Is The US Still A Nation Of Laws?

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If so, Congress has no choice but to begin the impeachment process now.

Trump committed obstruction of justice – not just in private by ordering his underlings to fire Mueller – but in public by calling the investigation a witch hunt. He suborned perjury by stating that he would “take care of” those who refused to testify against him and by calling those who did “rats.” He has ignored the Constitution’s emoluments clause by using his Washington DC hotel to profit from foreign leaders, foreign citizens and lobbyists. And he obviously requested then accepted and benefited from property stolen by Russian hackers.

If those actions don’t rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” it’s difficult to imagine what does.

Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment for ordering the break-in of the Democratic office and resorting to obstruction of justice in order to cover it up. Clinton was impeached for accepting oral sex from an intern and lying about it. Are those crimes worse than accepting property stolen from a political opponent by a hostile nation and obstructing justice by attempting to prevent an investigation into the matter?

Since Trump began his campaign to win the most powerful office in the world, we have seen him refuse to reveal his tax returns unlike most other presidential candidates since Nixon. We have heard him brag about sexual assault. We have discovered that he had an extramarital affair with a porn star and a centerfold model then illegally paid for their silence. We heard from more than a dozen women, including one who was underage, that Trump had sexually assaulted them. We learned that Trump had been a regular guest at Jeffrey Epstein’s parties before Epstein was convicted of trafficking underage girls for sex. And we learned that a tabloid managed by a Trump friend practiced “catch and kill” to bury unflattering stories about Trump.

Despite Trump’s claims that he had nothing to do with Russia, we heard his sons brag that the family business gets all the financing it needs from Russians. We learned that Trump’s lawyer had continued to negotiate a deal for Trump Tower Moscow even after the 2016 election. We learned that much of Trump’s income comes from real estate sales to Russian oligarchs – likely as a means of laundering money. We’ve seen Trump’s campaign manager, his personal attorney, his national security advisor and others associated with his campaign arrested and convicted. And we learned of more than 100 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russians.

We watched Trump settle a lawsuit that his Trump Foundation defrauded donors. We saw him settle claims that his Trump “university” defrauded students. We learned that he and his siblings engaged in tax fraud in order to avoid paying millions on their inheritance. And we learned that his name was mentioned in the Panama Papers – a leak of those involved in offshore tax havens – 3,540 times. (Not surprisingly, his good friend Vladimir Putin was also named.)

We have seen reports of millions in donations missing from the Trump Inaugural Committee. We have learned that the former owner of an illicit massage parlor in Florida is a regular at Mar-a-Lago and helped raise funds from Chinese nationals for Trump’s campaign – funds that weren’t reported and cannot be accounted for.

We have listened to thousands of lies told by Trump and his administration since he took office. (It has been documented that roughly 70 percent of the statements Trump makes are false!) We have seen him appoint the most corrupt and unqualified cabinet in history. We have watched him appoint dozens of unqualified and ideological judges to lifetime positions. We have watched the unraveling of environmental, financial and safety regulations. We have witnessed his racism and his apologies for violent white nationalists. We have watched as his administration ripped immigrant children from their parents and housed them in cages. We have seen his administration veto a UN resolution that would hold war criminals accountable and force a change in another UN resolution that will result in the denial of abortions to girls who have been raped as a military tactic. We have read his Tweets promoting violence against a black Muslim congresswoman. And we have seen Trump cozy up to some of the world’s worst dictators while, at the same time, turning a cold shoulder to our longest-standing and most loyal allies.

How many more crimes must Congress see before taking action? How many more despicable acts?

Does Trump really have to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, as he once bragged he could, to be held accountable for his actions? Would not any other resident of the US be charged and convicted for just one of the many crimes committed by Trump?

A woman in Texas is serving a 5-year prison sentence for not realizing that she was ineligible to vote. Yet Barr and the DOJ have let Trump and other members of his campaign off the hook for supposedly not knowing that it was against the law to undermine our electoral process by accepting help from a hostile nation. What happened to the long-standing legal principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse?

Throughout our nation’s history, we have operated according to the principle that no one is above the law. So far, that has not applied to the Teflon Don and his crime family.

The Barr Effect.

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Contrary to Attorney General William Barr’s 4-page “summary” of the Mueller Report or his misleading press conference, Trump and his campaign were not cleared of collusion. And he most certainly was not exonerated. In his report, Mueller simply said that there was not enough evidence to indict Trump and his campaign for conspiring with the Russians to interfere with the 2016 election – largely because the Mueller team could not interview the Russian hackers and Russian intelligence officials to confirm that they conspired with the campaign. In addition, the Mueller Report notes that many of the campaign’s communications had been encrypted and much of the evidence had been destroyed.

Nevertheless, the report does detail many examples of cooperation with the Russians who interfered with our democratic process. It also details numerous instances during which the Trump campaign accepted material and information stolen from its political opponents.

By any definition, that is collusion!

As for obstruction, the Mueller Report outlines at least 10 incidents in which Trump tried to obstruct the investigation, including numerous occasions when he ordered underlings to fire the Special Counsel. That means that Trump clearly committed obstruction of justice even though members of his administration refused to follow his orders. (An act of obstruction does not have to be successful in order for it to qualify as an indictable offense.) But, as a result of the DOJ’s unsupported ruling that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Mueller deferred the responsibility of determining guilt to Congress. In doing so, Mueller clearly stated that his investigation DID NOT exonerate the president. And the Mueller Report does not even consider Trump’s corrupt business practices, his tax evasion, his racism, his sexual improprieties, and his obvious violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, the GOP and some of the media continue to repeat the falsehoods made by Barr in his memo and press conference that the investigation “cleared Trump of all charges.” In other words, for the time being, Barr’s cover-up has worked. He has succeeded in providing a false narrative in order to protect his boss.

None of this is surprising. After auditioning for the position of Trump’s Attorney General by writing an 18-page memo proclaiming the unlimited powers of the president, the skeptics among us saw this coming. Barr’s intentions should have also been clear to anyone with an understanding of history. After all, Barr had participated in presidential cover-ups before following the capture of the sitting president of a foreign nation and the pardons of all the criminals in the Reagan administration who participated in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Indeed, it should be abundantly clear to everyone that Barr is not the Attorney General for the United States. He has merely replaced Michael Cohen as Trump’s fixer and consigliore.

Clearly, Trump is operating outside the law. And both he and Barr are operating contrary to ethical and moral standards. As a result, I believe that both should be impeached. Our nation was built on the concepts of reason, justice and the rule of law. Though it’s likely true that doing so may further divide the nation. But it’s also true that not doing so could set precedents for future presidents and attorneys general which could allow them to commit even more heinous acts. Worse, it puts the entire foundation of our nation at risk!

The Real Tragedy Of Notre Dame de Paris.

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In the 24 hours following the fire that partially burned the Notre Dame cathedral, donors have already pledged more than $1 billion for its repair. Certainly it was a tragedy for Parisians, for France, for Catholics and for the lovers of history and art. But consider what else could be done with that money. Imagine if the Vatican, an organization that holds approximately $1.6 billion in stockholdings, paid for the reconstruction of Notre Dame itself and the donors’ money was used to address far more serious tragedies elsewhere in the world. Imagine how much human suffering could be alleviated if corporations and the wealthy cared as much about people facing real hardships.

For example, $1 billion could provide approximately 3 billion meals for the Yeminis who are starving as the result of the US-backed war on Yemen by the Saudis. $1 billion could go a long way to address the tragic conditions faced by Central American refugees in their own countries. And what if we added the billions the Trump administration is squandering on a wall to feed the ego of the orange sociopath in the White House?

If the corporations and the wealthy so traumatized by seeing a Parisian landmark burn were equally concerned about human beings, they could solve most of the poverty in the world. They could improve conditions for most of people suffering as the result of war, climate change or the greed of brutal dictators. However, they only seem to care about the things that affect them directly or that have captured their imaginations.

Perhaps they’re merely influenced by media coverage.

As Notre Dame burned, many of the TV networks were transfixed, devoting virtually all of their time to scenes of the fire and of onlookers mourning. But on the same day, a fire broke out at the al-Asqa Mosque in Jerusalem. Where was their coverage of that fire? Where was their coverage of the three black churches in Louisiana that were burned by a white nationalist?

There are many serious tragedies in the world. Most go relatively unnoticed and unfunded. The fire at Notre Dame was not one of them.

Trumpism: Revenge Of The Misfits.

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There has long been a phenomenon relating to those who have difficulty fitting in with polite society – people who look different than others; who are darker, bigger, taller, shorter, fatter, clumsier, or poorer. After being ostracized, bullied and left out, once they find others who have suffered from the same issues and band together, they, too, become bullies. And often they become more ruthless than those who have abused them.

I believe that phenomenon, combined with the anonymity of the Internet, is at the root of the rise of hate groups.

The Internet has become the sanctuary and gathering place to haters of a great variety. Most of these are people who have some sort of grievance: Young men who are unable to establish a relationship with a woman, those who despise the government and the so-called coastal elites, those who are jealous of people who are more educated and socially adept, those who fear different customs or different religions, and those who blame all of their problems on black and brown people, immigrants and refugees. The Internet affords these people a place to connect with the similarly aggrieved. It’s especially useful to white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

The anger of all of these haters has been mainstreamed by media such as Breitbart, right-wing radio and Fox News Channel. Moreover, Trump’s disdain for political correctness (i.e., polite and civil discourse) has given the haters a license to say and do whatever they feel.

We saw this in Charlottesville at the gathering of the “alt-right,” in Charleston at the Emanuel African-American Episcopal Church, in Pittsburg at the Tree of Life Synagogue and, most recently, in Christchurch, New Zealand at the Muslim mosques. These atrocities were all committed by people inspired by Trump’s attacks on Mexicans, Latinos, Muslims, people of color and Democrats – attacks that have been amplified by his most ardent followers on underground racist websites such as 4Chan and 8Chan.

Trump is the reason the number of active hate groups soared to an all-time high in 2018. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center that monitors such things, at the end of 2018, there were 1,020 active hate groups – white nationalist, neo-Nazi, anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim groups whose members are willing to commit crimes. And these groups don’t even include the less organized “sovereign citizens” like Cliven Bundy and those who aimed their guns at government BLM employees and commandeered a nature preserve in Oregon. And they don’t include the Republican Party, which has become a hate group in its own right determined to punish opponents, suppress votes and deny civil rights to people of color, the LGBTQ community and Muslims.

Worse, thanks to Trump and his sycophants, these hateful ideologies are spreading around the globe. Indeed, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former Chief Strategist has been traveling Europe to spread his message of hate and fear financed by the billionaire Mercer family. At a recent European rally, Bannon told his audience that he wears the term racist as a badge of honor.

The goal is to unite the extreme far right to take over political control of western Europe. To what end we can only speculate. But it seems the intent is to destabilize western governments for the benefit of the oligarchs and autocrats. And, based on resentment of Syrian refugees and some long-standing grievances, they have had some success in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, even Sweden.

Unless our traditional political institutions are able to figuratively and literally disarm this movement, we can probably expect to see many more episodes similar to what we just witnessed in New Zealand.

The Crime Boss In The White House.

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Over the past two years, the party of Reagan has become the party of Trump. And it is now clear that no Republican can defy Trump without paying a price. The question is: What are they afraid of? Why are so many Republicans afraid to vote against Trump’s initiatives? Why do the so-called fiscal conservatives refuse to speak out against Trump’s massive deficit spending? Why do they refuse to hold Trump accountable for his racism and his refusal to denounce white nationalists? Why are so many Republicans afraid to vote against Trump’s power grab from Congress? Why do they not speak up about his corruption and his coziness with the world’s worst dictators?

And, most puzzling, why does Sen. Lindsay Graham – once a never Trumper – not defend the legacy of his long-time friend Sen. John McCain against Trump’s attacks? Why the change? What is Graham afraid of?

This is only a guess. But I believe Trump has always acted as a crime boss. He uses the language of a crime boss in referring to his long-time consigliore, Michael Cohen, who turned on him as a “rat.” He has run his business as a crime boss by bullying and refusing to pay vendors. By suing anyone who spoke out against him. By buying the silence of some critics. And by associating with a variety of other mob bosses – the Italian mafia, the Jewish mafia and, especially, the Russian mafia.

As a result, I believe that Republican dissenters fear retaliation. Likely, Trump’s political contributors – Robert Mercer, Sheldon Adelson and Charles Koch – have made it clear that they will not donate to the campaigns of the dissenters. Indeed, they have probably made it clear that they will fund primary opponents. And they no doubt fear that Trump will campaign for their primary opponents.

But I think their fear runs deeper. I think that, like every other crime boss, Trump has dirt on his opponents. Could it be that Trump knows the never-married Sen. Graham is a closeted gay? How would that play in bright red South Carolina? And, if so, what dirt does Trump have on other Republican leaders? Given his past, they have to know that Trump would use anything at his disposal to gain and maintain power.

I truly believed that special counsel Robert Mueller would be our modern-day Elliott Ness – someone who would put Trump in the place he deserves. But now that Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General, William Barr, has delivered a letter to Congress stating that the Mueller investigation did not recommend charges for conspiring with Russians and left the case for obstruction up to the DOJ, Trump has been emboldened. Like other crime bosses who have skated on serious charges, Trump now believes he is the Teflon Don. He believes that no charges can stick to him. And if there’s a chance they might, he has learned that he can manipulate the system by firing and hiring the people necessary to protect his very large behind.

That’s what crime bosses do.

Are Baby Boomers Really At Fault For Today’s Problems?

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The Millennial generation seems to believe that all of the national and world problems are the fault of the Baby Boomer generation’s unabated greed in accepting Social Security and Medicare. Really? Do we not get credit for paying into these insurance programs for our entire working careers?

Ignoring that unwarranted attack, consider the world the Boomer generation inherited – a nuclear-tipped Cold War, the consequences of imperial expansion and cultural genocide, the destruction of a highly-efficient rail system in favor of cars, the depletion of forests and other precious resources, as well as the near-extinction of the American Bison, Bald Eagles and other wildlife species.

Like generations before us, rather than accept the world we inherited, many of us have tried hard to improve it. It was the Boomer generation that was responsible for the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the fight for LGBTQ rights. We fought for the disabled to create the American Disabilities Act. And many of us rebelled against our own government to end the brutal and unnecessary war in Vietnam.

Our generation created human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many participated in the Peace Corps to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

The Baby Boomer generation fought for zero population growth and access to contraceptives in order to end over-population and the resultant stress on our planet’s limited resources. We helped create the Environmental Protection Agency to end the widespread dumping of chemicals into our water and air – a practice so prevalent the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire thirteen times! We fought for anti-littering laws. We fought to expose the dangers of cigarettes, trans fatty acids, asbestos, DDT and other dangerous products. We created recycling programs. And, once we were made aware of the problem, many of us have fought to replace fossil fuels in order to reduce our population’s impact on the climate.

We popularized health and fitness awareness. We fought for product labeling to list the ingredients in processed foods. Led by Ralph Nader, we created the National Transportation Safety Board to make our cars safer. Indeed, we created safety standards for most of the products sold in the US. We fought against the clear-cutting of forests; against the hunting of endangered wildlife.

As a boomer, I’m proud of our many successes…even many of our failures. Because I believe time will show that many of us were on the right side of history. Could we have done better? Of course. And not all of us have been willing to fight the good fights. We are, after all, the generation that includes Donald Trump.

For that, I am truly sorry!

A Powerful Voice For Social Democracy.

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Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian and author of Utopia For Realists recently spoke to some of the world’s wealthiest people at Davos, Switzerland in which he said, “I hear people talking the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency, but almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance and of the rich just not paying their fair share. I mean it feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water. We’ve got to be talking about taxes! That’s it. Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.”

His speech went viral.

Following that event, he appeared on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, where he was asked to address the current debate over socialism in the US. “To me, it seems a bewildering discussion,” he replied. “Because what we’re actually talking about are policies that are hugely popular among the vast majority of Americans. 67 percent want guaranteed paid maternity leave. 70 percent want Medicare for all. 81 percent is enthusiastic about the New Green Deal. 75 percent want higher taxes on the rich. These are hugely popular policies that work really well in the countries that tried them. So it has nothing to do with socialism or communism or whatever.”

“Actually, capitalism and the welfare state need each other. So something like a guaranteed basic income that I’ve been arguing for would actually be venture capital for the people. So that everyone can start a new company or move to a different job or a different city, which will make the economy much more dynamic. Now if we look at the history of innovation – take the Iphone, for example – every sliver of the fundamental technology of the Iphone was invented by researchers on the government payroll….all these breakthrough technologies are financed by the government. Capitalism and the government – they need each other.”

Asked how Democratic candidates should handle this in the campaign, he responded, “You’re just being a realist, right? Basically advocating the ideas that the majority of Americans want. We need a massive transformation of the economy when we talk about issues like climate change or inequality. It’s really the so-called moderates…the centrists…I think that’s the real radical fringe. It’s really a crazy radical idea of sticking to the status quo right now. The challenges are huge right now. We have to halt emissions on a global scale by 2050. So we need that huge transformation of the economy. So then if you say, ‘I’m a moderate, we should tinker around the edges’ that’s a pretty crazy proposition if you ask me.”

Exploitation Of The American Dream.

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The American Dream is a belief firmly rooted in our culture that anyone – regardless of race, gender, or circumstances of birth – can achieve prosperity through determination and hard work. That belief has led to our nation’s success and made it a beacon for people the world over.

Unfortunately, in recent years, the American Dream has been exploited by the wealthy and the powerful to serve their own self-interests. By encouraging you to believe that their success is the result of hard work, they have convinced you that you, too, can be a billionaires or, at very least, a multi-millionaire. All you have to do is work hard and vote to protect their wealth from extraordinary taxes.

But the reality is that most billionaires like Donald Trump achieved their wealth through a combination of luck, unethical or illegal activities, and by inheriting it their families. Indeed, very few Americans will become billionaires. The vast majority will struggle just to make ends meet. Nevertheless, the idea that you, too, can be obscenely rich is persuasive. So many Americans continue to vote against their self-interest by voting for those who propose tax cuts that benefit only the powerful and the wealthy.

Want to know why we can’t afford to rebuild our infrastructure? Why your child can’t afford the tuition of a college or university? Why your children are likely to be worse off than you? It’s because you’ve been conned into supporting tax cuts for large corporations and the wealthy.

While you struggle to pay your taxes, the people you admire pay a much smaller tax rate than you. And many don’t pay any taxes at all. Many have hired skilled tax lawyers who help them hide their wealth in shell corporations in places like Bermuda, the Caymans, Luxembourg and Panama. Some of the wealthy don’t even have to go to those lengths. They simply invest in shell corporations located in the on-shore tax havens of Delaware, South Dakota and Nevada. Didn’t know those tax havens exist? That’s because you don’t have the resources to take advantage of them.

And those multinational corporations that promised to create more jobs if only you cut their tax rate? They used the money saved from their lower tax rates to buy back their stock and pay their already wealthy executives bigger bonuses. Some are still stashing their international profits off shore until they can con you into supporting even larger tax cuts.

Don’t be angry at them. The wealthy and the corporations are just doing what they always do – finding ways to make more money. Instead, be angry at yourself. It is your own greed – the idea that someday you, too, will be obscenely wealthy that has led to the current situation. After all, you’re smart. And you’re willing to work hard. But the reality is that you have a better chance of winning the lottery – 175 million to one – than becoming a billionaire by creating a Microsoft or a Facebook.

In other words, you’re being played for a sucker. If you really want to succeed, look to the example of the greatest generation – the generation that survived the Great Depression and World War Following the war, the soldiers then came home to build the American middle class. They taxed the wealthy in order to build roads and all of the things we take for granted today. Executives were content to take a modest salary in order to make their corporations stronger. Unlike today’s generations, they didn’t consider themselves exceptional. They weren’t given Cs for just showing up in class. Most were proud to refer to themselves as just an average Joe or an average Jill. They didn’t expect to become wealthy. They just wanted to work hard, earn a good wage, live comfortably and make things better for their kids than themselves.

For them, that was the American Dream. I believe it should be enough.

“If You’re Explaining, You’re Losing.”

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That is the “wisdom” voiced by a number of political reporters when discussing the latest GOP accusations that Social Democracy and Socialism are one in the same…a perfect example of the flaws with today’s headline-driven, sensation-seeking journalism. Those reporters and their editors seem to believe that the American people are incapable of understanding complexity and context. But how would they know? They have seldom tried.

Certainly, local radio and TV newsrooms lack the time, resources and will to analyze complex issues and report them objectively. But the same can’t be said of cable TV networks.

Cable TV networks like CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have both the resources and the time to provide insight and details for complex issues – to help viewers understand social democracy, climate change, immigration, federal deficits, racial disparity and most other issues of our time. Instead, it seems they would rather focus on headlines and details. (One notable exception is Rachel Maddow who often uses her entire hour-long show to accurately explore the details of a single story. At the other extreme is Fox News, which like many talk radio shows, prefers to serve as a cheerleader and propagandist for the Republican Party.)

Want to know the difference between social democracy and socialism? You’d have better success asking a political science professor than watching a newscast. In reality, the only people who are likely to be asked to define social democracy on television or radio are its Republican opponents who will confuse it with communism. They will want to scare the bejeezus out of you to prevent you from voting for programs that might actually benefit you as opposed to their tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations. For the record, most of the nations in the advanced world are successful social democracies. They have universal health care, free education, free daycare and pensions, all paid for by taxes. Instead, the US has gone in another direction. Thanks to sustained GOP tax cuts, the US is now recognized as an oligarchy – a government dominated by the very rich and powerful. But have you seen or heard any broadcast news organization question that? Have you seen GOP politicians and strategists asked to explain and defend the policies that led to oligarchy?

That should tell you everything you need to know about cable TV’s journalistic bias.

Want to know the details and consequences of the two parties’ budget proposals? You’ll have to sort through dozens and dozens of newspaper, magazine and online articles in order to piece together a scant understanding. Want to know the true consequences of unabated carbon emissions on our planet? You’ll need to read detailed reports and studies from the world’s climate scientists. Want to really understand the Green New Deal? You’ll have to wait for an interview with its sponsor. And you’re more likely to find that on a late night TV talk show than in a newscast.

What passes for fairness in television journalism these days is this: The news host presents a news headline or encapsulated story. Then the host brings on pundits or officials from each party to provide their viewpoints on the story. The viewer is then expected to reach their own conclusions. There is no attempt to drill down to the truth. The hosts are more interested in providing equal time.

That’s not journalism! It’s infotainment.

When I attended journalism school, we were taught to search for the facts and truth. Opinions needed to be labeled as such. Equal time was only considered in terms of political campaigns. We were taught that there are not two sides to the truth. There is only the truth. That’s why network news reporters were once ranked as some of the most credible people in the world. They reported the truth without concern for providing time for opposing viewpoints. As Walter Cronkite famously said, “My job is not to tell you what you want to know. My job is to tell you what you need to know.”

No one understands the reality of today’s journalism standards better than reality TV star, Donald J. Trump. During the 2016 election, as Hillary and other Democrats proposed detailed solutions for our nation’s most pressing problems, Trump offered simplistic proposals (“Mexico will pay for the wall”) and sensational attacks against his opponent (“Lock her up”). Not surprisingly, the television news shows ignored substance and, instead, fawned over Trump, giving him endless hours of coverage. Even when he was exposed as a sexual assaulter, racist, fraud and liar, the media continued to host him at every opportunity. In industry parlance, Trump was “good copy.”

Even today, Trump dominates the airwaves. Whether it’s news of the Russia investigation, the corruption of his administration, the criminality of his family and his associates, or his avalanche of lies, the cable TV news channels are virtually all Trump all the time. As a result, the reality of his crimes and corruption are diminished – lost in a sea of stories and commentary by politicians and pundits on both sides.

Of course, there are still many diligent, hardworking reporters writing in newspapers, magazines and online outlets. And, in fairness, there are also many working for television news organizations. But their work is often overshadowed by the TV hosts, the pundits, the political strategists, the fear-mongers and the conspiracy theorists.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” We all need to work at educating ourselves. We can’t rely on TV news hosts, radio instigators, and social media platforms populated by Russian trolls to do the job for us. We need to do our own research; to seek out serious journalists; to read academic and scientific studies; to find the purveyors of truth.

It requires effort. But that’s what the nation’s founders would have expected of us.

“Patriotism Is The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel.”

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Samuel Johnson’s statement from the 18th century is just as true now as it was then.

When exposed, scoundrels will often claim patriotic intentions while questioning the patriotism of their accusers. For example, in order to hide their true beliefs, anti-government conservatives decorate their homes, their cars and their persons with the stars and stripes of the American flag. To disguise their racism, white nationalists also hide behind the flag. In an attempt to hide the treasonous complicity of his presidential campaign with Russians, Donald J. Trump questioned Hillary Clinton’s patriotism by alleging that she sold 20 percent of US uranium to Russia. And at this year’s CPAC, the traitor-in-chief waddled onto stage and made a show out of embracing the flag.

Now facing the pressure of a Democratic-controlled House Oversight Committee determined to fulfill its constitutional duty, Trump has built his re-election campaign around the same strategy by labeling his tormenters and potential opponents “un-American socialists.”

There are two distinct problems with that claim: One is that Trump doesn’t know the meaning of patriotism, and he doesn’t give a hoot about the majority of Americans. He has never tried to govern from the center in order to represent all Americans. He has done nothing to reach out to those who voted for his political opponents. Instead, he continually tries to pit his angry, loyal base against others – Democrats, people of color, Muslims and the LGBTQ population. He continues to call for investigations of Hillary by leading his followers in chants of “Lock her up.” He has refused to denounce neo-Nazis and white supremacists. In fact, he has embraced them. And he still maintains that President Obama was born in Kenya.

Second, he is mischaracterizing social democracy by calling it socialism in order to equate Democratic proposals with those of the failed Soviet Union and Venezuela. But, in fact, the “socialist” policies being proposed by Democrats are similar to those of Britain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden and much of the developed world – policies such as universal health care, free or affordable education, the Green New Deal, higher marginal tax rates for the extremely wealthy, and higher rates for estate taxes. These are all necessary if we are to rebuild our infrastructure, our middle class and the American dream. Without such policies, we may soon find ourselves lagging behind other global powers.

At the same time, in the name of patriotism, Trump and his administration have gone to extremes to destroy or diminish our nation’s most important institutions. If successful, his declaration of a national emergency to build his wall will diminish the power of purse given to the House of Representatives by our Constitution. He has damaged the power of the press by convincing his followers that any news critical of his actions is “fake news.” He has convinced his followers that the FBI, the DOJ and most other government agencies are controlled by the “deep state” which is determined to undermine his decisions. He dismisses the findings of our intelligence agencies and takes the word of our nation’s greatest enemies, instead. He and the GOP-controlled Senate have filled our court system with ideologues with neither the experience, the objectivity nor the temperament to act as judges. In addition, he has undermined our relationships with our most loyal allies.

And, according to many of those who have known him longest, if impeached or defeated in the 2020 election, Trump will not relinquish his office quietly. Indeed, they fear a second civil war. If those people are correct, Trump and his followers will no doubt claim that they are declaring martial law out of a sense of patriotism.