Dr. Common Good

If you think anything Trump has ever said about how he brought back global respect for the US or that world leaders respect him has a single molecule of truth, then I have a swampy sinkhole to sell you at a great price!

Put simply, Trump has no concept of history nor does he have any idea what role the various military and economic alliances have had in maintaining a relatively stable hedge against Russian aggression, over many years, and in maintaining the level of economic well-being that has characterized Western Europe and North America since the end of World War II. He somehow thinks these relationships are all transactional, one-dimensional commodities that can be valued by payments alone. If you combine that ignorance with a slavish adulation for Putin and other autocrats and dictators, Trump represents a disaster of major proportions for both the US and its allies, including those across the globe who will watch what we do and judge how reliable the US is, or whether or not the US even values democracy, ostensibly our core characteristic and selling point.

Add to that his complete inability to understand sacrifice for the right to self-determination, for the idea of democracy, or for anything else, and thus his willingness to throw Ukraine under the bus, which is absolutely dishonorable and appalling. Anyone who thinks that is an appropriate US policy line needs to face the spirits (and wrath) of all those who fought against fascism in WWII, and the spirits of the many thousands who have already been killed in Ukraine. How can Trump and his MAGA minions ignore that Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in an unprovoked attack to rein in what the Putin regime considers to be its dominion, not the independent country that it is? This of course follows their initial encroachment in 2014, when Russia invaded, then annexed Crimea, and invaded parts of Eastern Ukraine to support pro-Russian rebels. While the Russians may have fair concerns about NATO encirclement, Putin’s grandiose claims about restoration of traditional Russian imperial territory are baseless and out of place in the 21^st century as an acceptable cause for invading another country. Yet Trump understands none of this and does not care. He likes Putin, and would be only too happy to emulate him. Moreover, it is not for nothing that comparisons have been made between Russia’s aggression and Hitler’s early invasions of Eastern Europe – another piece of history about which Trump and company are blithely unaware. Next to Trump, Neville Chamberlain looks like a heroic figure.

Trump is a dangerous break from the postwar web of alliances, and the US role as lead advocate for human rights and democracy – however flawed and misapplied that has been over the years. The alliance partners know that. Russia knows that. But even worse, his break from this alliance is not the result of considered policy, but of ignorance, narcissism, and concern for no one but himself. And his MAGA followers appear completely unaware, so captivated as they appear to be by this cartoon champion.  

Trump is not respected. He is not strong. He is not tough. He is a bloviating bully, empty of anything that resembles thought, empty of anything that resembles a heart, or spirit. For Putin, Trump is a useful fool. For Western leaders, he is like an inexplicable anomaly that emerged from some dark hole in the American landscape, who knows nothing and cares nothing about all that has preceded him, or that which will follow. What do you do with this oblivious and venal man? He was, after all, elected, at least once. So I ask you, and many ask the same, do not elect or allow this man to head the United States of America. It would be a travesty, a stain on history.

Dr. Common Good

Yesterday in the U.S. Mexico border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, Trump once again spewed out his usual ignorant, mendacious swill, ominously warning his audience about “Biden migrant crime,” because, he said, they (migrants) are “coming from jails, and they’re coming from prisons, and they’re coming from mental institutions…and they’re coming from insane asylums, and they’re terrorists. They’re being let into our country.” And then he added, “We have languages coming into our country. We have nobody that even speaks those languages.”

It is beneath human dignity to even respond to this, but unfortunately this is what we are facing in today’s political cesspool.

First, do not give this garbage any credence. None. To characterize migrants that way is repulsive. This should not be coming out of the mouth of anyone purporting to represent American values or an American government. I want you to just think for one moment – What circumstances would drive people to flee their homes, cross over long stretches of hostile territory, hungry, with few possessions, and vulnerable to all manner of victimization? Could you do that? People leave their homes, for the most part, because of hunger, violence, immediate threats, and a lack of opportunity to make a living, or feed one’s family. I know, because I have worked with migrant communities for years. I have documented some of these circumstances. I have been on that U.S. – Mexico border, and I can tell you, I don’t know if I would have what it takes to get across that unforgiving landscape.  And in the case of migrants from Central America, they are often fleeing violence that is the long-term consequence of our own policies in the region. They are not coming from insane asylums, jails, and terrorist camps. That is a flagrant lie that Trump uses to whip up support, and pull in more campaign contributions. National police data in fact show that crime is down in the cities that have received the most migrants. So, yet another lie. Another shameless part of his con.

And “languages coming in to this country”? What kind of stupidity is that? “Languages” have always come in to this country, and every other country. English is itself a composite of multiple languages. But of course Trump would not know that, because he has the mind of a self-absorbed child.

What we really need is sensible immigration reform, and the resources to help manage the border. Some of that was actually in a bipartisan immigration bill that was on its way to being passed. But then, enter Trump. He ordered his Republican flunkies – that is truly the only way to think of them – not to pass it. Why? Because he didn’t want Biden to be able to claim any sort of success, especially on an issue he thinks is “his.” That’s a lot like the benched quarterback who tries to prevent his own team from winning because someone else would be able to take credit. What would your reaction to that be? It would not be good, and you know it.

Once again, and again, and again, Trump shows that he is disturbed, malicious, and ignorant. He is manifestly unqualified to be the head of anything, not even a local Boy Scout troop. I ask you, the American people, not to defile this country by supporting this disgrace of a person. We are better than that, whatever political party you follow.

ISRAEL, THE U.N., AND WAR WITH HAMAS: STOP DENYING CONTEXT, START SEEKING SOLUTIONS

Dr. Common Good

Now Israel is calling for the resignation of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and barring UN personnel from entry into Gaza. Why? Because Guterres said that the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum” and that Israeli bombing was causing “clear violations of international humanitarian law.” For that, he is being called biased against Israel and somehow “understanding” of terrorism – even though, as part of the same address, he clearly said that the Hamas attacks were “appalling” and that “nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians, or the launching of rockets against civilian targets” (reported by CNN, October 25). He also referred to the context, saying “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished,” yet, significantly, adding “But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

So let’s step back a minute. Guterres was not in any way condoning Hamas or its unforgivable, brutal attack. He was merely acknowledging that there is a context, and that the massive loss of life now occurring in Gaza is not a justifiable response. I ask you, what did he say that was incorrect here? Was he incorrect about occupation and displacement? Was he incorrect that there is a context to consider? Was he incorrect about the disproportionate response? Not at all.

There is clearly a context. That 56 years of occupation has only intensified under Netanyahu’s right-wing government. As reported by the Norwegian Refugee Council (August 10, 2023) and the UN, just since 2022:

• At least 488 Palestinians, including 263 children, from seven communities in Area C of the West Bank have been forcibly displaced due to an increasingly coercive environment, according to the UN. These include Ein Samiya (132 displaced), Wadi As-Seeq (35 displaced), Wedadie (21 displaced), Lifjim (46 displaced), Ras At-Tin (99 displaced in 2022, 89 displaced in 2023), Al-Baqa’a (54 displaced), and Khirbet Bir Al-Idd (12 displaced).
• The UN has documented 591 Israeli settler attacks so far this year that have resulted in casualties and property damage. The monthly average for the first six months of 2023 is 39 per cent higher than the monthly average of settler-related incidents in all 2022.
• Settlers killed six Palestinians and injured 204, including 24 children, in the first six months of 2023 (before the Hamas attack).

Moreover, the UN recently reported that Israeli settlers had displaced more than 1,100 Palestinians from the West Bank, just since 2022 (ABC News, September 21, 2023). Since the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister in 2009, some 14,000 Palestinians have been forcibly removed from their homes, including in East Jerusalem (UN data, reported by CNN October 22, 2023). As it is, Palestinians are living on only 22% of the land that was traditionally known as Palestine. The greater proportion of 78% was already claimed as part of Israel in 1948. And then there are Netanyahu’s cynical attempts, for years, to prevent formation of a Palestinian state. As part of this strategy, outlined by Zvi Bar’el in Haaretz, Netanyahu essentially nurtured Hamas. As reported in The Week (October 27, 2023), under his divide-and-conquer strategy, “he undermined the Palestinian Authority, which wants a two-state solution, while propping up Hamas, which doesn’t” (it wants elimination of Israel). He even allowed Qatar to supply Hamas with $30 million a month, and members of his cabinet, including security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, have shown open contempt for, and dismissal of Palestinians – the latter routinely claiming that there is no Palestinian people.

So yes, there is a context. If we are ever to achieve peace, denial, obfuscation and suppression of this context cannot continue. It is not anti-Semitic to criticize Israeli policy, or Israeli politicians, or to report the glaring violations of human rights that have characterized Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory for years. It is actually pro-Israeli. If Israelis are ever to live in peace and security, a goal I support, this history must be acknowledged and rectified. Don’t forget, whether you want to hear it or not, that prior to Israel’s founding in 1948, there were multiple Jewish terrorist groups – including Lehi and Irgun – that assassinated British officials, bombed the King David hotel in Jerusalem, bombed civilians at a bus stop near the Jaffa Gate, bombed the Ramla market in 1948, and committed other acts of sabotage and terror during that time. Importantly, however, these groups were disbanded or absorbed following the declaration of an Israeli state. There is an obvious lesson here. A state was formed, and terrorism stopped. The situation is not exactly parallel, of course, and the current conflict has festered for many more years, but denial of Palestinian self-determination, land and dignity is just going to keep producing a repeat of the same cycle of violence, whatever organization becomes the perpetrator.

This is a history that cannot be denied. It is context. It does not justify Hamas terrorism and brutality, but it does describe the wellspring from whence it came. In order to stop such terrorism, bombing and more violence is clearly not the answer. Ignoring settler violence and the appropriation of Palestinian land is not the answer. Ignoring decades of Israeli policy is not the answer. Shutting down the UN and its Secretary General is not the answer. Reconciling with the truth is the only meaningful step forward.

THE HAMAS-ISRAEL WAR: A STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL RESIGNS

Dr. Common Good

CNN reported today (October 19) that a State Department official has resigned over the Biden Administration’s handling of the Hamas-Israel conflict, and more broadly, because of its whole approach to the resolution of the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian issue. I am going to repeat here what CNN has reported (CNN 10/19/23, article by S. Paget) about his statement because what he has done is admirable and necessary, and because his statement is a succinct summary of what is wrong.

According to the CNN report, Josh Paul, who worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, said in a LinkedIn post that he resigned “due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel.”

“Let me be clear,” Paul wrote. “Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.”

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

Reached for comment, a State Department spokesperson told CNN the agency declines to comment on personnel matters.

In an interview with The New York Times, Paul said legal guardrails that are intended to keep American weapons out of the hands of human rights violators are failing, as the US backs Israel while the nation has cut off water, food, medical care and electricity in Gaza.

“There’s a moment where you can say, OK, well, you know, it’s out of my hands, but I know Congress is going to push back,” he told the Times. “But in this instance, there isn’t any significant pushback likely from Congress, there isn’t any other oversight mechanism, there isn’t any other forum for debate, and that’s part of what got into my decision making.”

Well said, Mr. Paul. You have summed up the situation exactly.

THE HAMAS-ISRAEL WAR: WHAT IS JUSTICE? WHERE IS THE ROAD TO PEACE?

Dr. Common Good

Before going any further, I want to make two stipulations. These are important. You must keep them in mind when you continue to read this post, whether you like what I say or not. Because if you do not keep them in mind, you will misinterpret what I am saying. And you should not do that, especially now.

STIPULATION 1: The Hamas attack on Israel and the murder of innocent civilians was brutal, reprehensible, inhuman, appalling, despicable, and every other word that one can conjure for this act that in truth defies words. It was unforgivable, and a stab right in the heart of Jewish historical trauma. There are no two ways about it. At the same time, it is plain wrong to conflate Hamas and the greater Palestinian desire for recognition, self-determination, control over their land, and a state. Hamas is but one actor in the Palestinian setting, whose modus operandi is far too much like that of ISIS and others like it – an all-or-nothing, violent mentality that devalues human life in the service of an absolutist goal of obliterating the other. As columnist Kenan Malik wrote in the Guardian (October 15), “[T]o suggest that such butchery represents the Palestinian struggle is to demean the Palestinian people and their battle for freedom and rights.”

STIPULATION 2: Israel and its people deserve to live in peace, and with security. Anyone, or any group, that denies this cannot fairly be a part of any process that could lead to peace. Equally, the Palestinian people deserve to live in peace, and with security. Anyone, or any group, that denies this cannot fairly be a part of any process that could lead to peace.

NOW, THE BROADER STORY:

These two stipulations made, one has to ask at least two questions: 1) What possible point, other than mindless revenge, is there to the retributive counterattack that is now underway by the Israelis, with the ostensible purpose of eliminating Hamas? 2) Why did this attack, and others before it, happen?

On the first point: Israel will not eliminate Hamas by mass-bombing Gaza and cutting off all water, power and food. It will primarily kill innocent civilians. In fact, as of the time this post is being written, the IDF has already killed almost twice the number of civilians than Hamas did in its attack. No, not by gunpoint (at least not yet), but through indiscriminate bombing. Yes, the Israelis mass-dropped fliers warning civilians to evacuate, but then gave Gaza residents just 24 hours to do so, which by all counts was logistically, and humanly impossible. So what is the point here? How is this possibly justified? Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza”…“There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.” This purportedly was to fight the “human animals” that attacked Israel. The problem here – there are over 2 million people living in Gaza, most of whom are just civilians, trying to make a living and care for families. What Israel is doing is not a solution, it is compounding extreme brutality with more extreme brutality. And ultimately, even if Hamas were eliminated through some brilliant surgical strike strategy, another Hamas, with a different name, will arise, because the essential conditions giving rise to Hamas have not been addressed. It is a serious fault of major news outlets reporting on the current conflict that these conditions are largely being ignored. More broadly, it is a fault of today’s political environment that any expression of support for Palestinian rights, or criticism of Israeli policies, is denounced, and labeled anti-Semitic. Moreover, while barely reported, the Gaza violence has spurred point-blank attacks on unarmed West Bank Palestinians by Jewish settlers, as documented in reporting by the Guardian and video footage circulated by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. This has nothing to do with a goal of eliminating Hamas.

There is also a historical irony in the Israeli attack on Gaza as a whole that is undoubtedly not lost on many Gaza residents; Gaza itself was populated by Palestinians fleeing the initial expulsion of some 700,000 Palestinians (the Nakba) following the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Likud MP Ariel Kallner even tweeted “Right now, one goal: Nakba!…A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of `48.” What on earth does that have to do with Hamas?

On the second point: The answer here is potentially long, because history is involved, so I will be as brief as possible. To start, we should not be surprised by the attack. After years of ignoring the Palestinian situation under Trump, and little attention paid to it by the Biden Administration — even as an extreme right-wing government took charge in Israel, doubling down on settlements, de facto annexation, repression and ugly rhetoric (e.g., from Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir) – some reaction was bound to happen. In fact, many sources predicted some form of escalation. In an interview on CNN, former Israeli prime minister Ehut Olmer said as much. Even Yigal Carmon of the pro-Israeli Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) warned that there were indications in August that war would break out in September-October.

The historical truth is that this land, divided into multiple states in the years following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and two world wars, was inhabited both by Jews and by the ancestors of the people now called Palestinians for thousands of years. Yet Netanyahu, echoing the hardest right-wing ideologues, has referred to the West Bank as Israel’s Judea and Samaria, completely obliterating the presence of a Palestinian people that deserves a land and country of its own as much as does Israel. And Israeli policies follow – settlements have continued virtually unabated for decades, encroaching on land once owned in one form or another by Palestinians, who farmed, sold their goods at market, went to school, and tried to live a life just like Israelis have tried to do. Where settlements are built, walls are built, the Israeli military follows or looks the other way, and the courts support it — to protect settlements, and to control the movement of Palestinians whose territory is now like Swiss cheese. Reviewing a recent book by Nathan Thrall documenting the destruction of Palestinian homes and villages, David Shulman (Professor Emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) writes that 62 percent of the occupied West Bank is under full Israeli control, with almost 200 settlements and settler outposts. Palestinians have been powerless to stop it, and the U.S. government has rarely exercised its leverage to force the Israelis to even slow down this inexcusable, and illegal, takeover of territory. How can any reasonable observer not expect deep frustration, and multi-generational anger?  

Furthermore, I am concerned that the attack will be used, cynically, by the Netanyahu government and its supporters to divert and drown out the growing opposition, in Israel, the United States, and globally, to Israeli policy vis a vis the Palestinians — just as Netanyahu and others cynically endorsed the growth of Hamas in the first place as a means of weakening and dividing Palestinians by weakening the political power of the Palestinian Authority/Fatah.

So one has to ask, amidst the fog of media coverage and unidimensional narratives, where is justice here? Where is a road to peace and security?

ON TRUMP INDICTMENTS, SHAMELESS REPUBLICAN PROPAGANDA, AND DEMOCRACY

Dr. Common Good

OK folks, let’s stop messing around. There is so much distortion and outlandish BS out there about the Trump indictments, denying Trump’s destruction of democracy, and the Biden administration that we need to set the record straight and clear:

Indictments and Democracy

• Trump is not being persecuted, and he is most definitely not the victim of some effort by the Biden Administration to get him out of the way for the 2024 election. Biden has not “weaponized” the Justice Department, and it is beyond belief that Trump and his loyalists could even say such a thing with a straight face, given Trump’s blatant use of the Justice Department to further his personal goals (coercing Justice Department staff to support his election fraud claims, using AG Barr to threaten Michael Cohen, distorting the Mueller Report, and countless other actions). Biden has remained hands-off and his AG Merrick Garland, as well as the special prosecutors, have been accorded full independence. Trump alone is at fault, along with his sycophantic gaggle of political hacks and gutless wannabees, for all of this, from day one. No other president in the history of the United States has ever come close to the rank criminality, abuse of office and absolute selfishness of purpose as this shameful individual. Hard as it may be to say, even President Nixon ultimately acted with some sense of country over person. But Trump is not even capable of thinking beyond himself. He has been, and is willing to destroy a country and its democracy for his own twisted benefit.

• The primary victim here is the United States of America and its people. Trump has stained our democracy, manipulated so many people, and deeply damaged our global reputation as a country, all while foisting the MAGA lie on millions of unwitting Americans.

• And make no mistake. His right of free speech is not being prosecuted or curtailed. That is a pure load of crock, repeated by GOP leaders who really know better but do not have the fortitude to act better. He is being prosecuted for actions – including knowingly making false statements to the FBI, the illegal retention and display of classified documents, obstructing justice by attempting to destroy security cameras/hide evidence, orchestrating multiple attempts to overturn the will of American voters and illegally restore himself to power (including fake elector schemes in multiple states, attempting to coerce the Vice President to refuse certification of the election results, coercing the Georgia secretary of state to “find” votes so that he could overturn the state’s election results, coercing the Justice Department to open sham investigations to reinforce fraud lies, threaten witnesses, and other such actions). Trump has had plenty of opportunity, in more than 60 court cases, to demonstrate evidence of fraud, and he has never been able to do so. Nor did the high-profile “audit” of the Arizona vote find anything either.

• This does not even count the other indictments and convictions related to sexual abuse, tax fraud, and much that is in the Georgia indictments for blatantly conspiring to change the Georgia vote count in his favor.   

Biden Administration

• On the allegations of Biden corruption and bribery repeated endlessly by GOP oversight committee chair James Comer and others? Patently false. Comer’s supposed “star witness” Devon Archer actually refuted the claims of corrupt connections between Hunter Biden businesses and President Biden under sworn testimony, for which there is no evidence. But Comer, following the Trump repeat-the-lie strategy, continues to spout this garbage. Whatever Hunter Biden did or did not do, that will be determined in a court of law – but there is no evidence at all that President Biden had any involvement in these alleged violations. It is head-spinning, by the way, to hear such allegations from those who defended or ignored Trump’s constant and corrupt use of his own businesses to get government funds, his facilitation of multi-billion dollar deals between the Saudis and son-in-law Jared Kushner, grifting of his supporters under false pretenses, and more.  

• As part of the larger propaganda swarm, Republican propaganda keeps referring to Biden as a disastrous president. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whatever you think of him personally, we should all thank President Biden for what he has done since his accession to office in 2021, including:

• Restoring American leadership and pulling NATO together, a remarkable feat, to stand with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, and backstopping the entry of Finland and Sweden to NATO, providing substantial military assistance to Ukraine (with bipartisan support), and imposing a series of stiff economic sanctions against Russia and its oligarchs. Trump, utterly ignorant of NATO’s role, would and could never have done this. He would have kowtowed to Putin, whom he admires.

• Passage of the American Rescue Plan, getting more than 500 million COVID-19 vaccinations out to Americans, and providing temporary support for businesses and families affected by the pandemic. The rescue package also cut child poverty in half, and reduced healthcare premiums under the Affordable Care Act by $800 a year. The Plan contributed significantly to the eventual mitigation of the pandemic and the return to work and school for millions. Trump did not do this, spending most of his time denying the severity of the pandemic and the need for masking, costing many lives.

• Passing a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which increased badly-needed investments in roads, bridges, broadband internet, public transport and more. Trump often promised to do this, but never even really tried. And plenty of Republicans who voted against the bill are now taking credit.

• Making a $369 billion investment in climate change, the largest in American history, through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. This Act also capped prescription drug prices at $2,000 per year for seniors on Medicare and gave Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices while also reducing government health spending. He also recommitted America to the global fight against climate change by rejoining the Paris Agreement. Trump, by contrast, took the U.S. completely out of this global leadership role and denied climate change as an issue of concern.

• Under the Biden administration, the economy has regenerated, even in the face of Ukraine war-driven inflation, to a growth rate of 6.5% in the second quarter of 2023 (according to Business Insider). Inflation, very high for a time, has dropped from 9% to 3.2% (according to a PBS news report). Unemployment rates have dropped to historic lows. In fact, the Biden administration has overseen the creation of more jobs in one year than any other president in U.S. history. As of July, 2023, the economy added 13.2 million jobs, for a total of 3.8 million higher than before the pandemic. The unemployment rate dropped for a time to the lowest in nearly 54 years; unfilled job openings surged, with over 1.6 for every unemployed job seeker (according to FactCheck.org). So much for false Republican claims that Biden has destroyed the economy – and this record outperforms Trump’s by a wide margin (even though he was seen as the “business president”).

• Passing the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, to strengthen American manufacturing and innovation, especially in some areas where we have been dependent on foreign products (e.g., computer chips).

• Signing the PACT Act to address service members’ exposure to burn pits and other toxins.

• Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act through 2027.

• Stopping a 30-year streak of federal inaction on gun violence by signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that created enhanced background checks, closed the “boyfriend” loophole and provided funds for youth mental health.

• And, though many have justifiably criticized the way it was handled, Biden did pull troops out of Afghanistan, ending the longest war in American history. This, by the way, is something Trump promised to do but never actually did – though he negotiated an agreement with the Taliban (behind the back of the Afghan government) that has been seen as a disaster, and that forced Biden’s hand in withdrawing the troops.

THE TRUMPIST GOP SHOULD BE RENAMED

Dr. Common Good

I am not typically one to spout hyperbole, but what we are seeing from the GOP and its media flame-fanners is off the charts for the United States of America.

The GOP in its current form should be re-named. Something like “The New American National Socialist Party”? Will that do?

Take the case of conspiracy theory and lie-peddling right-wing media sycophant Tucker Carlson. He just took a trip to Victor Orbán’s neo-fascist Hungary, to celebrate that leader’s increasing authoritarianism, crony kleptocracy, fawning Putin mimicry, control over the media, courts and all other government institutions, and ugly nativism, and even to film his show there. He also spoke at a far-right, Orbán-sponsored conference. Yet Carlson, and all those like him, claim to be “patriots.” Patriots of what? Surely not the Constitution of the United States.

Carlson’s visit displays, in all its bare-toothed, seething character, a shredding of the American concept perpetrated by today’s GOP. And, no surprise, animating that destructive ethos is what I call zero-sum racism. As Orbán has stated (per reporting by CNN), “We do not want to be diverse. We do not want our own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others.” Well, there you have it. QED.

So, to all those, liberal or conservative, who value the Constitution of the United States and what it represents as a constructive guide for how this country should be governed, and what it represents with respect to the relations between people, and between people and the state, take stock. What Tucker Carlson, Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the entire gang of hate-spewing, so-called populists advocate is not American, in the best sense of the word. It is anti-democratic, thugocratic, nativist, intolerant, and proto-fascist. It is the emulation of Putin, Orbán, Lukashenko (Belarus dictator) and their ilk.

Remember, many Americans once gave their lives to fight against that.  

JUNETEENTH, CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND ITS REVERBERATIONS

Dr. Common Good

The efforts by Republicans such as Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlson and others on the right to cast Critical Race Theory (CRT) as, of all things, “racist” – as racist as the Klan itself, said Cruz – would be laughable, absurdist theater, except that these efforts are part of a broader, insidious narrative perpetrated by the right that is creeping across the media-space like a biblical miasma. Even the newly elected head of the Southern Baptist Convention, Ed Litton, a staunch conservative, knows better, and to his credit, said so in public. So did General Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense, and General Mark Milley, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in response to inane political questioning by Gaetz.  Get it straight. Critical Race Theory is not racist. That is a patent falsehood that needs to be countered. It is the idea that race is a social, not a meaningful biological category, together with the simple acknowledgment that racism has infested the very structure of our society and its mechanisms of social well-being for a long, long time, and that to achieve the goals embedded in the Constitution, these structural impediments to equality need to be eliminated. There is nothing in CRT that calls all white people racists, or that seeks to pit racial groups against each other.  CRT does not advocate violence, terror, hatred or racial/ethnic subjugation as did the Klan.  

Aside from the obvious history of slavery and Jim Crow, who can dispute, for example, that African Americans were denied the opportunity to buy homes through redlining and segregated housing policies – even policies implemented by the Federal Housing Administration? For generations, owning a home has been the most basic means of accumulating wealth and passing it on. Who can deny that African American farmers in the South were explicitly denied loans and credit (including by the US Department of Agriculture) that would have supported the sustainability and thriving of their farming enterprises, driving most African Americans out of farming entirely? Who can deny school segregation and inequality, whether de jure or de facto, curtailing the ability of African Americans to attain the academic credentials that contribute to better income and the ability to influence the generation of knowledge? Who can deny the racial bias that has pervaded the criminal justice system for years, resulting in vastly disparate incarceration rates and far higher rates of police violence victimization for African Americans and other peoples of color? Who can deny the discrimination, explicit and hidden, that has existed in so many of the basic institutions of society, from recreational spaces, to media and entertainment, to workplaces, to civic organizations and clubs – all part of the network of social and cultural capital through which people gain access to resources, social position, political power, and jobs? You can’t deny it. Period. You just can’t.

In fact, I dare you, Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlson and all the rest, to deny any of that, and to back it up with any facts. This is not about being “woke” or whatever other distorted label you want to use to divert attention from historical truth.

So what are the Cruzes, Johnsons, Gaetz’s and Carlsons doing? They are throwing up smoke and lies in order to ride a political bandwagon that is, at its core, largely driven by white racial revanchism, the effort to re-assert dominance and control in a world where some people believe that they are being pushed out, that they are losing control of a way of life that has always been predicated on a racialized social hierarchy. Moreover, this broader, and dangerous right-wing narrative that includes the effort to label CRT as racist and an affront to our history is of a piece with the attempt to portray the January 6 insurrectionists as mere “tourists” (e.g., comments by Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde) or as patriots in some way, the conspiracy theories that seek to blame “antifa” or even now the FBI for January 6, the attempt to whitewash the destructive Trump presidency, the dogged attempt to perpetrate the mendacious lie that the 2020 election was a fraud and must be overturned, the concerted attempt to restrict voting rights as an undemocratic means of ensuring political power, and the perpetration of ugly claims that immigrants are dangerous, and that they pollute the cultural purity of a white, Protestant-based society (by the way, where does the Constitution characterize the United States as constituted by one religion? It, of course, does the opposite).   

This broader narrative is anti-democratic, racist, culturally bigoted, and a threat to the future of this country. Yet because it undergirds the politics of the right and all its media handmaidens, and because, for utterly selfish and venal purposes so many politicians and media charlatans on the right have chosen to stick to this message, it is gaining a kind of currency it in no way deserves. Enough is enough.    

The following document is lengthy, and I am going to post in sections soon, but for now, this is a rundown of lies vs. facts that should be useful for those who might have originally supported Trump, or even still do…

A MESSAGE — IF YOU THINK TRUMP HAS BEEN GOOD FOR AMERICA, PLEASE CONSIDER THIS

Dr. Common Good

www.dr-common-good.com

          Let me start with a blunt truth. Today we as Americans are faced with the most damaging and destructive president in American history. I am telling you, this doesn’t have much to do with being a Republican or Democrat. If you are a Republican, just think. Trump has ignored or just tossed aside key elements of the traditional Republican political platform – he has built up a massive national debt ($24 trillion as of April 2020, and $22 trillion in late 2019, before the effect of COVID-19), unquestionably weakened America’s security and strength in the world (don’t take it from me, take it from our generals), destroyed the long history of Republican support for free trade, and destroyed America’s reputation as the most important guardian of democracy in the world. He exhibits no part of the conservative and Republican value of personal responsibility, blaming anyone and everyone for anything that does not go well. I encourage you to read the statement I have attached to this document, written by a life-long Republican who, among other things, was campaign chair for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

If you are a Democrat, or a broad-minded person of any party, or just a patriot who values the American experiment, it is clear that Trump has willfully trampled on the rule of law in this country, and the checks and balances built in to the Constitution that is the heart and soul of the United States. He uses the Justice Department and legal system like a dictator, as a tool to get what he wants, constantly interfering in the legal process, threatening witnesses (e.g., Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Michael Cohen proceedings), and firing prosecutors involved in actions against him. He disdains the free press, attempting to legitimize only news outlets that parrot his views and achievements and do not criticize him, like Fox News or One America News. On the rare occasions when Fox News does contradict him or reports something unfavorable, he complains that, just maybe, they are not “his network” any more (since when have American presidents had their own networks?). He has rejected the longstanding commitment of the United States to human rights in the world. He has stoked and inflamed racism and bigotry of all kinds. He has gutted and demoralized government agencies and programs that have been central to the achievement of the American dream and America’s reputation – like the State Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even the Department of Agriculture – by getting rid of scientists, experts and career professionals, leaving many positions unfilled, installing subservient political appointees without even relevant experience (witness the recent mass firings at the Voice of America and affiliated U.S. broadcast units under the U.S. Agency for Global Media) or just publicly ignoring and devaluing them. He has ignored and discounted critical global challenges, including climate change and now the COVID-19 pandemic, and completely thrown away America’s leadership role on climate change (which China has now taken over) and in any other area – except when it comes to COVID-19 cases, where, yes, we are Number One in the world. He has severely damaged our historic and longstanding relationships with allies in Europe and around the world that have been the basis of our security and prosperity since World War II and before, insulting our friends and instead choosing to cozy up to dictators and autocrats like no American president of any party has ever done (or should do). As a person, he is a loudmouthed coward, who lies without restraint, acts like a child and spends an extraordinary amount of time calling people names, degrading them, blaming others, and boasting about himself. He is the only president in American history who acts as if what is good for him personally is good for America. In fact, there is no national interest for Trump, only Trump’s interest.

None of this has “made America great.” Trump has, in just three years, turned this country into an embarrassment, a third rate nation that is increasingly shunned by other industrial democracies and is no longer an example to anyone. And, he is clearly responsible for turning the U.S. into a pandemic disaster zone. Unfortunately, all of this has worked to the advantage of countries that are enemies or at least rivals for global reach, including China and Russia. They are loving it – it’s a free win. No wonder they want to see Trump as president. No enemy in modern times could have done more damage.

Now, if you don’t agree with the above description, let’s take a look at some of the facts – and I do mean facts. You can check any of them!  I will cover only a selection of facts (and Trump’s lies about them) here, because it is simply impossible to address all of Trump’s malfeasance in one brief document.

Lies, Lies and Boasting

In a sense, everything we cover here is going to be partly about Trump’s incessant lying, because it’s important, when we talk facts, to include the lies that Trump and company have thrown around about those facts. But just for reference, fact-checkers (e.g., Associated Press, Washington Post) generally agree that Trump has stated, and repeated, an estimated 18,000 lies and misleading statements (with some variation depending upon how “lie” and “misleading statement” are defined) since becoming president. Whatever the exact number, that is a record no president or leader in this country has ever come near.  

Phrases he uses when lying

It’s useful to point out some of the phrases and tactics that Trump routinely uses when he misleads and lies:

• “They say…”, “people say”…”people are calling me and telling me…” Trump uses these statements all the time as “proof” that something he is saying must be true. Funny, he never says who “these people” are.

• “As you know…””you know this well…” and other such statements. Whenever Trump says that, it is a false way of pretending that whatever he is about to say is “known” by his listeners, or interviewers, and therefore true. He gets away with it because he is the one speaking, he has the floor. In fact, his listeners often know they are in for a lie.

• “Oh, that’s fake news.” One of his favorite phrases, and a favorite tactic of Trump supporters and media. If there is a story about him he doesn’t like, poll numbers he doesn’t like, or any fact out in the public that he doesn’t want people to believe because it contradicts his story, he calls it “fake news,” creating distrust in the American people. He will even call something fake news when there is clear evidence, on paper, on video (straight, undoctored), or anything else, of something he said or did. With 18,000 lies, Trump is the actually the biggest fake news generator this country has ever seen, as this document shows.

Big lies about himself:

Trump is a performer, and he likes to create a myth, a narrative about who he is, that he guards jealously (that is at least one reason he has fought like a rabid dog to keep his taxes from being released):

• “I am a great genius.” Wow, what a grotesque lie. By any measure he is the most ignorant president in American history, without exception. As president of the U.S., you should know at least basic information about the history and function of countries and organizations that are the foundation of the world out there, and about the history and function of your own country. Trump knows none of this, and doesn’t even want to know. He doesn’t even know anything about the U.S. Constitution, which he swore in his oath of office to uphold. (He claimed, for example, that Article II gave him the right to “do whatever he wants”) He clearly has a hard time actually reading speeches that are written for him, and his tweets are full of misspellings, enough to embarrass a 5^th grader. He constantly makes statements that are just plain stupid – Windmills (his word for wind-powered generators) cause cancer, coronavirus can be cured by somehow putting UV light or antiviral bleach cleaners into the body, expressing surprise that Finland is a country, and so on. No genius is he.

• “I am a great dealmaker.” Wow, another ridiculous claim. Whatever he claims about his real estate career (most of which is also a well-documented lie, as he was bankrolled by his father’s money and still filed multiple bankruptcies), he knows nothing about how “deal-making” works in the world of global and domestic politics. In order to make deals in the world, you actually need some knowledge about it, which he does not have and shows no interest in gaining, as noted in the previous comment about his “genius.” Let’s see, how does pleading on the phone to the Mexican president to give him something on the wall so he wouldn’t look bad strike you as a big “deal” strategy. How about mooning and fawning over murderous dictator Kim Jong Un as a nuclear deal-making strategy? He achieved nothing other than contempt from Kim Jong Un and concern from the rest of the world. How about begging China’s Xi Jing Ping to give him a break by buying soybeans and wheat from the U.S. to help his re-election? And to help make that happen and curry favor, telling Xi that he supported the Chinese policy of confining a million minority Uighur people in concentration camps? Hmmm, that’s some real deal-making. 

Trump’s Big Economy (vs. the Environment)

• Trump constantly claims that has created the best economy in American and even world history. That is some wild claim! Even before the pandemic, this was not true. To be fair, the economy did grow, and unemployment dropped (pre-pandemic). But this did not start with Trump. He inherited a growing economy from Obama, who led the recovery after the 2008 depression. Trump promised over 4% growth, which has not happened. Yet Obama delivered four quarters over 4%, and an average monthly job growth of 224,000 compared to 182,000 under Trump. And apart from that, the economy under Trump did not do as well as it did under presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson or Bill Clinton. The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Yet even that period was not as good as the 1950s and 1960s – when growth rates between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In postwar 1950 and 1951, growth hit 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but it dipped as low as 2.5 percent in 1953.

• Trump has leveraged his short-term gains with debt. The Congressional Budget Office announced in 2019 that the national debt (what the US owes to creditors) under Trump had grown to $22 trillion, up about $2 trillion since Trump took office. As of April 2020, the debt reached $24 trillion. The 2019 budget deficit (the annual budget shortfall) was about $750 billion, up 25% over the previous year.

• The big tax cut – OK, under the leadership of House speaker Paul Ryan, a substantial tax cut was enacted in 2017. But what did that really do? The benefits did not go to the “folks who work in the mailrooms and machine shops” as Trump promised in 2017. According to the Tax Policy Center, more than 60% of the tax savings went to people in the top 20% of the income scale, and the corporate tax rate was cut by 40%. Supporters of the tax cut said that it would grow the economy so fast that the tax revenue gained from economic growth would more than make up for the revenue lost due to lower tax rates. Nope. Wrong. Didn’t happen (see budget deficit numbers above). It’s an old “supply-side economics” argument that never seems to pan out. There was a short-term boost in investment, and that, along with higher government spending, gave the economy a brief lift, though not that much (just 2.9% in 2018). According to a Gallup poll, only about 14% of people surveyed thought their taxes actually went down. Yes, the stock market jumped up, but remember, the stock market is not the economy. And much of whatever gains did occur were pulled back by Trump’s crazy trade wars, and now the economy has tanked in part because of Trump’s disastrous pandemic management. . 

• The big tariff wars – Trump really likes to make himself look “tough,” doesn’t he? He constantly boasts that the U.S. has taken billions of dollars from China as a result of his tariffs. This is just a load of crap, to be nice. Trump clearly does not know what a tariff is. Tariffs are placed on goods coming in to the U.S., which raises their prices for American buyers. They are not “taken” from China. Let me say that again — American businesses and consumers are the ones who pay, not China (or anyone else he places a tariff on). He also said China promised to buy $50 billion in American agricultural products. Lie again. Never happened.

• The economy and the environment – From the very beginning of his administration, Trump has framed environmental regulations and business/economic growth as oppositional, as a zero-sum game. He famously touted his love for coal during the campaign, and he has stripped or rolled back around 100 environmental protection rules put in place over many years – including clean water regulations implemented during the Obama administration (following lobbying by business groups) which means pesticides and other pollutants can be dumped in many wetland areas without penalty, stripping wildlife protections (e.g., in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act), rolling back automobile fuel efficiency regulations, rolling back pollution control and soot control regulations on power plants, and many others. This has been framed as “freeing up” economic activity. But that counter-positioning of economic activity and environmental responsibility is and always has been “trumped up,” so to speak. The economies of the future are going to be built on green technologies. Other countries know this and are doing very well with it – Northern European countries, even China, to name a few. And giant companies in the U.S. like Tesla are clearly capitalizing on this understanding. Trump and his supporters are backward-looking, and this anti-environmental stance will leave the U.S. trailing in global economic competition. It already has.

• On the previous point, Trump and his supporters still deny or brush off the conclusion that climate change is occurring and that it is human-caused (anthropogenic), despite the fact that 97-98% of all actively publishing climate scientists support this claim, with the tiny 2-3% of others publishing studies that cannot be replicated or contain errors (per a 2010 review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).  

The Big, Tough Immigration President

• Trump’s “immigration policy” has been little more than a series of hateful, spiteful and bigoted jabs, with no attempt at comprehensive immigration reform. It has included the travel ban on immigrants from Muslim countries, the attempt to eliminate DACA (now stopped by a Supreme Court decision), a disastrous southern border policy of separating families and children (and in doing so violating the UN Convention on Rights of the Child), setting up mass detention camps, and slowing down green card applications. And of course, the “wall.”

• Trump’s obsession with a “wall” – This would be a joke, if it weren’t so serious because of his insistence on using billions of dollars of taxpayer money (illegally, according to a recent federal court ruling) to fund something that is useless, ineffective, and nothing more than a reality show stunt. A 2019 video showed climbers scaling Trump’s wall in seconds, and people easily sawing through it. I can tell you from personal experience doing work in the border region that a wall is a mindless “solution” that will do nothing.   

• “Mexico will pay for the wall”: Don’t need to say too much about this one. Mexico didn’t, hasn’t, and won’t do such a crazy thing. On top of that, he is not and cannot build a wall – no matter how many times he lies about it. As of March 2020, he had only built about 3 miles of barriers in places where barriers of some kind didn’t already exist. And it’s you – the American taxpayer – who are paying for his silly attempts to build a wall, at the expense of funds that could be spent, say, on medical equipment to help in treating COVID-19 victims.

• Whipping up anti-immigration sentiment – This has been a major focus of Trump’s immigration “policy.” From the start, he called Latino immigrants criminals and gang members: Yet there is no evidence that Latino immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than non-immigrants. For example, a 2016 study published in Social Science Quarterly tested and found no significant link between undocumented immigrants and crime. It is no accident that much of Trump’s immigration policy and statements are shaped by political advisor Stephen Miller, someone known to have disseminated articles from white nationalist publications and, among other things, instigator of many false claims about voter fraud.   

Terrible, Terrible Obama

• Trump is clearly obsessed with smearing and rewriting the achievements of President Obama. Why is that? No one has ever seen such a strange obsession from any president, ever. Not only has he pointedly tried to reverse programs instituted under the Obama presidency just because they are Obama programs (by his own words), but he has routinely fired and/or smeared agency professionals and federal judges with the charge that they are Obama appointees, and thus, ipso facto conspiring against him in some way. He even refused, in an appalling show of pettiness, to unveil Obama’s portrait for the White House, a ritual engaged in by all presidents, regardless of party.  

• So-called “Obamagate” — This is just silly bullshit. Trump can’t really even describe what this alleged “crime” is, talking about “terrible things that happened,” calling it “treason,” and asserting that the “crime is obvious to everybody” (like who?).  He constantly makes reference to spying on his campaign (tapping phone lines at Trump Tower), yet there is no evidence at all for such a thing. Were the FBI and national intelligence agencies concerned about Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election, and apparent contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and Russia? Yes, absolutely. They should be concerned about this kind of activity, no matter who is running for president. Did they seek to obtain information on a range of contacts that were occurring between Russians/Russian government proxies and Michael Flynn, Carter Page, and others? Yes, as they are supposed to do. There was no advance plan to do this. The investigations were triggered by the occurrence of those contacts, period. Not a crime, but the appropriate counterintelligence functions of those agencies.   

• Trump says, over and over again, and every which way, that Obamacare was a “disaster.” Really? Obamacare (actually the Affordable Health Care Act or ACA) prevented insurers from turning away or charging more to those with pre-existing conditions, and over 20 million people gained coverage under Obamacare by 2020, through the ACA exchanges or Medicaid expansion – not a perfect solution, but a historic first attempt at addressing the inequities of America’s health care system. Senior citizens saved money on their Medicare coverage and prescription drugs. Children could stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until they turn 26. Consumers could get free birth control, mammograms and cholesterol tests. They could also get information — the law meantmanyrestaurants have had to post the calorie counts of their menu items. The ACA reduced out-of-pocket prescription costs for seniors (and did not, as some allege, prevent insurance companies from competing to offer lower costs). A 50% discount that Obamacare secured from drug makers on brand name medicines yielded an average savings of $581 in 2011 for seniors with high drug costs. A research team analyzed data from the 2012-2015 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a national telephone survey, involving 507,055 adults. Results showed that before the ACA, all the points covered in the survey were getting worse. However, by the first quarter of 2015, these negative health trends turned around and began to improve.

• As for Trump and Republican claims that they will keep the pre-existing conditions mandate, the House and Senate GOP plans backed by Trump likely would result in higher costs for people with pre-existing conditions in some states, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

• More recently, Trump has blamed Obama for leaving him with bad COVID-19 tests and a lack of ventilators, among other things. This is of course impossible. There was no COVID-19 under Obama, so he could not have done any such thing. But, as is so common, the ridiculous is asserted as “fact.” And as for ventilators, there were somewhere around 19,000 ventilators in the national stockpile, more than 16,000 of which were ready to use (according to Trump’s own Dept. of Health and Human Services). All of these were put there by the Obama administration, none by Trump. Again, just out-and-out lying.

Foreign Policy – Making the World Respect Us Again?

• Trump actually started out with a few respectable cabinet and military officials on his foreign policy team (regardless of whether or not I agreed with their policies) – particularly Rex Tillerson (State) and General James Mattis (Defense). This caused many to take a “wait and see” attitude towards his foreign policy. But one by one, almost everyone on Trump’s team that had expertise and independence of mind left or was fired. He then proceeded to appoint people with no experience whatsoever to various postings, the prime example being the naming of Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, to handle diplomacy with Mexico, Middle East peace efforts, and as point person with China, in addition to running the effort to address the opioid crisis, veteran’s health, and other tasks on the home front. Kushner has no relevant experience. None. And along with that, Trump’s daughter Ivanka is called a “senior advisor” and has been tasked with several diplomatic efforts. She has no experience either. No one takes these two seriously, and both have used their nepotistic appointments for personal gain (Ivanka obtaining approval for several Chinese trademarks following a lifting of the US ban on Chinese company ZTE for violating US sanctions, and Kushner seeking $100 million investment in his family’s real estate business, not to mention long financial ties between the Saudis and the Trump organization – where, for example, Saudis have bought $40-$50 million in Trump properties).

• Trump’s “America First” foreign policy (a creation of Steve Bannon, in part), has been a disaster, and that is being nice. He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, for which the U.S. had played a leading role, pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaving the Pacific Rim region more vulnerable to China, has constantly belittled NATO and European allies, and tried to promote the reinstatement of Russia into the G-7, from which they were booted after attacking the Ukraine and annexing Crimea. He has threatened a pullout from the Open Skies Treaty, in place since 1992 and part of a web of treaties intended to reduce the likelihood of serious and unintended military conflict in Europe. He announced a withdrawal of funds for the WHO, a mindless act in the midst of a pandemic since WHO is coordinating the global effort to develop vaccines, among other things, and is and has been the key global organization promoting public health. All of the above and more have led to an increase in both Chinese and Russian influence, and to the gradual distancing of the EU/European allies from the US, a disaster for national security.

• Like many other treaties and agreements, Trump called NAFTA “our country’s worst trade deal.” His administration began talks to renegotiate it in 2017, culminating in the signing of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2019. The two agreements are in actuality not that different, and it might be fair to call the USMCA “NAFTA.2”. Why? The new agreement makes a number of changes to the original NAFTA – many of which were included by the Democratic House – but it is more of an update than a new agreement. For example the USMCA ups the percentage of US car parts that have to be made in one of the three countries, strengthens labor law enforcement (a Democratic addition), increases dairy farmer access to markets, increases protections related to digital data, increases some environmental protections, and eliminates drug company exclusivity provisions. So while many consider it improved, it is hardly a scrapping of the original deal. 

• Disastrous Middle East policies: There are so many! He has completely destroyed what legitimacy the U.S. had with respect to supporting the negotiation of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement that would go a long way towards removing a central obstacle to US relationships in the Middle East. He did this by abruptly moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, something no previous president thought wise to do (see note below in brackets), and assigning Jared Kushner to develop a “peace plan,” which, when unveiled in 2019, was a complete insult to any notion of Palestinian sovereignty and the long-held goal of a two-state solution – setting up a Palestinian entity under almost complete Israeli security control and legitimizing much of the Israeli settlement activity (illegal under UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 446) that has turned the West Bank into a Swiss-cheese of control and difficult to conceptualize as a viable Palestinian state. Then of course Trump pulled out of the Iran Nuclear deal, painstakingly negotiated under the Obama Administration and by all counts successful in preventing Iran’s development of nuclear weapons without having to resort to a disastrous war. Then there is the Trump administration’s unquestioned support for Saudi Arabia’s high-casualty bombing of Yemen, which has creating a famine and human rights disaster. This, of course, is in accord with his open support for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS), who, among other things, was clearly involved in the grotesque murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist (working in the U.S.) Jamal Khashoggi, as well as massive royal family purges and the suppression and torture of opponents. All of that, according to Trump, had to be swept under the rug because the Saudis buy so many weapons from the U.S., and likely due to the personal business ties between the Saudis, the Trump organization (e.g., bailouts by Saudis for Trump hotels), and Kushner’s real estate business (Saudi investments). [Why has it long been considered unwise to move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv? Because Jerusalem is uniquely a holy city for three religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and the US stamp of approval for a symbol that marks the city as controlled by the state apparatus of one religion is by nature inflammatory.]

• Trump claimed he was “pulling troops out of Syria” in 2019. He did no such thing. Even Fox News called it untrue. He just moved troops from northern parts of Syria to guard oilfields in Eastern Syria. And he did this by doing what Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan wanted him to do in a phone call, shamefully abandoning our longstanding Kurdish allies who did most of the hard work in fighting ISIS, and further destroying U.S. credibility in the Middle East.

• Trump likes to claim that he “defeated ISIS.” Here are the facts. The Obama Administration set up virtually all the structures responsible for fighting the Islamic State that were carried forward under the Trump Administration, and there were more fighters trained and munitions provided under Obama than under Trump. Under Obama, all Iraqi cities (with exception of western half of Mosul) held by ISIS—such as eastern Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit—were retaken by the end of his term, as was much of northeastern strip of Syria along Turkish border. The basic plan of attack in 2017 was also developed under Obama, though Trump did speed up the pace by changing the rules of engagement.

• Trump and the military – He likes to say that “we’ve rebuilt our military.” Not only is this a vague concept (what does it even mean to “rebuild a military”?), but his administration has done no such thing, other than to increase the military budget, even more than was requested by Congress. He also makes false and exaggerated claims about his efforts for veterans, claiming that, for example, he had done something for vets that “they” were unable to do “for 40 years” – referring to the Veteran’s Choice health care program and accountability measures. Sorry, not true again. The Veteran’s Choice program was put in place in 2014, under Obama (through the Veteran’s Access, Choice and Accountability Act). What Trump did was eliminate the expiration date and continue funding the program. At the same time, he has insulted decorated military veterans (e.g., John McCain) and interfered in the military justice system, granting pardons and reinstating soldiers convicted by the military of war crimes and other violations.

On (Not) Draining the Swamp, and Abusing Power

• The Trump administration is unquestionably the poster child for abuse of power, including his refusal to truly separate his businesses from his role as president, his use of Trump properties to make money from official visits (e.g., by the Saudis and others) and even from our own military, his daily and pervasive lying, hush payments to suppress negative evidence during his campaign, abusive interference in the legal process whenever his interests are involved, the removal of multiple Inspectors General whose duties were to investigate and stop corruption within their agencies, the removal of prosecutors, and underhanded and truly treasonous dealings with multiple countries in which he trades favors for actions that will help his re-election campaign (e.g., in Ukraine, China and elsewhere).

• Constant interference in legal proceedings – Especially since the selection of William Barr as his Attorney General, Trump has routinely abused the power of the Justice Department, interfering in legal proceedings like no other president in history – including even former president Nixon. This has included threatening witnesses and even defendants (e.g., Michael Cohen), dangling pardons as a reward for silence in court, attempts to replace prosecutors and even judges in judicial proceedings against him, and the use of the Justice Department (through his willing Attorney General Barr) to conduct investigations of his political opponents and to undermine investigations against him (by investigating the investigators).

• Twisting, blocking and distorting the Mueller investigation and the Mueller Report, beginning with his refusal to allow administration staff or officials to testify even under subpoena, and amplified by Attorney General Barr’s willful distortion of the report’s conclusions (Mueller himself objected to Barr’s summary), falsely asserting that there was “no collusion, no obstruction.” This is simply a dangerous lie, a deception of the American public, perpetrated by Trump, Barr and other Republicans. If you don’t believe me, try reading the Report yourself, which documents more than 100 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian representatives, and 10 instances of obstruction of justice. The report did not say there was no collusion, it did not exonerate him from obstruction of justice offenses, and it clearly stated that Trump could be criminally liable once out of office. The investigation resulted in 34 indictments and 7 convictions – including of Trump campaign staff. Along with the Trump/Barr deception are all the related lies, including that the Russia probe was a “witch hunt” or a “hoax,” and that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election to help Trump win – a claim even the pro-Trump Republican Senate agreed is not true in its recent Intelligence Committee report. The evidence is stunningly clear that Russia did interfere, and that investigating this would be normal under any president. Every reputable intelligence agency has definitively stated that Russia interfered, and on the side of Trump. There is no “deep state” attempting to push this theory – another lie Trump likes to use (aided and abetted by conspiracy theorists on social media).

• Suppression of voting and false claims of “voter fraud”. Trump and his supporters (including Barr) constantly seek to limit opportunities to vote, including opposition to mail-in balloting and the expansion of polling places – openly acknowledging that fewer voters benefits Republicans. Yet the fraud allegations are not backed by any data, and repeated studies have shown that voter fraud is rare, including with absentee ballots. Richard L. Hasen, an elections expert at the University of California Irvine, wrote (in an essay for the Washington Post) that “there were 491 prosecutions related to absentee ballots in all elections nationwide between 2000 and 2012, out of literally billions of ballots cast.” Not only that, but research published in 2020 found that encouraging widespread voting by mail yielded “a truly negligible effect” on turnout and vote share by party.

• Ignorance regarding the Constitutional role of president (including the system of checks and balances and limits on presidential power): Trump has no idea what role a president plays in the American system of government. He recently stated that Article II of the U.S. Constitution allows him to do “whatever he wants.” What? Read Article II folks. It has several sections, but Section 2 is most relevant to presidential powers. While it states that the president is commander in chief, and can grant pardons and make recess appointments, most presidential powers are limited by the requirement that he have the advice and consent of the Senate and Congressional approval in some cases. He also claimed in an April news conference that he had the unilateral power to order states to lift stay-at-home orders and that he could order businesses to re-open. Dangerous ignorance. He cannot do that. In a way, it could be argued that his presidency should be annulled, since he swore to uphold a Constitution he is not even familiar with. What then, did his oath actually mean?  

Racism, Bigotry – Fragmenting the Country

• A constant feature of Trump’s campaign and his ongoing rhetoric has been to inflame racial tensions and stoke the “culture wars.” How does he do this? By tweeting and retweeting racist information and images (even if he doesn’t generate them himself), using overt or coded racist language, using culturally-referenced terms to extol the virtues of white Americans (“our valued heritage”), and blatant threats.

• There are many, many specific examples of racist rhetoric, racist “dog-whistles,” and the retweeting or other dissemination of racist material. These include his infamous quote regarding the white-power (and anti-Semitic) demonstrations in Charlottesville, VA, saying that there were “good people on both sides”; his constant reference to Latino immigrants as “invaders,” “criminals” and “rapists”; openly stating a preference for immigrants from good Northern European countries as opposed to “shithole countries”; his recent threats against Black Lives Matter demonstrators using language practically lifted from George Wallace (“…when the looting starts, the shooting starts”); his reference to Confederate statues as “our heritage”: and even a recent retweet of Trump supporters in golf carts who, along with holding Trump 2020 signs, were yelling “white power.”

• In addition to racist hatemongering, Trump constantly inflames and feeds the culture-war narrative that there is a hostile division between “real Americans” and “Democrat elites” or other “elites” who are framed as wanting to oppress and restrict the rights of real Americans by mandating coronavirus-protective masks, restricting Second Amendment (gun) rights, or suppressing the free exercise of religion, including religious bigotry.   

Doing More for Coronavirus than Anyone (Not)?

• The U.S. is currently the world epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more cases than any country, and as of yet little demonstrated effectiveness at addressing it – in part because, still, astonishingly, there is no national coordinated plan and Trump will not follow even the recommendations of his own CDC and Coronavirus Task Force. Even in late June, as COVID-19 cases shot upwards following a re-opening in many states that were not ready (under CDC guidelines), Trump (and VP Pence) continued to say that the U.S. is bringing COVID-19 under control, the case numbers are miniscule, and – astonishingly – that if we just slowed down testing we wouldn’t have so many cases (from Tulsa OK and Phoenix AZ rallies). He pointedly refuses to wear a mask, and has positioned mask-wearing as a culture-war symbol of subservience to “left-wing Democrats” and elites.   

• According to Trump, coronavirus is “like the flu,” it will “go away,” “die during the summer months when it is hot”, the “pandemic is dying out” and many, many other dangerous. NONE of these claims have been true, yet, especially when echoed by Trump-subservient media like Fox News, they have caused many Americans who look to the president to guide them to ignore medical, public health and scientific advice – making the pandemic and its economic impact worse. And his claims about his massive successes in testing are just false. Along with that are some of his many related, ridiculous claims, like “we inherited a broken test from Obama.” Really? How could that be? There was no coronavirus under Obama.

More Outrageous Lies from the Barrel

• Trump’s outrageous claim that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough killed one of his Congressional staff aides in 2001. That is just disgusting. An aide in his office did die, but from heart disease. But there is Trump, saying that “a lot of people suggest” that this was a homicide. There he goes again. Who are those “lot of people”?

• Remember his big public warning that Alabama was going to be a focus of Hurricane Dorian in 2019? That was not true per the forecasts from all relevant weather agencies. Oh, but Trump, so sensitive about being contradicted and looking bad, continued to insist on the Alabama focus, even holding a press conference with an amateur “chart” that had a pretend hurricane path written in black marker as “evidence.” Truly, truly pathetic.

ATTACHMENT 1: STATEMENT BY S. SCHMIDT, LIFELONG REPUBLICAN WHO SERVED IN MULTIPLE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.”

“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.

“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”

THE ENEMY WITHIN

Dr. Common Good

It has by now become crystal clear the degree to which Donald Trump is effectively an enemy of all that this country stands for, or should stand for if we are true to the basic principles of democracy, justice, and rule of law that are the bedrock of the Constitution. I would not call any public official an enemy lightly, much less the president. But the grotesque spectacle that occurred yesterday in which Trump used federal police to violently clear out peaceful protesters so that he could stage a crude photo-op walk over to a church that did not invite or want him, and then have the gall to wield a bible in the air as he threatened demonstrators with violent force, calling himself the “law and order” president, a display that was preceded by bullying tweets, speeches and a call with governors during which he called for the military to go in and “dominate” the protestors, locking them up for long jail terms, and crudely bragging that he would do the job if “weak” governors who look like “jerks” would not, is the most appalling and alarming display of dictatorial thuggishness this writer has ever seen from a U.S. president. This is the stuff of Putin, or Dutarte, not an American president. On top of that, it is an odious and fraudulent charade from a man who doesn’t even have the guts to fire someone in person (except on his reality TV show), and who hid in the bunker of the White House while warning anyone thinking of breaching the fences that they would face “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.” He is as weak as he is vile, a “little man,” as CNN’s Anderson Cooper rightly called him.

And the entire time, not one word about the massive injustice that sparked the protests in the first place, the blatant police killing of George Floyd, the latest in a long line of such killings. Not a single word.

There is not one ounce of leadership in Trump. He has shown himself, day after day, to be ignorant, brutish, venal, narcissistic, vindictive and without a shred of empathy or principle. He is not capable of leading. His only qualifications are a lifetime of ruling his little house of cards by diktat, the creation of a phony reality-TV show persona, and the amassing (and manipulation) of a mountain of debt in service of a glitzy real-estate sham-pire. He knows less about the U.S. system of government than any immigrant who passes the citizenship test. And yet he is president, at a time when there is a national pandemic crisis (about which he has foundered, lied shamelessly, peddled quackery, and manipulated for political ends) and now a crisis of racial justice. No enemy of the United States could do better than this to mismanage a country and destroy its social fabric as well as basic governing principles, not to mention its global alliances and leadership position. In the space of three years, the world has witnessed the U.S. degenerate into a tin-pot, cartoon dictatorship-in-the-making, our once-admired scientific and policy expertise shredded in favor of know-nothing sycophants, our friends at arm’s length, and the credibility of our word and our principles evaporated.  

At this point, any Republicans who continue to justify or enable Trump’s wannabe autocracy (including Barr, McConnell and company) are equally culpable, and will be cast in this nation’s history as collaborators in calamity.

As I have said before, this is no longer a partisan issue. This is a national issue. Remember in November. Trump and Trumpism must be voted out, for the preservation and good of the country. We have all heard the explanations and reasons for his election in the first place. Points taken. This time, there is no excuse.