Nobody can speak truth to power to this president…knowing they’ll be attacked or fired over it, surefire signs of his autocratic personality. And as a pathological liar, Trump has no use for the truth. The only message he ever wants to hear is anything that aggrandizes him. His ego won’t allow any criticism whatsoever. So GOP leaders cower to him & the echo bows to him. When you’re a leader of a cult, dissent can never be tolerated. Time & again we hear Trump’s hateful dehumanizing rhetoric, yet again hardly anyone in his party or among his staff would dare speak truth to power, since Trump only demands compliant/capitulating yes men. The damage he might do to our democracy is incalculable, so I ask you please read TheVORACS messages here, share with others & get out to vote! I’ve posted the entire article from how-the-unthinkable-becomes-routine-and-why-its-so-dangerous, as this election may be nothing short of a choice to either save or reject democracy itself!:
Humans have a survival-based instinct to adapt. As a species, we are remarkably resilient at just “getting on with it,” even in the face of rapid and perilous change. That’s usually good news for humanity. But when it comes to politics, that urge to accept even destructive change can become an existential threat to democracy. In 2003, when Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister of Turkey, he was described as a “modern, pro-Western democrat,” a man who would reinvigorate democracy as he pushed his country toward membership in the European Union. An editorial in the New York Times claimed that he “favors democratic pluralism” and was trying to “move closer to Western-style democracy.” How wrong they were. Fifteen years later, Erdogan holds virtually unchecked power. He has used his office — first as prime minster, now as president — to steadily dismantle democracy, piece by piece. Slowly but surely, he has gutted the judiciary, subdued the legislature and muzzled the press. When did Turkey’s already wounded democracy draw its last breath? It’s hard to say — and that’s precisely the point. Democracy can die a slow, gasping death — so slow that you grow used to its demise. The benchmarks today are clearer: Erdogan has thrown more journalists in jail than any other leader on Earth. He has arrested tens of thousands of people who oppose him. His government has even prosecuted someone for sharing an unflattering meme of the insecure strongman. But the slow-burn process acclimated Turks to his destructive despotism. They got used to it. The scandals and the authoritarian attacks became routine. That helped Erdogan get away with it.
Two years into the Trump presidency, Americans are becoming numb to rapid, dangerous changes. We are accepting horrific, disqualifying, authoritarian behavior from Trump — and then just moving on to the next horror like zombies, all while growing used to the new normal around us because it is becoming routine. There were many people who warned about Trump’s authoritarian impulses before he was president. Most were labeled as hyperventilating alarmists at the time. I know, because I was one of those people. But we weren’t alarmists. We were right. In April 2016, the Boston Globe bravely ran a hypothetical front page that imagined headlines in the Trump presidency. “Deportations set to begin” was the main headline. They have begun — and Trump is now threatening asylum seekers with soldiers after already separating toddlers from their parents. “Markets sink as trade war looms”; that headline, too, has happened. “New libel law targets ‘absolute scum’ in the press,” reads a third hypothetical headline. Trump has called reporters “scum” (and has repeatedly demanded stricter libel laws that would enable him to silence his media critics). Yet not even the Globe would have predicted that Trump has continued using Stalinist rhetoric to demonize the press just days after a rabid Trump supporter reportedly sent CNN pipe bombs. In April 2016, the Globe’s editorial stunt was decried by Republicans on sites like the Drudge Report as alarmist hyperbole. Trump called it a “make believe story” that was “stupid” and “worthless.” But those headlines were written precisely as a sort of worst-case scenario that used hyperbole to scare people out of complacency. Two years later, it doesn’t look like exaggeration at all. It looks like our Trumpian reality. If, in 2016, Hillary Clinton had warned that Trump would be the kind of president to respond to domestic terrorism not with compassion but by “joking” about how he was the real victim because the subsequent press conference gave him a “bad hair day,” she would have been diagnosed by Republicans as someone afflicted by “Trump derangement syndrome.” But Trump just made that “joke” after Jews were massacred in Pittsburgh.
What about anyone who suggested that Trump was the kind of man who would explicitly praise a physical assault of a reporter, or provide political cover to a regime after it murdered and dismembered a journalist, or congratulate a far-right demagogue on his election victory? Trump derangement syndrome? Nope, all these things have happened. And in a few days, those headlines will have disappeared. In other words, the unthinkable becomes routine and then normal with remarkable speed during times of rapid change. It’s a human instinct and a coping mechanism. And that’s one of the reasons that Trump has managed to skate above it all: because we just move on. Remember Trump’s own lawyer standing up in court and accusing him of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy? That was two months ago. Remember the “anonymous” New York Times op-ed? That was last month. Remember Trump’s campaign chairman pleading guilty to “conspiracy against the United States”? That was 46 days ago. That is precisely why the upcoming midterm elections are so important. They are the only brake that will stop us from careening from one scandal to the next, the only way to extinguish the growing flame of authoritarianism ignited by Trump. A lot of Turks wish they could travel back to 2003 to put out their own fire before it consumed what was left of Turkish democracy. Americans can avoid that kind of regret by turning out to vote next Tuesday, before it’s too late.
It Really Could Happen Here!!!
As I warn repeatedly, don’t think fascism couldn’t come to America! People can see the signs on these pages if they’re willing to read them with an open mind. Since the GOP won’t speak truth to power, they’re totally failing to put a check on Trump & would be complicit if our democracy collapses! Never has our vote been so important!!! Here is the conclusion taken from trump-borrows-tricks-of-fascism-pittsburgh:
In the United States today, reporting was already in trouble for similar reasons before Trump, like Hitler, began to claim that the reporters who seek the facts are liars and enemies. Naturally, the president denies responsibility when people take him at his word and draw instead from the conspiracy thinking he himself spreads. Trump blames the press for attempts to murder members of the press. He seizes the occasion, as always, to present himself as the true victim. The facts hurt his feelings. Trump and some of his supporters mount a strategy of deterrence by narcissism: if you note our debts to fascism, we will up the pitch of the whining. Thus Trump can base his rhetoric on the fascist idea of us and them, lead fascist chants at rallies, encourage his supporters to use violence, praise a politician who attacked a journalist, muse that Hillary Clinton should be assassinated, denigrate the intelligence of African Americans, associate migrants with criminality, run an antisemitic advertisement, spread the Nazi trope of Jews as “globalists”, and endorse the antisemitic idea that the Jewish financier George Soros is responsible for political opposition – but he and his followers will puff chests and swell sinuses if anyone points this out. If Trump is not a fascist, this is only in the precise sense that he is not even a fascist. He strikes a fascist pose, and then issues generic palliative remarks and denies responsibility for his words and actions. But since total irresponsibility is a central part of the fascist tradition, it is perhaps best to give Trump his due credit as an innovator.
Bigoted, Racist & Anti-Semitic Attitudes are Pure Evil
Just look at Trump’s own statements: michael-cohen-trump-said-black-people-are-too-stupid-to-vote-for-me, as no other president could have ever gotten away with this! From a GOP candidate, here is a deplorable anti-Semitic ad: republican-mailer-depicts-jewish-candidate-gripping-cash-grinning-gop-is-defending-it. As seen in these excerpts from trump-emboldens-the-darkest-side-of-american-society, it provides yet another reminder of the importance of these midterms & the message the American people must send:
Each of these hate-motivated acts of violence are the fault of no person but the perpetrators themselves. It is undeniable, however, that they come at a time when the darkest undercurrents of American society have entered the mainstream — and are being emboldened by dangerous and hateful rhetoric from cynical politicians, including the president of the United States. Through his actions — and inactions — Trump has emboldened the peddlers of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, prejudice and bigotry. When any other president would seek to extinguish the flames of hate, Trump has fanned them, often for his own political gain. Look no further than his actions this past week. In the wake of an unprecedented mass assassination attempt against his political opponents by one of his own supporters, Trump attacked the media. Next week, Americans will head to the polls to decide the direction of our nation. The choice they make will have a lasting impact on the future of our nation and our democracy. And so I have a message to every voter across America: When you cast your ballot, consider which candidate will actively work to curb the tide of hate, and which will embolden it — either through their rhetoric or their silence. The time has come for we as a nation to declare that enough is enough.
Trump’s Attacks on the Free Press are Relentless
Again this week he went back to his talking point enemies of the people! What other president could say this & get away with it? Trump is a walking-talking advertisement to destroy the First Amendment & set up a dictatorship! With the GOP refusing to speak truth to power, it actually makes it very dangerous for Americans to vote for any Republican on the ticket. See these important excerpts from jon-stewart-theres-a-good-reason-the-press-takes-attacks-on-the-first-amendment-seriously:
The attacks, imprisonment and murder of journalists around the world are carried out by or for regimes that parrot and take comfort from Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric. Freedom House’s 2018 report documented a worldwide trend: “Democracy is in crisis. The values it embodies — particularly the right to choose leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press, and the rule of law — are under assault and in retreat globally.” A significant aspect of the trend is the intimidation and silencing of journalists who report on abuse of power, corruption and human rights violations. “Global press freedom declined to its lowest point in 13 years in 2016 amid unprecedented threats to journalists and media outlets in major democracies and new moves by authoritarian states to control the media, including beyond their borders,” Freedom House’s 2017 report on press freedom explained. Trump “disparaged the press, rejecting the news media’s role in holding governments to account for their words and actions.
The Committee to Protect Journalists documents that in 2018 alone 45 journalists have been killed around the world, 262 were imprisoned in 2017 and 59 remain missing. One reason, you see, why journalists get upset when the president undermines the First Amendment, uses the same “enemy of the people” phrase that totalitarians do, threatens to pull a news outlet’s “license” and takes actual measures through the instruments of government power to chill free speech is because — as with anti-Semitism and racism — words matter. They have life-or-death consequences for journalists worldwide, whether Trump intends that or not. The free press is the only private business recognized in the Constitution, and for good reason. Authoritarians invariably try to achieve a monopoly on facts and truth to enable them to abuse power, and that requires the press to be delegitimized, intimidated and, in places around the world, killed or imprisoned. It’s the safeguard for the rest of our freedoms that protect all of us — and not just entertainers and journalists.
Deceptive Fox Echo
I’ve always believed the mainstream media leaned left, but we could always factor that in as we formed our own opinions. With Fox & the echo, their lies are all over the place & their conspiracies originate from who knows where. The scariest part of that echo audience, they seem incapable of discerning the difference between truth or lies, or even forming their own opinions, trusting everything they hear from the echo at face value. As a moderate conservative, years ago Fox News was my go-to network, but in recent years as they kept channeling far-right talk radio & started lying to us, I couldn’t take it anymore! The Fox late morning news show is mostly harmless, albeit slanted rather far to the right, & the mid-afternoon shows are fine. But their evening prime-time shows are a disease-borne garbage dump!
When someone is embedded inside an evil cult, it can get to the point they can’t take it anymore & are forced to leave that toxic situation: author-withdraws-from-fox-news-podcast-citing-networks-demagoguery. That’s why I view someone like Shepard Smith a national hero, a real journalist riding it out in the eye of the storm! In his afternoon time slot on Fox he speaks to an audience that rarely hears the truth: shepard-smith-cant-redeem-fox-news. So he actually called out the Trump cult on the Trump-approved network: Fox-host-Shepard-Smith-had-it-right-Trump-supporters-need-to-be-coddled-like-children?. And occasionally some others will tell the truth as seen in fox-news-martha-maccallum-trump-949481.
But unfortunately, most of the time Fox News hosts revert back to their preordained agenda & talking points. Fox & Friends (specifically Ainsley Airhead) in discussing those comments from Trump calling the media enemies of the people, told their viewers this week the media should “report the story the way the president wants it reported.” Gee, that would be just like the way North Korean TV reports the news! This link offers a potpourri of asinine partisan statements from various Fox bozos: fox-friends-anchor-accidentally-confirms-shows-mission-propaganda & also see se-cupp-rips-fox-hosts-disturbing-comment-on-trump-we-are-not-his-press-shop.
America’s Conservative Party
In becoming the cult of Trump, the GOP is now corrupted, deceitful, radicalized & evil beyond repair. If they can’t speak truth to power, it’s time to vote them out & reduce the party to nothingness, so we can start over with a clean slate. We also need Fox fake news to clean their house of prez-puppet extremists. See this important message pulled from the-gop-has-become-the-party-of-fake-news-and-paranoid-fantasies:
It is commonplace to hear and read about President Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party. And certainly there is lots of evidence that the GOP is animated these days by an unquestioning devotion to Trump and whatever his ideas may be at any given moment. But the problem is that Republicans are now becoming the party not of Trump but of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who in the 1950s accused the State Department of treason, called George Marshall — head of the Army during World War II, later secretary of state and defense — a traitor, and implied that the American government was being secretly run by the Kremlin. The Republican Party today has become a vast repository of conspiracy theories, fake news, false accusations and paranoid fantasies. Consider the most recent example. Trump has scared much of the country about a small group of Central Americans, fleeing poverty and violence, who are hoping to come to the U.S. border and apply for asylum. It’s perfectly reasonable to oppose letting them in, though it is cruel to demonize them constantly. But Republicans have not been content to oppose granting asylum. They have concocted facts out of thin air and invented conspiracies about who is behind this group of impoverished migrants.
Last week, one of the prominent hosts at Fox News, which is now the Pravda of the Republican Party, suggested that more than 100 Islamic State fighters had been caught “trying to use this caravan.” Trump, a devoted Fox News viewer, pounced on that claim, declaring that “unknown Middle Easterners” had joined the caravan. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asked whether Democratic donor George Soros was funding this movement. None of these claims has an iota of truth to it. But they are repeated and reinforced across the country. The notion that Soros is the dark mastermind behind all kinds of movements is now deeply lodged in the Republican Party — so much so that senior party leaders such as House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa repeat it almost reflexively. Rep. Steve King (Iowa) has accused Soros of backing a grand scheme to systematically introduce foreigners in order to replace “Americans” — in other words, whites — with “somebody else’s babies.” The Republican Party has many good people and good ideas. But none of them matters while it houses and feeds fantasies, conspiracies and paranoia, tinged with racism, bigotry and anti-Semitism. Republicans are now squarely the party of McCarthy, and until that cancer is excised, they should not be entrusted with power.
How much more evidence do we need to know the country is in trouble?
Well, here’s more evidence. We sent this link out in our message earlier this week, & if you have yet to hear this 10 minute video, please do. It is that good!: Steve-Schmidt-does-not-hold-back-in-tonight-s-Commentary. And even beyond that, send it out to all those in your contact list, providing especially crucial insights on the eve of an election. Seeing this next article inside trump-on-never-lying-speech-campaign-promise, I can only ask huh? Trump has lied to us more than 6000 times in less than two years in office! That’s not my opinion, experts have proof & they’re counting. Signs of authoritarianism are already emanating from the corrupted party of Trump, seen in this post from commentary-is-the-u-s-still-a-real-democracy:
In 2018, American elections are beginning to look disturbingly like those in less democratic countries. For example, in the race for governor of Georgia, one candidate, Republican Brian Kemp, who as secretary of state is charged with administering Georgia’s elections, has sought to disenfranchise tens of thousands of mostly African-American voters. In Kansas, the Republican candidate for governor, Kris Kobach, gained national notoriety when President Donald Trump appointed him to lead a commission on voter fraud, a problem that very rarely occurs in the United States. Kobach has spent much of his career advocating restrictions on voting rights that would have the effect of making it more difficult for people, particularly those who are not white, to vote. In several other states, such as Iowa, Missouri and North Carolina, Republicans have enacted legislation in the last two years that makes it more difficult for people to cast their ballots. In addition to the two parties taking different positions on voting rights, Republican-controlled state governments in Oklahoma and Louisiana have passed laws that either increase the penalties for protesting or otherwise curtail activities that are protected by First Amendment rights to assembly and speech. Several other states have similar legislation pending. This occurs in the context of a Republican president who has proposed limiting the right to protest and has frequently described the media as “enemies of the people.”
Don’t Forget!
We must always remember who Trump really is…
https://www.vox.com/2018/10/30/18037464/trump-rallies-apology-media-mobs
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-americans-think-trumps-encouraged-white-supremacists-2018-10
Who Echo Hosts really are…
And who some Congressmen really are…
So most of all, don’t forget to vote!!! The GOP can’t speak truth to power, so the American people need to do it! And we can say it loudly!
Beware of Trumpeters at his Rallies
Desperate or aggrieved people tend to be more susceptible to a cult, as we can see from the crowd reaction of Trumpeters at all his rallies. But it’s no laughing matter, since the more unhinged in the crowd can be very dangerous. We’re starting to see that play out in deadly violence & Trump’s crazy rants are egging them on, as seen in these excerpts inside trumps-pro-white-pro-fear-rhetoric-will-keep-fueling-and-radicalizing-angry-men:
People always say to ignore the extreme guys at Trump rallies because they’re all talk, but then the same guy who was photographed holding a sign with a bullseye over Michael Moore’s face ends up arrested on suspicion of mailing bombs to public figures smeared by the president’s hateful statements. Given his enthusiasm for Trump, Sayoc, whose father is Filipino, apparently identified more with the president’s worldview than with minorities and people of color made vulnerable under a president obsessed with racial and ethnic heritage, and whiteness. Donald Trump says Mexicans at the border — thieves and rapists, according to him — and Muslims, with whom he associates the word “terrorist,” present a danger to America. Society at large says it’s black guys like me. And yet white men are the defendants in court facing charges for these hate-fueled mass shootings. The anger and fear that Trump stokes creates a climate where lashing out, as the president does when he is angered, is encouraged. One way Trump contributes to this climate of targeted rage is by scapegoating minorities, liberals, immigrants and non-white groups as the primary reason why his followers might not be enjoying the economic status they feel they deserve, and by demonizing his political opponents. Meanwhile, some of those angry white men who feel like they are losing the status they are owed are shopping at gun shows and practicing at the shooting range. If current trends hold, some of them are planning terrible crimes. We desperately need to start acknowledging this as the national threat that it is.
The Dangers in Technology
In this modern digital-age, the echo uses many platforms to spread their brand of pathological extremism in the name of garnering attention, ratings & profits, as revealed inside extremism-has-become-a-business-just-look-at-gab. Technology can be a wonderful thing, as long as it doesn’t destroy us first, seen in online-hate-speech & this conclusion from internet-violence-hate-prejudice:
Technology has always been a coin with two sides: potential and peril. That’s what Mary Shelley explored in “Frankenstein,” which is celebrating its 200th birthday this year, and it has been the main theme of science fiction ever since. The internet is the technology paradox writ more monstrous than ever. It’s a nonpareil tool for learning, roving and constructive community-building. But it’s unrivaled, too, in the spread of lies, narrowing of interests and erosion of common cause. It’s a glorious buffet, but it pushes individual users toward only the red meat or just the kale. We’re ridiculously overfed and ruinously undernourished. It creates terrorists. But well shy of that, it sows enmity by jumbling together information and misinformation to a point where there’s no discerning the real from the Russian. Don’t take it from me. Take it from a Silicon Valley giant whose wares depend on our internet addiction. Speaking at a conference in Brussels, Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, warned, “Platforms and algorithms that promised to improve our lives can actually magnify our worst human tendencies.” “Rogue actors and even governments have taken advantage of user trust to deepen divisions, incite violence and even undermine our shared sense of what is true and what is false,” he added.
This was a week ago — before Sayoc’s arrest, before Bowers’s rampage, before Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, won Brazil’s presidential election. As The Times reported, pro-Bolsonaro forces apparently tried to hurt his opponents and help him by flooding WhatsApp, the messaging application owned by Facebook, “with a deluge of political content that gave wrong information on voting locations and times.” That same Times article noted that a search for the word “Jews” on the photo-sharing site Instagram on Monday led to 11,696 posts with the hashtag “#jewsdid911,” insanely blaming them for the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center, along with similarly grotesque images and videos that demonized Jews. Anti-Semitism may be ancient, but this delivery system for it is entirely modern. And utterly terrifying. I don’t know exactly how we square free speech and free expression — which are paramount — with a better policing of the internet, but I’m certain that we need to approach that challenge with more urgency than we have mustered so far. Democracy is at stake. So are lives.
Some have risen above the Spirit of Deception
Once this cult of Trump can be eradicated, I hope people remember there were still moral Christians out there doing the Lord’s work during these dark times:
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/oct/31/trump-democrats-evangelicals-pro-jesus-republicans
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/young-evangelicals-politics-midterms.html
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