Idiocy -- Pure And Simple

Arizona women are now living with an anti-abortion law that was passed in 1864, before they had the right to vote. Dana Milbank writes:

Trump accurately boasts that “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade” and “I was proudly the person responsible.” As a result of his achievement, conservatives on Arizona’s Supreme Court, freed by Roe’s demise, resurrected on Tuesday an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, from the moment of conception. Trump invited just such Wild West jurisprudence the day before when he said abortion policy should be left “up to the states.” Now, Arizona has restored women’s health care to an era when bloodletting and mercury pills were the standard of care and patients had limbs sawed off without anesthesia.

During the same week Trump took credit for what happened in Arizona, he compared himself to Nelson Mandela:

After all, the similarities are uncanny!

Mandela led the African National Congress. Trump led white nationalists to attack Congress.

Mandela did 18 years of hard labor on Robben Island. Trump made the hard decisions for 14 seasons on “The Apprentice.”

Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. de Klerk for abolishing apartheid. Trump won both the Club Championship trophy and Senior Club Championship trophy at Trump International Golf Club.

Mandela built the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal South Africa. Trump built Truth Social after he got kicked off of Twitter.

You get the point. This is sheer idiocy.

Image: CBC

L'Etat C'est Donald

The Trump administration is only three weeks old, but already its character is easy to define. It's all Donald, all the time. Paul Krugman writes:

It’s already clear that any hopes that Mr. Trump and those around him would be even slightly ennobled by the responsibilities of office were foolish. Every day brings further evidence that this is a man who completely conflates the national interest with his personal self-interest, and who has surrounded himself with people who see it the same way. And each day also brings further evidence of his lack of respect for democratic values.

You might be tempted to say that the latest flare-up, over Nordstrom’s decision to drop Ivanka Trump’s clothing line, is trivial. But it isn’t. For one thing, until now it would have been inconceivable that a sitting president would attack a private company for decisions that hurt his family’s business interests.

Mr. Trump’s attack on Judge James Robart, who put a stay on his immigration ban, was equally unprecedented. Previous presidents, including Barack Obama, have disagreed with and complained about judicial rulings. But that’s very different from attacking the very right of a judge — or, as the man who controls 4,000 nuclear weapons put it, a “so-called judge” — to rule against the president.

But worst of all is Trump's suggestion that restraining his power will lead to a terrorist attack:

Never mind the utter falsity of the claim that bad people are “pouring in,” or for that matter of the whole premise behind the ban. What we see here is the most powerful man in the world blatantly telegraphing his intention to use national misfortune to grab even more power. And the question becomes, who will stop him?

So far, two courts have stopped him. But, ultimately, it will be up to Americans to stop him -- if they want to. Until then, it's going to be all about Donald, all of the time.


Image: nebraskaenergyobserver

What A Gift!

Dan Leger writes in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald that a President Trump would be a gift to the enemies of the United States:

But if your goal is to undermine American democracy, then wrecking a Grand Old Party is useful. If you’re ISIS or Vladimir Putin and democracy is your enemy, Trump is your friend. He’s wrecking one of two legitimate American parties.

Trump will further undermine democracy by stifling free speech and the independent press by making libel suits easier to prosecute and by installing judges who agree with him.

Trump says he’ll encourage Japan and South Korea to acquire nuclear weapons, almost certainly setting off an arms race in Asia. That won’t make Americans safer.

Trump says he’ll use the U.S. military to impose America’s will on the world. He doesn’t realize that Washington’s been trying that for years, and failing.

His anti-Islamic rhetoric is a boon to ISIS:

Then by fulfilling his promise to mistreat American Muslims, he’ll deliver propaganda ammunition to radical Islamists around the world. You can’t buy that kind of publicity. President Trump might turn out to be the best friend the terrorists ever had.

And consider what he'll accomplish at home:

Meanwhile Trump will sharpen racial tensions in the U.S., which are already acute. African Americans see him as the white man’s candidate and that’s never good.

Within 100 days of a Trump presidency, the promised wall with Mexico will be designed, an immigration ban on Muslims will be in place, an audit of the Federal Reserve will be started as well as a plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.

That's right. He's a gift. A real gift.

Image:tanveernaseer.com

Will They Go Over The Cliff?

                                                        https://ifunny.co/

Yesterday, Donald Trump careened closer to the Republican nomination for president. Andrew Bacevich writes that Trump possesses an ugly ingenuity :

There is a form of genius at work here. To an extent unmatched by any other figure in American public life, Trump understands that previous distinctions between the ostensibly serious and the self-evidently frivolous have collapsed. Back in 1968, then running for president, Richard Nixon, of all people, got things rolling when he appeared on Laugh-In and uttered the immortal words, “Sock it to me?” But no one has come close to Trump in grasping the implications of all this: in contemporary America, celebrity confers authority. Mere credentials or qualifications have become an afterthought. How else to explain the host of a "reality" TV show instantly qualifying as a serious contender for high office?

For further evidence of Trump’s genius, consider the skill with which he plays the media, especially celebrity journalists who themselves specialize in smirking cynicism. Rather than pretending to take them seriously, he unmasks their preening narcissism, which mirrors his own. He refuses to acknowledge their self-assigned role as gatekeepers empowered to police the boundaries of permissible discourse. As the embodiment of “breaking news,” he continues to stretch those boundaries beyond recognition.

The United States has become deeply narcissistic and, like Trump, it is infatuated with its own voice, increasingly absurd though it may be. But that doesn't matter, because Americans now see their presidents as demigods:

With Americans assigning to their presidents the attributes of demigods -- each and every one memorialized before death with a library-shrine -- who better to fill the role than an egomaniacal tycoon who already acts the part? The times call for strong leadership. Who better to provide it than a wheeler-dealer unbothered by the rules that constrain mere mortals?

What does the future hold? Nothing less than the republic itself is at stake:

Should Trump or a Trump mini-me ultimately succeed in capturing the presidency, a possibility that can no longer be dismissed out of hand, the effects will be even more profound. In all but name, the United States will cease to be a constitutional republic. Once President Trump inevitably declares that he alone expresses the popular will, Americans will find that they have traded the rule of law for a version of caudillismo. Trump’s Washington could come to resemble Buenos Aires in the days of Juan Perón, with Melania a suitably glamorous stand-in for Evita, and plebiscites suitably glamorous stand-ins for elections.

 Will Americans go over the cliff? We shall see.

A Powerful And Dangerous Illusion

                                                        Carlos Osorio / AP
 Chris Hedges writes that, in the United States, the corporate state has triumphed:

The seizure of political and economic power by corporations is unassailable. Who funds and manages our elections? Who writes our legislation and laws? Who determines our defense policies and vast military expenditures? Who is in charge of the Department of the Interior? The Department of Homeland Security? Our intelligence agencies? The Department of Agriculture? The Food and Drug Administration? The Department of Labor? The Federal Reserve? The mass media? Our systems of entertainment? Our prisons and schools? Who determines our trade and environmental policies? Who imposes austerity on the public while enabling the looting of the U.S. Treasury and the tax boycott by Wall Street? Who criminalizes dissent?

Donald Trump is the incarnation of the corporate state -- which maintains its authority by keeping the so called "silent majority" entertained and propagandized. The central message behind both conduits is fear:

The German psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm in his book “Escape From Freedom” explained the yearning of those who are rendered insignificant to “surrender their freedom.” Totalitarian systems, he pointed out, function like messianic religious cults.

“The frightened individual,” Fromm wrote, “seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self.”

And, so, the frightened but entertained see Mr. Trump as their saviour. It's all an illusion, of course. But it's a powerful -- and a dangerous -- illusion.

There Are More Demagogues Waiting In The Wings

Donald Trump said last week that, if there were more people carrying more guns, things would have turned out differently in San Bernardino. Many have been appalled by the rise of Trump. Chris Hedges believes that his rise is the inevitable consequence of the death of  liberal institutions. He writes:

These institutions, which once made possible piecemeal and incremental reform, which sought to protect the weak from the tyranny of the majority and give them a voice, acted as a safety valve to ameliorate the excesses of capitalism and address the grievances of the underclass. They did not defy the system of capitalism. They colluded with the structures of privilege and white supremacy. But they provided some restraints on the worst abuse and exploitation. The capturing of major institutions by corporate power and the moral bankruptcy of our elites, especially members of our self-identified liberal class, have shattered this equilibrium.

Both American political parties have betrayed those who are voiceless:

Republicans, like Democrats, did not prevent wages from declining, unemployment and chronic underemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. treasury, or jobs from being exported. The two major parties colluded to pass trade agreements, ranging from NAFTA and the WTO to the now-pending TPP, that impoverish workers and weaken the power of government to intervene to protect the citizenry and the environment. They worked together to strip citizens of constitutional rights and install the most pervasive security and surveillance state in human history. They collaborated with Wall Street to trash the global economy and seize trillions in taxpayer money in bailouts. The two parties funded disastrous and futile imperial wars that enrich the arms manufacturers and defense contractors while bankrupting the nation. They militarized police, rewrote the laws to explode our prison population and destroyed social service programs such as our welfare system, which was dismantled by the Clinton administration. The two parties orchestrated the corporate coup d’état while diverting citizens with the battles over gay rights, abortion, “Christian” values, gun laws and affirmative action.   

Those who have been betrayed think they have found their saviour in Trump. He has harnessed their anger and promises simple solutions and retribution on those they think  have stolen their jobs -- like immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants. What Trump represents is a home grown fascism -- something the world has seen before:

The disgust directed at an ineffectual liberalism—as was true in late imperial Russia and the latter days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Weimar Republic and the former Yugoslavia—has given rise to a rejection of liberalism.

And, Hedges predicts, Trump's brand of fascism will grow unless those who have been excluded are brought to the table:

This American fascism will expand unless there is a radical restructuring to reintegrate dispossessed Americans into the economy. The failure to reverse the corporate assault, the continued expansion of poverty and despair, will accelerate the country’s breakdown. It will ensure the emergence of demagogues who, channeling this rage, will stoke white vigilante violence and call for the state repression of all groups including Black Lives Matter, abortion providers, environmentalists and anti-capitalists that are blamed for the country’s decline. 

There are more demagogues waiting in the wings.