Tag Archives: Max Boot

No, Folks, It Isn’t ‘Both’ Sides

Posted on by under Election 2020, Election 2022, Free Press Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

The current environment of political violence is untenable.  It is destroying us, destroying the democratic foundations of our republic, turning even the most mild-mannered among us into something we don’t want to be.  If it continues … well, let’s just say it cannot continue.  I turn to Max Boot, writing for The Washington Post, to assess and analyze where this incitement is coming from, and to destroy those false equivalences that are being so glibly put forth.

Don’t blame ‘both sides.’ The right is driving political violence.

By Max Boot

30 October 2022

It should not be controversial to say that America has a major problem with right-wing political violence. The evidence continues to accumulate — yet the GOP continues to deny responsibility for this horrifying trend.

On Friday, a man enflamed by right-wing conspiracy theories (including QAnon) entered the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and attacked her 82-year-old husband with a hammer, fracturing Paul Pelosi’s skull. “Where is Nancy?” he reportedly shouted, echoing the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, at President Donald Trump’s instigation. This comes after years of Republican demonization of the House speaker, a figure of hatred for the right rivaled only by Hillary Clinton.

The same day as the Pelosi attack, a man pleaded guilty to making death threats against Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). Two days earlier, three men who were motivated by right-wing, anti-lockdown hysteria after covid-19 hit were convicted of aiding a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). In August, another man died after attacking an FBI office because he was so upset about the bureau’s search of Mar-a-Lago. “We must respond with force,” he wrote on Trump’s Truth Social website.

Then there are all the terrible hate crimes, in cities including Pittsburgh, El Paso and Buffalo, where gunmen were motivated by the kind of racist rhetoric — especially the “great replacement theory” — now openly espoused on Fox “News.”

This is where any fair-minded journalist has to offer an obligatory “to be sure” paragraph: To be sure, political violence is not confined to the right. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot in 2017 by a gunman with leftist beliefs, and in June, a man was arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh after becoming incensed about court rulings on abortion and guns.

Republican leaders cite those attacks to exonerate themselves of any responsibility for political violence. “Violence is up across the board,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said on Sunday, arguing that it’s “unfair” to blame anti-Pelosi rhetoric for the assault on Pelosi’s husband.

Violence is unacceptable whether from the left or right, period. But we can’t allow GOP leaders to get away with this false moral equivalency. They are evading their responsibility for their extremist rhetoric that all too often motivates extremist actions.

The New America think tank found last year that, since Sept. 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the United States, compared with only one killed by far-leftists. A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists. A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40 percent of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23 percent of Democrats.

There is little doubt about what is driving political violence: the ascendance of Trump. The former president and his followers use violent rhetoric of extremes: Trump calls President Biden an “enemy of the state,” attacks the FBI as “monsters,” refers to the “now Communist USA” and even wrote that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a “DEATH WISH” for disagreeing with him. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has expressed support for executing Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) has tweeted that “the America Last Marxists … are radically and systematically DESTROYING our country.”

That type of extremist rhetoric used to be confined to fringe organizations such as the John Birch Society. Now it’s the GOP mainstream, with predictable consequences. The U.S. Capitol Police report that threats against members of Congress have risen more than tenfold since Trump’s election in 2016, up to 9,625 last year.

The sickness on the right was on display after news broke about the attack on Paul Pelosi. While leading Republicans condemned the horrific assault, the MAGA base seethed with sick jokes making light of the violence and insane conspiracy theories. (Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza suggested that the attack was “a romantic tryst that went awry.”)

There was, alas, no sign of the GOP taking responsibility for fomenting hatred. Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor of Arizona, blamed “leftist elected officials who have not enforced the laws.” Naturally, Republicans accuse Democrats of being “divisive” for citing Republican rhetoric as a contributing factor to political violence.

It’s true that, by calling out GOP extremism, Democrats do risk exacerbating the polarization of politics. But they can’t simply ignore this dangerous trend. And it’s not Democrats who are pushing our country to the brink: A New York Times study found that MAGA members of Congress who refused to accept the results of the 2020 election used polarizing language at nearly triple the rate of Democrats.

So please don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing “both sides of the aisle.” Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far right, not the far left, and the far right is much closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party than the far left is to the Democratic Party.

Note to Readers:  Typically, I include links that are a part of any post I reblog or copy, but the number of links in this piece would have required an extra hour that I didn’t have to format, so if you’re interested in seeing some of Mr. Boots’ links, you can do so on his original OpEd. 

Similar, But With Critical Differences

Posted on by under Election 2020, Election 2024, Global Issues, History, Political commentary, Social commentary

I have often noted the similarities between Boris Johnson of the UK and Donald Trump, starting with the creepy things each wear upon their heads, the mysterious way in which each has garnered an almost cultist following, the way each seems to think their office is created for their own personal gain, and more.  In all my comparisons, though, I have felt that Johnson was the less dangerous of the two, that he lacked the utter cruelty and vileness of Trump.  And now, I have been proven right.  While Trump has spent more than two years railing that his defeat was illegitimate, calling for violence by his followers, throwing the nation under the bus, and is by all accounts planning further demolition by throwing his hat in the ring yet again in 2024, Johnson did finally resign.  Max Boot, writing for The Washington Post takes the comparison further, looking at the difference in the systems as well as the two players.

Tories awaken to the cost of being led by an entertainer. The GOP still hasn’t.

Max Boot, Columnist

July 8, 2022

Every stage of Boris Johnson’s political progression has been utterly ludicrous and farcical — and that extended to his downfall, or “clownfall,” as the Economist dubbed it. Suddenly, in the past few days, there was a mass exodus from the British government among cabinet ministers who professed themselves to be shocked by the prime minister’s duplicity. “A decent and responsible Government relies on honesty, integrity and mutual respect,” thundered Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis in his letter of resignation.

Well, yes. But it’s hardly news that Johnson possesses none of those qualities. Dishonesty wasn’t a bug in the BoJo operating system, it was the system itself. “People have known that Boris Johnson lies for 30 years,” says Rory Stewart, a former Conservative member of Parliament. “He’s probably the best liar we’ve ever had as a prime minister.”

In this respect, Johnson was very much like former president Donald Trump. The difference, of course, is that while Trump continues to exercise an inexplicable hold on his political party, Johnson’s grip has finally been broken. The questions are: How could Conservatives have ignored for so long what was so blindingly obvious? And how can Republicans still stay in denial?

Until this week, the Conservative Party chose to overlook Johnson’s pathological mendacity because he was so popular. The secret of his popularity was that he was terrifically entertaining. Like a certain orange-tinted former U.S. president, he did not present as a normal politician. He made a virtue of his lack of seriousness to make it seem as if he was just a regular bloke despite his posh background. He bumbled his way to the top.

But the joke wore thin when Johnson actually had to govern. He promised to miraculously make Britain stronger and wealthier by exiting the European Union; he’s achieved just the opposite. Johnson’s management of the covid pandemic was no more successful. A House of Commons committee found that Johnson “made a serious early error” by flirting with the crackpot theory that allowing people to be infected would lead to “herd immunity.” The result was “many thousands” of avoidable deaths.

Eventually, Johnson instituted a strict lockdown, but he failed to abide by it. The result was the “Partygate” scandal, as evidence emerged of Johnson and his aides illegally partying at 10 Downing Street. Johnson was finally felled by one scandal too many. His chief deputy whip, Chris Pincher (a name straight out of Dickens), had to resign after being caught groping men in a bar. Johnson professed shock, until it emerged that he had been informed of similar misbehavior in the past when he had brought Pincher into the Foreign Office.

The lessons of Johnson’s rise and fall are simple and old-fashioned: Don’t treat politics as a branch of the entertainment industry; it’s too serious for that. Knowledge and competence are important in leaders; their lack is not a virtue. And character counts above all: Someone who can’t be trusted to tell the truth can’t be trusted to govern. It’s staggering that it’s taken the Tories this long to accept those basic home truths.

What’s even more staggering is that Republicans in the United States still have not, even though Trump’s political sins are far more serious. Johnson did not, after all, incite a mob to ransack Parliament in order to stay in power. His offenses are political misdemeanors compared to Trump’s major felonies.

Why, then, is the BoJo show closing while the Trump show rolls on? In part it’s because British politics is less populist and Tories are less radicalized than Republicans; there are Murdoch-owned newspapers but no Fox “News” Channel in the U.K. It’s also because British political parties are more powerful. While Tory parliamentarians don’t choose their leader, they do winnow the field down to two candidates for a vote by the party rank and file. Even if the winner becomes prime minister, that person can be, and often is, toppled by colleagues in the cabinet and the House of Commons.

If the United States had a similar system, with the Republican establishment in control of the primaries, the likely GOP nominee in 2016 would have been Jeb Bush, not Donald Trump. And if it were routine for Congress and the Cabinet to evict underperforming presidents, Trump might not have lasted long in office.

But our political parties are too weak and our standards for evicting an incumbent are too high: The president has to commit either “high crimes and misdemeanors” or be unable to discharge “the duties of his office.” Of course, Trump did commit high crimes and he was unable to discharge his duties. But Republicans feared the wrath of their rabid base if they were to make him the first president ever removed under either the Constitution’s impeachment clause or the 25th Amendment. (Richard M. Nixon resigned before being impeached.)

Now, despite everything, Trump could still make a comeback, because he retains a Svengali-like hold on the Republican base. It’s a tribute to the British political system that Boris Johnson is finally being removed from office, and a terrible indictment of the U.S. political system that Trump — who has done far worse — could still return to it.

I Can’t Stop 🤬 … Luckily, Max Boot Can!

Posted on by under education, guns, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

For over 24 hours I have been alternately growling, grumbling, and had @#$%& coming from my mouth over Tuesday’s school massacre in Texas and the horrid responses of some public figures.  I tried twice to put my words to paper, but I ran out of symbols 🤬 and quickly realized that my anger might be just as toxic as the responses that were driving it.  Then I came across an OpEd by The Washington Post’s Max Boot who said most of what I was trying to say, but did so without nearly as many 🤬

The deceitful dodges Republicans use to resist gun controls

By Max Boot, Columnist

May 25, 2022

We are now embarked upon a distinctively American ritual such as the Super Bowl or the Fourth of July — only much, much grimmer. We are, for the umpteenth time, in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting. Nineteen children and two teachers were just massacred at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., by a teenager who had been able to legally purchase two AR-15-style assault rifles — weapons of war — as soon as he turned 18 years old.

We are now embarked upon a distinctively American ritual such as the Super Bowl or the Fourth of July — only much, much grimmer. We are, for the umpteenth time, in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting. Nineteen children and two teachers were just massacred at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., by a teenager who had been able to legally purchase two AR-15-style assault rifles — weapons of war — as soon as he turned 18 years old.

To deflect gun regulations, right-wingers offer their own, increasingly outlandish proposals for how to avert school shootings. One former FBI agent interviewed on the Fox “News” Channel suggested that parents, instead of buying their kids toys and games, should invest in “ballistic blankets” — as if that would stop a determined shooter. Why not dress kids in bulletproof clothing too?

A retired detective suggested on another Fox News show that the answer is to install “man traps” in all schools: “a series of interlocking doors at the school entrance that are triggered by a tripwire … and it traps the shooter like a rat.” He did not, needless to say, offer any suggestions for how to pay for this elaborate idea or offer any evidence that it would prove effective.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) opined that “We need to return to God,” as if religious fanatics never perpetrate violence. She also echoed a common refrain on the right: “Our nation needs to take a serious look at the state of mental health today.” No doubt that’s true, and she’s Exhibit A. But (a) there is no evidence that the United States has more mental health problems than any other country and (b) Republicans consistently oppose more funding for mental health services. Indeed, conservatives are targeting mental health programs in many schools for elimination.

Another popular, if self-refuting, GOP talking point is to argue that the answer to widespread gun violence is to make guns more widely available. Sean Hannity suggested a tax break to retired soldiers and police officers who patrol schools. His colleague Jesse Watters called for using covid-19 relief money to hire more school security guards. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to arm teachers.

Its advocates don’t care that this theory — “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” — has been invalidated time and again. In the Buffalo mass shooting less than two weeks ago, a store security guard shot at the killer, who was clad in body armor, but did not stop his rampage. In Uvalde, a school district officer shot at the gunman but could not prevent him from entering the school.

The Federalist, a right-wing publication, might deserve some kind of booby prize for the most ludicrous alternative to gun control. It ran an article headlined: “Tragedies Like The Texas Shooting Make A Somber Case For Homeschooling.” So if you don’t have schools, you won’t have school shootings? Genius! But weren’t Republicans just complaining about covid restrictions that kept kids out of school?

Of course, none of these suggestions should be taken either literally or seriously. Republicans have shown repeatedly that protecting “gun rights” matters more to them than protecting the right to life. They aren’t actually trying to prevent mass shootings. They’re simply tossing out farcical ideas to distract the public and fill the airtime until public anger dissipates and gun legislation stalls. Then, very soon, we will have the next mass shooting and we can repeat this same pathetic ritual all over again.

Beyond Salvation?

Posted on by under Election 2020, Environmental Issues, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

As far as I can tell, today’s Republican Party has no actual platform, no ideologies of its own, but instead is simply against anything that Democrats support, and vice versa.  What the former guy did to that which was once recognizable as a legitimate party with actual views, has left a party that is no longer in control of its senses.  Max Boot, writing for The Washington Post, shows us just how low the Republican Party has gone, and one must question whether there is a future for the party outside of conspiracy theories, racism, incoherent rants and obfuscation.

The Republican Party is beyond salvation — even without Trump

Opinion by 

Max Boot

Columnist

April 20, 2021 at 1:05 p.m. EDT

That was a very telling comment that Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) posted on Twitter last week. He noted that tweets from President Biden’s account “are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional” and that his “public comments are largely scripted.” In Cornyn’s mind, this “invites the question: is he really in charge?”

On one level, this shows a senior Republican senator — someone who is seen as a staid establishmentarian — trying to spread smarmy insinuations that the president has lost his marbles and is being manipulated by shadowy leftists. That’s an article of faith on the conspiratorial far right that has now migrated to the mainstream despite the total lack of any substantiating evidence. When called out by Chris Wallace on Fox News, Cornyn retreated to the usual, despicable defense of conspiracy theorists: “I simply asked a question.” I didn’t say the moon landing was faked — I was only asking if it was!

But what is even more disturbing about Cornyn’s tweet is the upside-down assumption that it’s normal for a president to spew deranged, ungrammatical, abusive tweets — and that there is something wrong with a president who refuses to do so. Most people thought that President Donald Trump’s tweets were bonkers — but for a large portion of the GOP, they have now become the standard by which his successors will be judged. Republicans have gone down the rabbit hole where sanity and sobriety are inexplicable and indeed suspicious.

This is a sign of how the Republican Party is adjusting to post-Trump life. It has embraced Trumpism without Trump. This is not really a set of policy preferences; the GOP in 2020 passed on a platform beyond allegiance to the Orange Emperor’s whims. It is more of a mindless, obnoxious attitude — it’s all about “owning the libs,” spreading conspiracy theories, and waging culture wars as a way to rile up the rabid base and keep the cash register ringing.

Three of the major tenets of the Trumpified GOP have been on public view the past week — if you can bear to watch.

Hostility to science: Watch the video of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) yapping at Anthony S. Fauci, one of the nation’s leading infectious-disease experts, like an enraged chihuahua. “Dr. Fauci, when is the time?” Jordan kept asking. He wanted to know when it was “time to pull back on masking” and “physical distancing.” “When do Americans get their freedoms back? … What is low enough? Give me a number.” Fauci tried to explain that restrictions could be lifted as infection rates got lower. But for Jordan, this had nothing to do with eliciting information — it was all about showing his contempt for a leading scientist and demonstrating that he is much more exercised about prudent public health restrictions than about a virus that has already killed more than 567,000 Americans. It’s no surprise that vaccination rates are lower in counties that Trump won than in counties that voted for Biden.

Racism: Some of the most pro-Trump members of the House tried last week to start an America First Caucus. “White People First” is more like it: Their manifesto declared that “America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions. History has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country.” There was so much blowback that the America Firsters backed off. But, as my colleague Aaron Blake notes, the white supremacist “replacement theory” — which claims that shadowy elites are importing people of color to replace native-born Whites — has gained wide adherence in the GOP. It has been pushed recently by everyone from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who recently wondered (there’s that question again!) if Democrats “want to remake the demographics of America to ensure — that they stay in power forever.”

Authoritarianism: The Big Lie has become Republican orthodoxy — just like tax cuts and conservative judges. Polls show that 78 percent of Republicans don’t think Biden legitimately won and 51 percent say Congress “did not go far enough” to support “Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.” Little wonder that so many 2022 aspirants — including leading Republican Senate candidates in Ohio, Alabama, Missouri and North Carolina — are pushing the falsehood of the stolen election. The willingness to deny the election outcome — and thereby to reject democracy itself — has become the new litmus test for Republican primary voters.

This is by no means the whole of the GOP — but the Trumpy wing is by far the most vocal, militant and important. The “mainstream,” by contrast, is weak, vacillating and uncertain. Former House speaker John A. Boehner is a case in point: He denounces the “crazies” who have taken over, but he admits that in 2020 he voted for Trump — the leader of the crazies — because “I thought that his policies, by and large, mirrored the policies that I believed in.”

As I’ve said before, this is a party that is beyond salvation. I just wish Republicans didn’t insist on proving that bleak judgment right with dismaying regularity.

What A Welcome Change!

Posted on by under Environmental Issues, Global Issues, Political commentary

One of the areas in which Donald Trump was inexperienced, uneducated, inept and incompetent was foreign policy.  President Biden, on the other hand, has vast experience in international relations and has dealt extensively with foreign policy both in his role as a Senator, and later as Vice President under President Obama.  During Trump’s four years in office, the United States became first a laughingstock around the globe, and then an object of horror as our allies came to realize that we were no longer a trusted friend, but a nation under erratic leadership that was both unpredictable and unstable.  It will take time to rebuild the trust and respect we once had, but if anybody is up to that challenge, I believe it is President Biden.

An OpEd by Max Boot in Thursday’s Washington Post summarizes my own feeling of our new leadership in terms of our relations with other nations.  I hope you’ll find a few minutes to watch President Biden’s speech* … for the first time in four years, we have heard a President speak on matters that concern us all … no yelling, no facial contortions, no chants of “Lock her up” … just sensible, intelligent speech.  And I thrilled to hear him say …

“We believe free press isn’t an adversary, rather it’s essential, free press is essential to the health of a democracy.”

Such a welcome change from his predecessor who never missed a chance to denigrate the press, calling them the “enemy of the people.”

With his foreign policy speech, Biden begins to repair the damage that Trump did

Max-BootOpinion by 

Max Boot

Columnist

Feb. 4, 2021 at 6:40 p.m. EST

Joe Biden has given countless foreign policy speeches as a senator, vice president and presidential candidate. On Thursday, he went to the State Department to deliver his first foreign policy speech as president. His remarks were hardly radical, but they were important nonetheless, because they signal a new tone and a new attitude in U.S. foreign policy after four years of “America First.”

Biden made clear he understands that the damage done by former president Donald Trump, who was never mentioned by name, will not be repaired overnight. “We’ve moved quickly to begin restoring American engagement internationally,” Biden said, because it is imperative “to earn back our leadership position” and to reclaim “our credibility and moral authority.”

Although Biden proclaimed, “America is back. Diplomacy is back,” he showed keen awareness that other nations around the world will be distrustful of U.S. leadership after the disasters of the past four years. Why should anyone trust again a country that couldn’t handle a pandemic — and that just saw a violent insurrection in its Capitol?

No doubt Biden noticed what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said to Axios a few days ago: “We are used to believing that the United States has the ideal democratic institutions, where power is transferred calmly. … In Ukraine, we lived through two revolutions. … We understood such things can happen in the world. But that it could happen in the United States? No one expected that. … I was very worried. … I did not want you to have a coup. After something like this, I believe it would be very difficult for the world to see the United States as a symbol of democracy.”

Biden tried to allay such concerns by suggesting that Trump’s attempts to overthrow democracy could actually make us more determined champions of freedom. “The American people will emerge from this stronger, more determined and better equipped to unite the world in fighting to defend democracy — because we have fought for it ourselves,” he said.

It’s a neat argument — trying to turn our weakness into strength — and I hope it’s true. But if the Senate votes to acquit Trump — as seems almost certain, given that all but five Republican senators voted to dismiss the charge — it will unfortunately send a message of impunity for misconduct that will undermine Biden’s efforts to rebuild confidence in America as the leader of the free world.

There is nothing Biden can do to force Republicans to do their duty. But he certainly is doing all that is in his power to reinvigorate American diplomacy and standing in the world. Much of what he had to say on Thursday would have sounded like tired banalities coming at any other point in our history — but given what we have just experienced, the familiar phrases that rolled off Biden’s lips sounded fresh and important.

He called for “defending freedom,” “upholding universal rights,” “respecting the rule of law” and “treating every person with dignity,” and he said those principles constitute “our inexhaustible source of strength” and “America’s abiding advantage.” On one level: No kidding. So what else is new? But on another level: Thank goodness he’s saying it! I felt like cheering while Biden was talking. Those are all concepts we once took for granted yet are now badly in need of articulation after Trump trashed them.

So, too, there was something deeply comforting in Biden, first, admitting that we must address “global challenges” ranging from “the pandemic to the climate crisis” and, second, asserting that these challenges will only “be solved by nations working together and in common.” This is not exactly a blinding insight, but we can no longer take anything for granted. Trump, too often, treated climate change as a hoax and the pandemic as a plot to depress his popularity ratings.

Biden also struck an “old is new” chord by calling out Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: “I made it clear to President Putin in a manner very different from my predecessor that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over.” He didn’t have a lot of specifics to offer — he did not unveil any new sanctions on Putin and his gang — but simply the fact that he spoke the truth about Russian attacks and demanded that Putin release jailed dissident Alexei Navalny marks a sharp and welcome break from the recent past.

Biden made clear that Russia isn’t the only dictatorship that is no longer going to receive a blank check from Washington: He announced that the United States will no longer support Saudi Arabia’s offensive operations in Yemen, which have produced a humanitarian catastrophe.

In a sense, Biden did not break much new ground: He merely said the kinds of things that any president before Trump would have said. But to hear them now, after four years of unhinged rhetoric and actions, is novel and newsworthy.

*Link to transcript of President Biden’s foreign policy speech

Something To Think About

Posted on by under Election 2020, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

I have spent the last three years warning that Donald Trump was a wanna-be king, that he would turn the presidency into a dictatorship, given half a chance.  It seems that now, three years into his reign, others are seeing it, too.  Max Boot’s column in The Washington Post last Saturday sums it up well.

This is how democracy dies — in full view of a public that couldn’t care less

By Max Boot, Columnist

Feb. 15, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. EST

Max-Boot

The French philosopher Montesquieu wrote in 1748: “The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.” We are seeing his warning vindicated. President Trump is increasingly acting as a tyrannical (and erratic) prince. And yet much of the public is so inured to his misconduct that his latest assaults on the rule of law are met with a collective shrug. Public passivity is Trump’s secret weapon as he pursues his authoritarian agenda. “I have the right to do whatever I want,” he says, and the lack of pushback seems to confirm it.

So much bad has happened since Trump was unjustly acquitted by the Senate of two articles of impeachment on Feb. 5 that it’s hard to keep it all straight.

Trump fired Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for complying with a congressional subpoena and providing truthful testimony about Trump’s attempts to extort Ukraine into aiding him politically. Also ousted was Vindman’s brother, who did not testify. This sends a mob-like message: If you turn stool pigeon, your family gets it, too.

Trump’s ongoing quest for retribution has also claimed Jessie K. Liu, who was abruptly removed as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and replaced by a close aide to Attorney General William P. Barr after prosecuting Trump loyalists, including Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. Now Liu’s nomination to a senior Treasury Department position has been withdrawn. Next on the chopping block may be Elaine McCusker, the Pentagon official who tried to tell the Office of Management and Budget that Trump had no right to withhold aid to Ukraine. The New York Post reported that her nomination to be Pentagon comptroller will be withdrawn. (McCusker denies the report.)

While punishing those who dared to tell the truth, Trump is protecting those who assist his coverup. He inveighed against the request of federal prosecutors, following normal sentencing guidelines, to give Stone a seven- to nine-year prison sentence for witness tampering and lying to Congress. Trump also attacked the judge overseeing Stone’s case and the forewoman of the jury that convicted him. The Justice Department then asked for a reduced sentence. Four prosecutors resigned from the case in protest, and one quit the Justice Department.

Even Barr was driven to denounce Trump’s public interference in the legal system, saying that the president’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors and the department that we’re doing our work with integrity.” In response, Trump asserted that he has the “legal right” to determine who gets prosecuted — technically true but hardly in keeping with American tradition.

Barr’s protests ring hollow given how eager he has been to subvert his own department on Trump’s behalf — for example, by mischaracterizing the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Barr has appointed one prosecutor to review Flynn’s conviction and another to investigate the FBI and CIA personnel who uncovered the Russian plot to elect Trump in 2016. The New York Times reports that the latter prosecutor, John H. Durham, has raised alarm in the intelligence community by appearing to pursue a theory, popular among right-wing conspiracy mongers, “that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result.”

Anxiety about attempts to politicize justice will only grow because of a Post report that Trump was furious that the Justice Department did not file charges against former FBI director James B. Comey and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe — even though there is no evidence that either of these men broke any laws. After learning that his enemies were not being indicted, The Post reports, “Trump has become more insistent that Durham finish his work soon,” because he “wants to be able to use whatever Durham finds as a cudgel in his reelection campaign.”

As Justice Department veteran David Laufman writes, “We are now truly at a break-glass-in-case-of-fire moment for the Justice Dept.” But does anyone give a damn? Democratic lawmakers are, to be sure, perturbed, but it’s easy (if unfair) to write off their outrage as mere partisanship. Republican members of Congress, as usual, either have nothing to say or offer ineffectual expressions of “concern.”

And the public? I don’t see massive marches in the streets. I don’t see people flooding their members of Congress with calls and emails. I don’t see the outrage that is warranted — and necessary. I see passivity, resignation and acquiescence from a distracted electorate that has come to accept Trump’s aberrant behavior as the norm.

A recent Gallup poll found that Trump’s approval rating among Republicans — the supposed law-and-order party — is at a record-high 94 percent. His support in the country as a whole is only 43.4 percent in the FiveThirtyEight average, but he is still well positioned to win reelection, because most people seem to care a lot more about the strength of the stock market than about the strength of our democracy. This is how democracies die — not in darkness but in full view of a public that couldn’t care less.

*Note to readers:  Since this article was published three days ago, Trumps approval rating according to the FiveThirtyEight average has risen from 43.4% to 43.9%.

Max Boot: President Trump Has Been Working To Normalize Racism

Posted on by under Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

Most of us do not rely on others to set an example for us of how we should think, speak and act. Most of us have functional brains and were taught by responsible parents. But there is a contingent in this nation who will play “follow the leader” and “monkey-see, monkey-do”, and those are the ones who are following Trump’s example of blatant racism. Gronda, with just a little help from Max Boot of The Washington Post, has written an excellent post tying the racism that is Donald Trump to some of the events happening today. Please take a few minutes to read and ponder. Thank you, Gronda!

Gronda Morin

Related image THESE ARE TYPES OF SIGNS CARRIED BY SOME AT SARAH PALIN AND DONALD TRUMP RALLIES

As a former republican until 2016, I have become painfully aware that there is a racist living in the white House but President Donald Trump could never have been elected without the help and support of the current republican party which created the environment to guarantee his success.

In 2013, I had started to become painfully aware of a strain of racism that had permeated the republican party to where I finally left it in 2016. It started with the Trayvon Martin case. Too many in my former party (2012-2013) were propping up as a hero the likes of a bum, George Zimmerman. Then there was the demonizing of Trayvon Martin as a pot smoking thug when he was just a kid walking home from a store. When George Zimmerman was declared “not guilty” by…

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