prices?

I think he thinks he has been made king. We shall see.  I believe General Eisenhower was surprised to learn that the Executive Branch was not like the Army – giving an order didn’t mean that it was carried out.  It’s more complicated in politics than the military - or in a privately owned one man business enterprise.

Here is a list of his executive orders and tweet commands so far per Lisa Desjardins of PBS:

  

12. Border wall.  This order also directs the hiring of an additional 5,000 border patrol agents, subject to funding.  Congress?

11. Deportations and sanctuary cities.  The order also directs the hiring of 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, though it states that is subject to funding.  Congress?

10. Review manufacturing regulations. With the aim of finding ways to speed up permitting and all federal processes for them. Congress? The Courts?

9. American steel in pipelines.  “to the maximum extent possible.” Congress?  The Courts?

8. Speeding up environmental reviews for all priority infrastructure. Congress?  The Courts?

 6 + 7. Speeding approval of Dakota Access and Keystone Oil Pipelines. The Courts?

 5. Federal hiring freeze. The president has told agencies they cannot fill any vacant positions nor open new ones, with two exceptions: military personnel and critical public safety positions.

4. TPP. This memorandum withdraws the United States from all Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and from signing the trade deal. Congress is already refusing to ratify this.

3. Abortion. President Trump has ordered that federal dollars cannot go to organizations that provide abortion services. Oh well, when Reps gets into office this is what they do.

2. Regulation freeze. The president has frozen all regulations now in process (but not approved) until they are approved by him or an agency after he took office. Obama's symbolic actions at his end are being countered by Trump's symbolic action at his start.

1. ACA rollback. Mr. Trump has allowed all agency heads to waive requirements of the Affordable Care Act to the “maximum extent permitted by law.”  Congress and the Courts will have a lot to say about this.

It’s possible that he and his team will get everything on this list, plus the multitude of executive orders and Command Tweets to come, but … really? 

I think Mr. Trump may find out he is not a king after all, but just the top person in one third of the government – Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.  And, by the way, since he has decided to wage war against the Fourth Estate – the press – and his own Intelligence agencies, I am not sure that he is in quite as commanding position that he thinks he is right now.

American Civil War?

A conservative friend pointed out an article by the conservative talk show host, Dennis Praeger.  Praeger opines that America is in its second Civil War.  His reasons seem to be focused a lot around the notion that schools and universities are brain washing good American children to become radical left wingers who are opposed to all that America stands for. And he adds a hit list of exaggerated left wing atrocities.

In addition to being paranoid, isn’t it unpatriotic to call for Civil War in America?  

But I have a different view of Mr Praeger’s article – he’s competing for an audience.

Praeger, like all good conservative talk show hosts, communicates so as to boost his ratings.  So, isn’t sowing paranoid visions that those who disagree with them are unpatriotic and that nobody can be trusted to tell the public the truth other than themselves primarily just their marketing strategy?  Limbaugh was probably the source of that strategy, and he relentlessly rails against the “mainstream media” or “drive-by media.”  The idea is - don’t pay any attention to those other guys, just come to us on the radio and Fox News and Brietbart, etc., and we will tell you the truth and you can’t trust anything that you don’t hear from us.

This is a remarkably effective marketing technique, and has built massive audiences and fortunes for the Right Wing Media Complex. But isn't it terrifying when the real President of the United States literally disbelieves actual news offered by the mainstream media (who are genuine trained reporters who professionally gather and report news rather than just google it).  Doesn't it send up warning flags when we have a president that thinks Infowars is a news source?  I find this pretty scary.

I think conservatives are seeing the opposition to Trump as being opposition to conservatism.  Although liberals can be counted on to differ with conservatives, the opposition to Trump goes way beyond opposition to conservatism.  It is a desperate opposition to someone they see as a madman, a mentally and emotionally unstable threat to America and the world.  He is seen as either someone who will kill millions by accident, or become an American Caesar that our Founding Fathers fought so hard to prevent when they drew up the Constitution.

I don’t see Trump as a Republican.  I don’t like Republican ideology anymore, but my disgust for Trump has to do with his incivility, crudeness, childishness, and desperately fragile and needy ego.  It’s not about the programs (which I will likely write against as they are revealed) but it is about the danger of the character of a tyrannical child being given the keys to space ship America. 

Trump rides three waves into White House

Trump was sworn into office yesterday.  Sad. Sad.

There are many explanations for his win, here are three forces in the country that I think were critical.

First, he ran as a Republican and it was just the Republicans' time to win.  Loius C.K. mentioned a few months back that the country is split 50 -50 and the government switches back and forth regularly.  The Dems had it for 8 years, maybe it was just time for the Reps to get it.  I have many conservative friends, and I think that was what was important to them.

Second, all across the world as well as America, people are turning to the "Strong Man", the authoritarian, to keep them safe from the Islamofascist terrorist element of Islam.  Get scared? Vote for our own scary guy to fight them off.

Third, I believe America and the world are going through a major paradigm shift of consciousness - away from the twisted notion of manhood and Chauvinism and toward a true masculine and a true feminine. And the Trump victory is a kind of last gasp to cling to the past, to the old paradigm, to "Make America Great Again" by making it some fantasized version of Rough Tough Real Men Taking Charge.  True masculine is not dominating, or intimidating, or bullying, or frightening.  Those are confusions that the country and the world have been burdened with for centuries.  And I believe the time is happening right now where we are walking away from those mistakes.

True masculine is noble, virtuous, giving, protecting, providing, truthful, courageous, valorous, chivalrous.  It is something to be proud of.  The masculinity represented by Trump is none of these things, it is the pathetic remnants of selfishness, brutality, and cold-hearted domination.  Trumpism is just a milder version of the fascist elements of Islam, as well as those energies of Russia, Germany, and Japan that plunged the world into the nightmare of WWII and the Cold War.  It is something to be ashamed of.

It could be that an important step for the country to turn away from the twisted masculinity of domination and chauvinism for the country to really see it in operation in a Trump administration augmented by a Republican Congress which is lost in terrible, uncaring ideologies. This may end up being a tipping point - away from the old paradigm of masculinity that is actually a twisted chauvinism of domination and fear, and toward a discovery of the nobler energies of true masculine, which unites synergisticallly with a true and powerful feminine of feeling, imagining, and caring.

I choose optimism.  Plus, who knows, Mr Trump may surprise us all and be the black dog that tears apart the fossilized dogmas of both the Right and the Left.  I am willing to hope.

Russia withholding Trump leaks as evidence of Russian influence to defeat Clinton

The leaked intelligence document dump claiming - that Russia had intelligence support for Trump for about five years - that they fed him opposition research on Clinton during the campaign – and that Russia had humiliating evidence of his sexual activities – has caused a predictable outraged reaction by Trump.  He has a point in that the leaked documents had been in possession of most legitimate news and government organizations for some time, and indeed, since they could not verify the allegations they didn’t reveal them.  He claimed they were totally false, which I doubt, but that is not the point.

The actual point of the story is not the content of the blackmailable stuff, but the fact that Russia had this opposition research on Trump and did not use it prior to the election.  Why?  They had plenty of stuff they dumped to harm Clinton during the campaign, but withheld stuff they could have dumped to harm Trump. 

The briefing that the intelligence chiefs gave to the President and the president elect included info on these documents.  It was part of their case that the Russians interfered with our election to help Trump and hurt Hillary.  It was evidence that they only went after Clinton even though they could have gone after Trump as well, or instead.

Now David Ignatius, a very savvy foreign policy thinker, wonders whether the Russians stopped Clinton for reasons of their own, and now are out to torpedo Trump after he has won.  Perhaps Putin wants Trump to be president because he thinks that would be better for Russia than a Clinton presidency.  But, perhaps the real game has always been to elect the weaker candidate and then destroy him when he wins. 

Perhaps Putin’s goal is to destroy the United States in a way that he otherwise could not do.  He doesn’t have the military or the economy to humiliate and harm the United States, but he does have the decades of perfecting the very sophisticated weaponry of disinformation and propaganda. 

It’s hard for me to imagine any more effective means of destroying America than having the impetuous, uncontrolled, foolish child that is Donald Trump become president, and then undermine him with propaganda and disinformation.  

Given this silly man’s history, it doesn’t seem too hard for expert hackers, propagandists, and disinformation artists to destroy him, but I think America will definitely survive Trump and Putin as well.

Russian disinformation and Trump

James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, testified that the intelligence services have concluded with high certainty that a foreign power, Russia, interfered with the presidential electoral process in favor of Trump. There is no claim that actual vote tallies were interfered with.  It was a disinformation campaign, long ago perfected by the Soviet Union KGB, that influenced the voters.  Putin, of course was the head of that infamous organization prior to the fall of the wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Empire.

Using their pawn, Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks platform, the Russians dumped hacked Clinton emails at strategic times in the run-up to the election, planted fake news and disinformation designed to undermine Clinton.  Trump squeaked out a win, and U.S. intelligence monitored celebrations by upper level Russians.

"The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

Obama has responded to this outrage, publicly by expelling 35 Russian diplomats, and with actions that will not be made public. 

This is a well established pattern in recent years by Putin.  He has interfered in Ukraine, now in Germany and likely France for upcoming elections.  Putin's Russia doesn't have many ways to be an empire, but disinformation is a highly developed and effective weapon against democracies. And delegitimizing democracies, influencing elections, and turning factions against each other in his targeted democracies is what he wants, and he is succeeding.  

It is how he makes Russia important - not by making Russia more powerful economically or culturally, but by weakening and destroying the rest of the world.  Strange and pathetic little man.

How much of the polarization in America is coming from these disinformation efforts?  The Alt Right news sources like Brietbart, Drudge Report, and Infowars, as well as the viral postings on social media, all of which get picked up by right wing talk radio and Fox News, has created an alternate reality for conservatives that believe that the disinformation they are being fed is showing them the real world, and convincing them that the actual news organizations - NPR, PBS, and various forms of "mainstream media" are actually distortions of the news due to a liberal bias.  

So, we live in two worlds.  A world of news and a world of Russian and Alt Right disinformation.  It is little wonder that good people voted against Hillary and for Trump.  Their world view was influenced by Putin's disinformation and the Alt-Right's paranoia.

Trump, of course, wants to make sure that nobody thinks that he won because of anything but his own glorious magnificence.  So, he denigrates the U.S. Intelligence services.

I'm not sure it is a smart idea for a president in waiting to attack the intelligence services of his own country, especially if that person my have many secrets that he is trying to hide.  Business corruption?  Sexual debauchery?  Massive debts to Russian oligarchs? Disgusting personal vendettas against helpless civilians who irritated him?

And how happy can my conservative friends be about all of this?  Haven't they spent decades warning against Soviet and Russian infamy?  Are they actually praising Putin and Assange for interfering with American elections?

The world is upside down.

Thinking About America and the World - 2011 through 2016 - a Boomer's Journey of Hope

I have published a book containing five years of my demulcents.blogspot.com blogs thinking about America and the world - a Boomer's journey of hope.  I have found it fun to write.  It is a track of how my thinking about current events has retained some constancy, as well as how it has changed.  I have been a liberal, then a conservative, and then the Tea Party, the Alt Right and Trump pushed me back to liberal once again.  Fun to write.

THINKING ABOUT AMERICA AND THE WORLD: 2011 through 2016 - A Boomer’s Journey of Hope Kindle Edition

by John Moreschi (Author)

Link to book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MY454FA/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1483382645&sr=8-10&keywords=moreschi

A quick look back over five years of thinking about America and the world

I just finished assembling and reading all of my posts on this blog over the last five years.  I am thinking of self-publishing them.  It has been an interesting experience for me.  It is a way for me to track my thinking over the last five years, and I notice a few things. 

I seem to be relentlessly optimistic.  I expected the Arab Awakening to be much more positive, but so far it has only disrupted old tyrannies and established either new tyrannies along religious lines, or initiated terrible destructive chaos, again along religious lines.  Oddly, I remain hopeful that long term the Middle East will find new boundaries that people will be able to live with each other peacefully.  I'm afraid that a lot of blood and terror will happen first, but I still hope.

My biggest message seems to have been periodic decrying of the deep polarization in the country and the the demonization of one cultural and political tribe of the other.  It dismays me to see to what extent the Trump campaign and victory has pushed me in the direction of polarization and demonization.  

Decades ago I was a liberal Democrat, then a conservative Republican, and then independent.  Over these five years I have again become a liberal Democrat.  I don't believe I have been demonizing the majority of conservative voters, most of whom are normal Republicans voting for the "Republican", but I certainly have been demonizing Donald Trump.  It is very hard for me to see him as other than an unprincipled opportunistic overgrown child.  So, I want to pull back a bit from such a partisan view and be willing to evaluate him based upon policies and programs that he actually is responsible for in his upcoming administration. I don't know what to make of his tweets and rhetoric, I am just going to have to dismiss it as a smokescreen of bullshit/negotiating strategy and not get sucked into his headlining and diversion tactics - to refuse to take him literally on what he says, just wait until I see real policies and programs and react only to them, and not react to the relentless attention grabbing bloviations.

So, the year of 2016 is almost over.  Indeed, the five years of my writing from 2011 through 2016 is concluding.  I enjoy thinking aloud about America and the world.  When I review my thinking it is humbling to see what I wrote without the benefit of hindsight, and it is interesting to see how my thinking has been changing over time.  

What about 2017?  It seems to be more unknown than any time I can think of except perhaps 1968 when America and the world were in a terrible and violent chaos.  I hope the upcoming changes are not violent and are for the better.

The times, they are a changing...

Ambiguity of America - Obama and Trump

British historian Paul Johnson wrote "A History of the American People", and one of his first observations was that there are two strands that run through American history consistently - idealism and opportunism.  We have no better example of that than our current president, Obama the idealist, and our president elect, Trump the opportunist.

Somehow, America has managed to find a very powerful path forward between these two boundaries and still be a beacon of freedom and opportunity, as well as a beacon of justice and equality, to the world.

Right now I am very disturbed by the opportunistic nature of Trump, but I understand that my conservative friends probably were equally disturbed by what they saw as the "naivete and "weakness" of the idealistic Obama.  

The new year of 2017 awaits to reveal to us Trump's impact.  I choose hope over pessimism, and fully expect America to be a force for good in the world, not so much because of Trump or his administration (most of whom appall me) but because of what and who Americans are - overall we are forces of good.

And, I am willing to be pleasantly surprised by the actual policies and decisions of Trump and his administration. I have a bias toward hope in the future, and I am not letting a government rob me of that.

Trump – hopes and fears

I find it pretty hard to find any enthusiasm to write about the forming of Trump’s administration.  Mostly, I find it pretty depressing.  But I will spell out some of my hopes, and fears.

HOPES

I think the biggest problem in America for decades has been the terrible polarization in the country – right vs left.  As I have written before, I have been a lefty and a righty and back to a lefty now throughout my life.  I was a good man in each of those iterations and I know that very good people are on each side.  I reject the notion that someone who disagrees with my political views and solutions does so because they are somehow bad.

But, something I know from experience is that once you are inside an ideological bubble you can’t see outside of that bubble.  Ideology explains everything, whether you are in a right wing or left wing bubble.  The bubble is made up of beliefs, ardently held.  And everything you see is a reflection back to you in the center of your belief bubble that validates your beliefs.  You are trapped.

So, a huge majority of people in America are trapped inside the ideological bubble of either the right or the left – trapped in dogma.

 These bubbles, these dogmas, are very comforting because you are convinced that you have all the answers.  You think you are thinking about the world, but actually you  are only validating and confirming the beliefs and biases of your ideological bubble, your dogma.

So, I have hopes that the wrecking ball that is Donald Trump might be able to shatter the dogmatic belief bubbles on both the right and the left.  For example, social conservatives and social liberals might just discover that their obsessions aren’t really the central issues of the day, and they may both need to look beyond these ancient and tiresome culture wars to find out what is being called for in today’s world rather than endlessly fight the Boomer Culture Wars.  Certainly, liberals found out that they had been seen as having forgotten about the terrible problems facing the white middle and lower classes.  And, for goodness sakes, are abortion and gun rights actually at the heart of what the country and the world must deal  with?  Etc.  Etc.  Etc.  Ideology ad nausem.

Trump’s electoral victory has shown me that many if not most of the conservative sacred cows were pretty much ignored by the actual voters.  And Hillary’s loss showed me that most of the liberal sacred cows were also seen as incidental to the issues facing the people.

So, my biggest hope is that the ideological bubbles of dogma become shattered, or at least just seen as obsolete and essentially beside the point.

Another hope is in looking at the Trump selections.  Some of them are pretty frightening, but most of the frightening ones are scary because they represent views that I don’t share.  Basically, Trump is going for Real Men – Wall Street and military men.  However, from generals to CEOs I have to acknowledge that they are intelligent, accomplished, and successful men.  So, we don’t have Sarah Palin type incompetents in most of the picks – well there is Ben Carson who proclaimed himself to be unqualified to lead a government agency, but I guess he will do so anyway.  So, my hope is that this collection of men, with a lifetime of responsibility behind them, will rise to the occasion of the awesome responsibilities placed on their shoulders.

FEARS

Ideologically, I am very upset with the selection of Ayn Rand Libertarian acolytes who pride themselves in holding to the principles of selfishness and fierce independence.  I hate that we have people in government who see the world in the black and white uncaring notion that the country is filled with the Makers and the Takers.  Ayn Randism is something I was entranced by in my late teens and early twenties but grew out of.  The world, and its people, are much more complicated that the Randian notion of what it is to be good, strong, pure being burdened by the weak, helpless, and despised.  It is a adolescent fantasy of what life is like and what Real Men are like. It is a philosophy devoid of humanity and caring.  So, I fear the ideologies that drive these men.

And of course there is the compulsive, childish, hypersensitive, ignorant narcissism of Trump himself.  He knows next to nothing about government or the world, doesn’t want to learn anything, and is likely, if unchecked, to make decisions that could be really disastrous – not because he adheres to an ideology that I disagree with, but because of his ignorance and ridiculous grandiose idea about how Amazing he is.

It is a work in process, and I refuse not to be hopeful.  The thing for me to remember is that Donald Trump does not create my reality, I do, and I will do just fine. 

He will have his splash, his moment, and I hope and pray that he does much better than I fear he might, and that he does even better than I hope.

Rooting for some miracles

I am slowly coming to accept that Trump is going to be our new president.  Still quite a shock, but there it is.  A few thoughts.

It seems to me that my liberal friends and I are now feeling the way my conservative friends felt for the last eight years.  I believe they were just as shocked and appalled by Obama as I am by Trump.  It had always seemed to me that their fears and dismay were unfounded, and indeed Obama was not a socialist, not a Muslim, not in cahoots with the Islamic Jihad, not a foreign policy wimp, not out to disarm the populace and install a left wing dictatorship, not... whatever else was in the basket of fears on the right.  But, it is clear that the right wing did everything they could to oppose everything Obama and his administration tried to do.  Fortunately, they failed in blocking everything, but try their mightiest they did.

So, I can finally say, I know how you felt, I feel the same today.

But, I actually have some hope going forward.  There will be plenty of time to be upset and opposed to what our new president actually does, I see no need to continue a kind of fearful frenzy now before he even does anything.  

What I am hopeful about is Trump himself.  I believe he is in a liminal stage, a very formative stage, and I am very willing to be pleasantly surprised by him and his administration.  

But what about the terrible things he said during the campaign? imprisoning his opponent? Torturing prisoners? Taking away first amendment rights of the press and his political opponents? Disrespecting women? Mass roundups of immigrants? Trade wars with China? Imposing religious tests on Muslims? etc, etc.  These remain scary, but did he mean any of it?  What makes anyone think so?

I believe he only said things that got him attention and enthusiastic support on the campaign trail.  I think the only thing he paid any attention to was Fox News and right wing radio and media.  All he was interested in was to find the hot buttons on the right and say those handful of things over and over again in the simplest and most expressive sentences and tweets.  

Donald Trump was, far and away, the most uninformed presidential candidate in my lifetime, and I first started paying attention to presidential politics during the 1964 LBJ vs Goldwater campaign.  He never paid any attention to any briefings on the government, the country, or the world.  Such briefings were completely uninteresting to him because all he cared about was appealing to and rousing his conservative base, many, perhaps most, of whom got their information only inside the right wing bubble of right wing media.  The last thing in the world that Trump wanted was more information that could dilute his blunt messaging and appeal to his base.  Any hint of nuance would only dilute the passions of his followers.

But, much to all of our surprise, including his, he won the election.  I don't think for a moment that he regrets anything he said because his only objective was to win, so whatever he did or said to win was good, and he won, so in his mind he did everything right.  He has no sense of the impact of what he said on anyone in the world, he wasn't interested in what either his voters of opponents thought, all he was doing was upping his ratings, his votes, the enthusiasm of his crowds.  

But, now what?  As Zelina Zito said, liberals took him literally but conservatives didn't. I hope that is true, and I think it might be.  

Now that Trump is going to be president, what is his motivation?  Indeed, what is the only thing that is important to Donald Trump?  Isn't it the same thing that has been the only thing that has ever been important to Donald Trump?  That he be successful? be seen as a winner?  Doesn't he want to be a good president?  indeed, a great president? the greatest president of all time?  I think so.

So, as he finds himself in the office of the presidency he will actually start to learn something about the government, the country, and the world.  Won't he discover that the sound bites of conservative dogma don't even come close to reality?  Won't he see that so much of his applause getting lines in his speeches to his rallies would only backfire on him and make him a pariah amongst world leaders?  Won't he find out he can't start a trade war with China without destroying the American economy and destroying his presidency?  And the same for torturing prisoners? or rounding up millions of Latin Americans? or imprisoning his presidential opponent?  Etc. etc...

And if he really wants to destroy himself, the stupidest of all things he could do would be to attack the media.  It is one thing for Brietbart or Rush Limbaugh to try to convince everyone that the media is in the tank for liberals - after all, all they are doing is attacking the competition and trying to get their followers to pay attention only to them - but it is suicidally stupid for a president to wage war on the mainstream media of America and the world.  He would create a counter-attack that no president could withstand.

So, I have reason to hope that during this liminal time, in this time between his election victory and his inauguration, he is much more fluid and formable than his campaign rhetoric suggested.

I am ready for some miracles to happen here, some small, maybe some big.

Indeed, as this intentionally ignorant man comes up against what is actually happening in the country and the world he will actually start to learn things.  And maybe, if we are all lucky, he can bring conservatives along  with him in his learning process.  

It is time for the rigid dogmas on the right to die.  On the left too, by the way, and the Dems need to get their heads out of the bubbles of their putrefied dogmas as well.  We all need to see the world as it is rather than as presented to us by ossified dogmas of the past - both right and left.

If he doesn't flex, doesn't learn, doesn't change, there is plenty of time to get upset if and when he does terrible things. It is not unlikely that he would be impeached if he tries to go all Mussolini on us. 

For now, I am rooting for some miracles.

I know how you feel, I feel the same way…

We had an election, my side lost - I’ll live just fine.

I’m still dealing with the shock - here are some areas I am thinking about:

CHANGE - We are in a time of tremendous, chaotic change.  In the ‘60s Dylan sang “… the times they are a changin’…”  We are going through a massive, worldwide change today.  Clinton represented a continuation, trying to cling to the notion that there is no real change out there, it can all be the same, just keep the correct people in power.  Trump represents undeniable change.  The voters have reflected the earthquakes of change.

EARTHQUAKE – I think the forces that put Trump into office, that voted for Brexit in Britain, that are building in Europe, need earthquakes in order to avoid future bigger earthquake later – we do not want a real civil war in this country, or in the European countries either.

VISION - Each side of the political chasm has its vision of what that change is all about.  On the left the change is supposed to lead us to greater inclusiveness, caring, compassion, community.  On the right the change is supposed to lead us to greater opportunity, freedom, individuality.  Both are wonderful visions, and they seem to be diametrically opposed to each other, but they don’t have to be.  I can imagine a land where each is a powerful and free individual, living in supportive community environments presenting opportunity, educations, and nurturing.

DELEGITIMIZING THE ELECTION - This country is evenly divided and I am not happy with the efforts on the left to see Trump as an illegitimate president.  This has been going on, on both sides of the divide, since at least the year 2000.  Many on the left never accepted that Bush was a legitimate president because of the Florida/Supreme Court debacle.  Many on the right never accepted Obama as legitimate – from the “birther” to “undercover Muslim” accusations.  We have elections, the people decide, we need to live with it and do our best to live our personal lives, to agree or oppose politically as we see fit, and to work within the constitutional framework of the country.  If we lose, we lose.  We have constitutional political remedies, but to refuse to accept the legitimacy is a path to undermining who we are.

INVISIBILITY - What is clear to me is that an entire group of people had felt invisible and they spoke loudly and clearly that they are here – forgotten whites elected Trump.  At the same time, another group of people made it very clear that they felt invisible – inner city minorities – and Black Lives Matter spoke loudly and clearly that they are here too.  Each feels invisible.  Each feels disrespected.  Each feels forgotten and abused.

I can imagine a world where the forgotten whites and the forgotten blacks (and browns and reds and yellows) can look at each other and say “I know how you feel, I feel the same way”.

PARTIES – Each party needs to dramatically change.  The Democrats, amazingly, were defeated by the working class. How on earth did the party of the working class change so dramatically that it ended up sneering at the dirty fingernail folks?  The Republicans probably feel pretty vindicated right now, but I think they have been stuck in the rigid ideologies of Ayn Rand libertarianism, fundamentalist Christianity, and budget cutting absolutists.  I don't think Trump believes in any of that, and they are about to do major battle, it seems to me.

ELECTIONS – I think there are two big problems with our electoral process.  First, the primary system is deeply flawed.  I would like to see the end of caucuses, and a regional primary system that rotates the order of the regional primary elections every four years.  Second, the electoral college is certainly under attack after electing the loser of the popular vote twice in the last five elections.

GERRYMANDERING – I think the most undemocratic thing in America is the gerrymandering of the voting districts by the party in power in each of the states.  This radicalizes the representatives to Congress and is a deliberate and expert and totally effective way for either party in power in each state to keep themselves in power in perpetuity.  It is a scandal, and it is legal.  We need a new federal law or a Supreme Court overthrow of gerrymandering, and that should be a bi-partisan effort, it seems to me.

DEMONIZATION – Please, can we stop demonizing the other side?  I know there are racists, sexists, homophobes, and white supremacists who voted for Trump, and that appalls me, but I believe that vast majority of Trump voters are not any of that.  I know that extremists on the left voted for Obama but that doesn’t mean the Obama voters were communists or socialists, or trying to take people’s guns away, or force people to be gay, or end religion in the country.  The dehumanizing of those we disagree with politically diminishes the humanity of them, and of ourselves.  And forbids compassionate listening and understanding.

This is a wakeup call in many ways, but the one that stays with me the most is the loud shouts of those who felt invisible.  They are here, they are as good as anyone else, they need to be heard, and they have been.

All that being said, I am feeling anxious about how this is all going to play out.  Mr. Trump does not inspire much in the way of confidence in me, but I do wish him and our country well.

Dealing with the shock of the choice of American voters

I mean no offense to my conservative friends who voted for Donald Trump for president, indeed I think they never thought their vote would actually put him in the White House, but for me the country's vote to elect his person is the most vicious assault on the very idea of America since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.  Both are attacks on the very goodness of America that are simply incomprehensible to me.  I am dealing with my shock and grief at this election outcome.

I know that most Trump voters are not racist like the KKK and white supremacist groups that supported Trump.  

I know that most Trump voters are not misogynists and sexual predators like Trump himself bragged about being.   

I know that most Trump voters are not incipient war criminals like Trump has promised to be. 

I know that most Trump voters are not authoritarian dictators, or want an authoritarian dictator, like Trump has promised to be by promising to bar and persecute the press who say "nasty" things about him and to persecute his detractors and to commit war crimes.

I know most Trump voters aren't dangerous impulsive, uncontrollable overgrown children like Trump has demonstrated himself to be.

But how did so many of the people that I know and admire align with this person?

I know that many Trump voters somehow think that Trump will end up being, or turning over the government to Reagan type conservatives - or they think Trump is some kind of incipient Goldwater starting out a new brand of conservatism. I can't imagine that either of those ideas is even close to correct.

I know that many Trump voters think liberals are destroying the economy and ignoring the terrorist threats. But how they came to choose Trump instead of more mainstream conservatives is astonishing to me.

The best way I can handle this profoundly depressing outcome is to think that Zalena Zito was correct when she said that liberals took him literally but not seriously, whereas conservatives took him seriously but not literally.  I guess that means that conservatives didn't think he would ever deport millions of Mexicans, put up a huge wall along the border, keep out all Muslims, attack the press, torture prisoners of war or kill terrorists' families, etc.etc.etc. but liberals thought he would do as promised.  Perhaps conservatives just liked the attitude he expressed and figured he would not be a nut case in office.  

Indeed, I have hopes that that is true.  There are already indications that he is backing away from overturning Obamacare and deporting millions from the country.  

It is my deepest hope that Trump's desire to be seen as a Great President will lead him to betray his nut case right wing fanatics, reach across the isle, and show some common sense.  Not because he cares about the people, which I think is beyond his psyche, but because he cares about his reputation - which in the end is all he has ever cared about as far as I can tell (except for money, of course, which is just another way of getting admiration to his mind)

Trump is going to be our President, and I hope and pray that he does not follow through on the hateful rhetoric of the campaign.

Amateur hour in the White House

Republican voters narrowly elected Donald Trump to be president of the United States of America last night. 

Hard to make much of an analysis in a state of shock, but just looking at the electoral maps during election night, it became blindingly obvious that the cities were blue and the countryside was red.  Like England's Brexit, the turnout in the passionately anti-elitist countryside overwhelmed the tepid turnout in the cities.

The party that has to re-think its mission is the Democrats, not the Republicans, as I had expected.  The Democratic Party has become the party of cultural liberalism, seen as sneering elitism by those in the countryside.  I think that is why the angry denunciations of Political Correctness were such a fundamental part of the campaigns of Trump and Republicans.  The Democrats lost the blue collar working class voters.  Those folks went to the Republicans with great numbers and enthusiasm.  They do not identify with city/university/media cultural values of cultural liberalism.  They gave the "elites" the finger.  As crudely as possible.  

But, like the British after Brexit, they are stuck with a man who is a total amateur in the White House, as are we all.  What have they done?  

Another big theme is that America, like much of Europe and the rest of the world, has chosen an Authoritarian to lead us. Why? A response to the terrorist threats from radical Islam, of course.  Terrorists only need to terrorize to win, and a Trump victory as president is a terrorist victory, a sign that there terrorism is terrorizing us.

Another theme is the rise of the Confederacy - more particularly, the Confederate Man - including some pretty dark parts of that genre including bullying, racism, disempowering of women, but mostly John Wayne/Clint Eastwood hyper-masculinity that sees problems as needing to be dominated and subjugated.  Law and Order in the U.S., military assault abroad, remorseless punishment of those who refuse to tow the line that they insist upon.  Bubba triumphs.

I think the country just went into a kind of mid-life crisis where the middle aged, pot bellied man (the country) buys a red sports car (or private 757), collects sexy models and tries to create a life of an idealized past (Make America Great Again) that exists only in the fantasy of the man who is losing his virility and is terrified of that.

But, but, but... we have a new president, and we don't know what he will do, and I am pretty sure he doesn't know either.  I certainly hope that the awesome responsibility that he is now carrying will have a sobering effect on him, and he will actually try to govern responsibly.  Sending him, and America, prayers...

Trump is McCarthy, not Reagan or Goldwater

To my conservative friends, please do not vote for Donald Trump for president. 

Some seem to think he somehow represents the policies of Reagan and expect him to enact Reagan type policies.  Not a chance.

Some seem to think he represents a new conservative movement like Goldwater that will sweep the nation.  No chance in the world.

I think he represents the worst elements of the conservative universe that was once championed by Joseph McCarthy - demagogic, misogynistic, bigoted, authoritarian, and narcissistic.  I think he is a child with no impulse control.  I think he is an egomaniac that sees only his own self interest.  

I wouldn't trust him with a book of matches, let alone the United States military and the nuclear codes.  He has no impulse control. He is a child. A vote for this man is a vote to end democracy in the United States of America itself.

I hope my conservative friends can come to their senses and see what this man actually represents.  

Trump promises to be an Amercan dictator

In the final debate, Donald Trump, Republican Party presidential nominee, completed his series of promises to be a dictator.  He refused to promise to accept the results of the election if he loses.  

A summary of his dictatorial promises:

• He won't accept the election results if he loses
• He will imprison his political opponent if he wins
• He urges his "second amendment people" to kill Clinton or her appointed judges if she wins
• He promises to be a war criminal with torture and killing families of jihadists if he wins

Donald Trump is the most profoundly undemocratic, and profoundly un-American candidate in American history. 

Hillary, once again, showed herself to be informed, prepared, articulate, unflappable, and tough.  She will be a fine president of the United States of America.  

Slimed

I just finished watching the second presidential debate and I feel nauseous. Slimed by this toxic man, Donald Trump. He poisons this country. 

We actually had the candidate of one party promise to sic his appointed Attorney General on his opponent and put her in jail. This is ridiculous. It is astonishing. It should be illegal. The entire point of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. That does not include jailing your opponent of the presidential race. 

One of the first things I wrote about this campaign is that America has never lost its innocence. We have never elected a dictator. This man promises to be a dictator. His very candidacy has deeply wounded this country already. America is losing its innocence. 

A man with no dignity or character is the Republican candidate for 
President of the United States.