Goebbels’ Cherished Dream and Donald Trump
What if America fails to rise to the occasion of its vilely inept and criminal president and get rid of the bastard? Are we, the nominally sane and well-meaning, about to cede our Western democracies to an apparent plague of sociopathic greed and avarice, infantile egoism, venality, defiantly malevolent ignorance, proudly malignant narcism and crass vandalism of all that is good and holy in human social bonds and the Earth’s delicate, life-supporting ecology? Is it possible that we will let this happen — that we will passively permit the Boris Johnsons, the Nigel Farages, the Steve Bannons, the Stephen Millers, the Robert Mercers, the Mark Zuckerbergs, the remaining Koch brother, the De Voses, the Donald Trumps, the Republican Party, the Doug Fords, the Netanyahus, the Erdogans et al, ad nauseum, to prevail — to trash due process and walk away with the profits, the power, the glory, the might, the misplaced trust and governance of the democratic West? Really?
Goebbels referred to Media as Circe, and mocked the general populace as her helpless followers. It is incumbent upon us to admit the sobering thought that the current nightmare gripping the U.S. and dependent nations all started with ‘The Apprentice’ as a particularly toxic and mercenary aspect of the ‘Reality Show’ syndrome. It graduated to military psi-ops being used against domestic civilian populations by corporations like Cambridge Analytica, owned and run by White Supremacists (Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon, et al). Its tentacles reached into sectors of business, finance, religion, social cohesion, cultural norms, ethics, environmental responsibility, and, basically, all human constructs and realms of activity.
We definitely live in ‘interesting times.’ (I thought the same through Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes, but this is beyond my worst expectations of America by far.) I guess I missed the signs by not taking ‘The Apprentice’ and the entire ‘reality show’ syndrome seriously enough. A chilling op-ed in the NY Times by author Katherine Stewart, who has extensively studied and written about the Christian right, showed how the far right have been pushing a meme for several years now that Donald Trump, conman and egomaniac, has been sent by God to be “a vessel for the purposes of the faithful” in the role of King of the United States of America. Really? Then you should crucify him. After stripping him naked and flogging him through the streets dragging his very own crucifix. That way he can redeem your sins properly. Then start a religion based on his ignominious demise and atrocious reign whose sigil is a golden toilette. As reported in GQ Magazine in July, 2019:
If it weren’t for his reality TV show, The Apprentice, there’s a strong chance that Donald Trump wouldn’t be president today. It made the real estate tycoon a household name and helped him sell himself as a savvy businessman, despite his history of bankruptcy and debt. And some of the behind-the-scenes stories offer a window into Trump’s thinking about race. As The New York Times detailed in a story on Saturday, Trump once pitched an idea for the show’s fourth season with teams of all-white (specifically, all blonds) and all-black contestants competing against each other.
The producers of The Apprentice, who knew that it was both bullshit and toxic, should be held responsible somehow. Forget ‘Freedom of Speech.’ There should be penalties for seditious media. Because ‘The Apprentice’ producers failed to pull the plug when their sociopathic ‘golden egg’ suggested obscenities like his televised race war, the world ended up with an American president who blithely, repeatedly pitched obscene and absurd notions for curtailing the desperate attempts of immigrants to enter the country like installing a moat the entire length of the border with Mexico, filled with alligators and poisonous snakes, a ridiculous idea for which he demanded that aides procure a cost-estimate. He was deadly serious about it, and about his notion to paint the ‘wall’ flat black so as to trap maximum heat in the structure and burn the hands and feet of climbers. He proposed shooting border jumpers in the legs. “He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh.” He had to be told repeatedly that these ideas were illegal, and that they couldn’t actually do those things.
Among those in the room were Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary at the time; Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state; Kevin K. McAleenan, the Customs and Border Protection chief at the time; and Stephen Miller, the White House aide who, more than anyone, had orchestrated Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff was also there, along with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and other senior staff.(Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, The New York Times, Oct. 1, 2019)
In point of fact, Trump’s elevation to the position of the most power on the planet is an Atrocity, just as the elevation of his lackey, Kavanaugh, to the Supreme Court is an Atrocity. A male judge who’s expressed anti-Reproductive Rights for women views, and who is credibly accused of sexual assault, should NEVER have been appointed a Supreme Court judge. As with Clarence Thomas, Kavanaugh’s elevation is ongoing evidence that the U.S. still maintains a robust Rape Culture and ideology of male dominance.
It’s simply phenomenal — the corruption and graft — the almost unbelievable Crimes Against Humanity and the future of the planet. The separation of children from their parents or guardians at the American border with Mexico is an Atrocity. A Crime Against Humanity. A Holocaust of American Values. The National Shame. We cannot let it sink beneath the waves of atrocity being generated by this president and his minions like Stephen Miller. Never forget the ongoing assault against children and parents in the name of America’s racial ‘purity.’
Maxine Waters has addressed incendiary Republican and presidential ‘Civil War’ threatening tweets: ‘Rep. Maxine Waters told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi Wednesday that she no longer feels safe traveling or going out in public without security because of the death threats she gets “constantly.”
I mean, I can’t go to the grocery store anymore by myself. I have to pay for security all the time. I can’t move around the country without security. He is setting some of us up to be killed. I have death threats constantly. There are a number of people who have been convicted for threatening to kill me. Trump is dog-whistling to the white supremacists, the KKK, and the dangerous people…We have stories about many of those white supremacists who do nothing but practice how they are going to be involved in a civil war and fight against this government. And this president is irresponsible in so many ways, aside from making us a target of these white supremacists and those who would kill us in a civil war. Some of us would be the first to be killed.
Kellyanne Conway has said of Trump’s toxic, sociopathic tweets, “He needs to tweet like we need to eat.” The New York Times described how, ‘The platform has become a vehicle for conspiracy theorists, racists and spies to influence what Mr. Trump sees and amplifies to the world. More than half his tweets have been attacks, and the person he has most singled out for praise is himself. Ordinary people are plucked from obscurity, only to end up in Mr. Trump’s tweets.”
In Blowout, Rachel Maddow traces how the greed of the oil industry has corrupted the world, causing disasters both environmental and political, including, Maddow says, the Russian interference in the 2016 election. Maddow’s book reveals the extent to which, “…the interests of oil companies influence every aspect of our lives, from the personal to the political…Democracy either wins this one, or disappears.”
The primary pitfall of democracy is a proudly malign social and ethical ignorance that elects people like this guy, and thinks their vandalism of human values is good. The U.S., has long since officially been a banana republic in the era of Trump, but this…?
