Pence and the Republicans decide to increase the number of abortions in America

Republicans finally got to take a step to defund Planned Parenthood.  VP Mike Pence cast the tie breaker. 

"Republican legislation letting states deny federal family planning money to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers squeezed narrowly through the Senate Thursday..."

"The federal family planning program was created 1970 and in 2015 served 4 million clients at nearly 4,000 clinics. Most of the money is for providing services like contraceptives, family planning counseling, breast and cervical cancer screening and sexually transmitted disease prevention. It has a $286 million federal budget this year.

Most recipients are women, and two-thirds have incomes at or below the federal poverty level, around $12,000 for an individual. Six in 10 say the program's services are their only or most frequent source of health care."

I imagine that Pence and the Reps are proud of themselves for reducing abortions, but of course, exactly the opposite will happen - abortions will rise, as will disease and health issues amongst the women depending on family planning and health services.  

Without family planning and contraceptive care and assistance there will be more pregnancies and thus more abortions of unwanted pregnancies.

Ideology is a strange thing, blocking out any information that contradicts the dogma. The Reps hurt poor women today. Not happy.

A blow against internet privacy

It's hard for me to keep up with all the things Trump and the Republicans are doing which harm us.  But, I just wanted to point out one that just happened.  They are removing internet privacy laws, allowing companies to sell information on us including:

"...browsing habits, app usage history, location data and Social Security numbers..."

This does not make me happy.  They are making us unsafe.  

Don't provoke the "nuclear option" over Gorsuch

I think I have been too didactic, polemic, and left wing since the advent of Trump and Trumpism.  I want to feel more balanced as I think about America and the world.  To that end, I am thinking liberals are sometimes moving unwisely out of their disgust of Trump.

I think liberals make a mistake by going all out to block Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.  I understand that the left think that the Republicans stole the vacated Scalia seat from them by refusing to hold hearings on Obama’s moderate left nominee – Merrick Garland.  And I think it was appalling that they did that.  But, in truth, what chance would he have had to be confirmed by a Republican controlled Senate?  I disagreed with the tactic, but I don’t think Obama would have gotten a nominee confirmed.

And now the Republicans control the White House and the Senate.  They will decide who becomes the next Supreme Court judge.  If the Democrats exact revenge for Garland, don’t they use up all of their weapons on this confirmation – i.e. the filibuster?  Gorsuch will replace Scalia, and the court balance becomes what it had been before Scalia’s passing.  I didn’t like many of the decisions of that court, but it’s not really a change. 

If the Dems block Gorsuch, isn’t there another Gorsuch in the wings for the job?  If they  tempt the Republicans to use the “nuclear option” of bypassing the filibuster and needing only a majority to confirm, they would be much wiser, it seems to me, to wait until, or if, it is time to replace a liberal Justice, not a conservative one.

I think liberals are laboring under a fantasy that hearings into Russian - Trump campaign improprieties will nullify the election.  But isn't that about the same fantasy that conservatives harbored for a long time that it would be proved that Obama was really born in Kenya, and his election would be nullified?  

The Reps were in the cold for eight years, they are in power now, and will be for at least two more years, and maybe up to eight.  Liberals need to do something other than copy the extremism of the Reps during the Obama years.  

I have hope that new leadership can emerge from the Left out of the ashes of the 2016 election to shine a new light.  And, as a matter of fact, as Trump and the Reps continue to destroy themselves now that they are stuck with power and responsibility, I have hope that new leadership can arise from their ashes as well into an inspiring vision of the Right - which is not Libertarian, or Tea Party, or Corporate Plutocracy...

Targeted cruelty

The Trump budget emphasizes the military and cuts the safety net for America and the world.  This is no surprise, and there is much that is distressing about the Trump budget, but I just wanted to point out one characteristic that pretty well summarizes today’s Republican Party, to me.

Cruelty. 

Apparently, Trump and the Reps want to cut funding for Health and Human Services Community Development Block Grants by 16% which includes the Administration for Community Living which funds “Meals on Wheels” that feeds impoverished elderly.  I wonder how many of my conservative friends thought they voted for cutting funds to feeding the elderly?

And this thing about “America First”?  20,000,000 people are facing famine in four countries: Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, and Nigeria – the largest humanitariancrisis in the history of the United Nations.

“We are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations,” warned Stephen O’Brien, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief. “Without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death.”

 So, the Trump administration has decided that this is the time to cut humanitarian aid overseas.  “Humanitarian” - “Trump”?  Those two words don’t go together.  Used to be that the United States was the major force of benevolence and hope for a despairing world.  Now, it’s just “America First” – or, tough luck people, you’re on your own – or, America is no better than any other country, we’re only interested in ourselves.

It seems to me that this cutting of humanitarian support in the world is not only contrary to American principles and ideals, but against our interests as well, because America is safer and more prosperous in a stable world rather than one ravaged by poverty and famine. So it seems to me that the whole concept of “American First” is short sighted and harmful to America’s role in the world and to America’s future. But, budget cutters don’t seem to notice, let alone care.

Not to forget, by the way, that the Trumpcare replacement for Obamacare will remove 24 million people from healthcare insurance.  So they can just get sick and, you know … die. But, hey, their poor so who cares?

But, oh yes, they do want to build a completely useless wall between the U.S. and Mexico.  Must have billions for that…don’t want to make the Trumpsters angry…

I remain disgusted by this administration, and it’s not just Trump.  The Republican Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives has their fingerprints all over this budget. 

It is discouraging to watch the goodness of America be abandoned and replaced by cruelty.

Do Republicans really want to start killing people?

The Congressional Budget Office (CB0) has come out with its report on the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  No surprise – 24,000,000 people will lose health care.  

24,000,000 - people – humans - men and women and children. 

I know Republicans are accused of not caring much about people, but do they really want to start killing them? I guess it reduces taxes on the wealthy?  So that makes it OK?

I sincerely doubt that the Republican House will vote for this bill, and if it does I think it has almost no chance to pass the Senate.  But, still, is this what my conservative friends voted for when they voted for a Republican President, Republican Senate, and Republican House?

This administration is such a mess.   

Trump eliminates gun background checks on the mentally ill

Trump signed has decided that background checks on those deemed to be mentally disabled needs to be stopped.  I don't find this comforting, and I don't think this has anything to do with personal freedom.  I think it has to do with the gun lobby wanting to sell guns, and controlling the Republican Party.

"While the press corps was distracted and the cable channels aired footage of Trump surrounded by a bipartisan group of smiling women, behind closed doors and with no fanfare the president quietly signed a measure that killed a regulation enacted by the Obama administration to tighten gun background checks.

The rule required the Social Security Administration to send over the names of people who receive government checks for being mentally disabled and others who have been deemed unable to handle their own financial affairs to the FBI office that runs the national background check database. This is a universe of about 75,000 people."

I'm with Wyatt Earp - no guns in Dodge ... or at least there should be a background check.

Authoritarian White House bars selected news organizations

Trump today at the CPAC conference once again attacked the media, calling it fake news.  His spokesman followed up by banning the New York Times, CNN, Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, and Politico from a question and answer session with the press secretary.

Admitted were right wing media - Washington Times, One America News Network, and of course Breitbart, Steve Bannon's news organization.

As I wrote earlier, Authoritarianism 101 is to control the news.  Here is an action demonstrating that. The way democracy is killed is to take away the ability of the people to be informed.  This is absolutely disgusting.

So, where are my conservative friends?  Where is the Republican Congress?  Do they just cheer this move toward authoritarian rule?  Don't they find this appalling?  Isn't a free press one of the guarantees of the first amendment?  Where are the "Constitutional Conservatives"?

At a minimum, this is Trump signalling his base who not to get information from. 
  
I believe that the banned news organizations are quite experienced in covering authoritarian regimes around the world, and I expect that they are energized by this in a way that they haven't been energized for decades. 

Bannon and Trump have declared war on the news, I believe Mr Nixon did that a while back and it didn't work out too well for him.  

Trump serves at the pleasure of the Republican Congress, who do have the power of impeachment.  The question is how far will they let themselves be pushed? 

Trump - alternative reality TV president

Authoritarianism 101 is for the authoritarian leader to control the news.  The Soviets had Pravda, North Korea has total control over the news, and Donald Trump is doing everything he can to discredit actual news, mainstream news from professional journalists, actual facts.

This, of course follows the example of Limbaugh, Fox News, and other right wing media, who are really doing nothing more than a marketing ploy to get to you stop watching other media and tune into them - it is a ratings increasing strategy.  Unfortunately, too many people actually seem to believe that real news is biased, or "fake', and the only way to find out what is really going on is to listen to them - successful marketing strategy, but disastrous effect on America.

So, when a right wing populist president also says that the news is "fake" and you should get all of your news from the right wing echo chamber, that becomes the fundamental strategy of authoritarianism - to control the news.  

What Fox and Limbaugh haven't realized yet is that Trump will have no more respect for them than he does for CNN.  His goal will to have everyone believe only his news.  He already has a news source set up to take over the news - Breitbart.   Indeed, it can be argued that the childish and ignorant Trump is dancing on the strings being pulled by Steve Bannon, former head of Breitbart, and Breitbart has already announced plans for ambitious expansion into Europe and other areas of news coverage.  Breitbart is the self proclaimed mouth of the Alt Right, which is a welcome home to white supremacists, and certainly a deadly foe of liberalism.  

Breitbart may think they are in the catbird seat, but I believe they too should be wary of the authoritarian in the making, Mr. Trump.  As I said, Authoritarianism 101 is to control the news, and Mr. Trump lives only in a world of alternative facts - facts that feed his Grandiose Ego.

What alternative facts does Mr Trump want us all to believe?

The latest example comes from his disturbingly rambling news conference a couple of days ago when he made this ridiculously untrue boast:

“There has never been a presidency that’s done so much in such a short period of time.”

So, is that true or just the ramblings of a man whose ego so isolates him from reality that he just believes things that feed his ego fantasies?  

Here are some comparisons to other recent presidents, as discussed in Fareed Zakaria's latest article.

"...at this point in his presidency, Barack Obama had signed into law an almost-trillion-dollar stimulus bill to revive the economy, extended health insurance to 4 million children and made it easier to challenge discriminatory labor practices. 

How many bills have presidents passed in the first 100 days?

• Bill Clinton had passed 24 bills
• John Kennedy, 26 
• Harry Truman, 55
• FDR, 76

Trump?  Probably will be less than 10?

Actually, the best thing about Trump so far is how ineffective he is.  He is good at what he is good at - getting TV ratings, dominating headlines, focusing nationwide and worldwide attention on himself - feeding his insatiable ego.

But he is not good at actually doing things.

The worst thing about Trump, of course, is the same thing - his insatiable and childish ego.  How will he react when there is actually something to do? when there is a crisis to make decisions about and actions to be taken?  That is truly a frightening thought.  He is still a 10 year old boy, as far as emotional and intellectual development goes, and he may very well respond as a 10 year old boy.

Speaking of 10 year old boys in charge of nuclear weapons - Kim Jong-Un of North Korea?  One shudders to think what can happen if these two decide to face off over some international crisis.

I am somewhat encouraged that we seem to have adults as Secretary of Defense - Mattis - and Secretary of State - Tillerson.  I strongly desire that they can guide him toward reality rather than fantasy, and toward maturity rather than childishness.

So, the reality TV show star has become the Alternative Reality TV president.  Which reality will we live in - the real world, or the "alternative facts" world of Mr Trump?

Are you an Authoritarian? Latent authoritarian? Are you sure?

Presidential adviser, young Stephen Miller, went on the Sunday shows and proclaimed that the President’s powers cannot be questioned when it comes to securing the borders.  He is ridiculously wrong.  The way he said it was authoritarian in the extreme – threatening, dogmatic, inflexible, triumphant.  And then Trump tweeted congratulations to Miller for his performance. 

So, OK, Trump is demonstrating his intent to rule as an authoritarian.  It’s pretty clear.

I have been trying to understand Trump and his voters.  And it is clear that Trump’s authoritarian promises and behavior are exactly what got him into office.  There is an excellent article entitled “The Rise of American Authoritarianism” by Amanda Taub on Vox.com that explains the rise of authoritarianism in America and around the world.  It is a response to fear – fear of attack by the Islamofascist element of Islam, but also fear of social change and diminution of father figure type of authority, hierarchy, and structure.

It’s a long article, worth the read, here are some highlights and thoughts stimulated by the article.

People who score high on in authoritarianism voted for Trump.  The strongest correlation for Trump voters was authoritarianism.  Indeed, much of the polarization in America is due to a rise in authoritarianism in the Republican Party.

They note that once the GOP positioned itself as the party of law and order and traditional values it became a magnet for the authoritarian voters. This happened with Nixon in his infamous "Southern Strategy" where he switched the South from Democrat to Republican.  

This can end up hurting the Republicans because the authoritarian wing is at odds with traditional Republicans – e.g. authoritarians could give two hoots about tax breaks for the rich.

Authoritarians express much deeper fears than the rest of us and want order and strong leaders when they feel threatened.  The Islamofascist element of Islam is such a threat.

But there is another threat, just as terrifying to the authoritarians – social change.  And guess what’s been going on for the last few decades?  Lots and lots of social change.  With the Boomers has come social change, and with the Boomers has come other Boomers frightened of and fiercely opposed to social change – empowered minorities? gays? women? diplomacy rather than war? Understanding rather than punishment?  Way too scary for the authoritarians

There are overt authoritarians and latent authoritarians.  Threats from outside forces, and from the social changes from the inside activate overt authoritarians, but they also trigger an authoritarian response from those with latent authoritarian tendencies.  The terrorist attacks combined with the rise of minority, gay, and women’s rights and power have created a perfect storm of threat to the old structures that the authoritarian mind so needs - the strict father hierarchical, orderly, rigid, punishing structure where they are on top and feel safe in a chaotic and changing world.

“As the NYU professor Jonathan Haidt has written, a button is pushed that says, "In case of moral threat, lock down the borders, kick out those who are different, and punish those who are morally deviant."”

So, how to tell if you’re an authoritarian?  Scientists took quite some time to find a way to test it, but they succeeded.

“Feldman developed what has since become widely accepted as the definitive measurement of authoritarianism: four simple questions that appear to ask about parenting but are in fact designed to reveal how highly the respondent values hierarchy, order, and conformity over other values.

1.       Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: independence or respect for elders?

2.       Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: obedience or self-reliance?

3.       Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: to be considerate or to be well-behaved?

4.       Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: curiosity or good manners?

Feldman's test proved to be very reliable. There was now a way to identify people who fit the authoritarian profile, by prizing order and conformity, for example, and desiring the imposition of those values.”

I have to admit that I was raised by an authoritarian father, and I think his greatest disappointment in me was that I never became like him, but I have to be aware that I am very likely to have latent authoritarian instincts, which I will be guarding against, because I think  they are essentially hurtful, fearful, and weak.

Authoritarianism isn’t active in most people, but it can be triggered by perceived threat.  As I said above, terrorism from outsiders and social change from insiders that the authoritarians see as different from themselves are the triggers that drive them into the arms of authoritarian rulers, like Donald Trump. (Not sure yet if Trump really is authoritarian or just playing one on TV, but he is as close to one as I ever want to see in America)

So the Republican Party became the party of law and order, the controller of minorities and women, the chooser of the military over diplomacy, the crusher of social change – and became the home of the authoritarians - both candidates and voters.

The Democratic Party became the party of civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, criminals’ rights, social progress, equality – and drove the authoritarians screaming in fear and righteous threats into the arms of the Republicans.  Liberals see this fear response as bigotry – racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.  But underneath it all is fear of change, specifically fear of change being forced upon them by the Other, those unlike them, the strong white man model of how the world is supposed to be.  That world is fading away, and all the authoritarian bullying and cruelty that authoritarians can muster is not going to stop it.

What do authoritarians want in an authoritarian leader? government action to crush the threats – external attacks from the Other, and internal change from those mistakenly perceived to be the Other.

We end up with Trump today, but whom tomorrow? maybe a smarter crueler authoritarian?  Let’s keep that from happening, please.

The first thing that I wrote about Trump was that he was temporary but his voters were not.  That is still true.  Trump will eventually go away, maybe he’ll last a full term, maybe less, maybe he’ll manage two full terms.  But he will go away.  

It it is up to the rest of us to make sure the authoritarians do not run this country, not now, not in the future.  Maybe we can try to persuade them that their fears are overblown, paranoid, divorced from reality.  Sure, we need to protect ourselves from terrorists, but we are actually doing a good job of that, long before Trump arrived on scene.  Sure there is crime and corruptions, but in the real world rather than the Right Wing Alternative Facts World crime and corruption have been dropping steadily for some time, again long before Trump arrived.

Oppose the bullying.  Allay the fears.  Renew the True American Spirit, which has both individualism, freedom, and opportunity, and also has caring, compassion, equality, and social justice as well.  America needs two healthy parties – parties of both will and love.  

The authoritarians have stolen the party of individualism, freedom, and opportunity and turned it into the party of oppression, fear, and cruelty.  I trust my conservative friends will take the party back to its real values and reject this terrible flirtation with authoritarian rule.

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.