Worldviews

Andrew Sullivan has a different “take” on the reason for Trump’s slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin.

It’s a fascinating read, if ultimately unpersuasive–as others have noted, at the end of the day, the fact that the two men share a distasteful and dangerous worldview is insufficient to explain Trump’s puppy-dog fidelity–but it is wickedly perceptive as far as it goes.

Sullivan’s opening presents his thesis:

It is possible, is it not, that Donald Trump simply believes what he says.

I realize, of course, that this is technically impossible from moment to moment. But bear with me. The slackened jaws, widened eyes, and general shock that greeted his chuffed endorsement of the Kremlin over Washington this past week were understandable but misplaced. Everything Trump did in Europe — every horrifying, sick-making, embarrassing expostulation — is, in some way, consistent, and predictable, when you consider how he sees the world. It’s not a plan or a strategy as such. Trump is bereft of the attention span to sustain any of those. It is rather the reflection of a set of core beliefs and instincts that have governed him for much of his life. The lies come and go. But his deeper convictions really are in plain sight.

Those “deeper convictions” are the ones that drive rational people crazy. As Sullivan says, they are pretty much the same as the convictions (“impulses” might be a more accurate term) of the strongmen and thugs with whom he has always surrounded himself.

Accordingly,

The post-1945 attempt to organize the world around collective security, free trade, open societies, non-zero-sum diplomacy, and multicultural democracies is therefore close to unintelligible to him. Why on earth, in his mind, would a victorious power after a world war be … generous to its defeated foes?

This rings true. As we’ve seen with his phony Foundation, “generosity” is the last word one would apply to Trump.

Sullivan’s entire description of Trump is devastating because it is so consistent with what we have seen every day from the embarrassing buffoon who has soiled the Oval Office for the past 18 plus months. After describing the post-WWII world that America was instrumental in building, Sullivan writes

That kind of complex, interdependent world requires virtues he doesn’t have and skills he doesn’t possess. He wants a world he intuitively understands: of individual nations, in which the most powerful are free to bully the others. He wants an end to transnational migration, especially from south to north. It unnerves him. He believes that warfare should be engaged not to defend the collective peace as a last resort but to plunder and occupy and threaten. He sees no moral difference between free and authoritarian societies, just a difference of “strength,” in which free societies, in his mind, are the weaker ones. He sees nations as ethno-states, exercising hard power, rather than liberal societies, governed by international codes of conduct. He believes in diplomacy as the meeting of strongmen in secret, doing deals, in alpha displays of strength — not endless bullshit sessions at multinational summits. He’s the kind of person who thinks that the mafia boss at the back table is the coolest guy in the room.

This is why he has such a soft spot for Russia. Its kleptocratic elites see the world in just the same way.

Why look for collusion when this agreement of worldviews explains so much? Yes, Sullivan says, it’s perfectly possible that Trump knowingly accepted Russian help. It’s perfectly possible that he is still encouraging Russia to help him again.

But that’s simply the kind of unethical thing Trump has done for years, without batting an eyelid. He sees no more conflict here than he did in seeking Russian funding and German loans for his businesses.

Sullivan concludes that Trump simply wants an alliance to advance his and Putin’s amoral and cynical vision of world politics.

The descriptions of Trump and Putin that emerge from this essay are devastatingly negative–and yet, I think Sullivan ends up giving Trump too much credit. Much like other critics who ascribe sinister and devious strategies to our pathetic President, he attributes “vision” to a man I see as utterly incapable of formulating a vision– even a dark and self-serving one. Urges, yes. Vision? Not so much.

Sullivan does get one description absolutely right: that of today’s GOP.

And we know now that the whole Kabuki drama in which we keep asking when the GOP will resist this, or stop it, or come to its senses, is simply a category error. This is what the GOP now is. It’s an authoritarian, nationalist leadership cult, hostile to the global order. Republican voters increasingly like Putin, and 71 percent of Republicans backTrump’s handling of Russia in the Reuters/Ipsos poll. A whole third of Republicans do not believe the Kremlin attacked our democracy in 2016, despite every single intelligence agency and the Republicans in the House saying so. Seventy-nine percent of Republicans in a SurveyMonkey poll actually approved of Trump’s performance in the Helsinki press conference.

This is not treason as such. It is not an attack on America, but on a version of America, the liberal democratic one, supported by one of the great parties in America. It is an attack on those institutions that Trump believes hurt America — like NATO and NAFTA and the E.U. It is a championing of an illiberal America, and a partnering with autocrats in a replay of old-school Great Power zero-sum politics, in which the strong pummel and exploit the weak.

And it is all infinitely depressing.

41 Comments

  1. I am hoping that all Americans weather Democrat or Republican find a distaste for a dictator who is willing to take over nearly half of a country’s land without even firing a shot. The statement keep your friends close but your enemies closer hopefully will dispell the notion that any elected official would want to push toward cutting meetings from Putin but at the same make it clear mistakes have been made in the near past and need to be rendered in regards to Russia.
    This President , Donald Trump, continues to love attention and needs to find an ability to speak one message without Sec of State Pompeo having to try to set things straight, if that’s at all possible as he made efforts to before the congressional oversight committee.
    Many inpolitics see a blue wave coming in the fall because of the unbelievably unsmooth nature of this Republican President. Are his actions going to continue to CSU’s him to lose more ground for his party before the elections

  2. “He believes that warfare should be engaged not to defend the collective peace as a last resort but to plunder and occupy and threaten.”

    This ideology was Russia’s “worldview” before, during and after WWII while their claim as “ally” was in name only. Their true goals were quickly made evident after the fact; the U.S. appeared to take them at face value while they were of use to the allies in ending the war. The Berlin Wall could be the source of Trump’s tunnel vision regarding his own Mexican Wall at any cost…to the United States.

    He has claimed kinship to (and being more popular in the polls) than President Abraham Lincoln whose detractors were against his immediate pardon of all Confederates and welcomed them back into the Union. Russia continues through Putin’s leadership to “plunder and occupy and threaten” European countries; aided and abetted by Trump who has eased, ignored or ended our sanctions against Russia to gain favor with his idol, Vladimar Putin. He cannot see this country is the end goal of Putin; NOT the slavish adoration of Trump.

    “A whole third of Republicans do not believe the Kremlin attacked our democracy in 2016, despite every single intelligence agency and the Republicans in the House saying so.”

    As the old saying goes, do we believe Trump or our lying eyes? The November elections will answer that question and others regarding our belief in and support of the Constitution and the United States of America. As a nation, we outnumber those fully in the Trump camp but will we act on our awareness of the fact that they support not only Putin and Russian “values” but their foundation is currently built on neo-Nazi and White Nationalism. A line from the bio-movie “Marshall” remains true today, “America is still a large plantation.”

    “And it is all infinitely depressing.” It has gone beyond “depressing” at this time and has become life-threatening thanks to the GOP Congressional support of both Trump and Putin over our American democracy and moral value system. The worldview of America has lost almost all support of our once strong allies; along with the rebuilding of America as the Constitution framed it, we must work to rebuild the trust of the world that has been lost over the past 18 months…and is sinking fast.

  3. Sheila,

    “This is not treason as such. It is not an attack on America, but on a version of America, the liberal democratic one, supported by one of the great parties in America.”

    “And it is all infinitely depressing.”

    That GREAT PARTY you’re supporting is flawed. And so much so, that is IMPOTENT in the face of the AUTHORITARIAN MOVEMENT that now exists in the name of the Republican Party, led by the likes of a SOCIOPATH, by the name of Donald Trump.

    The Democratic Party lacks CIVIC COURAGE. That makes it at least 50% of the problem. We all need to face-up to this MANAGEABLE PROBLEM in the next 13 weeks as was pointed out, yesterday, by one of our more IMPOLITE commentators.

  4. The occupant in The White House, officially referred to as our President, sees a “good deal” as only one in which there is a winner and a loser. The consistent diagnosis of Trump by a few hundred clinical psychologists and psychiatrists that he chronically demonstrates narcissistic psycho-social arrested behavior disorders renders the man unaware during his tirades on open trade treaties have already caused damage to the economy of American famers who rely on foreign trade of their harvest to make the margin of return. Trump seeks only a win even when losses accrue to his own base of support. For the arrogant commercial developer, collateral socio-economic damage is ignored until it hits his margin. If he has power, he covers it with chump change paid for by others. That for him is a good deal. His win is sustained as layers of additional loses accrue to others. This makes him the most dangerous Commander-in-Chief ever to hold office in The White House. Support and vote Blue and/or progressive moderate Red.

  5. Sorry for the typo: I left out “it” between that and is in my first sentence.

    We better ALL wake-up before it’s too late.

    JoAnn,

    “As a nation, we outnumber those fully in the Trump camp but will we act on our awareness of the fact that they support not only Putin and Russian “values” but their foundation is currently built on neo-Nazi and White Nationalism.”

    How can you act without EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP? There is ABSOLUTELY none at the moment. We must face-up to it.

  6. The following is the final paragraph in my essay at http://www.Democracide.info, written twenty-five years ago. It’s a quote from Hermann Rauschning:

    “History shows that freedom can be preserved in the face of a continuing process only up to a certain point. Beyond that point one inevitably becomes the slave of events. The logic of the process takes charge, upsetting all independent plans and calculations.”

    Have we reached that point? If we haven’t, we are awfully close to it.

  7. Please, let’s not confuse politics with reality. Anybody with an amateur background in psychology can see Putin is manipulating Trump. Don’t make a mistake in thinking that they’re equals.

    Did Putin manipulate the dummies who engineered Brexit?

    He probably didn’t have to because those far right loonies are fighting liberalism and science. They consider the EU as a liberal concoction hell-bent on globalism.

    The problem is globalism is our reality…not something we should be fighting. This is only resistance to change.

    Did Putin’s manipulation of Trump lead to Donnie’s attack against NATO?

    Doubtful, since NATO is a US concocted farce and Don is from the worldview that liberalism has caused all the world’s problems.

    And NATO has caused all of Russia’s problems but who lied about expanding east of the Berlin wall once it came down?

    Also, after reading the comments yesterday, those still parroting MSNBC and the American media need to stop about Ukraine. I repeat the only role of the American press is to ‘manufacture the consent’ of American policy.

    I’ll get back to Ukraine, but when I posted the article about diabetes being linked to air pollution on Facebook, interesting comments from those in Southern Indiana about IDEM. Inept. Pro-polluters. Consistently sides with industry. Refuses to establish monitoring equipment to measure air quality.

    Going back to Ukraine, the USA or the force behind NATO and the G-7, provided the financing for the Nazi coup (see John McCain) to defeat the pro-Russian el Presidente. Ukraine is 33% Russian, and Crimea is more like 100%.

    Russia didn’t invade Ukraine and any media outlet who states that as fact is LYING. Crimea invited Russia back into their fold because they didn’t trust the government being formed by the USA and NATO – for a good reason.

    Now, we’re talking about worldviews. Albert Einstein called capitalism and communism evil because of what it does to the human spirit. One is not good, and the other is bad…they are both terrible.

    But, let’s not ignore the reality of world terrorism. The USA is atop the leaderboard. We spend more than on our military than our next ten competitors.

    As Americans, we need to ask ourselves, ‘Why?”

    If other countries really and truly believe that capitalism and a representative republic are superior to all other forms of government, wouldn’t they invite us to set this up in their country?

    You don’t need a military to spread your good news. World leaders want the American military out of the continents (see Asia right now).

    Folks who believe they’ve found the absolute right path for themselves, tend to adopt a worldview of righteous indignation or exceptionalism which leads to empire building.

    If our country was truly exceptional, why do we need such a large military, security and surveillance apparatus?

    If we were exceptional, the people would be happy, so there would be no reason to spy on them.

    Yet…

    Until Americans ditch the propaganda pitched by our useless media, we’ll never adopt a proper worldview and will continue to fall under manipulation efforts.

  8. so much for depression! Wake up! Look if you haven’t figured it out by now: you have to speak in no uncertain terms! – into the phone when you call your or a member of the Congress or Senates office – yes, call them – no email, no letter, call them. Let them know what you think. This is not a time to use words like, please, and maybe! No, it is time to say ‘As a voting citizen I want my member – Senator to…!’ call them. The people answering will get the idea if you call enough times you will find your email filled with letters from your reps – but what is more is if the public makes enough noise – NOT THE NEWS MEDIA – the PUBLIC! – we might actually get something done to stop this rampaging hollyweird unreality show. If we don’t we only have ourselves to blame. And believe me — I call regularly and often!!! YOU should too!

  9. I submit any serious and responsible survey of world history makes it impossible to have anything but an “amoral and cynical vision of world politics.”

    But Trump’s closest historic parallel is not Putin but the flamboyant and erratic Kaiser Wilhelm II who plunged the world into the abyss dubbed the Great War. He owned more than 300 military uniforms and changed them dozens of times of day. Trumps tweets and public pronouncements are the modern day equivalent of Wilhelm’s uniforms. Trump’s world view is not central to the problem but rather his immaturity and mental instability, like Wilhelm’s. Into the abyss!

    (Source on Wilhelm: G.J. Meyer in A World Undone)

  10. Marv Kramer,

    “The Democratic Party lacks CIVIC COURAGE”

    Please moderate your condemnation of the Democrat Party until after the November election. Or better still, don’t moderate but support enthusiastically the up-and-coming young men and women who will comprise and multiply the successful Blue Wave in November, now not far off.
    It’s true there is not yet a Twitter Storm to drown out Trump’s vulgar tweets but there is power in rhetoric like yours that can, for the next 13 weeks, castrate Trump’s miserably fictitious strength along with his cloacal motor-mouth.
    Marv, we want to read your remarks enrolling Democrat Party members to impel our horde to victory.
    You know, like the rest of us, that we ought not condemn the good in search of the better and you know that the GOP is not an option.
    Please Marv, you know the drill, “Accentuate the Positive”♪♫.

  11. Most often now I think of Trump and Putin as two crime family bosses having a kind of war over territory. Trump wants all the resorts and hotels and Putin wants access to the money laundering and control of energy. Trump’s crime “family” is literally his family… think the Corleones from The Godfather. Putin has built his family out of the Russian mafia and former KBG pals.

    To both men government has been just another obstacle to their control over their territories. They made that problem disappear by taking over their governments. They are rivals but not enemies. They each need to stop the other from getting into their territory, but each sees that he can USE the other to further his own goals. A little blackmail over PP tapes and dirty business deals does the trick for Putin. Trump wants to be seen as the “big shot” playing with the biggest dirty player in the world at last.

    Putin and Trump? Gangsters is all. Pure and simple.

  12. Sullivan could have summed it all up by saying that Trump believes that he is a Mafia Don, and that what he says goes, and if someone disagrees, that person is to be “taken care” of.

  13. Look at 45’s body language as he came to the stage with his buddy Vlad. That seems to indicate he was a whipped puppy. It is true that he sees only winners and losers, but he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to think beyond that.

  14. “The Democratic Party lacks CIVIC COURAGE”

    Marv; it is our leadership and some elected officials who lack civic courage, those of us on the blog prove day after day that we are aware of this and are trying to regain a hold on this government through our personal actions in many forms. We cannot strengthen the weaklings if they are not elected. We seem to be too many Indians with no Chief while the Republicans have too many Chiefs but no one is actually in control of the party…there appears to be no Republican party as it was once known.

    “Please moderate your condemnation of the Democrat Party until after the November election. Or better still, don’t moderate but support enthusiastically the up-and-coming young men and women who will comprise and multiply the successful Blue Wave in November, now not far off.”

    OMG; Thank you, thank you, thank you. Personally I am tired of being viewed among those who are accused of doing nothing; my days and nights are filled with keeping abreast of what is happening – and not happening – signing petitions and surveys, donating money I can not afford to donate, speaking out on this blog, on Facebook, responding to political newsletters and begging those who are not registered or who do not vote to please do so. If for no other reason than self-preservation they need to get into the action.

  15. OMG,

    “Please moderate your condemnation of the Democrat Party until after the November election.”

    “it’s true there is not yet a Twitter Storm to drown out Trump’s vulgar tweets but there is power in rhetoric like yours that can, for the next 13 weeks, castrate Trump’s miserably fictitious strength along with his cloacal motor-mouth.”

    I understand your concerns. They’re well taken. Your vision at 91, is still very sharp. I agree, my criticism of the Democratic Party is too harsh for outside consumption. I’ve, temporarily, left the blog a few times before; it’s now time for me to take the LEAD outside this fantastic group with PEACEnet.world.

    I’ve needed the exceptional mind power of this blog to perfect the mental, as well as, the organizational calibration needed to reach my PRIME targets: The trio of TRUMP, PENCE, & BANNON.

    Many, many, thanks to all. I’ll still be around.

  16. Todd,
    ” I repeat the only role of the American press is to ‘manufacture the consent’ of American policy.”

    This sentence and your other attacks on the media as the source of the world’s problems is utter nonsense. If it weren’t for the media, we wouldn’t know anything at all and you’d be silent.

    I read a recent tweet from … a baseball player that better explains things than your continuous, baseless attacks against those intrepid people trying to keep boobs like you and me somewhat informed.

    He said something like: “All the world’s problems would be solved if each of us put as much effort into solving them as Wal-Mart and Target do in changing their seasonal decorations.”

  17. JoAnn,

    “The Democratic Party lacks CIVIC COURAGE”

    “Marv; it is our LEADERSHIP and some elected officials who lack civic courage, those of us on the blog prove day after day that we are aware of this and are trying to regain a hold on this government through our personal actions in many forms.”

    I agree. The following is from “Positioning: How to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace” by Al Ries and Jack Trout (McGraw-Hill, New York, 2001):

    “In other words, to move a NEW IDEA or product into the mind, you must first move an old one out.

    “The world is round,” said Christopher Columbus. “No, it’s not,” said the public, “it’s flat.”

    To convince the public otherwise, fifteenth century scientists first had to prove that the world wasn’t flat. One of their most convincing arguments was the fact that sailors at sea were first able to observe the tops of the masts of an approaching ship, then the sails, then the hull. If the world were flat they would see the whole ship at once.

    All the mathematical arguments in the world weren’t as effective as a simple observation the public could verify themselves.

    Once an idea is overturned, selling the new idea is often ludicrously simple. As a matter of fact, people will often search for a new idea to fill the void.

    Never be afraid to conflict either. The crux of a REPOSITIONING PROGRAM is undercutting an existing concept, product, or PERSON.” p. 62

    Sometimes, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

    JoAnn, I’d like to paraphrase your opening statement……. “It’s the leadership, stupid.”

  18. I agree Mr. Sullivan gives Trump too much credit for having convictions and a philosophy, but he is dead right about his personal fascination with Putin. I’ll argue that fascination is based on two things about Trump: the fact that he seems to prefer a world he can deal with one individual person at a time (or via television or a rally stage, which is different but he has great skills) and because Putin is the idol of Trump’s probably lifelong belief that the world is a hard place and only the strong are worthy of admiration. That belief may or may not actually qualify as a worldview, but it certainly has gotten neatly swept along with the worldview that Putin and the rest of our capitalistic and kleptocratic strongmen are working from. But that doesn’t matter because Trump doesn’t care about such details. He’s in it for the results, and he’s getting them, by which I refer to the weird personal ones he really cares about like talking to Vlad by himself. I remind myself that the most powerful marketing speaks to what we want to become, not what we are or need today, and Putin’s existence is a potent, constant beam of marketing calling to whatever depths there are of Trump’s being day in and day out. That’s who he wants to be. That’s success. That, heaven forbid, is doing it right. His behavior is no longer surprising in the slightest, and it needs no deeper or wider explanation. It is, of course, still pathetic and despicable and doing great harm to the United States, our allies, democracy, we the people, and all hopes for peace and security and a healthy biosphere in the future.

  19. “All the world’s problems would be solved if each of us put as much effort into solving them as Wal-Mart and Target do in changing their seasonal decorations.”

    The quote that Vernon Turner used at the end of his last post sums everything up extremely well. We have grown up in an era where there have been certain consistencies that we have always taken for granted, almost to the level of our expectation that the sun will rise each morning and set each evening, not really giving much thought to the underlying tenuousness of what we see as our collective reality. We have not been engaged or involved in a really meaningful way in regard to where our country and the world are going in any real meaningful way other than to he briefly shocked by what we hear or see in the news and then we go back to our slumber of each and every day.

    I really hate saying this, or actually keying this, but we may in fact deserve what has befallen us, that we deserve having this utter buffoon in the White House and that we deserve the collapse of the social fabric in this country and the political cohesion that is supposed to go with it. Again, I really don’t like keying this, largely because I am it heart an optimist, but it seems as if we are hell bent on going quietly into that night because we can’t bring ourselves to confront what is happening and cannot seem to be what the wonderful poem, Invictus, encourages us all to do – be the masters of our own destiny. We seem to have ceded that to others if that we should never have any faith or confidence in. We take no responsibility.
    Being able to be the masters of our own fate may not really be in us anymore and all those generations that have gotten us to this point are fortunately not here to see just how completely we have squandered their very hard work. After a decade after decade of telling ourselves that we were a force for good in the world we’ve lost our way. That phrase, more and more, is beginning to ring hollow and shopworn as we retreat from our values and turn away from our responsibilities to ourselves, each other as Americans, and to all the other peoples of the world that have seen us as that beacon of hope that we portrayed ourselves to be. Perhaps, just perhaps, the dream that was fostered 242 years ago has run its course and we are incapable of either continuing it or reigniting it as we clearly need to do.

    While I truly hope that that is not the case and that we will shake off this slumber that we have been in and wake up and realize that we need to make some dramatic changes in what is going on right now and do so as soon as possible to stave off total disaster we are all too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to come to any sort of consensus that will work. We are sitting back, for the most part, as mere spectators too the possible collapse of western civilization that we have been an anchor for since the end of the Second World War. Unfortunately, we are very likely the only ones that can stave off this disaster and it’s going to take a lot more effort than what Mr. Turner’s last sentence portrayed. The big question is whether we have the strength as a people to realize that and act upon it accordingly or we turn away and continue to think that someone else can do it for us or that it will just continue on its own like some sort of perpetual motion machine and nothing will change.

    You don’t have to believe me but if we do nothing we are very likely going to pay a fearful prize for our inaction just as we are seeing today but far, far worse.

  20. Analyzing Trump, or Trump/Putin is dandy. Properly labeling them is necessary. That label is DANGEROUS. We cannot remove Putin directly but we can do so to Trump and well we must come the elections in 2018/2020. Putin must be removed through strengthening NATO, imposition of even tougher sanctions and refusal to compromise. It is necessary to put ALL of our efforts into the coming elections. Anything else is suicide. Sadly, I wrote a similar comment before the 2016 elections. I was right then, as I now hope is obvious, and I am right now.

  21. Trump’s egocentric pathology is behind his “actions”. He entire behavior profile is getting reactions so he can retain the spotlight. All the words being written about this or that consequence from Trump’s actions/tweets do not interest him at all. Those that disagree become the enemy. The press and the media that expose his madness for the world become the enemy of the people. And some blame the media for being corporate whores….

    The simple facts include the utter madness and insanity of Donald Trump. His personality defects do nothing more than expose the symptoms of that pathology. If his sycophant cabinet had any patriotic or rational thoughts, or even a smidgen of courage, they would invoke the 25th Amendment immediately and get Trump into a straight jacket right away. But neither the cabinet nor the Congress has ANY courage to do ANYTHING that would resemble patriotic thought.

    These are, ultimately, the “gifts” of “Citizens United v. FEC”, the gift from the Bush years that will keep on giving as the smell of bananas rises from our government to nauseate the world. Well done, Republicans and the dumb-assed voters who pick corruption over honesty and greed over justice. Corruption is now our national disease, and Donald Trump is merely the stinkiest symptom of it. He is the rotten banana.

  22. President Agent Orange is totally egocentric. Agent Orange demands absolute loyalty, but he is fully prepared to jettison anyone that has outlived their usefulness to him. He is a showboat who must have all the attention. Agent Orange does not worry his mind about the morality of his actions, or even his lies as long as he has attention. The anger of Agent Orange is directed at those he cannot control the narrative with.

    “The post-1945 attempt to organize the world around collective security, free trade, open societies, non-zero-sum diplomacy, and multicultural democracies is therefore close to unintelligible to him. ”

    This statement relies on the underlying premise (actually a myth) that the USA is this altruistic, benevolent, avuncular giant spreading freedom and goodwill throughout the world.

    Nothing could be further from the truth. The USA has counted among it’s allies some of the most brutal repressive regimes on the planet. Among these dictatorships were:
    The Shah of Iran, Somoza, Marcos, Suharto, the Gulf Oil States, etc. These allies all pre-dated Agent Orange.

    Todd is right when he says, “I repeat the only role of the American press is to ‘manufacture the consent’ of American policy.”

    When is the last time the American Press-McMega-Media challenged or critiqued our world wide military imperialism??? When is the last time the American Press-McMega-Media called our Campaign Finance System what it is -Legalized Bribery?? When is the last time the American Press-McMega-Media allowed Universal Health Care or Single Payer to be discussed in depth??

    Our American Press-McMega-Media can get rabid and frothing at the lips about Russian Aggression, while failing to mention the USA has invaded or sent more military expeditions around the globe since 1945 than any other country on earth.

  23. Hillary it is judged to have made a political error when she called Agent Orange and his base “deplorable”. Maybe and maybe not but if it were an error it was only in speaking it.

    I spend way more time than I should defending liberal democracy and the Constitution that is the contract we imply consent to be governed by it to those who have been told by their entertainment media that they should withhold that consent in favor of numerous cockamamie ill considered alternatives that they consistent and ignorantly label as “Constitutional”.

    I’m sorry but Hillary’s word is inaccurate because it falls short, not goes too far.

    Entertainment is designed to make fantasy seem real and it has been effective at doing that from screens that now consume our world. In fact maybe the next IPhone will be surgically implanted in eyeballs so people can never not be entertained. We think opioid addiction is bad but it’s very rare compared to entertainment addiction which has created a minority large enough to appear with help to be sufficient to elect a President.

    There is precisely as much evidence of civic and scientific ignorance in our world as there are screens. To say that it’s intolerable is understatement. Ignorance is a choice but not an accomplishment. It defines those who settle for it. It makes them predators once it’s given legitimacy by entertainers who share it.

    Is it possible to stem that tide in time? We’ll know Nov 6.

  24. From an article in The Intercept:
    “Did You Hear Me Beat Up on Republicans Today?” — A Progressive Democrat Running for Arizona Governor Promises to Revolutionize Education.

    David Garcia stepped off his campaign’s yellow school bus to meet Democratic voters in Payson, AZ.

    “Did you hear me beat up on Republicans today?” Garcia asked. “No,” the crowd responded. “Did you hear me talk about us and them?” he followed. “No,” the crowd assured.

    “You are not going to hear that from me, and let me tell you why,” he continued. “When you walk away from here, I want you to walk away with a set of values. A value about the importance of immigration, a value about public education — because I don’t care what party you’re in. If you share those values, I want you to be welcome to mark my name on that ballot, because when we do this approach — this ‘us and them’ approach — we turn people off.”

    Garcia’s platform includes the stable of progressive policies, like “Medicare for All” and free college, that insurgent candidates are running on across the country. Arizona’s political landscape is typically considered too far right to ever embrace any of those stances; pundits argue that what wins in California or New York doesn’t stand a chance in a state like Arizona.
    https://theintercept.com/2018/07/29/david-garcia-governor-race-arizona/
    ***************************************************************************

    No name calling, i.e., deplorables, or triangulation of us vs them. Then we have the totally bogus pundits telling us what will win in certain states, but not in others as if human needs are different depending on where you live.

  25. Sullivan’s alternative theory of why Trump does what he does and does not do what he should do is one of many roaming academia these days, and while interesting is subject to intellectual attack from many angles. I have a theory that, succinctly stated, is this: That Trump is simply a sick man, childish, organically unable to distinguish between right and wrong as our folkways and mores have defined right and wrong and anxious to be in the headlines every day – but such a theory is admittedly subject to intellectual attack as well – so perhaps it’s time to stop talking about Trump and feeding his daily narcissistic impulses and concentrate instead on doing something about it by using our energy to elect a Democratic Congress and impeaching this mentally ill piece of rancid protoplasm and thereafter undoing the enormous damage he has done while stopping any new damage he proposes in its tracks. Theories may help us get a seat at the table but only votes are counted.

  26. Pete,

    “I spend way more time than I should defending liberal democracy and the Constitution that is the contract we IMPLY CONSENT to be governed by it to those who have been told by their entertainment media that they should withhold that consent in favor of numerous cockamamie ill considered alternatives that they consistent and ignorantly label as “Constitutional”.

    You’re right in your defense. But the problem is NOW much greater: it is the TOTAL REJECTION of the SOCIAL CONTRACT.

    In “Tribe and Empire: An Essay on the Social Contract” by Patrick E. Kennon [ex-CIA analyst] the author explains that THE NATION is an unstable halfway between the PARANOID TRIBE, which sees all other tribes as actual or possible enemies and the open-ended empire which sees ALL PEOPLE as potential subjects or citizens.

  27. Tom,

    “You don’t have to believe me but if we DO NOTHING we are very likely going to pay a fearful prize for our inaction just as we are seeing today but far, far worse.”

    You better believe it.

    “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.”
    ~ Professor Albert Einstein

  28. This has been a WAR against American democracy from the beginning of the CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE in the 60’s. PARTISAN POLITICS has been used as a CONVENIENT COVER from the beginning.

  29. ML,
    “When is the last time the American Press-McMega-Media challenged or critiqued our world wide military imperialism??? ”

    Really? This is what you want? Well, first of all, you aren’t the arbiter of the news. You aren’t the decision maker of what gets printed or aired in 8-minute bites. Nor do you go forth and try to sell journals, newspapers or programming. Whether you like it or not, the news is also a BUSINESS! If you were paying attention, you’d discover that our media, in total, IS doing what you want it to, but isn’t using language that will turn off its customers. Military imperialism? Wow. That should sell in Arkansas.

    If any of us dug deep enough, i.e., past the first four pages of the morning paper, we’d find such condemnations and analyses. Read the New Yorker sometime. Read the Atlantic Weekly on your off days.

  30. Gerald,

    Re “… so perhaps it’s time to stop talking about Trump and feeding his daily narcissistic impulses and concentrate instead on doing something about it by using our energy to elect a Democratic Congress and impeaching this mentally ill piece of rancid protoplasm and thereafter undoing the enormous damage he has done while stopping any new damage he proposes in its tracks. Theories may help us get a seat at the table but only votes are counted.”

    It is always interesting to me to find these voting exhortations so commonly in this blog and its comments. Best I can tell, no one is changing any votes here and certainly none are being cast. It’s better understood as venting our anger about Trump via competing narratives, and getting the comfortable feeling that we are not alone, others being as sick and angry about it as we are.

    I am not at all being critical of your comments; I often join with you and others saying something quite similar. But I sometimes step back, as I’m sure you do, and ask what in the world are we accomplishing here?

  31. He’s spot on correct about this. From the Revolution forward a majority, or depending on your point of view a significant minority, of Americans have disagreed with the concepts behind the country’s founding. It’s what the Revolution was about, it’s what the Civil War was about, and it’s what our divisions today are about. These people are anti-democratic to their cores. The only difference now is that through the GOP’s gradually increasing reliance on the votes of these people, “Republican” now means Nationalist Authoritarian.

  32. yadda yadda yadda. Just vote for the imperfect Democrats in November. It is important.

  33. The power of the pen is mighty. These analyses are insightful.

    Trump seems to have sought money and the power (strength), attention and approval it brings all his adult life. Earning respect has been more difficult for him than buying it. He also has said he wants others to view him as one who is feared. So he intimidates those he thinks of as lower in risk and panders to and fawns over the autocrats whose power he envies. Unfortunately, the currency of his power-to-buy and intimidate now trades on the prestige, human rights, economic and military security, and taxpayer funds of Americans and much of the global community too.

  34. here in nodak, the locals dont know what,or would reconize,social media propaganda,or minipulation,even from thier own neighbors. ingrained suspicion from the goverment is a far more a issue here,even when trump screws thier crop money,they find excusses,unwilling to be,,,wrong… everyone here is in a mind state,that they have got thier savior. in my discussion,i bring up that i was raised across the river from nyc..we dont trust people,who,screw others out of thier money…this has been documented,and im sure mueller is digging up some long dead,(maybe) bones. if trump was even a near human,he would have a track record besides me,me,me,me… after many articles about trumps, russian buddies. im sure they want his presense,and i hope they get it..if they loaned him money,the payback will never end. read some of the stories about how russians,take over a buisness,its usually strongarm,and putin gets his cut.. if trump is leading this mob behind him,to,be like this, maybe we should demand they start wearing brown shirts.. history is able to repaet itself,even if no one reads…

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