reflectivepundit

Similarities and Differences between Car Pioneers Henry Ford and Elon Musk

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, had the foresight to produce the first automobile that was affordable for the middle class. But the successful industrialist, who became one of the wealthiest persons of his time, was also a staunch antisemite. To spread anti-Jewish biases, he purchased in The Dearborn Independent, for which he wrote a series of conspiratorial articles about the so-called global Jewish threat. After some of those racist articles were published in book-form and translated into several foreign languages, Germany’s Adolf Hitler made no secret of his admiration for Ford’s anti-Jewish tracts. Indeed, in 1938 Hitler awarded Ford with the “Grand Cross of the German Eagle,” Germany’s highest award for foreigners.

A century later, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors, had the foresight to build electric vehicles that were applauded for their environmental benefits. Once he became the richest man in the world, Musk bought the social media platform Twitter and altered it into a far-right online media named X that did not fact-check certain hate speech. The day Trump was inaugurated, Musk used the “Heil Hitler” salute in his appearance before a celebrating MAGA crowd. Six days later, he gave his explicit support to the neo-Nazi Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) Party in Germany declaring in his virtual speech that it was time for Germany to “move on” from “past guilt.” His listeners understood what he meant, namely, that the German people should simply forget about the holocaust and the death of six million Jews during Hitler’s Third Reich.  

Henry Ford was a politically influential player in the first decades of the 20^th century. But neither Ford nor any other unelected person was ever given so much direct decision-making power as Musk got within the first two weeks of the Trump regime. That was his award for donating $277 million to the Trump campaign 2024.

The other day, it was reported that Musk and his minions gained unprecedented access to the Treasury Department’s records of the recipients of government payments. One can only assume that this is a key to the work of his imaginary Department of Government Efficiency and/or the new rule of revenge in the administration. The abrupt closing of the USAID agency’s headquarters and its work around the world is also part of the executive power grabs at the expense of the legislative branch.

The Republican majorities in both houses of the Congress are on their knees and not willing to defend their constitutional roles. Many are happy sycophants; others know better but are afraid of MAGA’s revenge against anyone not 100 percent behind the authoritarian rule of the oligarchs.

Those, who criticize congressional Democrats for not fighting what is unfolding, forget the restrictive role of the minority. It is only, when the negative consequences of the just started tariff war and other ill-advised policies of the current administration hit home in the electorate, that Democrats can and must blame those who caused the dilemmas to come…

The Paradox of Donald Trump’s Victory Makers

By Brigitte L. Nacos

A few days after Donald Trump moved into the White House in January 2017, he signed an executive order that prohibited citizens of Muslim majority countries to enter the United States. He frequently called Muslims and Arabs at home and abroad terrorists. Yet, before Election Day, two Muslim and Arab leaders in Michigan endorsed Trump. One of them called the GOP candidate “a man of peace.” In Dearborn, where 55 percent of residents are of Middle Eastern descent, and in neighboring Dearborn Heights, where more of a third of citizens are Muslims and/or Arabs, Trump beat Kamala Harris handily. Most of these Trump voters are upset about President Biden’s support of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon. But if they believe that Trump will be more helpful to Palestinians and the Lebanese population, they are mistaken. Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s “historic victory” knowing that his strongman colleague will not interfere with his controversial policies.

Exit polls revealed on Election Day that 54 percent of voters had an unfavorable view of Donald Trump and 55% considered his views “too extreme.” Yet, Trump won the national popular vote along with the winning Electoral College votes. In other words, although a majority of voters had very negative views of Trump, enough of them voted for him.

Given Trump’s starring role in the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the horrific consequences of draconian anti-abortion laws in a bunch of states, it was no surprise, when opinion polls suggested that a sizeable majority of well educated, white suburban women, especially Independents, would vote for Harris this time around. It did not happen. Harris won merely 54 percent of the women’s vote nation-wide. It was not enough. In Montana and Missouri abortion rights amendments passed with strong female support. But ironically, many of the same female voters ignored the threat of a national ban of abortions under the coming Trump presidency, when they cast their votes for the GOP candidate.

Since he entered the political arena in 2015, Donald Trump has called Latinos criminals, rapists, animals, and carriers of diseases and bad genes. Yet, 54 percent of Latino men voted for the former president compared to 44 percent for Harris. In 2020, Joe Biden received 59 percent and Donald Trump 36 percent of the male Latino vote. In some states, namely Pennsylvania and Michigan, the Latino share of the vote might have contributed to Trump’s victory.

In sharp contrast to many other countries, America is still not ready to elect a woman president. This time, voters picked the same narcissist for the second time, while rejecting his highly qualified female competitor.

Trump will Do What’s Best for Women, Whether They Like it or Not.

By Brigitte L. Nacos

At a campaign stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Donald Trump told America’s women that he would protect them, “whether the women like it or not.” He also revealed that his aides told him, not to make the remark and that he told them, "I said, 'Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them.”

What the former president and once-again candidate for the highest office in the land, said, is a metaphor for his life-long patronizing attitude towards and sexual aggression against women.

He has sold himself forever as the best and the brightest, the toughest and the most successful, the best-looking alpha male who gets what he wants. Whatever it takes.    

In private life, in business, and in politics.

While misogynist Trump has attracted far more male than female hard-core supporters, a significant segment of white women is also loyal to him and his cult.

But in the 2022 mid-term elections and abortion referenda in several states, a significant number of conservative women voted with Democrats.  

Earlier this week, I was convinced that the opposition to Row v. Wade among those Republican women had declined. I assumed that many of them had returned to the fold.   

Now, I wonder whether “Trump being Trump” went too far with his chauvinist declaration of patriarchic Trumpian suppression of women’s agency.

At earlier campaign rallies, he insisted that he is the “protector of women” and wanted to take their minds away from “thinking about abortion.”

Now, all American women, including conservative ones, know how the Trumpian wind blows against all aspects of gender equality.

Perhaps, Trump’s latest macho bullet will ricochet back to marking his defeat thanks to women who are changing their voting decisions in these last days before Election Day…

When Trump and his Supporting Cast Spew Vitriol, the Dear Leader, GOP Officials, and Wall Streeters Like What They Hear and See

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When you thought that Donald Trump and his supporting cast could not go lower in their dangerous and crude attacks against opponents, the cult upped the ante last Sunday.

The horror-show at Madison Garden proved once again that these dirt-throwing characters find ever more hostile, threatening, vulgar and obscene put-downs of what their leader calls regularly the enemies within that he and his crew promise to persecute, execute, drive out of the country…

Starting with the election of Barack Obama and intensifying during the 2016 campaign, boundless hate of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Democrats dominated many niche websites at the far-right. Most people never read and heard the stuff.

But during Trump’s presidency and even more so after he left the White House, far-right extremism, the dehumanization, and the vilification of Americans outside the MAGA community along with the rhetorical war against legal and undocumented immigrants became part and parcel of one of the two major parties: Trump’s GOP.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was among those who warmed up the crowd in the Garden. When other supporting actors called Vice President Harris a prostitute controlled by pimps and the anti-Christ, a devil; when a self-described comedian characterized Puerto Rico as "a floating island of garbage” and Hispanics as fertile breeders of children, the House Speaker nor any other member of congress protested.

How could they? Their Dear Leader’s rhetoric picked up, where the supporting cast left off. And the crowd in the full Madison Square Garden gave them all jubilant ovations.

Wall Street, too, loved the celebration of right-wing extremism. As Yahoo’s financial page reported the day after,

• Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) extended its five-week surge on Monday, rising as much as 20% following Donald Trump's rally at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden (MSG) over the weekend as investors bet on improved chances the former president wins the November election.

In other words, after the former president, his sycophants, and the MAGA masses descended into the ultimate sinkhole of inflammatory rhetoric, the stocks of Trump’s media company jumped significantly higher in anticipation of a more likely second Trump presidency.

 

The Washington Post as We Knew It Is Dying in Daylight

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In February 2017, weeks after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States, the Washington Post put the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” underneath its masthead. These four words warned of democracy’s vulnerability and assured this leading newspaper’s journalistic pledge to defend democracy.

Yesterday, two minutes before noon on Friday, October 25, 2024, Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis published a short opinion piece declaring that the paper would not endorse any presidential candidate. He ended a practice going back to the endorsement of Jimmy Carter in 1976. It is also telling that the decision came after the opinion editor of the paper along with several member of the editorial board had drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris.

This retreat from journalistic ethics, namely, the responsibility of journalists and editors to hold those in power responsible for undemocratic behavior, was for me the last straw.

I canceled my subscription immediately.

As I read the Lewis declaration, I was momentarily shocked. But I was not surprised. I had noticed well before that the formerly sharp and deep bite of the Post’s watchdog role was getting increasingly weaker in the days and months after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post, appointed Lewis earlier this year.

The controversial British journalist and media manager honed his skills in several of Rupert Murdoch’s papers. Shortly after his take-over in Washington, he got rid of the well-respected editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee and hired several of his former British colleagues away from Murdoch papers for the highest editorial positions.

There came an announcement of staff reductions with an opportunity to get rid of the best and brightest reporters and editors and there were multiple editorial initiatives and changes that seemed more appropriate for a tabloid, not for a serious newspaper.

The Washington Post as we have known it since its fine investigative roles in the Pentagon Papers Case and the Watergate Scandal is dying in bright daylight. And that at a time, when democracy is under attack from a far-right movement and its anti-democratic leader who makes no secret of his fascist plans.

The Murdoch-ization of the Washington Post is progressing fast. One can only assume that this was what Bezos had in mind, when he put a Murdoch crew in charge.

Trump and Vance: Sexist Autocrats at the Gate of Power

By Brigitte L. Nacos

One reason why the name “strongmen” befits autocrats is that they typically have a male superiority complex. In the fascist mind, men are the superior and women the inferior gender.  

Italy’s Benito Mussolini claimed that women “never created anything.” 

Germany’s Adolf Hitler wrote in his manifesto Mein Kampf,

“The rights of citizenship shall be conferred on every young man whose health and character have been certified as good, after having completed his period of military service. The German girl is a subject of the State but will become a citizen when she marries.”

A century later, after women in western democracies won voting and other rights, anti-democratic far-right autocrats threaten the progress that women fought for in the past.

Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance are poster boys of sexist would-be strongmen in the current campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris is their main target.

At a recent campaign stop, Trump told the crowd that “Joe Biden became mentally impaired; Kamala was born that way.” What a display of sexism. For Trump, old age affected the male opponent’s mental abilities, the female opponent was never mentally fit but born, as Trump claimed at another occasion, with “a low IQ.”

The former president’s vulgar denigration of the vice president is both sexist and racist. When he called her the other day “lazy as hell,” he invoked an old stereotype of blacks. In 2016, Trump’s rhetorical attacks against Hillary Clinton were sharp, but nothing came close to his vicious language against Harris. “You are a shit vice president,” he shouted at one rally. And the crowd screamed back in an enthusiastic chorus, “shit, shit, shit.”

JD Vance seconds everything his “Dear Leader” spills out. And then he dishes out his own extreme ideas and plans. Like Hitler and other past and present strongmen nationalists, Vance’s reactionary notion of females’ role in life is their duty to bear children and keep house. Vance wants “childless cat ladies” and married couples without off-springs to pay higher taxes and have diminished voting rights. The latter punishment for not having “a direct stake” in their country would be achieved by giving children voting rights to be executed by their parents.

Just as telling is Vance’s agreement with the statement of one like-minded fellow that the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female is helping to raise children--supposedly he meant grandchildren.

Obviously, Vance has learned from his mentor Peter Thiel, a wealth, anti-democratic high-tech guy who wrote in an essay that “the extension of the franchise to women was one of the major reasons for the decay of America’s democracy.”

Thiel and his authoritarian Silicon Valley brethren, who are contributing generously to the Trump-Vance campaign, would get their say in a Trump/Vance administration.

With sexist autocrats at the gate of power, women must stop them, when they cast their votes.  

How Trump’s Gene Theory Copycats Hitler’s Aryan Superiority Tale

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Earlier this month, in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump attacked Kamala Harris’s immigration record by claiming that illegal aliens commit crimes because they have bad genes. He said, “You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes.”

A year earlier, Trump accused illegal immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”  He also called illegals “animals” and “not-human.”

And in his acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican Party’s Nominating Convention, he warned contrary to the facts,

• The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country. They are coming in from every corner of the earth…They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums…That’s why, to keep our family safe, the Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.

In short, Trump claims that illegal immigrants, who are mostly brown and black, have bad genes and thereby poison the purity of white Americans who have good genes. For him, that is a  reason to remove them from American soil.

That should give all non-white citizens pause, when they fill out their ballot less than four weeks from now. We know from his many racist remarks and actions in the past that Trump applies his unscientific gene theory to non-white citizens as well.

Trump’s dangerous claims are very similar to Adolf Hitler’s race theory. In his manifesto “Mein Kampf,” Hitler attacked German Jews as plague that endangered the Aryan superiority which he believed was based on good genes and blood. In his manifesto “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote nearly a century ago,  

• History furnishes us with innumerable instances that prove this law [of nature]. It shows, with a startling clarity, that whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture.

And in a speech in Munich, Hitler said,

• WE DEMAND IMMEDIATE EXPULSION OF ALL JEWS WHO HAVE ENTERED GERMANY SINCE 1914, and of all those, too, who through trickery on the Stock Exchange or through other shady transactions have gained their wealth.Against the infection of materialism, against the Jewish pestilence we must hold aloft a flaming ideal [of the superiority of Aryan genes].

Many influential people in Germany, political and business leaders, did not believe that Hitler planned to make his race theory part and parcel of his domestic policy, once he would become Germany’s leader. But many Germans bought his scapegoating of their Jewish fellow-citizens blaming them for all the problems the country had at the time.

Today, Trump’s stereotyping of illegal immigrant is enthusiastically supported by MAGA crowds and many GOP politicians. Opponents are silent because they do not have the backbone to speak the truth.

Trump has promised the biggest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history and the establishment of detention camps to facility this task once he is president again.

We should remember that Hitler threatened “only” the expulsion of Jews from their German homeland before he came to power.

And we all know what he did as strongman leader.

 

To Unmask the Trump-Vance Threat, Harris and Walz Must Call a Spade a Spade

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After he learned that Kamala Harris had chosen Tim Walz as running mate, Donald Trump claimed in a post on his social media platform Truth Social (what an ironic name!), “This is the most Radical Left duo in American history…” This was a mild version of his usual accusations that characterize his domestic political “enemies” as existential threat to America. On Veterans Day last November, for example, Trump said,

“The real threat is from the radical left. And it’s growing every day, every single day… They lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible…They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream…We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

He and his acolytes have revealed what they mean with rooting out the enemy within, namely, to destroy the “deep state” and the “administrative state” and replace them with MAGA loyalist who are being trained for their “patriotic” duty in the next Trump administration. Oh, yes, after the mainstream media finally covered the scary content of “Project 2025” at some length, Trump distanced himself from the far-right blue print. But the same Trump supporters who worked on that project are involved in a more detailed plan for the transition from the Biden to another Trump presidency.

And nobody should forget that the former president has threatened retribution against non-loyalists, that he has talked about prosecuting and executing high level members in his administration and in the congress who stood up to his illegal schemes.

Trump’s illegal and immoral actions and plans are so numerous that they seem normal and not worth mentioning.

The normalization of Trump’s extremism and its blessing by his running mate are great, perhaps the greatest problems for his opponents in this campaign. In their efforts to counter the dark picture of contemporary America that Trump and his side-kick JD Vance are painting, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are embracing hope and joy and laughter. That is a wonderful antidote to the script of the MAGA leaders that speaks to the fear and resentment that they stoke in their supporters.    

But the lion’s share of the Harris/Walz campaign energy must be reserved to unmask the existential threat that Trump and Vance post for America. That is not a laughing matter. Satire, jokes, and hints will not do.

Harris and Walz must call a spade a spade and bare the undemocratic views and plans of former president Trump and U.S. Senator Vance as un-American. They must explain the devastating consequences of the MAGA agenda and its implementation for the mass of Americans. And they must deny the far-right’s birthright to patriotism and the American flag.

When Vice President Harris spoke in Philadelphia about the “promise of America” coming true for her and her team-mate Walz and used the refrain “Only in America,” the crowd screamed repeatedly, U.S.A!

That was a good beginning for their 90-day campaign.

President Biden Cannot Win the November Election; He Must Step Down NOW

In this morning’s Washington Post the journalist Sally Quinn recalls the mental and physical decline of her husband Ben Bradlee, the well-known executive editor, who led the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal. Under the headline “My husband was slowing down. He needed protecting,” she describes in sadness what she calls up front “A story for Jill Biden,” the growing signs of dementia.

I hope that the First Lady and Joe Biden’s most influential advisors read this heartbreaking narrative of the progressive deterioration of Sally Quinn’s husband and how she protected him from doing publicly and privately what he was no longer able to do.

 If anyone had doubts about President Biden’s mental and physical decline, there was no denying after his catastrophic failure during the first debate with Donald Trump. While not as bad as the debate non-performance, his following public communication opportunities did not wipe out the terrible memories of the televised event.

Biden’s wife and sister along with his closest aides may have been in denial about the true state of the president’s decline for quite some time. But how can they ignore what unfolded in the last five or so weeks in full view of the American public? They all should arrange for a replay—or several--of the first presidential debate and meet reality. President Biden’s condition does not allow him to be a strong candidate and certainly not an effective president during a second term.

Surveys show that Donald Trump’s lead, especially in swing states, has increased. I do not see a path for Joe Biden to win the November election. And when the top dog loses, chances are that the rest of the ticket loses in greater numbers as well.

Today, a united front of Democrats, elected and appointed officials inside and outside of congress, must convince the president to abandon his candidacy. According to polls a strong majority of rank-and-file Democrats will agree with them. In short, with Biden as candidate, there may well be a landslide win for Trump and the GOP. With another candidate, younger, stronger, articulate, there will be at least a slim chance to prevent a second Trump term and majorities on both congressional chambers.

I like Joe Biden and thank him for his accomplishments during his presidency. If he stays in the race, I will vote for him as I would vote for a dog-catcher running against the former president. But my respect for President Biden will diminish as will his historic legacy.

Hate Speech and Violence are Contagious; Don’t Count on Sudden Civility

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After spending decades studying all aspects of political violence/terrorism, even the most horrific verbal and physical violence does not shock me. When I watched the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on live television, I was not surprised. Just as I was not surprised, when I saw the violent images of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. No, I could not have predicted what would happened to whom at what venue. But when political actors and groups of one persuasion label opponents regularly as illegitimate, enemies, and evil threats, there will be violent consequences sooner or later. There is some evidence that political violence is contagious in that it persuades other actors to carry out similar attacks.

President Joe Biden asked Americans to take down the temperature of divisive discourse in the hope that a less hostile climate would prevent further violence. Don’t count on it. Both sides believe that the stakes in the upcoming elections are the highest in modern times.

This morning, congressman Scott Perry (R-PA) was interviewed on the BBC News Hour on Public Radio. Perry, a close Trump ally, was one of the House members involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 elections. Today, after some lip service to President Biden’s call for tuning  down the temperature of the political rhetoric, he put all the blame for some of Trump’s rhetoric on the other side blaming the government and the weaponized Department of Justice for persecuting Donald Trump since 2015. In response, Trump was just defending himself.

But while it seems difficult for many commentators, especially those who are liberal, to set the record straight after a failed assassination attempt, it needs to be done.

Yes, there have been aggressive rhetoric and hate speech on the far-left that targeted Trump, MAGA, and the GOP. But whereas the far-right and its rhetoric have  gone mainstream and were adopted by one of our two major parties, the far-left has not such a reach. There is no major far-left movement, party, and leader.

That is the difference.

The latest phase of the current political climate in our country began with the election of the first Black U.S. president in 2008. A few weeks after Barack Obama’s inauguration, the Tea Party was established—officially, as an anti-tax movement—even though Obama had not initiated legislation at that early time. Eventually, the libertarian—less government--wing of the movement was overshadowed by social/cultural/religious/white conservatives, many of whom were “birthers.”

Donald Trump made himself the self-appointed propagandist for the anti-Obama rumors that the sitting president was not born in the U.S. and therefore an illegitimate office holder and likely a Muslim, not a Christian. With that role on his resume, Trump won the support of many Tea Partiers, especially religious nationalists, and Birther conspiracy theorists, once he won the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. The extremism on Tea Party and Birther online discussion boards and social media became more pronounced in the MAGA movement and Trumpian GOP.

Their call to action was and remains, Attack, Attack, Attack.

Because President Biden mentioned the Jan 6 insurrection attempt among other violent attacks in his conciliatory speech, he was attacked by Republicans demanding to forget about Jan 6, not mentioning it any more. They defended their leader who has promised that he will pardon the “political prisoner” jailed for their Jan 6 crimes on day one of his second presidency.

It has been reported that Donald Trump rewrote his originally tough speech for the National Nominating Convention at Milwaukee this week and hast tuned it down. This was not exactly what he did yesterday in a post on Truth Social, when he wrote,

• “In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win."

Nothing changed. Just another wording of what he has called repeatedly “the last battle” that his side is fighting and must win against the existential Evil threat.

This reality does not bode well for less hate speech and less violence.