Tag: Trump cult

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Politics

Words to the Wise

Words matter. Take the word “burger,” for instance. That word generally means a patty of ground beef, served in a bun, with some variety of toppings and/or condiments. The burger I order at McDonald’s will look and taste different from the burger I order at Red Robin, and that one will look and taste different from the burger I’d be served at a five-star restaurant. The size, the quality and preparation of the ingredients, and the endless possibilities for toppings and sauces and garnishes will yield different culinary experiences–not to mention wildly different price tags–but the three basic components will be there. In other words, if I order a burger, I know I’m not going to get egg salad.

Yet in 21st-century political lingo, I can’t be so sure. Depending on whom I’m speaking with, a burger might very well be egg salad, and egg salad could be quiche. The biggest barrier to that elusive goal of unity we keep talking about is that we don’t agree on what “unity” means. To some, perhaps those in the cancel culture, it means something close to agreeing on every point. To others, you can think or believe whatever you want so long as you swear unwavering fealty to the cult leader that keeps your party in the headlines and assures more election wins. Cross him, and your fate might look somewhat like that of Liz Cheney whose position in the party had to be reconsidered after she cast her vote to impeach the cult leader. Fortunately, she escaped censure, but her future decisions will have to take into account what she now knows is a potential result if she again runs amok of party leaders.

If unity is even feasible in our country, we’re going to have to find some middle ground between the idealistic notion that we can agree on everything and the dangerous prospect of turning over control to a narcissistic authoritarian who would rather burn down the building than hand over the keys.

But finding that middle ground is going to require defining some other important words, such as “truth,” “fact,” “opinion,” “patriotism,” “treason,” and “high crimes and misdemeanors.” When two members of congress are placed on trial by their colleagues and their names used in the same sentence–one for having committed the offense of voting her conscience against the party leader and one for being a crazed, violent, conspiracy-theorist nutjob–we’re in deep waters. In the end, the right decision was made to allow Liz Cheney to keep her leadership position; but only 11 of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s GOP colleagues were willing to vote with the majority that stripped her of her committee assignments. Even more disturbing is the fact that she was given a standing ovation by some of her GOP colleagues in response to her behind-closed-doors, tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear “apology.”

What do the words “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” mean? They seem relatively straightforward but get a bit muddled when a lawmaker who swore that oath can harass a school shooting victim, disrespect a whole nation of people (Jews), and advocate assassinating her colleagues and her party even has to debate whether to allow her to serve on the education committee that oversees the schools in which shootings have happened and where students and parents of those schools have to be deeply wounded by her labeling their personal tragedies as “false flag operations” that didn’t really kill anyone. Her actions make it seem more that she is the enemy than that she is the defender against enemies. God help us all!

Let’s talk about the word “incite.” Merriam-Websters says “incite” means “to move to action, stir up, spur on, urge on.” Simple, right? None of the dictionary definitions include participating in the actions oneself. The world has held Hitler accountable for the deaths of over 6,000,000 Jewish people, along with some others whom he considered undesirable and inconvenient to his purposes, yet there is no record of Adolph Hitler personally rounding up Jews, taking them to camps, herding them into gas chambers, and releasing the noxious fumes that would end their lives. Charles Manson never murdered anyone, but he was convicted and sentenced on seven counts of first-degree murder, because it was judged that he ordered his followers to commit the murders. According to the Washington Post, “Manson was also convicted of two murders that he did physically participate in,” but he was not the one who dealt the fatal blows.

Both Hitler and Manson are considered mass murderers, yet their hands never killed anyone. On January 6, 2021, the sitting “president” spoke to a violent mob in Washington, D.C., encouraging them to “take a walk” to the Capitol. Using such incendiary statements as “We will never give up,” “We will never concede,” “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” “We will not take it anymore,” and “We will not let them silence your voices,” he aroused the crowd to such a pitch of fury that they marched to the Capitol and desecrated that national monument in unspeakable ways. Five people died as a result of the violence, two more Capitol police officers have since committed suicide, and more than fifty other officers were injured, some of them severely. One risks losing an eye, and another has lost three fingers. Yet our GOP lawmakers want to parse words and can’t be sure whether the “president’s” words actually caused the insurrection. Fortunately, the House impeachment managers have no such vocabulary limitations; they have cited the speech maker as “singularly responsible” for inciting the riot.

The article of impeachment against the person who made that inflammatory speech charges him with “inciting violence against the government of the United States.” The problem is it seems few lawmakers in the GOP knows the meaning of “incite.” Within hours after order had been restored to the Capitol building, 147 of the people who had narrowly escaped death that day voted to overturn the election results and retain in office the person who had incited the riot that might have cost them their lives. Some people have a lot of trouble connecting dots.

Apologists for the inciter of the January 6 insurrection argue that this is a free speech issue.  Jacob Sullum sums up that argument in a column published in Reason:

“Even advocacy of illegal behavior, the Supreme Court ruled in the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, is protected by the First Amendment unless it is both ‘directed’ at inciting ‘imminent lawless action’ and ‘likely’ to do so. It is hard to see how [that] speech, which urged his supporters to ‘fight like hell’ against an ‘egregious assault on our democracy’ as a joint session of Congress was convening to affirm Biden’s victory, meets that test.”

I’ve heard it argued that he said what he said and they did what they did. One cannot be held accountable for the other. No connection. Then let’s just take the word “incite” out of the dictionary.

And that brings us to the words “freedom of speech.” Does the first amendment guarantee every citizen the right to say whatever the hell we please, wherever and whenever we want to say it, with impunity? Not according to my understanding. I believe our founders and our Constitution’s framers wanted to insure citizens the right to speak their minds on the actions of their government without fear of punishment. Slander and libel have always been illegal, as is the much-cited incident of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded building unless one has actually seen flames or smelled smoke. No right is absolute; every one has moral and logical limitations. Although our founders could never have envisioned a Reality-TV star “president” or a QAnon, anti-Semitic, purveyor of dangerous theories member of Congress, I find it impossible to believe they would have written into our Constitution an amendment protecting their destructive speech.

Our two deeply polarized political parties defend their own actions and condemn their opponents’ actions using the same words. The January 6 rioters call themselves “patriots,” while those of us shocked and devastated by what we saw and have since learned consider their actions among the least patriotic we have ever witnessed.

New York Times columnist Stuart A. Thompson recently published an article documenting his three weeks inside a QAnon chat room. Among many other disturbing comments Mr. Thompson heard, he reports that Q followers consider themselves “fact-checkers” of mainstream media. Most of us look to such nonpartisan resources as Snopes, Politifact, and ProPublica, but whatever. The article begins with a series of several audio clips in which group members can be heard saying such things as “Behead ‘em all” and “Bring in the firing squad.” Mr. Thompson quotes another member: “If the Biden inauguration wants to come in and take your weapons and force vaccination, you have due process to blow them the [expletive] away. Do it.” These speakers are the people who want to be the arbiters of truth and fact.

The word “opinion” gets tossed around a great deal these days, as in everyone is entitled to have ‘em. Although in both general usage and the dictionaries, “opinion” means any held belief, regardless of its relation to fact, I would argue that in public discourse–particularly that which determines government policy–an opinion should be more than a whim or what one pulls out of a particular body cavity. In public discourse, “two opinions” or “two sides” implies two equally valid positions on a subject, both positions backed by fact and evidence. However, when one side’s positions are based on science, logic, and investigative journalism and the other side’s position is based on theories about baby-killing, blood-drinking Satan worshipers, space-laser-launching Jews who ignite forest fires, and the Clintons killing everyone from Vince Foster to JFK Junior, the two sides seem a bit unbalanced. And the possibility of finding common ground for dialogue is slim to none.

Decades ago, I read a book called “None Dare Call It Treason,” by John Stormer. In the 2020s, everyone dares call treason any act which violates their side’s belief system. Many of us believe our former “president” was guilty of treason–or at the very least high crimes and misdemeanors–for attempting to enlist foreign help in getting elected, attempting to overturn an election, and inciting a riot to stop legally cast ballots from being certified. Those who are okay with all of those actions, however, accuse the accusers of treason for their disloyalty to “dear leader.” How does one adjudicate the leader’s actions when words have become meaningless?

Other common controversies involve the word “socialism,” used mostly by people who don’t know what it means but think it sounds scary and menacing. “Right to bear arms” has been debated for decades and will continue to be, given the current climate, for years to come.

Words matter, but they become impotent when separated from the ideas or realities they represent. The philosopher Aristotle had a great deal to say about words. He believed “We use words as tokens in the place of things” because “it is impossible to converse by bringing in the actual things under discussion.” I have to believe Aristotle would agree that discussion itself becomes impossible when the disconnect between things and their words makes the words mere inane gibberish. He goes on to say, “Those who are inexperienced with the power of words are victims of false reasoning, both when they themselves converse and when they are listening to others.

    In the famous speech which William Shakespeare penned for his iconic character, Juliet laments having just learned her newfound love’s name, since she (a Capulet) was forbidden any contact with him (a Montague). But they had been getting along swimmingly before the name issue came up. Her lament begins with the famous words “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore [why] are you Romeo?” She continues “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy” and then asks: “What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot/Nor arm nor face nor any other part/Belonging to a man. O be some other name./What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” It’s all just words.

But words matter. For Romeo and Juliet, our fictional lovers, words led to their deaths. For the people who were killed and injured in the January 6 Capitol attack, the words spoken directly preceding the riot had the power to determine their fates. The words they had spoken and listened to for months before they rose to action formed their world view and justified their insurrection in the names of God and country. Yet many of our lawmakers deem those words so trivial as to be dismissed without consequence.

I wish I had a nice fairy-tale ending where we all come together for a group hug, join hands, sing a couple of rounds of Kumbaya, and promise to be loving and kind to one another from now on. But until we can agree that “up” means “up” and “down” means “down,” I don’t know how we get out of this. I just pray we’ll figure it out.

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Politics

The Myth of the Presidency

“He’s so unpresidential!” say many Americans and other thinking people around the globe. “He disqualifies himself every day by his crass, undignified, vulgar behavior.” You’ve heard it and probably said it. The question this claim raises, however, is what it means to be “presidential”; and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that word takes on a different definition with every group who weighs in. Every new president is compared to his predecessors, and his (some day her) performance is judged by the composite measuring stick of the, at this time, 44 men who have held the office of POTUS during the history of our country.

In my history and civics classes during my first twelve years in school, I learned a rather romantic image of the U. S. presidency; and I’m willing to venture many others were taught that same rosy-colored view. We were treated to stories of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, crafted to demonstrate those men’s exemplary honesty and integrity. Lincoln was known as Honest Abe, and every new teacher reminded us of Washington’s encounter with a cherry tree and his stand-up behavior in readily admitted his youthful misdeed to his father.

Presidents were portrayed as gods among mortals. They were of a scarce breed that rose above human norms and achieved a rarefied super-mortal status. Many a man who has aspired to join this elite group has been automatically disqualified when American citizens have been shown his feet of clay. And because of the power of the presidential myth over our minds, we are shocked and betrayed with each revelation.

Precisely what do we Americans expect of our presidents? And how can we say if one of them is behaving in a presidential manner or not? I recently heard a supporter of our current “president” answer the reporter’s question “How do you think things are going?” with this: “I think it’s going great. We finally got someone with some balls.” Well, who can deny the importance of “having balls”? Yet I have a feeling we’re also going to find different definitions among U. S. voters of what it means to possess that fine quality.

Our founders rejected the establishment of a monarchy, preferring instead a high leader elected by the people. Abraham Lincoln, about 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, called this concept “government of the people, by the people, for the people” and expressed the wish that such government “shall not perish from the earth.”

Leonid Bershidsky, in an article titled “The US Expects Too Much from Its Presidents,” published in the Sun Sentinel, quotes Walter Bagehot, 19th-century Brit who in his book The English Constitution made this distinction:

“The Queen is only at the head of the dignified part of the constitution. The prime minister is at the head of the efficient part. The Crown is, according to the saying, the ‘fountain of honour;’ but the Treasury is the spring of business.”

Since the American Constitution lacks provision for such a division of roles, our president has been expected to take on the ceremonial duties of a king or queen as well as the everyday in-the-ditch duties of a prime minister. Bershidsky says,

“The U.S. doesn’t have a system in which the various sets of duties can be distributed between a presidency or monarchy, a prime minister’s job and multiple faction leaderships in parliament. In the U.S., according to the Congressional Serial Set, ‘The president simultaneously serves to perform functions that parallel the activities of a king or queen in a monarchy and the prime minister or premier in a parliamentary democracy.’”

He adds, “The U.S. demands even more ceremony of its presidents than other countries in part because of the expectation that the head of state is also the moral-authority-in-chief where Christian leadership is prized and the president is expected to channel those attitudes.” And therein lies our conundrum! When I think of the presidency, I’ve always been reminded of a quote from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: “You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.” Leaders born into royal families are bred and trained for the responsibilities they will bear. We take an everyday American and expect that person, after a brief orientation, to behave like a monarch; and when he doesn’t, the press and the history books “kill” him.

In an increasingly divided America, not all citizens prize Christian leadership; and what constitutes moral authority is even more difficult to agree on. I think the key lies in our expectation of the president to be a “moral-authority-in-chief.” The presidential myth that was such a part of our early education led us to believe exactly that: the president is the person we look to as a model of integrity and, if not Christian, at least extremely high moral values. So is “having balls” one of those high moral values? Let’s think about it.

In truth, our school-days romanticized view of the presidency has always been a myth. How many aspirants to the presidency can you think of who’ve been dismissed from consideration because of moral offenses, major or minor? Gary Hart and John Edwards quickly come to mind, and many others have lost their bids for lower offices because of moral scandals. In fact, Wikipedia lists a whopping 83 names of people whose political fortunes have been ruined or tainted by moral scandal in the history of our republic; and I’d venture to say there are plenty more.

Trump critics repeatedly cite his three marriages and numerous adulterous affairs as evidence that he’s morally bereft and unfit for the job; but what about Bill Clinton, John Kennedy, and even the sainted Thomas Jefferson? Many said they didn’t much care how many women Clinton screwed, but they were offended that he lied about one of them. John Kennedy had the benefit of being president at the dawn of the mass communication feeding frenzy, so most of us didn’t know about his multiple affairs; and since we’ve found out, the knowledge has done little to tarnish his image. And here’s what Trump supporters think of his moral scandals, according to a meme I saw on social media just this morning: “What President Trump did in his PRIVATE life as a PRIVATE citizen and NOT a PAID politician is NOBODY’S business.” All righty then.

If most Americans had to name the “Big Three” American Presidents, I daresay three names on everyone’s lips would be Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. I’m not familiar with any information that might taint George Washington’s image, but we now have credible evidence that Thomas Jefferson slept with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, and fathered some of her children. Does that make you think less of our third president or in your mind diminish his contributions to our republic? When you read the brilliant rhetoric in our Declaration of Independence, are you thinking of Jefferson’s moral compromise or of his role in achieving our independence from Great Britain? The highly revered and most often elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt is known to have had a mistress or three. And if that’s not enough, according to Dinitia Smith, in a 2004 New York Times article, “The subject of the 16th president’s sexuality has been debated among scholars for years.” Yes, you read that correctly. Many scholars believe Abe Lincoln was gay (which would have been scandalous in the 1800s), and they’re naming names.

Not only do we revere presidents who have fallen short of our high moral standards, but those who do meet those standards are not universally appreciated. Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are the icons of the personal purity and scandal-free private lives that we claim to expect from presidents. Yet Carter was elected for only one term and was largely dismissed until his post-presidential years, during which he has gained recognition and respect as one of the greatest ex-presidents. Barack Obama–whom even his rival John McCain defended as a decent family man–while much loved by many, has been the most openly reviled president in our history. It would seem those moral purity points don’t really count much with some people. Possibly the same ones who place a high value on “having balls.”

So much for our high moral standards! What else do we say it takes to make a person “presidential”? Well, he/she should uphold the law and never have so much as a parking ticket on his/her record. In 1992, when asked whether he’d ever broken a law, Bill Clinton had to claim he “never inhaled” the marijuana he “tried a time or two” to gloss over his college drug use. Observers see even this incident as a lowering of the bar, since such an admission might previously have disqualified a potential presidential candidate on the spot. But does that mean no previous president had ever used drugs? Depends on whom you ask. Some say Saint George (Washington) himself relied on laudanum (same thing Edgar Allan Poe used) for pain relief. Others claim Honest Abe was known to use a “blue mass” or “blue pill” to treat melancholy. John Kennedy resorted to a number of drugs, legal and illegal, to control the constant back pain that was part of his life.

Since then, the Nixon Administration makes smoking a joint or popping a pill look like a Sunday School party. According to a 2005 New York Times article, a whopping 69 government officials were charged with crimes, and 48 of them pled guilty.

Our Constitution provides for impeachment and removal from office for a president convicted of “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Article II, Section 4). According to Robert Longley,

“The impeachment process in U.S. government was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Noting that the traditional mechanism for removing ‘obnoxious’ chief executives — like kings — from power had been assassination, Franklin glibly suggested the impeachment process as a more rational and preferable method.”

The wise Richard Saunders (Franklin’s pseudonym for dispensing advice in Poor Richard’s Almanac) couldn’t have said it better! Impeachment is indeed a “more rational and preferable method” for removing an “obnoxious chief executive.” Where is Ben Franklin when we need him? But to return to our tally, only two presidents–Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton–out of the 44 men who have held the office, have been impeached but not removed from office. One, John Tyler, had a resolution to impeach drawn up against him, but the resolution failed in Congress. And our guy Richard “Tricky Dick” “I am not a crook” Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.

Okay, so perhaps we have been more forgiving of presidents’ adherence to the law than our rhetoric would suggest. But we really, really like a guy who can speak eloquently and represent us well on the world stage: someone who can charm a snake with his brilliant rhetoric and poignant words. Yeah, maybe not. Lots of people loved George W. Bush, known for saying “nucular” and “misunderestimate,” among his many malapropisms and sundry crimes against the English language. And those same people detested Barack Obama whose silver tongue could charm audiences and hold them in his magical spell.

Guess we’re a rather inconsistent lot. We have our standards, sort of, but they’re easily bent. And most notably, there’s not much agreement among the various tribal units comprising our society. Accusations of unpresidential behavior fall flat when supporters of the accused can cite a list of exceptions that expose the accuser’s hypocrisy. Well then, dammit, what do we want in a president? And how will we ever know if someone meets our standards? And how can we have a rational conversation without being exposed as hypocrites when we say someone is not conducting himself in a presidential manner? One thing which we may have to thank the current Republican Party for is forcing us to be honest about what really matters.

Our current “president” daily confounds his critics with his tweeting habit. Tweets have largely replaced official White House statements and ceremonial Rose Garden announcements. Instead, we watch for each morning’s “tweet storm.” Who among our ancestors, even if they knew what a tweet is, would believe that a “tweet storm” is something a president does? Each day, we say, “This one crosses the line! He’s done it now! Bye-bye, Donald!” But he’s still there the next morning when the next outlandish tweet appears. It’s hard for many of us to comprehend how he survived this one about Kim Jong Un: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Crass, yes. Vulgar, yes. Sexual innuendo, yes. Supporters rushing to condemn, no. Supporters applauding his “balls,” probably. So there he is, and there it seems he will stay for the foreseeable future.

Surely we can all agree that no one who is regularly called an “idiot” or a “moron”–even by members of his own staff–can possibly be qualified to serve in this esteemed office. But Paul Begala, Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator, cautions Democrats against protesting too much against Trump’s obvious lack of intellectual acumen. He argues that Trump is “plenty bright,” though admittedly not in the way many of us like our presidents to be bright. He explains, “There are different kinds of intelligence that are useful for different purposes. The kind of intelligence I believe Trump has is enormously useful if you want to, say, be a politician — even better if you want to be a demagogue.” Oh, good! Now I feel better.

Begala continues, “He has a cynical, innate intelligence for what his base wants to hear. It’s like a divining rod for division, prejudice and stereotyping. His relentless rhetorical repetition (‘No collusion, no collusion, no collusion’) is brilliantly designed to tell folks who are predisposed to like him what they want to hear. . . . It’s like he knows what every barstool blowhard is about to say before he or she even says it.”

In his conclusion, Begala advises, “So, don’t call him ‘moron’ or ‘idiot’; call him what he is: a conniving, corrupt con man, a dangerous, divisive demagogue — and, most sobering of all, the man who carried 30 states in the last election, and may well do it again if Democrats don’t focus their fire more effectively.” Works for me, but I didn’t vote for him, and I loathe the sight of him. How do we “focus our fire” effectively enough to have a conversation with those 63 million of our fellow Americans who see this “conniving, corrupt con man” as the God-ordained leader who will make our country great again? And some of those refer to him as the “god emperor”? (I know, barf.) Judge Jeanine Pirro claims Trump is fulfilling Biblical prophecy. I guess in some folks’ eyes, it doesn’t get more presidential than that.

Our fellow citizens who think that way don’t want George H. W. Bush’s “kinder, gentler America”; they want Donald Trump’s hard-fisted, damn-the-liberal-elites America. And in their eyes, the guy who’s promising and working to give them that America IS presidential. They don’t care how many wives he’s had; how many porn stars, Playboy models, and God knows who else he’s slept with; how many crotches he’s grabbed; how many friends he has in Russia; how many days he plays golf; how many times he calls people childish names; how many people he mocks, ridicules, and disrespects; how long he ignores the pain of Puerto Rican Americans; how many innocent Palestinians are killed for protesting against his decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem (yet another building on which he has plastered his name). None of it matters. They don’t care, and they’ll tell you they don’t.

Michelle Goldberg, New York Times opinion columnist, defines the word “red pill” as a metaphor taken from the movie The Matrix: “the alt-right’s preferred metaphor for losing one’s faith in received assumptions and turning toward ideas that once seemed dangerous.” “Red-pilling” is something that’s probably happened to all of us a few times in our lives, and it’s not always bad. Coming to realize that Palestinians are not the default bad guys in Middle Eastern conflicts is, in fact, a large step in a positive direction. On the other hand, accepting as presidential a person whom our ancestors would be vomiting in their graves to see ensconced in the hallowed walls of the Oval Office is not good.

Goldberg says,

“To the alt-right, of course, being red-pilled means abandoning liberalism as a lie. It means treating one’s own prejudices as intuitions rather than distortions to be overcome. The act of doing this — casting off socially acceptable values in favor of those that were once unthinkable — creates the edgy energy that has, of late, attracted Kanye West.” She advises, “Because the red pill experience is so intense, progressives should think about how to counter dynamics that can make banal right wing beliefs seem like seductive secret knowledge. Attempts at simply repressing bad ideas don’t seem to be working.”

Amen to repressing bad ideas not working!

But what could possibly cause 63 million people, among them an influential group who see themselves as the standard bearers for God, to allow themselves to be so red-pilled that they have completely abandoned their previously stated etched-in-stone beliefs? In a May 14, 2018, Washington Post article, James Hohmann cites “a deep craving for respect among supporters of the president and an enduring resentment toward coastal elites.” This is hardly new or profound to those who have been paying attention the last two years, but it is yet another voice screaming, “You’re doing it all wrong!” If you want change or want to see a tribal truce, you have to admit you’re using the wrong tactics, and you have to find some new ones that work. It’s true what they say: Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity. We’re living proof.

It seems there’s only one qualification we can all agree on as a must-have for our president: we all want a president who agrees with us. That’s why we have two major political parties, along with a host of minor parties and multiple factions within each of them. We want a president who will make our country into our image of what we think it should be. As I said in my last article, however, the core problem is we can’t agree on what we want to be, and the divide is growing wider and deeper. Obviously, having a president who agrees with all of us is not going to happen. Ever. Let’s go back to “that deep craving for respect.” Everyone has it. Abraham Maslow, in his five-tier model of human needs (which we all share by virtue of simply being human), lists two psychological needs: “belongingness and love needs” and “esteem needs.” Maslow, a respected twentieth-century psychologist, affirms the notion that all humans have a deep craving to belong to a group and to be respected and valued within that group.

Donald Trump, with all of his vomit-worthy, unpresidential habits, is for a large group of people meeting those very human needs: a place to belong and a community in which to be respected. As Michelle Goldberg says, trying to repress bad ideas with people who actually think they’re pretty damn good ideas isn’t going to work. And as Paul Begala says, pointing out Trump’s intellectual deficiencies gets us nowhere. It’s like quoting scripture to an atheist. Repeating the same accusations over and over only causes everyone to dig their heels deeper and deeper. What we’re doing is NOT working. Face it. Then start figuring out what will work. Hint: It’s going to have to start with some mutual love and respect. Treating each other as fellow citizens rather than members of warring tribes is a great place to start. Can we still do that?

 

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Politics

The Real Tragedy of Donald Trump, Revisited

On July 9, 2016–after Donald Trump had declared himself a candidate for the presidency but before it became obvious that New York playboy, real estate mogul, and reality TV clown had an ice cube’s chance in hell of actually winning that esteemed office–I wrote an article for this blog, which I titled “The Real Tragedy of Donald Trump.” To date, it has been my most-read article. In it, I said this, among other things:

“The fact that a crazy person thinks he should be president doesn’t really disturb me. Look at all the crazy people who have claimed to be Jesus! As I said at the beginning, Trump is not the cause; he’s the effect. Donald Trump would not be where he is without the 13,000,000 people who have so far voted for him. And therein lies the REAL tragedy! In the greatest and richest country on earth, 13,000,000 people feel so angry, so betrayed, so powerless, so disenfranchised, so cheated, and so dehumanized that the rantings of a crazy man are words of hope and promise! If I were drowning, I wouldn’t take time to vet the person who threw me a rope. I wouldn’t care how morally corrupt or mentally deranged the person might be; I’d grab that rope! The fact that 13,000,000 people have reached the level of desperation that a rope from Donald Trump looks like salvation is tragic.”

That was then. Now, almost a year into this sham “presidency,” I feel no compassion for those still riding the Trump Train. They’ve had as many opportunities to witness the deterioration of our democracy, to weep over the shaming of our nation on the world stage, and to recognize that they will suffer the greatest losses if Trump’s me-and-my-rich-friends-only agenda is implemented as the rest of us have had. Yet they continue to idolize him, fill his rallies, and pledge to vote for him again. How is it possible that citizens of the same country can witness the same debacle and one group call for impeachment while another group continues to cheer on their idol?

And that question brings us to the tragedy of Trump revisited. Eleven months in, the real tragedy is what Donald Trump has revealed about the state of our Union, and it’s not pretty. The real tragedy of this year-long nightmare is at least three-pronged.

Perhaps most disturbing is the reality that our “president” is in fact a cult leader. He is not recognized as a legitimate president by the sane majority. And he doesn’t care! He is content to be the president of his “base” so long as they feed his gargantuan ego with all of the adulation it requires, mock the “enemies” in the press along with him, agree with him that the Russia probe is a hoax and a witch hunt, and perpetuate the delusional belief that he is “making America great again.” The definition of narcissism–a word most Americans have learned to define and spell in the last year–is the belief that the narcissist is the only person on earth who matters and that other people gain relevance only as they serve the narcissist’s purposes. So long as Trump can retain a base large enough to ensure another electoral victory, the rest of us are just so much excess baggage. Never mind that the cult followers stand to be the greatest losers when the dreaded tax bill becomes a law and the ACA is so stripped that it no longer serves the millions of people whose lives have been saved by it. The rabid “Lock-her-up” chanters will chant on because that’s how cults work.

According to International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), these are just a few of the characteristics of cult culture:

  1. The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
  2. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
  3. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, and/or on a special mission to save humanity).
  4. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
  5. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
  6. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members’ participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group.
  7. The most loyal members (the true believers) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.

This checklist will be published in the new book, Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias (Berkeley: Bay Tree Publishing, 2006). It was adapted from a checklist originally developed by Michael Langone.

Number 1: excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to leader. Check. Never in our history has a person wielded such unquestioned influence over so many Americans, with their full cooperation. Seems the only true words DT has ever spoken are the boast that he could shoot people in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose followers.

Number 2: Questioning discouraged. Check. Not only does this rule apply to the many people who have been fired for refusing to cooperate with the “boss” but it also seems to be part of what keeps followers in line. Cults give powerless people a place to belong, to feel more powerful by association with the exalted leader. The prospect of losing that newfound status is enough to keep most cult members in line–all the way to the Kool-Aid/suicide line.

Number 3: Elitist. Check. Trump followers belong to an elite group; they’re the only ones who are important to the “president” of their country. Therefore, they have influence which most of them have never before known. While the rest of us scream and yell about the devastation being wreaked on our democracy, these elites smile smugly over the turn of events which has made them the ones who are now heard in the highest chambers. Their “god emperor” (yes, sickening as it sounds, some of them give him that title) is hearing and serving only them. That’s a pretty intoxicating feeling!

Number 4: Us-versus-them mentality. Check. Not much commentary needed here. Just look at the deep divisions in our society–probably the greatest since the Civil War. Look and weep.

Number 5: Leader not accountable. Check. Possibly the most frustrating aspect of all is the president’s lack of oversight and accountability. I recall my intense frustration during the first few months of this administration as it became increasingly clear how much power is invested in our chief executive and how little restraint can be exercised against that office. If we learn nothing else from this debacle, we must learn how incumbent it is on us, the voters, to choose a leader who has the knowledge, experience, and temperament to be trusted with that level of authority.

Number 6: Ends justify means. CHECK!!! The party-over-country mentality of the current Republican party has caused women to vote for and support a confessed p—y grabber, a child molester, and a few indicted felons, among others. It’s caused men and women to see injustice as justice when one person in a lewd tape–the one who listened and laughed along with the joke (yes, I know that’s bad, too)–to lose his job and the one actually making the lewd comments to get a job promotion. A big promotion! It’s caused lawmakers to swallow hard at the blatant racist, xenophobic, misogynistic actions of the “president” and his followers but then do nothing because they don’t want to lose their power and control. Their new mantras are “anyone but a Democrat!” and “anything to advance the agenda.” The conscience is the first thing to go!

Number 7: Fear of leaving group. Check. Those powerless people I described in my first article as feeling “so angry, so betrayed, so powerless, so disenfranchised, so cheated, and so dehumanized” have found power, enfranchisement, and humanity as part of a sort of inner circle. The tables have been turned: now those “liberal elites” are the ones beating our heads on our desks trying to figure out how we can “take our country back.” The Trump Cult is a place to belong, a place to feel loved and accepted–however deceiving those sentiments may be. That Kool-Aid is tasting pretty sweet. Right now.

According to Adrian Furnham, Ph.D., in a Psychology Today article, group membership offers several seductive benefits: friendship, connections, identity, an opportunity to make a contribution. I get that. However, I feel only disgust and disdain for a “leader” who is willing to destroy the whole world to feed his own ego and bank account and equal disgust and disdain for those who blindly follow and give him the power to wreak his destruction.

How often have you heard the word “tribalism” used to describe current relations among the citizens of our country? The state of discord, division, and outright hatred among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents or liberals, conservatives, and moderates is the second prong of the real tragedy of life with Donald Trump as “president.” “Tribe” has a positive meaning in modern parlance: it means our group of friends, our “peeps,” the folks we look to for friendship, social engagement, understanding, and support. And that usage has a great deal in common with the negative form of tribalism which so defines our modern political landscape.

Writer and editor Elisha Madison offers this definition:

“A common definition for a tribe is a group of people that all have common ancestry, or a common ancestor, a common culture, and live in their own enclosed society. Other names for a tribe are a clan [sic], which is used in some European countries, and family. The idea of a tribe goes back to ancient times when Rome would create divisions within society due to class, family, and money. These divisions were tribes.”

The tribal groups which exist in modern-day America don’t necessarily share common ancestry, but each one clearly shares a common culture and a tendency to live in its own enclosed society. The divisions among the various tribes have become such deep chasms and so impossible  to bridge that any cooperation or coexistence among them has been rendered all but hopeless. I have come to detest false equivalencies: lying is okay because everyone does it, Democrats do the same thing, both parties are corrupt, etc. Hogwash! The modern Republican party is so off the charts, there is no equivalence in the Democrat party and perhaps none in American history. In this one aspect, however, that of demanding adherence to the tribe’s belief system, I’d have to say we are all guilty. A Republican who accepts abortion and a Democrat who questions it or thinks perhaps some restrictions should apply are equal candidates for censure and possible banishment.

Ms. Madison goes on to list core characteristics of a tribe. I’ve selected the ones which apply to this discussion.

The first is unity. Better a child molester than a Democrat is a perfect example. He may be a child molester, but he’s our child molester. He may be a genital grabber, but by god, he’s our genital grabber. As in the cult culture, repugnant values can become acceptable so long as those values serve to create and maintain unity within the tribe. Ancient tribes’ physical survival depended on unity, and modern tribes are no different, except that now we’re fighting for the survival of our agenda, our prejudices, our political dominance.

According to Ms. Madison, many tribes live in a specific territory. I think that sounds a lot like “red states” and “blue states.” President Obama tried to convince us to stop being red states and blue states and get on with being the United States, but lots of people didn’t buy that idea; so we remain red tribes and blue tribes.

A third characteristic is common language and culture; and although most of the people discussed here speak English, the tribes have clear differences in culture and in the language they use to encode their ideas, beliefs, and values. What one tribe calls political correctness, for example, another calls respect, equal treatment, and kindness.

This characteristic may be most significant of all:

“Another commonality is their belief systems. Most tribes will all worship the same god or gods, and follow the morality of the common religion. Another factor is internal government. Most tribes have their own political systems within their own people and usually do not recognize outside laws. They will vote for and appoint chiefs and leaders to help rule their communities. This means if someone breaks a law, they address it within the society . . . This is called tribal sovereignty.”

So how does a crotch grabber become “president” and a pedophile become a senator? They are held accountable only to the laws of their tribe, not to those of the broader culture or system of laws. They are judged and found innocent within the tribal unit, everyone else’s objections be damned. The common religion even allows the pedophile to keep preaching morality and asserting his moral superiority in the faces of his accusers. The opposing tribe members are held to far different standards than one’s own tribe members. Hence, the Democrats have lost a long-serving representative and a conscientious senator while the Republican “president” retains his office and a Republican pedophile prepares to step into the same august body that called for the expulsion of a Democrat who was careless and foolish, even though he expressed remorse and accepted responsibility for his actions. The only metric for judging these incidents is the internal law of the tribe; absolute moral standards do not exist.

Here’s Ms. Madison’s summary statement: “Ultimately, a tribe is a nation within a nation. They are people that have created their own societies and rules, and live by them.” Bingo! I think we know now what we’re dealing with.

Most tragic of all is the perversion of Christianity under the evangelical take-over of the Republican party. That problem may seem to be of no concern to mainstream Christians, non-Christians, and adherents to other religions; but make no mistake, we all have been affected by evangelicalism because without that group as a powerful voting bloc, we would have a different person sitting in the Oval Office today. And if we have any hope of restoring intelligent leadership to the executive branch of our government, we must–like it or not–confront this group.

Since white evangelicalism and republicanism are practically indistinguishable these days, it’s become imperative to recognize the stark reality that evangelicalism is as different from Christianity as ISIS is from Islam. Evangelicals can’t be allowed to peddle their deviant ideas as the will of God or as in any way a representation of Christian belief. The modern white evangelical movement is a political regime operating under the guise of a religious organization. The enemy here is not Christianity, religion, faith in God, or people trying to follow the example of Jesus. The enemy is extremism and the resultant hatred, bigotry, and injustice.

White evangelicals are a tribe, and their tribal laws supersede our national laws. Yet because they are in fact a political regime and a pseudo religion, they can’t be satisfied with simply living within their own tribal bubble. As supposed “ambassadors for God,” they must impose their superior laws on the larger culture, because that is the will of God, according to their cherry-picked passages from the Bible.

As a religion, evangelicalism is weak and pathetic. It’s a set of rules based on those cherry-picked Bible verses which in no way resemble the life of their namesake, Jesus Christ, and in no way lead adherents to follow Jesus’ example. Increasingly, evangelicalism is the polar opposite of Christian belief and conduct.

As a tribe, evangelicals have all of the core requirements: unity, strong “red” territories, their own culture and language, and tribal sovereignty. Leaders such as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Junior, and James Dobson stand as the unquestioned dictators of both religious tenet and political philosophy. It’s hard to fathom the depth of hypocrisy in statements such as these:

“Never in my lifetime have we had a president willing to take a strong, outspoken stand for the Christian faith like President Donald J. Trump has. Whether you are Protestant, evangelical, Orthodox, Catholic–all Christians need to get behind him with our prayers.” Franklin Graham

“I think evangelicals have found their dream president.” Jerry Falwell Junior

“Only the Lord knows the condition of a person’s heart.  I can only tell you what I’ve heard.  First, Trump appears to be tender to things of the Spirit.” James Dobson

Not one of these spokespersons for hypocrisy can offer a coherent defense of his statement, because of course every statement is pure malarkey (my favorite Joe Biden-ism). What is it about sexual assault, cooperating with a foreign power, employing felons, probably being a felon, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, tweeting out insults, provoking wars, and you know the rest of the list–what part of that screams “I’m a Christian”? What part of endorsing an accused child molester says “I believe in Jesus and strive to follow his teachings” or “I’m tender to things of the Spirit”?

And that brings us to the real reason we all have to pay attention to these twisted people: they are a modern political juggernaut. They’re the reason Donald Trump was elected. They’re the reason current congressional leadership is what it is. They’re the reason Neil Gorsuch now occupies a seat on the Supreme Court. They’re the reason our education system is being dismantled by Betsy DeVos. They’re the reason people are leaving the church in droves, weakening a vital voice in establishing justice and equality for all.

Christians are as appalled by these imposters as non-Christians are, so the answer is not to tax all churches or quiet the voices of those who call for justice in the name of their faith. The answer is to identify evangelicals as charlatans and do our best to unseat them from their places of power and influence.

What then is the real tragedy of Donald Trump? The tragedy is that a morally bankrupt person occupies the highest office in our land and daily degrades that office and degrades our country’s standing in the world. The bigger tragedy is that millions of voters still don’t see what is unfolding before their eyes. Cultism, tribalism, and evangelicalism conspire to keep people blinded to the evil that is transpiring. Our cultural values are being turned upside down: wrong is right, immoral is moral, evil is good.

No one is quite sure who said it, but we’ve all heard the quotation, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Martin Luther King Junior said, “Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter.” Dr. King also said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

What can one person do in the face of such seemingly insurmountable obstacles? Show up, speak up, be the light, and be the love. And keep doing it all even when you see no results. Good is more powerful than evil, if enough good people have enough persistence and patience.