The Left Should Form An Alliance With Moderate Muslims

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the vast majority of the country was crying for action against the perpetrators of that heinous crime. We invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taliban and hunted down Al-Qaeda. Very few Americans objected to this action. Then the Bush administration made the argument that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein posed a threat to us and needed to be over-thrown by military force. Most Americans supported this action as well but some did oppose an invasion and even protested the impending war.

Unfortunately, the anger, pain and outrage over 9/11 was still too strong for the protests to have any affect on public opinion. Plus, there was a legitimate threat posed by violent, radical militants, motivated by their own anger and hatred, who were using religion to justify the murder of innocent people and to recruit others to join their cause.

Wait a minute. Did I just not call these violent radical militants “Islamo-fascist terrorists”? Oh my God, how will we ever defeat them?

I realized then, that progressives needed to do more than just oppose war. They needed to find a non-violent solution to the problem of Al-Qaeda. But other than ways to “contain” the terrorism, no really good ideas came from the left. We seemed content to just sit back and root for things to go badly in Iraq. I was really disheartened by this.

Fast forward to the present and the same situation exists. Fortunately, there have not been any attacks with mass casualties like 9/11 but these sporadic attacks by “lone wolf” actors who are seduced by the twisted ideology of terrorist groups like ISIS, is, obviously, extremely troubling on many levels. Besides the pain, suffering, loss of life, and the fear of future attacks, they give fuel to anti-Muslim hatred and support for Donald Trump’s call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, a registry of Muslims in the U.S. and surveillance of Mosques.

In the absence of any positive response to this problem from the left, just scolding conservatives and others for being “Islamophobic” is as feeble as the anti-war protests of the Iraq war. It’s worse than feeble, it’s actually counterproductive. Also, like I said, “in the absence of any positive response to this problem from the left”, this political correctness leads to things like the neighbors of the San Bernardino shooters being accused of not reporting suspicious activity because they didn’t want to be accused of profiling Farook and his family. (This was actually what one of the neighbors considered a possibility for why the other neighbors didn’t report to the police. Trump, the King of Fake News, repeated the right-wing fake news claim that the neighbors saw “bombs all over the place” and still didn’t report it.)

I cringe when I hear that the Manhattan truck attacker was let in on a “diversity lottery visa.” Not that I don’t think that diversity is a good thing, I’m all for it, but in the absence of an effective strategy by the left to stop terrorism, this just makes us look really bad and gives the right ammunition to attack progressives and Muslims and the idea of “diversity.” (Apparently there is more to this visa than what the right is alleging.)

Diversity has become a vile and dirty word to the right, especially the Steve Bannon/ Breitbart/White Nationalist right. It is without a doubt the single issue that motivates them more than any other. Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and the other right-wing propagandists have flat out admitted that this is the most important issue for conservatives (anti-diversity). This issue obviously resonates with Trump and he has exploited it with his constant, repeated and outrageous falsehoods about the threat of non-whites.

To those with a liberal disposition, like myself, diversity is a beautiful thing. Love for our fellow man and woman is one of the few teachings of my Catholic upbringing that has remained as part of my spirit, my soul, my psyche. Who among us has not taken a sturdy dose of psychedelic drugs and felt the power and beauty of that emotion? The story of the evolution of mankind, out of Africa, we are all truly brothers and sisters — a brotherhood of man, a sisterhood of woman. These experiences taught me the meaning of these emotions and helped me to develop a theory of the motivations of human behavior. I call it The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of Human Nature. This theory explains why some of us tend towards conservative thinking while others towards liberal thinking. It explains the very essence of conservatism and liberalism. I believe it holds a key to resolving the conflicts of left and right.

What the hell was that last paragraph all about? I must have been having a flashback.

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So, why hasn’t the left allied with liberal and moderate Muslims to develop a strategy to combat violent terrorism and anti-western hatred? The left is very aggressive about defending against anti-Muslim bias and hatred, which is good and important, but in the absence of any positive actions it allows the right to accuse us of protecting the terrorists. All the acts of kindness and humaneness are being used against us by the right-wingers to brand us as dupes who are allowing the slaughter of Americans.

One of the biggest problems we are facing is that the terrorists themselves are using our openness and humaneness against us, too. They are able to pose as law abiding people in order to commit their heinous acts of murder. If these acts of terror increase it will become even harder to argue against Trump’s crackdown on all Muslims.

We all know there are good decent Muslims who have spoken out against terrorism. The left should be supporting and promoting these people. Zuhdi Jasser is an American born Muslim and medical doctor who has served in the U.S. Navy. He is an outspoken critic of countries and organizations that promote the kind of hatred that fuels terrorism. He believes that America provides the best atmosphere for Muslims to practice their faith. He says that the U.S. needs to provide alternatives for Muslim youth and promote reformist groups.

He has engaged in interfaith activities, organized Jewish-Muslim dialogue groups and is an outspoken supporter of Israel. This guy is a hero. He is exactly the kind of person the left should be promoting. But because he is a conservative and criticizes certain Muslim groups — that deserve to be criticized — he is actually attacked by the left for promoting Islamophobia.

So we hardly see him anywhere other than Fox News. And despite the fact that the right does promote hostility against Muslims with fake news garbage that The King of Fake News, Donald J. Trump, repeats to the country — they also do talk about the need for Muslim leaders to reform Islam, for the Muslim American community to become more proactive in countering anti-American propaganda and to be more outspoken against violent acts of terrorism.

Why hasn’t the left been doing this!? Bill Maher is the only person on the left that I can think of who tries. Unfortunately, because of Bill’s anti-religiousness, he tends to favor critics of Islam such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali who make harsh wholesale condemnations of Islam and have been accused by the Southern Poverty Law Center of being an “anti-Muslim extremist”.

  

This is the problem: in an effort to combat anti-Muslim hostility/hatred, the left sees any  criticism of Islam as promoting that hostility. But as Maher points out, an ultra conservative interpretation of Islam is antithetical to liberal/progressive values. And Ms Ali’s criticisms of Islam are absolutely valid. But if we are going to change minds, which should be our goal, we are better off promoting people like Juhdi Jasser who is a devout Muslim and believes that Islam can reform itself and become a peaceful and tolerant religion.

I found a list of liberal and progressive movements within Islam on Wikipedia. 

en.wikipedia.org/... 

These groups should be promoted on every liberal talk show, or what’s left of them, every single day. MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann, etc.

Trump: "I Would Be A Total Unity President"

In a March 2016 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Donald Trump did what he does best and most often: he falsely accused someone of something he, himself, is precisely guilty of. Here’s the quote:

“I’ve been saying for a long period of time that he’s [Obama] the most divisive president maybe that we’ve ever had.”

As if that wasn’t obnoxious enough, he then followed that gem with this galling masterpiece:

“I would be a total unity president.”

Examples of this kind of hypocrisy by Trump are legion — like when he, the King of Fake News, calls the mainstream media fake news. Or like when he called Hillary a nasty woman. Or like when he gave Ted Cruz the nickname “lying Ted.” (According to Politifact, Cruz was a distant second to Trump on percentage of claims rated Mostly False, False and Pants on Fire, 66% to 77%. Trump was the only candidate to reach double digits in Pants on Fire ratings -19%. Cruz was second in that department  at 7%).  www.politifact.com/...

A more recent example is Trump’s description of NFL players “taking a knee” during the National Anthem as being disrespectful to the flag, the military and the country.

That’s right, the most disrespectful son-of-a-bitch we’ve ever witnessed — a vile prick who has disrespected Mexican people, Muslims, blacks, women, the disabled, Gold Star families, the Pope, our generals, our intelligence agencies, our allies, Ted Cruz’s wife and father, a terminally ill John McCain and other fellow Republicans — has described players, who were humbly protesting the police shootings of unarmed black men by kneeling with their heads bowed, as being disrespectful to our country.

Trump’s supporters have chimed in, calling this act of humility disgraceful because, you see, it’s not about what the protesters say it is, it’s about what conservatives say it is. They say it’s about respect for the military, the first responders and the country.

What I find disgraceful is how Trump supporters can approve of, so enthusiastically, a man who denigrated the military service of John McCain because he was captured, brutalized and tortured for five and a half years as a POW in Vietnam. If John McCain is a loser for getting captured, then, by extension, aren’t all POW’s losers?

Now that’s what I call disrespecting the military. Trump also defended his respect for Vladimir Putin, despite allegations of extrajudicial killings, by saying we kill people, too, and then questioning the innocence of the very same country he falsely accused the players of disrespecting. He was actually right about that but can you imagine how those hypocritical right-wingers would have reacted had Obama said that?

I guess those POW losers weren’t smart enough to get heel spurs in their foot. Was it the left foot or the right? Trump can’t remember, even though he said he has the world’s greatest memory.

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Speaking of double standards, Bill Maher recently asked, on his show “Real Time”, how would Trump’s supporters react if Obama had said some of the very offensive things Trump said. He then brought an Obama impersonator on to repeat, verbatim, those things Trump has said. It was very effective.

I have imagined Obama saying some things that would be equivalent to things that Trump said, only with the context “reversed”, so to speak.

Remember when Trump opened his 2016 campaign with the “Mexican criminal drug-bringing rapist” slander? Well let us imagine the response of Trump supporters if Obama had said the following after he first announced his running for the 2008 Democratic nomination:
“When Republicans vote for politicians, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of hatred, and they’re bringing that hatred with them. They hate Mexicans. They hate Muslims. They’re racists. And some, I assume are good people.”

Now let us reflect on that for a moment. It is not hard to imagine the outrage those words would generate from the right-wing media. There would be an explosion of fury and anger that would make the reaction to Trump’s Mexican slander pale in comparison. The mainstream media would be reporting that story as a major scandal. Democrats and liberals would be shocked and appalled. It would be both the beginning and end of Obama’s campaign. I would expect death threats on Obama.

Now let’s try this one: remember Trump’s 9/11 Muslim celebration slander? Imagine if Obama had said this following the Charleston church massacre when 21 year old white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black people, hoping to ignite a race war:

“After Dylann Roof massacred those people in that Charleston church, thousands and thousands of people were cheering after that. Thousands of people were cheering.”

Then imagine Obama saying in a subsequent interview with George Stephanopoulos that he heard reports about this on TV despite Stephanopoulos saying that no such reports could be found.

“There were people that were cheering in the South, where you have a large White Christian population. They were cheering after that massacre. I know it might not be politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering about that after the news came out. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don’t like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people in the South that, after they heard the news, a large White Christian population, that were cheering after the news came out. Not good.”

Let’s try this one. Obama retweets outrageously false statistics that exaggerate the police killings of unarmed Black men by a factor of 5.4 times, which he got from some Black racist web site. Then, in a subsequent interview with Bill O’Reilly, after refusing to apologize or issue a correction, he justified his retweet by saying “All it was is a retweet. It wasn’t from me, and it did — it came out of a radio show and other places. Bill, I didn’t tweet, I retweeted somebody that was supposedly an expert” and then added that the sources were “very credible”.

Then, after O’Reilly scolded him for falling for and then repeating fake news, imagine Obama saying “Hey Bill, am I going to check every statistic?”

After all, it’s only fake news if it’s unflattering to Donald Trump.

I would like Trump supporters to put that in their pipe and smoke it.

How The Divider-in-Chief Uses Racist Fake News

One of the most often used right-wing attacks against President Obama during his eight years in office was that he was so “divisive”. According to them, he was really bad on this. He divided people according to their racial and ethnic identity and then set them against each other. His rhetoric was so one-sided and inflammatory that they blamed him for the shooting of police officers. “He had blood on his hands.”

The right, using rhetoric that was very one-sided and extremely inflammatory, painted that picture of Obama. See the irony there? The talking heads on the radio, internet and Fox News kept a constant drumbeat going, ever since Obama appeared on the national stage, promoting this propaganda. There’s a lot more irony in the tale I’m about to tell. But the word “irony” implies something contrary to what one would expect, and if you know anything about the right-wingers I’m taking about, this is exactly what one would expect. “Hypocrisy” is a more fitting word.

You see, these are the same right-wingers who love Donald Trump. And what do they love most about The Donald? His very one-sided and extremely inflammatory rhetoric, of course. What makes this hypocrisy particularly disgusting is the nature of Trump's rhetoric when you compare it to Obama's.

If you examine the words used by Obama at the times he was accused of “divisive and inflammatory rhetoric” you will find them to be careful, measured, reasonable, restrained and invariably balanced with both points of view. That the right-wingers can take these words and twist them so grotesquely is tantamount to a disgusting lie. They have done this not only on issues of race but on many other matters. Like when he goes to other countries and apologizes for America — he never apologized. Or when he said to business owners “you didn’t build that” (their businesses) — he said the exact opposite, three times in that "conversation."

Here’s an example of when Fox News had a Cleveland Detective on the air so he could accuse Obama of being responsible for the awful Baton Rouge shootings of police officers last year (three killed, three injured). “It’s reprehensible. And the President of the United States has blood on his hands that will not be able to come washed off.” He was referring to statements made by Obama, previous to the Baton Rouge shootings, about the senseless shooting of Philando Castile by a police officer during a traffic stop. This Cleveland cop was not alone. The entire right-wing hate machine was accusing Obama. What did the race baiting Obama say about the officer who fired seven gunshots at Mr Castile after Castile told him he was carrying a firearm? Did Obama rant and rave, Trump-like? Did he  angrily accuse the cop of being a racist murderer?

Nah. Obama was his usual calm measured self:

"When incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our citizenry that feels as if, because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same, and that hurts, and that should trouble all of us,” Obama said in a statement the following day. “This is not just a black issue, not just a Hispanic issue. This is an American issue that we all should care about.”

So if this is the standard right-wingers use to measure inciteful speech, what are we to make of Trump’s language? The difference between Trump and Obama in content, tone and intent is like night and day. Or black and white, if you prefer. (Interestingly, that’s obviously the difference racist type conservatives see. Obama is inciting hatred because he’s black. Trump’s just telling the truth because he’s white)

Just check out any of Obama’s statements on these matters and you’ll see they are always reasonable and almost always factual. He never made a really bad misstatement that I know of. His tone is always calm and non-accusatory. And most importantly, his intent was not to anger people but to calm them by acknowledging the feelings on both sides of the issue.                                                                                             
Trump is the exact opposite. Trump has become infamous for his outlandish statements. His reasoning is batty. And how can we even begin to describe the sheer volume of his proven to be false statements. He is the single greatest promoter of Fake News. Ever.

And, most importantly, his intent is precisely to anger people — so he can manipulate them. And what is his favorite way to get people angry? Scapegoating non-white people using loathsome, outrageous falsehoods. He divides people according to their racial, ethnic and religious identity and sets them against each other. He’s the Divider-in-Chief.

The fake stories he uses (which he gets from the right-wing/alt-right/white-racist media) to slander non-whites aren’t just false. They are monumentally false.

He started this last campaign by repeating the right-wing fake news story that Mexico deliberately sends it’s worst criminals into our country. Politifact (as well as other fact-checkers) did a well researched fact-check and rated the claim “Pants on Fire.”

He said, in effect, that most, if not all, Mexican undocumented immigrants are drug bringing criminal rapists. The New York Times and many other news organizations cited statistics from various organizations like the Migration Policy Institute that show only 2.7% of undocumented immigrants have been convicted of a felony compared with 6% of the overall population.

Despite these facts, Trump not only wants you to believe his fake news story about criminal Mexicans, he wants you to think that they are after you white people. He has paraded out crime victims of illegal immigrants who are almost all white. But it is a well known fact that the vast majority of crimes committed by all racial/ethnic groups are committed against those same groups because most crime victims know their attacker. As Politifact stated, “these trends have been observed for decades.”

You’d think that Trump, an avid news watcher, would know this. But then he saw a fake news site that reported outrageously false Black on White murder statistics which exaggerated the percentage of Black killers by a factor of 5.4 times. The site was traced to some neo-Nazi scumbag who wrote “Should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little mustache.” Like all the other times Trump came across a right-wing/alt-right/racist-right fake news story, he bought it hook, line and sinker then promoted it like it had his name on it.

Interestingly, he re-tweeted this gem the day after a black activist was kicked and punched by supporters at a Trump rally in Alabama. Trump said “maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.” (The man was shouting “Black lives matter.”) So it looks like Trump was looking for stronger justification for the assault... see what these black thugs are like? They all want to kill you!

Then we have the infamous fake story that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attack as the world Trade Center came down. Again, a falsehood of monumental proportions that had been going around the right-wing/alt-right/racist-right fake news media for years. Trump was called out on it immediately because of its obvious falsity. But the right-wing/alt-right/racist-right media came to Trump’s defense with “proof” that this was true. They found several reports of uncorroborated allegations of small groups of people celebrating. Police investigators took no action. Trump supporters called the radio stations swearing they saw small groups of Muslims celebrating, too. See? Trump was right! The only thing is, even if we accept these unverified allegations, Trump and his supporters are still short by a factor of “thousands and thousands.”

How many is “thousands and thousands” anyway? I’ve asked several people their opinion because even Trump’s critics were low balling that number. Politifact generously assumed that Trump meant only two thousand. They printed this graph to illustrate how that number compared with the most credible report they could find — eight men celebrating on a rooftop:

But Trump said “Thousands AND thousands”. Other people suggested that number should be ten thousand or twenty thousand or fifty thousand or even more. Well I heard Trump himself tell us how many “thousand and thousands” are. Remember when he was complaining that the International climate agreement required participating countries to contribute a total of 100 billion dollars? He later referred to that number (100 billion) as “billions and billions and billions.” So, simple arithmetic says he meant 66 thousand Muslims celebrated. And he saw it on TV.

I read a Breitbart article that defended Trump. The writer was attacking the Washington Post fact checker for giving Trump four Pinocchios for that whopper. You see, a Washington Post article from back then was found about allegations of a “tailgate style party” on an apartment rooftop which the fact checker failed to mention. So, sure Trump had “exaggerated” but that fact checker was a liar! The Breitbart writer then engaged in some interesting logic that unintentionally exposed the true nature of Trump’s monstrous lie. He said, yeah, so Trump exaggerated somewhat but those “dozens” of celebrators represented many more Muslims who felt just like them but didn’t actually come out to celebrate.

He had no real proof of even “dozens” of celebrators and even less proof that an exponential number of Muslims felt the same way. But if Trump wants his supporters to believe that the actual number was indeed “thousands and thousands” as he continued to insist even in the face of common sense and the lack of evidence, what does he want them to think about the Muslim American population in general? By your own logic, Mr Breitbart writer, Trump wants them to think that practically all the Muslims in this country want all of us non Muslims to die. That would justify the ban, the registry of Muslims and the crackdown on mosques he wants.

If you google “Obama most divisive President in history” you will find 388,000 results with countless Republicans and conservatives offering this opinion. According to them, race is the issue Obama is most divisive on. By their own measure, do you think Trump has Obama beat? Do you think they would admit it? Should we be referring to Trump as The Divider-in-Chief from now on?

Trump is the all time master of divisiveness (since the Civil War. He just might be leading us into another one). Do you know who has been doing a pretty good job of dividing people by race for years, now? Republicans and conservatives. Think of a typical Republican rally. Looks like they did a pretty good job of dividing out the non-whites from the whites, doesn't it? But Trump has now made the Republican tent bigger. He's invited the KKK, the Neo-Nazis and the Alt-Right in and made them feel joyful and welcome.

How Trump Gets Away With Calling The Media Fake News

Of all the countless disturbing aspects of Donald Trump’s personality, the one that bothers me — and I suspect, many people — the most is his compulsive, pathological obsession with saying things that are blatantly false. The sheer pace and volume of these falsehoods is staggering. That Trump can say/tweet these things so openly and unashamedly, time after time after time, makes it hard to conclude that this guy is not mentally disturbed.

Then, adding insult to injury, for him to accuse the media of being “fake news” for reporting on these falsehoods is a height of hypocrisy that is only surpassed by its unmitigated obnoxiousness. I think it’s safe to say that we have never before witnessed anything close to this in the political history of our country.

What I find just as disturbing is the media’s pathetic inability to nail this fucking jerk for his astounding hypocrisy. Do you remember that incredible February 16th press conference when he spent 77 minutes lambasting the press and boasting about himself? (falsely, of course) That was sickening. To hear him go on and on about the “dishonest media”, standing at the podium pointing his finger and thundering “you are fake news” made me wish that the CNN reporter would go up to him and punch him in the face.

But as a progressive, nonviolence is one of the tenets I hold most dear. It is a principle I believe in as fervently as conservatives believe in cutting taxes for the rich. So, while his loutish behavior provoked an uncharacteristic response from me, a much more satisfying action by the CNN reporter would have been to nail Trump on his hypocrisy.

  

And NBC reporter Peter Alexander came close to doing that. After Trump falsely claimed that his electoral win was the biggest since Reagan, Alexander corrected him then asked, “Why should Americans trust you when you accuse the information they receive as being fake when you’re providing information that’s fake?”

That was a great question and it actually did nail Trump to the wall. Unfortunately, just like jello, Trump was able to slither his way off the wall. The reporter had the opportunity to drag Trump over the coals on that — which is exactly what Trump deserved —  but he left him off the hook.

Trump managed to deflect the impact of the question by answering “I don’t know. I was given that information.” Then he threw a distraction at the reporter by saying, then asking “We won by a very, very big margin… do you agree with that?” The reporter shrugs “you’re the President” then sits down! This was more a case of the reporter’s ineptness rather than Trump’s cleverness. I gave a detailed report on this interaction in a previous post: liberalbabyboomer.blogspot.com/…

You could tell Trump knew he was nailed but then when the reporter — instead of a follow up question — answers Trump’s question with “you’re the President”, he allowed Trump to say “OK thank you. That’s a good answer.” In his mind and the mind of his supporters he had nullified the question with a perfectly reasonable excuse. Trump did indeed nullify the question but his “excuse” was complete nonsense.

Why do I say Trump nullified the question? Because that interaction should have been the main takeaway from the press conference. But it was just a side bar in the subsequent reporting.
I mean, here is the Asshole-in Chief -- The King of Fake News -- pointing and thundering for 77 minutes about the “Fake News Media” and their dirty low down dishonest reporting and then he blurts out a blatant falsehood that he had already made and been corrected on in the past! He also made about a half dozen other incorrect statements in this presser.

I checked the right-wing media later and they completely ignored this interaction. I didn’t hear a single talk show host try to address it. Didn’t hear it brought up on Fox News. 

On the contrary, the right wingers were jubilant after this. I heard Ann Coulter gush and giggle like a schoolgirl. “It was magnificent!” “I was in heaven.” As far as the right-wingers were concerned, Trump gave the biased liberal press the shellacking they deserved. This was the moment when the right-wing media started to use the phrase “Fake News” every single time they referred to the “media” (excluding themselves, of course).

If only the reporter had responded, after Trump used the excuse “I was given that information”:

“The information you were given was fake, Mr President. You then gave Americans fake information.” It would not have been impertinent for the reporter to then state the obvious: “You have a very long history of reporting fake news as real news. You obviously can’t tell the difference between fake news and real news.”… and then repeat his question “Why should Americans trust you when you accuse the information they receive as being fake when you’re providing information that’s fake?”

Wouldn’t it have been “magnificent” if the reporter had followed up his question like that?
I know I  would have been “in heaven” if he had. Wouldn't it have been marvelous to hear Trump try to answer that question again? Do you think the right-wing media would have been so jubilant?

In my next post I will examine time magazine’s pathetic attempt to hold Trump accountable in their March cover story “Is Truth Dead?”

Trump is the King of Fake News

If I were asked to assess Donald Trump's character -- in other words, the mental and moral qualities distinctive to his personality -- I would not be able to find a single positive adjective that I could apply to any aspect of said character.

But the guy became President of the country, surely he must posses some positive qualities? Well, no. At least not in the sense that the quality being considered can be said to be a "good" one, or at least used in a manner that promotes a moral virtue.

I can't deny that he's audacious -- he's certainly willing to take surprisingly bold risks. But his audaciousness springs from an impudent lack of respect for just about any person or social norm -- regardless of whether any decent person would approve of these people or norms.

Many people would credit him for being smart. He's a billionaire, after all. Trump himself says he's "like a really smart person." But this assessment is in stark contradiction to the sheer number of profoundly stupid things he's said and done.

Here's just a small fraction:

Global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese.

I know more about ISIS than the generals.

Obama is the founder of ISIS.

"You're going to have such great healthcare, at a tiny fraction of the cost -- and it's going to be so easy."

Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.

"Bing bing bong bong bing bing bing"

The Mexico border wall must be see-through to stop sacks of drugs landing on people's heads. "they hit you with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over." (not fake news. I checked. Read this very funny article)

Good news for border residents: No one is throwing 60-pound bags of drugs over a 50-foot wall - The Washington Post

Well, what about ambition, motivating people and communication skills.

Again, these are good qualities but only if they are used in a manner that promotes a moral virtue. Adolf Hitler had those qualities in abundance and look what he did.

There I go with the Hitler comparison. 

I'm not saying Trump wants to invade Poland or exterminate the Jews. But he has used those qualities in much the same way as Hitler.

His ambition comes from his egomania. Here's the definition, and tell me this doesn't fit The Donald to a T: an obsessive preoccupation with one's self ... applies to someone who follows their own ungoverned impulses and is possessed by delusions of personal greatness and feels a lack of appreciation. (Wikipedia)

As far as motivating people and communication skills? Just like Adolf, he has appealed to people's worst instincts. Trump and Adolf both used demagoguery.

Here's the definition of demagogue, and again, it fits The Donald to a T:

a leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation. Demagogues overturn established customs of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so.

They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, it is possible for the people to give that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population. Demagogues have usually advocated immediate, forceful action to address a national crises while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. (Wikipedia)

Terrorism, illegal immigration and crime are legitimate issues. Every politician should be addressing them. What Trump has done that is so reprehensible is that he has addressed these issues with fake news that is outrageously false and inflammatory so he can then manipulate his audience by provoking their emotions.

Let's be clear, as I reported in a previous post, Trump doesn't make up most of the  fake stuff he says, himself. He get's that stuff from the right-wing hate media. 

Fair and Balanced: Trump On ISIS Founder: "I Really Like Him as a Person"

The Birther stuff. The drug bringing Mexican criminal rapists. The "thousands and thousands" of 9/11 celebrating Muslims. The outrageously false black on white murder statistics. Obama is the founder of ISIS. The crime rate is the highest it's been in 47 years. Hillary got a child rapist off and laughed about it. etc, etc, etc.

All of this fake news has been going around the right-wing media/blogosphere for years. Trump reads/hears it, likes it and then uses it. Trump hasn't met a fake right-wing news story that he hasn't bought lock, stock, barrel and promoted like it had his name on it.  

The fake stuff he makes up himself are the things about himself.

The size of his inauguration crowd.

The height of his buildings.

His net worth.

He knows more about ISIS than the generals.

He invented the economic term "prime the pump."

His electoral win was the biggest landslide in American history. (when he was corrected about that he then said it was the biggest since Reagan. When he was corrected about that he then said it was the biggest Republican win since Reagan. When he was corrected about that he then said it was still a very big win. It is ranked 46 out of 58 elections. He said he won 306 electoral votes. That was fake too. He won 304. Two electors refused to vote for him.)

I heard Trump say recently that he coined the term "fake news" (which he uses against the media).

He only started using that term after it had already been widely used in the media concerning the kinds of fake news he was promoting.

As I pointed out in a previous post, he has been the leading purveyor of fake news for years now.

Fair and Balanced: Spokesperson Conway: Trump Is Bananas

And that is the main point of this post. The man who constantly calls any negative news about himself "fake news" and has convinced his supporters that he is the only source that can be trusted -- is the King of fake news.

What I want to do in my next post is explain how the media has failed so miserably in forcing Trump to account for the mountain of falsehoods he has perpetrated on the American people and the world.

Honest Don And The Very, Very Dishonest Media

In the 1934 movie Six of a Kind, the great comedian W.C  Fields plays a sheriff called "Honest John."

In one scene, when asked how he earned the moniker, Fields' character tells of a time when he used to tend bar and wait on a guy with a glass eye. The fellow would take the glass eye out and put it in a tumbler of water. One day he forgot his glass eye. Honest John found it. The next morning when he came in, Honest John said "Young man, here's your glass eye." "And I gave it back to him. Ever since that day, I've been known as 'Honest John.'"

W.C. Fields Honest John Snooker Scene - YouTube

 

The comedic genius of this scene relies on the absurdity of the ridiculously low bar used by those who awarded Honest John his appellation.

 

Well, according to a poll that came out recently, an unbelievable 49% of registered voters seem to be applying the same ridiculous standards to the Trump administration, who they consider to be truthful!

To quote WC Fields -- Godfrey Daniels!!

 

Emerson College Polling Society

 

This compares with only 39% who consider the news media truthful!

48% find the Trump administration to be untruthful while a whopping 53% find the media untruthful.

This poll made me feel ill. What the fuck is going on? Are that many people only watching Fox News?

 

I would love to know what's behind the thinking of these people. The poll does refer to the Trump administration and not Trump himself. But even so, we're still talking about Kellyanne "Bowling Green Massacre" Conway and Sean "Alternative Facts" Spicer, both of whom constantly defend Trump's falsehoods, Trump's national security advisor and "so-called" general, Mike Flynn (who appears to have been untruthful about his communications with Russian officials.) Not to mention Steve Bannon and a host of other conspiracy theorists who relentlessly feed the media their fevered fantasies.

 

In a test of my ability to withstand disgustingly warped delusions, I tuned in to the "Fair and Balanced" network to watch them gloat. I heard Mike Huckabee ask, incredulously, "who are these 39% who actually believe the media are truthful?" Later, Sean Hannity and his guest sported broad smiles while they crowed about the correctness of their media assessments.

 

None of these jackasses seemed to be aware of the fact that they were broadcasting from Fox News -- a  television news channel and part of the news media. They were also blissfully unconcerned with the mountain of falsehoods that have been spewing out of the mouth and tweets of the (shudder) President for the past six years or so, and on a daily basis for the past two years. 

Mr Huckabee,  your incredulity should be directed at those who think the Trump administration is truthful, you obnoxious jerk.

 

Just like Trump thinks that all improperly registered voters voted -- and they all voted for Hillary -- the aforementioned jackasses think that the "untruthful media" poll responses only applied to non-right wing news outlets. What makes this all particularly disgusting is that Sean Hannity -- who broadcasts on a station who's very premise is a lie (Fair and Balanced) -- is the lyingest fuck of them all.

 

A chronicle of Hannity's and Fox News' untruthfulness deserves its own separate blog posts, which I intend to do in the future. For now, check out these past posts: Fair and Balanced and Fair and Balanced

 

Are the responders to this poll buying Trump's bullshit that the media is "very, very dishonest" when it comes to their coverage of him? Do they not notice that whenever Trump makes some outlandish claim -- including his most often used charge that the media is "very, very dishonest" -- he offers no evidence, but when the media fact checks his claims, they provide detailed information that includes references to relevant and reliable sources? 

 

If these people believe Trump -- despite all of the concrete evidence proving that he will say anything that he can pull out of his overweight ass -- then they are truly gullible fools and our country is in "big league" trouble.

 

Trump wants the entire media to be like Fox News. Ignore all of his imbecilic comments, his moronic insults, his daily output of blatant falsehoods, his racism and his childish and ego-maniacal behavior -- and just put a positive spin on all of his policy proposals. And don't forget to compliment and praise him and act like he embodies nothing but positive qualities. And whatever you do, don't treat him the way he and Fox News treated Obama. Because, while he can dish it out, he sure as hell can't take it.

 

I'm listening to his press conference right now and he's repeating the "fake news, false reporting, dishonest media" crap. Unfortunately, no one has asked him what, specifically, has been reported that is not true.

Is their reporting on your claims of massive voter fraud fake? Is their reporting on your claim that the crime rate is the highest it's been in 47 years false? Were they being dishonest when they contradicted your claims about the size of your inauguration crowd?

Frustrating.

 

Apparently, I missed this. Trump continued his daily output of blatant falsehoods by claiming that he had the biggest electoral college victory since Ronald Reagan. (Previously he claimed it was one of the biggest electoral college victories in history. According to the NYT it ranked 46 out of 58 elections)

A reporter corrected him by pointing out that it wasn't even the biggest electoral win since the last election (Obama had 332 votes -- Trump had 304). Trump than tried to say that he was talking aboutRepublican presidents and he was corrected again.

 

To his credit, the reporter asked "Why should Americans trust you when you accuse the information they receive as being fake when you're providing information that's fake?"

Trump's answer? "I don't know, I was given that information."

Trump then tried to distract from the question by saying " We won by a very, very big margin... but it was a very substantial victory, do you agree with that?"

 

The distraction worked because the reporter seemed to agree, sat down and left him off the hook. Infuriating. He should have repeated the question, because Trump didn't answer it!!

That distraction technique is used by politicians all the time whenever they don't want to answer a question. And it is very effective because it works. In order to deal with that the reporter should either ask the question again or, if the politician gives an ambiguous answer, ask for a clarification.

 

So, in this case, the reporter should have, because Trump actually gave an ambiguous answer, said "for clarification, Mr President, your answer to the question "why should Americans trust you when you give fake information -- your answer is 'I don't know?"

 

My guess as to how Trump would have answered that question, if he had been asked, is by repeating the "excuse" that that was the information he was given -- as if he should be forgiven because of that.

This is exactly how he answered Bill O'Reilly when confronted about his retweet of outrageously false black on white murder statistics that he got from some White Nationalist/Supremacist web site:

http://liberalbabyboomer.blogspot.com/2017/01/trump-honest-skeptic.html 

 

This is what I would have asked next: "with all due respect, sir, you have a very long history of making many, many false claims that have been fact-checked as being false -- shouldn't you, by now, be making sure that when you make a claim, that you can back it up with solid, reliable evidence?"

 

Whatever bullshit Trump would have offered next, this would have been my next question:

"Shouldn't you, sir, since you claim that the media is not being truthful about you, be addressing those many false claims you made instead of making baseless claims that the fact checks are fake news?"

 

Because there were no follow up questions, I guarantee you that that excellent question will be forgotten by most people. Trump really outplayed the media this time. He managed to turn the whole fake news/honesty issue around on them when they should have nailed him for being the real dishonest, fake news perpetrator.

Liberals correctly see this but the majority of people -- like the ones who answered the Emerson College poll -- will think Trump came out looking very good. I predict that Trump's honesty numbers will go up and the press's will go down after this. Disgusting

Trump On ISIS Founder: "I Really Like Him as a Person"

Sounds like fake news, huh?  Well, this time we have the proof. It's all been recorded. It's not fake news! It's Trump Time!

 

Incredible. How can the President-elect have such fond feelings for a man who was responsible for a series of bombings and beheadings, the savage murders of countless innocent people and the formation of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which eventually evolved into ISIS? We're talking about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the heinous criminal who was known as "Shayakh of the slaughterers."

 

Oh, wait. That's not who Trump was talking about. The man who lost the popular vote was talking about President Barack Obama.

 

We all remember when Trump called Obama the founder of ISIS, don't we?

And if you missed it when Trump said that he really likes Obama as a person, well here it is:

Trump says he's consulted Obama on Cabinet picks - POLITICO

 

I know, Trump said he was being "sarcastic" when he said that thing about ISIS. 

It did take him two days to come up with that excuse, and he repeated the ISIS charge emphatically, several times, during those days -- but I assume that he either never believed it in the first place or at least he no longer believes it, now.

Unless he's being sarcastic about being sarcastic. Hmmm.

Come to think of it, he did say "I'm being sarcastic... but not that sarcastic to be honest with you."

So maybe he meant it like, "Yeah, that's right. I'm being sarcastic, I'm being really sarcastic."

 

Anyway, when I heard him lavishing all that praise on Obama after his first meeting with the President, I had to shake my head in disbelief. Even though, by now, we should all be used to Trump saying such starkly contradictory things, that was a stunner. Trump also said that Obama "loves the country. He wants to do right by the country and for the country." !!!

 

One of the first things I thought of was 'how are the right-wing haters going to take this?' I was thinking about Trump's basket of deplorables, including all the radio talkers like Rush Limbag, Michael Savage and Mark Levin. These media megalomaniacs have based the last eight years of their multi-million dollar careers on the premise that Obama is a wretched Islamo-sympathizing demon who hates America with all the fibers of his radical leftist being. They have convinced their audiences of this belief by manipulating their emotions with an endless barrage of atrocious mischaracterizations, ridiculous hyperbole and outright lies.

To illustrate how ridiculous their hyperbole is, let me make it clear that my characterization of their characterization of Obama is not hyperbole.

 

Where do you think Trump got "Obama is the founder of ISIS" from? Trump didn't make that shit up himself. He got that from the right-wing media/blogosphere. That's exactly the kind of ridiculous hyperbole I'm talking about. If you believe that Obama is a secret jihad sympathizing Muslim -- and that he hates America with every fiber of his being (these kinds of things have actually, literally been said countless times during Obama's entire time on the national stage) then it's not much of a leap to believe that he really is the founder of ISIS.

 

This is what Trump does. He listens to and reads the right-wing hate media and repeats the shit he knows they love to hear. (Notice how he hardly ever repeats anything from the legitimate, intellectual conservative press. That wouldn't stoke the anger and hatred that he used to fuel his campaign.)

He's noticed the same thing that anyone who observes the right-wing hate media could see -- the audience will believe anything they hear that feeds their anger and hatred. They will defend those beliefs ferociously. And the more preposterously evil the things they hear are, the more ferociously they will believe and defend them.

 

This is why he hardly ever takes back any of the blatantly false things he repeats from the right-wing hate media. And when he does take it back, it's always insincere and not without a fuck you to the media for making him do it. This is because he knows how strongly his supporters believe in those things. If he disavows those falsehoods, he disavows their most cherished beliefs. And he only takes back those things when confronted with it's falsity (or awfulness) persistently and over a long period of time. 

 

Examples:

(Not an example of a false statement but an awful one) 

His admission that John McCain is a war hero --"OK, he's a hero because he was captured. I prefer soldiers who weren't captured."

 

His Disavowal of David Duke's endorsement which had to be wrung from him after days of being asked about it and lying about not even knowing who he was -- an irritated Trump uses just three words -- "I disavow, OK?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yseotd_fxWY

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/03/trumps-david-duke-amnesia/

 

His admission that Obama was born in the US -- "Hillary started it."

 

And the Obama/ISIS thing -- "I was being sarcastic."

 

Like I said, insincere, unapologetic and not without adding even more falsehoods and insults.

 

Anyway, getting back to my curiosity about how the right-wing radio talkers would react to Trump's praise of Obama. Without a doubt, the one theme they have emphasized more than any other during the last eight years is that Obama hates America and has even succeeded in destroying everything good and great about America. (hence the 'Make America Great Again' slogan)

Now here is Trump, right after getting elected and (as he pointed out himself in a post election rally) no longer needing the votes of his rabid right-wing supporters, saying the exact opposite!

 

Wow! I couldn't wait to hear their reactions. I tuned into Rush Limbag's show the next day and it was the very first thing the bloviating blowhard brought up! Rush's spin was classic Limbag.

He said that Trump was "playing" Obama. Ah, ha,ha,ha,ha,ha.

Me thinks you are the one being played, oh Lord and Master of all bullshit.

 

Yes, El Rushbo went on to say that Trump was playing Obama but that Obama was too arrogant and narcissistic to realize it. Ah, ha,ha,ha,ha,ha.

Me thinks you are the one who is too arrogant and narcissistic to realize who is actually being played, oh Lord and Master of all dittoheads.

He said that Obama thinks he's God's gift to humanity and that it is this psychological conceit that prevents him from seeing the truth.

 

Talk about the pot calling the black man something he's not.

I'm sure Obama has a healthy ego but for Christ's sake, for his entire career Rush is the one who has been using the catchphrase "with talent on loan from God" to describe the source of his awesomeness.

You can't listen to Dimbulb's show for more than 20 minutes without hearing him tell his audience how great he is.

And, to add even more irony to the farce, the third person involved, Trump himself, has also invoked God for creating him to be the greatest at whatever it is he happens to be talking about.

 

In a contest of arrogance, narcissism and being an all around shithead, comparing Rush and Trump for the honor of being the greatest in those areas -- would be like comparing Mickey Mantle to Willie Mays or Michael Jordan to Lebron James for being the best ever in their respective sports.

 

Do you want more proof that Trump is playing Rush and all the others in the basket of deplorables?

Well, stay tuned to this blog

Trump -- An Honest Skeptic

Do you recall the phrase "it's Giuliani time"? That refers to Rudy Giuliani's first term as mayor when the devious prick we now know as a screaming, foaming at the mouth maniac "allowed police to trample civil liberties -- particularly those of blacks, artists and welfare recipients -- in the name of maintaining public order." 

‘Giuliani Time’ paints ugly picture of the man - TODAY.com

 

Well, now it's Trump Time.

 

Ever since Trump put his hat -- or whatever that thing is on top of his head -- in the ring of presidential politics, I've considered him to be a litmus test for conservatives. Trump tests conservatives' ability to distinguish objective reality from the fabricated reality that their emotional biases urges them to believe in.

 

According to the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of Human Nature, this urge is innate and exists, to varying degrees, in all of us. Whether these biases are conservative or liberal is biologically determined.

Our brains are designed to want and to seek out leaders. In order to satisfy this need, we often project certain qualities onto these leaders, even when they don't exist. Democrats and liberals did this with Hillary. We wanted her to be the honest, selfless and upstanding standard bearer of our values, so we ignored her many self-serving ethical lapses, contrary political positions and just pretended that those lapses and contradictions didn't matter.

 

As for Trump, he took this phenomenon and drove it into hyperspace. He has created a space-trumptime continuum in which our nation has been plunged into a different dimension -- an alternate universe where reality is being defined by Trump and his supporters.

 

As more and more people normalize Trump, those who believe in an objective reality will become marginalized -- accused of and viscously attacked for being anti-Trump and thus unfair, dishonest and not to be listened to. I've even started to hear the term "Trump Derangement Syndrome" being used.

Oh my God, it's already begun! Reality has been turned upside down.

 

Early on, during Trump's primary campaign, I expected him to implode. While I realized that his unvarnished racism would appeal to that portion of republican voters that Hillary gave as a reasonable estimate for constituting half of his supporters, I was sure that his denigration of American prisoners of war, the disabled and women who don't live up to his standard of suitable attractiveness would turn off enough primary voters.

 

And certainly, his endless string of blatant falsehoods, moronic utterances and comical third grade vocabulary would be enough to doom his campaign. And when Jeb Bush said Trump couldn't insult his way to the presidency, I couldn't have imagined how wrong he would be.

 

But by the time we got to hear Trump bragging about his ability to get away with grabbing women's pussies, I knew he would get away with those boasts, too. After all, Hillary's own husband had already normalized that kind of behavior.

 

If only Democratic voters had chosen someone without all of Hillary's baggage. Someone who could not be attacked for personal behavior. Someone who had Trump's populist message without the ignorance, stupidity and racism. Someone who had a consistent, lifetime record of promoting that message. Someone who had polled much better than Hillary against Trump. Someone who would have brought out the youth vote.

Ahh, but I guess no one like that even exists.

 

I was heartened by the number of conservatives who came forward to accurately describe Trump's appalling personality and behavior. These are the conservatives who have passed the litmus test.

Unfortunately, they have been overwhelmed by the number who have enthusiastically climbed aboard 

Trump's insane train and described him in a manner that is exactly opposite of the way he truly is.

 

A case in point. Former Michigan Congressman Pete Hoeksrtra has recently described Trump as a healthy sceptic for doubting the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia hacked into Democratic Party computers. He repeated this description in a number of interviews last week.

And the point is, Trump is the exact opposite of a healthy skeptic.

 

As I've pointed out in previous posts, Trump has never met a false right wing allegation that he hasn't bought lock, stock, barrel and promoted like it had his name on it.

http://liberalbabyboomer.blogspot.com/2015/12/i-thought-birtherism-was-stillborn-but.html

 

This is Trump we're talking about. The King of the Birthers.

He "heard things" and "read things" about Obama. Like how he spent 2 million dollars to hide his birth certificate. Or how there was no proof he ever attended Columbia University.

A healthy skeptic would have performed a simple fact check and discovered that all of those things were proved in excruciating detail to be demonstrably false by numerous fact checking organizations. But Trump immediately believed every word of every false allegation he ever heard of and continued to promote all that birther related nonsense for five years.

 

And it wasn't just the birther stuff. The number of phoney shits he believed in was countless. He gets his information from right-wing conspiracy web sites like World Net Daily and Info Wars. He has collaborated with and guest starred on these sites.

 

Here he is on Bill O'Reilly's show defending his retweet of some outrageously false black on white murder statistics that he got from some White Nationalist/Supremacist web site. Check him out at the 3:59 minute mark where he says he's probably the least racist person on earth. When O'Reilly scolds him for the false tweet, the world's healthiest skeptic then goes on to ask "am I going to check every statistic..." in a way that obviously means "I am not going to check every statistic".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioLjp-G2bY8

 

Why couldn't at least one of Hoekstra's interviewers have pointed these things out? Wouldn't you have loved to hear Hoekstra's response? Wouldn't it have been nice for the American public to be reminded of the fact that Trump is not normal and that Hoekstra's description of Trump is the exact opposite of the way he really is?

 

Interestingly, after looking up Hoekstra's Wikipedia bio, I saw that Hoekstra himself, as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in 2006, put forward information that was deserving of skepticism (because it was apparently disputed by Pentagon officials, the Duelfer Report and the intelligence community) claiming that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.  

 

In 2007 he created a report about Iran producing weapons grade uranium that was also deserving of a healthy dose of skepticism -- being that it was labeled by various sources, including the IAEA, as erroneous, misleading, dishonest, incorrect and outrageous.

 

But Hoekstra seems a lot like Trump, himself. Maybe, just like Trump knows more about ISIS than the generals, Hoekstra knows more about Iraq, Iran and weapons, both of grade and destruction, than all of those organizations. He's a leading candidate to be the new head of the CIA and, like Trump, he's all in with waterboarding.

Most importantly, just like Trump and his supporters, he believes what he wants to believe.

And the things they are willing to believe are absolutely frightening.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/donald-trump-and-the-amazing-alex-jones

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-alex-jones-conspiracy-theorist-extraordinaire-got-donald-trumps-ear/2016/11/17/583dc190-ab3e-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?utm_term=.202759175040