With the dawning of his seventh day in office, we can see that Donald Trump is a bit like climate change. The damage caused by each of them is happening far faster than the experts predicted.
Ron Charles at The Washington Post writes—Why Orwell’s ‘1984’ matters so much now:
Donald Trump may not be a big reader, but he’s been a boon for sales of dystopian literature. Amid our thirst for adult coloring books and stories about missing girls and reincarnated puppies, some grim old classics are speaking to us with new urgency. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale ” have all risen up the latest paperback bestseller list.
But by far the greatest beneficiary of our newly piqued national anxiety is George Orwell’s “1984.”
Leaders have always tried to manipulate the truth, of course, and modern politicians of all persuasions want to “control the narrative,” but there’s something freshly audacious about the president’s assault on basic math, his effort to assemble from the substance of his vanity hundreds of thousands of fans on the Mall.
Almost 70 years after “1984” was first published, Orwell suddenly feels doubleplus relevant. Considering the New Trumpmatics, it’s impossible not to remember Winston Smith, the hero of “1984,” who predicted, “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.”
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—A Lie by Any Other Name
After Trump and his press secretary, Sean Spicer, got called out by the press for lying about Trump’s inauguration crowd size and viewership, Spicer limped back to the mic and whined of Trump’s press coverage: “The default narrative is always negative, and it’s demoralizing.”
No, sir, the default is to call a lie a lie; lies are negative because they are the opposite of the truth; and Trump continuously lies. Also, he who is devoid of morality is immune to demoralization. You can’t wring water from a rock. [...]
We all have to adjust to this unprecedented assault on the truth and stand ready to vigilantly defend against it, because without truth, what’s left? Our president is a pathological liar. Say it. Write it. Never become inured to it. And dispense with the terms of art to describe it. A lie by any other name portends the same.
Bill McKibben at The New York Times writes—On Pipelines, Donald Trump Looks Backward:
On questions of energy economics, Mr. Trump is stuck somewhere in the Reagan era, when energy independence at any cost was the watchword. He’s lost the plot of modern technological development. It’s sun and wind that are going to be our dominant sources of power as their prices continue to plummet. In fact, his approach may be even more antique: Fixating on Canada’s tar sands — where the economics of extracting low-quality crude have driven one big company after another out of that oil patch — is roughly equivalent, in its energy logic, to planning a sperm whale expedition.
And on the question of relations with the people who first inhabited this continent — well, he would fit in just fine with Andrew Jackson. Standing Rock, the scene of the battle over the Dakota pipeline, stands with Flint., Mich., as the flash points of environmental racism in our recent history. The Obama administration made a significant stride forward when it took seriously the complaints of Native Americans; Mr. Trump clearly prefers a world where Indians are simply colorful set decorations in the diorama of American history.
Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes—Don’t get distracted by Trump’s ‘dead cats’:
As word of the gag orders spread, White House press secretary Sean Spicer came before the cameras and said publicly what Trump had already said privately the day before: that Trump believes millions of people voted illegally in the election. [...]
Ka-boom. The president, through his spokesman, had just put himself at odds with leaders of his own party, Republican secretaries of state across the nation and virtually the entire store of human knowledge on the subject — and the social-media and cable news chatter quickly shifted.
Meanwhile, the sweeping gag orders muzzling the federal government quietly take effect. [...]
Distraction has long been Trump’s modus operandi. He dominated coverage during the primaries with outrageous pronouncements, thereby depriving his opponents of the media spotlight. When news coverage of his transition was particularly tough, he created a new narrative by attacking the cast of the musical “Hamilton.” It’s a constant use of the “dead cat” strategy: throw a dead cat on the table, and prior conversation on any other topic ceases.
But now Trump is president, and the stakes are higher. His fantastic claims about crowd size and voter fraud now divert Americans’ attention from serious and real changes in their government. We gape at dead cats, but the wolf is at the door.
Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine pairs up a pair of demagogues in his Welcome to the Pat Buchanan Administration:
The idea that Donald Trump reflects a populist, nationalist variant of conservatism pioneered by the former three-time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan is hardly novel. Jeff Greenfield wrote a column in September with the headline: “Trump Is Pat Buchanan With Better Timing.” The similarities are obvious: Both men spurned the Republican Establishment, rejected GOP economic doctrines from free trade to inclusive immigration laws to “entitlement reform,” and were hostile to globalism in all its forms. They even shared the same “America First” slogan, itself a typically Buchananite shout-out to the old-right isolationists who were indifferent (or worse) toward the possibility of Hitler winning World War II.
That reflects one difference between the two demagogues, of course: Buchanan has always had an acute if skewed sense of history, while the 45th president’s contact with the subject is probably limited to extremely brief exposure to the History Channel. [...]
While we naturally think of Pat Buchanan as a figure from another era, he is actually only eight years older than Donald Trump. Perhaps he can lend Stephen Miller a hand in the presidential speechwriting shop, where he once labored in the vineyards of Richard M. Nixon. He would fit right in.
Suzanne Moore at The Guardian writes—Patriarchy is the sea in which Trump and his sharks gather:
If someone declared publicly that some of their best friends were racists, there would surely be a sharp intake of liberal breath – even if they were to follow it up with the “I just like to get out of my echo chamber and have friends of all political persuasions” argument. Tolerance has it limits. Being openly racist is at that limit. Being openly misogynistic, however, is apparently fine. How else can we have TV host and blancmange of smugness Piers Morgan boasting of his friendship with Donald Trump while declaring himself a feminist and a supporter of women’s rights? As Trump – surrounded by his consiglieri, the newly made men, nervous of their Twitter-y boss – signs an executive order that will result in the death of women, I care not for an explanation of how Trump isn’t as bad as he seems. He is.
I care not for these delusional men crawling out like woodlice from under a rotting log. In turn, they each tell us they support feminism while doing it down. There is a slew of them everywhere you look. Conservatives posing as radicals. They often claim to love women, but are impelled to impart common sense; the segregated golf-bore wisdom of “funny chaps, women”. They know what women want. They are all for equality, just not extremity. [...]
Patriarchal power asserts itself through cultural as well as economic resentment. And that is everywhere. The oft-repeated sentiment that feminism is itself an extreme movement is evidence of how liberalism bows down to authoritarianism.
So much more important now than whether dullards profess their allegiance to women’s rights while refusing to listen to women is understanding who will get down on their knees to service the new man-child patriarchy. And those of us who won’t. The power of telling it like it is is ours.
Jonathan Jones at The Guardian writes—To understand Trump, we should look to the tyrants of ancient Rome:
The way the worst Roman emperors are portrayed in art can help us to see Trump more clearly. When we look at the face of Commodus in this eerie portrait, we are staring into the eyes of unhinged, utterly perverse tyranny. When this son of the respected emperor Marcus Aurelius took control of the vast Roman empire in AD161 he embarked on a career of bizarre folly and monstrous cruelty. As well as executing his enemies and perceived enemies, he liked to fight in the arena, killing gladiators with his own hands in a spectacle that educated Romans found shameful and disturbing.
Remind you of anyone? Donald Trump prefers to carry out his gladiatorial combats via Twitter. He hurls words instead of javelins. Give him four years, though, and who knows – perhaps he will be chasing Meryl Streep around the stadium in his chariot before the SuperBowl. [...]
The problem lies in defining exactly what Trump is, exactly how he is likely to act and how dangerous he will prove to democracy – this is where Roman art and history can help. We lack diversity in our examples of tyrants. Modern history has given us a stark, black and white contrast between totalitarianism and democracy. When something doesn’t fit into our democratic norms we reach for comparisons with Hitler, and when that doesn’t work we give up. Our historical memory is too short and leaves us without any analogies for someone as strange as Trump.
This is what makes Roman portraits of emperors so relevant. For instead of offering a simplistic binary image of democracy versus fascism, ancient Rome created a rich gallery of tyrants who were all different, all monstrously unique. The bad emperors of Rome were horribly original in their sicknesses and crimes.
Kate Aronoff at In These Times writes—Elon Musk Endorses Rex Tillerson, Confirming That Elon Musk Is Terrible. He also reminds us why a revenue-neutral carbon tax is terrible:
“This may sound surprising coming from me,” [Elon Musk] the SolarCity and Tesla head tweeted yesterday, “but … Rex Tillerson has the potential to be an excellent Secretary of State.”
No, Elon, it’s not surprising. In mid-December, Musk—alongside Uber CEO Travis Kalachnik—joined Donald Trump’s economic advisory team, so the fact that he’s supporting the president’s nominee to become the country’s top diplomat should surprise precisely no one.
Tillerson and Musk also have similar visions for how to solve (or, rather, not solve) the climate crisis. As Musk went on to explain via Twitter, he and Tillerson agree that a revenue-neutral carbon tax should be the keystone of any climate plan. [...]
So why would Rex Tillerson, a man whose only resume line beyond Exxon is being an Eagle Scout, support such a policy?
Because it doesn’t actually pose a threat to Exxon or the rest of the fossil fuel industry. Exxon has factored a carbon tax into its long-term projections since 2007.
Ann Friedman at the Los Angeles Times writes—If you boycott everything, you accomplish nothing:
Take a look at the Boycott Trump app, which claims to be “the first app of its kind, allowing users to hit Trump where it hurts most — his wallet.” It lists companies such as 7-Up, which is connected to Trump only because it sponsored “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2011; Amazon, which sells Trump’s brand of menswear; and Gucci, which rents retail space in Trump Tower. Hundreds of companies are implicated, many due to their CEOs’ supportive comments or campaign donations. A competing app called Boycott Trump Businesses sorts the offending businesses into categories (Trump-owned, Trump tenants, campaign supporters, friends and associates) but is just as broad.
I don’t want to yell into the wind to make myself feel better; I want tangible results.
In a way, boycotts are the perfect protest mechanism for this particular president. Trump was elected without a majority of votes and, if you still trust opinion polls, has historically low approval ratings—in other words, most of us wish he weren’t the president. He cites his business acumen as his primary qualification for office and has refused to divest himself to avoid conflicts of interest. What better time to call on the power of the purse?
But I’m skeptical that a wide-ranging, multi-target boycott effort will have the intended effect—assuming the intended effect is punishing Trump and the people who want to realize his agenda, rather than merely assuaging the consciences of those doing the boycotting.
When there are hundreds of businesses on the no-buy list, that dilutes the political message, and there’s a smaller chance that any one company will be hurt by its inclusion.
Juan Cole at Informed Comment wrote this opinion essay written shortly before Trump’s new immigration and visa policies were announced Wednesday barring refugees from Syria indefinitely, from the rest of the world for at least 120 days, and suspending for at least 30 days further immigration from a number of Muslim nations, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It’s titled Trump’s Visa Ban is about anti-Muslim Bigotry, not Security:
If this report is correct, Trump will represent this step as being about security, but it is not. Of the 750,000 refugees admitted since 2001, hundreds of thousands of them from the Middle East, virtually no refugees have committed an act of terrorism on US soil (typically they are running away from the violent people). He will say that refugees and immigrants from these countries need to be better vetted, but refugees are already subjected to a rigorous 18-month vetting process.
This measure, if it is taken, is just more racial and religious exclusion, policies we have seen before in the long and rich history of American racism. The 3 million Muslim-Americans are in Trump’s sites.
By far the majority of terrorist acts and political violence in the United States is committed by white supremacists.
It would be really bad if we got more white supremacists from abroad through immigration, since they are a clear terrorist threat. The head of German intelligence recently warned that far right extremist groups in his country are hooking up with US gangs and planning attacks.
Michelle Chen at The Nation writes—Yes, Trump’s Against Free Trade. That Doesn’t Mean He’s For Good Jobs. What would a progressive alternative to the TPP and NAFTA actually entail?
Promises kept? Trump’s inaugural vow to cure “American carnage” by unraveling trade pacts, along with implementing other “America first” measures, evokes deep skepticism from “free trade’s” progressive critics. The left has battled neoliberal trade treaties since the start of the World Trade Organization, independent of Trump’s crusade: The deals are historically associated with systemic patterns of job hemorrhaging, economic destabilization, and outsized multinational profits. And prior to the election, there was long-standing bipartisan opposition to the TPP, which would have expanded NAFTA’s misery, with a few more regulatory bullet points, across 40 percent of the global economy.
But on Trump’s forthcoming reforms, Arthur Stamoulis of the grassroots coalition Citizens Trade Campaign says, “There’s good reason for skepticism that he’s going to prioritize working families’ voices and workers’ advocates, let alone environmental advocates, safety advocates and others over the corporate voices in his own cabinet and on K-street.” In fact, Trump’s trade agenda might just provide a replacement of the much-maligned deals that leave workers less secure and corporations more empowered.
His erratic trade agenda so far revolves around pro-corporate tax cuts and destroying perhaps three-quarters of government regulations. In short, a Trumpian post-NAFTA era could undermine those same protections that US workers associate with their pre-NAFTA jobs. [...]
Graham Vyse at The New Republic writes—Yes, Betsy DeVos Deserves the Third Degree From Democrats:
Betsy DeVos’s Senate confirmation hearing last week was, by most accounts, a train wreck. The education secretary nominee aired extreme views that alarmed public education advocates, but she also showed an unfamiliarity with basic policy issues. So it came as no surprise when Democrats demanded a second hearing for the billionaire Republican donor, ostensibly because they want more time to vet her potential conflicts of interest. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who chairs the education committee, denied their request. On Tuesday, he took to Medium to accuse Senate Democrats of “grasping for straws.”
“Few Americans have done as much to help low-income students have a choice of better schools,” wrote Alexander, who served as education secretary under President George H.W. Bush. “She is on the side of our children. Her critics may resent that, but this says more about them than it does about her.”
For an education expert widely regarded as thoughtful on these issues, Alexander’s article is remarkably disingenuous, complete with straw-man arguments and unfounded characterizations of the Democratic opposition to DeVos. It wasn’t the only such piece this week. Shikha Dalmia, a policy analyst at the libertarian Reason Foundation, on Monday published a column in The Week titled “The foolish Democratic crusade against Betsy DeVos.” [...]
The normalization of DeVos and mischaracterization of her opponents is what’s truly galling. DeVos’s defenders should at least grapple honestly with why the left—and even Democratic centrists in the “school reform” movement—object to a nominee who represents the worst of the “school choice” movement and is a force for privatizing a vital public institution in America. It’s perfectly reasonable to be alarmed about her nomination, given the demonstrated failure of the policies she supports.
David Dayen at The Intercept writes—Mnuchin Lied About His Bank’s History of Robo-Signing Foreclosure Documents:
Treasury Secretary Nominee Steven Mnuchin lied in his written responses to the Senate Finance Committee, claiming that “OneWest Bank did not ‘robo-sign’ documents,” when ample evidence proves that they did.
Mnuchin ran OneWest Bank from 2009 to 2015 in a manner so ruthless to mortgage holders that he has been dubbed the “Foreclosure King” by his critics.
The robo-signing scandal involved mortgage companies having their employees falsely sign hundreds of affidavits per week attesting that they had reviewed and verified all the business records associated with a foreclosure — when in fact they never read through the material and just blindly signed off. Those records, in many cases, were prepared improperly, but the foreclosures went ahead anyway because of the fraudulent affidavits.
“Did OneWest ‘robo-sign’ documents relating to foreclosures and evictions?” Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., asked Mnuchin as a “question for the record”.
Mnuchin replied that “OneWest Bank did not ‘robo-sign’ documents, and as the only bank to successfully complete the Independent Foreclosure Review required by federal banking regulators to investigate allegations of ‘robo-signing,’ I am proud of our institution’s extremely low error rate.”
But even that review – which was not really so “independent,” since the banks hand-picked and paid for their own reviewers – found that nearly 6 percent of the OneWest foreclosures examined were not conducted properly.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—You Know It’s Bad When Scientists Are Planning a March:
It speaks to the way that Trump’s presidency has ignited people who have not typically been involved in resistance politics. I keep thinking of that line in Leonard Cohen’s Anthem where he says, “They’ve summoned up a thundercloud, and they’re going to hear from me.”
Following the success of the #WomensMarch, another unlikely group of folks are taking up the cause. In the next round, we’re going to hear from scientists. Right now a group of them are busy planning a march.
There are certain things that we accept as facts with no alternatives. The Earth is becoming warmer due to human action. The diversity of life arose by evolution. Politicians who devalue expertise risk making decisions that do not reflect reality and must be held accountable. An American government that ignores science to pursue ideological agendas endangers the world.
Since yesterday, they’ve garnered over 200,000 followers on and 44,000 followers on (those are the numbers as I type – but they’re growing by the minute as word gets out). I have a suggestion for both an official motto and patron saint: