Trump's Successful Assaults on the Pillars of Democracy

Beginning back in the early days of Trump’s campaign he hit on a strategy that, frankly, I don’t think anyone anticipated and if anyone did they likely would have thought it a dead-end. Attack the media. I don’t think it was a conscious decision on Trump’s part — just a spontaneous reaction against some bad press and, when his fans responded lustily, it became a central theme of his rallies and marches. Generally, politicians want to have good relations with the press, nurture contacts with influential reporters — after all, they’re the ones who get messages out. Trump, of course, also found another way to get his messages out: Twitter. A couple of tweet-storms and who needs CBS?

                                 

The ensuing war on the media has been surprisingly successful. Despite the rocky first few months of his presidency, his supporters still approve of the job he’s doing. In fact, a recent poll found that fully 85% of Trump voters give him top grades and approve wholeheartedly of his actions. The way they’re handling the tsunami of bad news is by concluding that much of it is fake news, that what is true is trivial and overblown by a biased press, and that if it weren’t for the lies and distortions of the hated media (read WaPo, NYT, HuffPo) his presidency would be flying along doing great things. Those supporters who do acknowledge that things have been a bit dicey say that’s just fine. He said he was going to upset Washington and do things differently and he is.

In the first few months in office Trump also ran into conflicts with other elements of government and, in a very Trumpish fashion, he employed the same tactic, attack. First we went after the various intelligence agencies and, as with the anti-media assault, the parallel smearing of the US intelligence agencies has had a similar impact. The narrative from the pro-Trump right is that the rank and file in the FBI and the CIA hate the president and are constantly undermining him and leaking untruths designed to compromise his efforts. The drumbeat is they should be investigating Hillary’s emails and tracking down who in the government is leaking information rather than chasing after Flynn or pursuing Trump’s links with the Russians. Comey has become their new bête noir who deserved to be sacked. The veracity of those “memos” that Comey has are doubted because he wrote them and he is just a bitter and disloyal man. The leak of top-secret intel to the Russians is viewed as a “ho-hummer” that has only been made to look serious because the biased press and untrustworthy intelligence agencies are making a mountain out of a molehill.

The third line of attack has been on the courts and seems to have stemmed from the same impulsiveness of Trump and, perhaps no longer surprisingly, has had a similar impact. His supporters no longer trust the courts and see the Federal judiciary as just another arm of the liberal hegemony that is as biased in their views of Trump as the media and the CIA. The several injunctions issued against Trump’s Executive Orders are critiqued as the actions of left-wing activist judges not as serious deliberations by an unbiased judiciary. They also view Nunes’ and Session’s recusals as the result of media pressure, not because of anything they did wrong.

The end product is predictable. Trump’s base now views everyone not with them as against them. And not simply against in some principled manner but viciously against as part of a wide-spread, leftist, coastal, pseudo-intellectual plot to undermine the person they see as the only one who can, indeed, make American great again.

This stance, once taken, is remarkably resistant to argument. Any effort to set the record straight or to persuade supporters that something is amiss in the White House is treated as just more more fake-news, more displays of Trump-hatred and continued anger and frustration over having lost the election.

To see this in all its glory wander around sites like Drudge, Breitbart, Fox News, or Infowars — or, as I’ve discovered to my surprise and dismay, post some anti-Trump material on Facebook and watch what comes back.

Trump's Narcissim Revisited

There’s been a resurgence of psychiatric “diagnoses” of Trump, most of them focusing on his obvious narcissism. A question that’s been bouncing around is how, if it’s so bloody obvious that he suffers from an easily diagnosed clinical syndrome, can he have been so successful? He is, after all, a very wealthy man and … last time I checked was the POTUS and the single most influential, powerful person on the freakin’ planet.

The answer is simple. Narcissists function extremely well if they are smart and in a supportive environment. And, yes, despite all the weirdness, he is smart . He’s ignorant and astonishingly uncurious but those traits are orthogonal to intelligence. In his private life, before he ventured down this crumbling highway to the presidency he was in a completely supportive setting. He had his company, his very famous name, a staff of loyal people, strong legal supports and critically, an unflinching loyalty from family and a very few friends.

When a narcissist is immersed in this kind of a world they can do great things. In fact, an awful lot of very successful people were/are profoundly narcissistic (think Steve Jobs for one). But in the political arena, as a president surrounded by hostile forces, competing visions, a strong opposition party, organizations that do not bend to his will, narcissism reveals its pathology. In the normal course of events, when a narcissist is merely a boss or a spouse or a friend, things may get testy from time to time but the daily struggles work themselves out. But if you are the freaking president of the freaking United States of freaking America all hell is bound to break loose.

Most narcissists run things on a “hang with me or else” strategy where “or else” is simply, go away, get off my planet or “you’re fired.” They will not only cut you off, they will devalue you in their minds so that your opinions no longer have any impact. It’s a very effective strategy. It protects them and diminishes the role of those who do not pledge and display loyalty. We saw this with his asking Comey to promise to be loyal. Comey said “no” and he was gone.

Trump is smart. Don’t let his tangled syntax or frequent 180’s fool you. You don’t run a company the size of his without a lot of IQ points. You don’t graduate from Penn’s Wharton School without them (FWIW, my BA is from Penn). He is ignorant and astonishingly uncurious but these traits have nothing to do with being smart.

A lot of the weirdness we’re seeing comes from him being challenged by forces he cannot control, ones where he cannot devalue them or tell them to “get off my planet.” It is a profoundly distressing situation for a narcissist which is why he sometimes gives off that “I really don’t want this job” aura.

And friends … we now are where we are and we will be where we will be which is almost certainly at a swearing ceremony for President Pence. And if you think that makes me happy … well, it doesn’t.

The First 100

Good day folks. I’ve been away… Sorry about that. Other things commandeering my time and it’s good news. Oxford University Press has agreed to publish my new book. The working title is “Caterpillars, Consciousness, and the Origins of Mind.” It’s based on a pretty radical notion: that consciousness begins with the first emergence of life, that it isn’t and shouldn’t be treated as something that only appeared in our species. If anyone’s curious, a preliminary overview of the model appeared here, in the new journal Animal Sentience.

But back to politics: Today is a “special” day, the 100th of the Trump presidency — the specialness is, of course, based on a arbitrary standard. We could make the 101th the cut-off (like with Dalmatians), or 76 (from 1776) or any other that might be cooked up.  The 100-day thing began, apparently, back in FDR’s day when things were rather bleak and everyone was looking, hoping and needing quick fixes to the vast array of critical issues that the Great Depression had brought on. And it stuck cause “100” is a nice, round number.

So, we hit the magic number today which is usually the honeymoon period where the newly elected POTUS gets to do, or at least present the framework for doing, the many things promised. In an article in The New Yorker, David Remnick presented his overview of this period. One of the things he noted was that normally the rest of us folks go about living our lives. We enjoy this period by not worrying about politics because the new administration is doing what it’s supposed to do. Alas, nothing is normal with Trump. As Remnick put it, this time we’re here:

“His Presidency has become the demoralizing daily obsession of anyone concerned with global security, the vitality of the natural world, the national health, constitutionalism, civil rights, criminal justice, a free press, science, public education, and the distinction between fact and its opposite.”

Why? Here’s why: The economy grew at a mere 0.7%, not the 4% growth Trump claimed he would bring (it’d been averaging some 2.2% under Obama). He’s refused to release his tax returns, divest from his business interests, is in violation of the Emoluments clause, has ignored standard protocol with regards to nepotism, handing over administrative and regulatory responsibilities to his daughter and son-in-law. He vacations constantly on the taxpayers’ dime (each weekend trip costs the taxpayers over $3 million) and plays more golf than any president in history.

As for all those campaign promises: Well, there’s not going be any funding for that ridculous border wall and Mexico won’t pay for it. All efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare have foundered. Two shots at his promised Muslim ban got slapped down by the courts which, just in passing, recently ruled that he cannot defund sanctuary cities. NAFTA will stay. The US will not pull out of NATO, which suddenly became a really important alliance. The Iran treaty will not be torn up. China is no longer a currency manipulator but an important ally and trading partner. The proposed budget framework is a, to use his favorite word, “disaster.” Just the first quick look makes clear that it favors the rich and big corporations, fucks over everyone else and will blow a Bush-sized hole in the economy — the initial analyses project the debt to rise by roughly $7 trillion if a full budget along these lines passes. It won’t.

Then there’s been a whole bunch of really bizarre blunders, ill-conceived phone calls to world leaders, paranoid-infused tweets, a brewing Russia-linked scandal, and the current insane bout of saber-rattling over North Korea. Much of these crazy and dangerous adventures of his are designed to deflect attention from the three investigations into the Russian tampering with the election and Trump’s role in it. That gambit has actually worked but it has also had another, far more serious impact. World leaders are freaking out. They don’t know what the US is up to, what our aims are, what the priorities are, who’s a friend this week, who’s on the Trump shit-list…. Even if they can settle on some apparently stable position, Trump has another tweet-storm and shifts gears. The “Trump Doctrine” seems to be “promote chaos.”

Amusingly, I’ve seen some of his truly desperate supporters claim that this is deliberate and he’s playing a crafty game of international politics where he’s always on top of the situation and manipulating all others. Yeah. Right. I’m a scientist. We all learned early on to cling to Occam’s Razor — do not invoke complicated explanations for situations that can be accounted for by simple ones. The simple one is simple: Trump is totally unqualified to be president.

At the heart of it is the obvious: Trump has no grasp of … well, virtually everything. He discovered that health care complicated (and seems to think no one ever realized this!); never even looked at the details of NAFTA or NATO before claiming he’d pull out of both; didn’t have a clue about the long and complex history of relations between China and the Korean peninsula; failed to recognize that China stopped manipulating its currency in 2014, that Erdogan is moving Turkey toward a dictatorship, that imposing border tariffs will drive up costs of goods, that … and that and … that..

He seems to think Frederick Douglas is still alive and doing great things for “the Blacks.” Then there’s the lies, the duplicity, the deception and those off-the-freaking-wall interviews that keep coming, each one hot on the heels of the previous. They are all done with friendly news outlets and reporters which has had an unintended outcome. Because they just let him ramble on he manages to drown himself in his own, truly blistering ignorance. The transcript of the one with the AP is here. Read it and cringe.

And the weirdest part of all, almost beyond grasping, is that he still has support among some 40% of the electorate and over 90% of those who voted for him. I guess they’re pleased about that new deregulation that allows the mentally ill to purchase guns and the thousands of families of long-term, law-abiding, tax-paying residents broken up.

I, frankly, can’t wait to see the train-wreck the next 100 days will bring, especially since now he’s finally discovered what we all knew from the beginning: he’s profoundly ill-equipped for this job and hasn’t a fucking clue what being president is all about. He never reads anything and that included the job description for the position. The only good thing that’s come out of these 100 days is the endless fodder for comedians.

Donald J. never wanted to be president. He wanted to be called president. No training, background or experience needed for that. It’s like having “TRUMP” on buildings someone else put up.

Trump/Bannon Immigration Policy: Tomorrow's Looming Disaster

A thought or three on the the immigration policy that Trump (and his Mephistophelian sidekick, Steve Bannon) are pushing. The first thing to grasp is that they are acting in what is easily seen as a classically childish fashion. Their vision is warped by narrow thinking and their decisions are driven by tiny, ego-centric, close-minded fears. There is, so far as I can tell, not a shred of interest in the long-range implications of their efforts, not a nod toward economic theory.

To see this we need to take a few simple principles of demographic analysis into account. These principles are, indeed, simple but they do call for a modicum of decency, a dollop of empathy and a willingness to acknowledge that cultures evolve and change over time. So:

I. When countries become economically stable the birth rate declines. None of the Western democracies are replacing the population through birth. This principle is as rock-solid as any. Children, in poor societies are more than objects to be cherished and nurtured, they are a source of economic growth. As a society become economically viable this benefit becomes a liabilitly and, consequently, the birth rate drops.

II. The elderly in a society are costly. Medical expenses, pensions, Social Security and a host of other support systems for the geriatric set need to be in place. Their costs are covered by the economic engines the younger generations provide. With declining birth rate that engine looses its steam. 

III. When birth rates drop, the well-being of the society is threatened by this economic disruption. The only place to find the younger “replacements” is through immigration — an obvious conclusion.

IV. Long-term demographic analyses project that the current rush of immigrants into Europe will provide strong positive economic gain in the decades to come — along with diversity in dress, food and the arts, further enriching the culture. How this plays out will be governed in large measure by the degree to which Europeans shed their fears and suspicion of cultural differences. If they marginalize the immigrants there will be fewer benefits of their presence.

V. These long-range projections also reveal which countries, based on current policy, are likely to blossom over the next several decades and which will not. Canada, for one, is projected to benefit significantly because of its relatively open immigration laws. Countries with xenophobic traditions and relatively closed doors will fare poorly. Amond developed countries, Japan has the worst economic prognosis because of their reluctance to absorb foreigners.

VI. Current analyses show that the US, because of policies in place before the Trump presidency, has a good, long-term economic picture. But if Trump/Bannon prevail, not so much.Their anti-immigration policies will have significant downward impact on the US economy. In addition to being a policy that is driven by fear, nurtures and encourages nativism and xenophobia, it is poor, long-term economic policy.

How much damage can the Trump administration do? This is far from clear. It will depend in large measure on how the courts treat things like the Muslim ban, the planned wall along the Mexican border and other proposed changes in immigration policy. So far the courts have not treated the Executive Orders banning Mulims kindly. It looks like Congress will balk at funding the wall and we have yet to see what specific changes in immigration policy will be proposed.

I’m hopeful…. Not something I often experience since the ugly people took over the government.

Is our POTUS a Traitor?

Okay, it’s crazy time. Actually, it’s been crazy time since Trump took over the Oval Office. But all this craziness has me thinking crazy thoughts. The little spasm of nuttiness that’s commandeered my brain, however, could very well turn out to be true.

Follow me on this here. I’m beginning to believe that our POTUS may be an agent of the Kremlin, a traitor. I’m trying very hard not to sound like some wack-job, an “Alex-Jones-nutball” swooping in from the left. But, here’s the story:

It begins with Rachel Maddow’s show Wednesday night. If you missed it, track down the video and watch. She’s knitting together a string of little tidbits, meetings, notes, hints, some of it fairly “hard” (i.e. we know this meeting took place) much of it “soft” (i.e., allegations still without independent verification).

The bottom line is just fucking off-the-wall-impossible, incomprehensible. The Russians have the goods on Trump. His organization and Russian intelligence were colluding throughout the campaign. But the real quid pro quo wasn’t just the Kremlin getting the guy they wanted in the White House, it was to control Trump and America’s positions on international affairs. In short, Trump just may be an agent of the Kremlin.

The evidence that she cites that’s so tantalizing is not just the usual stuff (Trump’s financial dealings with Russian oligarchs, his admiration for Putin’s “strongman” style) but deeper and far more malevolent — it’s what’s happened to the State Department since he took over.

Rather than being the instrument of US foreign policy, it has been neutered. Scores of life-long diplomats were either fired or resigned. They were not (and apparently will not be) replaced. Trump’s budget calls for an astonishing 37% reduction in funding of the State Department.

Secretary Tillerson, long a friend of Putin’s and recipient of Russia’s highest award for foreigners, has been reduced to a hand-shaking bag of wind who, when he says anything, just mutters empty slogans. There is no Undersecretary. All hints of how State will operate in the months and years to come show it leaning toward assisting Russia with sanctions, supporting inroads into Ukraine, backing its stance with regard to NATO, its interventions in the Middle East and its position vis a vis China.

And, curiously but tellingly, every day a new tidbit emerges from some source that confirms the allegations in that “dossier” that Chris Steele (who has emerged from hiding) put together. The main things missing right now are “hard” data on exactly who said/promised what in the meetings, Trump’s alleged sexual misconduct while in Moscow and, of course, those golden showers.

It’s also telling that when word of those meetings between Trump, his people and the Kremlin first leaked they were denied — passionately. Trump, Manafort and others are on record stating categorically that no one from the campaign ever met with anyone from the Kremlin. Well, there’s certainly been a course-correction on these as independent evidence comes out. I think we’re up to around six of his people having been confirmed as holding meetings with operatives from the Kremlin.

So here’s the teaser: it really is beginning to look like Putin has Trump by the short and curlies and it is just possible (I can’t believe I’m saying this — I really am sounding like a left-wing Alex Jones) that our POTUS is a traitor.