Tag Archives: Trump

Black Lives Matter, Stop the Steal, and a Demagogic Puppeteer

Close-up Of Businessman’s Hands Saving Piggybank From Hammering

The impetus behind the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is systemic racism.

People join and support BLM to protest a system of justice in America that treats people of color differently than white people. From that perspective, the BLM movement comes from noble place – the desire to right a wrong in our society.

This past Summer, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer sparked outrage and widespread protests, deservedly so.

Rising up and taking to the streets to protest that murder was an entirely appropriate response by Americans. And, if I remember correctly, when some of those protests turned violent, that violence was condemned by democrats and republicans alike.  

Most Americans agree that violent protests cannot, and should not be tolerated. That said, it’s important to understand the psychology of a riot.

Marin Luther King said:

“I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.

And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”

The BLM riots were the result of America failing to acknowledge the mistreatment of black and brown citizens by our justice system, which has been going on for years.  Prolonged injustice needs but a spark to lead to protests and riots, and the George Floyd murder was that spark.

Contrast that with the January 6th “stop the steal” protest, which turned into a violent riot.

The January 6th protest had nothing to do with prolonged injustice. It was not borne out of years of systemic racism. Instead, the January 6th protest was a planned and calculated attempt by our president to disrupt the certification the 2020 presidential election.

The impetus for the January 6th protest was the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was rigged. There is not a shred of truth to that claim. But, as we all know; Donald Trump does not care about the truth. So, he pushed the false claim of a rigged and stolen election to millions of Americans in the weeks leading up to the January 6th rally. And on that day, he again lied to the thousands in attendance.

None of this is in dispute. We know that President Trump spread lies and false claims about the election, and we know that he assembled the rally on January 6th to disrupt the certification of the election by congress.

The primary difference between the BLM protests and the Stop the Steal protest is the legitimacy of the issue being protested.

Systemic racism is a real and legitimate problem in America. We have data showing black and brown citizens are treated more harshly than white citizens by both the police and by the courts. In short, for BLM protesters there’s a genuine issue at hand and a real reason to be angry, and George Floyd’s life being extinguished under the knee of a white racist cop, brought an ugly and graphic clarity about racial injustice, to millions of Americans.

In contrast, what Trump supporters were protesting on January 6th was not justified. The very foundation of the Stop the Steal protest was built on lies. There was no widespread voter fraud. The election was not stolen. President Trump did not win in a landslide.

How do we know that the issues being protested on January 6th were not legitimate?

We know this because:

  • The votes were tabulated and Joe Biden had 7 million more of them.
  • The votes were recounted several times, and Joe Biden still had 7 million more of them.
  • Every challenge that the president’s legal team brought to the courts was defeated in resounding fashion.
  • The Trump Administration’s Attorney General reviewed the claims of widespread fraud and said there was none.

The indisputable truth is that President Trump lost the 2020 election.

Now, if the candidate that I supported and trusted lost an election, and then went on to tell me every single day for weeks at a time, that the election was stolen, and that the consequence of that stolen election was that my country was going to be destroyed, I might have stormed the US Capitol as well.

Take what Doctor King said about riots and apply it to what happened on January 6th:

I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.  And, what is it that America has failed to hear?

They failed to hear that my vote was stolen – that the election was rigged, that I won’t have a country anymore if the election is certified

I honestly believe that millions of Americans believed what Trump told them every day for weeks before and after the election – that it was rigged and stolen. And for the thousands that showed up on January 6th,  the only way to stop the steal was to stop the certification, and that meant storming the Capitol building. So that’s what they did, at the behest of our lying president.

The issue many of us are grappling with today is how did we get to the point where millions of Americans are resistant to facts and immune to the truth?

How did this happen on such a mass scale?

I believe it was the perfect storm of the browning of America, globalization, religiosity, and an opportunistic and depraved leader.

More than any other President in our history, Trump understood the value of other people’s fear. He understood that he could use that fear to his own advantage.

Trump understood that connecting with people over fears about our changing demographics, what it means to “be American”, growing secularism, and loss of manufacturing jobs, would override everything else – including truth and facts — because fear, national identity, and religion resonate at an emotional level.  

Trump knew the quickest and easiest way to get people to vote for, and support him (no matter what), was to connect with them over fear.  

Trump’s connecting with voters over fear didn’t involve engaging in meaningful dialog or the difficult task addressing our changing world – instead he commiserated – not because he was genuinely empathetic, but because he knew both the power and expediency of commiseration.

Trump saw early on that if he could get the disenfranchised to believe he was with them in terms of their fears around abortion, immigration, and globalization – he would have them in his pocket. Once he achieved that, he could “shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue” and it wouldn’t make a difference to supporters.

Trump’s fake commiseration around religious issues, immigration, and globalization led to a fact-resistant base of supporters, and emboldened the President to embark on his Hitleresque desire to rule a nation.

Trump knew that once he connected with people over fear, he could lie to them with impunity, and that they would follow him off a cliff, or to the doors of the US Capitol.

Truth, lies, opportunism, and the disintegration of Josh Hawley

Josh Hawley saw an opportunity in the angry, throbbing-with-hate, wild-eyed, vein-popping crowd of Trump supporters.


He felt the energy of that crowd’s rage and understood if he could harness it, he could jettison himself to the front of the 2024 Republican presidential pack. The only thing that stood in the way of that happening was the truth.
For months leading up to the 2020 Presidential election, and every day after it, Americans were fed a constant diet of lies that the election was rigged. Those lies breathed life into the January 6th insurrection that resulted in 5 dead, including a capital police officer.


Josh Hawley knows that President Trump did not win the 2020 election. He understands that every election comes with some irregularities and that in the 2020 election, those irregularities were minor and had no impact on the outcome. President Trump got drubbed by more than 7 million votes in an election deemed by Trump’s own election security expert as the most secure election in the history of our country.


Hawley’s motives leading up to the events of January 6th were seditious. His explanation of why he voted to overturn a free and fair election is both laughable and disingenuous.


Hawley said the people of Missouri had concerns about the integrity of the election, and as their senator, he was obligated to make sure their voices were heard.


If we listened to Hawley’s words in a vacuum, they sound reasonable and almost noble. But Hawley’s obligation as a US Senator is not to blindly support the concerns of his constituency, especially when those concerns are based on false information and lies. No, his job as a Senator is to tell those people the truth, even if that truth is complicated for some of them to hear – even if that truth becomes somewhat of a hindrance to Mr. Hawley’s political aspirations.


But Hawley did not do that. Instead, he used the divisive and volatile climate to elevate his own political profile and boost his presidential aspirations. This was a test of Josh Hawley’s character, and he failed miserably – and it’s an example of why character matters in our representatives.

I’m reminded of when John McCain was confronted with a lie about President Obama and how he responded to that lie.

McCain was holding a town hall, answering questions from his supporters, when a woman took hold of the microphone and said she did not trust Senator Obama because he was an Arab. Now, this woman was not alone in her fears – she and the nation had been fed a constant diet of lies about the President’s birth origin and religious affiliation.

McCain could have used that lie to fire up his base – he could have viewed all those false stories about Obama as campaign kindling, and he could have used that moment with that woman to sew division, doubt, and fan the flames of bigotry. Doing so might have given him a boost politically. But instead, McCain took the microphone from that supporter and respectfully told her that she was wrong – that she was misinformed and that senator Obama was not an Arab, but rather a decent American, who he happened to disagree with on the issues facing America.

That moment was a test of John McCain’s character, and he passed it with flying colors. McCain was not stupid. He understood the potential benefits off manipulating the lie about President Obama. But to John McCain’s credit, he understood that correcting that lie was far more important than any political momentum to be gained from it — because lies like that, the lies that divide Americans, are dangerous to democracy.

Regarding the lie about a rigged election, Josh Hawley and President Trump did the exact opposite of what a true leader should do: confront the lie head-on and stop it in its track. Instead, Trump and Hawley consistently propagated rumors that they knew were false for opportunity’s sake.

Truth is the sticking agent in the masonry mix of democracy. Without it, the foundation of our country crumbles.

Under the Trump administration, the truth became a malleable political commodity. It was hammered, reshaped, forged in lies, and repurposed for political gain.

Every administration plays with the truth on occasion, spinning it to suit this or that political reality. But spinning the truth is not the same as creating your own version of it to deceive and manipulate the public and to galvanize your own political power. That’s not spin – that’s propaganda. That’s a weapon.

The desecration of truth that happened during the 4-years of the Trump administration is the strongest argument for why character matters.

A presidential candidate with a high moral character knows that manufacturing a false truth for self-gain is inherently wrong. On the other hand, a presidential candidate with low moral character sees manufactured truth as a tool, a means to an end. And when such a person gains access to power and the levers of government to wield that power, our democracy enters a dangerous and precarious situation. The culminating consequence of 4-years of manufactured truth is what we witnessed and experienced collectively on January 6th, 2021.

The Trump administration had a strategy for truth, and truthfulness was not part of it.

The Trump strategy for truth was this:

As long as we hold the reins of power, we’ll use alternate facts, cherry-pick data, and create a version of the truth that serves our political agenda and strengthens our hold on power.

We’ll weaponize our strategy by publishing our version of truth on communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook. 

We’ll use these channels to magnify and reinforce the lies about voter fraud and a rigged election. And our supporters will spread these lies (knowingly or unwittingly) either way; the lies will take root.

The strategy, like Donald Trump himself, was utterly devoid of ethics.

But it worked.

For 4-years, the Trump administration designed their own version of the truth to meet a pre-defined set of facts. Then, they leveraged conspiracy theories and right-winged websites to discredit actual truth and to stand up for their own version of it. Finally, they injected their version of truth into the public square with mindful malevolence, feeding the masses lies and misinformation through every available communication channel.

Artificial Intelligence, the internet, and behavioral algorithms helped spread the lies incredibly and quickly.

Trump’s 4-year disinformation campaign and an all-out assault on truth was a mass poisoning of America’s mind by a well-oiled propaganda machine. The result? A cult-like following impervious to any information that goes counter to the narrative pushed by the President and his administration.

But unlike Jonestown or Waco, the Trump cult hasn’t succumbed to arsenic-laced Kool-Aid or fiery smoke. Instead, this mass poisoning continues to propagate, grow, and metastasize. And now, America is riddled with a cancerous, malformed notion of truth.

The biggest threat to our nation and our democracy is the continued bastardization of truth and the potential for that strategy to become a framework or playbook for the next power-hungry demagogue.

Tick tick tick tick

Donny

Can you hear the minutes

ticking off the clock?

Do you see yourself

with ball and chain

Sledge-hammering a rock?

Do you feel the noose tightening

around your flabby neck?

As you scream and yell

in ALL CAPS:

“WE NEED ALL HANDS ON DECK!”

Donny

Has defeat’s fowl stench

finally settled in your nose?

As the ghastly pile of corpses

from COVID-19 grows

As your grip on power

starts to slip

from your puny, chubby fingers

The rot

you’ve wrought,

for the last 4 years

still festers and still lingers

Good riddance to you

You portly prick

You stain upon our nation

Just go away

and don’t come back

Your train has left the station

A Terrible Price

The battle against COVID-19 required competent and steady leadership. To stop the spread of the disease, we needed our President to be honest, intelligent, and humble.

Honest, because we needed to trust him. We needed to know that what he told us about the disease was factual so that we could make well-informed decisions to keep ourselves and our families safe.

Intelligent because infectious disease epidemiology is complicated and heady stuff. We needed a president who could read briefings, synthesize and extrapolate the relevant data, sit down with scientists, listen to what they were telling him, and effectively make sense of it so that he could communicate what he learned to the public clearly and concisely. Being able to do this would result in public confidence.

Humble because COVID-19 was an unknown and ruthless disease. What we learned early on was subject to change as new data became available. We needed a president who was humble enough to admit the challenge would be tough and require Americans to work together in a coordinated and unified manner.

We needed our President’s honesty, intelligence, and humility, and he was glaringly 0 for 3.

COVID-19 has killed more than a quarter million Americans. Tens of thousands of those deaths can be blamed on the incompetency of our President. It has wrecked our economy, devastated small businesses, and decimated families. It also shined a light on an immoral and criminally incompetent leader and, in all likelihood, ended the Trump presidency. In a weird twist of fate, if not for the virus and incompetent leadership that ensued, we might have lost our democracy.

What a devastating price to pay for electing a con artist and reality TV celebrity to the Presidency. I hope we learned a lesson as a nation – that cheap populism makes for a dangerously shaky and ineffectual national platform and that honesty, intelligence, and humility matter in a President.

Bye Bye Motherfucker

We the people had our say

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

We dumped you on election day

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Clear your desk, be on your way

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

YOU DON’T GET TO FUCKING STAY!

The way you act is a disgrace

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Can’t accept you lost the race

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

We’re tired of your orange face

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

SO, GRAB YOUR SHIT AND PACK A CASE!

So long orange, hello blue

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

You bit off more than you could chew

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Let this be your Waterloo

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

TAKE JARED AND IVANKA TOO!

You’re a traitor and a louse

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

We don’t wanna to hear you grouse

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Be quiet as a fucking mouse

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

AND GET OUT OF OUR FUCKING HOUSE!

Trump, Lindsey, and Tortoise Mitch

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Drove the bus into a ditch

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Helped their buddies all get rich

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

AND GAVE US ALL A NERVOUS TWITCH!

You’re nothing but a pussy grabber

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Full of shit and constant blabber

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Your twitter feed is full of lies

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

YOUR BANK ACCOUNT HAS RUSSIAN TIES!

Your Christian views are fake as fuck

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

We’re tired of the “Rudy Tuck”

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Load your shit on to the truck

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

AND MOVE ALONG, YOU FASCIST FUCK!

You played the Christians like a fiddle

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

A simple folk, without a middle

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Save the fetus, cage the kids

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

YOU PUT OUR NATION ON THE SKIDS!

Ignored the data and the science

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Said fuck the mask with great defiance

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Got RONA from your noncompliance

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

AND STILL RELY ON PSEUDOSCIENCE!

Inject the bleach insert the light

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Don’t stop until you get it right

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

You plunged our nation into the night

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

NOW GET OUT OF OUR FUCKING SIGHT!

2020 Presidential Election Postmortem

Republicans gerrymandered districts, closed polling places, and appointed a crooked pro-Trump Postmaster General, who, in the middle of a pandemic, ripped sorting machines out of postal facilities and removed drop-boxes to hinder the ability to handle an increase in mail-in ballots. And after all of that politically-motivated and strategic malevolence, Trump still got his ass handed to him in a big blue box, beautifully adorned with 306 electoral bows, in what the Department of Homeland Security called the most secure Presidential election in history.

And ever since that stinging rebuke of America’s one-term orange menace, we’ve had to listen to republicans’ bitch and moan (without evidence) about voter fraud — 0 for 13 in lawsuits at the time of this writing – laughed out of courtrooms across battleground states.

We watched in bemusement at the more than eleven thousand pathetically lost souls at the “Million MAGA March” with their “Stop the Steal” signs, and thought to ourselves how easy it is in America to sway the masses. All you need is a website, a lie, and a human desire to be part of something “big and just” and its down the wallpapered-with-Q-conspiracy-theory-rabbit-hole they go, screaming and yelling like snowflakes on steroids, like zombies on crack, like lemmings on Led Zeppelin.

Shut the fuck up already. You lost. Despite all the slimy underhanded efforts to suppress the vote and misinform citizens, YOU STILL FUCKING LOST.

Instead of bitching and moaning without merit, start thinking about putting up a better candidate in 2024, and while your at it, you might want to consider the fact that America is changing. We’re becoming more diverse, less religious, and more concerned about our planet – deal with that by backing candidates who will hustle for new voters, who will reach out to the people who live and work in their state and look to genuinely understand their needs and concerns.

And for the love of Mike, don’t blindly back a shallow and vacuous megalomaniac like Trump, who for 4 years padded the wallets of rich people, lowered the tax burden for multi-billion dollar corporations, ratcheted up fear, racism, and xenophobia, tried really really hard to limit access to healthcare, rolled back environmental regulations, diminished the integrity of the Presidency by lying at an astronomical rate, withheld lifesaving information about the dangers of COVID-19, tongue-kissed authoritarians across the globe, and wrecked America’s reputation around the world.

If you can’t elect a candidate better than Trump next time around, you deserve to lose again. Biggly.

And quit being that single-issue-ban-the-fetal-tissue-voter, because all that does is make you a target for manipulative vote-grubbing slugs like Trump, who, let’s be honest, would mandate abortion if it meant overturning the 2020 election results. If you want to reduce the number of abortions in America, let’s start with improved health education, reinforced by frank and honest discussions with children about sex, sexuality, and the importance of acting responsibly, and combine that with easy access to birth control. Then, implement these measures nationally, so  everyone gets the same message at the same age, regardless of their background or where they live – that would do more to reduce abortions than 9 Amy Coney Barrets.

And finally, can we please get back to the core human values that actually have made America great – kindness, empathy, honesty, and integrity and get off the dangerous, religiously-fueled-patriarchal-cult-of-personality path we’ve been on for the last 4 years, because that shit is rotting this country from the inside out.

The Mad King and the Undeniability of Math

There’s something poetic about how the last few days of the 2020 presidential election played out.

As batches of counted ballots were released, I envisioned the President, alone in the White House, at the mercy of math. This muttering mad king, a slave to his television, forced to listen to the American press he so fervently hates, report on the facts, which he refuses to accept.

The harsh and austere undeniability of math.

The steadfast and steady march of the count.

To a person whose been married to the denial of facts for his entire life, it must have felt like death by a thousand cuts.

Hopefully, the people of this country can put down their blue and red tribal flags and start the hard work of talking with one another, instead of at one another.

We got this!

Time to take our country back

Knock the Trump Train from the track

Wear a mask and get to work

Control the virus, end the jerk

Flick the fly from Pence’s head

Sweep them both into the shed

End the tweets and stop the lies

Clear the darkness from the skies

Let’s put an end to our disgrace

The divisive talk on god and race

Vote for competence, vote for peace

Fuck it, just vote for the guy

who lies the least

Create a wave that’s long and blue

Save democracy from you know who

Put an end to the Orange Schmoe

And pull that lever for BlueNami Joe!

The Agent of Rot

Rot has an agent –

an orange bartender

he pours lies

and half-truths

like drinks from blender

he pours shots of hate

with no sign of surrender

sending his patrons

on misguided benders

The agent of rot

knows who to seek

he prays on the fearful,

the dumb, and the meek

The agent of rot

is a master of evil

he burrows in ears

like a sick twisted weevil

his whisper-warm breath

takes a crap in your ear

he laughs in your face

and fucks from the rear

With broken promises and

malevolent behavior

the gullible get

screwed by this unsavory savior

The agent of rot

is the person who serves it

aim all of your rage

at the one who deserves it

The disdainful malevolent essence of rot

the smell of the stink

the slime on the snot

the grand wizard of

falsehoods

The tweeter of lies

The vindictive and petty

muncher of fries

Use your vote like a shiv

and twist it in deep

Don’t ever forgive

That fat orange creep!

Values and the personalization of politics

America succeeds and prospers when its citizens get along with one another. And in a country where politics often ignites passion, getting along means not digging too deeply into each other’s political views.

So, Americans consciously work at not letting how we vote affect our relationships. It’s not always easy, but one thing that helps us keep the peace (and the republic) is a shared set of values that transcend politics.

We might have divergent views on taxation, education, healthcare, and foreign policy. Still, we unite around core values rooted in our humanity – honesty, decency, kindness, integrity, and empathy. It’s these shared values that allow you to tolerate my politics and me to tolerate yours.

So, what’s changed in America? Why are we so quick to disregard the unspoken rule that separates the personal and political? 

I suspect Trump supporters are saying, “I’m not acting any different than I’ve acted in the past; I’m simply voting for the Republican candidate – why all this outrage?” And I agree with them; they’re not acting any differently than they have in the past.

What’s changed this time is not you or me – it’s the leader of the Republican party.

Trump openly derides anyone who opposes him, he mocks and puts down people, he constantly pits Americans against one another, and he’s been a human wrecking ball to the long-held American values of “welcoming the stranger, dignity for all human beings, equality under the law, respect for dissent, and love of the truth.”

Donald Trump is demonstrably mean, dishonest, and apathetic. He is the antithesis of the values we assumed transcended politics and united us as Americans.

So, when I hear a colleague, a neighbor, or a friend vociferously support the former President, I process that support as an indifference to the personal (not political) values that I hold firmly — honesty, decency, kindness, integrity, and empathy.

America has never had to deal collectively with a leader like Trump.

The personalization of politics we see in our country today comes from the jarring realization that honesty, decency, kindness, integrity, and empathy do not transcend politics for Trump supporters.