What Respect , If Any, Is Due Donald Trump?

As readers of this blog no doubt have gathered, I have no respect for Donald Trump and I refuse to attach the word "president" to his name and I will not surrender to the bullshit argument that one should show him respect because of the office he holds.  Trump ha shown only disrespect for his office and has brought a level of crassness, vulgarity and corruption to the White House never seen before.   Richard Nixon looks almost noble in comparison and George W. Bush comes across as thoughtful and knowledgeable in contrast.  Trump has lowered the dignity not only of his office but of the nation as a whole.  Just travel abroad and see how many times you need to explain that you did not support the man to moral and decent people who still cannot believe America lowered itself by allowing such a foul person in the White House.  A column in the Washington Post lays out an argument as to why showing no respect to Trump is the decent thing to do.  Here are excerpts:

What respect — if any — is due President Trump?

I ask that because, ever since his State of the Union speech, I’ve been wondering if congressional Democrats were out of line when dozens of them refused to stand for him as he entered the chamber. My Post colleague, the enviably talented Dana Milbank, took the Democrats to task for their behavior. He said the office of the presidency, if not the man, deserves our respect.

I respectfully disagree. In the first place, I am unable to separate the man from the office. Trump certainly hasn’t. He has shown no respect for the presidency, not a nod of homage to the aura of his predecessors, some of whom he must have heard about. He has used foul language in describing certain emerging nations, wakes in the morning engorged with brattiness and tweets denunciations of almost anyone. In an instant abdication of all dignity, Trump began his presidency with a squalid visit to CIA headquarters, where he stood before a memorial for the fallen ranting about the size of his inaugural’s crowd. It was an epic act of civic sacrilege. Trump is frequently dismissive of his own aides. This, though, is their own affair. They are men and women who seemingly lack pride or, in an act of self-abnegation not seen since Henry II submitted to flagellation for the murder of Thomas Becket, choose to suffer for their own foolish actions. They hitched their wagons to a star, but he was really a one-man black hole who swallows truth. In assessing what respect Trump is owed, it is not the man I consider but his victims. All presidents have victims, of course. The lives of countless people, both here and abroad, were ruined or ended by George W. Bush’s Iraq War. The issue with Trump, however, is not over policy. It is about empathy. Bush himself was wrong about so much, but he is a courteous man who treated everyone with dignity. That is not the case with Trump.  The politicians, however, can take care of themselves. It is Trump’s other victims that I have in mind when I consider if the man deserves any show of respect. Should I stand for a president who has called Mexican immigrants criminals? If I do, does it show respect for some abstraction called the office of the president or a lack of respect for the actuality of the Mexican people?

Similarly, do we ignore how Trump mocked the physical disability of a New York Times reporter or attacked Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan? What about the Charlottesville protesters who Trump equated to neo-Nazis? I envision all these people feeling abandoned when Trump is cheered.
 [H]is aides are stalked by their former selves.  Whenever they accompany Trump anywhere, they should feel the contempt they have diligently earned by putting themselves at the service of a man who will sooner or later reward their stupidity with disdain. These are people who, in many cases, knew Trump was hugely unsuited for the presidency but let their demented hatred of Hillary Clinton and their personal greed blind them to the consequences. When they accompany Trump, they should feel the contempt Trump himself feels for people he’s bought. They are bimbos . . . .

There will be a presidency after Trump. With any luck, the next president will restore the dignity of the office, not merely with appropriate ceremony, but by acknowledging the honor and obligation of precedence. But until that happens, Trump gives us no choice. At the next state of the union speech, I’d like to see even more members rise to the occasion — by keeping their seats.

I would go further than the author and urge members of Congress to refuse to attend.   A half empty audience would be most appropriate.  Plus, it would drive Der Trumpenführer nuts. 

Conservative Christians Look the Other Way as Trump Debases the Presidency

It is Sunday morning and across America fundamentalist and evangelical Christians will be flocking to fill church pews and feign piety, many wearing their professed religiosity on their sleeves.  Many are against drinking alcohol, some won't even engage in dancing, and, of course they view loving same sex couples who are responsible members of their communities as an abomination to be annihilated.  Yet some 81% of them voted for Donald Trump and continue to support him largely because he appealed to their hatred of others and their desire to destroy the religious freedom of other citizens.  If one wants a reason to walk away from the Christian brand, these people are a strong argument that only hate-filled hypocrites call themselves Christian nowadays.  And the Millennials ARE paying attention: nearly one third have disavowed any religious affiliation, largely thanks to these self-anointed "godly folks."  A column in the Washington Post calls these so-called Christians out and ask the question of whether there is any debasement that Trump can do to the presidency or decency in general that might make these people disavow him.   Here are highlights:  

No group has been as blindly loyal to President Trump as Christian conservatives. They have not let religion or values get in the way of their support. Consider the “Access Hollywood” tape, the attack on a Gold Star family, a mass of inexplicable ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials (and the president’s open invitation to Russia to continue hacking), the firing of the FBI director, the humiliation of evangelical-favorite Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the politicization of the Boy Scouts, the threats to the special counsel and now an interview with Trump’s out-of-control, potty-mouthed communications director.

What about Trump, exactly, reflects their values? (Taking Medicaid away from millions and separating families to deport law-abiding immigrants?) The Trump administration is a clown show — but it’s the evangelicals who supplied the tent, the red noses and the floppy shoes. Each day presents a new insult to the office of the presidency and a repudiation of civilized behavior.

Cumulatively — let’s not forget the erratic, impulsive declaration that he was throwing transgender military personnel out of the armed services — it is not clear whether Trump has reached a tipping point when Republicans decide he actually has to leave office. Yet if Trump nevertheless proceeds to fire Sessions and then order Justice Department officials to fire Mueller (or fire them if they won’t), Republicans will have no remedy at their disposal other than impeachment; they may very well choose not to use it, but then we have the makings of a constitutional crisis on our hands.

And the religious right, which intones “Judge Gorsuch, Judge Gorsuch!” when confronted with the series of Trump abominations, should do some soul-searching. Was this trashing of the White House, assault on civil language and conduct and contempt for the Constitution (the one the religious right thinks is so important that the new Supreme Court justice must protect it) worth it? And if it gets worse, is there any point at which the religious might put country above tribe, morality above partisanship? No, I don’t think it will do so ever. 

Last evening I was at a small, intimate fundraiser with mostly members of the local Indian community and the contrast between their expectations and what they looked for in a politician could not be a more stark contrast with the evangelical Christian crowd:  they look for the personal honesty, integrity and personal morality of a candidate and whether that candidate will seek to do the best for all citizens and not deliberately harm targeted citizens.  This versus the evangelicals and their support for Trump.  In my experience, these non-Christians time and time again reflect the values of the Gospel message more than the purported Christians of Trump's base. 

The Trump Presidency is an Obscenity

With each passing day we witness more batshit crazy and vulgar behavior from the occupant of the White House, be it the man's coarseness in general or his gratuitous attacks on news anchors and now a video of himself wrestling with CNN.  None of this behavior is normal and the burden is to not allow it to so desensitize the population that such behavior becomes "acceptable" or normalized. Trump, of course , has man accomplices in the form of Vichy Republicans who will happily trash the constitution and all standards of normal political decency to cling to power. No one should be surprised with what we are witnessing: Trump had a lengthy track record in the media and on reality TV that should have warned anyone other than those eager to embrace his calls to racism, hatred and xenophobia that his election would be a disaster.  A column in the New York Times presses home the need to not be numbed by the barrage of insanity and to continue to resist the normalization of the obscene and abnormal.  Here are column excerpts:

Every now and then we are going to have to do this: Step back from the daily onslaughts of insanity emanating from Donald Trump’s parasitic presidency and remind ourselves of the obscenity of it all, registering its magnitude in its full, devastating truth.

There is something insidious and corrosive about trying to evaluate the severity of every offense, trying to give each an individual grade on the scale of absurdity. Trump himself is the offense. Everything that springs from him, every person who supports him, every staffer who shields him, every legislator who defends him, is an offense. Every partisan who uses him — against all he or she has ever claimed to champion — to advance a political agenda and, in so doing, places party over country, is an offense.

We must remind ourselves that Trump’s very presence in the White House defiles it and the institution of the presidency. Rather than rising to the honor of the office, Trump has lowered the office with his whiny, fragile, vindictive pettiness.
The presidency has been hijacked.

Last week, when Donald Trump attacked two MSNBC hosts, people were aghast. The condemnation came quickly and from all quarters.

But his words shouldn’t have shocked. His tweet was just another pebble on a mountain of vulgarities. This act of coarseness was in fact an act of continuity. Trump was being Trump: the grossest of the gross, a profanity against propriety.
 Republicans have bound themselves up with Trump. His fate is their fate. They have surrendered any moral authority to which they once laid claim — rightly or not. If Trump goes down, they all do.

It’s all quite odd, this moral impotence, this cowering before the belligerent, would-be king. A madman and his legislative minions are holding America hostage. . . . . It is what it is and has been from day one: The most extraordinary and profound electoral mistake America has made in our lifetimes and possibly ever.

We must say without ceasing, and without growing weary by the redundancy, that what we are witnessing is not normal and cannot go unchallenged. We must reaffirm our commitment to resistance.

We must remember that we now have a president exerting power to which he may only have access because a foreign power hostile to our interests wanted him installed. We must remember that he has not only praised that foreign power, he has proven mysteriously averse to condemning it or even acknowledging its meddling.

We must remember that there are multiple investigations ongoing about the degree of that interference in our election — including a criminal investigation — and that those investigations are not constrained to collusion and are far from fake news. These investigations are deadly serious, are about protecting the integrity of our elections and the sovereignty of our country and are about a genuine quest for truth and desire for justice.

Every action by this administration is an effort to push forward the appearance of normality, to squelch scrutiny, to diminish the authority and credibility of the ongoing investigations.

Donald Trump is depending on people’s fatigue. He is banking on your becoming overwhelmed by his never-ending antics. He is counting on his capacity to wear down the resistance by sheer force.

We must be adamant that that will never come to pass. Trump is an abomination, and a cancer on the country, and none of us can rest until he is no longer holding the reins of power.

Trump/Pence: Vulgarians at the Gate

As one friend noted on Facebook, within an hour of the swearing in of Trump/Pence, both the White House and Department of Labor websites have been scrubbed clean of references to LGBT civil rights. The completely expected start to a uniformly anti-LGBT government is clearly underway even as "friends" who voted for these foul individuals chat "sore loser" or "give him a chance" to those of us who are rightly fearful of the future.  The rage I feel - and rage is the correct term - towards these individuals is hard to quantify.  The coming assault on LGBT rights means nothing to them as white, heterosexual Christians because it doesn't effect them directly.  Their rights and sense of safety - at least for now - remain intact, so why care.  Frighteningly, its the same mindset that held sway in 1930's Germany.  The worse part of it all, to me is the normalizing of the reprehensible and manner in which deviancy is being defined downward with the "godly Christian" crowd cheering it on. As I noted myself in a Facebook post, I am seriously beginning the process of checking out the steps involved in securing dual citizenship in my mother's birth country - "just in case."  Two pieces in Salon look at the disturbing happenings.  Here are  highlights of the first that looks at the vulgarity that is now acceptable:

You see grown men wearing t-shirts printed with dick jokes. You hear parents shouting obscenities at the television during a football game, while their children throw food at one another. The woman behind you on the commuter train discusses the intricacies of her sex life on her cell phone. Right-wing commentators freely use terms like “libtard” and “cuck” to ridicule their ideological opponents, and then complain about “political correctness.” You watch as the Republican presidential nominee brags about the length of his penis, and is then caught on tape boasting about “grabbing women by the pussy” without their consent. Similar to tax policy, the admission soon becomes subject to partisan debate, then quickly forgotten. 

These are but a few of the sights and sounds now normal in an increasingly coarse and crude culture. . . . . Once a culture permits the previously unthinkable, the next logical move is tolerance of something even worse. A leader should challenge the audience, seek to inspire ambition for improvement, and offer an aspirational model for emulation. Trump’s vulgarity, in the Latin sense and the more contemporary meaning of crudity, comforts people at their basest urges, biases and fears. As President Jimmy Carter, a decidedly sophisticated leader, especially by comparison, said of the new President, “He makes people feel good about their prejudices.” . . . “It is fine if you remain uninformed and uncultured,” he might as well be whispering into the ears of his devoted followers. 

One definition of “vulgarian” is an “unrefined person with newly acquired power.” The surreal, science fiction image of Trump taking the oath of office with his hand on the Bible represents a triumph for the coarsest and crudest elements of American culture. . . . . The White House is now occupied by a narcissistic drama queen who fails to adhere to any standard of basic decency, whether they are admonitions against mocking disabled people or taboos against the objectification of women. . . . Trump will enforce the same degradation of public standards from the most powerful office in the country.

The second piece looks at the ugliness and bigotry of the base of support of Trump/Pence.  Here are excerpts:

Like many campaign slogans, MAGA [Make America Great Again] can mean a great many things. To a young white male who identifies with the alt-right and Richard Spencer, for example, it is code for making America white and “culturally pure” again; to an evangelical Christian, it stands for making America devout and dogmatic again; to a blue-collar worker in the Rust Belt, it means making America a manufacturing powerhouse again.

And then there’s someone like Christopher von Keyserling, a local Republican politician in Connecticut who was recently in the news after being arrested for pinching a woman in the genitals. According to reports, von Keyserling got into a political argument with the victim at an unnamed town facility in early December. After saying “I love this new world, I no longer have to be politically correct,” and calling the woman a “lazy, bloodsucking union employee,” he proceeded to reach from behind her, “place his hand between her legs and pinch her in the groin area.”

People were quick to note the disturbing parallels between von Keyserling’s behavior and President Donald Trump’s, as described to Billy Bush in 2005. In this Trumpian world, von Keyserling thought that he could be as vulgar, sexist and indecent as his party’s leader — who managed to win the election even after admitting to conduct that appeared to fit the definition of sexual assault.

“Make America Great Again” can mean many things, but it is ultimately a slogan that appeals to the politics of reaction. Whether it’s a white supremacist longing for the time when the white race dominated without shame or guilt; a bitter old man reminiscing about the days when all women were ladies; or a Christian fundamentalist who idealizes the period before Roe v. Wade, birth control and Charles Darwin, they are united in their reaction and collectively feel like victims of the modern age. Needless to say, women, people of color and LGBT people are much less inclined to romanticize the “good old days.”

The Trump campaign has accelerated the disintegration of public morality, and now the Trump administration threatens to shatter much of the progress that has been made over the past several decades, and return us to the bad old days.

Decent, moral people should be very, very afraid of what the future will hold if these forces are allowed to prevail. 

The Anti-Trump GOP Stampede Begins

Try as I might to not write about Donald Trump, the man and his campaign are such a shit storm that it is nearly impossible to not mention the man multiple times a day.  Moreover, if it is not a post about Trump himself, then the flight of Republicans from his standard or the ridiculous, disingenuous statements of his supporters/sycophants illicit a reaction.  The good news is that - absent some "October surprise" via Wikileaks (for whom I have lost nearly all respect) or other source - Trump seems to be in a free fall in terms of support from what sane and morally decent Republicans are left in the party.  Yes, the fetid swamp of the GOP base of Christofascists and white supremacists who are as morally bankrupt as Trump will never leave his foul standard, but as a conservative columnist notes, others are stampeding away from Trump.  Here are column highlights:

Already this week, a letter from 50 respected Republican foreign-policy gurus announced that they would not support Donald Trump; Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) wrote an op-ed declaring that she would not vote for Trump; and Trump once again roiled the race when he told a packed rally: “By the way, and if [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. The Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”

The Clinton team, not surprisingly, took this as an invitation to commit violence. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Well, let me say if someone else said that outside of the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now, with the Secret Service questioning him.”

Whatever Trump meant, it was confirmation that he has never “pivoted” to become a credible presidential candidate. Collectively it has been a horrible start to another week of agony for Trump apologists. 

Big-name Republicans, smaller-name Republicans, conservative foreign-policy gurus, you name it — they are racing to the exits, no longer willing to maintain the fiction that Trump could be president.

The grass-roots group of Republicans who will be voting for Hillary Clinton, R4C16.org, has posted its endorsement. It is signed by a raft of Republicans who have served in GOP administrations, in the military and on GOP campaigns:

We are proud members of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, a party rooted in liberty and respect for the individual.

Donald Trump betrays our values and beliefs. His campaign has been marked by isolationism, nationalism, vulgarity, and ignorance of serious policy matters. Supporting Mr. Trump forsakes Republican history, harms the Republican brand, and breaks the trust of millions of current and future Republican voters.

In the 2016 election, we will vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump for President of the United States. Secretary Clinton is a more qualified candidate and would make a better president. Voting for her is best for our country.

We will not allow Trumpism to become the new Republican party.

Co-founder Ricardo Reyes explained in a press release, “Republicans recognize it’s a binary option, Trump or Clinton. . . . . We are Republicans who believe our party’s nominee is a disaster.”

In the vicious Trump campaign environment, it is not an easy thing to speak out against one’s party; those Republicans who speak their minds are bombarded with insults, threats and ridicule. There is nothing personally to be gained for those like the R4C16 co-founders who have left politics to re-engage at the expense of their private careers. Even if Trump loses — which seems likely — they will face accusations of disloyalty from the party regulars. 

Cynics who dismiss Trump opponents as careerists might want actually to talk to those who have spoken out. We have spent months talking to #NeverTrump activists, Free the Delegate members, foreign-policy figures, political operatives and others who refuse to join the Trump bandwagon. Virtually all have voted consistently for Republicans for president. Many have never voted for a Democrat for any national office. They are mostly foreign-policy hawks. They are sincerely concerned that the GOP as currently constituted is not a viable national party. They are personally affronted by Trump. 

That process of organizing Trump defectors is now underway. Reyes explains, “We will be releasing more names as Republicans come around to endorsing Clinton. We will be organizing and participating in swing district events.” The impact of these efforts will be hard to measure in November, but keeping the percent of GOP support for Trump in the low 80s means millions of Republicans will have stood up to Trump. If, as Reyes says, their “goal is to provide a voice for Republicans who aren’t with Trump but distinct and separate from the official campaign,” they may have already succeeded.

I encourage readers to check out the Republicans for Clinton website.  While Hillary is hardly my ideal candidate, it is encouraging to see that at least some Republicans have not totally thrown morality and decency and the good of the country out the window in favor of blind partisanship.  Indeed, these Republicans are akin to some that once made me proud to be a Republican - before the Christofascist cancer began to metastasize in the GOP.