reflectivepundit

Shame on Mainstream Media for Publicizing another Trump for Political Office

By Brigitte L. Nacos

It is well-document that the most influential organizations of the U.S. mainstream media—from CNN to the New York Times and Washington Post—singled out Donald Trump for the bulk of their election-related coverage. This was the case in 2015 before and in 2016 during the Republican primaries. The celebrity candidate, however rude and insulting, received significantly more and more positive coverage than his competitors on the GOP side but also with respect to Hillary Clinton. Only after he had won the presidential nomination, did the same news organizations finally scrutinize the least qualified and the most dangerous of all candidates. It was too late.

While these same newsrooms deserve credit for their watchdog role during the nightmarish years of the Trump administration, they seemed not to have learned from their past mistakes in 2015/16. Again, they help—unwittingly, I assume—to pave the way for another Trump’s political career.

I was shocked this morning, when I first saw on Yahoo’s home page a story on Lara Trump, Donald’s daughter-in-law, under the headline “Lara Trump for North Carolina Senate Seat?” The article originated in the New York Times and was, as the story revealed, teased by Donald Trump’s enabler-in-chief Lindsay Graham, Senator of North Carolina, who told FOX News that the pro-conviction vote by Richard Burr of North Carolina in the Senate’s impeachment trial “made Lara Trump almost the certain nominee for the Senate seat” in that state.

So, the ambitious Trump through marriage, whose political ambitions had already been covered quite generously before, won another plum piece of free media without saying a single word or doing a single thing—just like father-in-law Donald whose ample free news in 2015/16 freed him from pleading for donations or spending his own money.

The news media must not become the former president’s substitute for his no longer available Twitter account but treat him like any former ex-president, better less so, although the FOX News newsrooms and their competitors will be delighted to serve as his bullhorns.

Just as important, the influential mainstream media must refrain from providing free publicity to other members of the Trump Clan: his sons, his daughters, daughters-in-law, and son-in-law.

When it comes to Mr. Trump and his family, journalists, editors, producers—all in the mainstream media must act according to George Santayana’s aphorism, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I do not expect that they will.

Trump and the Madman Theory: A Madman Without a Theory

 By Brigitte L. Nacos

In his book “The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World” Jim Sciutto applies President Nixon’s so-called “Madman Theory” to President Trump. But whereas Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser/Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had some, however crazy plan as they tried to convince adversaries of a president mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction to get concessions, Trump and his advisers never had a plan.

Now, after four crazy years, there is still a madman, a would-be tyrant and his hardcore followers trying to overthrow America’s more than 200-year-old democracy. What we have witnessed during the last four years and especially since Trump’s electoral defeat two months ago has been a huge step away from democratic principles—most of all the acceptance of election results by winners and losers in the pluralist system of governing.

As I watched FOX New last night at a time when Georgia’s election returns indicated a possible double win for the Democratic Party in the run-off for seats in the U.S. Senate, I heard hysterical outcries about those two “communists” ahead of their patriotic opponents. Given the long-used labels “communists” and “socialists” attached to “extreme liberals” by Trump and his propagandists, the time has come to call the Trumpian fascist movement no longer benignly “conservative” or “the conservative right,” they are in reality autocrats and, yes, they are fascists trampling on the rule of law.

At the end of his book “The Anatomy of Fascism” Robert O. Paxton details what he calls the “mobilizing passions” of fascism, among them,

• the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without any legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

• the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;

• the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success.

We see these fascist mobilizing passions at play right now at work in Washington, D.C. and around the country with the President of the United States Donald Trump in the starring role. We see these fascist mobilizing passions in the two chambers of Congress where too many GOP Senators and Representatives violate the oaths they swear to the U.S. Constitution. And we see these fascist mobilizing passions in the social media posts of online fascists who are devoted to and courted by their Dear Leader.

In two weeks, there will be a changing of the guards in Washington. Joe Biden will become U.S. President, and Kamala Harris will become U.S. Vice-President.

But to assume that the fascist passions will evaporate once Biden and Harris move into the White House would be naïve. The Madman without Theory will not go quietly into a post-presidential life.

                                                                                                              ***

I wrote the above post a few hours before Trump's fanatic followers unleashed terror in the halls of the U.S. Congress. While the violence did not surprise me at all, I watched in amazement the thin or non-existent law enforcement presence in and around Capitol Hill. Assuming that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and other agencies kept track of violent online extremist communities, law enforcement was fully aware that many fanatic Trump followers heard their idol's call to come to Washington and fight for his second term. Whereas overwhelming military and police might threatened peaceful "Black Lives Matter" demonstrators in the capital last year, the White Supremacists, typically insisting on their right to wear arms, met no serious resistance as they entered through doors and windows into congressional buildings.

After inciting and watching the seditious horror show for hours Donald Trump finally asked his terrorist followers to "go home" assuring them that he loved them...

 

 

The President Who Stole Christmas

By Brigitte L. Nacos

There will not be a Merry Christmas this year. Not in the United States of America.

Every day is now more deadly than were the horrific attacks of 9/11. Every day now, more than 3,000 Americans die as result of the Covid-19 pandemic. So far, more than 311,000 have succumbed to the illness. To put it differently, America has suffered the equivalent of 104 deadly 9/11 attacks!

Every day now, public health experts tell us that grimmer times are still to come. This morning’s heart-wrenching projection was a likely death toll of more 560,000 coronavirus victims in the U.S. by April 1, 2021.

And, yet, there is no public outcry, no public mourning. The most visible public activism is displayed by those who falsely claim to act in defense of their individual liberty and fight against mitigating health measures.

104times 9/11 in terms of lost souls seems less of a national nightmare than 9/11, when a divided nation united behind a crisis-managing president and consoler-in-chief, George W. Bush. Most embraced the notion, “Now, we are not Democrats or Republicans—we all are all Americans.”

There is no such spirit of unity and togetherness now. Just the opposite.

Unlike previous presidents, Donald Trump has not even tried to unite the country and discharge his most important duty: protecting the lives of Americans.

Instead, he denied, minimized, and completely ignored the most serious health crisis in a century at various stages. He called Covid-19 a political hoax, discredited and acted personally contrary to health experts’ mitigating guidelines, and cued his supporters to follow his dangerous words and deeds. Instead of listening to the best public health experts in the White House Covid-19 Advisory Board, Trump and his coterie sided the quackery of unqualified voices that advocated the debunked herd-immunity thesis.

As the first vaccine became available, the cheer leaders of one-term President suggested to name it “Trump Vaccine” in honor to all the good their hero has done to defeat Covid-19.

Instead, this catastrophic health saga will be remembered as the “Trump Virus” because the 45^th president knew early on how deadly this virus was and is but refused to take any mitigating actions to minimize the spread of the coronavirus.

To be sure, even if strict measures were implemented early on, Covid-19 would have taken many lives here as it did in other countries.

But this president’s complete failure of acting decisively in concert with sound scientific advice cost according to public health experts many, many more lives—probably hundreds of thousands! And many more will die in the weeks and months ahead.

No, there will not be Christmas as we know it in America. The man who stole it is President Donald Trump.

He stole it from those more than 310, 000 dead fellow-Americans and those close to them.

He stole it from those who lost their jobs and their small businesses.

He stole it from those who stand in long lines at food banks and soup kitchens.

He stole it from those children whose families face eviction from their apartments.

He stole it from Americans who seem strangely fatalistic in the face of an unspeakable crisis.

And, unlike the Grinch who stole Christmas in the famous cartoon, the man who stole this upcoming holiday in our real lives will not change his heart and mind.

Can America’s Democracy Survive the Onslaught by Trump and his Henchmen? Will the Press Act as Guardian of Democracy?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Shamelessly like autocratic rulers at all times President Trump spelled out what he had alluded to for some time: If his opponent Joe Biden wins the election, Mr. Trump will not leave office peacefully. Worse yet, he and his henchmen are now plotting a scheme that is to assure Trump’s victory as The Atlantic reported. Asked yesterday during a news briefing whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power [in case he would lose the election], Mr. Trump answered, “Get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful, there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.”  

In other words, 40 days before election day Donald Trump America and the world that he will remain U.S. president regardless of the election results. That is what happens in dictatorships, not in democracies. But during Trump’s presidency the rules of the games have already tilted in favor of raw presidential power.

To disregard Trump’s statements as just words would be a grave mistake. Especially when coming out of the mouths of the powerful, words matter; they tend to be followed by deeds.  

Like other autocrats, Trump signals his misdeeds by tweets or public statements. Thus, he makes no secret of the reason behind his rush to appoint and seat a replacement for Justice Bader Ginsberg: He wants a full Supreme Court dominated by GOP appointed conservatives in place to rule in his favor in case of a post-election dispute.

For more than 200 years, no sitting U.S. president declared upcoming elections to be illegitimate and refused to promise a peaceful change of power in case of defeat. It took the worst president in American history to throw his nation into an existential crisis of democracy.

The issue is no longer whether Republicans or Democrats win next month’s election, the issue is whether American democracy survives the already raging onslaught by an autocratic showman and his equally ruthless supporting cast.

Since there is little hope that other Republican leaders join Senator Mitt Romney in rejecting Trump’s power play, the leading media organizations may be the last hope to act as guardians of our democracy.

But that would take an agreement to report Trump’s threat to democracy day-in and day-out as most important news. It would mean for the press not to be distracted by Trump’s daily or even hourly launched rhetorical bombs that are minor in comparison to the existential danger. It would also mean that the failures of this presidency are highlighted every day, again and again.

Especially with respect to the Covid-19 pandemic. The president ignores the more than 200,000 Americans who died so far—more than half of them because of his mismanagement and his diabolical political calculations early on that states with Democratic majorities were mostly affected by the deadly disease.

It would mean for the press to remind the public that at this point the number of coronavirus victims is 70times higher than the number of those killed during the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden, in charge of those the horrific 9/11 incidents, was called here and elsewhere in the West “evil-doer.”

I have spent much times and effort to research the central role of publicity and propaganda in terrorism and argued consistently that over-covering might well encourage more such political violence.

Concerning the coverage of President Trump now, I argue similarly that the news media must refrain from over-covering him and from reporting every aggressive and nasty word he speaks and tweets.

Instead, the news media must stick to the only matter that counts now: Most prominently reported and placed news and commentary about the existential calamity Americans faces—and must resist.

Trump and his Base: Threat of Fascist “Mobilizing Passions”

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Fifteen years ago, in his excellent book “Anatomy of Fascism,” Robert O. Paxton wrote in the last paragraph of the last chapter, “Fascism exist at the level of Stage One within all democratic countries—not excluding the United States.” Today, American democracy may have moved into a higher stage of fascist infection.

I reread Paxton’s book after (1) I saw video clips of Stormtroopers in the streets of Portland, Oregon, grabbing non-violent persons and driving them away in unmarked vehicles; (2) I learned that heavily armed agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were the  “law and order” forces; (3) I read of the acting secretary of homeland security Chad Wolf tweeting that “our men and women in uniform are patriots. We will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch;” and (4) I heard Donald Trump refusing to answer the plain question, whether he would accept the election results in fall in case of his loss.

All of the above is straight out of the horror book of fascism and reminiscent of violence by Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Hitler’s Brown Shirts against political opponents during their respective leaders’ rise to dictatorial powers, and fascist leaders’ success to extend their staying power by all means.

While it seemed strange that the DHS, established after 9/11 to counter terrorism, never dispatched those agents to show their patriotism against violent right-extremists responsible for almost all domestic terrorism in the last several years, the U.S. President himself revealed that the storm trooper deployment was a partisan move to energize his movement in the forefront of the upcoming elections. “I’m going to do something — that, I can tell you,” Mr. Trump told reporters the other day. “Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these — Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.”

Just as the more than 140,000 Americans killed by the Trump virus have become our daily normalcy, the federal “law and order” violence in Portland and the promise of more of these storm trooper deployments did not result in massive public or elite outrage and protest. It seemed merely another illegitimate move by a president and his devoted servants.

Instead of providing a succinct definition of fascism Paxton enumerated what he calls “mobilizing passions,” among them the following:

• The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justified any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
• The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;
• The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;
• The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restrain from any kind of human or divine law…

We have not yet arrived at fascism as we know it from history, but we are witnessing in the age of Donald Trump demagogic populism with moves to illiberal democracy and now fascist traits as well.  

The acceptance of the unacceptable is the scariest aspect of the present political crisis. As Paxton notes rightly, fascist movements “could never attain power without the acquiescence or even active assent of the traditional elites…party leaders, high government officials” …”and the help of ordinary people, even conventionally good people.”

He ended the book with a somewhat optimistic chord. “We stand a much better chance of responding wisely, however, if we understand how fascism succeeded in the past,” Paxton wrote.  

I do not share that optimism and fear that most Americans did not learn the lesson of earlier fascism.

 

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.

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.