Donald J. Trump is a self-confessed mass murderer by negligent homicide. He has admitted he knew how dangerous the coronavirus was early on, but chose to lie about it “because he didn’t want to start a panic.” Nearly 200,000 Americans are dead because of those lies — and his followers are just fine with it. He continues to put them at risk with his continuing lies and behavior — and as long as he “owns the Libs”, they love him for it. This is what a Death Cult looks like.
There’s an episode of Star Trek the Original Series called Patterns of Force.
Historian/Observer John Gill attempted to uplift a planetary culture above the level he found them at by borrowing from Earth history — specifically the rise of Nazi Germany. He was hoping to use the discipline and efficiency of the authoritarian style of government for good ends. He got that — but he also got the rest of the package: rigid control of individuals, scapegoating leading to genocide, and war. The implication is that those are an inseparable part of the authoritarian pattern.
That got me thinking about other patterns.
We now know that Donald J. Trump is a self-confessed mass murderer. He is on tape admitting that he knew early on that the coronavirus was dangerous, more dangerous than the “strenuous flu”. He deliberately lied about it because he didn't want to “cause a panic”. This is the same person who has no compunction about trying to cause panics when it serves his purposes. Consider his fear-mongering about immigration, BLM, Democrats, Joe Biden. The difference is the coronavirus is real, and reality is like Kryptonite to those who deal in lies.
Let’s look at what is shaping up — once again.
Trump is responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives lost. He’s presided over a huge economic crash — and tax cuts for the rich. He’s exacerbated racial tensions, and destabilized world order. He’s denying climate change and actively trashing the environment. Government forces are committing atrocities agains immigrants, putting children in cages. He’s turned streets into war zones, encouraged police brutality.
He lies so often, it is a shock when truth accidentally comes out of his mouth and the mouths of those around him. He is militantly ignorant, defiantly bigoted, and incompetent on steroids. He heads a party that always puts party above country. He loves dictators, insults allies. His past behavior is prolog for his current reign of disaster. He inherited wealth and squandered it. Lied his way out of Vietnam and into college.
Patterns.
George W. Bush. The man who took a budget surplus and turned it into tax cuts for the rich. The notably incurious man who ignored all of the warnings about Al Qaida and 911. The man who led a government that failed to get Bin Laden and lied us into war in Iraq. (Trump has brought war home, and is trying to make it a Civil War.) The man responsible for hundreds of thousands of dead — Iraqis mostly, and turning America into a torture state. Halliburton. Plame. Scooter. Cheney. The man who left New Orleans to drown. The man who inherited his wealth and power, and became president because of a stolen election. Oil money. The man who avoided Vietnam by getting into the National Guard, and still went AWOL. The first MBA president. A president who surrounded himself with crooks and incompetents. Freedom Fries. “If you’re not for us, you’re against us.” The man who told America to pull together after 911 by going shopping.
Patterns.
George H.W. Bush. Another man who inherited his wealth and power. The conqueror of Panama. The Thousand Points of Light. A ‘loser’ who actually served in the military in combat — but got shot down. Ambassador to the U.N. “Read my lips — no new taxes.” Missed signals — and Gulf War One. Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, the CIA. Oil money. The Bush recession — “It’s the economy, stupid”. Those Iran-Contra pardons on the way out of office: Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger, Duane R. Clarridge, Alan Fiers, Clair George, Robert McFarlane. David Souter and Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. The man who put NAFTA together, ratified after he left office. The Americans with Disabilities Act. "The vision thing.” The Willie Horton Ad.
Patterns.
Ronald Wilson Reagan. “Morning in America.” The Conqueror of Grenada who cut and ran from Lebanon. “Tear down this wall.” Reaganomics, aka Voodoo economics. Supply side. The “Reagan Revolution” — the war on government. Governor of California and conservative icon. Fought World War II in Hollywood. The former union member who destroyed the Air Traffic Controllers union. "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.“ Blew off the advent of AIDS while “The Band Played On.” Killer trees and welfare queens. Star Wars. The War on Drugs — Just Say No. Arms for Hostages. Iran-Contra. CIA drug running. Tax cuts. “The shining city on a hill.” (Now in flames?) The dog whistle speech in 1980 calling for state’s rights. Reagan Democrats. The end of the Fairness Doctrine. Survived assassination. Bombed Libya.
Patterns
Richard M. Nixon. The only President to resign rather than be impeached. The man who “was not a crook.” The man who elevated Henry Kissinger into prominence — and overthrew the Allende government in Chile. The man who sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks and extended the Vietnam War. The secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. Law and Order. The Silent Majority. The Plumbers and Watergate. “Only Nixon could go to China.” The Southern Strategy. The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. Roger Stone. Roger Ailes. Haldeman-Erlichman. Watergate hearings. The enemies list. Statements that were true — until they became ‘inoperative’. The secret recordings. So much, much more….
Patterns.
Chart from a NY Times editorial showing which end of the economy grew in 1980 versus 2017. The gray line shows people at the lower end grew income more in 1980 than the top end. In 2017 the income growth rate at the top was out of sight — literally off the chart. There are more interactive charts at the link.
...It’s true that the country can’t magically return to the 1950s and 1960s (nor would we want to, all things considered). Economic growth was faster in those decades than we can reasonably expect today. Yet there is nothing natural about the distribution of today’s growth — the fact that our economic bounty flows overwhelmingly to a small share of the population.
emphasis added
Translation: the rich are not only getting richer — they’ve rigged the game to get richer faster at the expense of everyone else. For more, see testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee from the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould on Decades of rising economic inequality in the U.S.
Patterns.
Looking at numbers from 1975 to 2018, which presidents do better at dealing with deficits? Team blue. There is more at the link.
There are two interesting findings from this analysis. First, even with a relatively small sample size, the model is able to find a sizable, statistically significant difference between Democratic and Republican presidents, with Republicans adding 0.97% (p-value <0.01%) more to deficits on average every year. This effect is robust to outliers as well, as the difference in the median deficit change is 1.23% (p-value 0.01%).
Second, Democratic presidents tend to have more aggressively counter-cyclical policies than Republicans. This effect is heavily influenced by the fact that both Clinton and Obama reduced deficits when times were good and Obama increased them significantly when times were bad. It’s also influenced by Republicans like Trump adding to deficits when the economy is strong.
emphasis added
Trends.
Looking at the patterns here picks up a some common elements: lying, criminal conduct, varying competence, dubious fiscal responsibility, myth versus reality, class warfare, racism, anti-science. What’s also of interest are the trends. Although the different presidents above have a certain variability in their patterns (George H.W. Bush is an outlier in some respects), the overall trend with each iteration is that things get worse. Under Trump, the slippery slope is more like a cliff — and we are going over it.
Democrats have settled into a pattern of damage control and reacting to GOP patterns over the decades rather than challenging them. Many among the aging party establishment are still gobsmacked by Reagan. The biggest challenge in years was the Affordable Care Act — and even that was modeled on what was a Republican effort. Although the Democrats have gone with what could be called a centrist ticket in Biden and Harris, the progressive wing of the party is where the energy is coming from.
Is it time to start setting a new pattern? Given the stresses Trump has put the country under with his fomenting of division and open corruption, the breaking of norms, the disruption of the pandemic, the corrosive impact of inequality, and the increasingly insistent impact of changing climate, it’s difficult to see how the old patterns can realistically cope with what is headed at us. Call it a paradigm shift, “big structural change”, or “building back better” — we can’t continue the way we have been.