reflectivepundit

When a Weak Draft-Dodger Plays Military Strongman

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When civil unrest breaks out in countries ruled by authoritarian leaders, protesters are attacked, injured, and killed by heavily armed police or, more often, by military forces. In democracies top leaders recognize legitimate grievances of peaceful protesters, talk to activists, cool down the heat, and leave the law and order part to local and state leaders—especially with respect to terrorist and criminal violence perpetrated by a small minority of extremist intrudes that exploit these situations for their own causes.

In the last nine days, the U.S. President has not acted like the leader of a democracy and certainly not the American democracy. Instead of recognizing the rightful grievances of African Americans and all people of color—not only concerning the documented police violence, he exploits the violent destruction and looting of properties for his own interests.

In his tweets and public statements this president blames the radical left Antifa for carrying out violence. The fact is that some anarchists are responsible for violent acts designed to increase unrest and weaken the glue that holds citizens and their governing institutions and actors together. But this leaderless movement has at best a few hundred activists. The president does not talk at all about the more serious threat: the many extreme right groups that fit under the umbrella of the alt-right: White Supremacist, Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists—many of them heavily armed and militarily trained. Last weekend, three members of the far-right "Boogaloo" movement were arrested in Las Vegas with Molotov cocktails in their possession as they mingled with “Black Lives Matter” protesters. Boogaloo members, as some other organized right-wing extremists, want to provoke a civil war and turn it into a race war against minorities.

But neither the President nor his Attorney General are interested in countering the political violence, terrorism in other words, by intensifying the work of the very capable counterterrorism community. Instead, it seems that the President and his Enablers consider the violent part of the powerful protest movement in the streets as an opportunity. As Rush Limbaugh said last week, “Trump is having fun watching the fires.”

Fun? Opportunities?

Just think of Monday this week, when military forces were moved into Washington, D.C. and used raw force to remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park. The uniformed force charged the crowd, beat a team of Australian reporters, and used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. A blackhawk helicopter hovered low over buildings and streets to scare the hell out of ordinary citizens

For Donald Trump, the cowardly draft-dodger, this was a beautifully staged scene to pose as military strongman along the lines of all the autocrats around the world he admires.

We know that nothing will change in Trump’s rhetoric and behavior. Therefore, it is most frightening that his supporting cast plays all roles according to the president’s script. A Defense Secretary who calls American cities “battle spaces” that need to be “dominated.” By force. A chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who marches in camouflage uniform along with the President in the park just “liberated” from citizens. For a macabre photo opportunity that is already fashioned into a campaign ad. Docile Republicans in Congress condoning Trump’s misdeeds by silence or excuses that they are “late for lunch.”

November 3^rd is Election Day. Trump mentioned this date often. I pray and hope that there are more voters on the side of our constitutional rights of “peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances” than on the side of a would-be strongman that commands the military.

Joe Biden and the TRUMP VIRUS

By Brigitte L. Nacos

During the 2016 primary season, then candidate Donald Trump got most of the publicity oxygen that the news media produced. At the expense of his Republican GOP and Democratic rivals. Ironically, he accused the news media then and ever since, wrongly, of anti-Trump bias. And worse.

Now, the very news organizations that Trump characterizes collectively as “enemy of the people” fall into the same trap: They report and magnify everything that the president says and tweets—including the daily diet of claims that are false and, yes, big lies.

In contrast, there is little coverage of the presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden. To be sure, he follows the stay-home and wear-a-mask advice of public health experts that Mr. Trump openly defies. But if fair and balanced reporting means to actively enlist statements and comments from the other side, Mr. Biden and his campaign leaders are merely a phone call, text message, or email away.

However, the current laying-low tactic will not work for long for a presidential candidate. Not even during a crisis period, when the opponent’s attacks relentlessly. For all the craziness that is coming out of Trump’s mouth and tweet production, he does control the mass-mediated narrative.

That must change, if the Democrats’ ticket has a winning chance in November. Biden and his campaign should take its cue from the Never Trump Group’s Lincoln Project. Most of all, from their compelling documentary-like videos.  

Biden’s campaign needs slogans that can compete and beat the catch words of the Trump campaign.

Here is the thing: Trump’s politics of denial was responsible for the long delay in preparing and instructing the health care sector and the American public for the most devastating crisis since WWII. Yes, the virus originated in China. But Covid-19 deserves the name Trump VIRUS because this president’s alternative reality and alternative facts lulled adequate preparedness. As research shows, he is responsible for thousands of deaths.

In his book “Time to Get Tough” Trump wrote that “a president doesn’t ‘create’ jobs, only businesses can do that.” But as President he has credited himself with creating the best economy, the best stock market, and the lowest unemployment rate in American history. Well, then, Joe Biden. Why not talking now of a Trump Recession and Trump’s Record Unemployment? Besides the Trump Virus, of course.

And one more thing: Time to Get Tough!

Invigorating Walks, Covid-19, and Future Terrorism

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As we adhere to the stay-home regime, most of us have our ups and downs. Often, mood swings have very personal origins. During this Covid-19 crisis they are also brought on by accounts of heartbreaking deaths or miraculous recoveries, dispiriting or encouraging statistics, gloomy or optimistic sentiments about the future of this health emergency and its individual and collective economic costs.

This morning, during my one-and-a-half-hour walk, I thought how lucky I am not to live in New York City at this time but rather in one of its suburbs on Long Island. Whereas my children and grandchildren at the Upper West Side of Manhattan have not left their apartment for seven weeks, I have taken my daily walks except for a few bad whether days.

To be sure, I know the many advantages of living in the city, most of all, the shorter commute to and from work, concerts, opera, Broadway, Zoo, Botanical Garden, special restaurants, and so much more. But while I always preferred suburban life, I have never appreciated it more than in the present crisis.

This morning I started my walk around 7:00 a.m. There was no other walker on the route I take; I saw two moving cars besides some parked ones in the neighborhood. I saw dozens of running, jumping, and climbing squirrels, two approachable bunnies, five beautiful cardinals, a brown cat, and a multitude of other birds. When the sun peaked through the clouds, the red and yellow tulips in a flower bed opened up and stretched towards the sky.

Returning home, I saw a woman feeding a bunch of bird in her front yard. I harvested a few stems of chives that survived the mild winter in pots on my patio. Cut into small pieces this was the perfect herb to top slices of tomatoes on the cheese sandwich I planned to eat for breakfast.

My morning walks during the shut-down weeks are the same as they were in many months and years before. Same time of the day; same neighborhood, same route. But whereas these walks always energized me physically, today they invigorate me even more so spiritually. Instead of wondering whether life will return to normalcy—and when—I see somewhere in the distance the end of the crisis tunnel.

To be sure, this burst of optimism does not last the whole day. This day, I reviewed how extremists utilized or planned to use biological agents in the past. In 1993, members of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult tried to aerosolize a liquid suspension of bacillus anthracis in order to launch an anthrax epidemic. Except for spreading foul odors in one part of Tokyo the effort was unsuccessful. In 1995, two members of the Minnesota Patriots Council were arrested for producing ricin (produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant) and planning to assassinate a deputy U.S. marshal who had served papers on one of them for tax violations. The anthrax spores contained in letters sent to U.S.  media organizations and politicians shortly after the 9/11 attacks killed five and infected seventeen others people.  Several of the victims were postal workers who handled those letters.

Now, I wonder whether the coronavirus’s killing spree around the world could inspire transnational and/or domestic extremists to weaponize viruses more successfully than extremists of the past.

Thankfully, there will be another walk tomorrow morning.   

Donald Trump and the Big-Lie Theory

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When parents tell their children to tell the truth, they may cite the proverb that lies have short legs. The lesson is that you do not get away with lies.

I thought of this, when I reread an article on Donald Trump by Marie Brenner that Vanity Fair published in 1990 and republished in 2015, right after he declared his presidential candidacy.

Brenner wrote that one of Trump’s lawyers told her, “Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory.  “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”

Obviously, the Big-Lie theory has served Donald Trump well before and after he moved into the White House. According to the fact checkers of the Washington Post, President Trump made 16,241 “false or misleading” claims during the first three years in office. In other words, more than an average of 14 lies per day.

And, yet, with TV, radio, and online Trumpian propagandists at his service, Trump disproved the saying that lies have short legs.

During his ascent to and rule as liar-in-chief he has relentlessly attacked the mainstream media as “fake” and “enemy of the American people.”

Anyone who calls himself a “very stable genius” does not allow disagreement when he muddles fact and fiction. Thus, after the premier public health scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci corrected Trump statements during press conferences in the White House, he all but disappeared from that stage. One appearance in the last seven events.   

Dr. Deborah Birx, also a recognized public health expert, seems lately being sucked into the Trumpian circle of benevolent servants. In an appearance on “Watter’s World” last Saturday she told the FOX NEWS host that the President “looks at every bit of data” praising his “strong foundation on data” and that he is asking the right questions. When she explained Trump’s insane notion about the internal use of heat and disinfectants in the treatment of Covid-19 as his habit “to talk it through out loud” new information, she must have scored brownie points. Same, when she went after the news media.

Asked whether the media had been fair in reporting the pandemic, Dr. Birx answered forcefully,

I think the media is very slicey and dicey about how they put sentences together in order to create headlines. …I think often the reporting may be accurate in paragraph three, four, and five. But I’m not sure how many people get to paragraph three, four, and five…And I think the responsibility the press has is to really ensure that the headlines reflect science and data that is in the piece itself.”

No criticism of the Big-Lie theorist and his dismal relationship to truth and fact even during the current health emergency. Instead, an admonition of the mainstream media that records his falsities and misleading statements day-in and day-out.

This morning, President Trump threw another tweet bomb in the direction of the mainstream media.  “FAKE NEWS, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” he wrote. “There has never been, in the history of our Country, a more vicious or hostile Lamestream Media than there is right now, even in the midst of a National Emergency, the Invisible Enemy!”

The White House then informed reporters that the previously scheduled afternoon press briefing would not be held. Another signal that these press conferences are not about informing the public about the health crisis but rather about the president’s vanities.

P.S.  A few hours after announcing that the day's press briefing was canceled the White House let it be known that the President would “brief the nation” at a news conference in the afternoon. The stable genius needs the stage and always the starring role.

Covid-19 Crisis and the Failed Presidency

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As Americans fear for their own and their family members’ physical, mental, and economic survival and look to the President and the White House to manage the existential Covid-19 crisis with competence and empathy, they do not find what they need in Donald Trump and his administration’s disaster response. The President denies any responsibility for his failure to speed up disaster preparedness when he was well aware of this new global killer virus and effective response measures when he could no longer deny the lethal threat of the virus right here in our country.

Instead of using his overlong televised press conferences to unite the polarized nation, Mr. Trump conducts them like campaign rallies full of narcissistic self-aggrandizement and bomb-throwing against reporters asking “nasty” questions and governors pleading for more federal disaster help in order to save the lives of Americans.

In the “Afterword” of the paperback edition of his book “Time to Get Tough” Trump wrote,

“A great leader can bring America together. But unfortunately for us, Barack Obama is not a leader. So who can the country turn to?”

This was published in 2015, the pre-primary time, when he obviously figured he would be the president who would bring unity to this country. Yet, in more than three years at the helm he has not united Americans. Indeed, he has magnified partisan and ideological polarization. That’s why there is no strong rally-‘round-the-president effect at the height of this deadly crisis.

In serious, national emergencies a president is not supposed to “backup” governors of the individual states as the President claimed yesterday in a repeat of similar statement. No, when disasters strike, the President is the one who must lead and become the crisis manager-in-chief.  This is the time when he has to provide consistent and factual information as well as assure and console a scared and suffering nation.

In his book “Presidential Character” James Barber argues that character, the core of personality, determines how “the President orients himself toward life-not for the moment, but enduringly." Obviously, this is not a character trait of this president. In “The Art of the Deal” Trump wrote,

“Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. …You can’t be entrepreneurial if you’ve too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops”

This self-described attention to the moment—not the larger context—explains why this attention-challenged president changes his positions again and again and creates confusion. In the same book, he reveals, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.” Exclusively focusing on the present--that’s the problem with this presidency and one of the major reasons for its failure.

There is no interest in the institutional memory and the professional expertise of civil servants—not even when it comes to responding to disaster. Key positions in the executive branch, and especially in agencies charged with emergency preparedness are held by political appointees without expertise in the areas they are supposed to guide. They did carry out their most important mission, namely, to reject and erase what previous presidents and their administrations left behind—including, extensive preparedness protocols for global pandemics that many scientists predicted for years.

During the 2016 Obama-Trump transition, officials from both sides got together for a pandemic table exercise that assumed the possibility or even likelihood of such a global disaster striking within the next few years.

Instead of continuing the work of the previous administration, the Global Health Security Office in the National Security Council was dismantled during John Bolton’s tenure as National Security Advisor. Although Trump claimed in one of his press events that he knew nothing about this, his underlings knew then and know now that he wants everything erased that has a link to his predecessor.

But the President and his White House crew ignored also a warning of lacking preparedness for a killer virus pandemic by their own administration.

Trump’s Claim to Be an Absolute Ruler: “I am the Chief Law Enforcement Officer”

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Incredibly, this morning’s most prominent headline in the New York Times (as in other leading newspapers) did not highlight the most shocking and troubling statement the 45^th U.S. president made the previous evening. “I am the chief law enforcement officer,” Donald Trump said shortly after issuing pardons and commutations of sentences to an unruly bunch of corrupt individuals—without the “normal” role of the Justice Department. 

Probably without knowing that France’s Louis XIV coined the dubious justification of absolute monarchy with the exclamation “l’etat c’est moi” (“I am the state”), Donald Trump told us basically that only he determines what the law is, who will or will not be charged, tried, found guilty, and serve a sentence.

Last night, President Trump himself confirmed what has been evident for a while: With the help of Attorney-General William Barr as his most faithful protector and the Republican Senate majority and the rest of the GOP as enthusiastic cheerleaders rather than the constitutional check of an out of control executive, Donald Trump is now no longer the president in a system that was designed by our Founding Fathers.

Even before reelection and a second term Trump is bold enough to do away with the appearance of following the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law—not men and the well- established rules of the game.

In reality, in his ascent to dictatorial rule President Trump resembles now the strongman he admires most, Vladimir Putin of Russia.

The most troubling aspect is the absence of any protests from Washington or elsewhere in the country. Aside from the superficial comments by the talking heads in evening and morning shows and their never changing line-up of so-called expert guests, there were no outcries from leading Republicans or Democrats.

And there were no spontaneous protests by regular citizens in defense of their democracy. Instead, it was a day like any other day--for Trump’s supporters and for his opponents.

Add to this an uptick in Trump’s approval ratings of late and the increasingly bloody and completely counterproductive infights between the men and women competing for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party as the stuff that emboldens this president even further.

Sometimes democracy dies in darkness. This time, our democracy spirals downward in bright daylight. 

Until is too late?

The GOP Crowned the First American King

By Brigitte L. Nacos

 “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!” Nothing characterizes today’s state of affairs in our country better than this sentence from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that came to mean more generally that things are wrong, troubling, threatening.

If there were any doubts that the liberal democracy that the Founders designed and codified in the U.S. Constitution was trampled by the 45^th U.S. president and the Republican Party in the first three years of his term, such calms were squashed during the impeachment procedures against Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Senate.

What unfolded in the upper chamber of Congress this week was as shameful as it can get in a democracy: In concert with the White House, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell staged a show trial as practiced in totalitarian settings. Witnesses were not allowed to testify, documents not subpoenaed.

In spite of massive evidence in support of the two impeachment articles presented by House managers GOP senators broke their oath of impartiality and sided with their “Great Leader” and his wacky crew of defense attorneys.

Before the ultimate “not guilty” verdict was in, the outcome was clear. Even those GOP Senators who believed that Trump was guilty of “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress” supported acquittal.    

The party of Trump—once known as the Republican Grand Old Party—completely accepted and excused this president’s (1) well-documented efforts to bribe the president of Ukraine to smear a potential political opponent in the upcoming presidential campaign by withholding congress-approved military aid urgently needed to fight Russian invaders; and (2) his refusal to allow White House officials testify in the impeachment procedures in the House and provide relevant administration documents to House committees.

In short, Mitch McConnell and GOP senators crowned the first American King, the monarch that the Founding Father’s wanted to abolish forever through a system of checks and balances and shared powers.

Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his respect and admiration for the most authoritarian leaders of our time, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, China’s Xi Jinping to North Korea’s Kim Jong Um, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, and others. He loves these men because they are “strong” and wield their power widely.  Now he has increased his own power.

Even before the final roll call next week, President Trump knows that there will be not be congressional checks on any misuse of power  nor on obstruction of congressional oversight as long as the GOP has the majority in the Senate.

With a toothless majority in Congresses upper chamber, and Attorney-General at the President’s service, two Trump appointed members on the Supreme Court, and intimidated civil servants fearful to stick to fact and truth, American democracy as envisioned by the Framers and we know from the past is rotten.

No, we do not have an authoritarian system yet, but we are moving towards what Hungary’s Viktor Orban and other European populists call blatantly “illiberal democracy.” It is not difficult to imagine what would happen in a second Trump term.

The elections on November 3 can stop this downward slide!

Why did Trump order the Assassination of the Iranian General? The President’s Twitter Archive provides the Best Answer

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Since 2011, Donald Trump mentioned Iran 380 times in tweets that revealed his obsession with and hostility towards the Islamic Republic. In many of these Twitter messages he attacked President Obama for not being tough enough.

But in the most revealing tweets are the following:

Nov.  14, 2011: @BarackObama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him to win the election.

Nov. 29, 2011: In order to get elected @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.

April 4, 2012: Remember what I said about @BarackObama attacking Iran before the election...

Oct. 22, 2013: Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected—be aware Republicans!

As we know, President Obama did not attack Iran to trigger a rally-‘round-the-flag effect in support of his reelection chances as Trump predicted wrongly.

However, according to the Pentagon, it was Trump who ordered the deadly drone strikes that killed Qassim Soleimani, the Iranian general in charge of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force. While not shedding tears over Soleimani’s demise, one wonders about the overall strategic concept behind the assassination. While an all-out war is unlikely, Iran will strike back sometime, somewhere.  And the explosive Middle East will become even more dangerous and destabilized.

But that obviously does not concern Trump.

Replace “@BarackObama” and “Obama” with @realDonaldTrump in the four tweets above and you get a good idea why the Commander-in-Chief gave the green light for the assassination of the Iranian general on the territory of the sovereign state of Iraq.  

The President obviously believes that the conflict with Iran will raise his public approval and help his reelection along with his fight against the impeachment process.

So far, so good, for Trump: The breaking news now is all about the U.S.-Iran conflict—not about impeachment and likely Democrats running against the president in the general election campaign.  

Trump’s Virus of Alternative Facts Spreads at Home and Abroad

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Drawing on his experience as Hitler’s propagandist-in-chief Joseph Goebbels revealed, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” What once was the centerpiece of Nazi propaganda has become commonplace in contemporary America. The virus of alternative facts—in common language: lies propagated as truth--has spread from Donald Trump’s campaign and White House to his supporting cast in the administration, in Congress, and throughout the onetime Great Old Party.

Whether in his tweets, staged press encounters, or mass rallies the president himself tells and repeats again and again the same alternative facts. Just as important for these lies to spread is that

(1) the right-wing media report Trump’s whopper lies with excitement and breaking news prominence as true revelations; and

(2) the mainstream media, although day-in and day-out attacked by Trump, cover the President’s tweet output constantly and thereby, unwittingly, magnify them.  

Today, the wide gap between alternative fact and actual fact, between truth and lie, has increased the ideological and partisan polarization. Roughly half of the American public believes whatever alternative facts the President and his enablers in politics, FOX News, and others in his media propaganda arm say or write, while the other half of the nation form their views based on demonstrable facts.

Take this example: After the President met yesterday with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office (ironically, the same day congressional Democrats publicized the text of the two impeachment articles!), U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that President Trump had “warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections.” Lavrov, however, told the press during a news conference in the Russian Embassy that he and Trump did not discuss elections at all.

Sad but true, the Russian’s version is credible, Pompeo’s is not. After all, President Trump has all along denied any Russian interference in the 2016 election—why, then, would he warn of any interference by Moscow in next year’s presidential race?

The virus of alternative facts has not merely dire consequences at home but also abroad. Trump’s constant attacks on ”fake news” and “fake media”—a  reprise of the term “Luegenpresse” (lying press) used by Nazi leaders in their assaults on not yet completely controlled news organizations—have become part of the propaganda schemes of  leaders around the world, including those in  Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela, and Israel.

Most disconcertingly, even when followers recognize fully that their leader is a chronic liar they may not withdraw their support. Indeed, the other day, a voter in the United Kingdom revealed “she was voting for Mr. [Boris] Johnson precisely because he is a proven liar. It shows, she said, that he is ‘human’.”

Preferring serial liars as leaders! That’s the very sad state of affairs here, in the UK, and elsewhere.

The Orwellian Truth and Big Brother Trump

By Brigitte L. Nacos

We have heard it all from the White House before. There are no objective facts, there are alternative facts. Think of Donald Trump’s claim that the crowd size at his inauguration was   unprecedented although aerial photos showed clearly far more people at Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

Facts do not matter for Trump and his staffers who deal a lot in alternative facts and post-truth.

What unfolded in the face of Hurricane Dorian deserves mentioning even though nothing coming out of the White House defying fact and reality is terribly surprising.  

It began with the President tweeting that Alabama was among the states threatened by Dorian--perhaps an unwitting mistake. After weather experts assured the public that there was no threat whatsoever for Alabama, Trump could have easily acknowledged he made a mistake. Instead, he continued to insist that Alabama could be affected.Yesterday, from the Oval Office, he displayed a map issued by the National Hurricane Center that was obviously falsified to show Alabama could have been affected by Dorian.

Challenged by news reports, the President issued yet another tweet this morning insisting,  “What I said was accurate! All Fake News in order to demean!”

This all is so similar to totalitarian alternative reality, fact, and truth as described in George Orwell’s “1984;” it is so strikingly similar to what Big Brother’s voice O’Brien tells Winston who has not yet surrendered to the totalitarian dictate:

“Winston, you believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right...But I tell you, Winston, reality is not external...

Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.”

In a moment of dissent Winston wrote in his diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two and two make four.”

Big Brother knew.

Following a torturous process overseen by O’Brien, Winston does no longer question Big Brother’s complete control over fact, reality, and truth.

When Big Brother says two plus two equals three—or five—or anything, it is the truth.

As the U.S. President continued to claim that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian against all facts, his message was clear: Whatever Big Brother Trump holds to be truth is truth.

Thankfully, America’s 2019 is not Orwell’s 1984...