Category Archives: Politics

We Can Happily Look Forward to More of This

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Here’s part of a brilliant report from MSNBC on Trump’s attempt to explain where the money went:

So where does that leave us? Trump said he’d raised $6 million for veterans, but that wasn’t true. He later claimed he never used the $6 million figure, but that wasn’t true. His campaign insisted Trump had contributed $1 million himself, but that wasn’t true. Trump said he “didn’t want to have credit” for the fundraising efforts, but that wasn’t true. He said he and his team were vetting groups they’d never heard of four months after the fact, but that wasn’t true.

And as of yesterday, all of this, the Republican candidate insisted, is the media’s fault. Indeed, Trump thinks journalists should be “ashamed” of themselves for scrutinizing his claims that turned out to be wrong.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but in a normal year, in a normal party, with a normal candidate, this is the sort of controversy that could end a campaign. Legitimate presidential hopefuls can get away with some dissembling and the occasional whopper, but Trump was caught telling obvious falsehoods about support for veterans’ charities.

If this happened to Hillary Clinton, is there any doubt it would be the #1 issue in the presidential race between now and Election Day? That every pundit in America would use this as Exhibit A in their takes on why Americans just can’t trust the Democrat?

Unfortunately, there’s some truth in that last paragraph, although I think there will be less media criticism of Clinton’s “untrustworthiness” as we head toward November. I mean, even if you want to be “tough” on both sides or you have an ax to grind, how do you criticize Clinton for spilling a glass of milk when Trump makes a habit of firebombing dairies?

Reasons to Smile, Clear Sailing Ahead

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Who wants to read depressing crap every day? Not you! Not me! Hell no!

That’s why I’m planning to devote this blog to good news and encouraging thoughts until after the election.

That means I won’t quote from, comment on or link to disheartening articles like these:

“The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump”, by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker: It’s excellent:

He’s not Hitler, as his wife recently said? Well, of course he isn’t. But then Hitler wasn’t Hitler—until he was. At each step of the way, the shock was tempered by acceptance. It depended on conservatives pretending he wasn’t so bad, compared with the Communists, while at the same time the militant left decided that their real enemies were the moderate leftists, who were really indistinguishable from the Nazis. The radical progressives decided that there was no difference between the democratic left and the totalitarian right and that an explosion of institutions was exactly the most thrilling thing imaginable.

The American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern history—an authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power. The right thing to do, for everyone who believes in liberal democracy, is to gather around and work to defeat him on Election Day. Instead, we seem to be either engaged in parochial feuding or caught by habits of tribal hatred so ingrained that they have become impossible to escape even at moments of maximum danger….

If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by PerĂłns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks…. If he can rout the Republican Party in a week by having effectively secured the nomination, ask yourself what Trump could do with the American government if he had a mandate.

Or “Trump Has Taught Me to Fear My Fellow Americans”, by Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. Maybe Mr. Cohen hasn’t been paying close attention in recent years, but now he understands:

Donald Trump has taught me to fear my fellow Americans. I don’t mean the occasional yahoo who turns a Trump rally into a hate fest. I mean the ones who do nothing. Who are silent. Who look the other way. If you had told me a year ago that a hateful brat would be the presidential nominee of a major political party, I would have scoffed….

When I see these Trump supporters on television — the commentators …  — I have to wonder where they would draw the line. The answer seems to be: nowhere. They want to win. They want to beat Hillary Clinton, a calling so imperative that sheer morality must give way. Muslims and Mexicans are merely collateral damage in a war that must be fought. What about blacks or Jews? Not yet.

Maybe the talking heads on TV would draw the line at some mild version of fascism, but would the American people do the same?

And “Trump’s Lies and Authoritarianism Are the Same”, by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine:

Donald Trump is a wildly promiscuous liar. He also has disturbing authoritarian tendencies. Trump’s many critics have seized upon both traits as his two major disqualifications for the presidency, yet both of them frustratingly defy easy quantification. All politicians lie some, and many of them lie a lot, and most presidents also push the limits of their authority in ways that can frighten their opponents. So what is so uniquely dangerous about Trump? Perhaps the answer is that both of these qualities are, in a sense, the same thing. His contempt for objective truth is the rejection of democratic accountability, an implicit demand that his supporters place undying faith in him. Because the only measure of truth he accepts is what he claims at any given moment, the power his supporters vest in him is unlimited….

Truth and reason are weapons of the powerless against the powerful. There is no external doctrine [Trump] can be measured against, not even conservative dogma, which he embraces or discards at will and with no recognition of having done so. Trump’s version of truth is multiple truths, the only consistent element of which is Trump himself is always, by definition, correct. Trump’s mind is so difficult to grapple with because it is an authoritarian epistemology that lies outside the democratic norms that have shaped all of our collective experiences.

Those are just a few examples of the kind of material I’m going to avoid from now on. After all, our political situation isn’t all bad. Some in the press are waking up to the fact that they can’t cover Trump as if he were a normal candidate. Some Sanders supporters are accepting the fact that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee (and not because the super-delegates are all corrupt). More stories are appearing about Trump’s nefarious past. The businessman’s campaign is running out of money, while Clinton is sharpening her attack and correctly labeling Trump as a fraud and a con man. On top of all that, we’re only a few days away from the end of the primary election season! What’s there to worry about? Life is good! 

Collected Commentary on the Hot Topic

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The New York Times is America’s leading newspaper. I read it every day. Sometimes I read the comments. Sometimes I write one of my own. Has doing this had any effect on the course of human events? Well, every journey begins with a single step, right? Even if you never reach your destination.

In roughly chronological order:

Re: Hillary Clinton’s Dishonesty

Let’s see. A possibly misleading statement about financial transactions almost 40 years ago. Being involved in firing White House employees who were not protected by civil service rules and served “at the pleasure of the President” 20 years ago. Exercised bad judgment in some cases. Changed her positions in some cases. Perhaps criticized a political opponent unfairly.

You may dislike her intensely, but you haven’t made your case that she is especially dishonest, certainly not especially dishonest compared to many other successful politicians. We will see whether she seriously tries to deliver on her campaign promises when she is President. That’s the kind of honesty that will matter most.

…

The expert you cite is an independent blogger who has self-published two books and specializes in conspiracy theories. A look at his blog suggests he thinks every election we have is rigged. According to his “About Me” page, he’s focused on President Kennedy’s assassination since 2012 and produced a spreadsheet that shows “absolute mathematical proof” of a conspiracy. According to comments he’s left on other sites, he also denies that we know the truth about 9/11.

What his “analysis” has to do with whether Hillary Clinton is more or less honest than other successful politicians escapes me. The most important test of a politician’s honesty is whether they try to deliver on the promises they make. By that standard, I predict President Hillary Clinton will turn out to be more honest than many of her predecessors.

Re: A Conversation with Trump

This is the first Maureen Dowd column I’ve read in years. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that what she’s done here is what so many interviewers do with Trump: ask him a question and then let him have the last word. over and over again. It would be more productive and informative if she and other interviewers pinned him down instead of moving on to the next question.

If that’s too challenging, how about giving Hillary Clinton equal time? Trump says a bunch of crazy stuff. Report that. Hillary meets with some voters. Report that. Trump insults someone. Report that. Hillary makes a boring speech. Report that.

Giving the two presumptive nominees equal time wouldn’t be as entertaining, but it would help give the electorate a more balanced view of the campaign. This is serious business. It’s time for the news media to get serious too.

Re: Two Performers Refused to Appear on a Talk Show When They Learned Trump Would Be on the Same Program

If only more people refused to have anything to do with Trump. Shame on anyone who supports him, treats him with respect or does anything to imply that he is just another candidate for President, rather than, as one rich Republican donor said, “an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard”, i.e. a danger to our country and the world.

Re: Pro-Nazi Tweets from Trump Supporters

One of the important issues Mr. Weisman raises is how news organizations should be dealing with Trump. The First Amendment gives Trump the right to say all kinds of nonsense (either hateful or simply stupid), but it seems wrong for people in “the news business to find and write up both sides of [this] story, with respect and equal time to all opinions”.

I’m not a journalist or a journalism professor but it seems to me that we’re in a situation now that presents a “clear and present danger” to our country and the world. Trump has a right to speak, and since he’s the nominee, we need to know what he says and does, but it seems wrong for anyone, especially reporters, to treat him and some of his supporters with respect, reporting what they say without comment, as if Trump is simply another candidate for President.

Re: The State Department Inspector General’s Report on Hillary Clinton’s Email

Are editorials like this meant to show that the NY Times is treating all the candidates equally? America is hanging on a precipice, facing the real possibility that an incredibly dangerous person will become President, and we get another demand that Clinton utter some magic words about her email that will satisfy the press. How about you ladies and gentlemen come up with a confession for her to sign: “I screwed up. I wanted to insure my emails were private. It was a serious mistake. I should have been more forthcoming about the details. I apologize. It certainly will never happen again.” Then we could get back to doing whatever we can within the bounds of legality to stop Trump from becoming our President. If the people who speak for the NY Times don’t think they have a responsibility to help stop Trump, they are tragically mistaken.

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A Message Like His Will Always Appeal to Some People

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Depending on how we define “fascism”, Trump probably isn’t a fascist. He’s more of a fascist-in-training.

But he sure is an authoritarian. He boasts that he will do this, that and the other thing as President, as if his word will be law. That is the authoritarian ideal: the Great Leader who can make things happen without worrying about the niceties of constitutional government.

Authoritarianism, obviously, is anti-democratic. Once they’ve got the power, Great Leaders aren’t bound by elections. They do not go quietly. They talk loudly and carry big sticks.

If you want to read a short article on the danger Trump poses, I recommend “This Is How Fascism Comes to America”. The author is Robert Kagan, an historian and foreign policy specialist who was a Republican until a few months ago. A few words from Mr. Kagan:

What [Trump] offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger….

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

If you want to read a long article about Trump’s message and what his success says about millions of Americans, I recommend “Welcome to the Age of Trump” by Jonathan Freedland, a British journalist. Some selections:

He’s clearly not fettered by the restraints that hold back [other] politicians. On this logic, Trump is the fearless truth-teller. Which may seem an odd accolade to give a man who has been caught out as a serial liar and perhaps the most provenly dishonest candidate to seek, let alone win, the nomination of a major US party. But that is to forget that Trump’s core supporters believe it is the establishment – the media and political elites – that have lied to them for at least two decades. So when those same elites brand Trump a liar, his supporters either don’t believe it, or else they don’t care….

One reason why Trump seems sinister rather than simply clownish is the hint that he is hostile not just to the current two-party system in the US, but to the very norms that underpin liberal democracy…This is more than a rejection of the current Democrat-Republican gridlock. This is a contempt for the very notion of constitutional democracy. And if Trump is pushing it, it may be because he knows there is a ready audience for just such a message.

The World Values Survey of 2011 included a stunning figure. It found that 34% of Americans approved of “having a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections”, the figure rising to 42% among those with no education beyond high school. It’s worth reading that again, to let it sink in. It means that one in three US voters would prefer a dictator to democracy. Those Americans are not repudiating this or that government, but abandoning the very idea of democracy itself.

Among the evidence Mr. Freedland cites is a video from Vox that examines Trump’s popularity from a political science perspective. It’s called “The Rise of American Authoritarianism, Explained in Six Minutes” and is worth watching. It helps explain why someone like Trump will always appeal to certain voters. In fact, their authoritarian psychology may be the most defining characteristic of the people who actually believe Trump should win, not their racism, fear of Muslims, worries about immigration or their economic complaints.

That’s why we need to do everything we can to defeat Trump by the largest possible margin in November. If the election is close at all, it will encourage more fascists-in-training to seek high office, one of whom might be a much better salesman than Trump.

A Clear and Present Danger

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The title of this post might have been “Ignoring the Next Six Months – Day 21”, except for two things. Our Presidential election is a little more than five months away and my plan to ignore the campaign has been a complete failure.

In fact, I’ve paid so much attention to the campaign that I haven’t gotten around to doing a few other things, like updating this blog. Instead, I’ve spent a lot of time reading political news and commentary. I’ve left a few of my comments here and there (actually, all of them have been there). I’ve sent a few emails to a New York Times reporter who is assigned to cover Hillary Clinton. For heaven’s sake, I’ve even tweeted (@SomeGuyFromNJ). 

In case you missed it, Donald Trump now has all the delegates he needs to become the Republican nominee for President on the first ballot at their July convention. I’ll repeat that for emphasis: Unless he drops out or drops dead, Donald Trump will be the Republican’s 2016 nominee for President of the United States of America.

That means the question before us is: What should each of us do to stop this person from becoming President?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know this: There is no sense in filling a blog with random thoughts and commentary when we’re this close to a disaster.

For now, I’ll leave you with the photograph at the top of this page, a few words from Senator Elizabeth Warren, and my favorite quote from the past few weeks. First, Senator Warren:

Let’s be honest – Donald Trump is a loser. Count all his failed businesses. See how he kept his father’s empire afloat by cheating people with scams like Trump University and by using strategic corporate bankruptcy (excuse me, bankruptcies) to skip out on debt. Listen to the experts who’ve concluded he’s so bad at business that he might have more money today if he’d put his entire inheritance into an index fund and just left it alone.

Trump seems to know he’s a loser. His embarrassing insecurities are on parade: petty bullying, attacks on women, cheap racism, and flagrant narcissism. But just because Trump is a loser everywhere else doesn’t mean he’ll lose this election. People have been underestimating his campaign for nearly a year – and it’s time to wake up.

People talk about how “this is the most important election” in our lifetime every four years, and it gets stale. But consider what hangs in the balance. Affordable college. Accountability for Wall Street. Healthcare for millions of Americans. The Supreme Court. Big corporations and billionaires paying their fair share of taxes. Expanded Social Security. Investments in infrastructure and medical research and jobs right here in America. The chance to turn our back on the ugliness of hatred, sexism, racism and xenophobia. The chance to be a better people.

More than anyone we’ve seen before come within reach of the presidency, Donald Trump stands ready to tear apart an America that was built on values like decency, community, and concern for our neighbors. Many of history’s worst authoritarians started out as losers – and Trump is a serious threat. The way I see it, it’s our job to make sure he ends this campaign every bit the loser that he started it.

I wouldn’t say that America was only built on values like decency and community. America was also built on greed and inhumanity. Senator Warren would certainly agree. But her main point is unassailable: In the 228 years that we have been holding elections, Trump is the absolute worst person who has ever come this close to becoming President of the United States. The worst ever.

And lastly, a quote from Michael Vlock, a rich Connecticut investor who has given a lot of money to Republican candidates, but who says he won’t support you know who. Why?

He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard…I really believe our republic will survive Hillary.

Vlock left out “narcissistic” and “authoritarian”, but it’s not bad for a Republican.