Rejecting Donald Trump is an Act of Patriotism

This evening I ran into a "friend" who voted for Donald Trump who asked me if I was going to be going to the inauguration on Friday.  My response was that I would sooner slit my wrists.   Since the Vietnam War era I have always believed that rather than fall into the mindlessness of the "America Right or Wrong" crowd, true patriotism involves standing up for principle and demanding that America live up to its ideals and that the Constitution be defended.  Now, faced with an incoming president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, exhibits contempt fort conflict of interest rules, and seeks only to satiate his voracious ego, it is more important than every to stand up for America and the ideals of equality and equal justice under the laws. A column in the New York Times argues that resisting Donald Trump as Congressman John Lewis has done and refusing to recognize him as a legitimate president is an act of patriotism.  The far right will shriek and scream, yet they had no problem striving for 8 years to legitimize Barack Obama which merely underscores their hypocrisy.  Here are column excerpts:

[L]et’s ask whether Mr. Lewis was right to say what he said. Is it O.K., morally and politically, to declare the man about to move into the White House illegitimate?

Yes, it is. In fact, it’s an act of patriotism.

By any reasonable standard, the 2016 election was deeply tainted. It wasn’t just the effects of Russian intervention on Mr. Trump’s behalf; Hillary Clinton would almost surely have won if the F.B.I. hadn’t conveyed the false impression that it had damaging new information about her, just days before the vote. This was grotesque, delegitimizing malfeasance, especially in contrast with the agency’s refusal to discuss the Russia connection.

Was there even more to it? Did the Trump campaign actively coordinate with a foreign power? Did a cabal within the F.B.I. deliberately slow-walk investigations into that possibility? Are the lurid tales about adventures in Moscow true? We don’t know, although Mr. Trump’s creepy obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin makes it hard to dismiss these allegations. Even given what we do know, however, no previous U.S. president-elect has had less right to the title. So why shouldn’t we question his legitimacy?

And talking frankly about how Mr. Trump gained power isn’t just about truth-telling. It may also help to limit that power.

It would be one thing if the incoming commander in chief showed any hint of humility, of realizing that his duty to the nation requires showing some respect for the strong majority of Americans who voted against him despite Russian meddling and the F.B.I.’s disinformation dump. But he hasn’t and won’t.

Instead, he’s lashing out at and threatening anyone and everyone who criticizes him, while refusing even to admit that he lost the popular vote. And he’s surrounding himself with people who share his contempt for everything that is best in America. What we’re looking at, all too obviously, is an American kakistocracy — rule by the worst.

What this means is that Mr. Trump must not be treated with personal deference simply because of the position he has managed to seize. He must not be granted the use of the White House as a bully pulpit. He must not be allowed to cloak himself in the majesty of office. Given what we know about this guy’s character, it’s all too clear that granting him unearned respect will just empower him to behave badly.

And reminding people how he got where he is will be an important tool in preventing him from gaining respect he doesn’t deserve. Remember, saying that the election was tainted isn’t a smear or a wild conspiracy theory; it’s simply the truth.

Now, anyone questioning Mr. Trump’s legitimacy will be accused of being unpatriotic — because that’s what people on the right always say about anyone who criticizes a Republican president. (Strangely, they don’t say this about attacks on Democratic presidents.) But patriotism means standing up for your country’s values, not pledging personal allegiance to Dear Leader.

No, we shouldn’t get into the habit of delegitimizing election results we don’t like. But this time really is exceptional, and needs to be treated that way.  

I agree. #NotMyPresident.

Will “Trump Derangement Syndrome” Be Used to Silence Critics?

Personally, I believe that one needed to be deranged to vote for Donald Trump - or motivated by hate, racism, bigotry and/or right wing Christian extremism.   If you voted for Trump, facts simply did not matter nor did the endless stream of lies issuing from Trump's mouth and those of his sycophants.   Yet now that Der Fuhrer is just days from assuming the presidency, some Trump apologists - and perhaps modern day JosephGoebbels equivalents - may be poised to launch a campaign claiming that it is Trump's opponents who suffer from derangement.  The premise? First, lie often enough and eventually many will believe the lie. Second, when you cannot counter the factual argument of opponents, simply malign them and attack them and try to "change the subject."  The Bolsheviks and Nazis used this type of approach and we know - or at those of us who know accurate history - where that led Russia and German, respectively.  A piece in Salon looks at the likely coming campaign against Trump/Pence opponents and the reality that it is the Trump supporters and apologist who are deranged.  Here are excerpts:

Do you believe that Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy? Have you shared these concerns and anxieties with other people? Do you see disturbing connections between how fascism and authoritarianism took hold in other countries and what is occurring in the United States at present?

If so, you may be suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” — at least according to Los Angeles Times guest columnist Justin Raimondo.  Raimondo explains:

The country is in the throes of a major epidemic, with no known cure and some pretty scary symptoms. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS, and it’s rapidly spreading from the point of origin – the political class – to the population at large. In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of proportion. The president-elect’s every tweet provokes a firestorm, as if 140 characters were all it took to change the world…

In the advanced stages of the disease, the afflicted lose touch with reality. Opinion is unmoored from fact. . . . . Opinion is unmoored from fact. Life resembles a dark fairy tale in which the villain – Trump – is an amalgam of all the worst tyrants in history, past and present, while the heroes – Trump’s critics – are akin to the resistance fighters of World War II. TDS victims routinely compare Trump to Hitler …

Which raises the question: If he’s another Hitler, if he’s in league with Putin, then why is assassination out of the question? Poke a TDS victim and you’ll find they don’t think that “solution” is out of the question at all.

This is the final stage of the TDS epidemic: violence against a democratically elected leader. Unless a cure for TDS is found, this is where we are headed.

Raimondo’s theory and claims are absurd.  They are an exercise in projection. It is not Trump who has been greeted with almost deranged, crazed, unhinged, unfounded, unreasonable and maddened opposition, but rather Barack Obama.

Republicans and the broader right-wing news disinformation-entertainment complex created racist conspiracy theories such as “Birtherism” (whose lead advocates included Donald Trump) in an effort to delegitimize the country’s first black president. Republicans also used the language of the American Civil War in their threats of “nullification,” “secession” and invocations of “states’ rights” against Barack Obama. This was part of a broader pattern of reckless, extreme and irresponsible behavior by Republicans with the goal of undermining Obama’s presidency. Republican leaders went so far as to develop a strategy of opposing every one of Obama’s potential initiatives, regardless of what he proposed.

Basic facts should encourage people of conscience to resist Donald Trump. This is not derangement but rational and reasonable behavior. As I have explained numerous times, Donald Trump is a fascist authoritarian. He has promised to undermine basic tenets of American democracy, such as freedom of the press. Trump has also encouraged violence against his political foes. He has surrounded himself with political advisors who are affiliated with the most extreme and dangerous right-wing elements in American politics (and, increasingly, global politics), such as white supremacists and white nationalists. The American intelligence community has concluded that Russian spies and other agents, acting in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy, actively interfered with the 2016 presidential election.

Ironically, efforts to pathologize or psychologize those who oppose Donald Trump actually reflect deeper problems with both him as a candidate and now president-elect, as well as his supporters. Psychologists and other observers have concluded that Donald Trump may suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. He is an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur. Trump is also profoundly ignorant, and as the Atlantic pointed out in a blistering condemnation during the 2016 campaign, “he appears not to read.” His movement possesses the attributes of a political cult. Trump is now also the leader of a Republican Party (and broader conservative movement) that acts more like a religion than a functional political organization interested in responsible governance.

While Raimondo’s claims are absurd and irresponsible, we ignore them at our peril. “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is a preview of the narrative framework that will likely be used by conservatives and their allies in a compliant corporate news media to silence Trump’s critics. To that end, those who oppose Trump and his administration will be described as “crazy” or “unhinged.” The mainstream news media — because of its slavish adherence to false equivalency and a “both sides do it” narrative — will insist that Trump’s critics should “give him a chance” and are somehow “hypocrites” if they complained about Republican obstructionism against Obama.

The right-wing propagandists who will deploy “Trump Derangement Syndrome” against their enemies have one ultimate goal: to normalize the danger to American democracy represented by Trump and his supporters.

It is not those who oppose Trump who are deranged, but rather those voters who convinced themselves that a plutocrat authoritarian reality TV star con man and professional wrestler wannabe with no experience in government at any level was qualified to be president of the United States.

This is America’s great national derangement. Those who stand against and oppose Donald Trump are patriots who are trying to return the country to sanity.

Be very afraid, but never stop the opposition.

Resistance to Trump/Pence Is Patriotic — and Christian

Many Facebook "friends" will not like this post if I decided to cross post it on Facebook, but given the danger I feel now grips the nation, hurt feelings are not enough to make true patriots silent.  In keeping with this mindset, I must once again state that I generally hold most Christians, especially judgmental, self-congratulatory evangelical Christians in extremely low regard.  The same holds true for "scamvangelists" enriching themselves by shaking down the ignorant and/or gullible and, of course, the Catholic Church hierarchy that feigns piety while still covering up the molestation and rape of children and youths. Contempt might even be an apt description of my view of such "Christians," all of whom share one attribute: they claim the Christian name, but when it comes to living the Gospel message they are anything but true Christians.  Indeed, they make the Pharisees of the Bible look like rather upstanding individuals in comparison.  Disgustingly, politicians and far too many in the media  continue to give deference to these false Christians and act as if there is something righteous and noble about them when in fact they are foul and sully the Christian name. Author Anne Rice once said that if these people are what it is to be a Christian, then she wanted nothing to do with being a Christian.  I concur with Rice 100%.  Sadly, I believe that if you were to put a group of whites, blacks, Asian, Hispanics and Middle Easterners in a row, these "godly" people would only see the whites as human.  The rest would be something "other" and "lesser."  

With a majority of Catholics and 81% of evangelicals having voted for Donald Trump, the moral rot of these people has placed, in my view, a dangerous, narcissistic, pathological liar in line to occupy the White House.   And now these same people want to the rest of us to normalize the sickness and danger that they have unleashed on the nation and the world.  A piece in Sojourner makes the case that resisting the Trump/Pence/Republican agenda is not only truly patriotic, but also truly Christian.   Here are excerpts: 

A conservative evangelical national leader called me during the election campaign. He reminded me how much he cared about abortion, religious liberty, and the Supreme Court. Then said, “But in Christian conscience, I cannot help put a man in the White House who is intellectually incompetent, has lived an amoral personal and public life, is dangerously immature, and is a racial bigot. I just can’t do that.” This evangelical leader’s refusal to support Donald Trump was genuinely prophetic, unlike the 81 percent of white evangelicals for whom Trump’s incompetence, immorality, immaturity, and racial bigotry was not a deal breaker.

[B]ecause the majority of white Americans, and white Christians, decided Trump’s great defects and dangers were not disqualifiers, he will soon be inaugurated president of the United States.

Power always produces accommodation, and already Trump is being normalized by the media and political world — with the elites adjusting to the new situation of power as they always do. Celebrity has replaced leadership, chest pumping has replaced unifying, tweeting has replaced press conferences and international policymaking, and profiteering looks to become a presidential business. The president-elect’s denials of facts — like intelligence community reports of Russian intervention in an American election — are breathtaking.

Many of us in the faith community have real moral concerns as we enter into this new administration, so how do we relate to it? Accommodation and compromise are not the only responses to power. And we cannot just sit with hope that the president-elect’s words and promises are not to be taken seriously — or that he doesn’t really mean all of his attacks on people for their race or ethnicity, their faith, their gender, their physical abilities, or their identity as Americans. A better response is resistance to all those things, in defense of vulnerable people in particular, in the hope that such resistance might deter, or obstruct, or defeat such behaviors and policies.

Our resistance to the political language and proposals that concern us must go beyond prophetic utterances and symbolic actions. Resistance must include a strategy to block dangerous and destructive public practices and policies and turn public opinion against them.

Here are six points for a resistance strategy. 

1. Engage Legislative and Legal Decision Making

This past Tuesday proved in just over 12 hours how righteous outrage can be channeled to change the minds of members of Congress. House Republicans were ready on Monday night to gut the independent office in charge of investigating ethics complaints against members of Congress. By Tuesday at noon, they had been flooded with so many calls from outraged constituents that they reversed course . . . 

Just next week, the Senate plans to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act without, at the same time, replacing it with a comprehensive alternative. Repeal without replacement would endanger the health care of up to 22 million people who were uninsured before the passage of the ACA, and jeopardize many others with pre-existing conditions or other vulnerabilities. We need to mobilize all of our constituencies and allies to flood Congress with calls next week, calling on them not to repeal without simultaneously replacing the ACA.

Republican plans already afoot for the spring will require us to mobilize a fierce fight for the existence of the safety net itself, and the most basic nutrition and health care protections for our most vulnerable citizens. Legal battles against expected efforts to disenfranchise minority votes will also become imperative, and will need support from the faith community in particular.

2. Mobilize Your Church

It is high time for white churches and pastors to understand and confront why they failed in this election season to teach and preach about racism, and to be faithful to Christian principles about loving our neighbors and welcoming the stranger. Our original sin of racism in America — how it still lingers in all of our institutions and how it was effectively used in this election — was not faithfully addressed in the pulpits of white American churches. 

3. Use Media and Social Media for Moral Purposes

Engage the media, especially in your own communities. Letters to the editor, op-ed opinion pieces, radio show call-ins, and regular feedback to your local newspapers, television, and radio shows are more important than ever. . . . .  it is also time to engage your friends and relatives and fellow congregants who disagree with you on the issues now at stake in this country in thoughtful, useful, civil, and constructive ways.

4. Stand Up to Hateful Words and Acts

Verbal attacks and physical threats against people of color, including their children, are dramatically on the rise since the election. I continue to hear reports from black church leaders who find themselves under attack, and from African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American young people being assaulted with words and actions, and from believers of other religions being singled out for abuse. That means that we, white people, and white Christians in particular, need to step up and stand up to such attacks.

5. Prepare for Civil Disobedience

The day after the election, my youngest son asked me, “Dad, how many days before you are in jail?” My 13-year-old understood that such issues were at stake. We don’t begin with civil disobedience; we start by taking personal, public, and legal actions to engage our deepest concerns. But we need to prepare and train for civil disobedience for whenever the times and circumstances call for such moral confrontations. We should enter this administration with the expectation that those who resist the Trump agenda may likely spend time in jail. 

6. Take Action

Resistance means putting faith into action. . . . . in standing up and speaking out for moral politics and for the people God has called us to protect.

Who Really Loves America?

With Teabagistan erupting in outrage over the "snub" of America Sniper at last night's Academy Awards - my personal view is, thank God the revisionist history/war porn won no major awards - and Rudy Giuliani attacking Barack Obama's loyalty to America in a sad effort to remain in the political spotlight, it is a good time to ask what it means to "love America."   For the "love it or leave it crowd," it means to blindly cheerleader for whatever America does no matter how wrong and heinous and to cling to the myth of "American exceptionalism" no matter what facts might suggest a conclusion to the contrary.  To me, loving America means first and foremost being honest about America's strengths and its failings.  A column in the New York Times looks at this latter type of analysis which is increasingly an unknown concept to those in the GOP base.  Here are excerpts:

We have arrived at the point where the utter tedium and desperation of personal attacks against the president about his life story and his loyalty are no longer news. The histrionics have shed their ability to shock. Most right-minded Americans — ethically speaking, not ideologically speaking — have moved on.  But occasionally the insults prove to be accidentally instructive.

Take for instance what Rudy Giuliani (“America’s mayor”) said about the president last week at a dinner for Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin (a contender for America’s president). At the dinner — attended, according to Politico, by “about 60 right-leaning business executives and conservative media types” — Giuliani said, “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America.”  He continued, “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.” . . . and questioning the president’s faith in American exceptionalism.

As the Pew Research Center pointed out in July, “the view that the U.S. is exceptional — standing above all other countries in the world — has declined 10 points since 2011.” At that time last year, 58 percent of Americans believed America is “one of the greatest countries in the world, along with others,” while only 28 percent believed America “stands above all other countries in the world.”

And what does it mean to love the country? We’re not talking about touristic love of the place — not the mountains and the valleys, the cities and the suburbs, the mighty rivers and the shores that kiss the oceans — but a love of the idea of America.

In a way, this is an ideological battle. Conservatism is rooted in preservation; progressivism advances alteration.

Our allegiance needn’t — mustn’t — be blind to be true. We must acknowledge our warts if we are to proclaim our beauty. Our aggrandizement must be grounded. We must be willing to laud America where it has soared and rebuke it where it has faltered.  America is a great country in many ways. But it is far from perfect.

Seeking to preserve and enshrine one vision of this country from one period of its past robs it of what makes it magical: its infinite possibility for adjustment.

There is room for betterment. America is not static. America is striving.  And sometimes, America requires critique. Jingoism is an avoidance of realism.

You can simultaneously love and be disappointed in the object of your love, wanting it to be better than it is. In fact, that is a measure of love. Honest critique is a pillar of patriotism.  As James Baldwin put it, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Of course, if you want a good take down of Giuliani, here are some highlights from a New York Post op-ed:

Rudy may have forgotten the half-dozen deferments he won ducking the Vietnam War, even getting the federal judge he was clerking for to write a letter creating a special exemption for him. And remember Bernie Kerik? He's the Giulaini police commissioner, business partner and sidekick whose nomination as homeland security secretary narrowly preceded indictments. He then did his national service in prison.

Giuliani went so far as to rebuke the President for not being "brought up the way you were and the way I was brought up through love of this country," a bow no doubt to the parenting prowess of Harold Giuliani, who did time in Sing Sing for holding up a Harlem milkman and was the bat-wielding enforcer for the loan-sharking operation run out of a Brooklyn bar owned by Rudy's uncle.

Harold, whose robbery conviction was in the name of an alias, made sure the draft board knew he was a felon. On the other hand, Obama's grandfather and uncle served. His uncle helped liberate Buchenwald, which apparently affected him so deeply he stayed in the family attic for six months when he returned home.

 There's more, but you get the drift.

The Disruptive Force of Equality

At the time that the Declaration of Independence was penned, the concept embodied by the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" were foreign concepts around the entire globe.  Most nations were ruled by monarchies or were colonies of nations ruled by monarchies.  Indeed, it would be another 143 years before most of the European monarchies which were the norm in 1776 were to fall in the aftermath of World War I.   Worse yet, slavery still existed in many parts of the globe, including in America itself.  One might wonder whether or not Thomas Jefferson who slipped the language into the Declaration fully foresaw the power of his selected language or the difficulty which America would encounter in delivering on the lofty concept.  Today's struggle for LGBT equality is but the latest installment on America's journey to live up to the Declaration principles.  A column in the Washington Post looks this difficulty journey which, ironically, is being impeded most by the Christofascists, Tea Party set and today's Republican Party who claim to cherish American ideals.  Here are excepts:

On July 9, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was publicly read to the citizens of New York City — “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .” — they responded by decapitating an equestrian statue of King George III, cutting off his nose and placing his head on a spike outside a tavern. Metal from the statue was later turned into 42,088 bullets, intended, by one account, “to assimilate with the brains” of the British.

The “glorious cause” split the fledgling country roughly into thirds — patriots, the uncommitted and loyalists (who sometimes were roughly treated). The Civil War was not the first American conflict that divided families. William Franklin, Ben’s illegitimate son, was the last royal governor of New Jersey. His father disinherited him. 

And the ideals of the new nation were immediately rendered hypocritical by the presence of about 600,000 enslaved human beings. The British took full (and appropriate) propaganda advantage. “How is it,” said Samuel Johnson, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

Yet one of those slave owners, Thomas Jefferson — bookish, retiring, possessing what John Adams called a “happy talent for composition” — injected a philosophic statement into a protest movement: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

America could have declared itself independent from Britain without declaring all men equal. The various “injuries and usurpations” relating to the traditional rights of Englishmen would have been enough. But something more ambitious and universal got planted. 

The seed lay dormant for decades. . . .  While Lincoln had little respect for Jefferson as a political figure, he praised him for “the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth . . . and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.” 

Because Jefferson inserted an abstract truth into a bloody, fratricidal struggle, Lincoln could claim the mantle of the Founders during a bloodier struggle, essentially refounding the country on the best interpretation of its principles. After a further century of African American suffering, striving and demand, Lyndon Johnson could sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and hand a pen to Martin Luther King Jr. Slowly, awkwardly, America was learning to understand its own language. 

This story justifies a mix of realism and idealism. Our advance toward the ideals of the Declaration has been protracted, violent and often hypocritical. And yet: All men are created equal. The phrase is enough to cause a catch in the throat.

The idea of equality still drives people to amazing, almost irrational, sacrifices. It remains the most disruptive, hopeful force of history: All men are created equal. Just a whisper of the words is enough to cause humble people to sacrifice everything; enough to cause tyrants to fear. 

This is not, in the end, just an American language. Shortly before his death, Jefferson reflected that the Declaration was “pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world.” A difficult delivery, no doubt. But long expected.

The take away?  That it is those who continue to decry immigrants, those who oppose LGBT equality, and those who still hold segregationist beliefs that are the betrayers of America's founding principles, not the targets of their hate and animus.