Myeshia Johnson Stands Up to Donald Trump

With his non-stop trail of lies that are constantly being documented as false, one would think that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, would realize at some point that refusing to stop lying only digs his hole deeper.  Now, with the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson joining Congresswoman Federica Wilson, Sgt. Johnson's mother, Trump nonetheless continues to lie.  His sickness and narcissism will simply never allow him to do the decent and moral thing is to apologize.  Equally troubling, of course, is General Kelly's willingness to lie and prostitute himself for the benefit of a morally bankrupt individual.  Hopefully, Kelly's place in history will be forever sullied.  Ditto for every other individual who has thrown away morality, honesty, and decency to serve Der  Trumpenführer.   Having nearly lost a family member in Afghanistan, I DO take all of this personally since, unlike Trump, I know that real people and real lives are involved.  Trump disgusts me. A piece in the New Yorker looks at Myeshia Johnson's refusal to bow down to Trump's lies.  Here are excerpts:

There were two moments during her interview on “Good Morning America” when the expression of the face of Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson, was transformed by a sudden smile. One came when George Stephanopoulos asked if it was true that she and La David—who was twenty-five when he died, three weeks ago, in Niger—had met when they were just six years old. “Yes, sir,” Johnson said. The other was when he mentioned that she was expecting her third child, a daughter, in January. Her oldest child is six now. Those are circumstances that could overwhelm anyone. But Johnson, throughout the six-and-a-half-minute interview, was steady, calm, and focussed on two goals: asking for answers about how her husband had died, and standing up to President Donald Trump, who, she said, when he called her, “couldn’t remember my husband’s name.” “I heard him stumbling on, trying to remember my husband’s name, and that’s what hurt the most, because, if my husband is out there fighting for our country, why can’t you remember his name?”

It’s a good question, and there might have been a charitable answer—Trump’s own emotion about the difficult task at hand, perhaps. But then the President responded by—in effect—calling Johnson, a Gold Star widow, a liar.

There were no accompanying words of compassion for Johnson, who said that the call “made me cry even worse.” Beyond the lack of empathy, this is a steep escalation of Trump’s claims that Representative Frederica Wilson, who was in a car with Johnson during the call, and said that the President had not been respectful, had “totally fabricated” her account of it. Trump has taken to calling Wilson “wacky”; his chief of staff, the retired general John Kelly, called her an “empty barrel” in a press conference last week, and put out a story about watching in disbelief as she grandstanded during an F.B.I. ceremony a number of years ago—a story that was, as a video of the event proves, demonstrably false. Did they think that Myeshia Johnson would not speak up for Wilson? If so, they were wrong.

When Stephanopoulos said, “The President said that the congresswoman was lying about the phone call,” Johnson did not hesitate. “Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not ‘fabricated,’ ” she said, speaking evenly. “What she said was one hundred per cent correct.” It was all on speakerphone, she said. “Why would we fabricate something like that?” The Trumpian answer is that, if it makes the President look bad, it must be a lie.

Myeshia Johnson also addressed a point that seems to have particularly outraged Kelly: that Wilson was listening in on the call, which he portrayed as a violation of something “sacred.” It was an odd complaint, given that Kelly himself had listened in, too, but Johnson put it to rest with a reminder that she was an actor in all this, rather than just a symbol. “I asked Master Sergeant Neil to put his phone on speaker, so my aunt and uncle could hear as well,” she said, referring to the service member assigned to them, who was on the line with the White House, and to her husband’s aunt and uncle, who raised him after his mother died when he was a small child. (They have been identified as his parents in some press accounts; his aunt, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, had earlier backed up Wilson’s account.) Wilson, Myeshia Johnson added, was there, too, because she had worked with La David’s uncle in an elementary school and had guided La David in a mentoring program called 5000 Role Models. “She’s been in our family since we were little kids,” Johnson said.

In the video of the speech that Wilson gave which so offended Kelly, she asked members of law enforcement in the audience to stand up and be honored. It is hard to know what bothered Kelly about her appearance that day. Wilson herself, in an interview with the Times, said that she had no explanation—“I’m just flabbergasted,” she said—but she added, in regard to the general context of the affair, that the Administration is stocked with “white supremacists.” (The Times noted that she was not speaking about Kelly personally.) In any event, Trump might need to learn that there are women who will neither praise him nor stay quiet or shrink when he attacks. Some of them are Gold Star widows. Generals are not the only ones who get to speak, for military families or for the country.  

Trump is morally disgusting.  Anyone who continues to support him is, in my opinion, equally lacking in morality and decency.   They might like this assessment, but I believe that this charge is true.  And don't even get me started on the moral bankruptcy of the evangelical Christians who continue to stand by Trump and his hideous agenda.  Oh, and did I mention Trump's racism

After Niger Attack, McCain Calls for War Powers Debate

Questions continue to be raised about U.S. military actions in Niger after the ambush that killed four American soldiers.  Most Americans, including members of the U.S. Senate who should have known such military actions, knew nothing of America's involvement in Niger much less what the Americans who lost their life were doing their.  With an individual in the White House that I personally  deem to be unfit for office and mentally ill, it is critical that Congress reclaim its power to declare war - Section 8, Article I of the U.S. Constitution grants this power to Congress, not the president -  and launch any significant military action. We most certainly do not want the narcissistic liar-in-chief making unilateral war powers decisions that could reap horrific consequences to America and the world.  As Voice of America is reporting, the attack that killed four U.S. service members, it appears that there was a massive intelligence failure in Niger:

A local official and an analyst say residents of the Niger village where four Green Beret soldiers were killed this month may have delayed the soldiers while an ambush was set up and helped to lead the victims into a deadly trap.

"The attackers, the bandits, the terrorists have never lacked accomplices among local populations," said Almou Hassane, mayor of Tongo-Tongo where the attack took place, in what is believed to be his first interview with a Western news organization.

The village chief in Tongo-Tongo, Mounkaila Alassane, has been arrested since the attack, Hassane said, lending credibility to the suspicion of local involvement. He is in government custody according several officials.

While the soldiers were still in the village, a fake terror attack was staged nearby, according to Aksar and local sources. The soldiers rushed to the scene, where about 50 or more assailants with vehicles and motorcycles opened fire with Kalashnikovs and heavy weapons.

Four Nigerien soldiers and three Americans were killed on the spot. The body of the fourth American soldier was found 48 hours later, about a mile away from the initial site, CNN reported.

Rhissa Ag Boula, a high-ranking government official and a former Tuareg rebel chief in Niger, told VOA that the fourth soldier, La David Johnson, had remained at the front line while the others retreated under heavy fire.

The attack has raised questions in Niger, especially since the U.S. Army operates drone bases in the country and has significant intelligence resources there.

"That's what really shocked us: how, at their level, with all the resources they have, they could not have strong intelligence to avoid what happened there," said Hassane.

No group has officially taken responsibility for the attack. According to sources in the region, however, it is the work of Abu Adnan al-Saharaoui, who calls himself the Islamic Emir of the Great Sahara, affiliated with the Islamic State group.

Senator John McCain, has rightly called for a renewed debate in Congress to set parameters for the ability of the White House to authorize military actions overseas.  While the Niger incident is the immediate catalyst, fears of what Der Trumpenführer might seek to do in North Korea and Iran are no doubt at the back of McCain's mind and the minds of millions of other Americans. Politico looks at McCain's call for a new debate on limiting the president's powers to authorize military operations.  Here are article highlights:

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Monday seized on the deadly ambush in Niger to call for a new congressional authorization for U.S. military operations overseas.

McCain told reporters Monday that he and the Armed Services panel’s top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, are working on a proposal to update the broad war powers Congress gave the commander in chief after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The deaths of four U.S. soldiers in Niger earlier this month have stoked fresh interest in a new war powers vote, which the Trump administration has indicated it would not oppose — although it says it has all the legal authority it needs to conduct anti-terrorism operations under the existing 2001 authorization.

“We’re going to have to have” an updated authorization for the use of military force, said McCain, who has previously called for a new war powers resolution.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had already been scheduled to hold an Oct. 30 hearing on the president’s war powers, which Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) called “excellent” timing Thursday. But he remains unsure about any practical movement on an updated war powers measure. Indeed, lawmakers as well as senior Pentagon officials are still getting up to speed on critical facts regarding the Oct. 4 attack that killed four members of the U.S. Army Special Forces. Armed Services panel members are set for a Thursday briefing on the ambush in Niger, where the Pentagon’s Africa Command has stepped up its efforts against militants affiliated with the Islamic State terrorist group. Senior senators in both parties, including Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), said on Sunday that they were unaware of the size of the U.S. military presence in Niger, though the White House formally notified the Hill about troops in Niger in June.

Lawmakers are now pressing to know more about the events of Oct. 4, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford pledged on Monday to provide those details.  “We owe the families as much information as we can find out about what happened,” the four-star Marine general said.

“With regard to Congress and the criticism we’re not providing enough information, … if the Congress doesn’t believe that they’re not getting sufficient information, then I need to double my efforts to provide them with information,” Dunford added.

Defense Secretary James Mattis last week said the type of attack that occurred in Niger was “considered unlikely,” but he nonetheless promised to “rapidly” release the findings of an investigation into the incident.

This year’s previous pitches to update the 2001 war authorization have been attached to other legislation, and have failed to come to fruition. A proposal to repeal the authorization by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) was added to annual House defense spending legislation in June, but removed from the bill by House GOP leadership before it went to the floor.

And an attempt in September by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to add a repeal of the 2001 and 2002 war authorizations to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act was rebuffed by the Senate.  Lee, the only lawmaker to vote against the 2001 war authorization, called moves by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to derail her proposal “undemocratic.”

“People are asking, ‘Why are we in Niger?’ Rightfully so,” Lee said in an interview with Politico. “Well, a debate would provide information and answer a lot of questions and put Congress back in the mix in terms of us doing our job, because certainly we’re not.” 

Congress needs to take back its power and limit the ability of an unfit malignant narcissist to authorize military action based on mere whims and petulant bursts of angry over his fragile ego. 

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

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Democracy in Decline - Do Republicans Even Care?

Before both World War I and World War II, America pursued an isolationist policy and tried to ignore events happening in Europe and around.  Such shortsightedness ended up costing America and the world dearly.  Now, American foreign policy seems headed toward making the same mistake as Der Trumpenführer seeks to back out of international treaties and agreements and panders to the uglier and more extremist elements of American society who seemingly embrace authoritarianism, ignorance, and a contempt - if not open hatred - of others.  The long term ramifications could prove dangerous both at home and abroad.  Yet Congressional Republicans for the most part appear only to happy to abandon long term policies and objectives as they mimic Trump's disdain for foreigners and the defense of democratic values around the world.  The world is watching and coming to realize that the values of red America are toxic.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the disturbing trends.  Here are excerpts: 

It’s no surprise that when President Trump shot back at Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) last week, he failed to engage the substance of McCain’s argument.

But make no mistake: The challenge that McCain threw down a week ago, and that former president George W. Bush joined Thursday, is very much about an idea. It is about whether democracy, on the defensive around the world, can recover its confidence. That in turn depends in large part on whether the United States will honor what McCain called “the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth.’ ”

[T]he world is experiencing a “deepening democratic recession” characterized by fewer nations living freely, as measured annually by Freedom House; by increasing power projection from Russia and China; by the breakdown of democracy from Turkey to Thailand to Hungary; and by a “wave of illiberal populism” and a “decay of democratic values and self-confidence in the U.S. and Europe.”

You can debate the causes of this democratic decay, which obviously did not begin with Trump. Blame Bush’s invasion and bungled occupation of Iraq; President Barack Obama’s abandoning Syria to its grisly fate; or deeper, underlying trends of wage stagnation, economic inequality, fracturing social media.

But Trump’s admiration for strongmen and contempt for democratic values has accelerated the trend and shocked much of the world. Kori Schake, a Republican defense expert and Hoover fellow, said at the same seminar that the global anxiety today reminds her of what she was hearing from allies after the 9/11 attacks: People “are a little bit scared that America is becoming a different place than they thought they knew.”

Many Americans are worried about that, too. When I repeated Schake’s comment to Michael McFaul, a Hoover and Stanford scholar who served as Obama’s ambassador to Russia, he said he is “optimistic about our ability for renewal as a democratic society.”

But when it comes to global leadership, McFaul was less of an optimist. “The retrenchment period began under Obama, let’s be clear,” he said. “Trump is a more extreme version. That I fear may be permanent.”

The good news is the United States has hardly tried to counter the authoritarian offensive — which means that, if we stirred ourselves to act, we might yet shift the momentum. That is clearly what the old lions of the Republican Party are hoping for.

“For more than 70 years, the presidents of both parties believed that American security and prosperity were directly tied to the success of freedom in the world,” said Bush. “And they knew that the success depended, in large part, on U.S. leadership.”

The sad news is how few Republican leaders can bring themselves to defend traditional American ideals in the same way. Unless they do, the democratic recession will be increasingly likely to shift from cyclical phenomenon to the onset of something much scarier.

Monday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

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The Toxic Ethnonationalism of Today's GOP

As the Republican Party has devolved into something ugly, current and former members of the Party have reacted in differing ways.  Some, like me, walked away convinced that the Party could not be saved from within.  Others stayed and simply threw away their morality and integrity and embraced the ugliness - sadly, I know a number of such people.  A third group has stayed and appears to be fighting a losing rear guard battle as the power of the Christofascists and open racists and white nationalists over the party surges as best embodied by the rise of Donald Trump, a man devoid of honor, morality and basic decency.  I continue to believe that the only way the GOP will be reformed and perhaps brought back from the abyss is through repeated electoral defeats. That said, whether the mindset of the Christofascists, open racists and white nationalists who ignore objective reality can be defeated remains to be seen.  I am not optimistic.  One way or another, the Republican Party in its current incarnation must be defeated.  An op-ed in the New York Times by an establishment Republican looks at how some remain to try to work against the Trump cancer within the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

A year after President Trump’s stunning electoral victory, the Republican Party is in a very strange place. It’s politically dominant but increasingly unpopular, particularly among young people and nonwhites of all ages, whose level of unhappiness with Mr. Trump and his administration is toxic.

Republicans have all the power but can’t seem to get much of anything done. There are huge internal fissures that are growing rather than shrinking. . . . “Right now it’s a season of war against the G.O.P. establishment.”

The first thing those of us who are vocal critics of Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trump need to recognize and fully reckon with is that Mr. Trump’s victory in the Republican primaries was not an aberration so much as a culmination, an apotheosis of sorts. Underlying currents and powerful passions animating the base of the party that had been building for years burst forth when Republicans nominated Mr. Trump.

As the world now knows, these feelings of powerlessness, resentment and grievance are widespread, and as a candidate Mr. Trump tapped into them perfectly. Many Republican voters have, at least for now, jettisoned traditional conservatism in favor of the Trump-Bannon brand of ethnonationalism. . . . . they have embraced white identity politics as a matter of course and they have developed a disdain for the hard, intricate work of governing.

But the reasons for the rise of Mr. Trump lie still deeper than that. There is a nihilistic strain coursing through the veins of a significant number of people on the American right. They delight in Mr. Trump’s effort to annihilate truth and peddle conspiracy theories, and they draw energy and purpose from the unsettling effect he has on the nation as a whole. For them, Mr. Trump is a “fighter,” and politics needs to be weaponized in order to be enjoyed. . . . . As a result, they are bending their will to his ways, seeing the world as he does.

Republicans, then, are faced with an existential question. Will Mr. Trump and his most ardent supporters succeed in their effort to reconceive the party? Can they be stopped? Certainly, if they don’t encounter more spirited resistance than they have so far, they may well pull it off.

Some so-called establishment Republicans, alarmed by the rise of the ethnonationalist wing of the party, comfort themselves with the belief that this movement can be domesticated, absorbed into the traditional coalition with its sharp edges sanded off. According to this narrative, the Republican Party will weather this storm and emerge in a modified but recognizable form. There are bound to be tensions, but civil war can be averted.

Count me skeptical. Many of Mr. Trump’s supporters, who get their news from Breitbart and Alex Jones, from conservative talk radio and Fox News, want a revolution, not accommodation. . . . . They want to burn the village down. Until now all the energy has been with them, and it is laughable to think that passing tax cuts will satiate them.

That’s why, for many of the lifelong Republican conservatives who never boarded the Trump train, it is particularly disappointing that the Republican leaders we know who have deep disagreements with Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon are for the most part unwilling to make the counter-case in a forceful and comprehensive fashion. Nor are his private critics rushing to go public with their often mordant analyses of Mr. Trump’s movement.

I can’t help but feel that they are badly underestimating the gravity of the moment. They are willfully ignoring the danger Trumpism and Bannonism pose to many of the principles they claim to hold dear, and they are deluding themselves into believing that a rapprochement is possible with those who are determined to destroy them.

What this points to is the need for an energetic public case for a conservative politics as an alternative to their case for a revolutionary politics; for Republicans who don’t share Mr. Bannon’s manias to say so and to offer an alternative, in the area of policy but also in temperament and disposition. Thankfully that’s beginning to happen. In the last week, former President George W. Bush, in whose White House I served, and Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, offered a philosophical alternative to Trumpism.

In the short term, there may well be a cost to challenging the ethnonationalist wing of the Republican Party. But while the leaders of this wing are politically formidable, they are hardly invincible.

Beyond that, though, there’s really no choice about challenging the blood-and-soil nationalists. If they were to triumph — if the tribalistic, angry, anti-government wing of the party turns out to be the vanguard rather than an ugly and unfortunate parenthesis — then the Republican Party would collapse intellectually and morally, and a lot of lifelong Republicans would head for the exits.

[L]et me venture a guess. Much of America, including some large number of Republicans waiting to be mobilized, is thirsting for leaders of courage and purpose who, in a fractious and intemperate age, believe — and can help others believe — that one of the high callings of politics is to heal our wounds rather than to inflict new ones, to appeal to our best instincts rather than our worst.

For many of us, Mr. Trump, Mr. Bannon and Mr. Moore represent the politics of dissolution and dehumanization, of resentment and enmity, of half-truths and anti-truths. Republicans who do not want their party to be defined by them need to understand they can’t avoid this fight. They have to decide how they want to wage it and how they are going to win it. I’m not sure if it’s a winning one, but I’m certain it’s an ennobling one. And that should be enough.

Trump's Dangerous Lack of Empathy and Morality

Well before Election Day in 2016 Americans were warned that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der  Trumpenführer, was a malignant narcissist and how this posed a significant danger were he to win the White House.  Sadly, enough voters in three states were won over by his calls to racism and bigotry, likely with the connivance of Russian social media trolls, to place this unfit individual in the White House.  Sine inauguration day we have seen a cavalcade of callousness, moral bankruptcy, and attacks on the media never witnessed before flowing from the White House.  Sadly, Trump's only compass is his ego and need to self-promote and any feeling for the pain and suffering of others is an unknown experience.  Even George W. Bush - hardly among my favorite presidents or individuals - felt the need to condemn such behavior eloquently without ever naming Trump.  Everyone knew in a heart beat who Bush was referring to without Bush naming him.  Trump is literally that awful.  A piece in The Atlantic and a piece by Kathleen Parker (who has escaped the GOP reservation yet again) in the Washington Post look at Trump's dangerous callousness towards all but himself.  What is telling to me is that evangelical Christians continue to support someone so utterly morally bankrupt. First these highlights from The Atlantic: 

When White House Chief of Staff—and Gold Star parent—John Kelly, on Thursday defended Donald Trump’s call to the newly widowed Myeshia Johnson, he was somber and sincere, which is refreshing. But he was wrong.

Context matters. From another person, at another time, observing that Sergeant La David Johnson “knew what he signed up for” by joining the Army wouldn’t have sparked outrage. But consider what else Representative Frederica Wilson—with the backing of Johnson’s mother—has alleged: that Trump didn’t know Johnson’s name; he repeatedly called him “your guy.” And that Trump’s tone was oddly jovial: “He was almost, like, joking.”

Above all, consider what we know about the way Trump discusses pain and death. This is the man who congratulated Puerto Ricans—whose island had been utterly devastated—for losing only “16” and not “thousands of people.” The man who told a crowd in Corpus Christi on August 29, while 30,000 Texans were displaced, “It’s going well.” And who said after touring the convention center where thousands of Houstonians were taking refuge that, “We saw a lot of happiness.”

Donald Trump minimizes suffering for which he might be held responsible. That’s likely what he was doing in his conversation with Myeshia Johnson. And it’s not just insensitive; it’s dangerous. As the former Missouri Senate candidate, and former Army intelligence officer, Jason Kander observed on Wednesday night on CNN, people say, “He knew what he signed up for” because “they are seeking emotional distance from the situation. People say that because they want to avoid feeling that pain.” That’s worrying, Kander added, because “I want the president, any president … when they’re making a decision about sending people to a dangerous place, I want them to have as one of the things in their mind, the visceral, emotional feeling” that comes from absorbing a widow’s inconsolable grief.

That’s the key point. Trump’s comments bespeak a refusal to face the human costs of violence and war that could have frightening consequences for American foreign policy.

Trump loves discussing violence. He does it often, and almost always in the same way. When committed by terrorists, criminals, or protesters, violence is horrific, and its perpetrators are subhuman. (“Animals,” is a favorite Trump word.) But when committed by Trump’s side, violence is righteous and heroic, evidence of a functioning moral order. Crucially, it is also cost-free. Trump barely ever admits that violence, when deployed by his side, causes suffering that need disturb his sleep.

Another striking example of Trump’s refusal to face the human consequences of the violence he glorifies comes from his discussion of the NFL. The press has been filled in recent years with stories of former football players driven to suicide by the brain injuries they suffered on the field. But to Trump, they knew what they signed up for. In fact, he’s mocked the NFL for trying to minimize their suffering.

Trump’s discussion of war is similar. He said last October that veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder were not “strong.” He yearns for the good old days when American soldiers did not acknowledge pain, and when law, morality, and empathy did not impede their ability to maim and kill. Trump has repeatedly cited a bogus story about General John J. Pershing killing Muslim terrorists with bullets smeared in pigs’ blood as his model for fighting terrorism. He’s called for torture techniques far “stronger” than waterboarding. And he’s called for killing the families of alleged terrorists.

“I’m really good at war. I love war in a certain way,” Trump told an Iowa rally in 2015, “But only when we win.” It’s plausible that Trump will avoid war with North Korea because he fears America cannot prevail. It is far less likely that he will avoid war because he can’t bear the human cost. He never bears it.

That’s what Myeshia Johnson—who has a six-year-old, a two-year-old, and is pregnant, and who said she doesn’t know what she’ll do without her “soulmate”—confronted Trump with: the human cost. The human cost that doesn’t exist in professional wrestling. The human cost, which proves that violence and war aren’t always grand, manly spectacles, and that America doesn’t always win. The human cost, for which Trump, as commander in chief, bears responsibility.

He couldn’t handle it. His attacks on Wilson suggest he still can’t. He won’t abandon his decades-old intoxication with pretend violence and pretend war. And that makes him a very dangerous man to be leading the most powerful military on earth.

Kathleen Parker follows up on this theme from a different perspective, but it all comes back to Trump's lack of care or concern for the pain of others and his contempt for the truth when it fails to inflate his insatiable ego.  Here are column excerpts:

George W. Bush’s speech this last week at a forum hosted by his eponymous institute might as well have been titled “Dear Donald.” The 43rd president all but called out the current president by name as he lamented the tone and character of today’s political rhetoric.

“Bigotry seems emboldened,” Bush said . “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.” Indeed.

Trump likes to label these theories and fabrications “fake news,” but “fake news” is Trump’s own invention — and his greatest fabrication to date. Now the rallying cry for millions of Trump supporters, “fake news” is a deflection, a decoy floated on the human sea of credulity to distract people from coverage he finds unflattering. The truth is, what Trump says and does is so often unflattering without embellishment that adjectives and adverbs needn’t apply.

No stranger to media criticism — crushing criticism — Bush never attacked the fourth estate. He also obviously recognizes that worse than a reporter’s or editor’s error is the undermining of public faith in a free press. Once the government succeeds in eliminating a country’s watchdogs, the government becomes the only source of information. Most people know, or should know, how that ends.

Trump’s “fake news” charge is very much in the vein of propaganda. He has created a false narrative to clear obstacles — such as questioning reporters or the hindrance of accountability — from his path.

Russians are also very good at this. Recent revelations about fake Twitter accounts tied to Russia through which genuinely fake news was posted and distributed to influence the 2016 election remind us of how vulnerable we are to real fake news. Unfortunately, Trump has helped blur the line between propaganda and what is otherwise known simply as news.

In other remarks clearly aimed at Trump, Bush addressed bullying and prejudice in public life that “sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children.” And: “We can’t wish globalization away, any more than we could wish away the agricultural revolution or the Industrial Revolution.” . . . . As Bush suggested, globalization is the new age and the old one isn’t coming back.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1