reflectivepundit

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...

Publicity is the Oxygen of the Trumpian Propaganda Show; the Mainstream Media Can Deny It

Brigitte L. Nacos

During many years of terrorism research I found ample evidence that publicity is central to the terrorist scheme. Terrorism is a communicative act designed to get attention and dominate the media, elite, and public agenda. I am not suggesting here that President Trump is a terrorist comparable to those who carried out 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the recent attacks against innocents in a supermarket, synagogues, and churches--although his rhetorical twitter bombs are quite similar to those thrown by contemporary online jihadists and white supremacists that incite violence.

I suggest that just as publicity is the oxygen or lifeblood of terrorism, publicity is the oxygen or lifeblood of Mr. Trump’s destructive and disruptive propaganda show. During his 31 months in office Trump’s solo propaganda stream has been extremely successful. Even the best mainstream news organizations report on television, radio, in print or online instantly and seemingly breathlessly every crazy tweeted or spoken word this man utters.

Normally, when the president speaks, the press listens, and the public will be informed. But Donald Trump is not a normal president. In a rare moment of truthfulness, he said the other day that there was never a president like President Trump. Indeed! He and his cronies have cut normal routines between press and White House officials. There are no longer regular press briefings or new conferences. The transparency that Trump’s minions claim does not exist in this White House and Administration.

For Trump and his crew the news media serves conveniently as megaphone for the president’s mostly nonsensical and self-aggrandizing propaganda: insults, attacks, warnings, threats—with occasional assurances of love addressed to his truth-loving counterparts in North Korea and Russia and his friends at FOX News.

Nothing of this is newsworthy; nothing provides important public affairs information for the American people. Instead, this non-substantial news crowds out coverage of important news on immigration, health care, the environment, foreign affairs.

Most of the media unwittingly and some of the media wittingly magnify Donald Trump’s propaganda.

His unwitting accomplices in the mainstream media must stop this practice, must deny this president the oxygen that keeps his crazy rhetoric center stage 7/24.  

News organizations should declare a moratorium on covering non substantial Trump messages, whether tweeted or screamed at another campaign rally. It might not temper or cut down on Trump’s bully rhetoric, but it might reduce the frustrations and anxieties of many Americans who are exhausted from the never-ending coverage of this president’s unpresidential words.

Why not give it a try?

America’s Liberal Democracy under Attack

 

By Brigitte L. Nacos

With the news media already in weekend mode, the US Supreme Court announced on Friday its ruling that President Trump can use $2.5 billion to build his controversial Wall at the Southern border –although the Congress had earmarked this money for the Defense Department. Ignoring that the US Constitutions reserves the power of the purse to the legislative branch, the Court’s decision allows Trump to spend billions to fulfill his number one campaign promise in 2016. Not Mexico as he promised then but American taxpayers at the expense of the military will pay for the wall.

Reports about the ruling were momentarily “breaking news” on cable TV and mostly forgotten, when Trump threw another of his tweet bombs insulting Congressman Elijah Cummings and his Black constituents in Baltimore. Just as the President had early characterized countries with Black populations s-holes, his latest tweet insult called Cummings “a brutal bully” and his congressional district “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and “the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States.”  Cummings is one of the most soft-spoken members of the House. Given that Trump has a long history of attacking, insulting, and stereotyping African-Americans, Latinos, and other minorities of color, he added to the list of outrageously racist statements.

The attack on the African-American Congressman and African-Americans residing in his district, about half of his constituents, came shortly after similar content in his beloved Fox & Friends program on FOX News. This is typically how it works—the President sees and hears what he likes on FOX, tweets it as his own and thereby triggers massive mainstream news coverage.

In this case as in many similar tweet bombs before, his core supporters received another assurance from their Dear Leader that he is a White Nationalist defending their hateful, divisive ideology. Building the Wall, putting racial and religious minorities in their place along with Democrats and everyone else who does not support him is the Song of the King for the coming election campaign.

America’s liberal democracy is under attack and shows already some cracks. Just like power-hungry leaders abroad, such as Erdogan in Turkey or Viktor Orban in Hungary break institutions or hand them over to loyal supporters, Trump, too, has partners in Courts, the Department of Justice, and most of all in the Republican majority caucus in the US Senate.

When the Dear Leader is Said to Be Sent by God

By Brigitte L. Nacos

“Loved watching the crowd fill up for the 547th Rally in Green Bay. There has never been and probably never will be a movement like this again. Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation and only God could allow me to help. God bless America!”

The above tweet posted by Donald Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale on April 30, 2019 celebrated the U.S. President as savior sent to America by God. Parscale was and is not an exception among those who worship the Dear Leader in the White House as God-sent gift. Others in Trump’s orbit and many of his supporters among Evangelicals--ministers and rank and file supporters-- believe that he is the leader of a divine movement blessed by the Lord.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the recently departed White House press secretary, told the Christian Broadcast Network News when she was still in office,  

”I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president. And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

Earlier this week and following Trump’s racist tweets against four members of Congress, all women of color, Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the only black cabinet member, praised Trump during a cabinet meeting in the White House,

“You know," he said, "as I told you before, I think God is using you.”

This kind of worship is not unique among coteries surrounding divisive, racist, illiberal leaders. And it is not unique for hard-core rank-and-file supporters.

Comparisons to those surrounding Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany are instructive:  

Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, said in a speech, “With all our powers we will endeavor to be worthy of the Führer [Hitler] thou, O Lord, has sent us!”  

Hermann Goering, one of the most fanatical and most influential figures in the Nazi party and Hitler’s government, told the nation, “God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany.”

Joseph Goebbels, Secretary of Propaganda, who had grown up in a very religious family, stated, “We have a feeling that Germany has been transformed into a great house of God, including all classes, professions and creeds, where the Führer [Hitler] as our mediator stood before the throne of the Almighty."

There are valuable lessons to be learned from the past, But too often, as in today's America, those lessons and warnings are ignored by open worshipers and silent enablers of the occupant of the Oval Office.    

God Help America!

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Instead of singing “God bless America” this July Fourth holiday, we must rather wish and sing, “God help America!”

We do not need blessings for the dismal state of affairs but rather help to prevent further damage to our democracy.

To be sure, the great ideals of America were never fully realized—but there has been progress, sometimes more rapidly and sometimes more slowly.

Since Donald Trump took the highest office in the land, the president himself, his advisers, his incompetent department heads, the blindly following GOP in Congress, and his media propagandists led by FOX news have violated or supported the violation of laws and democratic rules of the game. Instead of moving Americans forward to a more promising future, they united to usher in a reactionary regime presided over a demagogue in bed with despicable dictators around the world.

Trump’s role at the G-20 meeting in Japan and his self-organized unreal reality show meeting with North Korea’s supreme human rights violator Kim Jong-Un was another embarrassing horror show on the international stage. After sharply criticizing Japan and Germany just before the meeting began, Trump’s jovial get-togethers with Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman( MBS), bolstered the international standing of ruthless rulers that violate civil liberties, human rights, and international law.

Trump continues to believe Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election campaigns in order to help candidate Trump rather than believing his own intelligence agencies that found ample proof of Russian malfeasance.  He believes MSB’s implausible denials that he ordered brutal murder of a Saudi journalist and U.S. resident in spite of contrary findings by the CIA and the United Nations.

The Donald’s latest meeting with North Korea’s Kim, with whom he fell in love thanks to the North Korean’s lovely letters, was not only celebrated by the President but by the American mainstream media as “historical.” Obviously, the very press that Trump has labeled again and again “enemy of the American people,” is falling again for his pre-campaign antics as they did before and during his 2016 campaign.

While Trump assured Kim and the world that he was “honored” by the joined crossing of the border between the two Koreas and lauded the Chairman Kim’s “powerful voice,” North-Korean security guards and state press used physical force against American journalists in the official press pool who pushed for access—bruising the new White House press secretary in the process.

Trump and his crew, including daughter and son-in-law, ignored these signs of Kim Jong-un’s horror show—probably happy  to draw the attention of Americans away from potential Trump opponents in the 2020 electoral race.

That brings me to the second point why God needs to help America this July Fourth: Unless Democrats competing to challenge the President next week get their act together, they will hand Trump his reelection on a platter. While it is fine to point to Trump’s promises made and promised broken record, Democrats need to offer voters a precise program for a brighter future in both domestic and foreign affairs.

Flattering Trump and Avoiding War

 

By Brigitte L. Nacos

There is no doubt the John Bolton, President Trump’s National Security advisor, has been itching to go to war against Iran for decades. And now, he finally sees a very good chance to realize his plan. In a way, the hawkish Bolton in the Trump White House resembles the hawkish Richard Cheney in the George W. Bush White House, where the then Vice-President (along with fellow neo-conservatives) finally got his war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq that they had plotted for years.

So, today, the worries that the Middle East will soon see another war of choice, not a war of necessity, are real. In the current climate, wittingly or unwittingly, hostilities can break out any time.

However, in one respect the build-up to the Iraq invasion was different than the current period of heightened conflict rhetoric.

George W. Bush was different than Donald Trump—especially in one important respect: Contrary to George W. the current president is an extreme narcissist who needs constant admiration, affirmation, and assurances of love.

The mirror-hungry Trump looks day-in and day-out for reflections of complete devotion—on FOX News, during his frequent rallies, in the absolute obedience and service of Republican politicians, his on-their- knees cabinet members, and his White House advisers.

Nothing is feeding his insatiable appetite for compliments more than assurances by his admirers that God send him to be the leader of America.

Obviously, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Um recognized the U.S. president’s narcissistic traits and fed his ego in “lovely” letters and personal encounters.

While the North Korean leader and his minions clash with members of Trump’s cabinet, they never have a bad word for Trump himself. In the words of President Trump, he and Um, “We fell in love!”

In this spirit, the narcissist Trump downplays the missiles that North Korea test-fires now and then as not violating his accord with Um. And never mind they expansive nuclear arsenal.

As for Iran, there is a constant drum beat of rhetorical attacks on Iran although there is no conclusive evidence that Tehran violated the Nuclear Accord that was agreed on by the Obama administration, Europeans, Russia, and China but severed quickly by the Trump White House.

Earlier this year, the National Security Advisor used a YouTube clip to send a message to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It was not a congratulatory gesture at the 40^th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution in 1989 but rather a threat. Directly addressing the Ayatollah, Bolton ended his message with the sentence, “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy.”

But war is not inevitable.

According to reports Trump so far resists Bolton’s anti-Iranian drum beats, is not ready for war.

The Ayatollah and/or Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani could send a “lovely” letter to Mister Trump and exploit his narcissistic needs. Just like the one time Trumpian “rocket man” Um recognized that the U.S. President is a real sucker for flattery, the Iranian leadership could play their cards in similar ways and beat Bolton and other hawks in Washington and elsewhere.  

While the tough words of Iran's leaders do not favor my peace diplomacy I still hope that soft (and clever) power trumps hard power.

 

 

 

The Christchurch Terrorist: The Personified Evil

By Brigitte Nacos

After seeing the most gruesome ISIS videos that showed the meticulously staged executions of hostages, the beheading, the drowning, the burning of victims, I thought that I couldn’t see anything worse, nothing more inhumane.

This morning I was proved wrong.

The video that the Christchurch terrorist shot with a camera seemingly attached to his helmet or cap and streamed on the best known social media platforms during his killing spree is of unspeakable cruelty.

Not only did the killer shoot peaceful, innocent human beings as they were worshiping in a mosque, he aimed at the same people—dead or injured already—again and again.

When he was nearly out of ammunition, he walked back to his car shooting at pedestrians further away to his right and left. He took another handgun from the trunk of the car, walked back into the mosque, and aimed his shots again at the people lying in their blood on the floor.

What I saw was the personified evil devoid of any humanity.

And, no, contrary to the common but false narrative of our time, this terrorist was not a Muslim, not a jihadist affiliated with ISIS or like-minded groups.

He was a White Nationalist, an angry, hateful racist with an Australian passport who wanted to fire the first deadly shots in a war against “invaders” of different religions and races.

When I read the 74-pages of a tract that the mass killer posted online, I was hardly surprised. He expresses the same hate, the same ignorance, the same calls for defending the white race, the same appetite for all-out race war, and the same attacks on humanitarian leaders who opened their countries’ doors to non-white, Christian refugees. On this count, he attacks most of all German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  

These racist outbursts are nothing new; they are central to the regular discourse on white supremacy/neo-Nazi online discussion boards, web sites, and social media accounts. The resemble the message sent by the Alt-Right’s “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville in 2017 that President Trump could not bring himself to condemn.

The mass killer of Christchurch is at home in the white nationalist online milieu. His primitive declaration that the news media characterized as "manifesto" celebrates among others the Norwegian white nationalist Anders Breivik (who killed 77 people to highlight his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda) and the American white supremacist Dylan Roof (who in 2016 killed 9 African Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church).

While Facebook and Twitter closed the terrorist’s accounts and thereby tried to block access to the horrific video and the terrorist tract titled “The Great Replacement,” both were readily available on White Supremacy sites.

That alone attests to the fact that the Christchurch terrorist did not think, plan, and act in a vacuum. He is part of a growing international front of White extremism that spans from North America to Europe and Australia and poses just as serious a threat as does Muslim extremism.

A fact that European governments have come to recognize contrary to top-decision-makers in Washington. 

If Howard Schultz Runs in 2020 as an Independent, Could a Boycott of Starbucks Stop Him?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After the first two years of Trump’s presidency and the recent shut-down of the federal government the number one imperative must be is to vote the MAGA man in 2020 out of office.

I believe that the impeachment route would be merely another irritant and stall in the GOP dominated US Senate. Democracy is best served when the electorate decides.

The biggest hurdle to vote Trump out could well be the candidacy of independent or third party candidates. Think of Jill Stein of the Green Party who might have drawn enough votes in crucial states to deny Hillary Clinton and hand Trump the victory.

Yet, Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, talks now publicly about a possible run in 2020—as an independent candidate.

What makes rich guys like Ross Perot in the 1990s and Schultz now think that they alone can heal all the ills of our political system? A good guess here is that it might be the same arrogance and hubris which motivated in the past and still motivate today the current occupant of the White House.

If Mr. Schultz believes that he is the best candidate for the highest office in the land, he should compete in the primaries of the Democratic Party given his liberal credentials.

Another business man and billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, who did a good job as Mayor of New York City, is not a pure enough liberal to have a chance to win the Democratic nomination.  He seems to recognize the pitfalls of an independent candidacy if the number one goal is to deny Trump a second term.

Schultz should take a page out of Bloomberg’s political playbook informed by experience in an actual public office and common sense.

It is telling that Trump tried this morning to goad Mr. Schultz by posting the following tweet:

Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!

Obviously, Trump would love a third candidate in the race who could win enough votes from Independents and Democrats to keep him in office.

While Howard Schultz is no longer running Starbucks he is the single-largest shareholder of Starbucks holding 33 million shares directly and 1.7 million shares indirectly through trusts as of Jun. 26, 2018.

If he runs as an independent, a massive boycott of Starbucks might stop his candidacy.

President Trump’s Rhetorical Support of Violence and the Mail-Bombs: Violent Words Result in Violent Deeds

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When President Donald Trump in the fashion of a populist demagogue celebrates a congressman who assaulted a reporter for asking a perfectly legitimate question;

When candidate Trump promised to pay legal fees for his fan boys who beat up protesters at his rallies;

When the President and his disciples call for jailing political opponents;  

When the Presidents calls opponents “evil,”

Nobody should be surprised that Trump and his GOP enablers in the Congress and other high offices incite and condone violence.

Yesterday, a pipe bomb was sent to financier George Soros who supports liberal causes. Today, there are reports of possible improvised explosive devices addressed to two other persons that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked since he declared his candidacy for the highest office in the land: Ex-Secretary of State und former U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton and  Ex-President Barack Obama.

Given the President’s daily dose of lies, alternative facts, and post-truth statements combined with his attacks on Democrats/Liberals as an existential threat to the America he and his equally reactionary supporters want to recapture, nobody should be surprised when more consequential violence will follow.

Under President Trump the United States has become more and more like a banana republic.

The old children’s rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is simply wrong.

Rhetorical attacks on individuals or groups can and do result in great harm. Hate speech can and does encourage individuals and groups to resort to violent actions against the targets of violent rhetoric.

Take the example of Dylann Roof who in 2015 shot to death nine African-Americans at the end of a bible study meeting in a Charleston, S.C., church. In his online “manifesto” he described how posted words on White Supremacy web sites had awoken his racial awareness and convinced him to move from mere words of violence to actual deeds. Since others did not act, he wrote, he had to...

By declaring himself a “nationalist” the President spilled the beans. His ideology is the same as that of those alt-right ideologues, nativists, and racists that marched in Charlottesville. The President’s divisive propaganda at each of his campaign rallies emboldens the violent characters on the extreme right further.

Just think of the members of far right hate-group Proud Boys that brutally attack the political opposition and seem reminiscent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts.

What will happen on Election Day and thereafter?

What Donald Trump Can Learn from George Washington’s and John Adam’s Problems with the Press

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Donald Trump, as candidate and far more as the 45^th US President, has relentlessly attacked news media and individuals therein for reporting critically on his and his administration’s politics and policies.

Reporting that the president does not like becomes “fake” news in White House jargon.

Trump has threatened to change the libel laws, presumably having the Supreme Court overturn the New York Times vs. Sullivan ruling that makes it next to impossible for public figures to prevail in libel actions against news organizations.

Trump should read a history book to get some sense of previous presidents’ experiences with the press. He would first of all learn that some earlier presidents had a much harder time with the press than he ever could imagine.

A good time to look at would be the 1790s and the presidencies of George Washington and John Adams, both Federalists who were vilified constantly by the Republican presses of their times.

The most influential Republican (Anti-Federalist) paper was the Aurora in Philadelphia published and edited by Benjamin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin, who hired writers like William Duane and James Callender.

Bache and his newspaper, more than any other Republican newsman and press, were constant thorns in both presidents’ hide.

Bache described President George Washington’s “comportment as ‘that of a monarch,’ his governance as the ‘apish mimickry of kingship,’ his ‘pompous carriages, splendid feasts, and tawdry gowns’ and his encouragement of the public celebration of his birthday.”

Since Bache’s Aurora was very influential in that it informed the content of many other Republican newspapers around the country, Washington war quite upset—but instead of publicly venting his feeling, he did so in conversations with and letters to friends.

In one letter, Washington wrote,  “If you read the Aurora of this city…you cannot but have perceived with what malignant industry, and persevering falsehoods I am assailed, in order to weaken, if not destroy, the confidence of the Public.”  

After George Washington died, the Aurora commented,

“If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington.

If ever a nation has suffered from the improper influence of a man, the American nation has suffered from the influence of Washington.

If ever a nation has been deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington.”