THE TRUTH ABOUT DONALD TRUMP

THE CONSERVATIVE ANDREW SULLIVAN SPEAKS THE TRUTH

ABOUT DONALD TRUMP.

Mass movements, Eric

Hoffer argues, are distinguished by a “facility for make-believe … credulity, a readiness to attempt the impossible.” What, one wonders, could be more impossible than suddenly vetting every single visitor to the U.S. for traces of Islamic belief? What could be more make-believe than a big, beautiful wall stretching across the entire Mexican border, paid for by the Mexican government? What could be more credulous than arguing that we could pay off our national debt through a global trade war? In a conventional political party, and in a rational political discourse, such ideas would be laughed out of contention, their self-evident impossibility disqualifying them from serious consideration. In the emotional fervor of a democratic mass movement, however, these impossibilities become icons of hope, symbols of a new way of conducting politics. Their very impossibility is their appeal.

But the most powerful engine for such a movement — the thing that gets it off the ground, shapes and solidifies and entrenches it — is always the evocation of hatred. It is, as Hoffer put it, “the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying elements.” And so Trump launched his campaign by calling undocumented Mexican immigrants a population largely of rapists and murderers. He moved on to Muslims, both at home and abroad. He has now added to these enemies — with sly brilliance — the Republican Establishment itself. And what makes Trump uniquely dangerous in the history of American politics — with far broader national appeal than, say, Huey Long or George Wallace — is his response to all three enemies. It’s the threat of blunt coercion and dominance.

And so after demonizing most undocumented Mexican immigrants, he then vowed to round up and deport all 11 million of them by force. “They have to go” was the typically blunt phrase he used — and somehow people didn’t immediately recognize the monstrous historical echoes. The sheer scale of the police and military operation that this policy would entail boggles the mind. Worse, he emphasized, after the mass murder in San Bernardino, that even the Muslim-Americans you know intimately may turn around and massacre you at any juncture. “There’s something going on,” he declaimed ominously, giving legitimacy to the most hysterical and ugly of human impulses.

To call this fascism doesn’t do justice to fascism. Fascism had, in some measure, an ideology and occasional coherence that Trump utterly lacks. But his movement is clearly fascistic in its demonization of foreigners, its hyping of a threat by a domestic minority (Muslims and Mexicans are the new Jews), its focus on a single supreme leader of what can only be called a cult, and its deep belief in violence and coercion in a democracy that has heretofore relied on debate and persuasion. This is the Weimar aspect of our current moment. Just as the English Civil War ended with a dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell, and the French Revolution gave us Napoleon Bonaparte, and the unstable chaos of Russian democracy yielded to Vladimir Putin, and the most recent burst of Egyptian democracy set the conditions for General el-Sisi’s coup, so our paralyzed, emotional hyperdemocracy leads the stumbling, frustrated, angry voter toward the chimerical panacea of Trump.

TRUMP IS SUPPORTED BY PEOPLE WITH NEO-FASCIST PERSONALITIES

WHO SUPPORTS TRUMP?  What's made Trump's is puzzling in that his support seems to cross demographic lines — education, income, age, even religiosity — that usually demarcate candidates. 

It turns out that there is a strong tendency for his supporters to possess an “authoritarian personality structure.”  What is authoritarianism?   People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders and prevent the changes they fear, and  even in America, they will favor un-democratic, anti-constitutional measures.  To put it simply, they have fascist tendencies.

Trump embodies classic authoritarian leadership:  He is simplistic, seemingly powerful and punitive.  He is the strongman that authoritarians year for, particularly in times of crisis.  Trump pictures an America taken over by rapists, cop killers, domestic terrorists, and reellng frome conomic disaster.  It is a country where white people have been humiliated at home (authoritarians tend to  be rascists) and by countries that are their enemy (authoritarians tend to like extremist policies linked to nationalism).

Authoritarians tend to have irrational fears that make them easy prey for Donald Trump.  Look at the chart below.  The chances of being killed or harmed by a terrorist are about the same as being struck by lightening.  But authoritarians think they pose a high risk.  Similarly, they feel threatened by the government of Iran but have little fear of a car accident.

It turns out that the best single predictor of support for Trump is those who have fascist tendencies, although those with only a high school education runs a close second.

LEON PANETTA IS A WAR CRIMINAL

 BERNIE SUPPORTERS!! Yes, we’ve got to elect Hillary Clinton. But that doesn’t mean that the Democratic National Committee operating the DNC convention can just get away with anything. Bringing the war criminal CIA Director Leon Panetta to speak to the convention was morally wrong. I applaud the Bernie supporters from Oregon and Washington who shouted NO MORE WAR. This happened in spite of DNC ushers separating the Bernie supporters from one another in the California Delegation and turning off the lights on the Oregon Bernie supporters. Panetta was the head of the CIA drone people that killed hundreds of innocent civilians and covered up CIA illegal torture.
In June 2009, a CIA drone fired a Hellfire missile that destroyed a “suspected militant hideout” in a border village in Pakistan, burying a family inside the ruins of the building. When rescuers rushed to help the injured, the hovering drone fired a second missile, killing 13 of those seeking to help the victims of the first strike. On the next day, a funeral procession for the dead was also hit, killing 80 civilians. The funeral attack was reportedly aimed at Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud, though officials acknowledged that he was not killed in the salvo.
The New York Times reported in September 2010 that the CIA had drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan.
Under the Geneva Conventions and other international laws, it is a war crime to launch indiscriminate attacks affecting the civilian population or civilian objects with the knowledge that such attacks will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects. This distinction between combatants and noncombatants is fundamental to all humanitarian law.
Furthermore, the CIA drone program, as it currently operates, is a system of extrajudicial execution in which people who may or may not be terrorists are targeted for assassination even when they are nowhere near a battlefield. The CIA has no more legal right to assassinate suspected terrorists on the streets of downtown Karachi than Pakistani intelligence agencies have to assassinate suspected terrorists on the streets of Carmel.
The CIA employees who carry out these attacks from their desks in Langley, Va., are civilians. They are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to the laws and customs of war. The CIA pilots are civilians violating the requirement of distinction—a core concept of armed conflict—by direct participation in hostilities. Like the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters they target, they are unlawful combatants.
Mr. Panetta was also instrumental in derailing any investigation into the CIA’s illegal use of torture, despite treaties that require the United States to investigate and prosecute those who engage in torture. By arguing for impunity for torturers, Mr. Panetta has helped ensure than such atrocities will happen in the future.

LikeShow more reactions

CommentShare

Comments

Write a comment...

GOP WANTS US TO BE A MILITARY/POLICE THEOCRACY

The GOP CONVENTION WANTS THE U.S. TO BE A KIND OF MILITARY/POLICE THEOCRACY.  Chris Christie turned the GOP convention goers into angry mob repeatedly chanting about Hillary Clinton, LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP!”  I had thought that in America, we vote against someone if we don’t like them.  It’s in tin pot military dictatorships that politicians lock up their opponents.   Trump Adviser Al Baldasaro of New Hampshire Said Hillary Clinton Should Be 'Shot for Treason.'  When MSNBC interviewed a New Hampshire convention goer about this, he excused Baldasaro’s remarks on the basis that he was a “military man who was speaking in the context of firing squads executing people for treason.” 

I wonder if this delegate would excuse the cop killers in Dallas and Baton Rouge because of the usual cant that our military veterans are all heroes, which the executioners of police were.

Of course, there are repeated chants of LOCK HER UP at the convention.  In addition to being an angry, bloodthirsty mob that applauded the not guilty verdict received by a cop who killed a black man, it appears that Donald Trump’s decision-making is a family affair, like in North Korea.  It appears that Donald Trump, Jr. chose the GOP vice-presidential nominee.

An analysis of the speeches at the convention indicates that America should be a militaristic nation that loves only its cops, the armed forces, the flag, and guns.  The convention manifested a patriotism smacking of religious fervor like that of the People’s Republic of China.   If one listens carefully, there are frequently convention shouts of  the Army's “Hooah”, the Marines “Oorah”, and the Navy SEALs' “Hooyah. ”  Sometimes the convention seems like a military convocation, such as one would expect at a gathering in North Korea.

Perhaps, most interestingly, the convention speakers, such as Mike Pence, advocate an (evangelical) theocracy, a form of government where the rulers claim to be ruling on behalf of a set of religious ideas, or as direct agents of a deity as is the case in Iran. 

GOP WANTS US TO BE A MILITARY/POLICE THEOCRACY

The GOP CONVENTION WANTS THE U.S. TO BE A KIND OF MILITARY/POLICE THEOCRACY.  Chris Christie turned the GOP convention goers into angry mob repeatedly chanting about Hillary Clinton, LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP!”  I had thought that in America, we vote against someone if we don’t like them.  It’s in tin pot military dictatorships that politicians lock up their opponents.   Trump Adviser Al Baldasaro of New Hampshire Said Hillary Clinton Should Be 'Shot for Treason.'  When MSNBC interviewed a New Hampshire convention goer about this, he excused Baldasaro’s remarks on the basis that he was a “military man who was speaking in the context of firing squads executing people for treason.” 

I wonder if this delegate would excuse the cop killers in Dallas and Baton Rouge because of the usual cant that our military veterans are all heroes, which the executioners of police were.

Of course, there are repeated chants of LOCK HER UP at the convention.  In addition to being an angry, bloodthirsty mob that applauded the not guilty verdict received by a cop who killed a black man, it appears that Donald Trump’s decision-making is a family affair, like in North Korea.  It appears that Donald Trump, Jr. chose the GOP vice-presidential nominee.

An analysis of the speeches at the convention indicates that America should be a militaristic nation that loves only its cops, the armed forces, the flag, and guns.  The convention manifested a patriotism smacking of religious fervor like that of the People’s Republic of China.   If one listens carefully, there are frequently convention shouts of  the Army's “Hooah”, the Marines “Oorah”, and the Navy SEALs' “Hooyah. ”  Sometimes the convention seems like a military convocation, such as one would expect at a gathering in North Korea.

Perhaps, most interestingly, the convention speakers, such as Mike Pence, advocate an (evangelical) theocracy, a form of government where the rulers claim to be ruling on behalf of a set of religious ideas, or as direct agents of a deity as is the case in Iran. 

ASTONISHING ARTICLE ON DONALD TRUMP

PERHAPS THE MOST REVEALING ARTICLE OF THE GOP CONVENTION: Robert Draper, New York Times, "How Trump Chose The Vice President." ". . . but according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?

"When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

"Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?

"'Making America great again' was the casual reply.

"Ultimately, Trump chose Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, not Kasich, to be his running mate."

It looks like, if Trump wins the presidency that Donald Trump, Jr. and Pence, who wants to turn America into a theocracy, will be running the country. You just can't make this stuff up! So, what would Trump's the task of making America great again involve? Comedian Bill Mahr pictures The Donald by his wall shouting to the workers, "Make it higher, higher!"

RESPONSE FROM THE SLOVENIAN CONSULATE ABOUT MELANIA'S PLAGIARISM.

RESPONSE FROM THE SOLVENIAN CONSULATE TO ME ABOUT MELANIA’S PLAGIARISM.

·       I called the Slovenian Honorary Consulate in New York, United States about Melania Trump’s cribbing from Michele Obama’s speech.  You too can call (+1) (646) 650-5081

·       I called because, as it turns out, even though a low-level speech writer fell on her sword saying it was her fault, that Melania wrote the speech herself and must have know that it copied Michelle’s words at the 2008 DNC.  The noisy, highly opinionated Chris Matthews of MSNBC let her off the hook last night saying that she was an amateur and perhaps didn’t know what plagiarism is.  I thought that was b.s. 

·        

When I got ahold of a low level diplomatic figure at the embassy, who spoke English well, he was deeply insulted when I asked him a question.  I wanted to know if students, who graduated school on a secondary level in Slovenia, as did Melania Trump, were taught not to plagiarize.   He was deeply insulted and responded that he had no intention on answering such a “non-serious question.”  I take that to mean a “yes,” Melania was educated not to crib.

So, it turns out, that The Donald’s wife is a plagiarist who committed fraud and showed no disrespect for Michele Obama by stealing her words.  Of course Chris Matthews might let her off the hook again by saying she was perhaps ill when the evils of plagiarism were taught in her secondary school.