World Regard for America Plummets Under Trump

Trump, the ugly America (and not just due to a fat ass and tiny hands)

Not surprisingly, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, a man who based his campaign largely on racism, Christian extremism and xenophobia is very unpopular in the rest of the world outside of America.  What is surprising is how quickly the image of America itself has plummeted.  Electing an ignorant, lying, vulgar narcissist has rightly made many, especially in Europe, think poorly of Americans themselves.  It will be interesting to see reactions in early August when the husband and I will be in London.  Back in 2004 while I was in Canada, many Canadians expressed sorrow for Americans, saying that we deserved much better than George W. Bush, a/k/a the Chimperator.  Frighteningly, the Chimperator looks relatively good compared to Der Trumpenführer - if nothing else, he wasn't mentally ill.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at America's plunging image abroad.  Here are excerpts:

President Trump has alarmed citizens of the nation’s closest allies and others worldwide, diminishing the standing of the United States in their eyes, according to a wide-ranging international study released Monday.

But in the survey of 37 countries, Russia is a bright spot for Trump. As beleaguered as the president is at home, a majority of Russians say they have confidence in him. And Russians’ attitudes toward the United States have improved since Trump took office.

Elsewhere, though, and with remarkable speed, Trump’s presidency has taken a toll on the United States’ image abroad.

The international survey by the Pew Research Center found that favorable ratings of the United States have decreased from 64 percent of people across all countries surveyed at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency to 49 percent this spring. The new figures are similar to those toward the end of the George W. Bush administration.

The president himself has fared even worse: A median 22 percent are confident that Trump will do the right thing in global affairs, down from 64 percent who had confidence in Obama.

From Chile to Italy, from Sweden to Japan, majorities consider the president arrogant, intolerant, unqualified and dangerous.  What is surprising, said Frank G. Wisner, a former diplomat who served under Democrats and Republicans, is the degree to which Trump has scorned principles the United States has not only long espoused but also helped to define in the previous century. These include democratic governance, free markets, collective security, human rights and the rule of law — commitments that together, Wisner said, delineate the liberal international order. Global popular opinion matters, Wisner said, in part because it defines how foreign leaders engage with American interests.

The depths of disapproval registered abroad suggest that Trump has undone the progress Obama made in burnishing the American brand. It took Bush eight years, and the quagmire in Iraq, to notch such dismal ratings overseas, according to Pew. It has taken Trump six months. 

Among other world leaders studied by Pew, German Chancellor Angela Merkel receives relatively high marks. The share of people who report little or no confidence in her, a median of 31 percent across 37 countries, is less than half that for Trump, at 74 percent. The survey found that 59 percent lack confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin and 53 percent in Chinese President Xi Jinping. Germans hold some of the most negative opinions of the United States, with 62 percent viewing the country unfavorably and 87 percent lacking confidence in Trump.

How the GOP Became the Party of Vladimir Putin

It has been said that when fascism came to America it would be wrapped in the American flag and clutching a Bible.  Those who uttered such prediction likely never believed that a morally bankrupt, greed driven narcissist like Donald Trump would be the harbinger of the death of American democracy or that the Republican Party would become the party praising a brutal yet cunning Russian dictator. Those who made such predictions obviously underestimated the linger power of racism and Christian fanaticism to make far too many Americans - i.e. the 26% that voted for Trump/Pence - only too ready to overthrow the American republic. Just so they could reclaim their white privilege and force their extreme right wing Christian beliefs on all even as they push a social agenda that is the antithesis of the Gospel message. Greed and cruelty to others have replaced the Gospel message of caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sheltering to the homeless. A column in the Washington Post looks at this ugly transformation of a once great political party that I once supported.  Here are excerpts:  

In Donald Trump, the GOP nominated the most pro-Russian U.S. presidential candidate since Henry Wallace, whose 1948 bid on the Progressive Party ticket was largely run by communists. Throughout last year’s campaign, Trump lavished praise on Russian President (and career KGB agent) Vladimir Putin, attacked NATO and encouraged the Kremlin to hack his Democratic opponent’s emails. He even proposed recognizing Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula — the first violent European land grab since World War II — a move that would put the United States in the company of Cuba and North Korea. Since the election, he has openly contradicted the intelligence community’s finding that Moscow tampered in our democracy, calling such claims a “political witch-hunt.”

In his victory, Trump is bringing other Republicans along with him. . . . A recent poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that, while 65 percent of Americans support a congressional inquiry into Russian election interference, a narrow majority (51 percent ) of Republicans oppose it. And a survey released this past week by HuffPost/YouGov showedthat 82 percent of Hillary Clinton voters want to maintain sanctions imposed on Moscow in response to its meddling, while only 16 percent of Trump voters do. Now that Russia has dropped its official atheism and anti-capitalism, claiming to be the protector of traditional values and Christendom, a growing number of American conservatives are receptive to Trump’s Russian rapprochement.

Pro-Russian converts on the American right appear to take two forms. The opportunists simply want power and are willing to sacrifice principles in pursuit of it. The ideologues, meanwhile, see Russia as nothing worse than an occasional nuisance, if not a potential ally in the fight against Islamic extremism.

Perhaps the most prominent opportunist is former House speaker Newt Gingrich. In 1994, Gingrich included NATO expansion to Eastern Europe in his “Contract With America.” Yet last summer, while rationalizing Trump’s unprecedented vow not to defend NATO allies unless they “pay us,” Gingrich said of tiny, vulnerable Estonia (one of the few NATO members to meet the alliance’s recommended defense budget threshold) that he was “not sure I would risk a nuclear war over some place which is the suburbs of St. Petersburg.”

The need to defend Trump’s victory at any cost has induced conservatives to praise a virulently anti-American anarchist, who is probably in cahoots with Russian intelligence, and whose head they once called for. When WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange published emails stolen from the Clinton campaign by Russian hackers last fall, a few patriotic Republicans such as Marco Rubio said the party should ignore the blatant attempt to subvert our democracy. But most seized on the correspondence, and earlier hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, as a political cudgel. 

Trump, who had suggested the “death penalty or something” for Assange in 2010 after he released secret U.S. Army logs, now sides with Assange over the U.S. “intelligence” community, as he derisively referred to it on Twitter.

Republican Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.) told an interviewer that Russian hackers “merely did what the media should have done” in stealing and exposing Democratic Party communications. Break the law?

Though the opportunists outnumber the ideologues, it’s the true believers who could pose the greatest damage to U.S. foreign policy over the long term. Their proposed strategic realignment with Moscow, predicated upon shared opposition to vaguely defined “Islamic terrorism,” is seductive but wrong: Far from being a potential partner in the fight against Islamic terrorism, Russia does much to stoke it.

A representative bellwether is former American Conservative Union chairman David Keene, who, writing in the Washington Times, cast doubt on the intelligence community’s assessments regarding Russian hacking and favorably quoted right-wing former Czech president Vaclav Klaus (who lost a sinecure at the libertarian Cato Institute for his pro-Putin views ) to the effect that “a nation and its leaders may be detestable without being dangerous.” 

Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.) is the perfect embodiment of this ideological makeover. In the late 1980s, he was a rock-ribbed Orange County Republican speechwriter for Ronald Reagan who actually fought the Russians alongside the mujahideen in Afghanistan. Today, Rohrabacher (who praised Russian hacking as “terrific ”) is Capitol Hill’s greatest defender of Putin, whom he portrays as an opponent of radical Islamic terrorism.

Trump’s supporters in the white-nationalist alt-right also venerate Russia as a reactionary regime standing athwart a liberal, cosmopolitan West that promotes feminism and homosexuality. When I interviewed him last year, alt-right leader Richard Spencer gushed about how the “Trump-Putin understanding” presented “a vision of a white world that is not at war.”

Some Republicans, such as Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), are putting principle before party by protesting Trump’s coziness with a regime that the GOP’s previous nominee, Mitt Romney, rightly labeled America’s “number one geopolitical foe.” Yet they appear to be losing. 

In an interview recorded more than 30 years ago, Russian defector Yuri Bezmenov revealed the KGB’s counterintuitive approach to recruiting. “This was my instruction: Try to get into large-circulation, established conservative media. Reach . . . cynical, egocentric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie. These are the most recruit-able people, people who lack moral principles, who are either too greedy or suffer from self-importance.” Say this for Bezmenov: He knew his mark.

Bezmenov could not have better described the white supremacists and Christofascists who have rallied to Trump/Putin's standard.  

Trump is More Paranoid and Dangerous than Nixon

A piece in the New Republic takes a frightening look at the lust for revenge and paranoia that will sweep into the White House on January 20, 2017, and the danger that Donald Trump poses to anyone that his warped and narcissistic mind may deem and "enemy."  Given Trump's pettiness, there could be few limits on his efforts to seek revenge and punish those who see him for what he is and the danger that he poses to the nation.  Add to Trump's dangerous personality the surveillance and other  powers that will be at his disposal, and all of us have cause to be very afraid.  Here are article excerpts:

Donald Trump and Richard Nixon have at least one thing in common: They are the two most paranoid and vindictive men ever to win the presidency. Both came to power armed with enemies lists, vowing to seek revenge against those who stood in their way. Both roamed the mansions of power late at night, raving against every perceived slight. Both were caught on tape describing the ways they enjoyed bending others to their will.

But Nixon, unlike Trump, was an introspective man. In one particularly fascinating moment of self-reflection following his resignation, he described to a former aide the habits that had enabled him to rise to the top of Washington’s greasy pole. When you’re on your way, he explained, it pays to be crazy.

“In your own mind you have nothing to lose, so you take plenty of chances,” Nixon said. “It is then you understand, for the first time, that you have the advantage—because your competitors can’t risk what they have already.” That’s an insight that Trump put to good use during the Republican primaries, when he was willing to place high-stakes bets that his more experienced rivals were unwilling or unable to match.

But then you win, and your problems begin. “It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top,” Nixon confessed. “You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it, because it is a part of you and you need it as much as an arm and a leg. You continue to walk on the edge of the precipice, because over the years you have become fascinated by how close to the edge you can walk without losing your balance.”

The ways Richard Nixon chased that high are now a matter of voluminous historical record. None is more harrowing than his exploitation of the vast powers of his office to spy on those he perceived as threats to his power, and then seek to use the results of that surveillance to neutralize or destroy them.

The first phone tap on one of his own officials came in the fourth month of his presidency. That same year, federal agents snared a gay, closeted antiwar organizer named David Mixner in a “honey trap,” and threatened to release photographs of his assignation unless he ratted out his comrades. By the second year, an entire unit of the Internal Revenue Service was chartered in a locked, soundproof room to harass a blacklist of antiwar activists.

His enforcer, Chuck Colson, drew up “enemies lists” that included such fearsome figures as actress Carol Channing and Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton. The IRS was deployed to audit their taxes or take away the nonprofit status of their organizations. 

Donald Trump assembles enemies lists, too; his organs of cognition appear to be structured around the idea of revenge. There are Republicans who voted against him, like Senator Lindsey Graham. (“It’s so great our enemies are making themselves clear,” Trump surrogate Omarosa Manigault exulted, “so that when we get to the White House, we know where we stand.”) There are media organizations he claims have covered him unfairly, like The Washington Post. . . . And it’s not hard to imagine that Trump’s list of targets will only grow longer as his power expands. Like Nixon, he has spent his entire life chasing the narcotic rush afforded by dominating others, the better to fill the void where a functioning soul ought to be.

But there are two key differences that set Trump apart from his predecessor in paranoia. First, his soul is sicker by miles than Nixon’s. And second, the surveillance apparatus he is about to inherit is far scarier than the one available to Nixon. . . . .  “Now we are about to hand over that entire apparatus to a paranoid, score-settling sociopath whose primary obsession seems to be with crushing his personal enemies.”

Today the government can monitor virtually every form of communication, including the contents of emails, phone calls, online searches, and a host of personal data.

It’s not hard to imagine the kind of damage Trump could do with the powers of the NSA at his disposal. “Let’s say you become part of the Trump opposition,” says Jon Stokes. “It probably won’t be long before Trump knows what kind of porn you like. Sure, that’s against the law—but the government has been breaking those laws for 20 years. We’ve just been doing it for noble, Jack Bauer reasons, not petty Donald Trump reasons.”

Consider, too, all the federal officials beyond the director of national intelligence who will serve at the pleasure of Trump. There’s the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, whom the president could illegally order to target enemies with tax audits, like Nixon did. The head of the Small Business Administration, which could cut off loans to Trump’s rivals. The entire Cabinet, which oversees billions of dollars in federal research grants and defense contracts and construction jobs. . . . And the head of military intelligence, who could use the Pentagon’s powers to spy on left-wing groups, as it did under Lyndon Johnson and to a vastly expanded degree under the paranoid auspices of Richard Nixon.

What will happen when President Trump orders some eyesore removed from his sight, only to discover the limits of presidential power? Revenge is a narcotic, and Trump of all people will be in need of a regular, ongoing fix. Ordering his people to abuse the surveillance state to harass and destroy his enemies will offer the quickest and most satisfying kick he can get. The tragedy, as James Madison could have told us, is that the good stuff is now lying around everywhere, just waiting for the next aspiring dictator to cop.

Be very, very afraid.

Robert Gates: Trump is "Beyond Repair"

Yet another prominent Republican, while not endorsing Hillary Clinton, has declared Donald Trump utterly unfit for the office of the presidency and in response to those in the GOP who are trying to tell themselves that Trump can be controlled or moderated, described Trump as "beyond repair."  This time the Republican is former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  His take down of Trump is scathing even as it has cautionary words for Hillary Clinton.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at this latest condemnation of Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates ripped both presidential candidates in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Friday, but particularly blasted Donald Trump, calling him “beyond repair.”

Gates, who served under former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, knocked Trump for everything from his attitude to his thoughts on foreign policy. He characterized him as someone who is “willfully ignorant about the rest of the world, about our military and its capabilities, and about government itself.”

“He has no clue about the difference between negotiating a business deal and negotiating with sovereign nations,” Gates wrote. “A thin-skinned, temperamental, shoot-from-the-hip and lip, uninformed commander-in-chief is too great a risk for America.”

Gates urges Clinton to give voters more reason to trust her and to focus on her national security policies in speeches.

'"Mrs. Clinton has time before the election to address forthrightly her trustworthiness, to reassure people about her judgment, to demonstrate her willingness to stake out one or more positions on national security at odds with her party’s conventional wisdom, and to speak beyond generalities about how she would deal with China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, the Middle East — and international trade. Whether and how she addresses these issues will, I believe, affect how many people vote — including me,” Gates wrote.

For Trump, Gates had this to say: “He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief.”

While Clinton has not publicly addressed Gates’ op-ed, Trump took to his favorite medium, Twitter to blast Gates, saying that he has never met him, but that he does not like his work.

Indeed, Trump doesn't "like the work" of anyone who doesn't fawningly kiss his extremely ample ass.

GOP National Security Officials: Trump Would Be "Most Reckless" President in History

Last week it was former CIA head Michael Morell endorsing Hillary Clinton for president and citing Donald Trump's ignorance, temperament and near co-opting by Vladimir Putin for his decision. Morell had always been an independent during his three decade plus career at the CIA.  Now, fifty (50) former GOP national security officials have released a scathing anti-Trump letter which states that Trump is not only dangerous and unfit for office, but that he'd be the most reckless president in America's history.   The full letter which is worth the time to read in full can be found here.  I truly do not recall in my lifetime such a revolt against a major political party nominee by prominent members of his own party.  The New York Times has details:

Fifty of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring that Donald J. Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

Mr. Trump, the officials warn, “would be the most reckless president in American history.”

The letter says Mr. Trump would weaken the United States’ moral authority and questions his knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. It says he has “demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding” of the nation’s “vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances and the democratic values” on which American policy should be based. And it laments that “Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.”

“None of us will vote for Donald Trump,” the letter states . . . Monday’s letter included many senior former officials who until now have remained silent in public, even while denouncing Mr. Trump’s policies over dinners or in small Republican conclaves.

Late Monday, Mr. Trump struck back. The signatories of the letter, he said in a statement, were “the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.” He dismissed them as “nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power.”

Mr. Trump correctly identified many of the signatories as the architects of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. But he also blamed them for allowing Americans “to die in Benghazi” and for permitting “the rise of ISIS”

Among the most prominent signatories are Michael V. Hayden, a former director of both the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency; John D. Negroponte, who served as the first director of national intelligence and then deputy secretary of state; and Robert B. Zoellick, another former deputy secretary of state, United States trade representive and, until 2012, president of the World Bank. Two former secretaries of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, also signed, as did Eric S. Edelman, who w as Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser and as a top aide to Robert M. Gates when he was secretary of defense.

Robert Blackwill and James Jeffrey, two key strategists in Mr. Bush’s National Security Council, and William H. Taft IV, a former deputy secretary of defense and ambassador to NATO, also signed.

[A] number said in recent interviews that they changed their minds once they heard Mr. Trump invite Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s email server — a sarcastic remark, he said later — and say that he would check to see how much NATO members contributed to the alliance before sending forces to help stave off a Russian attack. They viewed Mr. Trump’s comments on NATO as an abandonment of America’s most significant alliance relationship.

Mr. Trump has said throughout his campaign that he intends to upend Republican foreign policy orthodoxy on everything from trade to Russia, where he has been complimentary of President Vladimir V. Putin, saying nothing about its crackdown on human rights and little about its annexation of Crimea.

"We agreed to focus on Trump’s fitness to be president, not his substantive positions,” said John B. Bellinger III, who w as Ms. Rice’s legal adviser at the National Security Council and the State Department, and who drafted the letter.

He said that among the signatories, “some will vote for” Mrs. Clinton, “and some will not vote, but all agree Trump is not qualified and would be dangerous.”

[P]erhaps most striking about the letter is the degree to which it echoes Mrs. Clinton’s main argument about her rival: that his temperament makes him unsuitable for the job, and that he should not be entrusted with the control of nuclear weapons.

“He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood,” the letter says. “He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior. All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be president and commander in chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”

Frankly, I have to agree with these individuals' assessment 100%.  They may have been wrong on the Iraq War, they have it right when it comes to Trump.

Quote of the Day: Dustin Lance Black on Why Romney is Dangerous

I have had the pleasure to meet Dustin Lance Black three times now and he always comes across as insightful and able to have empathy for others.  Moreover, with family members still living in Virginia he is fully attuned to the vengeance that the Christofascists have taken against gays in Virginia in the form of GOP backed anti-gay legislation and the constant blocking of all laws which would provide non-discrimination protections.  And as a former Mormon, Black has a perhaps unique perspective on the mindset of Mitt Romney who he sees as a danger to all minorities.  Here is the telling quote via Pride Source:

What would a Romney presidency mean for the gay community?

A Romney win is not just dangerous for the gay community but for anyone interested in equality. This is a president who seems to have trouble seeing outside of his own experiences. I don't think this is a man who has demonstrated any kind of empathy or understanding for people who are very, very different. The danger is not that he will get a lot of legislation passed that will hurt gay and lesbian people; the danger is he is likely going to appoint two Supreme Court justices, making this the most conservative court in history. That's what is at stake. And that doesn't just go for gay and lesbian people; that's gay and lesbian people, women, workers - they all are about to see their protections stripped away. He explicitly said he believes these sorts of protections should be allowed to be put up for a vote. I find it absurd and criminal that he would say that minorities should have their rights put up to votes.

Mitt Romney and those of the far right are a clear and present danger to the rights of all minorities who cling to the days where a white majority reserved to itself rights and privileges denied to other Americans.   Equally frightening Romney and his Christianist supporters seem to have open contempt for the concept of religious freedom for anyone other than themselves.