Trump is Unraveling as His Presidency is about to Unravel…The echo & Trumpeter base fully back the politics of demagogic fascism, which is a direct attack on our constitutional democracy. The echo does it for the ratings/profits while their audiences are being fooled. Meanwhile, they’re puppets providing cover for their leader even as Trump is unraveling. The first section from trump-and-the-rise-of-fascism-around-the-world is posted below, which clicking on that link gives you an explanation of the other sections with these headings: Trump’s attack on the others, recognition and resistance, weaponizes language, abolish democracy & using language to resist. For that last section, this blog helps provide the language, so please join us in our resistance:
Fascist politics is once again on the rise in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. As an echo from the past, its principles and attitudes are re-emerging in a populist rhetoric that embraces extreme forms of nationalism, the cult of the leader, systemic racism, a culture of fear, a hatred of dissent and an utter disdain for the truth. Driven by a hatred of “the other” and infused with narratives of decline and victimization, fascist politics trade in an incendiary rhetoric of fear, demonization and violence. It creates divisions by targeting groups it defines as criminal, less than human, and then expands its hate-mongering to other groups as part of an attempt to deepen and expand a culture of terror, insecurity and disposablilty. It attempts to build power through aggressive attacks on the media, critics and the judiciary. Resentment based on real economic and existential insecurities become fodder for cult-like figures to misdirect anger, feed collective hate and foster a climate of shared fears and social divisions. Fascist politics is inseparable from the culture of violence, which it uses as its primary tool of communication and weapon of choice.
Pass the Word
Here at The VORACS, as I mentioned we’re giving you the language to resist these sinister forces attempting to hijack our nation, so please do share our blog address. Some echo-fans are hopeless, but you never know who you might help to bring along, so just spread our info & let them decide for themselves. To those who do learn the facts, there’s still time for those Trump supporters to make amends: dear-trump-loyalists-donald-will-always-disappoint-you. America can thank you & those you convert to truths can thank you too.
Inspiring Words from Our President
We’ve seen signs all along Trump is unraveling, but it’s recently getting far worse. There’s no question Trump’s angry/vitriolic language like fake news & enemy of the people are inspiring certain Trumpeter whack-jobs to take matters into their own hands. Foreign tyrants have also followed his lead by resorting to violence. America, the great defender of democratic ideals throughout the world, has joined a list normally reserved for brutal despot authoritarian regimes. Our prez with his irresponsible assault on the free press & First Amendment, is making the profession of journalism far more dangerous here & around the world, as reported in this entire article from report-us-joins-ranks-of-worlds-most-dangerous-places-for-journalists-for-the:
The U.S. was ranked one of the deadliest countries for journalists in 2018 for the first time in an annual report from Reporters Without Borders. The U.S. ranked sixth among the most lethal countries for journalists, behind Afghanistan, Syria, Mexico, Yemen and India, in that order. Six journalists were killed in the U.S. this year. Four journalists, as well as a sales assistant, were killed in June when a gunman opened fire at the Annapolis, Md. offices of the Capital Gazette. Two other journalists, a North Carolina television anchor and cameraman, were killed by a falling tree while covering a hurricane in May.
Overall, more journalists were killed, abused and subjected to violence in 2018 than in any other year on record, according to the report, which added that reporters are facing an “unprecedented level of hostility.” Murder, imprisonment, hostage-taking and enforced disappearances of journalists all increased compared to last year. A total of 80 journalists were killed in 2018, with 49 murdered or deliberately targeted while 31 were killed while reporting. While the report partially blames bombings and shootings targeting the media in Afghanistan with the increase in deaths, 45 percent of those killed were not in conflict zones. In 2018, 348 reporters were detained and 60 were held hostage. China leads the world in detentions, with 60 journalists held in that country. Thirty-one journalists are being held hostage in Syria.
“Violence against journalists has reached unprecedented levels this year, and the situation is now critical,” Reporters Without Borders Secretary General Christophe Deloire said in a press release. “The hatred of journalists that is voiced, and sometimes very openly proclaimed, by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists,” he added. The October murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who resided in Virginia, in Istanbul sparked international outrage. The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the hit as part of his crackdown on dissent. Reporters Without Borders has been heavily involved in the #ProtectJournalists campaign, which calls for the appointment of a special representative of the United Nations secretary general for the protection of journalists.
Mad Dog is Mad at the Prez
Mad Dog Mattis retired/was forced out while expressing major disagreements with Trump’s military & foreign policies. Mattis was a great soldier devoting his life to our military & protecting America. Trump was a draft dodger who once said his dodging of catching a venereal disease was the danger he faced comparable to the American soldiers who fought in Vietnam. But Trump assured us a couple years ago “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.” So in reality, Mattis is the honorable mad dog while Trump is unraveling & descending into madness.
Mattis fully understands the critical leadership role America plays in the world by keeping up our valuable foreign engagements, enforcing the peace against rogue regimes & terrorism as no other country on Earth can. But his boss, President Trump, is clueless. Our prez berates allies while coddling up to dictators, & sometime in early 2019 we’re likely to find out why he seems so compromised by Putin. Mattis was one of the few adults left in the room working in Trump’s cabinet trying to contain the prez. Trump is unraveling & an unstable president is increasingly isolated but still presides over the nuclear codes. These articles here report on the bombshell news of Mattis’ resignation yesterday, as Trump’s announced Syrian pullout was the last straw for Mattis:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-defense-secretary-jim-mattis-retiring-in-february?ref=home
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-gloats-over-departure-trump-is-ours-again?ref=home
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/us/politics/trump-mattis-resignation.html
The Lying is Bad Enough!
With the echo constantly deflecting away from the real crimes by defaulting to any & all crazy conspiracies about Hillary, while Americans wait on Mueller & all the other investigations to learn the extent of Trump’s criminality, Rubin points out how just his lying alone should be disqualifying. Posted here is her last part from the op-ed republicans-prefer-liar:
In this dimension, Republicans cannot talk about Hillary Clinton, or overturning the decision of the voters, or about whether he really, really broke super-serious laws. They need to justify why they and the American people should prefer an inveterate liar, who lied to get himself elected in the first place, over every possible candidate. Consider that whether it was legal or not, grounds for impeachment or not, Trump lied about:
*Hush-money payments to women
*Working on a potential real-estate deal with Russia during the presidential campaign
*Incontrovertible evidence that Russia interfered in our election
*Incontrovertible evidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman was implicated in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi
*Whether anyone on his campaign had contacts with Russians
*The purpose of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting (in the statement he drafted on Air Force One)
And then there are the incessant lies about policy and other matters: steel factories being built, part of the wall already built, the size of his actually-not-the-largest-ever tax cut, the jobs derived from the Saudi arms deal (200,000 … no, 400,000 … no, make it 600,000!), rampant illegal voting (by disguise!), the size of his inaugural crowd, the number of bills signed, an imaginary terrorist event in Sweden, “large-scale killing” of farmers in South Africa, Middle Eastern people mixed in with the caravan, President Barack Obama “wiretapping” Trump Tower, whether he considered firing Robert S. Mueller III, the reason for James B. Comey’s termination (before confessing to NBC News’s Lester Holt it was about the Russia probe), the Uranium One deal, and thousands upon thousands of others. If one believes democracy requires that elected leaders shouldn’t trick, manipulate, bamboozle and flat-out lie to voters to obtain office and explain what is going on, then Trump should never, ever be elected to anything again. And this is just because he lies over and over.
Even if the payments to shut up alleged ex-paramours weren’t illegal, they were part of an effort to deceive voters. Even if working on a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow up through June 2016 (or November 2016, if you believe Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani) wasn’t illegal, Trump lied about it incessantly — while praising and defending Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout the presidential campaign. What is the excuse for Republicans to support Trump’s reelection, or worse, not be able to decide (i.e. being afraid to tell us) whether his conduct warrants reelection? Republicans, you can have theoretically any other elected Republican, but you want Trump. The moral calculus (or lack of) is mind-boggling. No wonder Trump and his apologists keep bringing up Clinton. One could only (if at all) attempt to justify voting for Trump by raising the Clinton bogeywoman. She is not the question now; he is. What’s the Republicans’ excuse for backing an obsessive liar? Someone should start asking them.
Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo-Land
On a similar note from another one of my favorite op-ed writers, Boot has some fantastic insights on Trump’s shameless lying & propagating conspiracies, so we posted the whole article from turns-out-that-federal-judges-have-little-patience-trumps-conspiracy-theories:
The president of the United States is a certified conspiracy theorist who has suggested that Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered, that millions of illegal votes were cast in 2016 and that Democrats inflated the death count from Hurricane Maria to make him look bad. So it’s no surprise that, to save himself from possible impeachment and prosecution, he spins crazy conspiracy theories to impugn his foes. What is more confounding and dismaying is that so many Republicans and “conservatives” have been so eager to join him in Cloud Cuckoo-Land even though their theories keep exploding like kernels in the popcorn popper. Remember when Trump claimed that President Barack Obama “had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower”? When he said that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was investigating him because he was angry about a fee dispute at Trump National Golf Club? When he claimed that texts sent between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, Lisa Page, were evidence not only of anti-Trump bias but of “treason”? When he charged that the FBI had infiltrated his campaign with a “spy” to gather political dirt? When he supported Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in claiming that the FBI had obtained a surveillance warrant for Trump adviser Carter Page based solely on a dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele without telling the judges that Steele had been hired by political opponents?
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Each of these conspiracy theories is no more. It turns out that no one tapped Trump Tower. That there is zero evidence of Mueller being angry over golf course fees, much less misusing his authority to gain revenge. That Strzok and Page did not conspire against Trump. That the FBI had not infiltrated the campaign but had spoken with an informant on its outskirts to learn about Russian infiltration. And that the FBI investigation into Trump-Kremlin links was prompted not by the Steele dossier but by the admission of a Trump adviser to an Australian diplomat that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Newer conspiracy theories are exploding just as fast. On Sunday, Trump, doing his best imitation of a mafia boss, tweeted that “Michael Cohen only became a ‘Rat’ after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE!” Not even Cohen’s attorneys dared to make such a bold claim, because they knew FBI agents had a proper search warrant. If they did not, there is no way Cohen would have pleaded guilty and been sentenced to three years in prison, as he was last week.
Trump and his acolytes have also claimed that Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, was entrapped by the FBI into lying — or that he did not lie at all. “They gave General Flynn a great deal,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 13, “because they were embarrassed by the way he was treated — the FBI said he didn’t lie and they overrode the FBI. They want to scare everybody into making up stories that are not true by catching them in the smallest of misstatements.” Trump followers hoped that U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is presiding over Flynn’s case, would back up their claims and toss out his guilty plea. This weekend, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro hailed Sullivan as a “a jurist unafraid of the swamp, a judge who has a track record of calling out prosecutorial misconduct, a man who does not tolerate injustice or abuse of power.” But instead of raging at the FBI and special counsel, Sullivan raged at Flynn himself — in no small part because his attorneys tried the entrapment defense in their sentencing plea. “Arguably, you sold your country out,” the judge thundered at the shaken defendant at Tuesday’s sentencing hearing. Asked if Flynn was entrapped by the FBI, one of his lawyers answered, “No, your honor,” and Flynn admitted that he knew lying to the FBI was wrong. And just like that the Trump apologists went from hailing Sullivan as a jurist of uncommon wisdom to denouncing him as another cog in a vast left-wing conspiracy. “Can Flynn receive fair treatment from Sullivan in future?” Washington Examiner correspondent Byron York wondered darkly. How long before it is alleged that Sullivan has a fee dispute at a Trump golf club?
Being utterly shameless, Trump does not mind looking foolish by spreading preposterous conspiracy theories. He must figure that he will hoodwink at least a few gullible souls. But, for the life of me, I cannot fathom why so many so-called conservatives are so eager to propagate far-fetched lies on his behalf that are inevitably dispelled almost as quickly as they are created. When George Santanaya warned that “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” he could not have imagined that history would be forgotten as quickly as it is today. Trump defenders would be well advised to recall the ignominious fate of previous conspiracy theories before spinning fresh ones.
Steer Clear of Crazy Land
When is that gullible Fox audience finally going to learn? Every nutty conspiracy theory they trot out there (& there’s been lots of them) to protect their leader against the Mueller investigation which could bring down his presidency, those conspiracies always turn out to be wrong: how-fox-s-anti-mueller-squad-coping-demolition-their-flynn-theory. This line of thinking on Fox is simply ditzy beyond stupidity: fox_hosts_republican_congress_subpoena_bill_clinton_barack_obama_because_hillary_s_emails. And it looks like Bannon dreamed this one up: that-negative-image-of-the-clinton-foundation-is-owed-to-a-plan-run-by-none-other-than-steve-bannon. The echo just can’t give up the Clintons, since that rhetoric always riles up their audiences. It doesn’t matter to them they’re all lies.
With Fox & the echo now calling the shots for this White House, it’s become basically like the inmates running the asylum: why-fox-news-made-trump-shut-down-the-government. Here we see Toobin praising Judge N. for telling the truth on the network where the truth is seldom heard: jeffrey-toobin-lauds-napolitano-and-shep-smith-as-fox-news-journalism-zone-rips-primetime-as-crazy-night. But he did it during Shep’s hour, making it far easier, since that’s the one hour of the entire Fox day where real news & real journalism are espoused. It’s questionable whether Judge N. could ever say such things on the Fox evening shows, since as Toobin points out, Fox prime-time is “crazy land.” The Fox prime-time lineup has turned into the fact-free zone. It’s a real tragedy for America that millions watching their TV screens at night would voluntarily submit their minds to pure unadulterated mumbo jumbo capable of turning one’s brain into mush. Many living inside the echo-bubble for years are mentally too far gone from all the brainwashing.
Fall from Grace
Trump is unraveling but so is his PR lawyer. From the height of popularity known as America’s Mayor after 9-11, to the depths of aligning with demagoguery & covering up crimes as a buffoonish fool, that PR lawyer is now a running joke: rudy-giuliani-is-the-fool-for-our-time. In that scary alt-right world, here we see the wackos have taken over Reddit: reddit-libertarian-takeover-far-right.
Do the Right Thing
Some are courageously trying to do the right thing, but so far we haven’t seen much of a backbone from GOP politicians. That’s because Trump relentlessly twists facts & pounces on anyone who might dare expose his lies & corruption: trump-giuliani-attack-cohen-lies. In American history, we’ve never had a president who so routinely violates the law & the truth. These excerpts taken from The-worst-thing-Trump-has-done describe the single worst examples of many horrible patterns Trump is setting. America cannot be a great nation by following Trump’s immoral lead, & it might cause us to lose our moral compass beyond repair, putting our nation in a downward spiral. Trump is unraveling but we don’t have to follow. It’s time to take the higher road before it’s too late:
I believe that the two worst things that Donald Trump has done, worse even that his attacks on health care, the poor, immigrants, and the environment, have been to elevate hatred and raw emotion over rational thought, and to cripple the concept of Truth in political discourse. By Truth I mean not so much any particular religious ideal as the simple common-sense belief that actual facts do exist and that they matter. Donald Trump did not invent lying, but he has taken it to levels where it has never been before in American politics, where falsehoods are uttered with utter disregard for facts, and where solid counter-evidence is casually ignored or dismissed as “fake news.” We have never seen this type of intentional, concerted denial of objective reality before. At least not in America; such flagrant disregard for facts has always been associated with totalitarian regimes. Therefore, looking forward to 2020, I sincerely hope that Democrats will remember that Process (Doing Things Right) matters as much as Results (Doing the Right Thing), and will work to rebuild the trust that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have done so much to destroy.
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