Tag Archives: Donald J. Trump

Point of View Columns

From Black Shirts to Brown Shirts to Proud Boys

There are any number of reasons why a few days ago millions of Americans chose to watch Donald Trump on CNN lie about everything except the existence of gravity. Much in the same way that traffic slows to look at the four-car crash, millions of us took the time to clarify and ratify what we already know – one Donald J. Trump is a liar of epic proportions and he presents a clear and present danger to any pretense at democracy that is left in the future of this country.

Watching him lie about his recent loss of the defamation and assault law suit was like watching Aaron Judge swat hanging curve balls on a Little League field. Watching him lie about the war in Ukraine was reminiscent of Muhammad Ali toying with less talented pretenders to his heavyweight crown.

But when he started to lie about the 2020 election the scene was reminiscent of Patrick Mahomes throwing underhanded touchdown passes over thirty yards. It beggars the imagination that almost three full years after the 2020 election that Trump has embedded his imaginary victory into the minds of over 60 million of his followers and we began to see why.

Repetition of the election lies within the same paragraph, within the same sentence, sometimes without taking a breath for what seemed like minutes at a time. His ability to lie about his infamous call the Georgia Secretary of State when he asked him to “find” enough votes is just something to behold. Kind of like Steph Curry shooting jump shots forty feet away from the basket – nothing but net.

Trump did lie when he asserted that he had a legal right to hold on to any secret/confidential government documents. He did lie when he said that he never incited the January 6th mob to violently attack the Capitol.

He did not lie, however, when he said that he would pardon most of the January 6th insurrectionists if he was reelected. And we should believe him.

Indeed, we should have been believing him ever since he came down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 when he announced that he was actually running for president after multiple false starts over a span of decades.

And we should have believed him when he said that only he could save America upon his inauguration in 2017.

That item is particularly important because those are the words of a true autocrat driven by an ego that has gone over to the Dark Side. And any student of history can see some real similarities.

Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy accompanied by armed thugs called the Black Shirts. And it was the Black Shirts that eliminated and intimidated all and any opposition or competition. And when the opposition realized that Mussolini was a real and present danger to anything resembling democracy in Italy, it was too late.

Following the Mussolini model, Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany accompanied by armed thugs call the Brown Shirts. And it was the Black Shirts that eliminated and intimidated all and any opposition or competition. And when the opposition that Hitler was a real and present danger to anything resembling democracy in Germany, it was too late.

And now, following the model of 21st century autocrats like Putin and Erdogan and Orban, Trump has organized his opposition to democracy in ways that are remarkably similar to his ilk. Not satisfied with the minority rule tendencies of American democracy which got him elected in the first place, Trump has his Proud Boys and Oath Keepers – organized and well-armed gaggles of thugs who have pledged their loyalty to Trump – no matter what. These New Age Black Shirts are better armed than anything the early versions of Mussolini or Hitler could have ever imagined.

These nascent Trump Guerrilla Gangs have already shown that they will kill on his command, that they will seek to overthrow the American version of democracy on his command and that they will follow him lemming-like off the cliff of a civilized nation into something more terrible than they can imagine.

Meanwhile there are over sixty million Americans who would vote for Trump as president today, without any fear or intimidation involved. There are millions of Americans who cringe at the notion of another Trump presidency but may not vote because of voting restrictions or worse, because of inertia or some misguided belief in the probable end of the American version of democracy.

Whatever the case may be, it should be clear that this nation is being threatened by a clear and present danger called Trump.

He is not just another demagogue. He is something so much worse because he has inspired belief in a matrix of lies that cannot admit the truth. That belief has inspired tens of millions of Americans to turn their backs on even a pretense of democracy in order to preserve an imaginary past is built on the foundation of white male supremacy.

Maya Angelou once said “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”.

Trump has shown us who he is.

We should believe him.

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Point of View Columns

Apocalypse on the Horizon

By now the whole world knows what the people of New York City have known for decades – Donald Trump is the embodiment of a dystopian nightmare. In New York City he is known to be a liar, a cheat and perhaps the most blatantly insincere human being walking the face of Earth.

And New Yorkers are wondering how in the name of Bedlam and Bellevue could this living incarnation of megalomania manage to get 74,222,958 American adults to vote for him to be President of the United States…again? And yet we are faced with the man who brought you Trump University and Trump Steaks being the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

And by virtue of some satanic legerdemain Trump has gotten himself embroiled in a briar patch of litigation all of which have the possibility of him receiving a prison sentence(s) and fines that would take some of the sheen off of his fake persona of being a wildly successful businessman (who has managed to turn debt and bankruptcy into an art form). Meanwhile, simultaneously, he has managed to turn his travails into the Via Dolorosa of MAGA Nation, and his followers are more ardent than ever in following their Fake Messiah.

Just the mention of his various legal troubles has his followers loading up their AR-15’s and SUV’s to go somewhere to do something against the Deep State that is, according to Trump, the source of all of their troubles. And, as we saw on 1.6.21, it is clear that a few words from Trump, uttered at the right time, become an incantation that brings about literal death and destruction.

And now, on April 4, 2023, the hold that Trump has on MAGA Nation will be on full display for the United States and the world to see. The sight of the now indicted and accused leader of MAGA Nation as a defendant in New York State Supreme Court will be too much for many to bear. They may not make it to 100 Centre Street in Manhattan, but they will let their fear and anger be known – hopefully through peaceful protest, although it would appear that a significant cohort of MAGA Nation could not spell peaceful if you spotted them a “p” and an “f”.

Donald Trump reminds us of what happen when a child learns how to light matches but is absolutely ignorant as to the damage that can occur with the resultant fire. Similarly, Trump throws around words like “Death and Destruction” not realizing that way too many of his 74 million certified followers take those words seriously. And too many members of MAGA Nation own most of the over 400 million guns in this country, including millions of AR-15 weapons.

So, when Trump talks about “Death and Destruction” and “Soon You’re Not Going to Have a Country”, there are millions of well-armed believers who will follow him straight to Hell, as he seems to be asking them to do.

It remains to be seen whether two years from now 4.4.23 will be remembered as the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King or will it be remembered for something even worse – the continuation of a dystopian outcome for these United States.

And if it is the latter, the blood of America will be on the tiny hands of one Donald J. Trump.

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Point of View Columns

As the Ides of March Approach…

According to Shakespeare the Ides of March did not work out too well for Julius Caesar. And right now, it doesn’t like the Ides are accompanied by a whole lot of good things happening in these United States. Consider just two items taken from the news:

In Defense of White Male Supremacy

The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has brought to light any number of considerations and concerns with respect to the banking industry in particular, and the financial services universe writ large. Commercial banking is not supposed to be in the business of risky business, but somehow SVB missed that memorandum and the entire banking biosphere is concerned, and rightfully so.

 The pileup of Credit Suisse and Signature Bank and other banks are certainly evidence that the worse may be yet to come. The collective “we” are right to be worried.

And then along comes Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri, “The Show Me” state. And say what you will, Senator Hawley has certainly showed us.

You may remember him giving a fist salute to the assembled armed mob as it gathered outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021. And you may also remember him doing his best imitation of Usain Bolt as he sprinted for his life, fleeing from that same mob after it breached the Capitol.

He certainly showed us.

More recently, along with other white male supremacists, Hawley claimed that the reason for the collapse of SVB is that the board was too concerned with DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) concerns rather than focusing on the core business interests of the bank.

The unstated and underlying thought is that if the board consisted of white males who focused solely on the bottom line SVB would not have been so poorly managed and it certainly would not have crashed. Because, of course, white male executives are the epitome of excellence as opposed to all of those components of DEI, what with Blacks and Latinos and Asians men and women bringing their obvious lack of competence to the E-Suite and the board room.

Hawley need not apologize or retract his ignorant statement because he is saying what too many other Americans believe to be the case. No matter that white males were the senior managers of IBM when it turned down the opportunity to acquire Microsoft from a young Bill Gates and Paul Allen. No matter that white males were the senior managers when Lehman Brothers crashed, burned and died – the same being the case when the white male senior management of Kodak refused the opportunity to manufacture digital cameras.

The point is that no grouping of humans is particularly excellent or particularly inept because of race or gender or sexual choice. And the further point is that Hawley and his running partners are spectacularly ignorant in their efforts to resuscitate the dying ghost of white male supremacy.

 Beware of Professor Amy Wax

It turns out that the University of Pennsylvania has at least two blemishes on an otherwise stellar reputation as one of the finest institutions of higher education in the United States. The first is that one its alumni goes by the name of Donald J. Trump. Although it is fair to note that the Great Ghoul of the G.O.P. until long after graduation. But still…it counts.

A much more egregious flaw at the University of Pennsylvania is that a tenured professor by the name of Amy Wax continues to teach at the university’s excellent law school. Here are just a few quotes dredged from the slime of her statements both in class and in public:

“…on average, Blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites”

“…non-Western people feel a tremendous amount of resentment and shame”

“…. some non-Western countries are shitholes” (another UPenn alumnus used the exact same quote – guess who?

“women, on average, are less knowledgeable than men” (Obviously Professor Wax is note referring to herself in that comparative statement)

Speaking of television ads – “They never show Blacks the way they really are: a bunch of single moms with a bunch of guys who float in and out. Kids by different men.”

“American Blacks and people from non-Western countries feel shame for the ‘outsized achievements and contributions’ of Western people”

And finally…” when blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western Civilization – any kind of civilization – disappears”

These are not the rantings of some neo-Nazi white supremacist holed up in a Posse Comitatus compound somewhere in Idaho. These are public and classroom statements from a tenured professor where students incur a cost of $100,772 annually in order to have the advantage being a graduate of a law school with such a fine reputation for education and intellectual excellence.

Somehow, this renegade from common sense and common decency is allowed to continue to teach and besmirch the reputation of UPenn Law School because she is tenured and through some twisted interpretation of the notion of academic freedom and free speech.

But there are limits on rights and privileges. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that the right of freedom of speech does not allow a person to yell “fire” in a crowded theater.

Similarly, in an institution of higher learning some stunted notion of decency and at least a gossamer connection to the truth would preclude an instructor from stating that the genocide committed against the indigenous people of North America or the Jewish people of Europe were somehow good and necessary acts in efforts to make the world a better place.

Finally, how or why would students who will incur $300,000 in law school expenses want to be at an institution that permits someone like Amy Wax to teach under the pretext of free speech and the protection of tenure.

And finally, finally – who are the students who still enroll in classes taught by Amy Wax? Are they ok being in a classroom with someone who wanders through the sewers of hate and racism and who might spew some of that hate and racism at any moment?

Somebody is not getting their money’s worth. That’s for sure.

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Point of View Columns

The Day That Donald Trump Declared War on America

As the new year began there was the faint flicker of hope that 2021 would be a better year because at least it would not be 2020. But the fact that Trump was still president meant that his capacity for creating chaos would remain.

There are a number of dates in American history that are remembered with dismay and pain.

  • April 15, 1865 – the day that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The first time that an American president had ever been killed while in office.
  • December 7, 1941 – the day that the Empire of Japan attacked the United States without a prior declaration of war. Thousands of Americans died in the attack and America entered World War II.
  • November 22, 1963 – the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the first time that an American president had been assassinated since 1901.
  • April 4, 1968 – the day that Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.
  • September 11, 2001 – the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that resulted in the death of over 3,000 Americans
  • January 6, 2021 – the day that Donald Trump declared war on America

That last bullet might sound extreme except that it is true. If any foreign power or individual invited a huge mob of disaffected, well-armed true believers to come to Washington and then incited and invited that mob to attack the United States Capitol it would be considered an act of war. An individual would be charged with capital crimes including sedition, inciting to riot and treason.

Trump took these actions with the clear goal of derailing the certification of the presidential election results so that he, Trump, could remain in power. This is a clear and present case of treason and sedition. These are certainly impeachable offenses with which no American president has ever been charged. But if there were ever a time, now is the time.

An historical note – Andrew Jackson was arguably the most disruptive president in American history pre-Trump. Upon his inauguration he invited hundreds of his drunken supporters into the White House who virtually trashed the place as they celebrated. Very bad taste indeed – but not treasonous.

Now Trump comes along – with a portrait of Andrew Jackson in his office – and directs his supporters to attack the Capitol and the members of Congress to keep himself in office. And they actually go ahead and do it – Trump calls them patriots and beautiful people and as of this writing remains absolutely remorseless. And lack of remorse is just one more indication of how damaged a human being Trump is.

It should also be noted that the Trump mob was virtually all white. This all white mob virtually waltzed passed the Capitol police who were happy to take selfies with these invading rioters. The all white mob terrorized the members of Congress who were forced to cower and hide. The all white mob destroyed property, defaced the Capitol and generally acted like the deranged fools that they clearly are.

And their grievances are hard to discern at first? There were no poor people in the crowd. Most were reasonably well dressed and it is doubtful that there were many homeless or jobless white men and women in the mob. Their grievance was that their sense of White Privilege was being eroded by the progress of Black people, LatinX people, Muslims, LGBTQ communities and any “other” group that offended them.

And then, the DC polic4e allowed this mob to exit with few arrests failing only to give them souvenir gifts commemorating their visit to the nation’s Capitol. Four mobsters died under circumstances that are not yet clear. But there was no wholesale violence or brutality suffered by this all white mob.

Now change the narrative of the past two paragraphs from all white to all Black and think about how different the outcome would have been. After all, peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors have been shot, killed, maimed and arrested en masse without attacking any governmental buildings or committing acts that could be called treasonous or seditious in any way.

Think what the body count would be if thousands of Black Lives Matter protestors had invaded the Capitol and harassed and threatened the members of Congress while trashing and defacing the building in the process. The body count would not be complete as of the writing of this column.

Two things are clear from yesterday’s staged debacle. First, White Privilege is real. The overwhelmingly white men and women who made up the mob felt that they had a right to act in an illegal and violent fashion because they didn’t like the election results. Such is the perspective from the ivory tower of White Privilege. Such behavior would have been suicidal for Black Americans.

Second, Donald J. Trump did indeed promote a civil insurrection against the United States government and should be held accountable. There may be only thirteen days left in his Reign of Terror but his actions on January 6, 2021 should not be without consequence.

He was already going to be ranked as the worst president in the history of the United States. He should now be the first president ever convicted of treason.

After all, Trump did declare war on the America.

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Point of View Columns

The True Disaster That Is Trump

From the time that Donald Trump’s horror show of a presidential campaign began with a poetically appropriate descent down his own personal escalator to nowhere even though the political opponents, political observers and his battalions of true believing sycophants never believed that he would actually become President of the United States. This disbelief made it possible for many to ignore, excuse or laugh at the Buffoon Who Would Be King. And it can be seriously argued that it was this disbelief that established the foundation for his improbable victory and historically disastrous presidency.

Future historians will be awestruck at the fact that virtually the same population of Americans who elected Barack Obama twice would then elect Donald J. Trump. And historians will be dumbstruck at the amount of damage one man could do to institutions that were established and refined (albeit imperfectly) over the course of more than two hundred years. And yet, in November of 2018, with the second anniversary of his inauguration approaching, Donald Trump may not have a Soviet-style military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue but his thoughts, words, actions, enablers and true believers are responsible for the potential degradation and decline of the United States.

Lest such rhetoric seem a bit extreme, it will be important to consider facts that are irrefutable. While there has always been a natural and therefore healthy tension between the presidency and the press, there has simply never been a president that referred to the press and journalists as “enemies of the people”. This cartoonish, playground epithet might be dismissed as ignorant lunatic ranting except that the history of dictatorships over the past 100 years almost always featured the demonization of the press so that the only truth is the truth uttered by the fearless leader/savior/messiah.

Whether it involves insulting reporters (“stupid” is a curiously favorite word in Trump’s truly limited vocabulary), turning “fake news” into a serious discussion point or banning journalists from the White House press briefings, the 45th president goes lower every day in his attacks on the press. And once the dissenting press becomes the acknowledged enemy, we are only a few goose steps from the dissent of any citizen becoming a message from “the enemy of the people”. And history tells us quite clearly what happens next.

And even though Trump’s vocabulary is limited by his almost non-existent reading and even more microscopic attention span, his increased use of the term “nationalistic” is reminiscent of the same kind of danger we easily recognize when we see a child racing through a gas station with a flaming tiki torch in hand. Yet, while we recognize the tiki torch toting tot as a danger, we get tangled in rhetorical nuances when it is obvious that white nationalists hear the Trump dog whistle as loud and as clear as Klan klaxon horn.

This call to arms has left people dead in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and California in just the past two weeks and no matter how much Trump may deny it, there is blood on his hands. And as long as he continues spewing presidential hate speech disguised as ignorant ramblings of a megalomaniac, there will be more blood.

And as bad and as dangerous as Trump’s domestic destruction is –and it is bad and dangerous – his behavior on the international stage may prove to be even more terrible. Using a word like “nationalism” in regions of the world, where millions of people died as a consequence of such rhetoric, is more than stupid. Trump has not only inspired mini-Trump-wannabees in Italy, Poland, France, Egypt, and Turkey and in other countries where the road to fascistic perdition was only paved over in recent memory. The consequences of Trumpspeak are too horrific to contemplate, but a smoldering globe needs only a few more flamethrowers before conflagrations become common place.

And lest an apocalyptic vision seem too extreme, consider the irreversible damage to the environment that have been occasioned by the Trump administration. The removal of “job-killing” regulations have given rise to “people-killing” environmental danger zones across this country. The damage that can take place over the few years of a Trump presidency can result in near-permanent damage for decades, no matter who becomes president. But when the President of the United States ignores science and refutes facts with hoots and catcalls, there are too many Americans believe that he is actually making sense.

This country has never seen a president with such obviously malign intentions. His racism is there for all the world to see. His misogyny is part of his DNA. His ignorance fuels his disdain for intelligence and logic. And his cavalier attitude towards potential disasters – nuclear, climate, environmental, infrastructure, economic – should give pause even to the most ardent of his Republican enablers, because Republicans have children and grandchildren too and because Republicans cannot possibly wish to bequeath a dystopian future to those children and grandchildren.

It should be clear by now that the nightmare that is Trump is not a dream – he is a reality, as are his supporters. But everyone has the ability to determine what tomorrow can be and Trump does not have the power to control that future unless that power is granted to him by those who sit by idly, hoping that he will change or hoping that he really cannot be as bad as he seems to be.

Last words – Trump really is that bad.

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Point of View Columns

Reaction to the Election of Donald J. Trump – In Real Time

The following was written approximately 12 hours after the election of Donald Trump was confirmed:

“I will need more than a few lines to express my thoughts about the election…..was up until 3.20 and saw the blasphemy through to the bitter end….was up at 5.30…went biking @6.30 and was in a tv studio @8.30 for about an hour and a half talking about the election results…….will decompress tonight and try to sort out my thoughts…the one thing I know for certain…I will not let the likes of Donald Trump bring me down for next to a moment…..my grandmothers were a domestic and a seamstress respectively, my grandfathers were a stevedore and a Pullman car porter respectively….after all that they faced – and my mother and father have faced…they would be embarrassed and ashamed if I would let a spoiled foul mouth billionaire diminish my spirit for even a nanosecond……that will never happen….Nietzche said if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger….We are not dead and we are getting stronger every day!”

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Point of View Columns

Is Bernie Sanders Ralph Nader on Steroids?

Historical comparisons are often a dangerous game. Every time is different. Every era is different. But there is something about the potential worst case scenario impact of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign that is eerily reminiscent of Ralph Nader’s quixotic/kamikaze presidential campaign in 2000 which launched the Bush-Cheney era into the 21st century. The entire planet is still paying the price for Nader’s exercise in self-indulgence. The question may be what will be the ultimate cost of Sanders’ windmill tilting.

To be clear, on his best day Bernie Sanders will never have the resume of accomplishment that defines Ralph Nader. Being the avatar of the modern era of consumer advocacy, Nader literally changed lives and saved lives that were at risk of being the victim of various corporate cost-benefit analyses in which human lives were just another cost factor.

And just as clearly, on his best day Ralph Nader was never able to harness the energy born of frustration and the hunger for sociopolitical change that will be the ultimate legacy of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Whether Sanders will be able to ride the whirlwind that he has sown is a completely different story.

What we do know is that against all odds, logic and laws of American political nature, Donald J. Trump is one election away from being President of the United States. What we also know is that President Trump will not only bring bombast, braggadocio and free-style insulting to the White House, he will also bring racism, sexism and white nationalism out of the collective American closet. Not just America, but the entire world will be thrust into the perfect storm of America First crashing into every other competing world view.

This apocalyptic view of a Trump presidency should be enough for even the most progressive advocates for change and political revolution to think long and hard about the risk of eschewing pragmatic politics. The fact that Hillary Clinton has mastered a system which has created insuperable obstacles to the Sanders campaign means that the system is in need of a serious overhaul.

But if that overhaul comes at the expense of degrading and ultimately derailing not only the Clinton candidacy, but the entire Democratic Party, then Donald Trump, not Bernie Sanders, will be the winner. And the moral and political desolation that would be the inheritance of over a third of a billion Americans is simply not worth making political points.

Ralph Nader was warned on multiple occasions that by taking votes away from Al Gore he was enabling the election of the Bush-Cheney tag team. Nader ignored those warnings and many of his supporters felt that there wasn’t enough difference between Gore and Bush-Cheney to matter in any event.

It should be apparent that the difference between President Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump is stark and stunning. It should be apparent to Bernie Sanders that, in continuing to attack Hillary Clinton he is contributing to the corrosive vitriol that has been spewed her way by Republicans for over twenty years.

On November 9th Bernie Sanders will still be a United States Senator and can live a very comfortable life in Vermont. He will be able to live his life just as Ralph Nader continues to live a very comfortable life after being complicit in the election of George W. Bush.

One can only hope that Bernie Sanders and his supporters will mix political pragmatism with their revolutionary vigor. There is simply too much at stake this time around.

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