reflectivepundit

The First 10 Days: Who Pulls Strings in the Trump White House?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The first ten days of the Trump presidency gave enough reasons for alarm. Not merely because of President DJT’s continued bias in favor of alternative facts.

Clueless in matters of democratic governance and the truism that details matter in the implementation of executive orders and laws the president and his motley crew acted according to a reckless blueprint in unprecedented haste and thoughtlessness.

The ideological scheme guiding the new administration is the work of Steve Bannon, the former boss of Breitbart, one of the more influential among the far-right nationalist, nativist, and conspiracy theory promoting online organs.

During last year’s campaign, when Trump emerged as a serious presidential contender, some neo-Nazi voices expressed support for the reality show star with the caveat that as president Trump would only be a temporary front-man for the real national-socialist revolution under a bona fide leader of the cause.

For now, Trump’s chief strategist Bannon is foremost among those pulling the strings in the White House as he was in the decisive stretch of the presidential campaign.

He was the one who wrote the inauguration speech along with fellow hardliner and White House advisor Stephen Miller.

Bannon was—and is--the strongest advocate of Trump’s controversial executive order against Muslims that was enacted Friday night before relevant government agencies were informed of its full content and meaning. Not surprisingly, Bannon and Miller overruled Department of Homeland Security officials who did not want to include green card holders in the travel ban.

That the ban excludes Muslim majority countries whose citizens actually committed terrorism within America’s borders and/or have acute problems with terrorism today seems to suggest that the grey eminence in the White House does take his boss’s business interests into consideration, namely, in Turkey, the Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Those countries, along with others, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, are not part of the ban. That much for principles in fighting terrorism at home…

I actually agree with President Trump that terrorists are evil. I disagree that we must be equally as evil—or more so—in order to defeat terrorism.  

Most troublesome among the dubious decisions in the opening days of Trump’s governance were changes in the operations of the National Security Council which is led by the conspiracy theorist and Islamophobia-in-chief Michael Flynn. While Steve Bannon will be a regular at Council meetings, the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will no longer attend all meetings but merely those falling into their responsibilities and expertise. What a scary state of affairs: Leading intelligence and military officials are no longer regulars leaving lots of room to maneuver for Flynn, formerly a paid contributor to Vladimir Putin’s RT propaganda network, and Bannon, like his boss an admirer of Putin and authoritarian rulers in general.

What's next?

P.S. According to Politico, Senator John McCain said today, “I am worried about the National Security Council. Who are the members of it and who are the permanent members? The appointment of Mr. Bannon is something which is a radical departure from any National Security Council in history." 

Unfortunately, McCain praised Security Advisor Flynn although he is very critical of his pro-Russian stance.

George Orwell’s 1984 and the Trump White House: Newspeak and Doublethink

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In George Orwell’s 1984 the all-present slogans of Oceana’s Ministry of Truth are

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

In secret, the novel’s protagonist in Big Brother’s hellish dictatorship dissents such Newspeak and Doublethink designed to “make it increasingly difficult to express ideas that contradict the official line—and, in time, even to conceive such ideas.”

Thus, this entry in the protagonist’s diary:  

 “Freedom is the freedom that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

In the current White House and among President Trump’s supporters inside and outside of congress, including his fans at FOX News and similar Trumpian propaganda outlets—two plus two does not necessarily add up to four. Instead, the result could be five or three or any other number. After all, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway explained the lies of her boss and his press secretary concerning the audience size during the inauguration ceremony as “alternative facts.”

When truth and facts do not matter to those in power, when lies and alternative facts become the normal and inform decision making (such as the president’s announcement of an investigation into 3-5 million illegitimate votes for Hillary Clinton), we are reminded of  Orwellian Doublethink and Newspeak.

During the GOP primary campaign and the general election race Mr. Trump presented far more “alternative facts” than actual facts.The fact-checkers at Politifact evaluated 70% of his assertion as false or mostly false.

As president he has far more means to insist that “alternative facts” are facts knowing that Rupert Murdoch’s media and the online propaganda machine of the far-right will double up.

Far more troublesome is that GOP leaders either run for cover or embrace White House Newspeak and Doublethink themselves. Obviously, Trump intimidates and tames them. They fear his wrath.

Take Paul Ryan. When asked by Greta Van Systeran of MSNBC about the financing of Trump Wall along the Mexican border, the House Speaker said this,

“Well, first off, we’re going to pay for it and front the money up … There are a lot of different ways of getting Mexico to contribute to doing this and there different ways to defining how exactly they pay for it. The point is, he has a promise he made to the American people, which is to secure our border, a wall is a big part of that. We agree with that goal, and we will be working with him to finance construction of the physical barrier, including the wall on the southern border.”

Mexico merely contributing? Defining different ways how exactly to pay for it? That does not sound at all like the chants at every Trump campaign: “Who will pay?” “Mexico!”

As for corporate leaders, they endure Trump’s Newspeak and whip because the president has already promised them lots of carrots.

When two plus two is no longer four, it is time to worry. 

Trump’s Populist Inauguration Address: Road Map to Illiberal Democracy?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Donald Trump’s inauguration address was through and through an extreme populist declaration that attacked the corrupt political elite (sitting right in front of the just sworn in 45^th U.S. president) and glorified "the people."

His harsh demarcation between the good, patriotic people on the one side and the selfish, out of touch, high-brow establishment on the other side was characteristic for populist ideology that needs enemies -- “the other”—in sharp contrast to the common people.

Populists are hostile to intellectuals; they claim to be like regular, common people. Even if they are billionaires like Trump and several of his cabinet appointees.

Whether Trump wrote the speech himself as he claimed or not, whatever he said was completely in line with the right-extreme, nativist, nationalist, racist ideology of his chief advisor Steve Bannon, the boss of the alt-right Trump mouthpiece Breitbart News.

This is what Bannon told Michael Wolff of the Hollywood Reporter after Trump’s election victory,

I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist…The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver…we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years (emphasis added).

50 years?  

Populism is hostile to pluralism but may well lead down the road to authoritarianism.

When elected to the highest office in a democracy, a populist leader and his crew can claim –and have claimed in the past--that the will of the people trumps the pluralist political process and the give-and-take between different interests and different groups that agree on the highest values and fair rules of the game based on civil liberties.

Indeed, if not effectively countered, there is a clear and present threat of populist leaders turning to authoritarian rule, what some contemporary populist heads of government in Europe, for example, in Hungary and Poland, have come to call illiberal democracy.

Populists who embrace authoritarian rule disregard civil liberties, first of all freedom of the press.

"The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what's wrong with this country. It's just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what's going on,” Bannon told Michael Wolff.

When Trump attacks the mainstream media day-in and day-out as rigged, unfair, and untruthful, one wonders, whether journalists’ mistreatment by Trump and his team during and after the presidential campaign are warning signs for more drastic curbs on those news organizations that are not among Trump’s propaganda machine.

Like far-right leaders in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe Trump celebrates law and order, isolationism and protectionism, while vilifying immigrants, Muslims, and other non-patriots as additions to his list of enemies.

Since authoritarian and fascists regimes are typically led by male chauvinists of the populist variety, the many powerful women’s marches in Washington and around the country one day after Trump’s troublesome inauguration speech were powerful signs of rising dissent and the will to overcome.

 

Crooked Hillary or Crooked Donald?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Imagine for a moment that Hillary Clinton had agreed to an interview on Russia’s state-owned RT television during last year’s presidential campaign and praised Vladimir Putin frequently as exemplary leader.

Imagine furthermore that as president-elect she had chosen as Secretary of State a man who received the Russian “Order of Friendship” award from Putin and that she appointed as National Security Advisor a conspiracy theorist who dined with the Russian president and appeared frequently on his RT propaganda arm.  

Surely, Donald Trump and his supporters would have condemned Mrs. Clinton beyond their constant attacks on “crooked Hillary” as a clear and present danger in the highest office in the land and world.

But although Mr. Trump did all of the above—from his high praise for Putin to his appearance on RT and his selection of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor--, Republican leaders,his rank-and-file supporters, and his FOX News propagandists seem to find nothing wrong with his affinity for Mr. Putin and a host of other authoritarian rulers.

During the campaign Trump warned again and again of a “rigged election” and left no doubt that the Democrats were out to cheat.

Ironically, there is ample evidence of efforts to rig the election in favor of Trump by Russian hackers on behalf of Vladimir Putin and with the assistance of Julian Assange, the shady WikiLeaks operator, who released hacked material drip-by-drip during the general campaign.

While the Kremlin celebrated, the next president of the United States condemned our country’s intelligence community for its audacity to trace the hacking to the Russian adversary praising Assange and Putin instead.

And The Donald gets away with it!

As a Trump voter in Louisiana told a reporter in response to a question about Russian involvement in the election, “If that’s what it took, I’m glad they did it.”

Yes, John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, presided last week over a revealing hearing on the hacking incidents (note that neither the mainstream media nor Democrats call it what it is—a scandal!).

But even Republican hawks walk on egg shells in order not to link Russian espionage to the outcome of the election in fear of Trump’s wrath.

His lashing out at the intelligence community was in defense of the legitimacy of his victory on November 8^th and thus the legitimacy of his presidency.

In this new age of “post-truth” Mr. Trump has convinced his followers that he won the election in a landslide (he did not), that he actually won the popular vote (although Mrs. Clinton got nation-wide close to three million votes more than he), and that his presidency is legitimate--never mind Russian hacking.

History, however, will record the troublesome outside meddling just as it documented the dubious Supreme Court decision that handed George W. Bush the presidency 16 years ago.