TRUMP & TRUMPISM, FROM A DISTANCE: WE NEED TO OWN UP TO OUR OWN MISTAKE

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's first term. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.  

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Donald Trump. For all our sake, it would be nice if we could just throw Trump back into the shark tank he came from and as a country just curl up in some quiet corner to lick America’s wounds from Trump’s rampages through the White House and American political history. (Trump did so much damage....,it's hard to forgive but we could ban  him from running for any public office … ever again...to his and our benefit. We owe this to ourselves, and in a way, to Trump.)

Let’s keep in mind that America (we were all, in some way at least curious) wanted to see what a businessman could do as president. We felt businessmen had an inside track on how to get things done because after all their rich lives, multiple homes, and yachts are earned and sustained by sharp eyed focus and cany insight to bottom line actions… we've heard. 

So we got (elected? maybe) Trump who most of us wanted to see apply those supposedly awesome ‘business moves’ to solve America’s problems. 

And we didn’t have to wait long to see Trump apply his impressive television “Apprentice” mojo to running America…and he did a real job on America, and on Americans. Trump nearly ran America into ruin in a random-walk presidency of self-interest, greed, smoke-and-mirrors, con-man slickness, and maybe even treason. 

Trump was America's "Big Sellout." Trump made America into a grifter's buffet. Trump saw the presidency as a 'magic hat' that made people bow.  America was Trump's open sesame and he was awful.

Within weeks after his inauguration, Trump revealed himself to be frighteningly inappropriate.

Working with Trump as president was like trying to put a leash on a rattlesnake for a walk in the park…not working. 

Trump is a middle feeder from a tank of sharks…not the best like Rex Tillerson, nor the worst, but still an atrocious fit. BUT WE ELECTED TRUMP ...SO IN A WAY WE OWE HIM...SOMETHING.

TRUMP wasn't serious about becoming President. He wanted revenge, the free advertising to be used for other money-making projects and to impress with a title on the mantlepiece.  

And Trump didn’t even know or much care about American history, especially Constitutional history. He thought the White House was just a pad with “old furniture” that he wanted to replace with “modern stuff”.  Trump's wife was equally misplaced and showed it. And his daughter thought “Senior Advisor” was a kind of Disney role where she could hawk her clothing brand and get market advantages…like in China. 

Trump's ransacking sprint through the presidency was a sad, sad moment for America. Kinda wish we could not send Trump to prison or relegate him to a laughable history bookmark. Like a middle-feeder carp, I wish for all our sake, we could just throw Trump back into the shark tank he came from and we could curl up in peace to lick America’s wounds from his rampage.

A Matter of Perception, or Continuance of Obfuscation?: the Inner Conflicts of American Democracy -Transparency vs. Efficiency

There was a recent article in Politico (Jan 15, 2020) about the pros and cons, and to what degree, of restricting access of the press to the Senate impeachment trial of President D Trump. The Republican head of Senate (actively pro-Trump), Senator Mitch McConnell, favors strict access restriction while the Democrat Senators and House ''plaintiffs' favor open, transparent hearings with more witness allowances and more press access.  All of this seems to resemble the beginning of a Constitutional conflict much resembling, to Pericles21, the pro-States Rights (and defense of slavery) arguments from John C Calhoun in the early (1820s) days of the American republic.

Pericles21 sees a commonality with both the current Senate arguments for strict constitutionality protection of audience limits on the impeachment press attendance and the 1830s States Rights debates led by John C. Calhoun (South Carolina).

The commonality is both the 1800s Calhoun-led debate over States' Rights (a century ago!) and the current 2020, McConnell-led debate over limiting the presence of the press in the Senate impeachment trial involve hidden agendas.

(And what's with South Carolina which seems to so reliably and regularly spawn wreckers of public calm and potentially the nation itself?)

In the case of States Rights, the debate was superficially about the rights of American States; the real debate was about slavery - whether to continue and protect slavery or move towards emancipation.

The hidden agenda in the current debate over limiting the press attendance in the Senate trial of President Trump,  and influencing nearly all post-2016 election Republican Party behavior, is 'Kompromat' (blackmail in American 'lingo') - whether Trump is guilty of treasonous acts and policy resulting from Russian 'Kompromat'.

Underneath it all, the article adds to a picture of how the Republican party's general political philosophy, intentions, and actions since the 2016 election especially have been antithetical to the Constitution's goals that stress open government operating in the public interest and guided by a healthy free press. In this respect, the question from the Senate Republicans was whether the presence of the press would disrupt the trial. The Democrat perspective hs been the press would help keep the Senate to an open (read 'transparent' and honest) track in the trial of Donald Trump.

As background to establish the aims of the Republicans in the impeachment trial, the Senate Republicans, under the 'leadership' of Mitch McConnell, publicly vowed to effect a predetermined outcome which is to throw out the House impeachment and exonerate of Trump. To achieve this result, the Senate made moves to prevent the House Democrats, whose body had voted to impeach Trump, from fully presenting their case for convicting Trump by heavily 'editing' what witnesses, and how many, the Dems could bring forth to testify against Trump. These Republican moves and similar obstructions starting soon after Trump's inauguration contributed to the primary impeachment points the House successfully brought against Trump.

The visible Senate Republican animosity towards the American press, and by default against transparency in government, has been palpable throughout the Trump campaign and the 3 years so far into the first term.  This is the Trumpists' banner so perfectly summarized in the invention of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' so quickly played against any critical questioning of the Trump presidency.

Pericles21 interprets the Republican use of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' as 'blocking' devices (sophomore debate tricks) thrown out with deliberate cynicism to obfuscate, divert and kill any and all investigations into Trump, his campaign and conduct in office.

Pericles21 further believes the Republicans' use of these and other obfuscation tricks cover up a dark picture of Russian influence, through Russian Kompromat, over the 2016 presidential election and continuing to influence the actions and policies of Trump himself, with the overt assistance of the Republican Senate and from the House (at least until the reversing 2018 Congressional elections made Democrats the controlling party in the House).

Russia's Kompromat influence over Trump (notably, but not exclusively, the Steele Dossier) is 'blackmail material' which was brought out before the 2016 election but has been left out of the impeachment picture. although directly 'thrown' up by Speaker Pelosi's statement that with Trump, "all roads lead to Putin" {Vladimir Putin, Russia's leader].

Trump's 'transgressions' during his compromised campaign and in his term in office so far present an unbroken trail of treason or near-treason, but certainly impeachable conduct.

Some day, Trump and Russian Kompromat will have to be uncovered. One hopes that American governance (bi-partisan) will learn from the lesson with the Trump debacle.

America On Sale: Branding and False Gods

Pericles21 regards the term 'branding', used by the Republican party, to be dangerously inappropriate when used to shape the American political picture.  The usual definition of  'Branding' is an advertising term used to 'sell' something by placing a label on inanimate or non-human objects. Branding also carries the taint of deception which further makes the term inappropriate for use to describe any part of the American democratic process; this is the perspective of Pericles21.

In 2009, Pericles21 commented on the 'tendency' of the GOP to brand itself without being real, or sincere:    

the GOP is lost in a kind of political "mannerism" where they remember the postures but have lost any idea of the meanings and contexts of their awkward and jerky mimicry of conservativeness. The result is the derangement of Limbaugh, the Insaneness of Hannity, the Dreck of Beck, and Michelle Bachmann's stupid utterances accompanied with her really strange, vapid and pat-on-back-expecting-look-at-me-daddy false smiles. The GOP sputterings are not down-to-earth, nurturing oatmeal but dry sawdust and dull nails. [Isn't this 'branding' made into a god?']

Returning to the theme of this post, the artificial and manipulative 'branding' employed so frequently from the GOP lexicon,  agreeing with Pericles21, there are those who see 'branding' as a reality of American politics...with all the pejorative implications of using the term inappropriately.

A recent New York Times opinion piece, 'Donald Trump, Meet Your Precursor' (NYT, December 6, 2019) posits that 'branding', more than ever yet with precedence, is a descriptor of current American democratic mechanisms, our politics,  and warns that American democracy has come to resemble a market with bins full of glitzy labels affixed to ersatz (false) goods rather than a genuine, natural process of public self-governance.

"...the electoral arena has more in common with consumer brand market competition than it does to an academic symposium on immigration policy or a non-profit funded public awareness campaign. Brands are forced to adjust to market realities in ways few advocacy groups ever encounter."

The piece uses a historical review of American political history leading up to the Civil War and then during the "reconstruction' period to give examples of disguising political intentions and actions through branding to first preserve slavery and then, post-war, to turn back to de-facto slavery.  Central to this historical review is the role of the demagogue, the false profit warned about by the Founders...  the demagogue who by false branding and deceitful psychological manipulations, 'natural' aspects belonging to the demagogue's personality, would lead America away from the democratic intentions of the American Constitution and its founders.

But, as Pericles21 noted in 2009, brands can be falsely used as 'persuaders' not in response to genuine market forces but can be deliberately designed with the intention to actively shape and even create market preferences and redirect market forces, through artificial and sometimes cynical psychological manipulations. 

Psychological manipulation, when rationalized apriori by the desired outcome, and especially justified 'post-facto' when successful, can then be defended as a 'good' even when the outcome was achieved using immoral or artificial actions and manipulations, i.e., "triggers" such as playing to, and magnifying, racist or gender prejudices. 

The above background thoughts seem to describe where American democracy has arrived, the ascendancy of a demagogue who has compromised normative behavior with seeming ease despite being uninterested, and unknowing, in the principles of American democracy except where they benefit the personal interests of the demagogue...and his monetary rewards.