Wednesday, January 11, 2017

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:
 
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?"
 
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
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Wednesday, January 4, 2017

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." 
 
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.
 
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".
 
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.
 
 
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