Between Elon Musk’s Twittersphere and the country-wide talk radio echo chamber Donald Trump’s Republican Party has a media propaganda machine equal to that of the Communist Party in China, Vladimir Putin’s autocracy in Russia, and Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. Information available to the public is to be tightly controlled and manipulated to favor the ruling regime. 1984 explores, in combining Orwell’s experience and insights expressed in two earlier novels, the callous oblivion of British capitalism in Burmese Days and Stalin’s betrayal in the Spanish Civil War of a truly populist people’s rebellion in Homage to Catalonia, the end of truth, love, and caring in power politics. Like Big Brother, Trump continually expresses an aura of absolute certainty of his correctness. More than ever Orwell should be required reading for everyone of voting age.
Tag Archives: American Politics
The Future of Trumpism
The MAGA rioters who stormed the Capitol and the Neo-Nazi Fascist Klansmen marching at a Trump rally in Charlottesville regarded themselves as patriotic revolutionaries acting under a romantic illusion that brute force was a realistic means to keep Donald Trump in the White House. The real insurrectionists today are the authors and proponents of Project 2025 who recognize that the true power in capitalist America is money, even more so since the Conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that it had unlimited “free speech” power. Project 2025 is structured around a Libertarian ethos of freedom from regulation, maximum profit, and concentrated wealth that will radically alter the historical arc of American democracy. It has deep pocket corporate and individual backers. Donald Trump aspires to personal autocratic power, able to hire and fire as he sees fit, but at the forefront of Project 2025, he is largely a storefront manikin and incoherent entry level drug to an authoritarian rule of wealth. J D Vance has had a few opening glitches, but with his manly White embrace of religious and family values, his roots in the Midwest, and time spent in the tech world of Silicon Valley, he stands as a reliably malleable successor to lead the Project 2025 revolution. In this election, America stands at a crossroads of its self-definition.
RP
Avatar
Religious and exploitive, white supremacy has been at the core of the American ethos since the first European colonists arrived. The New World was God’s gift to enterprising freedom seekers, and what a grand gift it has been. Waves of entrepreneurs, religious and economic, swept across the continent, pushing aside all standing in their way. Donald Trump, thus, is not an upstart anomaly in the American experience. He is the embodiment of a segment of its ethnic and cultural psyche and history. That he has millions of America First, true believers enthusiastically supporting his candidacy shows how deeply embedded bullying white supremacy remains in the hearts of much of the American public. He is their avatar, and it is he and his followers who are the true victims of injustice in today’s morally and technologically evolving world. “We represent all that is great in America and we are under attack spiritually, emotionally, and economically. We are its anchor”. If there is weakness in Trump’s drive to power it is his blatant need of acceptance and love, and that white supremacy no longer abides below the radar and now needs a heroic figurehead. A nationwide admittance of Truth and Reconciliation concerning the dark side of American history is possible but perhaps a bridge too far. Further, there is in Moby Dick, that most American of novels, the example of the sailors on the Pequod, open-eyed, casting their lot with the mad obsession of Ahab. America’s future awaits.
RP
On and on
Cultural momentum, be Chinese and Russian authoritarian imperialism or Euro-American colonial white supremacy, remain primal driving forces in world political history. The same must be said of the religious institutions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, each claiming being the favorite of God, and equally so of the global consumption of the life and riches of the Earth for survival and power. War and violence, profit and larceny, have been part and parcel of human history from its onset. As for American democracy being “a shining city on a hill”, armaments and munitions sales are soaring, fossil fuel drilling and consumption are booming, Andrew Jackson, father of the Trail of Tears, remains the face of the $20 bill, and Donald Trump aspires to an autocratic Presidency and has an avid following. The trajectory of mankind, increasingly technologically accelerated, seems ever more virally spiraling out of control, trending toward an uncertain end. The meek may well be destined to inherit the Earth or at least what is left of it. A basic law of physics states that a body in motion remains in motion until meeting a countering force. The heart of humankind is divided, at best bipolar, in imagining the future. Where we eventually land is narrowing precipitously.
RP
The face of America
To the Editor:
Donald Trump, his Cabinet coterie of thugs and robber barons, his White Nationalist cult following, and Congressional Republican go-alongs regard themselves the true face of America. It is not a pretty picture, and, sadly, to a degree it is true. Up until the Civil War, the wealth of the nation was largely built on slavery in the South and immigrant sweatshop labor in the North. Exploitation of human and natural resources has long held sway in the American economy and the resulting class hierarchy based on the power of money has created the increasingly disparate distribution of wealth we see today. This is capitalism run amok and it is destroying the American dream. One can call those trying to rein in the excesses of wealth socialists, but they are the people in reality trying to make America a nation of ideals benefitting more than an elite few.
– RP
Divine Revelation
To the Editor:
In trying to come to terms with the Trump Presidency, I find myself having to maintain that this is a Divine Revelation of just how virally insane mankind can (and has) become. Man, mankind, humankind, homo sapiens, how ever you want to call us, we are the apex predator/polluter/destroyer species on the planet, this “our” Earth. That the trajectory of the evolution of life–LIFE! for God’s sake!–has arrived at us would seem to be the penultimate act of Absurdist Theater, equally so those scriptures claiming man was made “in the image of God. Man! I hope not. That is not to say we do not have virtues. There are many, but clinging to the twisted sense of power that comes with deliberately double thinking and casting doubt on the existence of Truth and Reality in all things borders on personal and group dementia. “Truth is Beauty, Beauty Truth”, that is something you can have both ways.
RP
Chauvinism and DoubleThink
To the Editor:
It is hard to imagine a more bumbling exhibition of male chauvinism than that of the Kavanaugh Judiciary Committee hearings. The level of discomfort of the candidate and the Republican members at being confronted with the female gestalt belongs more on the psychiatrist’s couch than under full public scrutiny. None the less, Kavanaugh’s display of privileged, All-American, sports-loving, beer-guzzling, combative prolonged adolescence seems not to have deterred their support for seating him on the Supreme Court. In deflecting criticism to Democrats rather than at Dr. Ford, they do recognize they are playing with fire in regards to women voters, but that they found, despite Kavanaugh’s frequently less than forthcoming answers, both testimonies “credible” indicates how deeply embedded DoubleThink, the ability to simultaneously believe two utterly contradictory “facts”, has become in American politics. Truthfulness no longer seems to hold great value, and here Donald Trump is the master of creating and manipulating the ensuing confusion in people’s minds. That the Republican Party has gone “all in” on this strategy of assuming power is disappointing in its disregard of honor once having been a Conservative value.
-RP
Trickle Down
To the Editor:
Let’s call it Trickle Me Once, Trickle Me Twice. The Trumpublican tax “reform” is a simple reaffirmation of Ronald Reagan’s supply-side, trickle down economic platform that has resulted in the wealth and income disparity we have today. It is purely magical thinking to believe that the corporate world will share its tax windfall with the average working American whose own tax “relief”, unlike that for corporations, is set to expire. Company bonuses are nice but, unlike pay raises, they are only temporary. In other words, future deficits will fall squarely upon public rather than corporate income and Conservatives can amplify their disparagement of federal public well-being and safety net programs such as Medicare and Social Security. The goal seems to be to continue the transformation of America into a Banana Republic ruled by a wealthy, oligarchical elite. All “isms” have positive and negative aspects, but coupled with the deregulation of banking and the fossil fuel extraction industries, this is Capitalism at its worst.
Robert Porath
Climax Molybdenum
To the Editor:
The Climax Molybdenum Mine between Copper Mountain and Leadville in Colorado has over the years eaten away an entire mountainside along the Continental Divide and its milling operation filled a once-pristine mountain valley with lifeless, chemical-laden tailings. Downstream is Dillon Reservoir, a major source of Denver and Front Range water. The mine is now asking the EPA to allow the acceptable level of molybdenum in water be increased. Scott Pruitt is rapidly transforming the Environmental Protection Agency into the Industrial Production and Profit Protection Agency, but increasing the allowable level of molybdenum in water by a factor of 236 times is surely a step too far. Then again public safety is not the issue.
Robert Porath
The Politics of Race
To the Editor:
It is becoming clear that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are continuing to count on the White backlash to the Obama years to ensure their political majority in 2018 and 2020, that and gerrymandering and voter suppression Mike Pence’s media stunt of abruptly leaving the Indianapolis Colts game could have not been more blatant to that end, and the NFL seems now so afraid of losing its fan base that it has joined in on the platform. One has to wonder how Black athletes feel about being thrown under the bus and how might they react. Steve Bannon may no longer have a position in the White House, but he is still dominating both the political narrative and the Republican agenda.
Robert Porath
