October 4, 2020
Today Donald Trump is in Walter Reed Hospital being treated for
COVID-19. The news about his illness is filtered through the White House team and his family who have obfuscated and misrepresented information many times in the past. Fox news reports the information from this team without any editorializing. The rest of the media highlights how this illness brings again into focus the infectivity and potential deadliness of the virus and how Trump and his administration has downplayed 'these facts and misrepresented the seriousness of practicing social distancing and the wearing of masks. Potus wounded and possibly more seriously impaired is now part of the White House narrative.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/scotus-nomination-trump-coronavirus-superspreader-eventAs the news is enfolding depending on the source you have two quite different pictures but the very latest indicates a much more severe illness with high fever, lower oxygen levels and treatments including dexamethasone.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/03/us/rose-garden-event-covid.html?referringSource=articleShareRebecca was talking with a repair person for our sprinkler system before this news hit. He is a avid Trump supporter who gets all his news from watching Fox News. He believes whatever the president and his team say and concludes that any other opinions to the contrary are fake news generated by Democrats and opponents of the president to mislead.
A friend suggested I learn about Roy Cohen to better understand Trump's strategies and statements.
Cohen was one of very involved in Jules and Ethel Rosenberg's conviction for espionage. He was a lead counsel for Joseph McCarthy's committee Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He subsequently worked for Trump who was sued by by the federal government for numerous violations of the Fair Housing Act. Trump continued his services up until Cohen was ill with A.I.D.S.
"Deflect and distract, never give in, never admit fault, lie and attack, lie and attack, publicity no matter what, win no matter what, all underpinned by a deep, prove-me-wrong belief in the power of chaos and fear." " The basic lessons that Trump learned from Cohn were: Never apologize. If someone hits you, hit them back a thousand times harder. Any publicity is good publicity. And find an ‘other." https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/19/roy-cohn-donald-trump-documentary-228144 So the recent news of Trump's tax records reveals that he has managed to pay very little in federal taxes. He owes over $400,000,000 in loans but these loans appear to be with foreign lenders and we have no knowledge about these loans from a president who has attempted to coerce a foreign government to impune his main political rival Joe Biden (see the Mueller report). He has been taped voluntarily by Bob Woodward admitting that in January he knew that the COVID-19 virus was very infectious and dangerous. He did not follow the rules of debate for President and instead behaved with shouting and talking over his opponents time to respond to questions, and made statements directed to right wing racist groups Proud Boys to be ready but now stand down. He urged supporters to monitor our federal election polling sites seen by many as intimidation. He continues to disparage mail in ballots as representing his opponents opening to steal the election away from him while his polling numbers continue to indicate he is losing causing great consternation with his opponent democrats that he's looking to steal the election through abrogating the voting process and having the Supreme Court involved after he appoints Amy Barrett a nominee who has come out in the past against the Affordable Care Act and Roe vs Wade. Over his presidency he has attempted to dismantle this health care act, environmental protection acts, and immigration quotas and laws seemingly attempting to undo all the benefits of the Obama presidency. He continues to insult his opponents and continues to lie about almost any subject which may make his administration look bad or be suspect in bad behavior."
The other person of interest to me is Newt Gingrich. "
The normalization of personal destruction. The contempt for custom. The media-baiting, the annihilation of bipartisan comity, the delegitimizing of institutions" are phrases describing his political style. "He conceived of governing as war. Democrats were not merely to be defeated ideologically. They were to be immolated.""
Gingrich was my introduction to Orwellian newspeak. He had this tic of starting every other paragraph with “frankly” and then telling a lie; it was his poker tell. Falsehoods and hyperbole came as naturally to him as smirking. He freely trafficked in conspiracy theories. His PAC circulated a pamphlet for aspiring politicians who wished “to speak like Newt.” It advised them to repeat a long list of words to describe Democrats, including sick, pathetic, corrupt.Like Trump, Gingrich was a thrice-married womanizer who’d somehow seduced the evangelicals. He too had a skyscraping ego, nursed grudges as if they were newborns, and lacked impulse control. In 1995, Bill Clinton made him sit in the back of Air Force One; he responded with a tantrum and shut down the government, prompting The New York Daily News to run a cartoon cover of him in a diaper under the headline “Cry Baby.” "“Conflict equals exposure equals power,” became one of his favorite sayings. Which may as well be the motto of reality television. And Trump." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/opinion/trump-newt-gingrich.html I catalogue some of the issues that highlight how Roy Cohen, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump are similar in how they operate. Yet Trump enjoys support with people I have had contact with excusing these facts and behaviors. My previous post have outlined some of the research into our fast and slow thinking processes, Morality as Cooperation Theory described by Oliver Scott Curry, current research suggestions into fear, anxiety, existential threat, and charismatic practitioners practice to entice and ensnare us in their web of subterfuge.
George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984 may send some chills into your body after thinking about these issues.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote a book The Vital Center. He describes DoughFace optimism an aspect of liberal progressive thinkers as contributing to autocracy like 1984. " a weakness for impotence, because progressivism believes that history will make up for human error; a weakness for rhetoric, because it believes that man can be reformed by argument; a weakness for economic fetishism, because it believes that the good in man will be liberated by a change in economic institutions; a weakness for political myth, because
Doughface optimism requires somewhere an act of faith in order to survive the contradictions of history.
The weakness of impotence is related to a fear of responsibility--a fear, that is, of making concrete decisions and being held to account for concrete consequences. Problems are much simpler when viewed from the office of a liberal weekly than when viewed in terms of what will actually happen when certain ideologically attractive steps are taken. Too often the Doughface really does not want power or responsibility. For him the more subtle sensations of the perfect syllogism, the lost cause, the permanent minority, where lie can be safe from the exacting job of trying to work out wise policies in an imperfect world. Politics becomes, not a means of getting things done, but an outlet for private grievances and frustrations. The progressive once disciplined by the responsibilities of power is often the most useful of all public servants; but he, alas, ceases to be a progressive and is regarded by all true Doughfaces as a cynical New Dealer or a tired Social Democrat.
Having renounced power, the Doughface seeks compensation in emotion. The pretext for progressive rhetoric is, of course, the idea that man, the creature of reason and benevolence, has only to understand the truth in order to act upon it. But the function of progressive rhetoric is another matter; it is, in MacDonald's phrase, to accomplish "in fantasy what cannot be accomplished in reality." Because politics is for the Doughface a means of accommodating himself to a world he does not like but does not really want to change, he can find ample gratification in words. They appease his twinges of guilt without committing him to very drastic action. Thus the expiatory role of resolutions in progressive meetings. A telegram of protest to a foreign chancellery gives the satisfaction of a job well done and a night's rest well earned. The Doughfaces differ from Mr. Churchill: dreams, they find, are better than facts. Progressive dreams are tinged with a brave purity, a rich sentiment and a noble defiance. But, like most dreams, they are notable for the distortion of facts by desire." https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/vital-center.html
Schlesinger likes the New Deal approaches of Franklin D. Roosevelt trying solutions some may work others fall by the wayside but there is progress. The liberal who has grievances and issues may get to rant and collaborate with others in committee but does little to move us forward.
Leonard
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