reflectivepundit

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.

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.

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.”

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.