Ruth Marcus, columnist for the Washington Post, describes her paradoxical view.
“Here, for me at least, is the comforting paradox of the age of Trump: I have never respected a president less, nor loved my country more.
“This sentiment may startle. It may rankle, even. It comes in a week that witnessed the passage of the worst domestic policy legislation of my lifetime, followed by the now ritual but always repulsive lauding of President Trump. First by the Cabinet courtiers summoned for that purpose; next by Republican lawmakers willing to lay it on just as thick — even more nauseating, because they know better than the servile flattery of their words and because they occupy, theoretically anyway, a coequal branch.
“And this patriotic burst comes disconcertingly in a year that has seen the public display of the racist, xenophobic worst that America has to offer. These ugly impulses existed long before Donald Trump’s pursuit of the presidency and will, sadly, outlast him….
“Has there been a more embarrassing year for the United States? Thinking Americans cringe at what foreign countries and their leaders make of us and our president, with his reckless upending of international agreements, his bigoted and poorly executed travel ban, his unashamed ignorance, his reckless tweets, his endless susceptibility to flattery…
“George Washington, in his farewell address, advised fellow citizens to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” It is hard not to recall that admonition when listening to Trump’s faux-patriotic posturing against kneeling NFL players and his demand that they show “total respect for our national anthem, for our flag, for our country.”
“Real patriotism would be to recognize, as the Supreme Court did three decades ago in overturning a criminal conviction for burning the American flag, that “we do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.”
“Real patriotism would be not to denounce the “Russia hoax” but to insist that Congress — and for that matter, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — get to the bottom of what happened in the 2016 election and, even more imperative, that the United States strengthen its defenses to prevent future meddling.
“That is the patriotism Trump has awaked, in me and so many others. Because our fundamental fight is not against Trump. It is for America.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Has there been a more embarrassing year for the United States?”
I dunno. Leading the “coalition of the willing” into an illegal war of choice based on information that even I, a schmuck with an internet connection, knew was false, wasn’t exactly ennobling. But at least Bush was a war criminal with dignity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdDp_jlgC9M
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In a way, I’d agree that W’s war was more shameful, and there have been other Presidents with equally or even more atrocious acts: the trail of tears, slave owners, FDR’s internment camps, and more, but they are probably less “embarrassing” in that their agents had some redeeming/counterbalancing qualities and actions you could point to. Trump alone is proudly and willfully ignorant in a way that no previous President has been. I detested Bush and abhorred Nixon, but I would trade Trump for either one in a heartbeat, even though I’d still go right to working to oppose either of them if they were in office again. I guess I’d rather be angry than embarrassed. There’s being wrong, and then there’s being just plain stupid. Trump is just plain stupid. Having him in office makes every one of us look equally dumb.
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I appreciate your civil response. I disagree with you, as I remember feeling – and hearing and reading many others express – exactly the sentiments you express about Trump about Bush back then. I suppose we could argue the exact degree of stupidity, willful ignorance and embarrassment among the three. But I think we have reasonable common ground. Thank you.
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Come on, Dienne! Can you honestly say there has been a time when so much of the world sees our president as dangerously self absorbed and ignorant, not to mention incompetent?
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FFS, I guess she can’t do better than that.
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Yes. The Bush years when we recklessly engaged in wars of choice. Bush was widely seen as ignorant and incompetent. I traveled a lot during those years. I wished I knew another language (or at least could fake a better British accent). It was embarrassing to admit to being American. It astounds me the extent to which people have forgotten those years and rehabilitated the Bush administration, rather than seeing the direct continuity.
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You’re right, Greg, I can’t do better than 4,500 dead American soldiers, 1 million wounded American soldiers, over 1 million dead Iraqis and countless millions more wounded and displaced Iraqis. Nor, as of yet at least, can Trump. (Give him time, he might get there.)
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FFFS, NO ONE IS ARGUING THAT THE BUSH-SCARED AMERICAN INVASION WAS NOT BAD NOR HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THAT. Are you capable of storing two thought in your head without having one negate the other? Or will you continue to be a gadfly stuck in political amber?
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Wait a minute, Trumpisms vs Bushisms can be a fun game! Which is more embarrassing:
A) Shoving the prime minister of Montenegro
B) Throwing up on the prime minister of Japan
A) bigly, unpresidented
B) misunderestimated, is our children learning
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This is Dienne’s pattern, she is the resident contrarian. This is the umpteenth snarky deflating comment. OK, fine but don’t expect not to have a visceral reaction to the knee jerk contrarianness. Of course Bush was an unmitigated disaster for this country, he was given 8 years to do his dirty deeds and foment his wars of choice. Trump has been in office for almost a year and he has been rattling sabres with North Korea; I’m hoping against hope that he doesn’t get us involved in a war with North Korea or any other country but the man is a loose cannon. By the way, I voted for Gore firstly and then Kerry in 2004. Yes, I voted for the lesser evils, the neo liberals instead of the neo dumb arse. Gore or Kerry would have been light years better than Bush. I am not being irrelevant, I am being comprehensive.
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There was a time when Dienne wasn’t thought of as a contrarian here. She was part of a majority of us who were opposed, not only to libertarians and conservatives, but to neo”liberals” as well. I understand her. As a teacher, my life having never been more difficult than under the last administration with Race to the Top and all the Waiting for Superman attitude that surrounded it, I too am afraid of so-called centrism breeding Kissinger’s instability at home and abroad. I see nothing but havoc from the White House from 1981 to present. Reaganomics, my foot! His tax cut was enormous as well. The center isn’t better than the right because the center excuses and stimulates the right — to go alt the way right. Bush wasn’t better.
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Thanks, InService.
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So to answer speduktr’s question, “Can you honestly say there has been a time when so much of the world sees our president as dangerously self absorbed and ignorant, not to mention incompetent?” Yes, there has been. The result at the end of 8 years of having the foolish Decider in charge was the historic election of the first Black president. (This time, we don’t have 8 years to wait, though.)
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Joe sums up my thoughts very well. InService, I hope we can disagree without being disagreeable, because you make, as you always do, some very valid points. My points of disagreement with you are threefold, as I’ll try to sum up, beginning from the bottom. As I have argued many times here, labels are tricky things, often distorting or concealing what is rally meant. For example, your view of the center is not congruent with mine. What is commonly agreed upon at “the center” is, in my opinion, “center-right.” Our American conception of the “the center” would not be “the center” in any other modern, industrialized society in the world. Their “center” is closer to our “left-center.” When you write, “The center isn’t better than the right because the center excuses and stimulates the right”, I agree with you completely. Where we differ is on what exactly the center means.
When you differ with Joe’s accurate, in my view, description of our “resident contrarian” by writing that this “wasn’t thought of as a contrarian here” before, I think you miss a very important point. Times shift. That does not mean what was true at an earlier time is no longer true. But our perceptions change, our alliances shift, our views evolve, especially according to the circumstances contemporary events present us with. If we were judging in a static environment, to use just one example, then I would not be in a position to ally myself with the current dissent of say, a Richard Painter or Bruce Bartlett about certain aspects of the current regime. In a statist world, I might think to myself, “well, they were evil then, supporting regressive Republican policies, therefore their criticisms are irrelevant to me.” In American politics we pick and choose our allies—and our enemies—based on the circumstances before us. It is informed pragmatism that drives us, not irrefutable ideology. Indeed, as we see, when a majority takes the latter view, we are damned to fail as a polity.
Also, I agree with you (as do, I think, 98% of our community) with your views on the Reagan tax cuts and corrosive effect they have had on our society and politics. But I use that to inform what I think about current tax cuts, not to make blanket judgments on what is “worse” or “better.” It is a particular American disease—as I have also written here before—that we tend to try to rank things, to say this is better than that. This can lead to unintended conclusions and inadvertently set us off on divergent paths when we should be moving in the same direction.
Another example of the dangers of static thinking can be summed up when Republicans claim to be “the party of Lincoln.” We all know how foolish that is, but it is technically correct…technically correct, that is, if one chooses to ignore history. The corollary thought is that Democrats supported Jim Crow, founded the KKK, and opposed the Civil Rights Movement. Technically true, but does not hold up to today’s experience.
Finally, yes, as one who regularly travels outs the U.S. and spent the better part of 40% per year outside of country between 2006-2013, I agree that this nation’s suffered incredibly when we chose to go into Iraq. In a very, very short time, we squandered incalculable goodwill and respect throughout the world. But people understood it was political and saw the election of Obama as redeeming, whatever we might have thought of the agenda for those 8 years. In my most recent trip abroad, I was dumbfounded how much our nation’s standing—not just politically, but as a people, as a society—has fallen. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. When I asked many friends and acquaintances why this was so, the answer was to the effect of “In the past we understood that there were domestic pressures, but we could excuse that because we knew, deep down, Americans would be our partners when the chips were down. We don’t think that anymore. You freely elected him even though he got less votes. We can no longer count on you. That’s why we have lost respect and don’t plan on things getting better.”
To sum up, I think it was said best in Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country,” when a father comes upon his murdered son’s last writings about the evils of Apartheid. To paraphrase, what we did then was acceptable given what we knew then, knowing what we now, it is no longer acceptable. When our “resident contrarian” continues to pluck the same string over and over again as the melody changes, there comes a point when it becomes tiresome and counterproductive. Especially when there is no underlying disagreement about fundamental issues.
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Please forgive the many typos. I am a very poor proofreader. I see what I think, not what I actually write.
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These are dangerous times. Dienne, I am always with you. Go Bernie! Greg, you eloquently showed me a flaw in my thinking. As I have written many times here (under one or two usernames), this blog is a place for people able to change, as Diane changed years ago when she saw the dark side of standardization. I do not mean to give up hope for progressivism, though, and start stumping for Cory Booker 2020. I will only if and when it becomes necessary. As dangerous a time as the current one is, I for one intend to do like race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. did and keep turning left, ’till the last lap.
Keep pulling to the left, not to the left-center.
But, you’re right, I don’t need to continue seeing everyone right of Bernie as part of the same monolithic group. The first few months of the 2016 primaries caused me to do that. I can change because Donald Trump is Andrew Jackson crazy and self absorbed, working with instead of against Koch, who is John C. Calhoun elitist and anti-democratic. It can’t be that the answer to Koch is Bloomberg or Broad. It just can’t be! But if it is, so be it. These are dangerous times.
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Dienne is right, many of us were embarrassed to be represented abroad by Bush– I remember being particularly so during the backlash against the French for refusing to support the invasion of Iraq, & the Mission Accomplished” moment, tho there were plenty of other times. Oddly I don’t feel the same about Trump. I don’t think of himas the President or as representing me in any way, he doesn’t even pretend to represent anyone but his dwindling core. He is an embarrassment to himself and to his supporters.
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My goodness, why are you so angry, Greg? I was simply arguing against the sentence I quoted. My point (which you are free to disagree with, but why it gets you yelling like that is beyond me), is that 2003 was every bit as embarrassing to our country, and more deadly to others in the world. Bush might not have bragged about grabbing women by the p*ssy, but he was nonetheless nearly universally seen (especially outside the U.S.) as a dangerous, ignorant clown, just like Trump. His policies and illegal war (which he joked about on national television), caused untold death and suffering.
Never have I defended Trump (despite constant accusation to the contrary around here). I’m simply saying that he is not a radical disconnection from our past, but rather a continuation of it. As John Proctor says in THE CRUCIBLE, we are what we have always been, but naked now.
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dienne77 makes the same defense as the rabid Trump defenders do.
Every time you say something negative about him, they have to point out how evil Barack Obama or George W. Bush or Tony Blair or FDR (killed so many innocent Germans) or LBJ (napalmed so many innocent children) is.
Here is the difference. Those politicians had redeeming qualities. Every single one. They made mistakes — often in the middle of war time. None of them – as far as I know — were sociopaths with absolutely no consciences.
LBJ was just as evil as Trump, by dienne77’s standards. In fact, MORE evil since she counts every death against him. She can make the same arguments about LBJ’s evilness as she does against every other politician. See, Trump is no worse than LBJ and probably better as there aren’t as many deaths on his watch.
That’s how Hitler came to power and every other fascist. People like deinne77 who always know there was someone far worse and the country always survived.
Except we’ve never before had a sociopath. Too bad some Americans — both on the left and the right — don’t realize it.
After all, if we survived the purely evil LBJ, we’ll survive Trump, right dienne?
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Please enlighten me. What was GWB’s redeeming quality? Enquiring minds want to know. More to the point, were you pointing out this redeeming quality prior to his saying bad things about Trump, or is saying bad things about Trump a redeeming quality in and of itself which magically wipes away one’s war crimes?
Here’s the thing that you will fail to understand at your own peril: Trump is not a radical departure from prior U.S. presidents. His policies are not a radical departure. He and they are a continuation, harvested from the soil that prior administrations have cultivated. Simply getting rid of Trump is not going to do anything for the soil that produced him. We will simply have more Trumps, and each successive Trump will be worse than the Trump before, just as Bush was worse than Reagan and Trump is worse than Bush.
Nor are Democrats the answer, even if they are “better” than the Republicans. They serve the same masters, which cultivates the same soil. Increasing inequality breeds fear, hatred, xenophobia, eagerness for scapegoats and right-wing extremism. The Democrats have shown themselves adamantly opposed to any policies which will help the middle and working classes at the expense of their billionaire/corporate donors, so inequality just continues to increase, which will only further fuel right-wing extremism. If you want more Trumps, keep voting for the Establishment.
Again, if calling me a Trump troll makes you feel better, do keep it up, but it does not change the facts.
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I am not calling you a Trump troll. I am merely pointing out how your thinking and their thinking is very similar.
You both see only black and white but the world doesn’t work that way. And deep down you know it which is why you’ll give Bernie a pass if he helps out Andrew Cuomo and refuses to support the pro-public school Governor in Virginia. I’m not sure if LBJ is evil to you or if you see LBJ in shades of grey either — is he all evil like GWB or does he have any redeeming qualities?
Honestly, I get it, dienne77. I was just like you. You would have cheered me on when you heard me talking about Jimmy Carter being so evil. I spouted every single line you did to tell the people trying to convince me he was better than Reagan they were condoning evil.
But I grew up and learned a little about the world. Maybe that makes me a sell-out. Maybe I learned that being President isn’t as simple as I think and Carter wasn’t as evil as you believe certain Democrats are. I get it. I just wish you’d get over it.
I think what offends me the most is your self-righteousness on foreign policy. Yes, America has screwed up in the past. That doesn’t give incoming administrations the right to abandon the people they screwed up. That’s the easy way. Obama isn’t a hawk. He didn’t become a hawk because some neoconservatives brainwashed him. He became a hawk (as I suspect you’d call him) because there were no easy choices and he tried his best to use America’s power for good. That doesn’t mean his choices were right. But that also doesn’t mean his choices were evil. While you seem to know exactly what constitutes right and wrong in foreign policy, I confess not being nearly as brilliant as you in deducing the future and how each action will affect us. No doubt there were people who insisted that America’s involvement in WW II was pure evil and done only for the evilest of motives. The rest of us see nuance.
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^^And you comment about Democrats: “they serve the same masters” is about as ignorant as I have ever heard anyone speak.
Does Bill de Blasio “serve the same masters” as Andrew Cuomo? Does Elizabeth Warren serve the same masters as Chuck Schumer? Does Tim Kaine serve the same masters as Tom Perriello?
When you make comments like that, you DO sound like a Trump troll. Are you?
What MASTERS do the democrats I vote for support? I know you certainly post nasty things about them serving those “masters” when you mimic the right wing troll attacks.
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I am suffering Trump fatigue ,so I will keep it short . You may find out the answer to that too soon . There are no adults in the room . Those that are there, remind me of Peter Sellers and Slim Pickens.
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Now Trump and the conservatives are working to make the campaign finance laws more obtuse with greater access to dark money, and they plan the changes before the 2108 election. The Republicans are proposing allowing churches to donate to political campaigns while keeping their tax exempt status. This will allow the right wing conservatives to become more political and vote as a block. With all the money spent on propaganda, if we don’t fight back, we run the risk of having the type of government the Koch Brothers believe we should have.
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I love my country, but I would like the laws to reflect the will of the people, not just corporations and the 1%.
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I believe that item got canned in the final version of tax-reform bill
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The simple truth is that W was horribly bad — from a stolen election to doing nothing about Al Qaeda and allowing 9/11, from supply-side tax cuts and laissez-faire treatment of Wall Street, to war in Iraq over mythical weapons of mass destruction and the failure to fund the Iraq and Afghan wars.
The truth is also that the tramp Trump is god-awfully bad, and dangerous — from supply-side tax cuts to cuts to the EPA, from Russian help in the ‘election’ to helping ‘Christians’ privatize public eduction, from utter contempt of the rule of law and the truth, to abject corruption and incompetence.
W and Trump are two sides of the same nasty coin.
The fact that there are tens and tens of millions of ‘American’ citizens who support these kinds of politicians is cause for deep concern.
The mission of public schooling was to help ensure the nurturance of democratic citizenship…not the proliferation of fascism.
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With George W. Bush, as much as I despised him, I never felt that democracy itself was being threatened. While the Bush Administration lied, when caught out they didn’t simply insist that up was down and reality was whatever they wanted it to be. I felt confident that their lies didn’t mean that there would not be a new election every 4 years.
I can’t say that about Trump. And that is a very dangerous thing.
I’m not making that unallowable comparison between Trump and Hitler. But I do believe there is a danger to democracy itself that this country has not seen before and too many people on the left – including some on this board — are NORMALIZING this veering toward fascism because their hatred of the Democrats has become seriously deluded in which every single democrat is guilty by association. And they say “What’s the big deal with Trump, he is no different than previous lying Presidents and at least he isn’t intentionally bombing innocent civilian babies trying to kill as many of them as possible to please their masters like so many Democrats do.”
This enabling of Trump and company’s fascist instincts is helped by those on the left who claim “The Democrats have shown themselves adamantly opposed to any policies which will help the middle and working classes at the expense of their billionaire/corporate donors…” No, they haven’t. Certainly some Democrats do the bidding of corporate donors but to attack the entire Democratic Party — which includes Elizabeth Warren and Tim Kaine and many others who are not working only for the good of their donors is as much of a lie as what Trump says. So why are people on the left promoting this lie?
We won’t change things if the left lies as much as the right. If we need to smear people with lies (“Al Franken physically groped the breasts of a sleeping woman”) because it’s so much easier to repeat a simplistic lie than to tell the more nuanced truth (“Al Franken posed for an obnoxious, offensive photo in which he faked groped the armor-covered chest area of a sleeping woman while mugging for the camera in an obvious- but obnoxious and inexcusable – attempt at juvenile humor”) then those on the left who think dishonesty is okay are no better than the right. And they promote the very dangerous notion that normalizes the lies of Trump.
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Trump is terrible. Agreed.
As to W, have you forgotten about the election of 2000? Flat. Out. Stolen.
And 2004, in Ohio?
Naw. W was bad for democracy. So is Trump. So is the Republican party.
We are going to find out that Trump and the Republican National Committee both colluded with Russia to ‘win’ the presidential election.
I’ve said this countless times on this blog….the Republic is in much greater danger than people think.
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