TRUMP’S BENT-UP, CROOKED TRUMPET HAS LED AMERICA TO BECOME A THIRD RATE DICTATORSHIP

To begin this post, Trump lost the 2016 American presidential election’s popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes, but he ‘won’ the electoral college ‘tally’ by a significant number. However, that ‘Win’ resulted from a total margin of 77,000 votes spread strategically (through voter district gerrymandering) over three critical states - an accomplishment critically aided by a murky package of onion-layered data-mining and internet analysis-planting operations, shell companies and ultimately funded by Russian Intelligence. All of this added up to manipulation of the American 2016 election thru the ‘cooperation’  of Trump campaign managers, Wikileaks and an ‘independent’ Ukraine-based (not Ukrainian!), cyber-snooping startup that did ‘business with both the Republican and then the Democrat Party and alongside with  Russian Intelligence (GRU) - a fine mix as they would say in Boston. 

Once in office, Trump has openly, and without restraint from a partisan and blatantly enabling Senate, broached historically normative as well as some Constitutional presidential boundaries.

Trump has proven ignorant of, or ignores knowledge of American diplomatic practices, treaties and objectives; he has set his own personal, often erratic and short-term changeable, new ‘courses’ for American diplomacy that seems to change daily somewhere and appears to the international community to be a kind of drunken random walk. This has negatively impacted America’s trade and financial links.

Trump operates America like a small, sole-owner corner shop; or he wants to operate America that way.  He is a micromanager and to render America suitable to his small-scope managerial capabilities, he has unmethodically (but effectively) reduced America to a giant dressed in rags, now humbled and bent to his small store vision limits. Trump has stripped most of the major government departments of seasoned top staff, reduced significantly operational employees, and inserted his personal directors who like him are unfamiliar with the operations and purposes of their new jobs. As the result, America presents to the world a face of ignorance, amateurish bumbling and unprofessionalism that constantly throws historical allies off-balance and estranged America’s relationships with them. A telling sign of the Trump era are his apparently favorite international leaders, a consistent set of global autocrat dictators - principally those of North Korea, Philippines, Brazil and Russia. America, directed by Trump, is no longer a ‘peer’ within the diplomatic and trade circles of former allies…why…because America no longer knows what it is doing!

On other fronts, Trump has shown a propensity to associate with fringe elements from conspiracy-theory groups to pseudo-science to neo -Nazi racists. Nazi-flage wavers are tolerated in public now and have open-door access to Trump. 

Amid this and more, Trump has attempted to micro-manage America’s response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic - he has fronted new ‘cures’ as often as he hears of them even though some have been bizarre such as calling for testing bleach injections and throat sprays. Continuing with his attitude regarding the pandemic, Trump also displays a hostility to Science methodology and safety testing. Also in this regard, he has nearly destroyed the environmental regulations set up by former republican administrations to assure Americans of safe water, air and products. 

To summarize, but there is much more that can be described, the Trump presidency has been characterized by ignorance, unprofessionalism, anti-science, anti-regulatory, anti-intellectualism, anti-government, small-scope destructiveness and pettiness. Plus all of these characteristics are mixed in with what some see as psychopathy, malignant-narcissism and a projected self-destructive bent.

The question is, at this time, how further down this destructive path and to what darker corners will Trump drag America and the rest of the world?

The Rigging of the 2016 Election: Was American Intelligence Just Flummoxed by the Audacity of Trump and Russian Hacking, and Paralyzed by Jurisdictional Compartmentalizing (Self-Interest ), And/ Or Has American Democracy Operated Successfully But Against Itself

PREFACE:
Pericles21 believes that in the 2016 election process, America was attacked and conquered by a known, long term and actively detrimental declared enemy state, Russia, in a modernized, non-shooting, non-bombing war largely without America knowing of the war going on or how to respond (e.g., FBI Director Comey's seeming indecision about what to do about Apparent Russian interference and relationship with the Trump campaign the spring and summer 2016).

Pericles21 also believes that since losing that 2016 war, the American public remains confused, overwhelmed by the sophistication that requires a new vocabulary in attendance to the digital world of networks, cryptology, cyber-intelligence, second and third degree crowd-behavior influencing (cyber-social networking nudging), 'cutouts' and good old fake proxies. What a fine world we Americans have naively lived and loved in for at least 40 years. But, 'Hey' if there is one good thing we Americans do well is to continue a good thing and 'naivete' feels so good (and 'Roseanne' is on tonight so don't bother us), so we will try our best to continue to exist in a fine state of denial assisted with a little OxyContin and Beer. We will do our best to maintain behind the wall of ignorance of the sophisticated, non-traditional ways our own culture was attacked, penetrated, taken over and then weaponized against us. What a 'thing'!

BLOG PRIMARY (A little late maturing in a daily amazed and increasingly scared blogger's mind):
The above 'Preface' is a point of view reflected in John Schindler's thorough and sobering article in the 'Observer' ('Here’s How the FBI Investigation Into Russia and Trump Campaign Actually Started', May 28, 2018)
America was outclassed and outfought on a battlefield that had no soil, no water no air. America's educational priorities, or rather, 'de-emphases' away from real science, science rationality, mathematics and cyber education all combined to help defeat us. (America's commodified, comercial-prioritized culture also played a key role in 'plumping', desensitizing our national awareness to being attacked as Russian agents posing as business players walked freely in plain sight along America's streets.)

Also, that 2016 war we just lost, was an asymmetric war - America was attacked but did not (could not?) respond.
Instead of shooting bullets, America's enemy saw and used vulnerable leverage-points in America's own culture - our hugely popular (and influencing) social websites and our mostly right-wing, loud and inciting, emotionally histrionic 'news' venues that claim 'entertainment' status when confronted with factual challenges to their 'news'. In this regard, Russia's weapons of choice were signally, Facebook and Fox News (especially in the latter, the loud, emotionally strident views of Sean Hannity who has been outed as having a discarded mistress, a hook into Tump's dark shade Fixer 'Lawyer' and perhaps even a nipple at. he belly of the ever nurturing )of greedy piglets) Grand Sow, the collective group of Russian oligarchs munching and slurping on the rich far East provinces of the former USSR, all under the watchful eye of the Great Boar himself, Grand Uncle Vladimir.

In that 2016 war America just lost, our huge military budget ($700 Billion asked this year) and advanced war machines were useless. Our 'advanced', decadently expensive, evolved but still essentially traditional weapons we are so proud of sat idle and irrelevant.

COMMENTARY:
Pericles21 believes that American intelligence agencies and politicians, and a large portion of America's general population, who are still scratching their heads about the surprising 2016 election of Donald Trump (aka 'RICO Dedito'), were and remain naive about the re-shaping of warfare and the increasingly clear alliance between Russia (along with other other national interests) and Donald Trump. Americans are also in denial of how Russia used non-traditional warfare to take control of and 'guide' that election through sophisticated cyber-invasion techniques ('hacking') and equally sophisticated manipulation of American voting predispositions. And we are recently become aware of the compromising of America's right wing (Trump supporters)'entertainment' icons, e.g., Sean Hannity.

But not only America's general population were caught unaware of or frozen in the headlights of the Russian attack. America's intelligence defenders seem equally naive not to have expected that America would one day be 'attacked' with the same indirect, non-exposive 'weapons we have been using to accomplish regime change in critical foreign areas for the past 100 years (the sinking of the battleship 'Maine', the many interferences in the mid-East, Indo China, Africa, South America, etc).

When the compromising relationship between Trump and Russia apparently became clear by early 2016, it appears the FBI and the NSA were restricted or delayed in non-interfering (read 'noon-cooperative') stasis by, in retrospect, our Congress's somewhat naive imposition onto the FBI and NSA of jurisdictional hegemony and a administratively old school (Prussian?) perspective that prioritizes non-interfence if not competitive relationships between these intelligence realms.

It is not surprising, therefore, that this intelligence infrastructure of easily administrated (by un-informed elected officers), clean boundaried and separate jurisdictions should fail America in the face of not only increased vulnerabilities of electronic digital communications and networks but the accelerating expertise in penetrating (cyber-hacking) inadequately protected systems.

Opinion. America's inattention to, and/or lack of committed (loyal), deeply trained, expertise to develop cyber defenses and protect America's potential, 'Multi-Front vulnerabilities in our culture as well as our digital systems, has led to a gross vulnerability of American social and cyber systems to penetration, take over and psychological manipulations. We saw that happen in the 2016 election.

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Work in progress but the above had to come out or be next week (July 10, 2018)irrelevant

that outcome, were and remain naive about world political realities and the non-traditional forms of warfare that have been written on for centuries (e.g., Lao Tsu's and Mao's 'Little Red Book')

A clear, if not concise article by John Schindler in the Observer [May 28, 2018,'Here’s How the FBI Investigation Into Russia and Trump Campaign Actually Started', May 28, 2018]
https://observer.com/2018/05/what-did-the-fbi-do-in-2016-about-russian-connections-to-donald-trump/

[Personal: Comey (FBI Director) and NSA couldn’t grasp how Trump, a candidate for President, could do such a thing?]

SUMMY: (NSA & FBI: ““ By mid-July 2016 We knew we had a Russian agent on our hands,”

The FBI-NSA investigation of Donald Trump was kicked off by …routine SIGINT reports..from America’s foreign friends before 2016.

2015: Britain’s NSA’s routine surveillance detected suspicious ‘interactions’ between Trump associates and Russian agents.
Britain passed this info to the U.S. as part of their routine exchange of information.”
Late 2015 and into 2016: NSA’s other intell friends ( Australia, Germany, Estonia, and Poland) all reported interactions between Trump and Moscow.
So, too, did the French and the Dutch—the latter being an especially savvy SIGINT partner of NSA’s.
2016: different foreign agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were given to U.S. FBI
2016: In response to FBI urgency, NSA rose to the occasion, and
by mid-July 2016, “We knew we had a Russian agent on our hands,”

America Stumbles in English to Describe Trump Jr's Two-Stepping Double-Cross of America - 'We're Just Not Subtle Enough, Ma' (Where is HL Mencken?)

[this post is an edited version of a July 12, 2017 post]

'Come forth, you incarnate Menckens! America calling! Mencken is also referenced, thoroughly, in a recent article, 'Revisiting H.L. Mencken in The Age of Trump' (FRANK FEAR, LA Progressive)

The American, so-called progressive, media keeps going with the Trump head-fakes - or is too cowardly to steady-gazed call a charlatan a charlatan. 'How come, Ma? They can read and write words like nobody's business(scratching of head.)' Ma: "Well, sonny, it's all about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches - or, if you can't deal with that, 'you pay your money then you have to choose', is that clear enough for you?" Sonny: "Sure Ma! Can I go out to play, now?" Ma: "Don't forget to tie your shoe laces and chew some gum." Sonny: "You're great, Ma."

Americans use language like...chimps read encyclopedias...seemingly absorbed utlil one notices the encyclopedia book is upside down.

And on to this post.

Almost daily,in the last six-months since the January inauguration, we've witnessed better entertainment than television farce - belly-splitting comedy and ballyhoo regarding Father Trump and most recently, son 'Junior' Trump and the 'Russian thing'.

More specifically, we are now grappling with Trump Jr's attempts to tell us about his interfaces before the 2016 election with Russian interests while in the same breath, lying-by-omission about those encounters. Seems Trump Jr, and many many other key Trump-president staffers and advisers who have critically sensitive security clearances (insisted on by DT) didn't exactly tell about all their meetings with Russian agents, businessmen-agents, crooks and grifters... all of whom had bad intentions in mind for America. Or, who were currently involved with active bad things against America.

All this has come down to a specific meeting between Trump Jr (with two of daddy's key staffers) and a Russian lawyer-alleged-agent. But wait a minute! Seems that meeting has grown in number with each retelling. We won't know where it ends but how many others attended that meeting? Well, that room surely was crowded with all those Russians, American political hacks (Trump supporters) and electronic surveillance and blocking devices!

According to Trump Jr, the meeting was all about procuring offered "dirt" (damaging info) on Hillary Clinton. But then again, if one shifted one's gaze into the mirror a bit, there appears in the background a tear jerking scene - the meeting was 'really' about pleading with Russia, on behalf of all those sad American childless couples, to lift Russia's bad ban on letting childless Americans adopt Russian babies. 'Bayby-Gate'

'But then', Russia's baby-ban was Russia's answer to America's economic sanctions on Russia (Putin and his Russian-global mafia) for it's attempt to launder dirty money from illicit global operations (read 'crime') consisting mostly of sex-slave trafficking, surplus nuclear-and-standard weaponry, drugs, etc.

The main talking point surely wasn't about babies!

But Trump Jr's tale has shown us tricky turns, back flips, reverse angle corner shots ( excuses and dodges) and other contortions all woven together in Trump Jr's attempts to tell his side of things and yet spin a golden veil from coarse home-spun.

Almost as bad as Trump Jr's omissions and dodging is the almost-as-bad efforts of the American press and media to parse WTF is happening in all this tragi-comedy, political magic act from the Trump opus.

Is it that the Trump male line is endowed with a 'slick gene' so slack that any one of them can come off the bench and bamboozle the media with split-fingered, meth-jumpy, spit-gooberish curve ball pitches? It looks like it, but Pericles21 posits a reason for this might just be that the Trumps are playing Brooklyn street ball (known for its traditions of roughhouse mayhem) while the media is playing cricket in the highlands (tea break, anyone?

In the July 12, 2017, DailyKos web page (july 12, 2017) "On language: The meeting was about sanctions, not "adoption", "Dcg2" commented on the failure of even veteran American media writers to use the English language sufficiently to convey how Trump Jr's recurring excuses and resultant, unending descent into ludicrousness and self-immolation amaze the 'veteran' American media.


However, fret not. Pericles21 has a thought that should help put our media's plight into perspective.

Pericles21 (me):

Americans are not subtle in how we use our language...even though increasingly our culture, especially the political part, has become full of situations that call for subtlety in cynicism and humor, or (deliciously) both. 'Ordinary' America-speak just can’t carry the weight. I have had Russian-American friends who’ve described the cathartic joy that Russian people under current and previous Russian dictators have enjoyed using the power of subtlety and irony in their language. Maybe it’s that we Americans like to get right to the bone of a situation and, instead of language-basd subtlety, employ such mind-releasing tricks as shooting, stabbing, punching, lynching, burning to the ground, running over with cars, tossing out of windows, etc. (and with as much dramatic noise as possible).  America needs, desperately, as many Neo-Menckens as possible. They’re around...let them come forth!

And Dcg2 sums it all up in a tidy parse:

Ultimately, we don’t control government.  We don't control the media. But we do control the language we use — and we don't have to adopt their language or their spin, nor should we legitimize the mainstream media adopting their language or talking points

Daily Kos web ("On language: The meeting was about sanctions, not "adoption")