Germany Bans ‘Gay Conversion’ Therapy - Other Nations May Follow

The only advocates of so-called "gay conversion" therapy are far right Christians, principally in America and Russia who use the lie that gays can change their sexual orientation in order to (i) justify their anti-LGBT bigotry, and (ii) argue that LGBT individuals need no non-discrimination protects since being LGBT is a "choice," and their political prostitutes.   Every legitimate - meaning not funded by Christofascist organizations or governments beholden to them - medical and mental health association in the world  oppose the fraudulent therapy and recognize that it is both harmful and simply cannot change what is unchangeable. Sadly, here in America, Trump has promised the moon to Christofascists, including attacking LGBT rights to maintain Christofascist and evangelical support just as his BFF Vladimir Putin has done the same with the Russian Orthodox Church, a denomination that  throughout its history has sided with autocrats and sold out the best interests of the common people in order to maintain its power and privileges.  Indeed, with Putin the Russian Orthodox Church has put power and privilege ahead of truth and knowledge much as it did under the most despotic of the Tsars.  Now, Germany - which has a strong anti-gay Catholic element - is banning conversion therapy for minors.  Other nations may follow suit, handing American Christofascist who have sought to export this vicious lie a major defeat.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the development.  Here are highlights:

NEW YORK, May 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Germany has banned so-called “gay conversion therapy” for minors as a growing number of countries review legislation regarding the controversial practice designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual.

German lawmakers voted on Thursday to prohibit so-called “conversion therapies” for anyone aged under 18, but stopped short of an outright ban, with advertising or offering treatment carrying fines of 30,000 Euros ($32,500) or up to one year jail.

The United States, Canada, Chile, and Mexico are among other countries seeking to outlaw the treatment, based on the belief that being gay or transgender is a mental illness that can be “cured,” according to LGBT+ advocacy group ILGA.

Advocates say bans spare young people pain and suffering at being harassed and humiliated because of their sexuality, an experience which has led to suicide.

Here is the status of the practice in various locations around the world.

- Conversion therapy is outlawed nationwide in Brazil, Ecuador and Malta.

- There is not a federal ban on conversion therapy in the United States, but over 19 U.S. states, including California, Colorado, New York and Washington, prohibit the practice to some degree.

- About 700,000 Americans have been forced to undergo a form of conversion therapy, according to the University of California’s Williams Institute.

- The Australian state of Queensland is considering the country’s first conversion therapy ban, with jail sentences of up to 18 months for doctors and social workers.

- The Canadian federal government introduced new legislation in March this year to criminalize conversion therapy. Conversion therapy has been banned in some Canadian cities, such as Vancouver and Calgary. Ontario was the first Canadian province to ban the practice in 2015.

- Britain and Ireland have drawn up bills to outlaw conversion therapy but they have stalled.

- Brutal and extreme conversion methods including torture, forced internment, electroshock therapy and sexual violence have been documented in Ecuador, South Africa, the Dominican Republic and China.

- A fifth of gay, lesbian and bisexual Britons who have tried to change their sexuality have attempted suicide.

If one wonders why Christofascists are so obsessed with conversion therapy, the answer is actually very simple: if the Bible verses so loved for arguably condemning gays are wrong about homosexuality, then what else in the Bible is false.  Gays by their very existence threaten the house of cards belief system of far right Christians and evangelicals.   These people would rather harm those they do ot even know rather than admit they based their lives on false premises and beliefs.  To me, it is the ultimate form of selfishness.

Call Trump’s News Conferences What They Are: Propaganda

The current situation with COVID-19 is showing examples of amazing leadership among many stet governors and foreign leaders as well as lying and propaganda most obvious in the form of Donald Trump where even his group of experts are forced to correct Trump's lies. Shockingly, Trump's base continues to believe the lies and tout the liar-in-chief as "doing a good job" in the fight against the virus even as he has thrown states and hospital systems to fend for themselves. Being a leader means accepting responsibility and giving accurate information, not dishing a sleazy reality TV spiel. Of course, Trump wants to take no responsibility and his idea of leadership is boasting and saying whatever he believes his knuckle dragging base wants to hear.  Meanwhile, his sycophants prostitute themselves constantly to stay in the good graces of the "glorious leader."    A column in the New York Times looks at the disturbing situation.  Here are excerpts:

In a time of global emergency, we need calm, directness and, above all, hard facts. Only the opposite is on offer from the Trump White House. It is therefore time to call [Trump's] the president’s news conferences for what they are: propaganda.

We may as well be watching newsreels approved by the Soviet Politburo. We’re witnessing the falsification of history in real time. When Donald Trump, under the guise of social distancing, told the White House press corps on Thursday that he ought to get rid of 75 to 80 percent of them — reserving the privilege only for those he liked — it may have been chilling, but it wasn’t surprising. He wants to thin out their ranks until there’s only Pravda in the room.

Sometimes, I stare at Deborah Birx during these briefings and I wonder if she understands that this is the footage historians will be looking at 100 years from now — the president rambling on incoherently, vainly, angrily, deceitfully, while she watches, her face stiff with the strangled horror of a bride enduring an inappropriate toast.

If the public wants factual news briefings, they need to tune in to those who are giving them: Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose addresses appear with English subtitles on Deutsche Welle. They should start following the many civic-minded epidemiologists and virologists and contagion experts on Twitter, like Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch and Yale’s Nicholas Christakis, whose threads have been invaluable primers in a time of awful confusion.

These are people with a high tolerance for uncertainty. It’s [Trump's] the president’s incapacity to tolerate it — combined with his bottomless need to self-flatter and preserve his political power — that leads, so often, to his spectacular fits of deception and misdirection.

Only a liar — and a weak man with delusions of competence — would be so unnerved by the facts.

Compare this to Cuomo, who takes questions at his news conferences calmly and systematically — and, more to the point, has a substantive response when asked the same questions about anxiety. He hears it. He relates to it. He says it’s real.

On Friday, Cuomo said something else that was quite striking, as he was issuing his executive order for nonessential workers in New York to stay home, other than to run errands or exercise outside. “If someone wants to blame someone or complain about someone, blame me,” he said. “There is no one else who is responsible for this decision.”
Cuomo is nothing if not politically shrewd. He knows full well how this comment compares to Mr. Trump’s “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

But telling the media that they’re peddling fake news is straight from the playbook of the political gangsters of the last century. So many of Trump’s moves are.

How about Orwellian doublespeak? Ooooooh, check. Trump and his team are continually deploying words and phrases that disguise a reality that suggests the opposite. Vice President Mike Pence talks about a “strong and seamless” partnership with the states, when at the same time Mr. Trump is trolling the states, telling Cuomo to get his own respirators.

Pence speaks relentlessly of a “whole-of-government approach,” when in fact the government is hollowed out — defunded to fight pandemics, denuded of experts — and broken in shards, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sidelined in this fight, and the president’s task force now mutely competing with a shadow group run by the president’s son-in-law.

But most dangerous of all is Trump’s insistence that things are fine, or will be shortly, that they’ll be stronger and better and greater than ever. We don’t have any evidence that this is true, and the president finds any suggestion to the contrary quite rude. When a journalist pointed out to him on Thursday that the economy had all but ground to halt, Trump cut him off.

Here’s the truth: Things might be hard — unfathomably hard — for months, perhaps even north of a year. Anyone who’s reading or listening to other sources of news besides the president knows that. It takes sensitivity and strength and intelligence to speak truthfully to the public about imminent hardship, the prospect of enduring pain.

So I listen to Justin Trudeau, a sci-fi experience, a dispatch from an alternate universe that prioritizes the needs and anxieties of the middle class.

And I listen to Cuomo, who says the same thing. His news conference on Friday was about the practical things, knowing the entire state — country, globe — had just taken a precipitous slide down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, with food, shelter and safety now topmost on many people’s minds. No one can evict you for 90 days. We’re getting hospital beds. We’re recruiting doctors and nurses in training to fight this fight, and we’re coaxing medical professionals out of retirement.

Trump Cannot Grasp German Car Exports, But Wants to Negotiate Nuclear Weapons

One of the most dangerous things one (or a nation) can is encounter is someone who thinks they are smarter than everyone else, yet in reality is a dim wit and too stupid/narcissistic to recognize their own limitations. Such is the case of Der Trumpenführer, who is about to negotiate on nuclear weapons and North Korean disarmament yet is too stupid and uninformed to even  accurately talk about German car imports/exports figures and trade balance relating thereto. Trump has ranted about the presence of too many Mercedes Benz vehicles in the USA, yet doesn't grasp that nowadays a majority of such vehicles are manufactured in America in red states and that exports of such vehicles exceed imports.  Kim Jong-un is likely having a hard time not laughing out loud to himself as he prepares to meet with a most likely utterly unprepared Der Trumpenführer (Hitler though he knew more than his generals and we all know how that turned out).  A piece in CNN Money looks at how shockingly little Trump knows about German car exports.  Here are story excerpts:

"Sorry, we cannot let our friends, or enemies, take advantage of us on Trade anymore," Trump said on Twitter. "We must put the American worker first!" His complaints about foreign tariffs and trade surpluses are by now familiar. A frequent target is Germany and its car exports. Here are the facts.
 Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron during a recent meeting in Washington that there are too many German cars in the United States. He's also raised the issue with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the past, and threatened to tax German car imports at 35%.

Economists say Trump is missing two key points: German automakers have opened big factories in the United States, dramatically reducing their need to import cars. Plus, targeting German carmakers would hurt American workers and the US economy.
 German automakers sold 1.35 million vehicles in the United States in 2017, about 8% of total US car sales. Of those, only 494,000 were exported from Germany to the United States — 25% less than in 2013, according to the German carmakers association.

Most of the remainder were made in the United States and in Mexico, . . . Then there are those German car factories in the United States.

BMW (BMWYY), Volkswagen (VLKAF) and Mercedes, which is owned by Daimler (DDAIF), all have major manufacturing plants in the United States and employ nearly 50,000 American workers.

The largest BMW assembly plant in the world is located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Last year, it posted a new production record of more than 400,000 vehicles — 70% of which were exported to other countries.

Volkswagen has a large factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that produced 112,000 vehicles last year. And Mercedes makes 300,000 cars and SUVs a year in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.

It's a booming business: The total number of cars produced by German automakers in the United States has increased by 180,000 since 2013 to 804,000, according to the German carmakers association. Half are exported to markets including Europe and Asia.

German automakers would most likely scale back investment in the United States if their products were targeted with increased tariffs. And the European Union would almost certainly respond by increasing tariffs on US autos.  Economists say that the focus on tariffs is misplaced.

New trade barriers would mean major problems for the industry at large, which relies on parts supply chains that cross multiple national borders.

"To make a clear cut distinction between what is an American car and what is a German car is in my opinion nonsense," Jacob Kirkegaard, a European trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told CNNMoney last month.

If Trump persists in this idiocy, I would hope Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen would announce plant closures in Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee and cite Trump and his Republican enablers as the cause of the closures.  Three red states could theoretically swing blue if this happened. Facts do matter to sane Americans and most of the world.  Not so today's Republicans and their idiot base.

As for the North Korea talks, take anything Trump and/or Kim Jong-un says in the aftermath, take it all with many grains of salt.  My money has Kim Jong-un playing Trump for a fool. 

The Other German Autocrat Trump is Channeling

There are many accurate parallels between Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, and Adolph Hitler.  Both held simmering hatred towards certain groups - for Hitler, it was Jews, for Trump it is non-whites - and were narcissists to the extreme.  But there is another German autocrat that bears remarkable parallels to Trump who, like Hitler, lead that nation to catastrophic loss. Trump, who doesn't read books and seems to have no interests in knowing or understanding the lessons of history (he accused Canada of burning the White House in the War of 1812 when it was burned by the British Army), likely doesn't even know this former ruler's name: Kaiser (i.e., emperor) Wilhelm II.  Like Trump, Wilhelm thought he knew everything and thought he was a wonderful negotiator and could connect with people. Reality, of course was the exact opposite. Wilhelm was an idiot and took Germany to War in 1914 with terrible results.  The thick history book, "Ring of Steel" goes into great detail about the lead up to WWI and German's many wrong assumptions and the reality that Germany was doomed to defeat in any protracted war. A piece in New Yorker remind us of the other tyrant Trump seemingly tries to emulate.  Here are article excerpts:

One of the few things that Kaiser Wilhelm II, who ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918, had a talent for was causing outrage. A particular specialty was insulting other monarchs. He called the diminutive King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy “the dwarf” in front of the king’s own entourage. He called Prince (later Tsar) Ferdinand, of Bulgaria, “Fernando naso,” on account of his beaky nose, and spread rumors that he was a hermaphrodite.  

After a visit to Germany, in 1909, during which the Kaiser slapped him on the bottom in public and then refused to apologize, Ferdinand awarded a valuable arms contract that had been promised to the Germans to a French company instead.

Not that this deterred the Kaiser. One of the many things that Wilhelm was convinced he was brilliant at, despite all evidence to the contrary, was “personal diplomacy,” fixing foreign policy through one-on-one meetings with other European monarchs and statesmen. In fact, Wilhelm could do neither the personal nor the diplomacy, and these meetings rarely went well. 

In 1890, he let lapse a long-standing defensive agreement with Russia—the German Empire’s vast and sometimes threatening eastern neighbor. He judged, wrongly, that Russia was so desperate for German good will that he could keep it dangling. Instead, Russia immediately made an alliance with Germany’s western neighbor and enemy, France. Wilhelm decided he would charm and manipulate Tsar Nicholas II  . . . . into abandoning the alliance. In 1897, Nicholas told Wilhelm to get lost; the German-Russian alliance withered.

About a decade ago, I published “George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I,” a book that was, in part, about Kaiser Wilhelm, who is probably best known for being Queen Victoria’s first grandchild and for leading Germany into the First World War. Ever since Donald Trump started campaigning for President, the Kaiser has once again been on my mind—his personal failings, and the global fallout they led to.

Trump’s tweets were what first reminded me of the Kaiser. Wilhelm was a compulsive speechmaker who constantly strayed off script. Even his staff couldn’t stop him, though it tried, distributing copies of speeches to the German press before he’d actually given them. Unfortunately, the Austrian press printed the speeches as they were delivered, and the gaffes and insults soon circulated around Europe.

The Kaiser reserved particular abuse for political parties that voted against his policies. “I regard every Social Democrat as an enemy of the Fatherland,” he said, and he denounced the German Socialist party as a “gang of traitors.” August Bebel, the Socialist party leader, said that every time the Kaiser opened his mouth, the party gained another hundred thousand votes.

When Wilhelm became emperor, in 1888, at twenty-nine years old, he was determined to be seen as tough and powerful. He fetishized the Army, surrounded himself with generals (though, like Trump, he didn’t like listening to them), owned a hundred and twenty military uniforms, and wore little else. 

In fact, Wilhelm didn’t accomplish very much. The general staff of the German Army agreed that the Kaiser couldn’t “lead three soldiers over a gutter.” He had neither the attention span nor the ability. “Distractions, whether they are little games with his army or navy, travelling or hunting—are everything to him,” a disillusioned former mentor wrote. “He reads very little apart from newspaper cuttings, hardly writes anything himself apart from marginalia on reports and considers those talks best which are quickly over and done with.” The Kaiser’s entourage compiled press cuttings for him, mostly about himself, which he read as obsessively as Trump watches television. A critical story would send him into paroxysms of fury.

To add to the confusion, Wilhelm changed his position every five minutes. He was deeply suggestible and would defer to the last person he’d spoken to or cutting he’d read—at least until he’d spoken to the next person.  . . .  Wilhelm’s staff and ministers resorted to manipulation, distraction, and flattery to manage him. “In order to get him to accept an idea you must act as if the idea were his,” the Kaiser’s closest friend, Philipp zu Eulenburg, advised his colleagues, adding, “Don’t forget the sugar.” 

More sinisterly, Wilhelm’s patronage of the aggressive, nationalistic right left him surrounded by ministers who held a collective conviction that a European war was inevitable and even desirable. Alfred von Tirpitz, Germany’s Naval chief—who realized at his first meeting with the Kaiser that he did “not live in the real world”—consciously exploited Wilhelm’s envy and rage in order to extract the astronomical sums required to build a German Navy to rival Britain’s, a project that created an arms race and became an intractable block to peace negotiations.

I spent six years writing my book about Wilhelm and his cousins, King George V, of England, and Tsar Nicholas II, and the Kaiser’s egotism and eccentricity made him by far the most entertaining of the three to write about. After a while, though, living with Wilhelm—as you do when you write about another person over a long period—became onerous. It was dispiriting, even oppressive, to spend so much time around someone who never learned, and never changed.

The Kaiser wasn’t singly responsible for the First World War, but his actions and choices helped to bring it on. If international conflict is around the corner, it would seem that you really don’t want a narcissist in control of a global power. Wilhelm’s touchiness, his unpredictability, his need to be acknowledged: these things struck a chord with elements in Germany, which was in a kind of adolescent spasm—quick to perceive slights, excited by the idea of flexing its muscles, filled with a sense of entitlement. At the same time, Wilhelm’s posturing raised tensions in Europe. His clumsy personal diplomacy created suspicion. His alliance with the vitriolic right and his slavish admiration for the Army inched the country closer and closer to war.

The defeated Germany sank into years of depression, resentments sharpened, the toxic lie that Germany had been “robbed” of its rightful victory in the war took hold. The rest, as they say, is history.

I’m not suggesting that Trump is about to start the Third World War. But recent foreign developments—the wild swings with North Korea, the ditching of the Iran nuclear deal, the threat of a trade war with China—suggest upheavals that could quickly grow out of American control. Some of Trump’s critics suppose that these escalating crises might cause him to loosen, or even lose, his grip on the Presidency. The real lesson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, however, may be that Trump’s leaving office might not be the end of the problems he may bring on or exacerbate—it may be only the beginning.

Unlike the German political parties of Wilhelm's time, the Republican controlled Congress could rein Trump in.  Yet it doesn't. Why? Congressional Republicans care more about remaining in office and living well of the taxpayer teet. Like Trump, the focus is all on themselves and they don't give a damn about what happens to the nation or everyday Americans.  History provides many lessons.  Sadly, our education system gives it short shrift.  We are about to pay the consequences.  Let's hope Trump, like Wilhelm, finds himself thrown from office and his dreams of empire destroyed.

Kaiser Wilhelm - who lead Germany to disaster.

Trump's Ongoing Damage to America's Global Standing

While visiting London last month, one thing that we found was almost universal among the British: an extreme dislike for Donald Trump and a bewilderment that Americans could have voted for such an unfit and foul individual. Indeed, we found ourselves having to repeatedly explain that we had NOT voted for the man and instead had work to elect his opponent. As a lengthy article in The Atlantic authored by a former member of the George W. Bush administration points out, the British view of Trump is not unique.  Rather it is the norm and it has global consequences for America's standing in the world.  While this may not matter to Christofascists and white supremacist who voted for Trump as a means to try to turn time back domestically to 1950 with little thought of anything else other than their hatred of an ethnically diverse America, it should since there are enormous consequences of having an unfit, boorish individual in the White House.  Here are highlights from the article:

Donald Trump was right. He inherited a mess. In January 2017, American foreign policy was, if not in crisis, in big trouble. Strong forces were putting stress on the old global political order: the rise of China to a power with more than half the productive capacity of the United States (and defense spending to match); the partial recovery of a resentful Russia under a skilled and thuggish autocrat; the discrediting of Western elites by the financial crash of 2008, followed by roiling populist waves, of which Trump himself was part; a turbulent Middle East; economic dislocations worldwide.

These circumstances would have caused severe headaches for a competent and sophisticated successor. Instead, the United States got a president who had unnervingly promised a wall on the southern border (paid for by Mexico), the dismantlement of long-standing trade deals with both competitors and partners, a closer relationship with Vladimir Putin, and a ban on Muslims coming into the United States.

Some of these and Trump’s other wild pronouncements were quietly walked back or put on hold after his inauguration; one defense of Trump is that his deeds are less alarming than his words. But diplomacy is about words, and many of Trump’s words are profoundly toxic.

Trump seems incapable of restraining himself from insulting foreign leaders. His slogan “America First” harks back to the isolationists of 1940, and foreign leaders know it. He can read speeches written for him by others, as he did in Warsaw on July 6, but he cannot himself articulate a worldview that goes beyond a teenager’s bluster. He lays out his resentments, insecurities, and obsessions on Twitter for all to see, opening up a gold mine to foreign governments seeking to understand and manipulate the American president.

Foreign governments have adapted. They flatter Trump outrageously. Their emissaries stay at his hotels and offer the Trump Organization abundant concessions (39 trademarks approved by China alone since Trump took office, including one for an escort service). They take him to military parades; they talk tough-guy-to-tough-guy; they show him the kind of deference that only someone without a center can crave. And so he flip-flops: Paris was no longer “so, so out of control, so dangerous” once he’d had dinner in the Eiffel Tower; Xi Jinping, during an April visit to Mar-a-Lago, went from being the leader of a parasitic country intent on ripping off American workers to being “a gentleman” who “wants to do the right thing.” (By July, Trump was back to bashing China, for doing “NOTHING” to help us.)

In short, foreign leaders may consider Trump alarming, but they do not consider him serious. They may think they can use him, but they know they cannot rely on him. They look at his plans to slash the State Department’s ranks and its budget—the latter by about 30 percent—and draw conclusions about his interest in traditional diplomacy. And so, already, they have begun to reshape alliances and reconfigure the networks that make up the global economy, bypassing the United States and diminishing its standing. In January, at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, Xi made a case for Chinese global leadership that was startlingly well received by the rich and powerful officials, businesspeople, and experts in attendance. In March, Canada formally joined a Chinese-led regional development bank that the Obama administration had opposed as an instrument of broadened Chinese influence; Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France were among the founding members. In July, Japan and Europe agreed on a free-trade deal as an alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump had unceremoniously discarded.

In almost every region of the world, the administration has already left a mark, by blunder, inattention, miscomprehension, or willfulness. Trump’s first official visit abroad began in Saudi Arabia—a bizarre choice, when compared with established democratic allies—where he and his senior advisers offered unreserved praise for a kingdom that has close relations with the United States but has also been the heartland of Islamist fanaticism since well before 9/11. The president full-throatedly took its side in a dispute with Qatar, apparently ignorant of the vast American air base in the latter country.

The administration obsesses about defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and yet intends to sharply reduce the kinds of advice and support that are needed to rebuild the areas devastated by war in those same countries—support that might help prevent a future recurrence of Islamist fanaticism. The president, entranced by the chimera of an Israeli–Palestinian peace, has put his inexperienced and overburdened son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in charge of a process headed nowhere. Either ignorant or contemptuous of the deep-seated maladies that have long afflicted the Arab world, Trump embraces authoritarians like Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (“Love your shoes”) and seems to dismiss the larger problems of governance posed by the crises within Middle Eastern societies as internal issues irrelevant to the United States. A freedom agenda, in either its original Bush or subsequent Obama form, is dead.

In Europe, the administration has picked a fight with the Continent’s most important democratic state, Germany (“Bad, very bad”). Trump is sufficiently despised in Great Britain, America’s most enduring ally, that he will reportedly defer a trip there until his press improves (it will not). Paralyzed by scandal and internal division, the administration has no coherent Russia policy: no plan for getting Moscow back out of the Middle East; no counter to Russian political subversion in Europe or the United States; no response to reports of new Russian meddling in Afghanistan.

To accommodate a president fixated on economic deals, an anxious Japan has pledged investments that would result in American jobs. A prickly Australia, whose prime minister Trump snarled at during their first courtesy phone call, has edged further from its traditional alliance with America—an alliance that has been the cornerstone of its security since World War II.

On issues that are truly global in scope, Trump has abdicated leadership and the moral high ground. The United States has managed to isolate itself on the topic of climate change, by the tone of its pronouncements no less than by its precipitous exit from the Paris Agreement. As for human rights, the president has taken only cursory notice of the two arrests of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny or the death of the Chinese Nobel Prize winner and prisoner of conscience Liu Xiaobo. Trump did not object after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s security detail beat American protesters on American soil, in Washington, D.C. In April, he reportedly told Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, who has used death squads to deal with offenders of local narcotics laws, that he was doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.”

Matters will not improve. Trump will not learn, will not moderate, will not settle into normal patterns of behavior. And for all the rot that is visible in America’s standing and ability to influence global affairs, more is spreading beneath the surface.

To a degree rarely appreciated outside Washington, it is virtually impossible to conduct an effective foreign policy without political appointees at the assistant-secretary rank who share a president’s conceptions and will implement his agenda. As of mid-August, the administration had yet to even nominate a new undersecretary of state for political affairs; assistant secretaries for Near Eastern, East Asian and Pacific, or Western Hemisphere Affairs; or ambassadors to Germany, India, or Saudi Arabia. At lower levels, the State Department is being actively thinned out—2,300 jobs are slated for elimination—and is losing experience by the week as disaffected professionals quietly leave.

Add to this fractured foundation the erratic behavior of the president himself, who will be less and less likely to accede to (or even hear) contrary advice as he passes more time in the Oval Office. Septuagenarian tycoons do not change fundamental qualities of their personalities: They are who they are. Nor is someone who has spent a career in charge of a small, family-run corporation without shareholders likely to pay much attention to external views.

Mattis and Tillerson have, by all accounts, raged at a White House obsessed with loyalty, which fired a junior staffer for unflattering retweets more than a year old and had trouble attracting first-tier or independent-minded experts to begin with. At some point these advisers will either give up in frustration or simply be replaced by more-pliable individuals.

Trump unrestrained is of course a frightening prospect. His instincts are not reliable—if they were, he and his campaign would have kept their distance from Russian operatives. A man who has presided over failed casinos, a collapsed airline, and a sham university is not someone who knows when to step back from the brink. . . . . In a fit of temper or in the grip of spectacular misjudgment—possibly influenced by what he’s just seen on TV—he could stumble into or launch an uncontrollable war.

Trump is, and is likely to be to the end, volatile, truculent, and impulsive. When he does face a crisis, whether or not it is of his own making, he will discover just how weak his hand is, because no one—friends or enemies, the American public or foreign leaders—will take anything that he promises or threatens at face value.

This dangerous and dispiriting chapter in American history will end, in eight years or four—or perhaps in two or even one, if Trump is impeached or removed under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. But what will follow? Will the United States recover within a few years, as it did from the disgrace of Richard Nixon’s resignation and the fecklessness of Jimmy Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis? Alas, that is unlikely. Even barring cataclysmic events, we will be living with the consequences of Trump’s tenure as chief executive and commander in chief for decades. Damage will continue to appear long after he departs the scene.

Establishments exist for a reason, and, within limits, they are good things. Despite what populists think, foreign policy is not, in fact, safely handed over to teams of ideologues or adventurous amateurs.

Veterans of Trump’s administration will include some patriots who knowingly took a reputational hit to save the country from calamity—plus a large collection of mediocrities, cynics, and trimmers willing to equivocate about American values and interests, and indeed about their own beliefs. Many of them even now can say, as the old Soviet joke had it, “I have my personal opinions, but I assure you that I don’t agree with them.”

There are many reasons to be appalled by President Trump, including his disregard for constitutional norms and decent behavior. But watching this unlikeliest of presidents strut on the treacherous stage of international politics is different from following the daily domestic chaos that is the Trump administration. Hearing him bully and brag, boast and bluster, threaten and lie, one feels a kind of dizziness, a sensation that underneath the throbbing pulse of routine scandal lies the potential for much worse.

It is worth remembering that this frightening state of affairs stems from two main forces: (i) the desire of evangelical Christians to secure special rights and the ability to inflict their toxic beliefs on the nation as a whole, and (ii) the desire of racists to regain their sense of white privilege and the freedom to openly discriminate against others.  All of us may end up paying dearly for the foul motivations of these noxious elements of  American society.

Hundreds of German Choir Boys Abused Over Six Decades

As the Roman Catholic Church remains outwardly hostile towards LGBT individuals and continues to let go of its 12th century understanding of human sexuality (and the writings of church fathers who seemingly had some mental health issues), a new report out of Germany reminds us that the Church's unnatural and bizarre approach to human sexuality inflicts a cost on many, especially children and youths.  Sadly, the Church's celibacy requirement for its all male priesthood makes that priesthood a safe haven for the psycho-sexually dysfunctional and abnormal particularly when the near obsession with all things sexual is combined into the mix.  Sex abuse cases continue to unfold in America, all hell is breaking lose in Australia where the number three man at the Vatican has been charged with sex crimes, including rape, and similar stories are unfolding in Guam, India and various parts of Africa.  The problem is systemic yet no high cleric who was involved in aiding and abetting or covering up for such sex crimes has been punished.  Pope Francis' commission to address this has done nothing. As an institution, the Church is morally bankrupt.   Here are highlights from the BBC on the latest bombshell:

At least 547 young members of the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir in Germany were subjected to physical and in some instances sexual abuse over a period of 60 years, a new report says.

The report accuses 49 members of the Catholic Church of carrying out the abuse between 1945 and the early 1990s.

The alleged perpetrators are unlikely to face criminal charges because of the amount of time that has elapsed.

Victims said the experience was like "a prison, hell and a concentration camp".

The alleged physical abuse relates to children attending both the Regensburger Domspatzen's pre-school and high school, according to the lawyer tasked with investigating the abuse, Ulrich Weber.

Among those singled out for criticism in the report was former choirmaster Georg Ratzinger, elder brother of retired Pope Benedict XVI.

Mr Weber said that while Mr Ratzinger, now 93, had no knowledge of sexual abuse, "one can accuse him of looking the other way and failing to intervene".

Presenting his findings on Tuesday, Mr Weber said the investigation had found 500 cases of physical abuse and 67 instances of sexual abuse over six decades.

However, he said he was unable to contact or speak directly to a number of former students and said he estimated the true number of victims to be as high as 700.

Of the 49 church members who carried out the abuse under what was described as a "culture of silence", nine were found to have been involved in sexual abuse, Mr Weber added.

He said the alleged perpetrators had been identified but were not expected to face criminal charges because the alleged crimes took place too long ago to be legally valid.

He said the victims described their experiences at the boarding schools in southern Germany as "the worst time of their lives, characterised by fear, violence and hopelessness".

The 1,000-year-old choir was initially rocked by allegations of widespread sexual abuse in 2010.  A 2016 report into the allegations found that 231 children had been abused.

Mr Weber also criticised Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who is now a cardinal, for the weaknesses of the initial review of the scandal when it first came to light in 2010. The cardinal has rejected his findings.

The UN has accused the Vatican of "systematically" adopting policies allowing priests to sexually abuse thousands of children.

I ask again: how can  a morally decent person remain a member in this church and, worse yet, continue to support it financially? 

Trump's Surrender of American Power and Influence

Donald Trump - like perhaps a majority of his supporters in my opinion - is basically a know nothing.  He doesn't read, gets his "news" primarily from Kook-Aid serving Fox News, dislikes briefing reports if they are more than a single page, and in general appears to have little interest in doing the work required to be president.   Combine this with his inward looking "America First" narrative that belittles other nations and is blind to the importance of foreign trade in projection American power and it is a recipe for disaster.  A column in the Washington Post by an economist equates Trump's policies to date as a huge surrender of American power and influence across the globe.  Here are column highlights:

President Trump’s foreign policy, such as it is, rests on a massive and apparently indestructible contradiction. Trump wants the United States to remain the “essential” nation, the best embodiment of Western ideals of freedom and democracy, while at the same time deliberately alienating many of our traditional allies, whose support the United States desperately needs. American leadership becomes difficult, if not impossible.

It is hard to straddle this contradiction, because it reflects a basic misunderstanding of the American “greatness” that Trump so avidly pursues. To Trump, this greatness is mainly measured in economic terms: the number of added jobs; the trajectory of wages; the rate of economic growth. It is a nostalgic and unrealistic yearning for the economic dominance the United States enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s.

The truth is that American greatness then and later was never about dollars and cents alone. Prosperity was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The greater objective was to promote democracy and mixed economies, with power divided between the market and government. To advance this vision, the United States advocated open trade and provided a military umbrella. The latter created a geopolitical shield against instability.

Trump sees the costs of these programs as showing that past U.S. leaders were willing to sacrifice the interests of ordinary Americans to meaningless global cooperation. . . .  these complaints, they were (and are) fundamentally misleading. The notion that Americans simply abandoned their own interests for Japan’s, Germany’s or South Korea’s — to select a few obvious countries — is counterfactual. . . . Our economic and political interests were served by a prosperous and increasingly democratic global system.

As “grand strategy,” the post-World War II American conception of the world order largely succeeded. The global economy grew richer. A wealthier Europe established stable democracies. The Soviet Union collapsed. America benefited from all of this.

But as Trump has surely discovered, running an outward-looking, internationalist foreign policy is hard when your domestic policy is nationalist and inward-looking. Abroad, the balancing act has backfired. . . . A recent Pew Research Center poll of 40,448 respondents in 37 countries finds a big drop in favorable views of the United States. 

As a result, it’s harder for Trump to lead internationally. Foreign leaders can more easily oppose him without suffering adverse domestic political consequences. He has made it even harder by antagonizing other countries by withdrawing from the Paris agreement on climate change. There was no need; all the pact’s goals are voluntary.
He quit the Trans- Pacific Partnership — a trade agreement with 11 other Pacific Rim nations; many economists consider this a blunder, because Asian economies are among the fastest-growing. And last week, Europe and Japan announced they’re negotiating a trade agreement that covers 40 percent of world trade and excludes the United States. Being outside these agreements would weaken U.S. exports. Further, the European Union warns it might retaliate against the United States if Trump restricts Europe’s steel exports.

What we’re witnessing is extraordinary: a voluntary surrender of power and influence. . . .  history suggests that trade and geopolitics go hand in hand. To deal with North Korea, Trump needs allies to make economic sanctions tougher or to support military action. He has precious few because he has been so careless in abdicating responsibility for the global trading system.

Putting an ignorant narcissist in the White House will likely cost America dearly.  Bigots and white supremacists may feel empowered and free to swagger, but the country as a whole will be the loser. 

Allies Start Planning a Life Without America

Vladimir Putin must be smiling.  How could he not be as we witness America's allies moving forward with plans for their security and economies with America no longer a dependable ally.  The champagne must be flowing in at the Kremlin.  Der Trumpenführer has accomplished what decades of Soviet and then Putin efforts failed to do: splinter American alliances and fray the ties of NATO. An editorial in the New York Times looks at this phenomenon which could prove disastrous for America down the road.  Here are excerpts:

Many governments must be thinking along the same lines, but few have spelled it out so clearly. Germany did, when Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “The times in which we could rely fully on others — they are somewhat over.” Now Canada, a country tightly bound to its neighbor by history, alliance and the longest border in the world, has declared the need to recognize that the United States is relinquishing its role as the “indispensable nation.”

“The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course,” Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, told her Parliament this month.

Ms. Freeland never mentioned Donald Trump. That wouldn’t be diplomatic. But every line of her speech before a silent House of Commons was clearly about a world order thrown into crisis as President Trump scoffs at trade agreements, hectors allies, rips up the landmark Paris climate accord and otherwise demonstrates disdain for anything that isn’t “America First.” Canada’s course, Ms. Freeland said, would be the opposite of Canada First; it would be “the renewal, indeed the strengthening, of the postwar multilateral order.” The problem is that it’s not so much Mr. Trump’s policies as his chaotic absence of clear policies that is pushing Canada, Germany and other allies to draw back from Washington. Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, sought early in the Trump administration to find ways of working together. But according to Canadian news reports, Mr. Trump’s rejection of the climate agreement was what finally persuaded Mr. Trudeau that he had to find his own way. Ms. Freeland’s powerful speech was, in effect, the proclamation of a new Trudeau Doctrine of actively pursuing multilateral trade, strengthening multilateral institutions and building a stronger military.

Neither Canada nor any other ally, of course, can begin to match the United States in might or wealth, and it remains to be seen whether Mr. Trudeau comes up with the money to achieve the goals Ms. Freeland enunciated. But it is surely to the advantage of Canada and other allies to step out from under America’s long shadow and take more responsibility for their shared security and values. How much better that would be, however, if they were not doing it largely to escape a shadow that has turned dark, turbulent and dangerous.

The Winners From Trump's Foreign Policy Shifts: Russia and China

To whom does Donald Trump/the Trump Organization owe his/its financial survival? Russia and its oligarchs and the Bank of China, a entity controlled by the Chinese government.  The Russian oligarchs and their laundering of dirty money have kept Trump properties going, and the Bank of China is one of Trump's main financiers (along with Deutche Bank).  Thus, it is no surprise that when one looks at the fallout from Der Trumpenführer's foreign policy actions over the last week, the big winners are Russia and China.  Russia is seeing the NATO alliance split - something Russia has worked at since 1945 - and Trump is likely to lift sanctions and give back Russia's seized spying facilities near Washington, DC. As for China, Trump's trashing o other NATO countries has opened the door for China to pursue trade advantages in Europe, and now, with Trump's withdrawal of America from the Paris Climate accord is positioning China for new potential global leadership.  All so that ignorance embracing Fox News viewers and evangelical Christians can feel self-satisfied and pretend that they are not the worse form of "white trash."  A piece in the Washington Post looks at how China benefits from Trump's - in my view - borderline traitorous actions.  Here are excerpts:

In ditching the Paris accord on climate change, President Trump has cemented his reputation as the international disrupter in chief with the latest in a string of decisions that foreign policy analysts believe could have profound consequences for U.S. global leadership.

The decision to exit the Paris agreement is sure to anger many of the almost 200 nations that signed the commitment to reduce emissions. In one sign of shifting alliances, the European Union and China were expected to issue a joint statement Friday vowing to take a leading role in stemming climate change. China in particular is expected to fill any leadership vacuum created by the U.S. retreat, both in climate change and trade.
 “Having pulled out of the Paris accord, after sowing doubt at NATO and killing the TPP, President Trump is on the way to ending the U.S.-led international order,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a firm that assesses political risks. “I think we’re heading toward a Hobbesian, each-on-his-own world.”

Many in the foreign policy establishment believe the pullbacks have undermined U.S. influence and credibility.

“Other countries will be less willing to engage with us,” said David Victor, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California at San Diego. “It creates a vacuum others will try to fill. It will make it harder for the United States to advance its interests.”

Now, China is positioned to move into the void left by the United States. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a speech extolling the virtues of globalized trade as the United States appeared to be turning inward. The U.S. abandonment of the Paris accord represents another opportunity. On Thursday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stood beside Merkel in Berlin and declared the fight against climate change a “global consensus” and an “international responsibility.” He noted that China was one of the first countries to ratify the Paris accord.

“Xi Jinping is sitting in Beijing and can’t believe what’s happening to him,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. representative to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “The United States’ retreat from leadership means China can move in America’s wake. We’re seeing the possibility of a shift in global leadership, away from Washington and the United States toward Beijing and China.”

A column by a Nobel prize winning economist in the New York Times likewise trashes Trump's actions.  Here are highlights:

As Donald Trump does his best to destroy the world’s hopes of reining in climate change, let’s be clear about one thing: This has nothing to do with serving America’s national interest. The U.S. economy, in particular, would do just fine under the Paris accord. This isn’t about nationalism; mainly, it’s about sheer spite.

About the economics: At this point, I think, we have a pretty good idea of what a low-emissions economy would look like. I’m sure that energy experts will disagree on the details, but the broad outline isn’t hard to describe.

Clearly, it would be an economy running on electricity — electric cars, electric heat, with internal combustion engines rare. The bulk of that electricity would, in turn, come from nonpolluting sources: wind, solar and, yes, probably nuclear.

Meanwhile, there would be compensating benefits. Notably, the adverse health effects of air pollution would be greatly reduced, and it’s quite possible that lower health care costs would all by themselves make up for the costs of energy transition, even ignoring the whole saving-civilization-from-catastrophic-climate-change thing. The point is that while tackling climate change in the way envisaged by the Paris accord used to look like a hard engineering and economic problem, these days it looks fairly easy. We have almost all the technology we need, and can be quite confident of developing the rest. Obviously the transition to a low-emissions economy, the phasing out of fossil fuels, would take time, but that would be O.K. as long as the path was clear.

Why, then, are so many people on the right determined to block climate action, and even trying to sabotage the progress we’ve been making on new energy sources?

Don’t tell me that they’re honestly worried about the inherent uncertainty of climate projections.

Don’t tell me that it’s about coal miners. Anyone who really cared about those miners would be crusading to protect their health, disability and pension benefits, and trying to provide alternative employment opportunities — not pretending that environmental irresponsibility will somehow bring back jobs lost to strip mining and mountaintop removal. Pay any attention to modern right-wing discourse — including op-ed articles by top Trump officials — and you find deep hostility to any notion that some problems require collective action beyond shooting people and blowing things up.

Beyond this, much of today’s right seems driven above all by animus toward liberals rather than specific issues. If liberals are for it, they’re against it. If liberals hate it, it’s good. Add to this the anti-intellectualism of the G.O.P. base, for whom scientific consensus on an issue is a minus, not a plus, with extra bonus points for undermining anything associated with President Barack Obama.

And if all this sounds too petty and vindictive to be the basis for momentous policy decisions, consider the character of the man in the White House. 

It will be divine justice if China rises to the challenge and takes over American leadership on international trade and climate change.  One can only hope that the cretins and morons that Trump is pleasing by such harmful actions suffer immeasurably as the consequences come home to roost.  Meanwhile, take a good look at Britain which in a similar form of wrongheaded xenophobia has marginalized itself through its Brexit vote to a point where no one seemingly cares what happens there.  America is marching down a similar road.  I hope people remember those responsible for this diminishing of America.  

Why the Trump "Reset" Effort Won’t Work

As Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, headed off on his first foreign trip, a number of pundit posited that this was an opportunity for Trump to "reset" the narrative and salvage his presidency. That, of course, did not happen for more than a few hours - even before Trump's disastrous display in Europe.  Add to that the string of bombshell stories that broke each day while Trump was out of the country, and one is left with a metastasizing political shit storm.   The biggest obstacle, however, to stabilizing the Trump/Pence regime is Trump himself.  Many of us during the campaign predicted precisely what we are witnessing.  A piece in the New Yorker lays out the case of why efforts to reset the Trump regime will fail.  Here are highlights:

The latest Trump Administration reset has begun, or so we are being asked to believe. On Tuesday, Mike Dubke, the White House communications director, confirmed that he was leaving his job after just three months. There is also talk of the Administration setting up a “war room” to deal with the Russia scandal, and assembling an all-star legal team to defend President Trump.

To put it in business terms, the White House’s problem can’t be resolved by firing the marketing team and hiring some external consultants. The problem is the obvious shortcomings of the primary product, Donald J. Trump. Here are six of them:
 1. He isn’t Presidential.Even in an era of hyper-partisanship, the Presidency retains an aura that can lift up the person occupying it. During the first part of his trip to the Middle East and Europe last week, Trump largely stuck to his prepared script, stayed off Twitter, and let the Presidency work for him. As pictures of him being feted in foreign lands were beamed back home, his approval rating rose five points, according to Gallup.

But Trump couldn’t see the trip through without a blowup. When he got to Brussels, he berated his fellow NATO leaders in public. Then he attacked the Germans, saying they were “bad, really bad” for exporting so many cars to the United States. After he arrived back home, this weekend, he quickly got back on Twitter and wailed away at his usual targets: the leakers, the media, and the Democrats. (For good measure, he also criticized Germany again.)

2. He has limited bandwidth. And that’s putting it nicely. Presidents don’t need to have Ph.D.s. They do need to be able to ingest a lot of information, focus on particular issues, and learn new things. In public, at least, Trump’s advisers insist that he can do this.

Why, then, did Trump launch his diatribe against the Germans on the eve of the G7 summit? On top of coming across as a boorish guest, he displayed his ignorance on trade—one of his signature issues. Evidently, he was oblivious to the fact that BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen have all set up factories in the United States, where they assemble many of the vehicles they sell here.

Was Trump briefed on the structure of the global auto industry before he spoke? It might not have made much difference.  . . . his attention span is so short that intelligence briefers are encouraged to keep written presentations to a page and to include a lot of visual aids, such as maps, charts, and photographs.

3. He won’t (or can’t) stick to a message. The most dramatic example of this came after the James Comey firing, when Trump contradicted the White House’s official version of events, which was that the President had merely endorsed a proposal to get rid of the F.B.I. director that had come from Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General. That departure from script wasn’t a one-off: Trump does it all the time.

Unless Trump can somehow be persuaded to be more consistent, it doesn’t matter who holds the positions of White House spokesman and director of communications. They will both have to spend most of their time trying to repair the damage that their boss inflicts on his own message.

4. He won’t delegate real authority. All Administrations have rival factions, but most Presidents empower someone—their chief of staff, usually—to enforce discipline. . . . The only thing that’s clear about the power structure in the current White House is that Trump is in charge.

5. The Russian saga is now a morass. In firing Comey, Trump transformed a troublesome story that was causing him great irritation into a potential constitutional crisis. The appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel gave him another chance to pull back, but he failed to take it.

With Mueller in place, Trump could conceivably have changed tack. Rather than consistently belittling the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, he could have said that he understood why many Americans have serious concerns about Moscow’s involvement in the 2016 election. He could have said that he had nothing to hide and that he welcomed the appointment of a new, independent figure to oversee the investigation.

Such a course of action might have given Trump a bit of leeway, but, instead, Trump retreated further into his bunker on Tuesday, repeating one of his discredited theories about the origins of the investigation. . . . . Coming on top of the recent reports suggesting that Kushner tried to set up a back channel of communication with the Kremlin last December, such statements only fuel the suspicion that Trump is trying to cover up something.

6. He’s stuck with unpopular Republican policies. When a President sees his popularity dip, the obvious response is to do something that voters like. But Trump has committed himself to two policy measures that are anything but popular: the House Republicans’ health-care-reform bill and a big tax cut for rich people and large corporations.

In a piece at the Federalist a few days ago, Ben Domenech, a conservative-leaning journalist and radio host, argued that Trump ought to back away from the Republican Party’s agenda and look to strike a deal with congressional Democrats on a number of big issues, including health care and taxes.

This is an interesting idea. But it presupposes that Trump still has enough political capital to alienate members of the Republican leadership and the big conservative donors who back them. That’s far from clear. With the Democratic Party increasingly focussed on impeachment, Trump surely needs to retain all the Republican backing he can in Congress. Pursuing a strategy that endangers the continued support of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would be a risky punt—it would take an artful and self-disciplined politician to pull it off. From all we know about Donald Trump, that isn’t him.