Thursday, February 28, 2019

Democracy or Donald Trump – Pick One


Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me. Time to retire the boring
and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!
4:14 AM - 16 Oct 2016 Tweet
 
Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!
Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican
hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very
unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!


They are mutually exclusive, but they shouldn’t be. For a man who castigates the duly-elected leaders of democracies, purported allies like Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron, but speaks admiringly of brutal autocrats, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, perhaps this comes as no surprise. It is odd that in the history of the United States, which has been embroiled in wars since its inception, the greatest threats to our democratic republic have always come from within. We seem to have come to a breaking point where either Donald Trump’s vision triumphs and ends our system of democratic checks and balances or Donald Trump is contained until he leaves office to give American democracy a chance to revive.

We have not been this divided since our Civil War era, an explosive internal struggle that almost sank the nation. There are structural flaws that stem from the fact that our country was created in an era when agriculture dominated commerce. Our Founding Fathers, mostly landowning farmers, just did not trust the city-folks whom they felt would, sooner or later, outvote their agrarian interests. With under two percent of our nation’s workforce committed to farming, over 85% of our population living in urban communities, it’s pretty clear that that reality is happening.

The very composition of half of our Congress, the Senate, is based on land mass and not population. Tiny liberal Rhode Island, with a little more than a million people, and sparsely-populated conservative Wyoming, with around 600 thousand residents, each square off as Senatorial equals – two per state – against the liberal 40 million population California, the 20 million population New York and the conservative 25 million Texas. Within 25 years, assuming continuation of current demographic trends, that anomaly will be amplified as 16 states with 70% of our total population will control less than one-third of the Senate. 

Demographics also tell us that white Protestant Americans – the core of Donald Trump’s base – are already a minority. As the vitriolic “resistance” from liberal states and virtually all large cities will attest, Donald Trump only represents his base and the wealthiest greed-mongers in that one percenter constituency (the latter, aka donors and supporters of sympathetic Super-PACs). 

For this minority of Trump-base-constituents to continue to dominate our political institutions – based-supported Republicans control most state legislatures/governorships, the U.S. Senate, the Presidency and all currently-nominated federal judges) – democracy must be stopped. The base cannot tolerate a democracy that must, by sheer numbers alone, marginalize their power to reflect their actual numbers, not the exaggerated influence that our system of government has actually given them. They need their strongman to force their agenda on the rest of us, to sabotage anything that dilutes their power based on their obviously-dwindling percentage of the total U.S. population.

Strongman Trump’s disdain for constitutional “due process,” evidenced by his constant lambasting tweets against any judicial decision that contradicts his policies, his belief that there are no constitutional barriers against his usurpation of the constitutionally-defined appropriations function of Congress (merely by declaring a national emergency in the face of statistics generated within his own administration that contradict almost every single stated basis for his “wall” construction), and his declaration that mainstream media are the “enemy of the people” are the platforms of a dictator-wannabe. His slogans are based on lies, his firebrand political style has given rise to hate-groups willing to come out of the shadows in open defiance of non-white values. How many hateful perpetrators of violence against non-whites have referenced Donald Trump’s words and policies as justification for their actions?

Yet Republicans cling to his coattails, addicted to his failing policies because they voted for them while forcing moderates in their midst to leave office, under their belief that they can no longer hold national office without Trump’s endorsement and the support of his base. Even though they wince as they vote, they continue to place re-election over what they know is right.

As much as Trump rips most of MSM (mainstream media), if the messengers of his populist propaganda arm – Fox News where presenters like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingram are so inebriated with their perceived power as spokespeople for Trump’s base – he trembles in fear and finds ways to appease their directives. Nothing else seems to move him. Oh, he explodes against even comedic depiction of him, even suggesting that legal action should be taken against any network that would deign to mock him.

We know his instrumentalities of change include appointing cabinet-level personnel who have spent serious years attacking their departments, often trying to abolish them, ready to defy their legal mandates to serve the new master. He has appointed biased judges with questionable sexual behavioral issues as well. He has fired even his own appointees, when they do no do precisely what he wants (even if illegal), with the greatest frequency in American history. His executive orders, often substitutes for legislation he knows would never pass, live in a judicial system that is under constant assault, struggling to preserve democracy against a spate of clearly unlawful presidential commands.

And he loves raising the hackles, firing up the hatred (“lock her up, lock her up!”) of his base in rallies and through tweets. “Since announcing his candidacy in the 2016 presidential elections to the end of his second year in office, U.S. President Donald Trump has sent 1,339 tweets about the media that were critical, insinuating, condemning, or threatening. In lieu of formal appearances as president, Trump has tweeted over 5,400 times to his more than 55.8 million followers; over 11 percent of these insulted or criticized journalists and outlets, or condemned and denigrated the news media as a whole.” Stephanie Sugars, Research Assistant, writing for CPJ North America (CPJ.org) on January 30th

Even as Donald Trump once hosted NBC’s Saturday Night Live, he now believes that they are part of a Democrat-driven conspiracy to discredit him and force him from office. His first and latest anti-SNL tweets are reproduced above. The latest was after SNL mocked his wall emergency on the February 16th telecast.

 “This was the seventh tweet that Trump has sent out blasting ‘Saturday Night Live’ since he hosted the show in November 2015 in the midst of his presidential campaign. But he’s lately been suggesting that some sort of legal action should be taken against NBC.

“‘A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?’ he wrote on Dec. 16.

“Some presidents have taken ‘Saturday Night Live’ with good humor. President George H.W. Bush invited Dana Carvey to the White House after Carvey impersonated him on the show during the 1992 presidential campaign. In 1976, Gerald R. Ford all but embraced Chevy Chase’s portrayal of him as a klutz by inviting the comedian to the White House and even doing a cameo on ‘SNL.’” Daily Variety, February 17th. “Can’t be legal”? “Retribution?” Is the First Amendment simply an inconvenience that can readily dispensed with? Why is it that autocrats uniformly attack free speech and the free press? Always. No matter that you might be liberal or conservative, if you believe in a truly democratic form of government, you have to know that Donald Trump does not.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and I only hope that the damage that Donald Trump has done to our nation, the world, its people and to our own democracy can still be reversed.


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