I won’t summarize this article by Aaron Blake in the Washington Post, except to say that it is about the 2-page summary of Russian hacking, what the CIA said about it, what Kellyanne Conway said about it, what Donald Trump said about it. Interesting point: She wants to see a “house cleaning” at CNN because they reported on the existence of a memo that does in fact exist.
It is a case study in deflecting, obfuscating, lying.
This is not the first time we have seen political figures lie. But the Trump team seems to have honed the practice to a fine art.
This is a twist on an old line, “How can you tell when the Trump spokespeople are lying?” Answer: “When their lips are moving.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I LOVE the last comment.
People knew that Trump was a liar when voting for him or should have
but
post truth, who cares.
The following seems to summarize my feelings.
DEMOCRACY & GOVERNMENT
Farewell, America
No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently.
BY NEAL GABLER | NOVEMBER 10, 2016
America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.
Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it. As I surveyed the ruin of that country this gray Wednesday morning, I found weary consolation in W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1, 1939, which concludes:
This generally has been called the “hate election” because everyone professed to hate both candidates. It turned out to be the hate election because, and let’s not mince words, of the hatefulness of the electorate. In the years to come, we will brace for the violence, the anger, the racism, the misogyny, the xenophobia, the nativism, the white sense of grievance that will undoubtedly be unleashed now that we have destroyed the values that have bound us.
We all knew these hatreds lurked under the thinnest veneer of civility. That civility finally is gone. In its absence, we may realize just how imperative that politesse was. It is the way we managed to coexist.
If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t.
This country has survived a civil war, two world wars and a Great Depression. There are many who say we will survive this, too. Maybe we will, but we won’t survive unscathed. We know too much about each other to heal. No more can we pretend that we are exceptional or good or progressive or united. We are none of those things. Nor can we pretend that democracy works and that elections have more-or-less happy endings. Democracy only functions when its participants abide by certain conventions, certain codes of conduct and a respect for the process.
The virus that kills democracy is extremism because extremism disables those codes. Republicans have disrespected the process for decades. They have regarded any Democratic president as illegitimate. They have proudly boasted of preventing popularly elected Democrats from effecting policy and have asserted that only Republicans have the right to determine the nation’s course. They have worked tirelessly to make sure that the government cannot govern and to redefine the purpose of government as prevention rather than effectuation. In short, they haven’t believed in democracy for a long time, and the media never called them out on it.
Democracy can’t cope with extremism. Only violence and time can defeat it. The first is unacceptable, the second takes too long. Though Trump is an extremist, I have a feeling that he will be a very popular president and one likely to be re-elected by a substantial margin, no matter what he does or fails to do. That’s because ever since the days of Ronald Reagan, rhetoric has obviated action, speechifying has superseded governing.
Trump was absolutely correct when he bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and his supporters wouldn’t care. It was a dictator’s ugly vaunt, but one that recognized this election never was about policy or economics or the “right path/wrong path,” or even values. It was about venting. So long as Trump vented their grievances, his all-white supporters didn’t care about anything else. He is smart enough to know that won’t change in the presidency. In fact, it is only likely to intensify. White America, Trump’s America, just wants to hear its anger bellowed. This is one time when the Bully Pulpit will be literal.
The media can’t be let off the hook for enabling an authoritarian to get to the White House. Long before he considered a presidential run, he was a media creation — a regular in the gossip pages, a photo on magazine covers, the bankrupt (morally and otherwise) mogul who hired and fired on The Apprentice. When he ran, the media treated him not as a candidate, but as a celebrity, and so treated him differently from ordinary pols. The media gave him free publicity, trumpeted his shenanigans, blasted out his tweets, allowed him to phone in his interviews, fell into his traps and generally kowtowed until they suddenly discovered that this joke could actually become president.
Just as Trump has shredded our values, our nation and our democracy, he has shredded the media. In this, as in his politics, he is only the latest avatar of a process that began long before his candidacy. Just as the sainted Ronald Reagan created an unbridgeable chasm between rich and poor that the Republicans would later exploit against Democrats, conservatives delegitimized mainstream journalism so they could fill the vacuum.
Retiring conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes complained that after years of bashing from the right wing, the mainstream media no longer could perform their function as reporters, observers, fact dispensers, and even truth tellers, and he said we needed them. Like Goebbels before them, conservatives understood they had to create their own facts, their own truths, their own reality. They have done so, and in so doing effectively destroyed the very idea of objectivity. Trump can lie constantly only because white America has accepted an Orwellian sense of truth — the truth pulled inside out.
With Trump’s election, I think that the ideal of an objective, truthful journalism is dead, never to be revived. Like Nixon and Sarah Palin before him, Trump ran against the media, boomeranging off the public’s contempt for the press. He ran against what he regarded as media elitism and bias, and he ran on the idea that the press disdained working-class white America. Among the many now-widening divides in the country, this is a big one, the divide between the media and working-class whites, because it creates a Wild West of information — a media ecology in which nothing can be believed except what you already believe.
With the mainstream media so delegitimized — a delegitimization for which they bear a good deal of blame, not having had the courage to take on lies and expose false equivalencies — they have very little role to play going forward in our politics. I suspect most of them will surrender to Trumpism — if they were able to normalize Trump as a candidate, they will no doubt normalize him as president. Cable news may even welcome him as a continuous entertainment and ratings booster. And in any case, like Reagan, he is bulletproof. The media cannot touch him, even if they wanted to. Presumably, there will be some courageous guerillas in the mainstream press, a kind of Resistance, who will try to fact-check him. But there will be few of them, and they will be whistling in the wind. Trump, like all dictators, is his own truth.
What’s more, Trump already has promised to take his war on the press into courtrooms and the halls of Congress. He wants to loosen libel protections, and he has threatened Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos of Amazon with an antitrust suit. Individual journalists have reason to fear him as well. He has already singled out NBC’s Katy Tur, perhaps the best of the television reporters, so that she needed the Secret Service to escort her from one of his rallies. Jewish journalists who have criticized Trump have been subjected to vicious anti-Semitism and intimidation from the white nationalist “alt-right.” For the press, this is likely to be the new normal in an America in which white supremacists, neo-Nazi militias, racists, sexists, homophobes and anti-Semites have been legitimized by a new president who “says what I’m thinking.” It will be open season.
This converts the media from reporters to targets, and they have little recourse. Still, if anyone points the way forward, it may be New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks is no paragon. He always had seemed to willfully neglect modern Republicanism’s incipient fascism (now no longer incipient), and he was an apologist for conservative self-enrichment and bigotry. But this campaign season, Brooks pretty much dispensed with politics. He seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that no good could possibly come of any of this and retreated into spirituality. What Brooks promoted were values of mutual respect, a bolder sense of civic engagement, an emphasis on community and neighborhood, and overall a belief in trickle-up decency rather than trickle-down economics. He is not hopeful, but he hasn’t lost all hope.
For those of us now languishing in despair, this may be a prescription for rejuvenation. We have lost the country, but by refocusing, we may have gained our own little patch of the world and, more granularly, our own family. For journalists, Brooks may show how political reporting, which, as I said, is likely to be irrelevant in the Trump age, might yield to a broader moral context in which one considers the effect that policy, strategy and governance have not only on our physical and economic well-being but also on our spiritual well-being. In a society that is likely to be fractious and odious, we need a national conversation on values. The media could help start it.
But the disempowered media may have one more role to fill: They must bear witness. Many years from now, future generations will need to know what happened to us and how it happened. They will need to know how disgruntled white Americans, full of self-righteous indignation, found a way to take back a country they felt they were entitled to and which they believed had been lost. They will need to know about the ugliness and evil that destroyed us as a nation after great men like Lincoln and Roosevelt guided us through previous crises and kept our values intact. They will need to know, and they will need a vigorous, engaged, moral media to tell them. They will also need us.
We are not living for ourselves anymore in this country. Now we are living for history.
LikeLike
Gordon, an excellent analysis.
The tens of millions of white (for the most part) Americans who voted for Trump are afraid. They are afraid that they will soon be a minority in this country (which they will be, eventually) and they cannot deal with this. They want to hold on to what they think of as the “ideal” of this country- back to the 1950’s, or before, where women “knew their place,” where blacks were segregated and marginalized.
When people are afraid, their worst instincts come to the forefront. They cannot accept anything that they think might marginalize them.
LikeLike
Can’t agree with your analysis of of the “fears” of those “white Americans”-not at all. I believe this article better explains what happened: “Meet the Deplorables”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/13/meet-the-deplorables/
This election was a total repudiation of the Dems’ neo-liberal policies and capitulations to the moneyed elite from B. Clinton onward that hurt the average Joe and Jane, whether white, brown, yellow or anyone else except the elite.
LikeLike
“This election was a total repudiation of the Dems’ neo-liberal policies and capitulations to the moneyed elite …”
Duane, is your point that some Americans voted for right wing Republican Senators and Congressmen with right wing conservative policies that did MORE capitulations to the moneyed elite than Dems could even dream of because they wanted to “get revenge” on the Democrats?
In what world do sentient people “repudiate” policies that capitulate to the moneyed elite by voting for the very people who insist that ALL policies capitulate to the moneyed elite?
Here’s what I think you mean: The right wing noise machine has decided that east coast liberals who care about things like unions, minimum wages, and universal health care along with gay right and pesky issues like racism and xenophobia are “moneyed elite” while the east coast right wingers — as well as billionaires who live in other places — who have destroyed unions and are looking to destroy social security and medicare are simply “non-elite billionaires” because they feed into the anger of uneducated white working class midwesterners by offering up handy scapegoats like non-whites and Muslim and Mexican immigrants. And they tell them that those “libruls” will take away the guns that make them feel powerful when they are simply pawns being laughed at as they shoot themselves in the foot (figuratively) by supporting the “non-elite” billionaires and not those “elite librul” rich folks on the coast.
LikeLike
And how stupid they they were to help Trump get elected.
LikeLike
The Trump team has perfected a science of lying. The lead proponents being F—face Von Clownstick Little hands Trump . Kelly Anne Goebbels has perfected it to new heights with her knowledge of polling.
“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”
” If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.”
LikeLike
Sadly, what Trumplethinskin and Kellyanne Kommentariat, et al keep saying is believed by way too many people. They will not be convinced of the truth, and this is an onging danger to our country.
I really hate to bring up Godwin’s Law, because I don’t think we are there yet (at least, I hope), but I do begin to understand why so many Germans were willing to believe the propaganda of the Hitler regime.
LikeLike
They only woke up when they were totally devastated .
LikeLike
Yes, and we shall see how much Americans wake up when they are totally devastated, and have no reasonable health care, their local schools are crumbling even more because of fewer and fewer resources, the companies get to scr*w workers even more, the environment gets worse and worse, the public lands become used for profits for developers and gas and oil companies, and on and on and on.
I am just afraid that, if and when they do wake up, it will be too late.
OTOH, the 1% will no doubt be doing well.
LikeLike
Zorba,
There is a program (I think on Amazon) called “The Man in the High Castle.” It is an adaptation of a Philip Dick novel, in which the Nazis and the Japanese won World War II and now occupy the U.S. It takes place in the early 1960s. Everyone except a tiny resistance has adapted like sheep.
LikeLike
Diane, I read Philip Dick’s novel over 20 years ago. It is indeed very scary, very dystopian.
We need to keep fighting against this, in whatever way we are able.
Contact our representatives, support good causes, vote for people who are on our page, whatever we can do.
LikeLike
Rachel Maddow has used the word “lie” for a couple of nights in a row, no hedging. Last night she had excerpts from some of the published “opposition research documents,” what our intellegence officers said about them, and replays of lies from the Trumpsters about all of that.
I see that Rick Hess, who is pretty good at the same tricks as the Trumpsters, is going after the educational research community for being lefties. Hess is the director of educational policy studies as the American Enterprise Institute.
Hess has a Commentary in EdWeek titled “Its Leftward Tilt Leaves Ed. Scholarship on the Sidelines.” This commentary is critical of scholars and researchers who care about equity and diversity, and who are open to qualitative research. He is critical of education deans and other scholars who have joined in the opposition to DeVos,
This commentary and several other opinion pieces in the January 11, 2017 issue of EdWeek seem to have been in the works and timed for publication to serve one purpose: To diminish the informed and well-documented case against the appointment of Devos. Pages 20, 21, 22, and 28 are given over to criticisms of higher education and public intellectuals (including Linda Darling-Hammond, Diane Ravitch, and Gloria Ladson-Billings) as entirely too liberal, left-leaning, and intolerant of “right leaning educational researchers”
Hess says that this intolerance explains why so many of right-leaning (and right-minded) scholars and researchers have migrated to think tanks and advocacy groups.
Rick Hess is happiest when he constructs his own rating scheme for “influence” using out-of date information from the CVs of scholars.
LikeLike
“As I see things, the ability of education researchers to inform discussions of practice and policy is hampered by their community being so philosophically unrepresentative of the nation as a whole.”
Wow! Is Hess kidding us?
Get with his program or else, eh! That’s a fairly totalitarian thing to believe in.
LikeLike
Duane, you missed his point. He and the good folks at AEI (funded by DeVos) are representative of the nation. You are not.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Laura,
Did Rick Hess mentioned that Betsy DeVos funds AEI?
LikeLike
No.
LikeLike
Merry Christmas Sergei to you and Vlad .
I am just calling you to thank you and Vladimir for the excellent work you guys have done. As per our previous conversations . We will be certain to reward you for your efforts on. our behalf. So have Vlad drop us a call when Donnie takes office. But please include the negatives and all DNA evidence with your first delivery of material .
LikeLike
Because they always get away with it and pay no price for getting caught.
LikeLike
It’s business. This is how they do business. This is what business is to them. And to them everything is about business.
Reflective bubble hermetically sealed.
LikeLike
I argue that Littlefingers Donald Trump’s administration lies even when their lips aren’t moving.
LikeLike
That’s a really good one Lloyd!
LikeLike
You wanted crooked Hillary!
LikeLike
Oh, as if Trump is better? Trump, whose businesses declared bankruptcy four times? Trump, who scr*wed his investors, the people who loaned him money, his contractors, and even worse, the people who worked for him by not paying them?
This is who you think is better? You should be grateful that you didn’t work for him and never got paid.
If Trump is who you wanted, then I really feel sorry for you.
LikeLike
Crooked Hillary? Are you kidding. Contrast her with Trump.
LikeLike
I see the same thing, no contrast other than he has little hands and she has big ones from groping for power and fame.
LikeLike
Duane,
That is a stupid and disgusting comment. Trump is an arrogant egomaniac and a pathological liar. Do you like his choices for his cabinet? Do you agree that climate change is a hoax? Do you agree with the new director of the budget that the federal government should not fund research? What are your principles other than cynicism?
LikeLike
No
No
No
Fidelity to truth and justice which I see neither party nor the main stream media as having.
From one of my favorite authors Brother Ambrose in his “Devil’s Dictionary”: CYNIC, n.
A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.
LikeLike
Honestly, Duane’s comments on here are exactly why we should all be scared.
I am quite certain that in Nazi Germany there were people just like Duane claiming that Hitler was no worse than any of the other compromised candidates. Just another typical politician. Instead of focusing on Hitler’s illegal actions, let’s focus on how terrible those guys he ran against were and keep our focus on them while Hitler slowly destroys a working democracy. After all, those guys he ran against were too close to big money. And at least Hitler is telling us white Christian folks how superior we are to the other guys. At least he recognizes how wonderful white workers are and praises them and tells them how much better they are than those nasty immigrants and non-Christians.
What could go wrong! Duane’s posts terrify because I had convinced myself that rational America would never let what happened in Germany happen here. I can’t even imagine what he thinks we are supposed to do. Just keep doing Trump and his alt right supporters’ dirty work by keeping the focus on how evil those elite liberals are? No matter what, Trump could never be as evil as those nasty elites on the coast. So let’s keep the focus on on them (us). And when they come to round us all up, people like Duane will be convinced we all deserved it.
LikeLike
WOW, NYCpsp, REALLY!
You’re afraid of me and what my comments imply to you? Have you not read my condemnations here of THETrumpster (written that way as a way of showing disgust with him)? Because I also criticize your favorite candidate for all the many flaws that she has and the havoc she has wreaked upon the world as SoS??
“What could go wrong! Duane’s posts terrify because I had convinced myself that rational America would never let what happened in Germany happen here.”
Well, that is your problem, NYCpsp, the assumption that Americans (and I could be real obnoxious and add “especially those ‘nasty elite liberals'”-your term not mine) act any more “rational” than other humans spread out across this planet.
NYCpsp, you purport to fear my words and what you so blindingly believe I say after you have twisted my words to past recognizable. Tis not I whom I would fear.
Actually, I’m a big garrulous, pretty mellow ol bear of a guy who has attempted to live his life helping at the local level since the 70s through volunteering sports coaching, boy and girl scouts, school fundraising, DU, taking kids outdoors whose parents wouldn’t/couldn’t and many other givings of my time (to the detriment of my checkbook). I’ve no regrets other than wishing I would have spent more time making money to have now instead of giving my time freely-NOT!
NYCpsp, I hope you are coming to the NPE Fall conference. I’ll be happy to sit down with you, buy the first round (adult beverage or not) and you will see that I am not quite the boogeyman you have pictured in your mind.
LikeLike
Duane,
I did not say you were the bogeyman.
I said your characterization of people who believe that Trump is FAR WORSE than Hillary Clinton as “east coast elites” plays right into the far right’s hands.
I never had any doubt you are a very good man. I admire the way you live your life and I generally agree with many of your posts.
That is what TERRIFIES me. Your certainty that Trump is no different than Hillary Clinton. I can’t figure out if you are trying to say that Hillary Clinton is also a scary outlier of a corrupt, dangerous politician or if you are trying to say that Donald Trump is no worse than the typical neoconservative Democrats like Obama.
But in either case, it normalizes Trump. Because if you fail to make any distinctions between imperfect, philosophically neoconservative, and totally corrupt, you are playing right into the far rights’ goals. That is exactly what they want you to think because NO politician is ever going to be perfect (and their propaganda will exaggerate all the flaws) so why get worried about a completely corrupt guy grabbing power. What could go wrong?
LikeLike
Crooked Hillary was an amateur compared to “Little Hands ” who has spent a lifetime fleecing people.
Crooked Hillary released her Taxes Donald Dirt-bag has not .
LikeLike
Joel,
Trump will never release his taxes. This will be the Perpetual Audit.
LikeLike
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Judi, you are so funny!
LikeLike
She’s less than funny. She is an example of those delusional people who voted for Trump.
And I think that she will eventually regret this.
LikeLike
I needed a sarcasm emoji.
LikeLike
Careful, Judi, not toeing the Clintonista line around here can get you tarred and feathered (rhetorically speaking that is).
LikeLike
Duane, what is the Clintonista line?
I made a choice between a highly qiualofied woman candidate and an unethical lunatic who has appointed right wing extremists to lead every government agency.
Is that the Clintonista line?
I have no regrets.
LikeLike
And you are correct to not have regrets. I have no regrets for having voted for Jill Stein.
While I don’t agree with your evaluation of Clinton I certainly do with your evaluation of THETrumpster.
LikeLike
The Clintonista line is the insult thrown at the “elite” on the east and west coast who actually note that there are differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. If you are one of the admirable white Hillary-haters, you understand that Trump should be normalized as no different than Hillary or than Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or anyone else.
For Duane and Judy, if one is deluded enough to believe that not only is Hillary Clinton different (and better) than Trump, but she is also different (and better) than Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and a slew of other Republicans, then you suffer from being a Clintonista.
Prominent Clintonistas include Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
When all the Clintonistas are rounded up to the place they belong by Great Leader Trump, then the worthy and intelligent white Christians who remain will be able to find the suitable leader this country deserves.
Did I get that right?
LikeLike
“The Clintonista line is the insult thrown at the “elite” on the east and west coast. . .”
Quite correct, NYCpsp in that part of your comment. And that is what I mean to say with it.
The rest of it, no, you didn’t get it right. While there is some veracity to what you say, it is still that elite viewpoint coming through which I so decry.
For a far better explanation of “the deplorables” (not my term, Hillary’s term and if it isn’t elitist, I’ll eat crow) and what really happened as far as those “deplorables” are concerned please read “Meet the Deplorables” by Rob Urie: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/13/meet-the-deplorables/
LikeLike
Duane, you are what I love about the discussions we find here. At times I think you are so wrong and an idiot, at other times I find myself in full agreement with everything you write and bask in your bluntness. I’m hoping you think the same about me, pro and con. We keep each other on our toes and hopefully we find our ways to our own visions of what we respectively see as the truth. I enjoy this and am thankful that Diane gives us these opportunities to confront, agree and learn. It helps me and I sincerely hope it helps you to get through the times we are damned to live in.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the kind words, GregB.
I only say it/write it as I perceive it. I don’t expect all or anyone to agree, disagree or whatever with me. I’d be disappointed if all agreed, not only because that would be boring but also because that disagreement among humans in communication seems to be an eternal condition far beyond my meager perception and control.
And yes, I learn a lot here especially from your astute commenting. And again to reiterate your thought “thanks Diane”!
Although I can’t agree with the thought of “the times we are damned to live in.” Hell, I’m happy to be alive (even with the various aches and pains which can be debilitating at times) now. Even with the current political state, which I don’t consider all that different from the last 36 years, I am glad to breathe, take in the fresh air, look up at the stars in the dead of winter while listening to a screech owl, hearing the rippling waters of a stream, etc. . . . There is still way too much to enjoy and not enough time-and that fact is what life is about for me.
LikeLike
In a civil discussion, we refrain from calling people idiots. In my estimation, Duane Swacker is a highly educated person of principle who does not back down under pressure. Whether one agrees, or disagrees with him is a matter of choice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the kind words, Abigail. (and back at ya!!)
LikeLike
Abigail, if you read my full post, you will see we agree. “Idiot” was written with a sarcastic chuckle. Duane figured that out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, GregB, I understood. Even with my best of friends, some I’ve known for 50 years I sometimes think “WTF is that idiot thinking?” (and I sometimes think the same thing of some of my thoughts) Tis life and living and I might as well enjoy what I can and try not to get too worked up over things, but I still do and can.
LikeLike
Duane E Swacker
The Urie link was great and I have stated the same here and elsewhere numerous times. It is why I battle NYCP constantly . It is a very accurate description of the Democratic party on par with Thomas Frank or Lofgren…
It is what in my heart I want to believe . Nothing was more infuriating than Tom Perez laughing it up with Bill Maher . “If you can’t get a job today your a loser ”
But guess what, in my personal experience being a recently retired member of a very highly paid construction Union . Living in a solidly middle to upper class suburb of NYC .
It is not the reality of the Trump voters I encounter. I would certainly agree that it may explain enough of the populous, to have swung a vote to Trump in those key states .
Of the many Trump voters I encounter none have been economically displaced. In-fact many earn outrageous income compared to other working class NY-rs. I have described many in the past who were dependent on aspects of the safety net yet would deprive others of the same. Who see their own bennifits as deserving. That is one type of deplorable there are others.
Even now the industry I worked in has a 10% unemployment rate . But it is not those unemployed who tend to be Trump supporters. it is some of the most empowered workers in the nation who tend to be vocal Trump supporters .
A few months back my discussion was with another retired worker . He hated Obamacare didn’t want to pay for the” lazy slackers” . So here was a worker who as a general foreman on some of the largest projects in NY earned way more than a Senator. A worker who had Cadillac healthcare, subsidized by tax benefit to his employer. Had a defined benefit as well as defined contribution pension. Objecting to another worker whose non union employer would not pay a subsistence living no less provide health benefits, being given a helping hand. When I told him he was voting for a man who would destroy his union and his pension. This (great in his own mind) union member told me he don’t care he did not need it . He is probably is right. He is not alone.
I voted with Chomsky you voted Green, I think this link is more descriptive of the Trump voter
http://billmoyers.com/story/media-morality-neighbors-cow/
LikeLiked by 1 person
“it is some of the most empowered workers in the nation who tend to be vocal Trump supporters .”
And that is exactly what I have seen here in the Midwest. Many middle to upper middle class voters voting for Trump, believing his rhetoric in a fashion that I find almost impossible to believe-that such educated, most have degrees, folks have fallen for THETrumpsters shit, and shit it is.
LikeLike
you’re
LikeLike
Duane,
“…”But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end….
If you had done the courtesy of reading the ENTIRE “deplorables” speech that Hillary Clinton made, you would see that she was specifically addressing the issue of “elites” not understanding that you so smugly believe that none of us understand. She grew up in that community — as did I — and it truly sickens me when people like you pretend that somehow Jill Stein has some special understanding of their lives that we just will never know. You seriously suffer from Hillary-derangement syndrome. I don’t argue that there aren’t some Democrats who find working class folks beneath them, but frankly, you can find them just as often among young Bernie and Jill Stein supporters as you can among the “east coast elites” where you seem to think they live. And Hillary Clinton was not one of them. You just fell for the alt right picture of her — you and your Jill Stein supporters were their patsies and boy did they cheer you on while laughing behind your backs at your delusions. ‘Hillary is an east coast elite so I have to vote for Jill Stein”. LOL.
Here is why you are being played, Duane. You think you are being critical of both Hillary AND Trump. But what you are really doing is NORMALIZING Trump by your constant posts that he is no different than Hillary. Hillary is an imperfect political woman who is better than many Republicans and less progressive than many Democrats. Trump is an outlier who cares only about himself and has fooled some members of the public to believe he cares about their needs. But the alt right needs you to keep normalizing him so they can continue to grab power and every time you compare him as “no worse than Hillary” (which means no different than ANY politician) you do their dirty work for them.
There is genuine criticism to be made of Hillary and other candidates. And there is exaggerated attacks that the alt right encouraged people like you to use in order to normalize Trump. You played right into their hands and continue to do so. It’s shocking that you still reserve so much of your criticism for the Democrats and not for Trump. If I was a psychologist, I would interpret that as denial. People like you spouting the alt right line about Hillary being no better than Trump convinced many voters (with help from alt right propaganda). Now you need to double down on your insistence that you were absolutely correct about that — despite all evidence to the contrary in every action and appointment Trump has made since the election. And the alt right keeps egging you on.
In fact, I suspect “Judy Flanders” is a troll with her “crooked Hillary” posts that sound just like Trump. Egging on the Hillary-haters normalizing Trump by saying “he’s no worse than Hillary would have been” and laughing at them behind their back. Egging you on to hate “east coast elites” based on false characterizations that you buy in entirely. And when it comes time to round us up, egging you on to explain how we all deserved it.
LikeLike
NYCpsp,
I’m so glad that you “know” what I believe, because obviously you have not taken what I have written for what it is but have put your “spin” on it so I come out the boogeyman. So be it. And very sad, indeed.
Although you get my award for “Putting Words in My Mouth and then Twisting Them to Incomprehensibility”
Basta contigo. (Can you understand that?)
LikeLike
Duane,
I don’t know what that means, even with google translate. My best guess is “Right back atcha….”
I’m sorry if I put words in your mouth. I guess I am thin-skinned when it comes to hearing people like me (those who voted for Bernie in the primary but could see that Hillary Clinton – with all her flaws — was a decent person who could make a very good President) as “Clintonistas”.
I suppose we differ because I see Hillary as a human being who wanted to do some good in the world and also wanted to have a nice lifestyle to support her family so didn’t have a problem getting as rich as possible. I don’t think at any point she thought that taking money from making a speech — what every other former high level government official did — would be portrayed as evil and a sign that she planned to do their bidding if she ever held future office. And just saying “appearances matter” and “she should have known better” while recognizing that she STILL was a good person who planned to govern to help others and not just the rich is very different than saying “she is crooked to the core, no better than Trump.”
I suspect had Hillary been raised as Jill Stein was — with everything she needed and no doubt her college and medical school paid for and a nice inheritance from her parents or grandparents to make her way easier — she might have said “I will take no money and live off of my fabulous trust fund so I can enjoy all the finer things in life while looking down at those “strivers” who dare to try to get rich like my grandparents did.” Boy did I meet lots of those people in college. Looking down at the middle class kids doing interviews with investment banks as sell-outs while going on fabulous vacations paid for by their parents, coming out of college with no debt, having their parents buy them their first home or subsidizing their expensive rent while they pat themselves on the back for working at a low-paying job “doing good” that barely covers the train fare to spend every weekend at their parents’ or grandparents fabulous ocean front vacation home that is there for their use. Those people were the real “liberal elites” who voted for Jill Stein because she “understood” the working class voters they “really cared about.” Those people were the “liberal elites” who looked down their nose at the Hillary Clinton voters who understood that there is no difference between enjoying the riches of your parents’ affluence while you “do good” and making speeches (or working at an investment bank) to create your own affluence because your parents didn’t hand over a trust fund or subsidize your lifestyle.
Of course, those kind of trust fund babies voted for all the candidates – not just Jill Stein. But somehow we have entered an alternative dimension where making speeches for as much money as someone is willing to pay you is much worse than having your entire very affluent lifestyle subsidized by a grandfather who got rich by screwing over little people or cheating or bribing, or maybe just “selling out” and working for the man. And in that alternative reality, the right wing propaganda meisters have successfully convinced some working class voters that wanting to get rich because you weren’t born with a silver spoon automatically means that every action to took for the last 45 years to help the poor and working class should be assumed to be only in pursuit of that speech-money because that’s all you care about.
LikeLike
NYCpsp,
Enough with you! is the translation. It’s what I say when I get frustrated with a conversation to the point where I probably won’t respond anymore.
I can be an ornery prick at times especially when I believe the other person with whom I am talking isn’t listening without their personal interference coming into play-and I can do the same myself, I know it.
I also know that we are on the same side in the battle for public education. A little tit for tat infighting is okay in my mind but we (and I very much include me in that we) are not seeing the forest for the trees in this little verbal joust. And sometimes that is what is needed to perhaps see that others indeed can have legitimate views that aren’t the same as ours.
I was tired of the election after the primaries much less the general and find it frustrating to still be talking of these things here on the “site to discuss a better education for all.” (and I understand and stand behind Diane in supporting her in posting as she chooses, but don’t necessarily agree with it and I’d like to think we both understand each other on that account.)
Anyway, my offer still stands and I hope you make it out to Oakland later this year for the NPE conference!
LikeLike
Thank you, Duane.
LikeLiked by 1 person
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/01/09/russia-trump-election-flawed-intelligence/
LikeLike
Hey folks, I know Trump is in bed with Big Oil, and Big Oil is interested in having sanctions lifted so Exxon can drill in Russia and get its ROI. I know sanctions are a reasonable reaction to the way Putin leads the Russian government. I know hacking the DNC is just as bad, if not worse, as our tapping Angela Merkel’s phone…
All that said, isn’t there a danger that Trump could be getting his feelings hurt by all this criticism of his Russia love, could be feeling weakened, and could easily be egged on by all of us and the media into showing his strength and nationalist chauvinism by attacking Russia? War is the worst scenario for everyone except Big Oil, which still gets to make a ton of money fueling all those leviathan bombers and aircraft carriers in a big war. I’m starting to get nervous.
LikeLike
Not a chance relax . Vlad is a very dear friend who loves Donald
LikeLike
A plethora of companies profits from the war industry.
LikeLike
Unfortunately a 50 font YEP!
LikeLike
It’s what keeps the war machine going.
LikeLike
“The newsworthy story at this point was that a credible intelligence official had provided information to the FBI alleging Moscow had tried to cultivate and compromise a presidential candidate. And the issue at hand—at a time when the FBI was publicly disclosing information about its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of her email at the State Department—was whether the FBI had thoroughly investigated these allegations related to Russia and Trump. I also didn’t post the memos, as BuzzFeed did this week, because the documents contained information about the former spy’s sources that could place these people at risk.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/spy-who-wrote-trump-russia-memos-it-was-hair-raising-stuff
Further the former British Ambassador to Russia has stated.
“Wood said he believed Steele was a “very competent professional operator”, adding: “I do not think he would make things up. I don’t think he would necessarily always draw the correct judgment but that’s not the same thing at all.”
“The former spy went into hiding this week after his cover was blown. “Russia would certainly like to know where he got his information from – assuming his information is basically true and he hasn’t just made it up, which I don’t believe for a moment – and they’re accustomed to take action,” said Wood, describing the allegations as “dangerous knowledge”.
Former Foreign Office and intelligence officials told the Guardian on Thursday that Steele was highly respected in the intelligence community”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/13/trump-dossier-uk-ambassador-moscow-john-mccain-andrew-wood
Penalty for treason
“Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)”
Penalty for lying a tarnished reputation.
So the question seems how badly does Paul Ryan want to be President?
LikeLike
Or Orrin Hatch
LikeLike
Malcolm Nance (my new hero) on Chris Hayes tonight commenting on Flynn’s possible complicit behavior as an enabler of Russian hacking: “…coincidence takes a lot of planning…”
And although our audience might dismiss this profound work of art, please take some time to listen to message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj9SeMZE_Yw
LikeLiked by 1 person
GregB,
I too was struck by that wonderful turn of phrase by Nance on Chris Hayes show. The night before, after Trump’s incoherent press conference, Nance noted that Trump called himself an “asset,” because of his mutual friendship with Putin. Nance said, “yes, he is an intelligence asset for the Russians.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
If you watched Rachel Maddow, she pointed out the contrast between Comey’s public reports about Hillary’s emails, and his refusal to acknowledge that the FBI was investigating the possible Russian intervention into our election, of which he was made aware last summer.
LikeLike
Sen. Angus King–not sure about his views on education–deserves consideration for some kind of award for his remark to Comey, “the irony of your making that statement here, I cannot avoid.” That statement might find its place in histories and textbooks well beyond our lifetimes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dan Rather posted this interview that CNN’s Anderson Cooper did with KellyAnne Conway. Conway insisted that CNN fire its staff because of inaccurate polling which predicted a Clinton victory. It’s almost unbelievable. But worth watching every second. I agree with Dan Rather that this is like a training video for journalists in how to interview. This is crazy. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/politics/anderson-cooper-kellyanne-conway-trump-intelligence-report-russia-cnntv/index.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
Trump and his team say whatever they want, ignore ethics laws, keep his tax returns hidden, lie freely. They get called out but it doesn’t matter. They are without shame.
LikeLike
YEP!
LikeLike
As Seth Meyers also did with Conway. It’s so sad that Jon Stewart, Jon Oliver, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, are the Murrows, Friendlys, Rathers, Cronkites, and Chancellors of today. Instead we are inundated with Ted Baxters (Ted Knight, you were a gem) masquerading as “journalists.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Too polite almost defensive. Especially in light of the events that have unfolded since. When you know your right, no need to be polite, to Kelly Anne Con-artist. Nor to be polite to her boss, both of whom are probably guilty of treason.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This should not be a debate but a unified front against Trump and his allies.
The Clintons are not relevant to the discussion. We need to stop Trump and to do
so with many forms of resistance. This idea that voting for the Greens was some act
of intelligence or courage doesn’s hold water. The issue is what to do that can stop
Trump from destroying the good that remains.
LikeLike
Thanks, Marek. A dose of reality is very important in these times.
LikeLike
“This idea that voting for the Greens was some act
of intelligence or courage. . . .”
Please show us the point in this discussion where anyone mentioned anything like that. I missed it.
LikeLike
Jill Stein sat at the head table with Putin and General Flynn to celebrate the 10th anniversary of “Russia Today,” Putin’s propaganda magazine. Russian Greens criticized her for ignoring Putin’s human rights abuses.
LikeLike
Let me put it this way, maybe it will help make some sense of the situation. Were Sadat and Begin wrong to sit at the same table in the late 70s?
LikeLike
It goes both ways, Duane. I’m sure you can come up with many more such as Nixon went to China. But Lindbergh went to Nazi Germany. Should we have engaged with Hitler or pursued the strategy of unconditional surrender? Would it have been right to negotiate with Pol Pot or Idi Amin? Was it right for our government to support Augusto Pinochet? The point I’m making is that you take each case individually and weigh the choices to make decisions.
In the case of Putin, we have corroborated evidence that his agents have committed murder on foreign soil, that he has ordered genocidal bombings in other nations and parts of the former Soviet Union, that he has killed journalists, human rights advocates and political opponents in his own country, and that he directs covert programs to undermine the political processes of many nations. So I’m with Diane and Marek on this one. There is no automatic decision tree one can consult in foreign policy. But in this case, I think it is clear that Americans who are vetted and honored by Putin are playing a very dangerous and cynical game; a game with incredibly high stakes.
LikeLike
The beef that I have at the moment, and what bothers me the most is that no one, not anyone said anything remotely near to what Marek implies in her comment. Why bring up that dead horse? Why does Diane bring up Stein and Putin when the thread has nothing to do with it? All I asked for was a clarification by Marek on her statement and suddenly it’s blown up into an anti-Stein diatribe. Ay ay ay ay ay! Eso no tiene sentido.
And your examples, GregB, only serve to expand that blatant conflating of the thread to something it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong I’ll go toe to toe with you on what the US foreign policy has been and how many millions, yes, millions of deaths this country has been responsible for all in the name of supposed freedom and liberty and that great American Exceptionalism that justifies that death and destruction.
Can’t agree with you on this one.
LikeLike
I suspect we agree on more than we disagree on. We quibble on details and nuances. I think I understand why Diane wrote what she did and if so, I agree with her on this point. But I’ll not speak for her.
And if you keep using Spanish comments that I can’t understand, I’m going to have to retaliate in German and lay some Schadenfreude on you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Or I could give you a few Greek phrases to use. Written in the Greek alphabet. 😉
LikeLike
Simple: Every nation looks out for its own self-interest. We try to protect our nation and our allies. Putin looks out for his, which is to break up NATO and the Transatlantic partnership that has kept the peace in Europe since World War 2. There was a US-Russian alliance against the Nazis in the Second World War, but only because the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Before the Nazi invasion of the USSR, there was a peace pact between the USSR and the Nazis. Putin is not to be trusted. He is a thug. But he is very smart, and he knows that Trump is not smart and desperately in need of flattery.
LikeLike
Maybe we should all start to flatter Littlefingers instead of criticize him, so we out flatter Putin. The challenge is finding something nice to say to Littlefingers and not end up lying all the time like he does.
LikeLike
Been wanting to learn German all these years. My grandmother and her friends spoke it.
LikeLike
Oy!
LikeLike
Oy! was meant for Zorba.
LikeLike
Kαταλαβαίνω. (I understand.)
Ευχαριστώ, αδερφός μου. (Thank you, my brother.)
See, I translate my phrases, unlike Duane. 😉
LikeLike
It’s all Greek to me. Especially with all those foreign, un-American symbols. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lying worked!
Why get off the horse that got him here?
Now that truth is moot, how best to counteract
the obvious lying that so many seem to ignore?
The solution will probably be found in a court of law.
I give him two years max, before he is impeached.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And may those two years be filled with such an endlessly published scorn against him that everyone — and that includes populations across the globe — sees the better side of a country currently overwhelmed by embarrassment.
LikeLike