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USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - David Guyatt - 19-01-2017
Albert Doyle Wrote:Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, just slipped and spoke of "Continuity Of Government" being one of their plans...
Whoops.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Tracy Riddle - 19-01-2017
Albert Doyle Wrote:Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, just slipped and spoke of "Continuity Of Government" being one of their plans...
That's because they are keeping about 50 of Obama's appointees for the time being. Since Team Trump is so slow to fill posts and apparently doesn't have a lot of people willing to serve in his administration. Spicer is an idiot every time he appears on TV.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Albert Doyle - 19-01-2017
No Tracy. You missed Spicer's interview. He specifically said "making sure the government continues in situations of weather caused disasters or societal unrest". He was talking about COG and it was clear he inadvertently slipped and repeated what he was no doubt hearing at briefings which tells you right there who is really behind Trump and the Republicans...
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 19-01-2017
New York protesters camp out at Goldman Sachs to oppose Trump
![[Image: new-york-protesters-camp-out-at-goldman-...-trump.jpg]](http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/587eb9735124c93966a0d0ec-450-300/new-york-protesters-camp-out-at-goldman-sachs-to-oppose-trump.jpg)
Demonstrators protest against Wall Street bank's ties to President-Elect Trump's administration in Manhattan, New York Thomson Reuters By Elizabeth Dilts
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dozens of protesters gathered outside of Goldman Sachs Group Inc headquarters on Tuesday to rally against President-elect Donald Trump's picking several former executives of the Wall Street bank for top jobs in his administration.
Some of the 50 or so protesters wore swamp-monster masks in reference to Trump's pledge to "drain the swamp" that he said Washington has become and get rid of special interests. About 20 of them brought sleeping bags, intending to camp outside 200 West Street until Trump's inauguration on Friday.
Goldman Sachs security guards sent employees and guests to entrances on the north side of the building on the rainy evening as protesters unrolled green sleeping bags on the southwest corner.
In an emailed statement, Goldman Sachs spokeswoman Tiffany Galvin said the bank respects "every individual's rights to assembly and free speech."
She declined to comment on the protesters' objections to Trump's nominations of ex-Goldman employees including Steve Mnuchin, Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Treasury Department. Others include Gary Cohn, who had been chief operating officer before becoming Trump's economic adviser, and Dina Powell, who left her position as Goldman's head of philanthropic investing to do the same.
Goldman Sachs had long been viewed as Wall Street's most prestigious and profitable bank with so many executives leaving for high-profile government positions it earned the nickname "Government Sachs." But in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman instead found itself blamed by politicians and activists for profiting from the implosion of the mortgage market.
In response, the bank embarked on a public relations campaign to clean up its image and launched initiatives to help small businesses, prisoners and female entrepreneurs. But the string of Trump appointments has renewed some of public contempt it received during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. (http://reut.rs/pJKyQX)
Nelini Stamp, 29, an organizer with a group called Working Families, said she also participated in that movement and Trump's appointments drove her to come back.
"We're here to make sure that people realize that Goldman Sachs is running our government," Stamp said.
Holding a sign with the image of a swamp monster biting down on a gold bar emblazoned with #GovernmentSachs and "foreclosures," Ethan Cantor, 25, said it was his first time at a protest.
The New Jersey native said Trump's embrace of Goldman Sachs contradicted criticism the president-elect had leveled against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for speaking fees she received from the bank.
"He used Goldman as a dig against Hillary," said Cantor, who said he reluctantly voted for Democratic candidates in the last election. "One good thing about (Trump's) campaign was that it was populist. Now he's lying to his own voters."
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Tracy Riddle - 19-01-2017
Albert Doyle Wrote:No Tracy. You missed Spicer's interview. He specifically said "making sure the government continues in situations of weather caused disasters or societal unrest". He was talking about COG and it was clear he inadvertently slipped and repeated what he was no doubt hearing at briefings which tells you right there who is really behind Trump and the Republicans...
He's used the term more than once.
A spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump chided Senate Democrats on Thursday for not preparing to confirm several of what he called Trump's "consensus" Cabinet nominees more quickly.
"The Democratic leadership is not working with us to ensure continuity of government," incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters at a morning briefing. "Let's get it done. This is not time for partisan politics."
[FONT=&]
Donald Trump has asked roughly 50 senior Obama administration officials to remain in their roles in order to "ensure the continuity of government," spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]This decision comes as Trump is reportedly struggling to fill important posts in his new administration.[/FONT]
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Tracy Riddle - 19-01-2017
Albert Doyle Wrote:No Tracy. You missed Spicer's interview. He specifically said "making sure the government continues in situations of weather caused disasters or societal unrest". He was talking about COG and it was clear he inadvertently slipped and repeated what he was no doubt hearing at briefings which tells you right there who is really behind Trump and the Republicans...
Can you provide a link to Spicer saying that? I've turned up nothing in my searches.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Albert Doyle - 19-01-2017
I wish I had a tape of what Spicer said today. He specifically elaborated that they would be bolstering the Home Land Security interpretation of COG in order to make sure the government continues against all threats.
It was on at around 10:30am on CNN as part of the transition coverage.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 20-01-2017
NORMAN LEAR, ARCHIE BUNKER'S CREATOR, DISCOVERS BLACK HOLE IN GOP
![[Image: image00-7-700x467.jpg]](http://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/image00-7-700x467.jpg)
Norman Lear Photo credit: TED Conference / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)In addition to some of the more familiar heroes in American history Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln we'd like to propose a figure that at first blush might seem an odd fit.
Norman Lear never led America into war. Instead, he made television shows that changed the way Americans viewed themselves and their society, both the good and the bad, including racial bigotry and the Vietnam War.
In his signature shows "All in the Family," "Maude," "Sanford and Son," "The Jeffersons," "One Day at a Time," "America 2-Night" he brought to life memorable, three-dimensional characters who dealt with issues that were taboo on television at the time. His most famous creation, the blustery, misspoken Archie Bunker, saw something wrong with just about everyone else while insisting that America itself was perfect, and that the flag, and the military, and war itself, could not be questioned.
Lear worried a lot about where America was headed, and so, after television, he became a citizen activist.
![[Image: image02-3-1024x682.jpg]](http://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/image02-3.jpg)
Jean Stapleton and Carroll O'Connor as Archie and Edith Bunker from the television program All In the Family, September 3, 1974. Photo credit: CBS Television / Wikimedia.He founded the nonprofit, People for the American Way (PFAW), to retake the notion of what it meant to be a loyal American from the extreme fundamentalists and belligerent warmongers who increasingly dominated the American narrative.
Lear owns one of the few surviving copies of the Declaration of Independence the revolutionary document, printed on July 4, 1776, that declares all men are created equal. When he put that document on display in schools and museums, he was sharing more than a sense of history. He was sharing a sense of urgency. Lear told a reporter in 2012,
"I don't wish to wake up in the morning if I have no hope. Hope is a big part of my being. There's a wall between me and the people who are throwing rocks, and it's glass. They're throwing rocks at the Constitution, and we have to be strong enough to turn them back."
At 94, still working on his own version of how to "make America great again," he asks some provocative questions about the Military-Industrial Complex, which has continued to grow like a strangling weed around democracy. Today, on the 56th anniversary of former General and President Dwight Eisenhower's unprecedented warning about the threat of uncontrolled militarism, Lear's call to action has never been more timely.
We're pleased to have Norman as a reader and supporter of WhoWhatWhy.
Introduction by Russ Baker, Editor in Chief.
******
Dear Who What and Why:
I have a WHY for you. And a bit of a challenge, too.
First, a bit of biography: I served in the 15th Air Force in WW II, in a B-17 bomber, out of Foggia, Italy. For about half my tour of duty we were on a mission basis, but some targets were so distant that we were credited with two missions when we flew them. There were times when we reached the target but couldn't drop our bombs because of inclement weather. Still, having gone the distance and survived the flack from below and the fighter attacks in the air, we were credited with a completed mission. At 50 missions an airman's tour of duty was complete and he was sent home.
At some point in my tour the Air Force decided to jettison its mission basis, and we were suddenly flying sorties instead. A sortie was every time we dropped bombs. No matter how distant the target, how long the flight, we were credited with a sortie only when we dropped our bombs on a target. A man's tour of duty was complete when he'd flown 35 sorties.
When my tour was completed I'd flown 35 sorties or, to use the earlier terminology, 52 missions. Of course, when asked today how to describe my service, good American that I am, I always quote the larger figure. "I flew 52 missions," I reply.
![[Image: image04-1024x682.jpg]](http://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/image04.jpg)
Norman Lear in Air Force uniform.Photo credit: With permission from Norman Lear.
Now to the WHY question I have for Who What Why: As I come to it I ask myself why all the above? My question is about Dwight David Eisenhower, the Five Star General who led all the Allied Forces in WWII, and who later became a two-term Republican President of the United States. I guess I wrote about my service to establish a connection between myself and the Ike I liked under whom I served.
Finally, my question. And my challenge:
A year and a half or so ago there were 17 individuals contesting to become the Republican candidate for the Presidency, the office that President-Elect Donald Trump will soon hold.
Question: WHY IN ALL THAT TIME, WITH AS MANY AS 17 MEN AND WOMEN SEEKING TO SELL THEIR REPUBLICAN SELVES TO LIKE-MINDED VOTERS CRYING FOR LEADERSHIP, DID NOT ONE OF THEM INVOKE THE NAME OR THE MEMORY OF OUR FIVE STAR WORLD WAR II COMMANDING GENERAL AND TWO-TERM PRESIDENT OF THESE UNITED STATES, DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER?
Why?
That's my question. And my challenge to WHO WHAT WHY and all of its readers and followers: Can anyone out there come up with or point to any speech, article or public utterance that could be called evidence to suggest that any Republican seeking public office anywhere has invoked the name and/or memory of Ike Eisenhower?
And if, as I suspect, that evidence cannot be found especially among the thousands of speeches, millions upon millions of words, spoken by the seventeen that morphed into our president-elect WHY?
WHY?
_______________________________________________Readers: for some perspective on this, you can read Ike's speech, here. And then, in the Comments space, feel free to offer your answers to the question Norman posed.
.
Eisenhower's Farewell Address (audio transcipt):
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me, over the years, to bring reports and messages to our nation.
My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the Nation good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideologyglobal in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex strugglewith liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied researchthese and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: The need to maintain balance in and among national programsbalance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantagebalance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many long years stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little resemblance to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.
Now, this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influenceeconomic, political, even spiritualis felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever presentand is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic systemever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, weyou and I, and our governmentmust avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
During the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of waras one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of yearsI wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
Soin this my last good night to you as your PresidentI thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and Imy fellow citizensneed to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Now, on Friday noon I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 20-01-2017
Got up this morning and suddenly remembered today was to be a funeral for my Country.....a black day for our Nation. I'm not naive to think it has been roses before today, but this is the plunge over or all too near the edge for my taste. I realized today that I'll be 70 if he is only a one-term President and doubt if I'd live long enough to even see the damage he will do undone in my lifetime [I would presume it would take more than ten years to undo the legislative damage - longer to undo much of the other damage - some of it will never be able to be undone. If Trumpf is not the rise of fascism in the USA, then I have learned nothing in my lifetime. I'm sure that is exactly what this is. Anyone who had not should read the recently re-released book by Bertram Gross entitled Friendly Fascism. It was originally written about Reagan, but it applies even more to Trumpf!
Demagogue-in-Chief
Posted on Dec 11, 2016
By Chris Hedges/Truthdig
For Donald Trump, the presidency will be a vast stage for accommodating his megalomania and insatiable appetite for money. Those who mock, defy or anger him will feel the wrath of the state. Those who are not obsequious will be cast aside. He will invest most of his energy in his brand. Self-promotion is the only real talent he possesses. Corruption, already rife within the political system, will explode into a full-blown kleptocracy. Manufactured stories about Trump's prowess, brilliance, sexual allure and goodness, as well as how America is becoming "great again," will be pumped out by the White House smoke machine. He will demand encomiums that will become ever more outrageous. All love, devotion and allegiance will be to Trump.
Trump is the sick expression of a dysfunctional political system and mass culture that celebrate the most depraved aspects of human naturegreed, a lust for power, a thirst for adulation and celebrity, a penchant for the manipulation of others, dishonesty, a lack of remorse and a frightening pathology in which reality is ignored. He is the product of our escapist world of constant entertainment. He embodies the mutation of values in American society that has culminated in an enormous cult of the self and the abandonment of the common good.
"When a population becomes distracted by trivia," wrote Neil Postman, "when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville, then a nation finds itself at risk: cultural-death is a clear possibility."
Demagoguesinsecure and crippled by an unbridled narcissism and seldom of high intelligenceplay to the inverted values of a decayed society. They attack all who do not kneel before the idol of "the great leader." "Saturday Night Live" can continue to go after Trump, but Trump, as president, will use every tool in his arsenal, no matter how devious, to banish such public ridicule. He will seek to domesticate the press and critics first through the awarding of special privileges, flattery, gifts and access. Those who cannot be bought off will be destroyed. His petulant, childish taunts, given authority by the machinery of the security and surveillance state, will be dangerous.
Trump's fight with the Fox News host Megyn Kelly illustrates his vindictiveness. Kelly, who was sexually harassed by Roger Ailes when Ailes was Fox News chief, questioned Trump on her television program about allegations of rape made by Trump's first wife, Ivana. Ivana Trump later recanted the allegations, although she had provided graphic details of the rape in a signed deposition during divorce proceedings. Trump was furious with Kelly for raising the matter.
In an interview by Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" that was posted last week, Kelly said that for months Trump attempted "to woo menot romantically, but just, you know, into favorable coverage." Trump demanded that she phone him, Kelly said, and she did so. There was a moment in that telephone conversation when he realized he had failed to persuade her, she said. "He became very angry. He told me I was a disgrace, that I ought to be ashamed of myself, and that's when he said, I almost unleashed my beautiful twitter account against you and I still may.' "
The conflict between the two exploded after the first Republican primary debate, in August of 2015, in which Kelly asked Trump about his derogatory comments about women.
Kelly was savagely attacked by Trump for nine months after the debate, including repeatedly on Trump's "beautiful twitter account." The attacks ended when Kelly went to Trump Tower to film what she called "a softer focus interview" with Trump but which in journalism slang is called a "puff piece," one that flatters the subject of the interview.
Kelly told Gross that the attacks by Trump "unleashed a chaos in my life unlike any I have ever experienced."
"I was receiving death threats regularly, serious death threat against me, against my family," she said. "Strange men showed up at my apartment building demanding to see me in a threatening manner. People started casing my home. Photographers were found on my property. I don't know if they were private investigators or what they were, but people started digging into my past, bothering my mother, bothering my closest friends, bothering my high school friends, trying to dig up dirt on me."
"The c-word was in thousands of tweets directed at me," she said. "Lots of threats to beat the hell out of me, to rape me, honestly the ugliest things you can imagine."
"The thing I was most worried aboutI have a seven, a five and a three-year-oldand I was worried I would be walking down the street with my kids and somebody would do something to me in front of them, that they would see me get punched in the face, or get hurt."
Kelly said the "crescendo of anger" sent "my life into lockdown."
When Gross asked Kelly about the "alt-right" figures gathered around Trump, including Steve Bannon, Kelly was unequivocal. "They will come after you," she said. "They will target you. And they will be relentless about it."
Ridicule especially antagonizes the demagogue. It deflates the pretentious and the powerful. It reduces to human size those puffed up by their self-importance. It exposes them for who they are. It affirms the self-respect and dignity of the oppressed. Demagogues, lacking the capacity for self-transcendence, cannot see the ludicrousness and absurdity of their pretensions. They cannot distinguish between their inner fantasies and reality. They can belittle and ridicule others, as Trump does, with great cruelty, but they see nothing humorous about similar treatment directed at the self-created edifice of their own glory.
"There are people who tell jokes," goes a joke illustrating the morbid humor prevalent among the populace in East Germany during the communist rule. "There are people who collect jokes and tell jokes. And there are people who collect people who tell jokes."
I have covered numerous demagogues as a foreign correspondent, including the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and the Syrian dictator Hafez Assad of Syria, as well as Erich Honecker of the former East Germany, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. They had different idiosyncrasies and styles. Gadhafi and Ceausescu loved the spectacle and pomp that come with power. Milosevic and Assad spent long periods out of the spotlight. But all had patterns of behavior exhibited by Trump.Bertolt Brecht's "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" provides the blueprint for how demagogues work. It is the story of a Chicago mobster cornering the cauliflower market in 1930s Chicago through threats, blackmail and coercion. It is also a thinly disguised allegory for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The Barker, who opens the play, lays it out in the prologue:
Ladies and gentlemen, we present today,
The great historical gangster-play!
Learn all bout blackmail and framing! Further:
How to succeed in big business through murder.
Demagogues expend great energy marginalizing, censoring and silencing all critics, something the corporate state has already done to dissidents such as Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader. They use the media, especially the airwaves, as a vast public relations department to amplify their lies and promote their personality cults. They destroy cultural and education institutions, replacing them with rote vocational training, nationalist kitsch and tawdry entertainment. They elevate members of their family, sect, tribe or clan to the inner circles of power. (Trump's tribe, of course, is the billionaire class.) They put generals in key positions. Those in the military appeal to demagogues because they are not trained to think but to be obedient. The military also does not shrink from violence. The demagogue and the inner circle grow fabulously rich by pillaging the state. They live in private inner sanctums of opulence and depravity that resemble Versailles or the Forbidden City. They banish anyone in the court who tells them unpleasant truths. They read into the most benign acts wild conspiracies. They often sexually assault girls and women. Hussein and Gadhafi were notorious rapists. Trump's misogyny is well documented.Demagogues foolishly see the elaborately staged public events held for them as proof that a populace loves and respects them. And in the final, decrepit stages of their rule they became grotesque parodies of themselves. The sycophants around them, profiting from the orgy of corruption, feed their gargantuan self-delusion. The demagogues, believing they are divinely inspired geniuses and omnipotent, make decisions based on hallucinations. When a demagogue reaches that stage, society can be obliterated.Demagogues usually seek to immortalize their grandeur in huge building projects that are monuments to their immortality. Saddam Hussein sought to rebuild the ancient city of Babylon. He constructed a replica of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II on the ruins of the original, embossing his name, like Nebuchadnezzar II, on many of the bricks. Gadhafi built the largest irrigation system in existence, calling it "the eighth wonder of the world." Ceausescu, whose birthday was a national holiday, constructed a massive palace, The People's House, at a cost of $1.75 billion in Bucharest. He conscripted as many as 100,000 workers for the project. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, who died from accidents during the construction. The palace, which is the second largest building in the world, after the Pentagon, has 3,500 tons of crystal and 1 million cubic meters of marble. It was two-thirds finished in December 1989 when the regime was overthrown. In a visit to the national museum that winter, I found it filled with idealized portraits and busts of Ceausescu. Rooms were devoted to hagiographic accounts of his mythical life story. Building projects and image creation of this kind make Trumpwho has decorated his residence in Trump Tower as if he were Louis XIV, the Sun Kingsalivate.Demagogues foster the psychosis of permanent war, which often leads to actual war. The psychosis of permanent war becomes a tool to abolish civil liberties and condemn dissent as treason. Huge expenditures go into the military, which demagogues see as an extension of their personal power, while the rest of the country decays. There is nothing a demagogue loves more than a big military parade.The story of demagogues is as old as civilization. They have risen and fallen like the tides, always leaving in their wake misery, destruction and death. They exploit the frustrations and anger generated by a decayed society. They make fantastic promises they never keep. They demonize the vulnerable as scapegoats. They preach hatred and violence. They demand godlike worship. They consume those they rule.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 20-01-2017
The author of the best single book on who/what Trumpf really was and is - his and his father's history of racism and tricky business deals et al. was Wayne Barrett. His book can be found on a certain 'bay' for the price of admission. I suggest reading it!
He has long had lung cancer, but sadly he died just last night, a few hours before the man he said was 'not qualified to run the Trump Organization, so certainly not qualified to run the USA.' was inaugurated.
As I write, D.C. Police are pepper spraying some protesters against Trumpf, and things are getting a little chaotic in Washington - although at other protest locations, tens of thousands [so far] have successfully shut down some entrance points into the Inauguration, peacefully.
Tomorrow, the Women's March Against Trump may have between half and one million demonstrators - with sister demonstrations in other cities around the USA and around the world.
For the best live coverage from a progressive perspective, may I suggest you NOT watch MSM in any country, but watch or listen in to http://www.democracynow.org