Time to take
stock once again of where we stand under this despotic fascist president,
Donald J. Trump. We have addressed this
status several times in the past few years and have watched the progress of
this president on 14 points that seem to characterize fascist regimes across
many countries and cultures. (See my three
Blogs of 11/2015 on “Send in the Storm Troopers”). I referred to his fascist-type ideology and
behaviors before he was even nominated by his Party, and 3.5 years of his term
in office have vividly shown how much he mirrors fascist leaders.
To review
briefly, those characteristics consist of:
1. Incessant
propaganda – Republican radicals are particularly adept at this with unified themes
and memes right down to the synchronized wording used by local
operatives. Right now, the biggest Big Lies being told are that protestors
in the streets, progressives in government and organizations and Democrats in
Congress are all connected, and they are all supporting or are themselves anarchists,
socialists, or communists. His Big
Propaganda Lie lately is that these bad people are going to begin taking over
the suburbs of this country by building ‘public housing’ (dog whistle: for black and brown people) in your
neighborhood!
2. Keeping
detailed records – Trump’s suggestion for a database to track Muslim refugees, plus his
kidnapping of hospitalization data related to COVID19 and his attempt to
establish a nationwide alert system illustrate this tactic
3. Adapting
message to audience – Pandering to his ultra-conservative base is something Trump
does constantly, lately stressing Law and Order against protestors; continuing
to say that the USA is being taken to the cleaners on trade agreements,
alliances, and international organizations like the World Health Organization; plus,
politicizing of masks and social distancing and minimizing the COVID virus
itself
4. Castigating
the opposition (see #1 above), and just this past week, this president castigated the
Democrats in Congress for going home for a recess without passing the
inadequate Republican legislation related to the extension of unemployment
insurance (among other provisions). On the contrary, Republican leader of the
Senate, Mitch McConnell, has blocked consideration of Democrat legislation
approved by the House that would have addressed the problem quickly, but
Republicans, as usual, want to limit bail-out money for the “hungry hoard” and
instead enrich the wealthiest among us. There are many examples of this
from Republicans, but none as graphic and hate-filled as their acknowledged
excoriation of President Obama at every opportunity.
5. Projecting
an image of fervent patriotism and avid militarism. Donald Trump may be the epitome of
tough talk that spurs nationalistic fervor. His reaction to protests is cast as
patriotism rather than the racism it is; and, his outrageously bloated military
budgets (one of which just passed in the House) maintain his tough guy image as
has the sending of secret federal agents into Portland recently. He now threatens to send them to several
other cities that just happen to be run by democratic mayors! In addition, the brisk movement of used
military equipment to local police forces has also been done under the umbrella
of fervent patriotism and support for our local Law & Order providers.
6. Sending
in the Stormtroopers – demonstrations of strength and violence are intimidating to
most, and attractive to some which is why the Storm Troopers attended most Nazi
rallies in their brown-shirt uniforms. Not too long ago, Trump’s goons
worked over a Black protestor who tried to bring attention to what many
consider Trump’s racism.
An extension
of that brutishness has now occurred in Portland, OR that has no rival in
American history. Sending federal agents
not usually assigned to riot or crowd-control and untrained in such matters, to
grab, kidnap and drive ‘suspects’ to unknown locations for unknown reasons is
not democracy at work. It is one of the
essential acts of fascist dictators.
This
secretive police force -- with no identifying insignias or badges, no
announcement of their mission, operating outside their usual assignments of
protecting borders and federal property – are an existential threat to all of
us.
7. Infiltrating
local governments and offices – radical Republican takeover began in earnest with
their gains in municipal areas by running for school boards, councils, and
legislatures. Donald Trump has overseen one of the largest takeovers of federal
departments and offices and branches by loyal de-constructionists and loyal
white nationalists – fiercely loyal to the Trump agenda of democratic
destruction and fascist aggrandizement -- ever experienced in our history. He has captured the Republicans in the
Senate, the majority of state Governors and legislatures; stacked the federal
courts with loyalists dedicated to decisions promoting his agenda rather than
the tenets of the law and constitution; stacked
and (almost) captured the Supreme Court; is undoing public education so that
private education supported by federal funds can teach Alt Right principles through
re-written history.
He has
successfully placed people in departments like State, Treasury, Education, HHS,
and Homeland Security who have changed the Mission and Purposes of those
offices to comply with the Donald’s wishes and desires. Meanwhile, he has eliminated professional
staffers and leaders from the EPA, the Post Office, DOJ, the White House, and
many more in order for “deep state” opposition to his nihilism not to
flourish.
Re-election
would assure further destruction of that which remains. He has even attacked consumer groups such as
the Board of Consumer Protection originally initiated by Elizabeth Warren and
supported by Barack Obama. Trump
destroyed it. And that’s not all he has
set out to destroy under the heading of inspection and control. He has cut budgets of several agencies involved
in consumer protection, including his egregious moves in the recent past
against independent Inspector Generals, the FBI and the CIA.
8. Picking
on an enemy (or scapegoat) – Early on, Trump and fellow Republicans chose to make Syrian
refugees the target of their villainous Xenophobia, potentially denying
thousands of young families the ability to seek the safety and protection of
this land. Since then we have seen him turn against DACA (until the SCOTUS
jumped in); professional government employees who chose to criticize or act
against him; and more recently against peaceful protesters on the streets of
our cities and towns who are calling us all to abandon institutional racism
(especially in police agencies) and get on with the business of building one
just nation out of a pluralistic culture.
9. Joining
local organizations and movements and then promoting and proclaiming one’s own
philosophy and cause(s) at every opportunity, such as a school board meeting or
a coalition of churches.
10. Using
religion as a pawn—the Nazis warned the faithful to beware of fundamentally anti-church
socialists and communists who were atheists. Republicans constantly warn
their Evangelical friends to be wary of the anti-Christian and socialist
leanings of the national government. A while back, Republican
support for the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses
to gay couples on religious grounds was the epitome of this kind of
manipulation of religion. Now it is
centered around abortion and contraception, religious schools, anti-Islam, and
biblical interpretations of various social issues. The insidious imposition of religious beliefs
(father as unquestionable head of family; 10 Commandments and prayers on
display at public functions) goes on apace with little opposition. And who of us will ever forget the picture of Trump standing in front of historic St. John's Church holding a borrowed buble so awkwaedly? He used religion even as he abrogated the right of protestors by forcing them out of his path to that church!
11. Assisting
workers and others down on their luck – This tactic is well known to both
Radical Republicans and to Jihadists who have done similar “good works” in
their respective areas. The pandering of some Republicans to the pressing
needs of the working classes is another example of this. What they actually do
when in office is quite different, as shown by lack of healthcare support, no
infrastructure bill; tax cuts that won’t last and get eaten up by other
neglected areas like healthcare costs. The COVID fight was a moment to shine
and they blew it!
12. Emphasizing
youth membership -- giving them very visible things to accomplish – by keeping
its activities as much social and adventurous as political. Republicans
are paying special attention to religion-affiliated colleges where more
right-wing students can be recruited to join the Young Republicans.
13. Destroying
trust in government and its leaders – It is clear that radical Republican
debasing of the political process and of the leadership of that process
(including the President, the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate and
the former Speaker of the House) has produced a repugnance among the citizenry
for the whole process of governing. Here’s another twist on it: often
government is not the problem, but lack of good leaders is the problem.
COVID19 – here for
all to see is a major failure on Trump’s watch that has already taken over
154,000 lives and is expected, if changes aren’t made in time, to kill perhaps
hundreds of thousands more.
Trump is to blame for all of this because of
his inability to use government to accomplish large tasks (such as providing
guidelines, equipment, PPEs, testing, tracing, and treatment). His attempts to blame everybody else –
including China, W.H.O., Barack Obama, Governors and Mayors, Dr. Fauci and
other scientists, as well as some doctors – are nothing more than political
hype to save his job – a job he seems to want to keep because it affords him
leisure time to pursue golf (at which he is a known cheater), watch FOX News
endlessly (rarely coming to work in the Oval Office before late a.m.) from whom
he often takes advice or garners stories of conspiracy.
Here are a few of his failings in this pandemic that will end up killing a substantial number of his followers:
Here are a few of his failings in this pandemic that will end up killing a substantial number of his followers:
· not taking early warnings seriously
· failure to use a major tool at his
disposal (Defense Production Act) that could have enlisted and supported certain
companies in the making of masks, PPE, and ventilators. He chose to ignore it
· opening businesses too soon; and now hell-bent
on wanting to get children into overcrowded, poorly ventilated, highly
susceptible virus-containing locations, thus endangering the lives of children
and of adult supporters and non-supporters Insisting that the virus will
disappear on its own
· Suggesting treatments that have not
been thoroughly tested, others that would have been lethal; and a short-cut vaccine
that could have turned out to be toxic for some and lethal for others
· Putting a WH Task Force together to help guide
national response to the disease and then undermining their efforts by becoming
their focus, their spokesperson, their guru – all of which served to
emphasize lack of a national plan and to
increase the death toll
· shutting down the Task Force and
going off in other directions to de-empathize and distract from what the virus
and Trump’s incompetence are doing to our society
A corrupt
and dangerous man like Trump does things that no one else will do simply
because he needs to provide both distraction and misdirection, with him as the
star of both. And so, he sends secretive
agents to Portland to pit blame for all of his mistakes and miscalculations on
our young children and grandchildren, telling us that they are all anarchists
and revolutionaries out to destroy our neighborhoods and our way of life. I beg to differ. They are our children and grandchildren:
well-educated, purposeful in their dissent and positive about their reforms.
Most of all, they are dedicated to peaceful protest and non-violent
confrontation. They need to be taken
seriously and Donald Trump and his Trumpers are failing to do so because they
don’t know how and care little about why anybody should bother.
14. Using
and abusing the election process to win office(s) and to gain control.
Gerrymandered districts, Super-PACs, attacks on voter registration and the
ability to vote, plus attempts to manipulate the actual returns and voting
processes, are all ways that Republican radicals have used and abused the election
process.
There can be
little doubt left that D.J. Trump has set the November 2020 elections as his
priority choice for cheating to win. He
is preparing to do all I said he would (see recent Blog post on this subject).
His major
emphasis so far has been his obsession with undermining any attempt by states
to initiate voting by mail-in ballot (only five states already have it). He is
scared to death of a mail-in election because he knows that certain states with
this already have seen record vote totals, including Oregon and Colorado. He doesn’t want that everywhere because he
knows it spells defeat for him when voter turnout is expanded. Thus, he has taken measures to slow the Post
Office procedures and to change the timing on delivery – mainly by making sure
that the new Postmaster General is a Trump loyalist who will do his bidding and
join him in this effort to undermine postal services. All this a very familiar pattern of
de-construction of government that will serve his aims and desires, and his alone.
I take no
great pleasure in reporting that this administration, led by its authoritarian President,
has moved further away from democratic values, ideals, and practices than any
former administration. In my estimation
(confirmed in large part by Mary Trump’s incisive book about Donald and his
family), the current status of this regime and its “Fuhrer” should not surprise
us to any great extent, had we paid closer attention to the words and behaviors
of this man before he ever ran for President (see Addendum to today’s Blog –
and the two previous )
Our
reluctance (and outright inability) as a nation to call him out for his past
doings and threats; his many unjust business transactions, lawsuits and
failures; plus, his ability to manipulate issues, people and organizations to
promote himself and his family has brought us, arguably, to the most dangerous
moments in our history.
We are
standing on the brink of losing our unique experiment in a democratic Republic
that favored right over might, empathizing the inalienable rights of all as
equal, proclaiming that justice must be blind to the accoutrements of power and
wealth and treat everyone as equal before the law. It even declared that all persons should have
the equal opportunity before the law to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
The
dismantling of this ideal is apparently not yet perceived (or just plain
ignored) by a large portion of the people of this nation. There
is rampant in our society right now, such a lack of critical thinking and bold
action that around 33-40% of those eligible to vote still support the
de-construction of our central governing system because they agree with Trump
and his followers that “government is the problem” in spite of the fact that
our central government oversees and operates hundreds of successful programs
and services benefitting millions of
people every single day.
Despite the
daily demonstration that a strong national government with a strong national
plan of attack is exactly what has been lacking under this President in
relation to the attack of the COVID19 virus.
Not using government resources and power to fight a pandemic has left us
in the precarious and humiliating position of being the nation with the worst
record of fighting back against this virulent enemy.
Of course,
Trump believes government is the problem because it is filled with Democrats
who, he claims, are all Trump-haters who want to block everything that he needs
to do to “make America Great Again.” Strange,
isn’t it, that his followers believe such nonsense when Trump and his minions
have spawned those measures that tend to harm many in his base right along with
the non-Trumpers he says he will target for retribution.
It is this
false narrative that continues in the minds of his uncritical followers who
think he is making government work better, for their benefit. That, as he has
signaled in many ways, is not on his agenda.
He looks out for himself and his business enterprises, plus, to the
extent it enhances his power over others, he works for the benefit of white
millionaires and billionaires who, like him, belong to a wealthy class intent on
government revolving around them and their needs and projects, not around the
“unwashed herd” who they basically despise.
Trump
has failed us all. Trump has helped kill over 154,000
of us. Trump has decimated our economy
by his lack of action and equally as much by his unplanned too-early-opening of
businesses.
Now he
wants to slaughter our children and grandchildren (and their families) by
getting them back to schools without adequate preparation and any way to
prevent a rise in the number who will be infected with this virus. He is willing to send our children into
harm’s way I(the valley of death) in order to prove his
assertions that he is right, that he knows more than his scientists, and that this virus will just disappear.
HE IS WRONG! HE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT IT! OUR CHILDREN ARE IN DANGER!
RESIST THIS FASCIST LEADER – DON’T SEND YOUR KIDS TO SCHOOL
UNLESS LIFE-SAVING PLANS ARE IN PLACE IN YOUR DISTRICT.
VOTE HIM OUT OF OFFICE BEFORE YOU
LOSE THE RIGHT TO VOTE!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ADDENDUM:
Five More Things About Trump to Which
We Should Have Paid More Attention
Instances of
bigotry involving Donald Trump span more than four decades. The Atlantic interviewed
a range of people with knowledge of several of those episodes. Their recollections
have been edited for concision and clarity and five are as follows.
I. “You
Don’t Want to Live With Them Either”
The
Justice Department’s 1973 lawsuit against Trump Management Company focused on
39 properties in New York City. The government alleged that employees were
directed to tell African American lease applicants that there were no open
apartments. Company policy, according to an employee quoted in court documents,
was to rent only to “Jews and executives.” Ultimately, they settled—they signed a consent decree. They had to post
all their apartments with the Urban League, advertise in the Amsterdam
News, many other things. It was pretty strong.
Under the
terms of the settlement, reached in 1975, the Trumps did not admit to any wrongdoing.
But soon, according to the government, they were back at it. In 1978, the
Justice Department alleged that Trump Management was in breach of the
agreement. The new case dragged on until 1982, when the original consent decree
expired and the case was closed.
II.
“Bring Back the Death Penalty”
The
so-called Central Park Five were a group of black and Latino teens who were
accused—wrongly—of raping a white woman in Central Park on April 19, 1989.
Donald Trump took out full-page ads in all four major New York newspapers to
argue that perpetrators of crimes such as this one “should be forced to suffer”
and “be executed.” In two trials, in August and December 1990, the youths were
convicted of violent offenses including assault, robbery, rape, sodomy, and
attempted murder; their sentences ranged from five to 15 years in prison. In
2002, after the discovery of exonerating DNA evidence and the confession by
another individual to the crime, the convictions of the Central Park Five were
vacated. The men were awarded a settlement of $41 million for false arrest,
malicious prosecution, and a racially motivated conspiracy to deprive them of
their rights. Trump took to the pages of the New York Daily News, calling the
settlement “a disgrace.” During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump would
again insist on the guilt of the Central Park Five.
III.
“They Don’t Look Like Indians to Me”
In the
early 1990s, Trump attempted to block the building of new casinos in
Connecticut and New York that could cut into his casino operations in Atlantic
City. (All of Trump’s casinos eventually went into bankruptcy.) In October
1993, Trump appeared before the House Subcommittee on Native American Affairs
of the Committee on Natural Resources. The subcommittee was chaired by Bill
Richardson, later New Mexico’s governor. Trump was there to support an effort
to modify legislation that had given Native American tribes the right to own
and operate casinos.
Trump
began by noting that he had prepared a “politically correct” statement for the
committee, but almost immediately went off script. The hearing became loud and
acrimonious.
BILL
RICHARDSON: He
(Trump) said he didn’t think that Native Americans deserved the legislation,
because there was a lot of corruption around Native American casinos. I
remember asking him after the hearing, “Well, what’s the evidence?” He said,
“The FBI has it.” I said, “You’re making the accusation; why don’t you bring
the evidence?” He said, “No, you should ask the FBI.” I said, “You’re making
the charge of corruption and you’re not backing it up—that is unacceptable.”
IV. “He
Doesn’t Have a Birth Certificate”
“Our
current president came out of nowhere, came out of nowhere … The people who
went to school with him—they never saw him; they don’t know who he is.” That
statement, made at the February 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference,
marked the launch of Donald Trump’s public efforts to sow doubt about whether
President Barack Obama had been born in the United States. “Birtherism” had
been festering for several years before Trump embraced it—supplanting other
proponents and becoming its most prominent advocate. In March, on ‘The View’, Trump called on Obama
to show his birth certificate. In April, he said that he had dispatched a team
of investigators to Hawaii to search for Obama’s birth records.
For
Trump, the run-up to birtherism had been a controversy that flared when a
Manhattan developer proposed building an Islamic cultural center on a site in
Lower Manhattan—the so-called Ground Zero mosque. Anti-Muslim sentiment animated Trump’s
birtherism campaign. He said of Obama on The Laura Ingraham Show in
March 2011: “He doesn’t have a birth certificate, or if he does, there’s
something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me—and
I have no idea whether this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be—that
where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim’.”
V. “On Many Sides”
Roughly
six months into Trump’s presidency, on the night of Friday, August 11, 2017, hundreds
of neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched onto the University of Virginia’s
campus in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and
soil,” a Nazi slogan. The “Unite the Right” rally was protesting the proposed
removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Confrontations arose
between members of the so-called alt-right and groups of counter-protesters….” The Alt Right protests became aggressive and dangerous
resulting in multiple fights and injuries. A vehicle plowed into multiple
pedestrians,
resulting in one death.”
On August 12,
President Trump said he condemned hatred and bigotry on "many sides"
in Charlottesville, Virginia, in remarks from New Jersey, his first since white
nationalist group protests turned violent and resulted in that one death and 34
others injured…
"We're
closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville,
Virginia," Mr. Trump said. "We condemn in the strongest possible
terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides."(emphasis
added)
In his
remarks, the president failed to mention the displays of white nationalism or
Nazi symbols present in Charlottesville Saturday. The president ignored a reporter's question
asking what he had to say to white nationalists who say they support him and
commit acts of violence.
Richard
Spencer was one of the key figures behind the “Unite the Right” rally, who confirmed
Trump’s seminal role:
“There is no
question that Charlottesville wouldn’t have occurred without Trump. It really
was because of his campaign and this new potential for a nationalist candidate
who was resonating with the public in a very intense way. The alt-right found
something in Trump. He changed the paradigm and made this kind of public
presence of the alt-right possible.”
