NOT FASCIST? REALLY, MS. LYMAN?

Dr. Common Good

On a recent airing of CNN’s Abby Phillips NewsNight, panelist Brianna Lyman from The Federalist rolled her eyes and muttered “oh, come on” when Trump administration actions were described as fascist. Well, Ms. Lyman, if you think that is an unfair characterization, maybe you need a reminder with respect to the facts. Here are a few:

Mobilizing the Department of Justice (DOJ) for purely personal vendettas and political prosecutions – Don’t even try to claim that Trump’s and Pam Bondi’s slew of charges and indictments against political opponents are a reaction to the purported politicization of the DOJ under Biden. There is no comparison. Not only was then-Attorney General Merrick Garland exceedingly cautious, but all of the cases against Trump and other 2020 election conspirators arose because there were actual, egregious violations of the law, documented in painstaking investigations by the DOJ and by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who, by the way, was appointed specifically to distance those prosecutions from the DOJ and avoid any potential political entanglements. The evidence in those cases was overwhelming, and it is a national travesty that Trump, through legal manipulations and delays, was able to escape accountability. Trump clearly attempted to commit blatant fraud in Georgia by demanding that Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” votes so that he could win. In another call, he demanded that Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston hold a special legislative session to overturn the Georgia election results, asking Ralston “Who’s gonna stop you for that?” All of this and more is clearly documented fact. It is also very clear that Trump absconded with an entire trove of classified documents after leaving the White House and refused to give them back, even after prolonged requests from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), lying to the FBI that he had returned all documents and destroying evidence that he had them, a criminal obstruction of justice. These are felonies. The FBI did not “go after” Trump or invent charges. He violated the law repeatedly and with public belligerence. Then of course there were his actions on January 6, 2021, fomenting and supporting the unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters who attempted to stop the vote certification process, resulting in destruction of property, and multiple deaths and injuries, including injuries to 174 police officers. All of this does not even count the illegal and unconstitutional actions he undertook during his first term in office.

By contrast, Trump and his DOJ (yes, “his” DOJ, even though it is supposed to be the people’s DOJ) have cooked up allegations and indicted many of the people who publicly opposed his abuses, including James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, and others. To do so, Trump has had to illegally appoint prosecutors to replace sitting U.S. attorneys who refuse to engage in such baseless and fraudulent prosecutions. He has even commandeered the DOJ and other Federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), to find anything, even in personal mortgage records, which could be used as a rationale to prosecute. So there you have it. QED. The prosecutions are generated by motives against the person, not violations of the law. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They treat the legal system as their personal weapon to silence and intimidate, and to remove opposition.

Defying or ignoring court orders. As a corollary to the previous point, Trump and his administration have repeatedly defied court orders or ignored them altogether. In an analysis of 165 court orders earlier this year, the Washington Post found that Trump had resisted the order in at least 57 of those cases (about 34%), by responding very slowly, misrepresenting facts in filings, and ignoring the orders outright (reported in the July 21 Independent). This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They treat the legal system as subordinate, in the way, or even as an enemy.

Illegally sending the National Guard to American cities – but only if they are “Blue” (Democrat) cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and Washington, DC, when they are not requested (by governors) and for which there is no actual justification. Trump invents an “emergency,” and that becomes a pretext for the troops – who, most of the time, have no idea why they have been deployed. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They gin up fake “emergencies,” and use that cover to deploy the military for political intimidation. It is unconstitutional, and a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Illegally sending ICE shock troops with masks into American cities (again, primarily “Blue” cities) and yanking immigrants or those who “look like” immigrants, including mothers and children, off the streets, out of schools, even out of court legal proceedings, shoving them to the ground, pushing them into unmarked cars and hustling them off to un-named detention centers where they cannot even contact family – without even a pretense of due process. And then sending them off to detention centers far afield, where they have no family, no contacts, no support. Not only that, in absolute contradiction to the lies coming from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE has seized almost 200 citizens, and about 75,000 people with no criminal records (around 70 percent of those seized), a flat out contradiction to the Trump Administration’s claim to be focusing just on criminals. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They gin up fake crises, and use that cover to deploy – in this case – thugs with masks for political intimidation. Due process is cast aside, even though it is a cornerstone of the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment.

Suppressing free speech. This includes the use of government agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (which grants licenses) in attempts to force broadcast outlets to suppress any programming or commentary that criticizes or opposes Trump and his policies, and even to call for the firing of specific individuals. It also includes limits and restrictions on the White House and Department of Defense press corps, allowing only “friendly” media representatives who won’t ask serious questions or contradict Trump or his administration’s spokespersons (Karoline Leavitt is a prime example, a routine purveyor of glaring lies) – this of course allows for control over what is reported to the public. It also includes the extortion of universities, under threat of massive fines and the loss of research grant funding, as a means of controlling campus speech and controlling the content taught in classrooms. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They quash opposition and control the narrative by eliminating dissent, restrict the information available to the public, and label as enemies of the people those who voice dissent. It is a classic technique.

Treating the government as a personal domain. Trump has sought, and had some success, in expanding his control over government agencies, and rendering himself immune from any criminal prosecution (aided and abetted by the Supreme Court which he stacked in his favor). And he has visibly, and illegally, appropriated buildings and American cultural institutions, like the U.S. Institute of Peace or the Kennedy Center, taking them over, and renaming them for himself, when they are in fact not “his” to control or rename. In a recent shocker, Trump – without any authorization, only his personal whim – destroyed the East Wing of the people’s White House, in order to build a cheap, gaudy monument to himself. To a degree never seen in US history, Trump has used the office of presidency to glorify and enrich himself, his businesses, his family and loyalists, mixing business deals with government business, pardoning people who effectively bribe him with investments and cash (as in the pardoning of Changpeng Zhao, founder of the crypto exchange Binance, which had closed a multi-billion dollar deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto business). Furthermore, to legitimize his “domain, he has surrounded himself with Cabinet secretaries and agency heads who are little more than obsequious sycophants – one has only to watch a televised Cabinet meeting to see the obvious parallel to a meeting of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s ministers. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. It is right out of the classic fascist/dictator playbook. They treat the government as merely an instrument of their personal will, and government leaders as servants of that will.

Using the military to pursue wars and extrajudicial killings under false pretense and without any legal authorization. Trump and his mindless minion Pete Hegseth have been systematically launching missile attacks on small boats in the Caribbean that are allegedly running drugs, ostensibly threatening U.S. national security, entirely without any proof and without Congressional authorization. And in doing so, Trump and Hegseth kill the boat occupants – recently even circling back after an initial attack and killing defenseless survivors, which amounts to the crime of “murder on the high seas” and is a violation of international human rights law. Now Trump is threatening to use the military to attack or invade Venezuela, again a violation of international law and our own Constitutional requirement for Congressional authorization, this time claiming that Venezuela is a terrorist country and, more recently, that the U.S. has the right to forcibly reclaim oil assets nationalized in the 1970s. No matter what one thinks of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, this is just naked aggression, hardly different than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They use the nation’s military at their own whim, disregarding law and civilian control, simply to pursue power and control.

___________________

So, Ms. Lyman, what do you call this? In what surreal world do you live where any of this represents the democracy this country is supposed to embody? Yes, while presidents and their administrations have, over the years, violated democratic principles and the rule of law in specific instances, we have never seen the stunning totality and ubiquity of abuse perpetrated by this administration. It is unprecedented in American history. To be blunt, you are a fool to laugh it off.

____________________

As the philosopher, mathematician and Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell once said, “The technique of acquiring dictatorship over what has been a democracy…always involves the same mixture of bribery, propaganda, and violence” (from Power: A New Social Analysis, 1938).

TODAY’S LITANY OF TRUMP DEPRAVITY

Dr. Common Good

Dr. Common Good has not had the chance to post for a little while, so this will be something of a “dump.”

Let’s take a quick inventory of Trump’s recent and continuing depredations on the United States and, for that matter, the world:

• Weaponizing the justice system in the U.S. – Vindictive, fabricated charges against his former opponents, including Letitia James, James Comey, Adam Schiff, among others – using illegally appointed prosecutors to do so, and abusing access to private information about their mortgages to gin up fabricated charges.

• Creating a conspicuous rule by patronage, and corruption on a scale never imagined in the U.S. (Nixon and the Teapot Dome scandals notwithstanding) – This includes a continuing slew of pardons that don’t even come close to meeting the customary justifications for granting. Trump’s pardons are either transactional or a reward for stoking Trump’s infantile ego; hence the pardon of convicted crypto executive Changpeng Zhao, whose Binance crypto exchange laundered money for terrorists, illegal narcotics trade, and others, but, of course, who provided a needed financial boost for the Trump family crypto business called World Liberty. Hence the influence-buying “gift” by Qatar of a $400 million dollar airplane, and granting the United Arab Emirates access to high-tech Nvidia computer chips, normally export-restricted for security reasons, following a promise of extensive investment. And the continuing, amateurish corruption by FBI Director Kash Patel, using DOJ jets for his pleasure trips and FBI security for his girlfriend. Oh, and a pardon for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted, high-profile drug trafficker, because he gushed with praise for Trump, and because he was convicted during the Biden administration (a Trump automatic faux-pas).

• The continued implementation of an ugly, racist, fascist police state, including the abusive and illegal snatching of people off the streets, from schools, from homes, and even from courtrooms, by ICE agents with faces covered in black masks. And the unjustified use of national guard troops, ostensibly to “quell violence,” but in reality as nothing more than a show of thuggish force against cities, or mayors, who dare to defy Trump’s authoritarian demands. Along with that, there is the patent lying by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who claims, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that ICE has not detained a single U.S. citizen.  

• The arbitrary, capricious use of U.S. military force, or threat thereof, in violation of long-established rules of war – including the ongoing attacks on small boats that are alleged to be smuggling drugs to the U.S., again, without evidence. And the gratuitous killing of two unarmed men who were clinging to a boat that had already been destroyed. Then there are Trump’s bombastic threats of war against Venezuela and Columbia, smacking of 19^th century jingoism. As a corollary, Trump has also openly interfered in elections, threatening, for example, to cut off U.S. aid to Honduras if his sycophantic “mini-me” (Nasry Asfura) did not win.

• The senseless destruction of America’s economic position in the world – including the chaotic and harmful tariffs which destroy markets for U.S. goods and raise prices for Americans, and the mindless, ignorant rejection of green energy and climate change — the consequence of which essentially hands the entire global market to China, which is assiduously pursuing dominance in this sector. Along with that, the refusal to extend subsidies for health insurance through the ACA exchange (some call it “Obamacare”), soon to price out millions of Americans who need health care, and the destructive skewing of the economy towards the small cluster of billionaires and corporate influencers and their symbiotic relationship with the Mafia-like Trump clan.

• The continued abandonment of our Western European allies and the undermining of efforts by Ukraine to fend off the Russians, driven in part by a pro-Putin, pro-authoritarian, retrograde, even anti-European political ideology personified, among others, by J.D. Vance, and spelled out in appalling detail in the Trump Administration’s newly released National Security Strategy.

• The continued evisceration of the once-admired scientific research institutions of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stripping out their public data, and depleting the critical expertise that has for so long been the foundation of their reputation and importance for the public good. Along with that, there is the inane and dangerous destruction of a health care and immunization system built on generations of research, but now driven by conspiracies and quackery under the reign of the woefully unqualified RFK Jr.

• The ongoing attempt to destroy the free press, one of the cornerstones of American democracy – using the Federal Communications Commission to threaten television stations that do not fire or discipline comedians and other individuals who criticize Trump, kicking all normal journalistic organizations out of the White House and Pentagon press briefings in favor of the fawning MAGA media, and stripping National Public Radio of its funding.

• The nauseating display of ego by the this president, the likes of which has never been seen in the U.S. – plastering the Oval Office with tasteless gold ornamentation, destroying the East Wing of the White House (again, without legally required permits and approvals) in order to build a Versailles-like monument to himself, taking over the Kennedy Center and moving to rename it for himself, illegally appropriating the U.S. Institute of Peace and, of all Orwellian twists, renaming it the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, and – at the same time as he is eliminating National Park Service free days on Martin Luther King’s birthday and Juneteenth holidays – establishing a free day in honor of his birthday.  

• The public abandonment of longstanding American values, including the support for democratic movements worldwide, the provision of humanitarian assistance and foreign aid to needy countries and peoples, a commitment to equal rights, a pluralist, welcoming society, freedom of religion, the rule of law and much more. However imperfectly these values have been practiced, they have at least been held as aspirational.

Once again, I must repeat. There is nothing about this that makes America great. Nothing.

HEGSETH, TRUMP AND THEIR SAD BUT DANGEROUS LITTLE-BOY VISION OF A MILITARY

Dr. Common Good

In the nonstop litany of idiocy that is the Trump administration, we now have Hegseth’s “gathering” of the generals and top brass to promote his, and apparently Trump’s, darkly cartoonish vision of a new military and its “warrior ethos.”

What a pathetic joke. Where, one wonders, does Hegseth get this garbage? With a full-sized American flag behind him a la Patton (the movie), he sternly addressed a room full of high-ranking, professional military who have actual, serious experience with warfighting, defense, and global conditions (and don’t need a lecture from an unqualified, junior wannabe), laying out a childish, performative vision of what his new “warrior ethos” means. Everyone needs to be fit, and must meet the “highest male standards.” No “beardos,” no “fat generals.” Appearance is paramount. There is to be no more “wokeness,” no concern for “climate change delusions,” no DEI, and a removal of “social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage.” “We are done with that shit,” he said. “You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong, always, in polite society.” More stunning, and dangerous, was his call for the military to ignore Geneva Convention laws on humanitarian treatment during war, and to eliminate “stupid rules of engagement” often designed to protect civilians during fighting. Since soldiers are trained to “kill and break things,” they should not fight with one hand tied behind their back.   

What was that? He apparently dreams of fostering a 19^th century, Teddy Roosevelt-style corps of tough guys, charging up the hill, spitting out blood and tobacco as they run. Somebody please tell him to stop watching B war movies. This is 2025. A lot of contemporary warfighting happens behind a screen, piloting virtually-operated drones, engaging in cyber-warfare, monitoring and processing intelligence, or piloting high-tech aircraft, vehicles and ships. In this globalized world, it also requires knowledge, intelligence, and diplomatic skill. There should be two central qualifications for being in the military: 1) a strong commitment to defending the United States and the Constitution, and 2) high-levels of competence as appropriate to one’s designated role. Who cares whether you are male, female, trans, non-binary, or whatever? Yes, direct battlefield roles should require fitness and discipline, but many of these other roles should focus on competency. Look at Ukraine. They are surviving against a vastly larger military because of their ingenuity. I doubt anyone there cares whether or not you have a beard or your jaw isn’t square.

If I were in the military of any other country, particularly China, I would be laughing at this ridiculous display. It should be patently clear what is needed for a high-functioning military in this age of high tech and AI. And it is highly likely that America’s rival, and even allied, militaries, are not running around spouting off this kind of retrograde drivel. It would be a joke, except this is a serious matter and potentially damaging to our national defense. Responsible people need to pull Hegseth off the stage before he turns the national defense into a Potemkin-like simulacrum.   

And then on top of Hegseth’s blather comes Trump. In an hour-long, largely incoherent ramble that included a bucketload of false claims, a professed love for his own signature, criticism about how “ugly” stealth ships look, and his usual bragging and whining, he also tossed out a number of exceedingly disturbing statements. He warned that “America is under invasion from within,” and that the enemy from within is “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.” US cities, he said, are now a “big part of the war.” In fact, he added, “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” This, from a President of the United States of America. Such statements should be instant grounds for impeachment or removal via the 25^th Amendment. Ah, but did we hear from any shocked Republicans? You know the answer.

By the way, despite the MAGA claims about cutting government expenses, the cost of forcing high-ranking military personnel to leave their posts all over the world and come to Virginia for this shallow, incompetent, and useless reality-show spectacle must have been enormous.

PETE HEGSETH AND HIS IDIOT REVISIONISM – REWARDING MASS MURDER

Dr. Common Good

Yet again, we have to wonder. How did the United States, yes, the United States, end up with a Secretary of Defense so generally ignorant and so thoroughly steeped in a dangerous and myopic MAGA-ism?

In the latest of a litany of incidents displaying this ignorance, along with a kind of cruel, racist revanchism, Hegseth has decided that 20 soldiers who committed an infamous mass murder of Native Americans should retain their Medals of Honor; specifically, for the 1890 killing of close to 300 Lakota Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. This, after legislation had been introduced in 2019 to revoke the medals and the previous Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin III, had ordered a review of whether or not the medals should be rescinded. Hegseth, in announcing this decision, said “we’re making it clear that they deserved those medals.”

Think about this. This is the United States in 2025, rewarding mass murder. The Wounded Knee massacre was preceded by years during which the US government had seized Native land, protected hunters who were killing off the buffalo herds – a staple of Lakota (and Plains Indian) existence — abrogated treaties that aimed to protect Native land from settlers, and generally proceeded to destroy the Lakota way of life. Just prior to the massacre, US cavalry troops had moved in to disarm a Lakota encampment. During the disarmament, it appears that one deaf Lakota man struggled against the soldiers and his gun went off, after which the cavalry opened fire, ultimately killing most people in the encampment, including women and children who fled the fighting and were hunted down. Some Lakota fought back, but they had largely been disarmed.

And for this, Medals of Honor? What is the “honor” that mindless Pete Hegseth is commemorating? What is the “valor”? Is this some perverse representation of the “warrior ethos” he seeks to promote? What an abject disgrace, and a slap in the face to the many soldiers who have earned Medals of Honor for true bravery and sacrifice, including, by the way, many who were Native American. Among other things, this is one more glaring example of the hollow, twisted logic of the Hegseth/MAGA “anti-woke” crusade.

Any American with an ounce of integrity, and an ounce of dignity, should repudiate this sickening act and all that it represents. And I will say this straight out: Pete Hegseth, you are no warrior. You are a sham, and like your president, all you know how to do is create cartoonish displays and ersatz rituals. You know nothing about being truly human, nothing about sacrifice, nothing about human history, and given your religious pretense, absolutely nothing about grace. 

HOW?

Dr. Common Good asks…

How is it possible that we have an American president whose “speech” today before the UN was just a blowhard rant filled with braggadocio, completely baseless and egotistical claims about his “peacemaking,” whining that he has not received a Nobel prize, bragging that the US is the unchallenged “hottest” country in the world, lecturing the UN on its uselessness, spewing out a racist demagogue’s blanket condemnation of migration as the reason countries are “going to hell” and losing their heritage, and issuing a flagrantly ignorant denunciation of green energy and climate change science as perpetrated by “stupid people” and “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

How? How did we get here? Yet Trump’s repulsive word-sewer is seen as coming from the United States, a key founder of this very United Nations. 

And just a day earlier, a fumbling president who could not even pronounce the word “acetaminophen” stood before the US and proclaimed “Tylenol” as the cause of autism, following the “conclusions” of his depraved and ignorant HHS Secretary RFK Jr. The world laughed, and the scientific experts stood flatfooted with mouths agape.

How?

Right now the United States is seen by most of the world as an idiotic, pathetic caricature of its former self, a country to be ignored, a country giving away many of its greatest assets, and a country to be taken advantage of because of its self-destructive and colossally stupid leadership and policies – which can’t help but raise this question in the minds of many: “How? How did this once thriving, admired country, defender of democracy (at least part of the time), purported “leader of the free world,” fall so quickly off a cliff into a turgid morass of myopic, ill-informed, moronic, mindless and just plain psychotic swill? How? Weren’t we just the country that did a better job than most of the world in addressing and recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic? Weren’t we just the country that was expanding healthcare to cover more people who could not afford it? Weren’t we just the country that, through USAID-funded programs, supported so many efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, starvation, and infectious disease? Weren’t we just the country that harnessed the sometimes-erratic relationships between NATO countries into a galvanized and coordinated opposition to Russia’s cold-blooded invasion of Ukraine? Weren’t we at least beginning to rejuvenate our leadership in the global fight against climate change? Weren’t we? Huh?

So, I ask again, how has it come to this? What this appalling imposter of a president and his servile, unqualified, self-dealing administration has done should be way over the line, beyond the pale, for Americans of every political stripe. Yet here we are.

You – and I mean all Americans — should seriously be asking yourself, how? And you should be thinking about some answers. Now. It’s past Paul Revere time.

POLITICAL MANIPULATION, DISTORTIONS AND THE SHOOTING OF CHARLIE KIRK 

Dr. Common Good

I am going to make this short and to the point.

First, political violence is unacceptable, period. No matter what Mr. Kirk said, or what his positions were, there is no place whatsoever for assassination or political violence in the United States. We empathize with the Kirk family for their loss.

That said, the canonization of Mr. Kirk by Trump, Vance, and other right-wing voices is grotesque. However clever his manner, he espoused vile racism, bigotry, white Christian nationalism, hostility to immigrants, and a backwards misogyny that fed hatred and violence.  To wit:

• He opposed the fundamental American tenet of equality, calling, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake,” and that Black people were “better off” years ago during Jim Crow and slavery, and he hosted on his podcast a slavery apologist who said that things went downhill after Black people were guaranteed the right to vote. He was a major proponent of the “great replacement theory,” claiming that liberal forces were seeking to replace white people with immigrants. He also once said that Black women – including Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson – “did not have the brain power to be taken seriously.” They had to “go steal a white person’s slot” to be taken seriously. And he spread a litany of lies about the police killing of George Floyd.

• He called for a white Christian state, claiming that “there’s no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the Constitution.” He advocated for an “American way of life” based on “Christendom” and he was routinely, and rabidly, anti-Islamic, saying that he didn’t ever want his children to hear a Muslim call to prayer. He even called the prophet Muhammad a rapist and a pedophile, among other names. Along the same lines, he wholeheartedly supported Israel’s war in Gaza, denying reports of mass deaths and genocide, and professing his belief in the “scriptural land rights given to Israel.”

• He claimed that women should be subservient to their husbands and that having children was their primary role; so much so, that on being asked if his 10 year old daughter should bear the child if she was raped, he unequivocally said that she should.

• He opposed any gun control and argued, ironically, that a few deaths every year was an acceptable price to pay for maintaining his version of the right to bear arms. 

There is little doubt that these and his many other pronouncements fed into extreme MAGA and right-wing hate.

Now, Trump, Vance and generally the MAGA-world, are shamelessly exploiting the Kirk shooting to excoriate and call for vengeance against liberals and “woke-ism,” calling liberals “scum,” exhorting people to root out liberals, and blaming them for political violence, conveniently forgetting the right-wing extremist assassinations of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, attempts on the life of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and his family, the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and the litany of mass shootings inspired by right wing hate against people of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community, at churches, synagogues, bars, and Walmarts, among other locations. At the same time, they have held up an imaginary Charlie Kirk as a bastion of American values, with Vance taking his casket on Air Force 2, and Trump awarding Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom as an exemplar of American values and a “champion of liberty.” And to cap the hypocrisy, Attorney General Pam Bondi now says the Justice Department will go after hate speech, which, she said, is not free speech. Really. After charging liberals with “cancel culture” allegations when there was any outcry against right-wing hate speech, she can still say that with an apparent straight face. George Orwell would have a field day.

For Dr. Common Good, what Mr. Kirk stood for should never be held up as exemplary American values. What he stood for is not the America the world once admired, not the America of the great democratic experiment, and not an America that many recognize any longer.

Despite all of this, we should be using this as a moment to be reflexive about the ugly political divide, and to seek out ways to move forward, allowing for civil disagreement and not zero-sum game authoritarianism or the politics of exclusion. That is not American. Unfortunately, that is not the path Trump and his MAGA allies have taken. They are instead using this opportunity to ramp up authoritarian control.  

The following is a template letter — use (or adapt) if you can:

Dear UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT:

We, the undersigned urge you in the strongest terms not to cave in to the demands of the Trump administration with respect to “remediation” for purported violations of federal civil rights law during the 2024 campus protests against Israeli actions in Gaza. These actions by the Trump administration amount to extortion under the pretense of combatting antisemitism, and a continuation of their campaign to silence dissent and control the free discourse that is enshrined in the Constitution. The Trump extortion ploy against universities is just a part of their broader effort to control speech that has included ideological vetting of exhibits at national parks and at the Smithsonian museums, detention and attempted deportation of individuals voicing opposition to Trump policies, firing of longtime and dedicated civil servants and removing agency data that contradict the Administration’s declared truths, and the defunding and intimidation of media organizations that disseminate facts contrary to Trump’s preferred story-line. This is flatly un-American, and the stuff of tyrants.

It is important to emphasize that we fully support true efforts to fight antisemitism, but find the Trump administration’s use of that pretext cynical and without any credibility. If Trump were truly interested in addressing antisemitism, he would not have entertained known antisemites at his home for dinner, used antisemitic tropes in public on multiple occasions, curtailed or eliminated programs intended to fight far-right extremism, and voiced support for right-wing and antisemitic protesters in Charlottesville Virginia, among other actions. In that spirit, where Jewish or Israeli-American students have in fact been threatened or felt threatened, there are many remedies and actions that can be pursued that do not simultaneously demonize or penalize those peacefully exercising their rights to speak and to protest.  

Moreover, protesting the abhorrent actions of the Netanyahu government in Gaza, where at least 60,000 people have now been killed and where Israel has mounted an enforced starvation campaign, is not in any way antisemitism. Protesting right-wing settler violence against Palestinian residents in the West Bank is not antisemitism. Such protests, in our view, are not only in line with a long tradition of Jewish activism for social justice, but are protests against policies and attitudes that will never bring peace to Israel or security to the Jewish people, in Israel or here in the U.S. Students had, and have, every right to engage in such protests without being accused of antisemitism, and you, as President of this venerable and prestigious university, should not allow the Trump administration to play this dictator’s game. It is wrong. It is cowardly. We must be better than that.

Do not let this university be yet another domino in a concerted campaign to quash the basic rights and freedoms that actually do make America great. That is how autocrats and dictators consolidate power. We entreat you, again, not to submit to this naked power ploy.

Signed (ADD HERE)

TRUMP IS MAKING AMERICA…WHAT? ANYTHING BUT GREAT

Dr. Common Good

Let’s review some of the key actions and decisions by the Trump administration over the past few months. Every single one of these actions has contributed to an America that has trampled its own values, forfeited any claim to world leadership in anything, turned the office of the presidency into a cheap, tin-pot grift, gutted our once-admired institutions of research and learning, and shredded any sense of fairness and justice for Americans at home. To wit:

• The consequences of Trump/Musk’s DOGE and continued cuts is a complete sham, and is a litany of wasteful, wanton destruction, ruining the lives and work of thousands of dedicated American public servants, and the functions of key organizations and agencies that actually did make America great, and that helped other people in need throughout the world (including USAID). As Bill Gates said, speaking of Musk, “the richest man in the world has killed the poorest people in the world.” Trump and his minions have been more than happy to gift the greedy and wealthy, at the cost of taking away basic food aid, health care, help for students with special needs, and many other supports for American people. 

• It could easily be said that Trump is in fact “making China great.” With the elimination of USAID and resulting pullout of the global USAID presence, guess who steps in? China. With the abandonment of a green energy agenda and reversing of support for green energy development provided by the Biden administration, guess who steps in to ramp up their domination of the green energy market? China. And when the vaunted US strength in research and academic institutions is thrown to the wind under the ridiculous logic of “anti-wokeism” or “anti-DEI,” who benefits? China and everyone else.

• Tariffs – Oh, how Trump and his minions lie about this! Once again, tariffs do not take money from the country that is the supposed target. They are extracted from whoever imports anything from that country. So, if I am a manufacturer and I import some of my parts from China, or from Europe, I will pay the tariff, not China or Europe. It is without question a tax on the manufacturers. Part of Trump’s big lie here? He and MAGA claim they are reducing taxes on businesses. Well guess what, it is in fact just a game of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Lower taxes, but raise tariffs. Either way, manufacturers pay more. Ford, for example, just announced that they expected to lose $2 billion in tariff costs – they have already lost $800 million. A second part of Trump’s Big Tariff Lie is that they are meant to penalize countries that have “treated America badly.” That’s a head-shaking fish story! Trump recently placed an additional 40% tariff on Brazil (for a total 50% tariff). Why? Because they had the decency to put former president Jair Bolsonaro on trial for staging an attempted coup after he lost the last election. Trump doesn’t like that, since Bolsonaro was one of his buddies in autocracy, and, well, because Trump himself fomented a coup after he lost in 2020. As is plainly evident, that is about Trump and his whims, not about US trade at all.

• Trump is assaulting science and general truth in a way no American president ever has. In the name of eliminating “woke ideology” he has directed the National Park Service (NPS) to scrub any references to slavery or anything else he deems a less-than-rosy picture of US history at NPS sites. He has even directed the Smithsonian to scrub references to his two impeachments in an exhibit about presidential impeachments. His administration has decimated university research funding, blocked international students, and his HHS head RFK Jr. has fired the expert CDC vaccine advisory panel and is now considering dismissal of the US Preventive Services Task Force. These are non-political, top-level scientific advisory bodies. His EPA, under Lee Zeldin, is seeking to reverse the finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health, which is stunningly ignorant and serves only the short-term interests of oil and gas producers. On August 1, Trump fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because the jobs report that came out this week reflected poorly on Trump’s economy. He then, with absolutely no evidence, accused the Commissioner, a veteran public servant who had served administrations of all parties, of politically manipulating the numbers. All of this is an Orwellian atrocity. And for those who echoed Trump’s allegations of “communist” and “socialist” with respect to Democrats, there is no more communist dictator-like action than to erase truth in favor of ideology, or in favor of self-serving lies.

• Trump and his administration are fully complicit in the horrendous starvation and genocide in Gaza, and the intensified settler violence against innocent Palestinians in the West Bank. His full support of Netanyahu and his right-wing zealot allies is unconscionable, along with his parallel effort to quash any dissent or objections to that policy in the US under the spurious, and cheapened, guise of antisemitism (using a definition of antisemitism that is ambiguous in referring to criticism of Irael as antisemitic). It is also a slap in the face to the long tradition of Jewish social justice and the real efforts to stop antisemitism – which, by the way, Trump does not actually care about, having supported and catered to antisemitic groups and individuals since day one.  

• Especially in this second term, Trump has engaged in corruption at a wild, unprecedented and public level: A few examples: 1) The doling out of pardons to criminals who managed to pay, or have someone pay for the million dollar a plate dinners at Mar a Lago; 2) The creation of a bitcoin scam operation which is essentially a pay to play scheme, using the presidential office to enrich himself – a cryptocurrency auction for an audience with the president; 3) Accepting the gift of a 747 plane from Qatar, in full violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, and stealing more than $900 million from funds intended to repair and upgrade our nation’s aging nuclear missile infrastructure to outfit it for his use – and, yes, it is for his personal use. He will keep that plane after his term, under the fraudulent ownership of the “Trump Library” (What library, one might ask? He does not read, and he does not write); 4) Opening the Executive Branch club in Georgetown, at a price of $500 million for membership, essentially a “pay to play” forum for wealthy individuals who want access to Trump; 5) He is now building a $200 million “ballroom” addition to East Wing, which he claims will be funded only by private money. In return for what? Why not take that money and use it to help with health care and food for the millions who will need it now that Trump’s budget has taken that away?

• Add to that list the absolute corruption of the judicial system via Attorney General Pam Bondi and her cast of loyal Trump acolytes, who have been using the Justice Department as a personal tool to go after Trump opponents. This is not what the Justice Department is for, and Bondi’s claim to be reversing the “politicization” of the Justice Department under Biden is a cynical fantasy for public consumption by the uninformed. And on top of that, the Trump “Justice Department” has skirted the normal and required Senate approval of US Attorneys by exploiting a loophole. The trick is to put in a loyalist acting US attorney, who does not need Senate confirmation (as acting), then when the legally allowed 120 day term for an acting US attorney is up, make that person the Assistant US attorney. When a new US attorney is nominated by the state courts, Trump fires that one, making the Assistant (and once Trump-loyalist) acting US attorney again. It is pure manipulation and corruption of the system. The confirmation of Emil Bove as a Circuit Court judge is another case – he was Trump’s personal attorney who committed numerous, documented violations of legal practice, and engineered the Mafia-esque deal with New York mayor Eric Adams to let him off the hook for corruption charges if he followed Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Bove also lied, flagrantly, to the Senate Judiciary Committee about these violations, a perjury offense in itself. Finally, Trump moved convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum security prison just days after she spoke with Trump’s Deputy Attorney General and former personal attorney Todd Blanche. She is under a 20-year sentence and was not eligible for such a move. What back-door deal was made here?

• In short order, Trump has laid waste to the critical network of global alliances that has helped keep America safe and strong since at least WWII. He has done this through his outrageous “tariff wars” even to our greatest friends and allies, by threatening to take over Greenland, Panama, and Canada), and by a moral and political reorientation of US support in favor of dictators like Putin, bin Salman, Nicholas Orban, and others, staining whatever claim the US has made to be the world’s strongest supporter of democracy and human rights. This disgraceful pattern is exemplified by Trump’s ignorant and malicious abandonment of Ukraine, which has not changed much even though Trump – for reasons of his own ego – has recently soured on Putin. 

• The thuggish, illegal, and capricious deportation of immigrants using masked shock troops and throwing due process to the wind. Despite Trump’s promised focus on immigrants who committed crimes, more than 70% of those detained have no criminal record at all. Many are legal US residents, who have contributed to this country and paid taxes for years. It is a public show of hatred and intimidation, masterminded by the ugly, power-drunk Stephen Miller, who has demanded that ICE deport 3,000 people a day, and has flooded the media with patently false claims about immigrants as criminals.

I could easily go on, and I will do so in continued posts. But I ask, what about any of this has anything to do with making America great? Trump likes to call everything that paints him as a villain a “hoax.” Well, here you go, folks. The biggest hoax of all is the Trump and MAGA claim to be “making America great.” 

TRUMP THE DUPE, AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR AMERICA

Dr. Common Good

On top of its mounting litany of illegal and authoritarian actions in the US, the Trump administration has shown itself to be a dupe on the world stage, to the peril of Americans and the well-being of our allies.

First, Trump, Vance and company have routinely shown themselves to be utter dupes, and fools, when it comes to Ukraine. What is the explanation for the Trump reversal of American support, in concert with our European allies, for the independence of Ukraine and its resistance to Russian aggression? We need not repeat the details, but on February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, not for any of the flimsy and specious justifications it has floated, but to take control over the country and return it to the Russian orbit. It was aggression, pure and simple, and a threat to Europe and NATO. The Biden administration understood this and took the right steps in galvanizing NATO and supporting Ukraine with weapons – though some would argue with too much restraint. Given the lessons of history, this would seem the obvious conclusion. But no, not for Trump, who has a history of idolizing Putin and his authoritarian ways, along with an appalling ignorance of history and venal, puerile narcissism. Trump turned on Ukraine, acting, against all evidence, as if it was at fault. He, and Vance, thus became chief spokespersons for Putin’s propaganda, and they continue, more or less, to follow this path. Complete dupes and fools.

Now, Trump and company have bombed Iran. Why? Iran posed no imminent threat to the US, a conclusion reached by our own intelligence services. Yet with no evidence, Trump dismissed those conclusions and just asserted that they were a threat anyway. Without being privy to all the possible intelligence on this matter, it very much appears that Trump, once again, is a dupe – and this time he is yanking the US into a potential war or at least a lengthy period of retaliation. This time, Trump is a dupe for Israel’s Netanyahu, who initiated the attacks on Iran several weeks ago, and very much wanted to rope in the US so that he could make use of the US “bunker buster” bombs to hit Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. Israel does not have those weapons. So, he played on Trump’s childish need to appear tough, and Trump has willingly complied, with no plan, no forethought, and utterly without Congressional notification or consent, continuing his pattern of violating the Constitution and the democratic process. Trump is an easy mark for such manipulation. It could also be argued that Netanyahu himself is using the Iran attacks to divert attention from condemnation of his disastrous policies in Gaza and his green light to violent right-wing settlers in the West Bank, who have significantly increased their attacks and land grabs against Palestinians. Simultaneously, the attacks on Iran divert attention from the threats he faces from his own corruption trials and internal opposition. It’s an old game. Netanyahu has been itching to attack Iran for many years, and there is no apparent evidence that Iran was at a more critical threat-point now than it has been in recent years.

History thus repeats itself. The selfish motives of leaders have and will generate conflict and war, and it is the broader populations who suffer the consequences.

As a democratic country, will we allow ourselves to be duped by the pure selfishness and vanity of Trump, who could care less about the broader consequences as long as his twisted personal needs are met?      

REFLECTIONS ON THE VIETNAM WAR ANNIVERSARY AND TODAY’S POLITICAL DIVIDE

Dr. Common Good

This 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War is a reminder of at least two streams of social sentiment that form what must be seen as key to the retrograde animus fueling MAGA politics.

First, since it is the anniversary, let’s look at the Vietnam War and its aftermath, still reverberating in the national consciousness. Most historical accounts are consistent in documenting the bipolar, Cold War worldview, and all the fears and hubris that implies, as underlying the initial framing of the Vietnam conflict as primarily another case of the Communist world pursuing its aim of global domination wherever a weak spot appeared. This was the raison d’ȇtre for George Kennan’s doctrine of containment. After the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, the Greek civil war in the late 1940s, the rise of communist parties in Italy and France, the Korean War, a series of anti-colonialist wars in Algeria and elsewhere in Africa, and the McCarthy era in the U.S, then came France’s defeat in Vietnam and the perceived likelihood that Vietnam was next on the target list. Without France there, the political leadership in the U.S. largely agreed that it was up to us in our assumed position as leader of the free world to stop that advance. But as U.S. involvement increased, along with the use of heavy bombing and more traditional heavy-force tactics, so did frustration that the North Vietnamese and Vietcong were not knuckling under. Casualties mounted. Political opposition grew, infused with an increasing belief that we were in the wrong, that we were bludgeoning the Vietnamese for just wanting to free themselves from Western colonial domination. The aims of U.S. involvement became muddled, resulting in a patchwork of policies and constraints on how the U.S. should prosecute the war – constraints that were often violated, as in the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos. The political divide erupted in riots and protests, sometimes met with violence. The right chafed and fumed at the constraints imposed on U.S. power, while the left railed against the abuses of U.S. power and human rights. And in 1975, the U.S. pulled out in what many on the right have viewed ever since as a humiliation caused or at least exacerbated by liberal/leftist politics.    

Second is the reaction among conservatives against government involvement in the basic support and protection of individual rights and well-being that began with the New Deal, then continued through Johnson’s Great Society programs, the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the environmental movements, and Supreme Court rulings on desegregation (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, and many others), right to counsel (Gideon v. Wainright, 1963), reproductive rights (Griswold v. Connecticut,1965, Roe V. Wade, 1973) and the separation of church and state (Engel v. Vitale, 1962), among others, all of which questioned and contested assumptions about racial and gender hierarchies, the unfettered exploitation of natural resources, family composition and life, the dominance of Protestant Christianity as the sole moral and social determinant of values, and even what a good life should look like. To some on the right, these represented doubts about America itself and about its core values. And to some of the most extreme among the right, these constituted a continuation of attacks against a romanticized, ante-bellum (pre–Civil War) pattern of life.

Put these two together, and you have two powerful sources of resentment and revanchism – against the restraints imposed on the exercise of U.S. power in the world as something akin to a divine right or manifest destiny, and against the political forces that disrupted an idyllic picture of American life in the 1950s and early 1960s that was (and still is) essentialized as white, Christian, and typically suburban or rural. This idyllic picture, of course, was never valid for African Americans and other peoples of color who were subjugated to Jim Crow laws and countless other brutalities and constraints. It was never valid for poor whites in the Appalachians, and never truly valid for most American women, among others. Anyone driving across the country in the early 1960s could have seen that. But if you look at the “culture-war” today, these same beliefs drive the anti-DEI, anti-woke, pro American power aims of MAGA, and the longstanding resentment against those – vaguely portrayed as woke, liberal, Eastern, elite, etc. – who have kept “real America” down and bastardized its raw essence. Globalism and internationalism are seen the same way, as constraints imposed by “weak” or elitist European political structures on the free exercise of Americanness. Trump and his cronies (yes, that is what they are) pull on, twist and provoke that well of resentment every day, no matter the damage it does to the country and our relations with the world, no matter how ridiculous and ignorant are the labels used (e.g., “communist” judges). Worse, the most vociferous MAGA devotees are clearly willing to shred the Constitution to regain that imagined America, even if it requires an authoritarian dictator to do so.

This is a divide that will not be mitigated by a recourse to standard political shibboleths. The question is how to meet, resist, and/or defuse this pernicious wave and preserve that which is in fact unique and admirable about the American experiment.