The Great Enemy Of Democracy, Part 1

I have a friend who wears a pin with the Union Jack design and the caption "Make America Great Britain Again." Donald Trump would be OK with that if he could emulate King John, who is universally considered the worst English king ever.

Of course it's not the United States of America he wants to reign over. It's his branded autocratic state, Trumptopia, a cloud cuckoo land where being great again means being white and dumb. 

In his appearance at CPAC February 28 Trump rehashed his Big Lie with embellishments, and lashed out fiercely against the Biden administration. In full tyrant mode he predictably blamed the Democrats for all the misdeeds he perpetrated while in office and took credit for their achievements. 

The whining was whinier, the self aggrandizement bigger, the boasts more boastful, the threats against democracy more vile--a clear sign of his desperate need for attention. Only Fox News televised the event, unfiltered and with no fact checking.

Brainwashing is Trump's primary weapon. He wields it like a sledgehammer, but he understands the basic theory, which is really pretty simple.

First you identify the core subjects. Not hard. Trump aimed directly at lower-class, lower-income white Americans who are inherently bigoted through generations of racism. He played on their fear of losing jobs to foreigners, on their anger at the rise of minorities, and on their perception that everybody is against them. And he commiserated with their indignation at having to accept a Black president.

He rolled out the most absurd conspiracy theories, but because it was he, an important white man in the news and on social media, they listened and believed. They were hooked.

Reeling them in: 

You start with the Big Lie, bringing it out early and repeating it as often as possible. Tell your followers the same thing continually and with conviction, and they will come to believe it and repeat it. 

You tell it even when it makes no sense to tell it. Why talk about mail-in voting months before the election? To get it into your subjects' heads. You say forcefully that the upcoming election will be corrupt. How do you know this? Are you a prophet? Doesn't matter. Get it into their heads. You start talking about how there's rampant corruption in the electoral process, especially in areas with high Latino and Black populations. Get it into their heads.

You use negatively reinforcing language: The corruption is terrible, the situation is disgusting, the voting fraud is massive, the opposition's policies are crazy, insane, and the media and anyone else who disagrees is fake--always, always fake.

You plant seeds of insecurity: "Everybody knows this, everybody agrees I'm right." If they don't know what the subject is, they'll scramble to learn. You ask open-ended and leading questions: "What's that all about?" Having opened the door, you tell them what it's all about. Finally you throw a crumb to their knowledge: "You know what went on there, don't you?" Well, yes, they do know, because they've been told by the Leader.

That takes care of the plebes. But you also have to have support from higher-ups, so you go to work on Republican politicians.

Trump is a master at exploiting weaknesses and vulnerabilities. He went straight to every politician's greatest fear: losing elections. With lost elections come reductions in power, visibility, access, influence, respect, and self confidence. 

Trump promised Republican politicians freedom from those fears if only they would fall into line behind him. And he was careful to point out how many conservative Americans he could control. 

He played the upper crust just as he had the commoners, but additionally, by lesson and by example, taught them Doublethink: the ability to hold two conflicting ideas in one's mind simultaneously.¹ Thus they could echo the Leader's practice of saying one thing while meaning the direct opposite--and over time they would come to believe what he and they said.

Having constructed his cult, Donald Trump, the Great Pretender and Liar-in-Chief, launched his campaign to become an autocrat.

To be continued.

 

--- Diogenes, 3/4/2021

 

¹ See my January 13, 2021, post: "2020(21) = 1984"

A Time For Silence

The most obnoxious conservative demagogues, including cult master Trump himself, have spent the weekend at CPAC sniping at and denigrating the president, his administration, and anyone else who doesn't agree with them, reading from the same tired old script and spinning the same old lies. 

I've never known a group of people with less imagination and invention. They can't even make up new untruths.

When he was President Obama's point guard, then-Vice President Biden sparred and traded political jabs with true heavyweights around the world. The small voices at CPAC are like so many gnats.

President Biden should do what he does best: stay cool, focus on genuinely serious matters, and remain calm. He absolutely should not engage that batch of fools.

Trump and his ilk live for attention. Like teenage girls, the worst thing they can suffer is indifference and inattention. Mr. Biden and his staff should provide lots and lots of silence.

--- Diogenes, 2/28/21

 

 

The 24-Karat Turd

Totally bonkers, barking mad, deranged, off their rocker, screwy, batty, nuts, daft, cracked, crazy, unhinged--whatever term you care to use for insanity, it's the new conservative. Or maybe it's just Trumpism, which has redefined madness.

A booth at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando is featuring a larger-than-life gold statue of Donald Trump. 

It's not gold, of course. Like all things Trump, including his presidency, it's a cheap and tawdry simulacrum of the real thing. The material is fiberglass covered in gold-tinted chrome. It is dressed in a suit coat, tie, shorts, and flip-flops, and carries a "fairy princess" magic wand. Were it not for the fact that the artist seems to be a Trump fan, it could taken as contemptuous.

Media platforms have been full of the thing and not a few people have cited biblical passages. The Second Commandment has been popular, but I think Exodus 32:20 is more fitting. After talking God out of destroying the Israelites for disobedience, Moses descends from Mount Sinai. Seeing the people worshiping and cavorting around a golden calf, " . . . he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the water, and made the people of Israel drink it." 

The point of making the Israelites consume the ground calf was to convert it into human excrement, demonstrating the nature and ultimate fate of false gods. I've been having dreams of all the Republican movers and shakers eating ground up chrome-plated fiberglass and shitting out little Trump-shaped turds.

I apologize for the grossness, but their behavior has gone so far beyond reason that I'm sometimes at a loss how to deal with it civilly.

Is there anyone, finally, who can't see the phenomenon for what it is? Trump is a cult leader and his followers are cultists. Not "cult-like" or "quasi-cult" or "resembling a cult," as some apologists have tried to make it. The Trump movement is a full-blown, active cult that is inimical to America's democratic values. The violence of January 6 should be seen as just a precursor for probable future uprisings. 

Major Republican donors are sucking up to Trump this weekend, and they have a lot, make that a LOT, of money. And regardless of where his personal future is headed, he has supporters who will fight for him. We've seen it. Does anyone think January 6 was all they had? A one-shot, flash-in-the-pan kind of misfire? Not at all. Quite a few right-wing militant groups wisely stayed on the sidelines on 6 January. When they decide which battles to fight it will be a new ball game.

And let's not forget the numerous Trump supporters on active military duty. Whether they rise up during or after their service, they will be formidable.

We are still in danger and there does remain the possibility that the Trump faction could capture Congress and even the White House in two or four brief years. We have to remain solid, vigilant, active, and perhaps armed. 

The threat has abated, but it has not been defused.

Wachet auf!

 

--- Diogenes, 2/27/21

 

Cities Of The Dead

Consider three North American cities: Atlanta, Georgia; Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and Matamoros, Mexico. I invite you to look up one or more of them on Google Earth or whatever viewing or mapping program you use. Study the demographics, take a virtual tour, find out how many museums each has, how many churches, how many restaurants, how many theatres--whatever attracts you to cities, and visualize the local population carrying out their lives.

Then imagine them empty: devoid of life and motion, no sound of traffic or bells or whistles or sirens, no children playing, no concerts, no couples laughing, no sports events, no people. Visualize each as a ghost town.

Each of these cities has a population of approximately 500,000--the number of Americans who have now died of COVID-19. That's what we as a nation have lost: the population of a good-sized city. 

As pure numbers go, 500,000 isn't particularly huge, compared, e.g., to astronomical distances. We read about 500,000 widgets being shipped somewhere and don't bat an eye. But the 500,000 we're talking about here aren't widgets, and the distance they're traveling isn't finite. 

These are American lives lost, their souls released. Early in the pandemic the American death toll was compared to 9/11. Now our scope has to expand to the point that the number of American COVID-19 deaths approximately equals the number of Americans killed in both world wars, combined.

Out of respect for those deaths President Biden has ordered flags flown at half-staff on federal buildings. Here in my part of Virginia many private organizations, companies, clubs, and individuals have followed suit. 

The stark exception is the group who consider themselves citizens of Trumptopia. They fly the Trump flag high, and like their leader believe the pandemic to be a hoax and President Biden to be a pretender. They may not be traitors, but they are definitely deserters.

Die Fahne hoch . . . ?

Hell, no!

--- Diogenes, 2/26/2021

Slaying The Lemma

I've slain the multilemma I wrote about a few days ago that was causing such angst about the direction this blog should take. 

I accomplished this thanks to a shocking reminder from CNN's Brianna Keilar who, at the end of a piece about Trump's recent letter retaliating for Archdemon Mitch McConnell's "betrayal," said: "Trump is sending [the letter] from the political graveyard right now, but there's no guarantee he doesn't rise from the grave in four years."

I didn't quite scream, but the hair on the back of my neck stood to attention and my heart thumped a few times. Of course there's no guarantee. I'm hoping he lands up in federal prison for at least one of the myriad crimes he's committed. That in itself wouldn't stop him from running, but it would be damned difficult to run a campaign from a prison cell. Now that the whole world knows about his crimes in detail, there's no reason for any prosecutor to hold back.

So despite the position statement in my previous post that "In the end we decided it was better to move forward than to always be looking backward," we're going to be open to all topics that invite comment under our revised motto, "Veritas Super Omnia," Truth Above All, and Trump, his cult, and the Republican congressional leadership, are still fair game.

When Al Capone was finally convicted and imprisoned, it wasn't for any of his violent and highly visible crimes, but for tax evasion. Remember there's always hope.

--- Diogenes, 2/19/2021 

Quo Vadimus?

I've been silent for a couple of weeks because I've been bouncing around on the horns of a trilemma--or maybe a quadrilemma--how many horns can a lemma have, anyway?

The challenge facing us here at Vox Humana is how, or if, to redefine the blog. We started the project in March 2017 as a means of protesting the Trump presidency. Our original mission statement was to expose and comment on "the lies, malfeasance, and crimes of the Trump administration. We use facts to expose Trump for the fraud he is."

Following the Biden inauguration we began considering a new direction. The publication of "Ignorance Is The Curse Of God" on January 26 was intended as our first effort in a more informational, less adversarial, direction. But while Trump is gone, the Trump cult remains active. The antics and pronouncements of Gaetz, Greene, McCarthy, et al. seemed to call for a return to our anti-Trump stance. But we had already set a foundation for a new direction, which we really didn't want to abandon.

Moreover, as Trump fades away in the nation's rear-view mirror, it is apparent that his cult members are losing focus. The more hard core among them will continue to spout Trumpery and QAnonisms for a longer or shorter time, depending 1) on the depth to which they have been brainwashed and 2) the level of control they are willing to grant to the crazies in their constituency.

Enter the trilemma.

The choices we faced were:

• Move forward in the new direction;
• Re-set our sights on Trump cult members, especially those in Congress;
• Return to our original anti-Trump stance;
• Try to tackle all three, perhaps through a second blog.

This was not an easy decision. Trump and the Trump cult remain a clear and present danger to this country. We are especially alarmed by the number of true believers in Congress. In the end we decided it was better to move forward than to always be looking backward. We'll keep an eye on the Great Pretender, and will maintain a close watch for cultic craziness in Congress and elsewhere.

So with apologies for the long hiatus, we'll resume our series on the Constitution with the next post.

Thanks for your patience.

---Diogenes, 2/10/21

 

Ignorance Is The Curse Of God*

Why is the Constitution important? 

The only answer I have is what Louis Armstrong said when asked to define jazz: "If you have to ask, you'll never know." 

This is the first in an occasional series of essays about the history of American government. If you remember everything from Civics 101 you can skip it, but please read the next paragraph first.

According to some polls, as many as 75% of Americans of voting age have only the vaguest understanding of the Constitution.** That ignorance has brought America to the brink of collapse. It was the primary weakness in a credulous sector of the population that ex-president Trump exploited, making them believe their own government had turned against them. It is an appalling level of ignorance made even worse by the fact that several members of Congress share it.

The soul of the Constitution is in the first three words, which everyone knows but few understand: "We the People," written in script dramatically larger than any other words in the document. That's not a stylistic conceit; it's a statement. 

That donor statement identifies who is making the proclamation and granting the benefit.

Compare the donor identification in any monarchical document, and not just in the past. Here's one from 2018: "Elizabeth the Second by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Our other Realms and Territories Queen Head of the Commonwealth Defender of the Faith . . ." Etc., etc. 

There's no such aggrandizement in the Constitution.

"We the People." With three simple words the American people granted themselves a nation. And yes, it was all the people, not just their representatives to the Congress of Confederation, which approved the Constitution for ratification. Each state called a special election for a popular vote of ratification. By popular vote the Constitution became the foundation of our government in June, 1788.

For the first time in the history of the world, a proclamation granting nationhood did not rely on the largesse of a monarch.

In plain language the Preamble sets out its purpose: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

As big deals go, that's infinitely ginormous. No other people in history have successfully thrown off an oppressor and gone on to establish a successful nation with a brand new, innovative, something-new-under-the-Sun, unique form of government. Nobody. Ever.

That's the first important thing about the Constitution. Stay tuned.

 

---Diogenes, 1/25/2021

*  William Shakespeare, II Henry VI, IV.vii.

** For example: https://woodrow.org/news/how-well-americans-know-constitution/; https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/commentary/more-americans-need-actually-read-the-constitution; https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-are-poorly-informed-about-basic-constitutional-provisions/

 

Constitution 46, Tyranny 0

There's a great old patriotic song called "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," that has this line: "Thy banners make tyranny tremble, when borne by the red, white, and blue."

Donald Trump, a would-be tyrant, has learned that the Constitution of these United States of America is more powerful than tyranny. So it will always be.

Trump is now trembling in Florida, and Joe Biden is in the White House.

Barring unforeseen disaster, catastrophe, or tribulation, this will be the last message I post on Vox Populi in its anti-Trump role.

Thanks to all who have read, commented, kept the faith and spread the word. I am sincerely grateful.

--- Diogenes, 1/20/2021

Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968

Today is Dr. King's birthday, and now, in this bizarre and berserk world, it is especially important that we remember him.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is at the top of the list of people I deeply wish I had met. He was a man of God, a man of peace, and a man of the people. He dedicated his life to them, served them, and died for them. In a restless and divisive time he spoke peace to violence and brotherhood to hate. We were slow to learn.

In the week following his death more than 100 American cities were wracked by major riots in the so-called Holy Week Uprising. Thousands of buildings were destroyed and $65 million dollars--nearly $500M today--of damage done. Baltimore, Detroit, and other cities still bear the scars.

Even I can't say they were unjustified. It wasn't just an outpouring of grief. For Black communities across the country it was the last straw. They had been ignored, persecuted, cheated, brutalized, and robbed by whites for generations, and the reckoning had finally come. The nationwide violence was like nothing seen before or since in this country.

The government's predictable response was to militarize police departments, leading to more decades of racial tension. Since 2016 we have suffered setbacks to laws and programs meant to protect minorities, and on January 6 we were forcibly reminded of the anger and hate still held by many whites in this country.

But we are learning, if slowly. The unrest that followed the deaths of Black people at the hands of police in 2020 was nothing compared to 1968. The 10,000 mostly Black people who gathered in Houston to mourn the death of George Floyd did so peacefully and with respect for the memory of the man murdered by Minneapolis police.

The rise of Black Lives Matter has been an important step, but it can flourish only if it focuses on racial harmony. The ball is in the whites' court.

The United States is today not just divided, but fractured. We desperately need a person with the strength, humanity, fairness, and sheer goodness of Dr. King.

We should all be praying for that person to appear.

 

 

--- Diogenes, 1/15/2101

 

2020(21) = 1984

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

 

You remember these slogans. The pithy precepts of the Party in George Orwell's novel 1984. They are slogans from the Ministry of Truth, which in fact makes up lies disguised as truth to feed the people, and is engaged in a massive project to rewrite history. 

 

As Orwell said, “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”¹ That control comes about by rewriting history to make it more agreeable to the Party's plan for the present and the future. 

 

We have seen our past rewritten in school textbooks that downplay or deny the ugliness of slavery in America; that recast the Civil War as an economic struggle rather than a battle for the freedom of a race; that ignore the violent and extra-constitutional governmental persecution of WWI antiwar protesters; and that carry no mention of the forced internment of Nisei (American-born Japanese) into concentration camps during WWII.

 

In order to sell its disinformation to the public the Party has brainwashed the population with doublethink, the ability to "hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, . . ."²

 

We have witnessed doublethink in the remarks of Donald Trump, who has routinely ascribed to his opponents bad acts that he himself has committed. In his four years as president he has established a personality cult of frightening size, and has instilled doublethink in a great many of them, including several members of Congress. Any time you hear a member of the Executive branch or a Republican member of Congress talk about their devotion to the Constitution, you can bet they're doing something to damage it.

A few Congressional types are now finally saying what I and other bloggers and commentators have been saying for months: The senators and representatives who follow Trump blindly and without question have betrayed their oaths to the Constitution and put Trump in its place. Their mouths proclaim defense of the Constitution but their actions say they are doing their best to negate it.

 

It's been refreshing today to see a number of Republican representatives actually embracing reality and denouncing Trump during the House impeachment proceeding. But it's been sad to watch several others, clearly affected with doublethink, predictably spew out glib, duplicitous Trumpspeak. 

 

It's sad because their minds have been hijacked. They are themselves, yet they are not.³ They are capable of carrying on perfectly normal conversations until the subject of Trump comes up. Immediately their consciousness opens a different channel. Out comes the Trump praise, the Trump-can-do-no-wrong rhetoric, the denials and the lies. 

 

The really scary part is that I don't think most of them are even aware of it.

 

They are frightened. They think they've reached their exalted state thanks to Trump's blessing, and they will fight ferociously to stay on his good side. They fear his displeasure and they fear their constituency, who they know will vote them out if they don't toe the Trump line. Having tasted the power of being in government they can't bear the thought of leaving it and will do anything to stay.

 

It would be easy to simplify this as a class struggle, trailer trash rising up against the elite intelligentsia, but it really isn't that simple. The mob that attacked the Capitol appears to have been a cross-section of American society. I've explored the demographics of Trumptopia, and while its firm foundation is unquestionably low-income, minimally educated white people, such is not its totality. Highly placed professional people and members of Congress and state legislatures don't fit the mold of the base, yet there they are, and they didn't spring up fully formed from America's cultural sub-basement. They come from good homes and good schools and polite society, and they want to overthrow the government of the United States of America.

 

"How did we get here?" is a question that a lot of Americans are asking. I don't have an answer, but unrepentant educator that I am, I have a suggestion for further reading: "How Did Hitler Happen?" is a concise essay on Hitler's rise to power, published online by The National WWII Museum: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/how-did-hitler-happen

 

Before you read it I suggest you make a simple side-by-side graph with one side headed "Trump" and the other "Hitler." Then, keeping recent events in mind, see how many commonalities you find and let me know. If you find none, you might want to get yourself tested for the Doublethink virus.

 

I'll give you one hint: the flag. 

 

Hitler had a flag: Bright red with a central white disc containing a black swastika. Like most highly effective symbols it is simple and bold. Hitler designed it himself to be used as both a flag and a poster. To be precise, this was the flag of the Nazi party, but Hitler and the party were inseparable; moreover, during his incumbency the banner was also the de facto flag of Germany. Germany was Hitler and Hitler was Germany.

 

Trump also has a flag. There is no "official" design, but it generally fits the pattern of his other campaign literature: His last name, all capitals, in a bold sans-serif font, usually white on a blue field, sometimes with stars. There is no other name, no hint of a running mate. Trump is a solo act.

 

The point is, there is a flag. Flags proclaim power, dominance, and sovereignty. In constitutional republics no individual, not even the president, has a personal flag.

 

Hitler's flag became Nazi Germany's flag. Trump wants his brand to be stamped on and flown above the United States of Trumptopia.

 

Never. We shall never let it happen.

 

 

--- Diogenes, 1/13/2021

 

¹ George Orwell, 1984. (Sorry--I can't find my copy of the book for a full citation; I'm relying on Wikipedia for the quotes).

² Ibid. and ditto.

³ Not quite like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but similar.