reflectivepundit

Have You Left No Sense of Decency, Mr. Trump?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When you try to keep up with a president who manages to lie in his public statements several times within less than one hour—as he did last Friday during a question-and-answer session with the press, you learn rather quickly there is nothing coming from Mr. Trump’s mouth that can surprise you.

More troubling is that some seventeen months into the Trump presidency there is nothing he, his inner circle, his administration, and his cheerleaders in the Congress can do that is particularly surprising.

We expect nothing else. We are no longer shocked. And most of us watch in silence--even though many resent Mr. Trump and his attacks on America’s constitutional foundations.

That’s what happens, when autocrats, dictators, fascists tighten their grip of control on the people, not just their fans.  

Mr. Trump does not hide his authoritarian end-game. As he himself stated last week, he does not merely admire North Korea’s despotic leader Kim Jong Un for his complete control of his people. Instead, he wants to be America’s Dear Leader with us ("my people, he said) giving the same attention to him when he speaks (meaning required over-the-top applause in North Korea) as North Koreans do to their leader.

Never mind that in the last 24 hours or so a few Republicans have voiced mild displeasure over the forced separation of desperate asylum seeking families at our Southern borders.

While no longer surprised by anything said and done by this presidents and his supporting cast, I now know that I can still be shocked. I am deeply shocked about the so-called zero tolerance border policy set and enforced by the president and his administration.

I am shocked as I look at the images of babies and toddlers and young children and teenagers forcibly taken away from their mothers and fathers.

I am shocked as I look at cages holding mothers and fathers apart from their equally caged children (Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised since the president himself has dehumanized black and brown people in his rhetorical outbursts—always the prelude to dehumanizing actions).

I am shocked as I see the pictures of detention facilities for now orphaned boys and girls and the start of establishing  tent cities  for children in areas where super high temperatures are the norm.

I agree with Maureen Dowd who wrote in her last column on this American disgrace that the Statue of Liberty is crying.

I am crying, too.

Is there no end to this madness? Is there no voice loud and powerful enough to bring America back onto the right path?

I think of the great moment in U.S. history, when one courageous man stood up to U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunt of an allegedly Communist dominated deep state: Joseph Welch, chief counsel and defender of the U.S. Army under attack by McCarthy, told the Senator in one crucial hearing, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

This was a turning point. The beginning of the end of McCarthyism!  

The time has come to ask the same question of the U.S. president (and Trumpism).  

Have you left no sense of decency, Mr. Trump?  

When Leaders Dehumanize Racial/Religious/Ethnic Groups...

By Brigitte L. Nacos

For many of the slave masters of old African Americans were less than human, which was reason enough to mistreat their slaves.

For Hitler and his Nazi followers Jews were “Untermenschen” or subhuman beings, such as rats, which was reason enough to kill more than six million Jews in gas chambers.

Obviously, mankind does not learn the lessons of the past.

Least of all, President Trump!

The other day, he called undocumented immigrants “animals.” “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are,” he said. “These aren’t people. These are animals.” As Elise Foley wrote in the Huffington Post, as presidential candidate and as U.S. president Mr. Trump called undocumented immigrants repeatedly animals. According to the report, last year,”he said ‘criminal aliens’ were ‘animals’ and then made a gruesome claim that they are murdering ‘young, beautiful’ girls.”

First, there is dehumanization. Then, the declared “sub-humans” are mistreated.  

How else can one explain that mothers and children from Central America, Mexico, Africa, and other places deemed “shit-holes” by Trump are separated if they manage to cross into the United States?

Would that happened to blond and blue eyes illegals from Scandinavia or other “desirable” countries in Europe?

In Trump’s world, bigots are given starring roles.

At the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem last week, Pastor Robert Jeffress from Texas delivered the opening prayer. Never mind that he said in the past that all Jews will go to hell and that the Jews cannot be saved. He also has denigrated Catholicism, Islam, and Mormonism.

At the same occasion, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, spoke at a reception in Jerusalem in honor of Americans attending the ceremonies. Earlier this year, as New York Magazine reported, he used “a derogatory Hebrew word for black people, in a sermon, and comparing them to monkeys.”

After an immigrant from Uzbekistan, a legal U.S. resident, killed eight persons in a horrific Halloween truck-ramming last year, Trump called him an “animal” that deserved to be sent to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. There, many of the post-9/11 terrorists or alleged terrorists were tortured in so-called “enhanced interrogation” sessions. Often, the detainees were called “animals” or were told that they had to work themselves up to the status of a dog—meaning, they were considered sub-animal…   

Dehumanizing human beings, using animal metaphors in public without repercussions has bad consequences. Bigots encourage other bigots.

That’s what came to my mind when I read the other day about a Manhattan lawyer who berated Spanish restaurant workers because they spoke in their native language to each other.

Trump’s Dangerous Wrecking Crew

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Trump does not unite but he divides people and nations;

Trump does not build but he destroys bridges;

Trump does not solve but he creates problems;

Trump does not clean up but he corrupts politics;

Trump does not uphold but he violates democratic values;

Trump does not tell the truth but he lies day-in and day-out.

Voices of reason and sanity are not heard in President Trump’s White House and Administration. Instead, the intellectually and ethically challenged narcissist-in-chief is validated by his like-minded wrecking crew of extremists in domestic (i.e., AG Jeff Sessions and EPA Director Scott Pruitt) and foreign/national security (i.e., John Bolton and Mike Pompeo) politics and policy.

In her new book titled “Fascism,” former Secretary of State Madeline Albright writes in the concluding chapter, “Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history…If transplanted to a country with fewer democratic safeguards, he would audition for dictator.”

I wonder, though, how many of those safeguards are left and whether the remaining ones will crumble under constant attacks by Trump’s wrecking crew.

The Republican majorities in both Congressional chambers certainly are not democratic safeguards against presidential encroachment. Instead of providing the inter-branch checks and balances prescribed in the U.S. Constitution, GOP members are on bended knees before their dear leader.

The judiciary still holds strong. The question is, how long?

As candidate and as president, Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked officials in the Department of Justice, the FBI, the intelligence community, and judges whose rulings he did not like. Just read a few of his many tweets for confirmation.

And now, Republican members of congressional committees, such as Rep. Devin Nunes, act more like President Trump’s defense attorneys than members of an independent legislative branch in their war against the Department of Justice, especially independent counsel Robert Mueller, Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein, and most recently even AG Sessions—all of them Republicans.

A free press is the most important foundation of a democratic system. Thus, the First Amendment! 

 Major news organizations have maintained their independence thus far. After providing “breaking news” all the time to Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination, the press’s investigative reporting had displayed in the last 18 months and continues to report on the dark underbelly of President Trump and his supporting cast.

But Trump’s attacks against the “fake” media are of great concern. Today, he threatened to take access credentials away from the press. He has repeatedly threatened changes in the libel law—even though that would not be in his power.

And, then, there is Trump’s impact the rest of the world.

Sending “Thoughts and Prayers“ Will Not Prevent the Next Mass-Shootings in Schools, Churches, and Other Public Places

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Just as disheartening and shocking as the latest mass-shooting in and around a High School in Parkland, Florida, is the usual reaction refrain by the whole line-up of Republicans, including President Trump. Their” thoughts and prayers” are, as they assure in seemingly caring tweets and statements and interviews, with the victims, their families, and first responders. As always, these so-called leaders tell us that right after another mass-shooting the time is not right to talk about any kind of gun control (Who dares to do so anyway, is accused of being “political”).

Instead, Donald Trump and GOP Senators and Representatives and their supporting casts play the old record that blames mass-shooters’ “mental health issues” for these kinds of massacres.  

Indeed, many of these shooters are in one way or the other deranged but if they would not have easy access to these killer weapons, there would not be such mass shootings—at least not as many.

For Trump and his GOP the buck never stops in the Oval Office or in the U.S. Congress--instead, they pass it.  

Following the Florida massacre, the president tweeted,  

“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”

Seems that Mr. Trump blames the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and others in the South Florida Community for not alerting the police!

If you want to know the real reason why the GOP rejects any reasonable gun control, such as more effective background checks or the ban of assault weapons, follow the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) money trail. You will find that the GOP’s Senators and Representatives and Governors who were so quick with “thoughts and prayer” assurances were all recipients of very generous campaign donations by the NRA as a detailed list compiled by the Washington Post shows.  Add to this that the NRA invested more than $20 Million in Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign in form of donations and pro-Trump advertising.

In short, it is all about money and not at all about the common good.

And it is certainly not about the will of the American people. Opinion surveys show that a majority of the public at large and a plurality of Republicans agree to stricter background checks and the ban of assault weapons.

As long as NRA money finances election campaigns of (mostly GOP but also some Democratic Party) candidates, there will not be any gun control.

Just thoughts and prayers—and blame of others…

When Democracy Dies in Bright Daylight

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After Donald Trump won the presidency, the Washington Post began to print the warning “Democracy Dies in Darkness” underneath its masthead to highlight the need for journalism that speaks truth to power. After contributing to Mr. Trump’s stunning presidential nomination and election victory the Post and a number of other news organizations reclaimed belatedly their role as watchdog of government. Now, however, the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is no longer the right one to describe what we are witnessing on a daily basis.

Last century, the most authoritarian, dictatorial, and fascist leaders utilized the legitimate political process to win the most powerful office in the state. Once in the saddle they carried out immediately what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung—putting every public and private sector under the complete control of the leader, his hand-picked clique, his party. Think of Mussolini and Hitler.

Today’s autocrats, today’s fascist leaders consolidate state power not immediately like their predecessors but step by step over time. A good example is Hungary’s President Victor Orban who has openly proclaimed the end of liberal democracy and the advent of the “illiberal state” or illiberal democracy in his country modeled after Putin’s Russia and Erdogan’s Turkey. So far, there has been a purge of the civil service, curbs on the judiciary’s independence, intimidation of the press, establishment of election rules tilted in favor of parties that support him, and the vilification of foreigners.

Sounds familiar? Indeed! The U.S. president, too, has attacked Washington’s civil servants, declared war against the law enforcement apparatus and its leaders, fired highly placed officials in the Department of Justice and FBI,  called for their removal of more people across departments, presides over an administration with dangerous gaps in knowledgeable personnel. Just think of the dismantling of the Department of States’ Foreign Service professionals. And last but not least, think of President Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy and credibility of the news media.

Just like the current autocrats in Hungary and Poland and elsewhere, the narcissist in the White House speaks openly and frequently about his disregard for democratic rules of the game.

Of the people in all branches of government and all its institutions, Mr. Trump expects and demands loyalty to him alone—not to the constitution, not the law.  

Those are traits of dictatorial, fascist rulers.