reflectivepundit

Warning to Progressive Democrats: The Devil is in the Name

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When activists of the Netroots Nation met the other day in New Orleans  to discuss their strategies for the 2018 mid-term and the 2020 presidential elections, they heard from several potential presidential contenders of the Democratic Party—among them Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren. But it was Cynthia Nixon, a challenger of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reelection bid from the left, who addressed the controversial “s” word for socialist.

Nixon appealed to the progressive crowd not to shy away from the “democratic socialist” label or their agenda. “Republicans call us socialists no matter what,” she said.

The problem is, however, that the devil is in the name. And the “s” word for socialist does not sit well with Democrats and Independents either. While most Americans would be hard pressed to define the term, there is no love lost when it comes to socialism that tends to be equated with communism.

So, progressive leaders from Bernie Sanders to Cynthia Nixon and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and progressive activists everywhere drop the label “socialism” and replace it with a more benign and actually more fitting “s” word --social.  

Call yourself Social Democrats, call your agenda social, call your distinct partisan wing “Social Democrats of America” (different from your current name Democratic Socialists of America).

Your agenda is social—health care and education for all, living wages, environmental protection, human rights for asylum seekers and immigrants, and so much more of what you find in Western Europe’s comparable democracies. Most, if not all of what Progressives here fight for has long been adopted in EU countries—most of all a social safety net for everyone.

So, again, the devil is in the name. Keep the letter “s” but change the word to social!

The Damning Facts that Drive Trump’s Lies and the Hope for Truthtellers

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The facts are clear: Russian operatives controlled by Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential elections with the intent to help Donald Trump to become president. The highest U.S. intelligence officials, all appointees of this president, and the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee controlled by a GOP chair and majority, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller agree on this.

Today, Putin admitted that he wanted Trump to win while, not surprisingly, denying any wrongdoing.

Even as he stood next to Russia’s authoritarian leader President Trump attacked the facts, repeated the lies he tweets day-in and day-out, and attacked alleged foes at home, while his actual words and body language showered admiration on the autocrat he obviously fears.

In her essay “Truth and Politics” Hannah Arendt wrote that “truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other.” Still, in spite of her claim that lies are in the tool box of most, if not all politicians, she was aware of the danger of lies trumping facts. Thus, she wrote, “The chances of factual truth surviving the onslaught of power are very slim indeed…”

That’s what Americans are faced with today: Will the truth or will lies prevail?

As the Mueller investigation moves ever closer to Trump’s campaign crew and perhaps his family, as the indictments multiply and the trial of Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort nears, the president fights the truth with lies. In her philosophical essay Arendt wrote, “Unwelcome facts possess an infuriating stubbornness that nothing can move except plain lies.”

Will President Trump manage to replace the unwelcome truth with lies?

What happened today in Helsinki was even in Trump’s dreadful playbook a new low for any president and worse yet than his bullying of NATO, the EU, and the British Prime Minister last week. The horror show was not an assurance of the Trumpian “America First” promise but rather a declaration of love to Putin and “Russia First.”  

Yet, just like Trump declared the meetings in Brussels and the United Kingdom as historical success stories, he already praised himself for his success he achieved in Helsinki “for the American people.”

Will his advisers, will Republicans in Congress, will his appointees in the intelligence community continue to support this president as they did after each of his many outrageous missteps in the past?

Or will one truthteller or a group of truthtellers finally step forth and confront the liar-in-chief and the community of his enablers and supporters in the White House, in the administration, in the Congress, in states, cities, and counties with the facts, the truth?

Hannah Arendt wrote, “Where everybody lies about everything of importance, the truthteller…in the unlikely event that he survives, he has made a start toward changing the world.”

We can only hope and pray for such truthtellers and their survival. Otherwise, God help America as we love it.

Call Them Asylum Seekers or Refugees—Not Illegal Immigrants or Migrants

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As I read this morning’s New York Times at the breakfast table, an op-ed article by Brad S. Karp and Gary M. Wingens, chairmen of two of the country’s most prestigious law firms, was of particular interest.

First, the authors provide a concise survey of President Trump’s violations of international and constitutional law in his administration’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers at the country’s Southern borders. Second, the article reveals that the law firms Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Loewenstein Sandler “sent a team of lawyers to represent parents detained near the border in Texas” cooperating with non-profit organizations that try to protect the rights of affected adults and children.

What struck me though was the article’s headline “An Army of Lawyers for Migrants.” The authors do not use the term migrants that would indicate people moving from place to place mostly to find work but they rather write of “families seeking asylum” and refugee laws about the legal requirements for the treatment of asylum seekers.

When I saw the same article in the online opinion section of the Times I noticed that it had the fitting headline: “The Law Did Not Create This Crisis, but Lawyers Will Help End It.” I bet that the wording was changed for the print edition simply to shorten the headline in disregard of the fact that the term “migrants” has a different meaning than asylum seekers.

Like the Times other leading news organizations use the terminology that this president and his supporters prefer. Whether supportive or critical of the administration’s policies and actions reports typically refer to illegal immigration and illegal or undocumented immigrants or migrants.

Thus, in today’s Washington Post an editorial critical of the crisis caused by the Trump administration carries the headline “The right way to respond to the migrant influx” and calls those crossing the borders “illegal immigrants.”

President Trump has his reasons for calling asylum seekers, refugees from dangerous places, “illegal immigrants” that “infest” or “invade” our country bringing us allegedly criminals, gangs, and rapists and prevent us to “make America great again.” Like all demagogues he utilizes the power of words to widen us-against-them and good-versus-evil divides.   

Editors and journalists, too, ought to know that language matters.

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

By Brigitte L. Nacos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am crying, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Brigitte L. Nacos

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

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

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

Least of all, President Trump!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump’s Dangerous Wrecking Crew

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Trump does not unite but he divides people and nations;

Trump does not build but he destroys bridges;

Trump does not solve but he creates problems;

Trump does not clean up but he corrupts politics;

Trump does not uphold but he violates democratic values;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Brigitte L. Nacos

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

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

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

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

Following the Florida massacre, the president tweeted,  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just thoughts and prayers—and blame of others…

When Democracy Dies in Bright Daylight

By Brigitte L. Nacos

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those are traits of dictatorial, fascist rulers.

President Trump and the Violence of the Word

By Brigitte L. Nacos

This weekend, as I listened and read assessments of Donald Trump’s first year as U.S. president, Ross Douthat’s column  in today’s New York Times caught my particular attention. His argument is, as the headline states, “so far more farce than tragedy.”

I agree that our democratic system has not been replaced (yet) by authoritarian Trumpism but disagree with the columnist’s core arguments, namely,

• that there is “a vast gulf between things Trump says he wants—which are indeed often authoritarian—and the things that actually happen in the essential characteristics of his presidency’s first year.”
• that “Trump is a dictator on Twitter, a Dear Leader in his own mind, but in the real world there is no Trumpocracy because Trump cannot even rule himself.”

These citations ignore the power of the written or spoken word. Language matters. Hate speech can and does inflict harm on the targets of hateful words—especially when these are communicated by the U.S. president  in the Oval Office, at staged cheering events amidst his most admiring fans, and, of course, on Twitter.

Whether expressed in vulgar or merely “tough” language, when the president and his minions attack and stereotype minorities, they injure their targets. Here are just a few examples from today’s mock presidential etiquette guide in the Times:

• Retweet inflammatory and fake anti-Muslim videos from an ultranationalist British group;
• Ask in a meeting with lawmakers on immigration policy, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?,” referring to Africa, and “Why do we want people from Haiti here? Take them out.”
• Warn American citizens in Puerto Rico, only weeks after a catastrophic hurricane, that the federal government can’t help them out “forever” even as you tell victims of a hurricane in Texas, “We are with you today, we are with you tomorrow, and we will be with you EVERY SINGLE DAY AFTER, to restore, recover, and REBUILD!”
• Tell Americans that a march of torch-carrying white supremacists and neo-Nazis includes “some very fine people” — and when one of those marchers murders a peaceful counterprotester, condemn violence on “both sides”

There is so much more to be added to this list of words likely to injure targeted minorities, especially Mexicans and other Latinos, among those DACA recipients. Then there are the hundreds of thousands of Salvadorians and Haitians threatened to lose their TPS status and be forced to leave this country after staying here legally for most of their lives.  And, of course, Muslims. And people of color, anyone not white. They all have been rhetorically put down by Mr. Trump. And often words are followed by deeds that cause human suffering. 

This president, no doubt, has engaged in hate speech before and during his campaign. And this did not stop once he became president.  

Unfortunately, the old children’s rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is wrong. Words do  hurt. Hate speech directed at particular ethnic, racial, religious, or other minorities or members thereof are injurious. 

The sociologist Mary Jackman has noted that hateful spoken and written words can lead to psychological, social or material injuries. Legal scholar Mari Matsuda includes physical harm as consequence of “violence of the word” and notes that the targets of such speech “experienced physiological symptoms and emotional distress ranging from fear in the gut, rapid pulse rate and difficulty in breathing, nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder, hypertension, psychosis, and suicide.”

Perhaps, the president does not know or does not care or both.

Why the Liar King in the White House Owes Thanks to the News Media

By Brigitte L. Nacos

None of his predecessors has peddled lies (and actually repeated them when proven false) as frequently as President Donald Trump. Part of the steady flow of lies (according to one count 103 in his first 10 months in office versus 18 during President Obama’s full 8 years in the White House) are first circulated via his Twitter account.

Some originate in the president’s head, others are borrowed from his propagandists at FOX NEWS and other Trump media, and still others are simply retweets of typically outrageous social media sound bites and video clips.  

While Trump has more than 45 million followers, the mainstream media that he attacks day-in and day-out spreads and magnifies his tweet production.

Indeed, you do not have to read the president’s actual tweets in order to know the content of all or most of them—simply following one or more mainstream news sites will do.

As much as propaganda is the oxygen of populists, especially of the authoritarian variety, tweets provide the oxygen for President Trump. Not so much by being posted at his Twitter account but far more by being reported, analyzed, critiqued and rehashed by literally all major and not so major news organizations.

Whenever the president tweets, the news media report and thereby magnify what Mr. Trump spits out.  

Imagine for a moment that the still free press would stop to report his tweets. To be sure, there would loyal followers accessing Trump’s account but certainly not all that signed up during the last several years.

Otherwise, Trump’s tweets would be like the tree in the forest that falls without the press being there. It would be as if it did not happen.

A non-event!   

I know that this kind of media self-censorship will not happen.

Thus, the Liar King owes thanks to the news media for providing a mighty bullhorn for his tweeted propaganda.