Part Two – Hannity Trump Lovefest is a Toxic Brew

I have a section on the Hannity Trump bedtime lullabies below, but first let’s save our democracy by fighting demagoguery.  More of Trump’s autocratic tendencies are revealed inside links like this kevin-warsh-federal-reserve-trump-justice-department, where his lack of respect for the independent nature of certain federal agencies & his interference in wanting to control those institutions, is indicative of unrestrained power amassing in the executive branch feeding his dictatorial aspirations.  I do have confidence our longstanding institutions can hold up to an onslaught against democracy as we seem to be seeing now, but we also can’t be oblivious, indifferent, overconfident or just assume our Constitution would never be abridged.  When the American people are complacent, that’s when the forces aligned with authoritarianism could be allowed to fester.  I keep saying, don’t think fascism couldn’t come here, & by the time we realize that it could be too late.

I don’t mind providing such links to views from the left if their opinions are based on facts & provide important warnings we should be in tune to.  Look who’s really presiding over the swamp: The-New-Yorker-Cover-On-Trump-The-Swamp.  There are times the best warnings come from way out on the left: House-Republicans-are-literally-trying-to-break-the-law-as-in-cripple-the-DOJ-and-FBI.  Also see this wake-up call in these excerpts from View-from-the-Left-When-NotNormal-starts-to-look-downright-autocratic:

Donald Trump floated the idea of getting “an extension for the presidency” this week in front of a crowd of his revelers in Elkhart, IN. It’s not the first time Trump has contemplated dictatorship. In March, he admired the maneuvering of Chinese President Xi Jinping in becoming “President for life,” musing, “Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” The gut reaction of most Americans to the thought of anyone establishing that type of singular autocratic rule over our country is to think, No way—not in the United States. But this week revealed some of the starkest signs yet that the conditions for just such an eventuality are already taking hold. The revelation that several international corporations funneled several million dollars into a shell company set up by Michael Cohen—who had zero expertise in their industries and by at least one account did absolutely no work—ripped the mask off a pay-to-play scheme that resembles an autocracy like Russia’s.

 

While we can’t say for certain yet whether these companies received a direct business benefit from the money they paid Cohen, it sure looks that way at first blush. Just this week, we watched the stocks of pharmaceutical companies jump after Donald Trump backed off a campaign promise to make prescription medications more affordable. One Pharma giant that benefitted from the announcement was Novartis, which shelled out $1.2 million to Cohen even though company executives claim they only met with him one time. But that’s not the only place where evidence emerged that Trump himself is single-handedly picking winners and losers among the corporations of the world. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai announced the death of Net Neutrality would become official next month on June 11—a huge win for telecom behemoths like AT&T, which lavished $600,000 on Cohen. In fact, on MSNBC Friday the executive director of American Oversight, Austin Evers, revealed AT&T executives secured a private dinner in Barcelona with Pai—just one month after hiring Cohen. That’s some pretty sweet access.

 

This dynamic sets up a bribery/extortion loop where the money that flows to the autocrat from the industry titans, then flows back to the industry titans. Being a successful business person eventually becomes one in the same with being a supporter of the regime. “The danger,” Bassin said, “is that when elections come around, the powerful industry titans keep the regime in power because they know where their bread is buttered—they’re getting an advantage in the regulatory marketplace over others and they want to keep that advantage.” What Bassin is describing is exactly why the Russian oligarchs don’t have any interest in toppling Putin, who was just sworn into his fourth term as president this week. In a normal analysis piece, I would end here after following one example to completion. But I feel personally compelled to elevate another way the Trump administration is modeling autocratic regimes because it is so horrific. 

 

Trump and his lieutenants have now officially adopted the policy of separating children from parents who cross the U.S. border seeking asylum. In a New Yorker piece this week, Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen explained how the practice of breaking up families is an age-old totalitarian tactic. “Hostage-taking is an instrument of terror,” Gessen wrote, “Capturing family members, especially children, is a tried-and-true instrument of totalitarian terror.” In fact, one of the reasons Trump reportedly unloaded on his Homeland Security chief this week was because he thought she was resisting his order to separate children from their parents. The president and his aides in the White House had been pushing a family separation policy for weeks as a way of deterring families from trying to cross the border illegally. In other words, they’re terrorizing these families for their own political benefit under the guise of enforcing immigration law. If you find it impossible to imagine a scenario where Trump could engineer an “extension” of his presidency, look around—the seeds of autocratic rule have not only been planted by Trump and his coterie, they are already taking hold right before our eyes. We can only hope they are successfully stamped out by the law enforcement officials who Republican lawmakers are in the process of intentionally trying to cripple.

Like the author in this next article, I despise bullies.  I particularly despise bullies who’ll constantly lie & embellish themselves to belittle others.  That may be at the heart of the reason I’m an uncompromising never-Trumper, which I invite all of you to stand up to that bully by sharing our blog site thevoracs.com.  But these excerpts come from the article opinion/why-reward-bullies:

I despise bullies. This doesn’t stem from my playground years but rather from a career in my 20s performing with a professional symphony orchestra. Orchestra conductors are notorious tyrants, cruel and demanding, with near-total control over the artistic lives of the players. To consolidate power, they turn players against one another, prey on weakness, destroy confidence. As we used to note, many conductors are evil geniuses, but all are evil. Over the decades since that time, my position on conductors has softened (a little), but my position on bullies has not. And I believe a big majority of the population shares this antipathy. Witness the box-office success of movies like “Horrible Bosses” and “Revenge of the Nerds,” in which bullies get their comeuppance. Consider also the frequent anti-bullying public service efforts, the latest of which is the first lady Melania Trump’s “Be Best” campaign. So it is mystifying that the ultimate market-based phenomenon in a democracy — political discourse — is currently dominated by this despised character trait. From television to social media to everyday politics at the highest level, we see the powerful belittling, maligning and mocking those with lower status. If we hate bullies, why are they rewarded in the public sphere with fame, attention and even electoral success? Why aren’t they repudiated?

 

There are three explanations. First, people tend to be selective ethicists. The other side’s bully is a horrible person; your side’s bully is a “truth teller.” Indeed, we sometimes even flip the script and say our bully is actually a victim who is simply fighting back against even bigger bullies. Second, people are, paradoxically, attracted to bullies. In her book “The Allure of Toxic Leaders,” the social scientist Jean Lipman-Blumen shows that people complain about political dictators and tyrannical executives yet nearly always remain loyal out of a primordial admiration for power and need for security in an uncertain world. The third explanation is simple acquiescence. In a famous study published in 1999 in the Journal of Adolescence, three psychologists investigated how children act when they witness an act of bullying. Hundreds of schoolchildren were videotaped on the playground, and nearly 200 bullying incidents were recorded. Bullies love audiences, and in more than half of the cases, two or more peers were present in addition to the bully and victim. And how did the peers react? Twenty-one percent joined the bully, while 25 percent defended the victim. The rest — 54 percent — watched the incident passively, neither joining in nor defending the victim.

Echo-people need us to share this info with them, since they’re not hearing truths by isolating themselves inside their bubble.  We’re seeing the truth increasingly the victim of tribal allegiances & political expediency.  In these dangerous times, we have a leader legitimizing himself through boasts & falsehoods, which he is largely getting away with inside his own party due to the echo spearheaded by Fox spreading those same lies, with a base willing & able to actually believe those lies.  A Michael Bloomberg graduation speech calls out such insidious trends, as seen in this link michael-bloomberg-at-rice-university-an-honor-code-for-life & these excerpts from michael-bloomberg-epidemic-of-dishonesty-threat-democracy.  We must heed these warnings & spread truths to our fellow-Americans, since when nearly half the population keep falling for the lies, democracy itself is at risk of falling:

Americans are facing an “epidemic of dishonesty” in Washington that is more dangerous than terrorism or communism, according to former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. In a commencement speech on Saturday at Rice University in Houston, the billionaire said “an endless barrage of lies” and a trend toward “alternate realities” in national politics pose a dire threat to US democracy. The 76-year-old, who flirted with an independent presidential run in 2016, did not call out any politicians by name. Although he derided Donald Trump as “a con” and a “dangerous demagogue” before his election, in an interview before the speech at Rice Bloomberg refused to comment specifically on the president. Fact checkers have determined that Trump has made hundreds of false and misleading statements since entering the Oval Office.  “This is bigger than any one person,” Bloomberg said. “It’s bigger than any one party.”

 

In his speech, Bloomberg evoked the legend of the nation’s first president, George Washington, who as a boy supposedly said he could not tell a lie when asked if he cut down a cherry tree. “How did we go from a president who could not tell a lie to politicians who cannot tell the truth?” Bloomberg asked. He blamed “extreme partisanship” for an unprecedented tolerance of dishonesty in US politics and said people were now committed more to their political tribes than the truth, suggesting that the nation is more divided than any time since the civil war.  “There is now more tolerance for dishonesty in politics than I have seen in my lifetime,” Bloomberg said. “The only thing more dangerous than dishonest politicians who have no respect for the law is a chorus of enablers who defend their every lie.” “When elected officials speak as though they are above the truth, they will act as though they are above the law,” Bloomberg told graduates. “And when we tolerate dishonesty, we get criminality. Sometimes, it’s in the form of corruption. Sometimes, it’s abuse of power. And sometimes, it’s both. “The greatest threat to American democracy isn’t communism, jihadism, or any other external force or foreign power. It’s our own willingness to tolerate dishonesty in service of party, and in pursuit of power.”

 

Trump is raving mad the traitors & cowards are not the ones who helped Russia taint our election, but instead are the ones leaking truthful info to the media.  But our prez is incapable of telling truth from lies.  If Satan is the Father of Lies, what would that make of our nation’s leader who lies more than anyone we know?  And what does that make of his mouthpieces in Fox & the rest of the echo, always doubling-down on those same lies?  And what about the audience whom unfailingly believe those lies to the point they’ve practically become loyal servants?  I’m just wondering.  It seems to me more like a cult.  I just see the whole lot of them as partners in crime complicit in the radicalization of the GOP, while serving to erode away at the underpinnings of democracy.  The opening to Alternative-Media-Was-Legit-For-A-Brief-Moment-In-Time-Before-It-Morphed-Into-Alternative-Reality shows where the echo got its roots & was actually sane in those early days (I’ll admit to being a Rush fan back then, us ditto-heads were so naive):

Every night before bedtime after putting on their PJ’s, they get on the phone for a nightly ritualistic lovefest where they swear allegiance to each other while making up new lies together, cleverly demonizing their political opponents & covering up their crimes from their involvement in the mounting scandals.  No doubt they also sing lullabies as they tell each other nighty night stories.  But seriously, the articles below provide more evidence of a TV political network serving as state-run media, which is similar to how business is conducted in Russia, North Korea & other rogue nation states.

Rather than post excerpts on this bizarre Hannity Trump tryst where these two delusional buffoons prop each other up each night with tales of outlandish tomfoolery, I’ll just list the following links to the articles so you can choose to read ones you select in their full context:

This next article has more reporting on this toxic Hannity Trump liaison.  It also shows the huge gap on the reporting with the Russian scandal.  Most Americans who care do tune into the real news with objective updates, while the Fox crowd is being fed the crap, as we see from these posts in alarming-new-revelations-about-trumps-addiction-to-fox-news:

There are two Mueller probes. There’s the one that exists in the Fox News-addled mind of President Trump and his supporters, which features dark conspiracy-mongering about a “Deep State coup” against Trump; out-of-control federal agents jackbooting poor, hapless Trump allies; and, of course, the corrupt failure to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Then there’s the one that exists in most mainstream news accounts, which features a team of investigators mostly going by the book, never leaking, methodically following the facts, albeit very aggressively, wherever they will lead. The gaping disconnect between these two Mueller probes is driven home by two new pieces: one from New York magazine, which reports alarming new details about Trump’s addiction to Fox News and how that has shaped his perception of the Mueller investigation; and one from The Post, which paints a detailed picture of how the probe has actually been operating day in and day out. The New York magazine piece reports that former White House advisers Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus sought to deliberately drive Trump deeper into the Fox News bubble, because he was getting overly agitated by criticism on MSNBC and CNN. They did this by talking up Fox’s high ratings and importance to Trump’s base until Trump’s television diet became, as one former official put it, “mainly a complete dosage of Fox.” But this has created its own alarming problems, officials now say. Fox gets Trump riled up about topics that weren’t supposed to be on that day’s agenda, forcing White House staff to scramble to refocus. And Trump’s addiction to Sean Hannity — who has become a kind of walking security blanket for the president — is having a deep impression on his view of the Mueller investigation.

The Trump way of governing along with the views of his base are largely locked away in the echo-bubble where facts rarely gain entry, as seen in articles like trump-has-only-done-tv-interviews-with-his-biggest-boosters & also how_trump_aides_worked_to_limit_his_news_to_fox_news & also trump-tricked-watching-fox-friends& also the-systemic-problem-with-pro-trump-media-in-one-quote.  Fox fake news loves bashing the real media, even when there’s nothing to bash.  Inside their world, the truth represents anything their viewers want to hear.  So as their rhetoric feeds the flock the red meat they ordered from the menu, it doesn’t really matter to them whether the reporting is actually based on facts or not.  That’s why Fox is not news, but propaganda.  See an excerpt from fox-mocks-new-york-times_us:

“Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth trashed the “failing New York Times” on Friday for supposedly not reporting on the recent capture of five ISIS leaders, apparently unaware the paper beat Fox News to the story. “I looked for the five ISIS leaders captured in the failing New York Times,” Hegseth said, flipping through the newspaper. “And in the print edition today, I have not seen it yet.” Hegseth didn’t find the story in Friday’s New York Times because the paper covered it on Wednesday. Hegseth’s own station, Fox News, reported on the Times’ coverage a day later, on Thursday.

In this excerpt from more-than-half-of-russian-facebook-ads-focused-on-race, we see so much of the phony Russian Facebook ads were based on race baiting:

More than half of the Facebook ads created by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency to influence Americans during and after the last presidential election made references to race, according to a new analysis by USA Today. The news organization reviewed every one of the 3,517 IRA ads released to the public earlier this week by the House Intelligence Committee (IRA), and its reporters discovered that nearly 2,000 of the ads referred to race — accounting for some 25 million impressions from targeted Facebook users. Previous examinations of a smaller selection of the ads established that the IRA worked to influence voters using already contentious American issues like race, immigration, gun rights, sexual orientation, and political party tribalism, but this new analysis makes it clear that racial tension was the Russian operation’s go-to wedge.

Ideologically, I consider myself a center-right moderate on the political spectrum.  Always have been.  But from reading my posts regularly for a few years, my conservative Cubs fan buddy repeatedly complains there’s no way I’m center-right, since he considers me somewhere between a progressive socialist & pinko commie.  It may just be both of us are partly right & partly wrong.  The very definition of conservatism has totally changed.  The shift was initially spearheaded by talk radio a few decades ago, complimented by internet social media groups since the turn of the century, then were joined by the clout of Fox News a few years ago.  That steadily growing conservative media complex is what I’ve always referred to as the echo, which in unison have increasingly captured the mindset of their conservative following, which their agenda & ideology have shifted unrelentingly further & further to the right.  The change has been so gradually subtle, most conservatives haven’t grasped the reality their core political beliefs have gone way out on the extreme far-right.  So the bulk of the GOP base has transitioned from rational to radical conservatism.  My own center-right viewpoints which were not long ago defined in the mainstream of conservative thought, have now become ideologically closer to the progressive left than the way out far-right where the GOP base has shifted, which the echo has steered their audiences off the rails into some conspiracy-laden insanity land.

Will this essay — or the op-eds nearby — change your mind? The traditional op-ed may seem quaint compared with tweetstorms, tell-all interviews and cable news shouting sessions. Skeptics may be forgiven for dismissing this medium as old-fashioned and ineffective. We have new evidence, however, that should persuade even a determined skeptic. In a peer-reviewed study we published this month, we find op-eds do change minds. After reading opinion pieces, we found people were far more likely to agree with the author’s point of view. Even in today’s allegedly post-fact world, people are capable of considering new evidence and reaching new conclusions. We find not only can op-eds change the minds among general readers, but also among Washington policy professionals as well.

 

That suggests each well-written op-ed changes a lot of minds. If a successful op-ed is read by about a half-million people, we can expect it changes between 50,000 and 100,000 minds. But are op-eds only preaching to the choir — convincing partisans already predisposed to agreeing with them? That is not what we found. While there are some small differences in results, we find  Republicans, Democrats and independents were persuaded by the op-eds. The real difference is not in how many beliefs shift; it is in where those beliefs started. For instance, 55 percent of Democrats who read the op-ed on infrastructure came to agree with the author, compared with 42 percent who did not read the op-ed — an increase of 13 percentage points. However among Republicans, 89 percent who read this op-ed came to agree with the author, compared with 69 percent who did not read the op-ed — an increase of 20 points. In both cases, a significant percentage of opinions changed — but that still left a gap between the Democrats’ and the Republicans’ beliefs. We replicated our study among a sample of 2,000 congressional staffers, journalists and other professionals. This sample was obtained by emailing a list of 32,500 policy and political professionals and inviting them to participate. On average, the share of these “elite” readers who came to agree with the op-ed’s argument increased by 12 percentage points.

 

Perhaps more surprising, these effects persisted. When we followed up with another survey with our participants a month later, op-ed readers were still significantly more likely than non-readers to agree with the authors whose op-ed they read. The immediate effect of the veterans op-ed was 28 percentage points, but after a month, the effect had halved to 14 points. This pattern was consistent across all five op-eds: The effects of reading the piece were approximately 50 percent of the original size after 30 days. Our results show even now, in a divisive period in our national politics, Americans are capable of considering diverse views, absorbing facts and even changing their minds. Contrary to a large volume of commentary from many quarters, the “other side” is not immune to evidence and argument. Persuasion is possible, even commonplace. This is good news, both for editorial pages and for members of the public who read them.

Evangelicals

Evangelicals now own Trump.  It was their voting at more than 80% for Trump that got him elected, & their continuing strong support is what keeps enabling & unleashing him.  I can’t dismiss the idea God led evangelicals to support him for the expressed purpose of stocking the courts with conservatives, setting the stage for eventually tipping the scales on the abortion issue.  In addition, let me give us an ideal scenario that I would love to see play out, a dream fantasy if you will even beyond reversing Roe v. Wade.  Trump’s reputation is based on being this great dealmaker.  Imagine if he strikes deals with North Korea (singapore-donald-trump-kim-jong-un) & Iran where they agree to dismantle their nuclear programs, agree to remain non-nuclear nations, & agree access for allowing verification.  That would largely resolve for now the single biggest danger the world faces today.  Furthermore, imagine Trump striking a deal with China for a trade deal that’s actually fair, where China agrees to stop manipulating factors that has led to stealing our manufacturing jobs & intellectual property.  Having achieved these monumental achievements, Trump promptly resigns his office, knowing the investigations are about to expose his numerous crimes.  His legacy & legend would go down in history as truly one-of-a-kind, being the most consequential leader with the ultimate contradictions.  He could walk off into the sunset as a criminal president….& also a hero.

But I’m still looking for more plausible explanations for the inexplicable, how could evangelicals willingly align themselves with moral degradation?: chart-of-the-day-heres-why-evangleicals-love-donald-trump & also is-trump-presidency-part-of-gods-plan-for-america.  I do find it curious the most angry responses I’ve gotten in recent years from the moment I first started calling out Trump (& even prior to that gridlock-Teddy Cruz) have consistently come from my fellow-evangelicals.  In seeing evangelicals as a group generally bowing at the feet of this moral basket case, I’ve regularly warned of following a leader that is demonstrably dishonest, bullying, manipulative, self-centered & thoroughly lacking human values, so it’s rather interesting to me I’m getting called out by these folks for taking the higher moral ground.  I guess to them I’m the black sheep who has strayed from their compliant political group think.

But any religion that purports to show the whole world the keys to heaven & avoidance of hell, they’d better also show to the world the highest integrity & moral values.  And if any church religion in its aggregate has as a stated or implied goal reaching a lost world, where the enemy is Satan (the father of lies), appealing to outsiders becomes problematic & seriously sabotaged when the faithful are perceived having an unwavering devotion to a worldly leader known to be a chronic liar.  So any faith seen as synonymous with Donald Trump as the world increasingly believes, may soon become a faith detached from its higher purpose.  Just one of many examples occurred yesterday watching perpetually-nutty pastor Robert Jeffress give a prayer at the ceremony for the U.S. embassy in Israel moving to Jerusalem, where he gave honor & praise to the one true almighty king, President Donald Trump.  The world is seeing evangelicals representing something totally different in our faith these days, which is no longer the love & grace of Christ.

Do not expect that King Trump is the second version of King Cyrus.  If the faithful choose to dance with the Devil, expect a severe backlash is coming.  We’re already seeing it: how-the-religious-right-is-shrinking-itself-overzealous-christianity-is-driving-people-away & also the-guardian-view-on-us-religion-the-christian-right-is-breaking-up.  This conclusion to the article conservative-columnist-rips-into-hateful-culture-in-the-white-house illuminates us to the dark forces the Fox News viewership & evangelicals are unapologetically joining forces with:

Fox News’s business model is built on promoting crackpot ideas and airing hateful rhetoric that feed the anger and resentment of its base. That means tearing down genuine heroes who challenge the Great Leader Trump. They are utterly comfortable voicing obnoxious slurs, revealing a stunning lack of human decency. They are superstars in the right-wing ecosystem, not in spite of their crass, bigoted views, but because of them.” Rubin went on to say that nothing that comes out of the Trump White House should surprise anyone anymore, due to the culture he not only brought with him, but continues to nurture. “This is the political culture blessed and cheered on by evangelical leaders — for whom nothing Trump or his cronies do (be it paying hush money to a porn star or slandering a POW or endorsing an alleged child molester) is over the line,” she wrote. “There is something dark and twisted at the core of the Trumpian political movement and philosophy (if you can call it that). You don’t get criticized, let alone fired, for perpetuating hurtful conspiracy theories (about Seth Rich’s death, President Obama’s birth certificate or McCain’s captivity) or for voicing hateful views.” “In short, not all of Trump’s followers and enablers are bad people, but in the Trump universe, bad people sure do flourish,” she concluded.