This comment was posted in response to a NYT article entitled, “Donald Trump Jr. and the Culture of Dishonesty”:
Ralph
pompton plains
The larger problem is that the Republican Party has been selling lies for years. It’s part of the party’s culture and made the election of a liar like Trump inevitable.
Tax cuts don’t raise revenues. Climate change is real. More guns on the street doesn’t reduce violence. President Obama is an American. Opening our markets to mercantile export economies makes multinational corporations rich, but doesn’t benefit all Americans. Cutting the safety net will not set the poor free. Repealing the ACA will not give poor people more choices. Torturing suspects doesn’t obtain truthful confessions. The market can’t fix all social problems. The Republican Party has lied about all of these issues.
In the party that deals in lies, being a dishonest liar doesn’t preclude you from being the president.
- 1538 Recommended
As reported in many papers yesterday, including the New York Times, Donald Trump Jr. received an email on June 4, 2016, from an acquaintance, Rob Goldstone, stating that a source connected to the Russian government had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. In response to this email offering information about illegal campaign contributions from Russian entities, Don the Con Jr. set up a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, which was also attended by Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. The meeting turned out to be a bust– all the lawyer wanted to talk about was the possible resumption of American adoptions of Russian children and the repeal of the Magnitsky Act.
The Magnitsky Act was passed in response to the murder, by Kremlin operatives, of the lawyer for a man who revealed damaging information about new Russian oligarchs, and it blacklisted certain Russians suspected of human rights abuses. When this law was passed in 2012, Vlad “the Impaler” Putin retaliated by halting all American adoptions of Russian children.
What is significant about this meeting is that Don Jr. scheduled it in response to an email that specifically stated that the damaging information came from Russian government sources who wanted to help the campaign of Don Sr. Naturally, Don Sr. could not be having meetings of this sort, but the thinking of campaign officials appears to have been that Don Jr. was an appropriate go-between. The fact that campaign staff were completely open to receiving damaging information from Russian sources prompts us to ask: did they think that it would be of no consequence that material assistance from foreign sources, specifically from a bitter rival of the US, was accepted by the campaign for a presidential candidate?
The very next week, a massive release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails was revealed in all national news media. These emails were preceded and followed by a fake news campaign directed by Russia that involved numerous Russian trolls in social media and on comment streams as well. These active measures by Russian intelligence agents and their contractors tilted the election enough in Don’s favor that he managed to squeak through in enough states to get an Electoral College victory. His win was considered unlikely by major media and pollsters; the fact that he did win is a major coup by the Russians, who can be said to have been primarily responsible since even though their effort may not have produced large results, only a tiny change was needed to tip the scales in Don’s favor.
Now Don the Con is trying to tell us that the word of Vlad the Impaler is more credible than the word of our four major national intelligence agencies.
Meanwhile, Don’s associate Steve Bannon is busy working on “dismantling the administrative state”, or to use a slightly more colorful phrase, “shrinking the government until it can be drowned in a bathtub.” Don has instituted a hiring freeze, failed to nominate heads of numerous agencies, dispatched loyal Trump workers with little administrative experience to most all agencies to quietly pour sand on the gears, made open threats to with-hold the federal subsidies for the purchase of insurance that are critical to the success of the Affordable Care Act, nominated people to head critical agencies that they have sworn to shut down, and so on.
By the time this bunch is removed from office, government will be so dysfunctional that it will take ten years to restore services and longer to restore public confidence. This will be fine with Don the Con, who has hitched his political star to a wrecking crew.
This is a post about a post about a new book: “Conservatives Without Conscience” by John Dean. Those of you over sixty will remember John Dean as the member of the Nixon White House who ratted out the whole grubby little conspiracy. I say “grubby” and “little” because, by modern standards, the Nixonian transgression was trivial and his attempts to cover up half-hearted. Nowadays, our leaders lie to us without compunction and you can usually tell when they’re lying but they’ll lie about that too. Can you really sit there and tell me you put any credibility into the statement by Vlad “the Impaler” Putin that he did not have anything to do with hacking the presidential election last year? By the same token, why would you take Don the Con’s word that there is no there there?
The secondary source is the website DailyKos, which has a decidedly Democratic bent; a Mrs. Robinson posted a series reviewing the book and more importantly, laying out the basics of the authoritarian follower type of personality.
To get back to John Dean’s book: he defines the authoritarian follower personality as someone who first, submits to authority (the one who agrees with his views) without question, second, aggressively (even violently) supports authority, and third, sees things with a black-and-white or four-year-old type of worldview, what he calls conventionality or conformity.
The type of people who see things this way are most often moderate- to low-educated, raised by parents who were extremely religious and have incorporated that, and frequently mid-to lower-intelligence but primarily when raised by religious bigots as parents. They are also frequently lower-income with unskilled trades or manual trades. The higher the educational level, the less likely one is to follow an authoritarian leader.
We already know what makes an authoritarian leader, but it is more important to understand what makes an authoritarian follower. The closer the person you encounter comes to following these traits, the harder it will be to convert that person away from Don-ism. Unfortunately, if they’re susceptible they’re probably already under the spell of our liar-in-chief. Once you have made the decision that a person is inconvertible, it is easier to avoid them entirely.
Now, my notes here may seem like a game of telephone, but they’re intended to point out to you that you really should read the book.
LawNewz, a law blog that otherwise has few redeeming features, posted an article on April 21 about a lawsuit from three protesters who were thrown out of a Trump rally in March 2016. They say that they were ‘roughed up’ and that Trump is liable because he incited the crowd to “get ’em out.” Trump’s lawyers’ defense against this suit is fairly bizarre, using the First Amendment to claim that he– Don the Con– was the one whose rights were infringed. This line from the blog post is particularly telling:
If that sounds like a bizarre argument grounded in narcissism and bordering on the Kafkaesque, that’s because it is.
Don’s lawyers seem to have been infected with Don’s own variety of mental illness. The arguments that the lawyers make in trying to absolve Don of responsibility claim that the protesters were infringing on Don’s First Amendment rights, even though they were private citizens, and that he is immune from lawsuits because he is the President. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Don the Con is just as vulnerable to investigation as any private citizen, and if the FBI finds out that he was acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, offering the Russians a reversal of economic sanctions applied after the annexation of the Crimea in exchange for help winning the presidential election, then he is in big trouble.
I’ll leave it to the FBI to detail the potential charges against Don the Con, since every FBI agent is trained as a lawyer. Take it from me: don’t mess with an FBI agent.
There is a report on the CNN website that sounds troubling: “Sexually Transmitted Disease rates reach record high” but it’s dated October 20,2016. I guess the media was more interested in the presidential election at that moment. The CNN report is based on a report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), one of those agencies slated for budget cuts in the new administration.
The CNN report is illustrated with posters like the one reproduced above, from WW II.
The CDC report shows numbers collected for the year 2015 of the reportable sexually transmitted diseases, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. Hepatitis C is not considered a venereal disease, but deserves a mention in this context; the CDC reported it separately on May 4, 2016.
The numbers show a yearly increase in the rate of chlamydia infections from the date it was first reportable, 1984, to 1.5 million cases in 2015. At the same time, the rate of syphilis dropped from a peak of nearly half a million cases in the first reported year, 1941, to a nadir of about 30,000 cases in 2000-1; there has been a gradual but steady increase in syphilis cases to about 75,000 in 2015. Gonorrhea rates rose from about 200,000 reports in 1941 to a million cases in 1975-1981, then dropped gradually to about 300,000 in 2009 before increasing to about 400,000 in 2015.
The numbers for these three infections are on the rise again, and the rate of chlamydia has been increasing every year for the last 30 or more years to dominate the picture.
For Hepatitis C, the situation is even worse: the CDC report shows mortality increasing by six percent a year over the last fifteen years to almost 20,000 people a year, more than any other reportable infectious disease. At the same time, the rate of HIV-related mortality has decreased a total of 42%, to under 9,000 deaths a year.
These are serious, and preventable, infections that can ruin a person’s health and life. National health insurance would go a long way towards reducing the rates and mortality from these infections. The increases in chlamydia rates, in particular, represent a failure of preventative measures that is directly related to poor education at the high school level. Sex education is critical for reducing these rates, and home schooling will not fill the bill. Only a public school with obligatory attendance by children will serve to educate and protect them from serious harm in so many ways. Our present administration is pointed in the wrong direction on this issue as on so many others.
Comment of the Day (from the Guardian)
1617i blame the government. Surely, they could issue a little handbook to the newborn explaining why life will be such a big disappointment.
Despite Growth In Renewable Energy, More Coal Plants Being Built: More Global Warming on Horizon
Despite the precipitous drop in prices for solar panels and wind turbines, companies worldwide are planning and building some 1,600 coal-fired electric power plants. The addition of these plants would increase the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent and make it impossible to meet the terms of the Paris climate accords, which aim to keep the world’s average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. China has entered the renewable-energy competition, but it is primarily aimed at reducing pollution in cities and less on overall emissions reduction.
The reason for this continued growth in coal-fired electric power plants? The motivations are unclear. Demand for infrastructure development is high in developing countries, and in places like Egypt and Pakistan, electric power supply is limited. Many African countries get by on four hours of power a day. It appears that the overall supply of new electric power generating capacity is limited, and existing solar and wind power installation growth simply is not enough to supply the rising needs of developing countries.
The development of worldwide modern infrastructure is overwhelming the capacity of the environment to tolerate it. Significant temperature increases are inevitable and development will continue to be spotty. Predictions of future temperature increases over the next hundred years are probably conservative, meaning things are going to be worse than we think.
Source for coal power plant numbers: New York Times July 1, 2017.
Civil War May Come to America
Here’s what Noam Chomsky had to say in an email interview with the NYT, conducted over the last couple of months:
Noam Chomsky: We have to be a little cautious about not trying to kill a gnat with an atom bomb. The performances are so utterly absurd regarding the “post-truth” moment that the proper response might best be ridicule. For example, Stephen Colbert’s recent comment is apropos: When the Republican legislature of North Carolina responded to a scientific study predicting a threatening rise in sea level by barring state and local agencies from developing regulations or planning documents to address the problem, Colbert responded: “This is a brilliant solution. If your science gives you a result that you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”
Ridicule is a morale-booster for our side, but it is not a weapon of attack. The only weapon that can possibly defeat the Republicans is the acquisition of enough raw power to pass laws and staff the federal executive branch with experts so that Republicanism as it now exists can be utterly destroyed. Republicanism must change or be eliminated, or Republican policies will destroy America, not to mention the world.
There is at present a significant risk of civil war between the urban population and the rural population of the US, with blacks, Latinos, and Asians being forced onto the urban side by rural racial bigotry and poor to middle-class, uneducated whites being forced onto the rural side by Republican propaganda and racial affinity. A further risk to civil war is the proliferation of lethal firearms, over 300 million in the country. As blacks have begun to feel more at risk, they have been taking advantage of lax gun-control measures to arm themselves as best they can afford. Other ethnic groups are not far behind in arming themselves.
The violent rhetoric and exclusionary policies of the current Republican administration have led to a deteriorating mental attitude among die-hard supporters of Don the Con. Here’s a quote from another article in the NYT:
One friend who twice voted for Barack Obama now sees World War III on the horizon and deeply regrets his vote for Mr. Trump.
Revolution is unlikely because the reins that hold the country together are held by the military and the National Guard, who remain loyal to their government paymasters. But small unit actions by local vigilance committees and hippies who have fled to the hills have become increasingly likely. Disintegration of the social fabric that provides people with a basic sense of security is making everyone trigger-happy.
The only thing that can hold the country together is a de-escalation of violent rhetoric and the re-establishment of benevolent government. The first thing that must happen is removal of the current administration. Then a administration must take steps to provide jobs that pay well enough to keep body and soul together to everyone, even people who don’t want to work. Everyone must have a home to live in; all foreclosures must be reversed and all housing units must be occupied. Once these basic steps have been taken to calm unrest, government must attack on the propaganda front. True propaganda must be produced that shows the actual situation in the world today, with global warming and pollution wrecking the planet and millions of people starving in countries Americans have never heard of. Someone has to lecture the American people on their duty to help make things better.
Here’s what Noam Chomsky had to say in an email interview with the NYT, conducted over the last couple of months:
Noam Chomsky: We have to be a little cautious about not trying to kill a gnat with an atom bomb. The performances are so utterly absurd regarding the “post-truth” moment that the proper response might best be ridicule. For example, Stephen Colbert’s recent comment is apropos: When the Republican legislature of North Carolina responded to a scientific study predicting a threatening rise in sea level by barring state and local agencies from developing regulations or planning documents to address the problem, Colbert responded: “This is a brilliant solution. If your science gives you a result that you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”
Ridicule is a morale-booster for our side, but it is not a weapon of attack. The only weapon that can possibly defeat the Republicans is the acquisition of enough raw power to pass laws and staff the federal executive branch with experts so that Republicanism as it now exists can be utterly destroyed. Republicanism must change or be eliminated, or Republican policies will destroy America, not to mention the world.
There is at present a significant risk of civil war between the urban population and the rural population of the US, with blacks, Latinos, and Asians being forced onto the urban side by rural racial bigotry and poor to middle-class, uneducated whites being forced onto the rural side by Republican propaganda and racial affinity. A further risk to civil war is the proliferation of lethal firearms, over 300 million in the country. As blacks have begun to feel more at risk, they have been taking advantage of lax gun-control measures to arm themselves as best they can afford. Other ethnic groups are not far behind in arming themselves.
The violent rhetoric and exclusionary policies of the current Republican administration have led to a deteriorating mental attitude among die-hard supporters of Don the Con. Here’s a quote from another article in the NYT:
One friend who twice voted for Barack Obama now sees World War III on the horizon and deeply regrets his vote for Mr. Trump.
Revolution is unlikely because the reins that hold the country together are held by the military and the National Guard, who remain loyal to their government paymasters. But small unit actions by local vigilance committees and hippies who have fled to the hills have become increasingly likely. Disintegration of the social fabric that provides people with a basic sense of security is making everyone trigger-happy.
The only thing that can hold the country together is a de-escalation of violent rhetoric and the re-establishment of benevolent government. The first thing that must happen is removal of the current administration. Then a administration must take steps to provide jobs that pay well enough to keep body and soul together to everyone, even people who don’t want to work. Everyone must have a home to live in; all foreclosures must be reversed and all housing units must be occupied. Once these basic steps have been taken to calm unrest, government must attack on the propaganda front. True propaganda must be produced that shows the actual situation in the world today, with global warming and pollution wrecking the planet and millions of people starving in countries Americans have never heard of. Someone has to lecture the American people on their duty to help make things better.
The National Center for Health Statistics has published a provisional report stating that the birth rate in the United States dropped 1% in 2016 from last year to a record low. The birth rate has been below the replacement level for some time, but the country’s population continues to grow as a result of immigration. The world’s population also continues to grow, although birth rates have dropped; see this CIA web site for authoritative figures by country. A Worldbank graphic shows the dropping birth rate since 1960, when there were roughly 5 births per woman; there are now roughly 2.46 births per woman. The Worldbank website also has graphs for life expectancy, infant mortality, and so on.
Another graph on the Worldbank website is of interest: the crude death rate in the United States. After dropping from 9.5 per 1000 in 1960 to a low of 7.9 in 2009, the rate has increased to 8.2 in 2013, then levelled off. It seems that the Great Recession has killed a few people in this country (0.3 people per thousand per year, or 300 in a million: roughly 100,000 people a year over the whole US died because of the Great Recession, and are continuing to die.)
