Greg Brozeit comments here frequently and teaches us as he comments:
Immediately after the election I posted a summary of a review I wrote about an essay by Isaiah Berlin on Joseph de Maistre. Here is the full piece. It ties into the subject of this post and hopefully provides some insight into the fascist mindset that is on the rise again throughout the globe:
Maistre was the intellectual father on modern fascism. I doubt that 20th and 21st century fascist leaders and politicians—even the current American incarnation—ever heard of him, but his ideas form the core of modern day reactionary political systems. Born in the Savoy kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in 1753, his views were strongly influenced by the experiences of the French Revolution. He served the king of Sardinia, first gaining prominence as a pamphleteer and later as envoy to Russia—the king wanted both to control and keep him as far away as possible—where he lived from 1803 to 1817 before being summoned home until his death in 1821.
Maistre strongly opposed the liberal thinkers of the 18th century with a counter-intuitive empiricism. “In place of the ideals of progress, liberty, perfectibility he preached the sacredness of the past, the virtue, and the necessity, indeed, of complete subjection, because of the incurably bad and corrupt nature of man. In place of science, he preached the primacy of instinct, superstition, prejudice. In place of optimism, pessimism. In place of eternal harmony and eternal peace, the necessity—for him the divine necessity—of conflict, of suffering, of bloodshed, of war.” He saw killing as a virtue, extrapolating the killing of animals for man’s benefits (from food to clothing to luxury) to the primal need for society to live in fear of the “hangman,” which, intellectually, is not far removed from contemporary rhetoric about “law and order.” Moreover, war is a good for society because it acts as an organizing force. The Church, Catholic in his case, does the same. Since, as Berlin articulates Maistre, “Man is by nature vicious, wicked, cowardly and bad…unless clamped with iron rings and held down by means of the most rigid discipline” he “need[s] to be curbed and controlled.”
Moreover, Maistre believed that irrationality—“the only things which last”—not rationality, explained how society behaved. “For example, he says, take the institution of hereditary monarchy: What could be more irrational?…Here is an institution of patently idiotic nature, for which no good reason can be given, yet it lasts…But far more rational, far more logical and reasonable, would be to abolish such a monarchy and see what happens.” Maistre felt the same about marriage, reasoning the irrationality of a couple falling in love and then staying together because of historical tradition. “So he goes on, from institution to institution, paradoxically asserting that whatever is irrational lasts, and that whatever is rational collapses; it collapses because anything which is constructed by reason can be pulverised by reason…The only thing which can ever dominate man is impenetrable mystery.”
Prejudice is, according Maistre, a virtue because it is “merely the beliefs of the centuries, tested by experience.” Scientists “are the people who have the least capacity for understanding life, and for government…[because] science [has a] dry, abstract, unconcrete nature, something about the fact that it is divorced from the crooked, chaotic, the irrational texture of life with all its darkness, which makes scientists incapable of adapting themselves to actual facts, and anyone listening to them is automatically doomed.” He advised the Russian czar to ban German Lutherans from entering his country because “Good men—family men, men who have traditions, faith, religion, respectable morals—do not leave their countries. Only the feckless and the restless and the critical do so. This is,” as Berlin makes clear, “the first real sermon against refugees, against freedom of spirit, against the circulation of humanity…”
Maistre was, unsurprisingly, a great admirer of Napoleon. The King of Sardinia explicitly prohibited Maistre from meeting with Napoleon because he feared the consequences of what might come out of such an encounter. And although Maistre’s views were largely confined to elites and he was much forgotten after his death, his ideas predicted the worst of the 20th century and still informs how we should view demagogues and their followers today. According to Berlin, “Maistre earns our gratitude as a prophet of the most violent, the most destructive forces which have threatened and still threaten the liberty and ideals of normal human beings.”
For those who question how the Putinism, Trumpism, fundamentalist religion, and extreme terrorism can flourish today, it might be worth learning more about Maistre. They probably won’t like what they see and read, but they’ll be better able to understand why these movements exist and why the defenders of liberal democracy (writ small) must never become complacent.
How can there be “intellectual roots” of “trumpism”. Is that not an impossibility?
Ha ha ha
You are waaaaaay too logical, Duane.
While we are in agreement, there’s no denying a consistency, however frightening its incarnations are.
Variations on a theme. . . .
I believe the essay is in Berlin’s The Proper Study of Mankind anthology.
And here it is.
Click to access maistre.pdf
This summation refers to an essay from “Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty” which was a reconstruction of six essays Berlin read on a BBC radio series. Maistre, like Vico, Herder, and other obscure thinkers, was a topic to which Berlin returned over and over again. Henry Hardy’s work to make sense of and compile Berlin’s writings into a coherent whole is invaluable.
Yes, sorry, that link is to a lecture.
This is a review of those lectures.
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=16956
May as well study the history of political corruption, street hustling, real estate, luxury hotels and reality TV.
Trump wishes he had intellectual roots. Maistre may have worked for one of Trump’s ancestors.
Yes, indeed, Akademos.
Dump is a simpering idiot and totally immoral. He is a national embarrassment.
There is no rationality in trumpism and fascism, only post hoc rationalzation. From a developmental point of view: The linkage between words and deeds is not established yet in either.
Yes, but much of the essay is about an irrationale, so to speak, about irrationality.
As I read and understand it, in summary, it is anti-Enlightenment.
One of the joys of Berlin’s writing are his examinations of thinkers who were most certainly opposed to the views associated with the Enlightenment as well as the logical, totalitarian conclusions that leading of ideas of that era could lead to. These are most well known by those somewhat familiar with him on his writings about negative and positive freedom.
Berlin’s legacy is a reverence for pluralism, especially the notion that sometimes views of competing factions will not be satisfied, and a rejection of monism, the idea that one “truth” could explain human actions. If we revere self governing, I think Berlin provides some valuable guidelines about its limits and how it can survive them.
Fascism is commonly a chameleon, and a supreme opportunist. It uses situation-specific camouflage. It disguises itself in whatever large groups of people in a conflicting culture want–in the short term; and then, when it destroys all checks and balances, and gains authoritarian power, it drops the totalitarian hammer of its purveyors on the people that were sucked in to it in the first place–and in terms of whatever biases and truncated psychology that exists in the now-controlling fascists. It’s the product of a group of deranged, truncated, jealous and disappointed minds involved in the biggest BS the world has ever known, rather than a “political philosophy.” To call it a political philosophy is to already assume the fog surrounding its totalitarian center.
The remote source of the present rise of fascism in the U.S. is not capitalism, but in out-of-control capitalism—that cannot be hidden from the people–many of whom, ironically, are “wannabees” who would also turn into out-of-control capitalists should they “get rich.” (Ask any similarly-greedy TV evangelist.)
A new economic system, without personal self-control or well-grounded institutional-state controls, remains and increases the invitation to fascism–in its present-day robes, of course. And so we’re in the process of destroying democratic institutions and “receiving” fascism. Trump is only a dumb purveyor of that movement.
As the note here suggests, fascist purveyors are anti-intellectual–because the fascist knows that, though they are right that human evil is a known historical fact, it’s the also-historical presence of good that they refuse to understand and recognize. As most of us will recognize in the struggle with our own education, its easy to become unthinking, even if we don’t take the further move towards power-mongering . . . much more difficult to think beyond one’s own untutored and unsavory desires and fears. And fascist purveyors go after freedom of speech and the ideas of intellectuals–those who can see through the fascist camouflage early on and that are anathema to the fascist’s survival.
The fascist thrives on the jealousy of “too busy” ignorant towards the intellectual and where that ignorance can quickly turn into resentful thuggery. Behind that ignorance, again, is the rich getting richer.
It is a supreme irony of our time that it’s those who claim religious intentions who are holding open the door to fascism in our day, and to its skeptical, dogmatic, pessimistic and nihilistic intent. (God’s work, I suppose?) It’s a shortfall of the people’s own intelligence at work.
In other words, the door is open to stupidity rather than intelligence; to personal and institutional dogmatism rather than to the real call for the nuance of our own intelligence working towards long-term but more difficult thinking that is required to steer through our times and towards our own self-transcendence; to degenerate rather than high moral character; and to hate rather than love.
Below is a recent article from the online magazine AEON that speaks of the subtleties of fascism. CBK
https://aeon.co/ideas/fascism-was-a-right-wing-anti-capitalist-movement?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=db840944ed-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_08_03_52&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-db840944ed-70395829
I do not disagree with a word you wrote, but I differ on the idea of not having a philosophy. Rather than call it a philosophy, perhaps we can agree that Maistre’s writings and ideas provide a remarkably consistent set of principles. After all, Hannah Arendt spent a great deal of (well spent) time writing about the similarities and overlap of right and left wing totalitarianism, yet Berlin (they did not like each other) did it much more simply and convincingly.
This article shows that it is possible to rationalize heinous human behavior and beliefs if you try hard enough. I am certain slave owners had a lot of ways to explain how slavery helped black folks. What’s next, a Biblical justification for pedophilia?
It is of trivial interest that Stendhal’s protagonist in “The Red and the Black,” Julien Sorel, was inspired by Maistre. Sorel also had an over-inflated, breathless view of himself.
I don’t think we need to go back nearly 270 years to some obscure theorist to find the roots of Trumpism. It would be more productive to look to our more recent past, for instance, starting around the 70s and 80s when TPTB began disassembling the New Deal in favor of neoliberalism/austerity/”trickle-on”, er, I mean, “trickle down” economics/whatever you want to call it.
It’s pretty well documented that far-right extremist ideas don’t take hold when people are basically secure in their safety, jobs, homes and basic needs and when they have reasonable leisure time and leisure activities worth pursuing.
But since the advent of austerity, productivity has increased while wages, benefits and job security have flatlined or even plummeted. People have been illegally thrown out of their homes while big banks have profited obscenely. People have been denied healthcare and medicines, while insurance companies and big pharma have profited obscenely. Our environment and family farms have been destroyed while oil companies, food monopolies like Monsanto and ADM, and other polluters have profited obscenely. The sons and daughters of the poor and working classes have sacrificed their lives to our endless wars while the war machine has profited obscenely.
I know I sound like a broken record, but perhaps rather than assuming that the “deplorables” are some sort of new breed of “irrational”, inscrutable, barely human “other”, we could assume that all people have reasons for what they do, based on how they experience the world. For the past 40ish years, people have been suffering, and it’s that suffering that provides the breeding ground for far-right extremism. People see that “the system” has failed them, so they reject “the system”.
The first party to figure out how to fix “the system” for the betterment of all people will be the party to get rid of Trumpism. Currently neither party is that party.
No we don’t have to go back 270 years, but we should. We should understand the distant roots of our own society. We should understand how society has developed and what influences have influenced how we have reached today. Beginning history with relatively recent events turns everyone into clean slates only influenced by that current history. It’s like saying I shouldn’t pay attention to WWII because I wasn’t born until it was over, despite the fact that my father fought in it. The Great Depression has nothing to teach us because most of us didn’t live through it? My parents and grandparents did. My ancestors on my father’s side got kicked out of a German state back in the 1600s and were eventually forced to leave England and come to the “New World.” They were early refugees who fought on the wrong side of some conflict. While I can’t point to a concrete example of how their experience shaped me, it certainly shaped their experience and their children’s, and their children’s,… I know you don’t mean to dismiss all history before whenever you were born, but sometimes I feel like we spend far too little time trying to understand how and why other people think differently than either you or I might. It is too easy to divide people into those who are greedy and self serving as opposed to those who are solely concerned with the welfare of community.
Trying to understand how and why people are the way they are is what I spend a great deal of time doing. (It’s why I majored in psych, worked in social services and got a masters in psych, even though I don’t really use my degree in my career.) If we walk a mile in other people’s shoes, I think we get a better answer to that question than looking to distant, obscure theorists. Not to say that distant history doesn’t have its own role to play and, sure, it’s important to understand. But my issue with this piece is that it seems to be saying that because some guy 270 years ago that no one has ever heard of espoused the value of irrationality, that explains why Trump supporters are irrational.
I’d argue that, depending on how you define the term, Trump supporters are not, in fact, irrational. Misguided, sure. Angry and lashing out in all the wrong directions, you betcha. But they’re reacting to the actual circumstances of their lives as they experience them, not the crazy words of some obscure theorist.
From Psychology Today:
an Analysis of Trump Supporters Has Identified 5 Key Traits
A new report sheds light on the psychological basis for Trump’s support.
Authoritarian Personality Syndrome
Authoritarianism refers to the advocacy or enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, and is commonly associated with a lack of concern for the opinions or needs of others. …
Social dominance orientation
Social dominance orientation (SDO)—which is distinct but related to authoritarian personality syndrome—refers to people who have a preference for the societal hierarchy of groups, specifically with a structure in which the high-status groups have dominance over the low-status ones. …
Prejudice
… It is a well-known fact that the Republican party, going at least as far back to Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” used strategies that appealed to bigotry, such as lacing speeches with “dog whistles”—code words that signaled prejudice toward minorities that were designed to be heard by racists but no one else. …
Intergroup contact
… it’s important to note that there is growing evidence that Trump’s white supporters have experienced significantly less contact with minorities than other Americans. …
Relative deprivation
Relative deprivation refers to the experience of being deprived of something to which one believes they are entitled. It is the discontent felt when one compares their position in life to others who they feel are equal or inferior but have unfairly had more success than them. …
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201712/analysis-trump-supporters-has-identified-5-key-traits
I was a psych major, too. Ed therapy for my masters. My favorite history teacher in high school spent a great deal of time on examining the possible motivating factors for the actions of the people who made history. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at why they might have done what they did. The irrationality discussion appealed only in that it appeared to identify a way that people may react to highly stressful social conditions. It’s not Trump per se that we need to get rid of but the conditions that have allowed Trumpism to flourish.
I have the funniest feeling that we are saying almost the same thing, just coming at from slightly different perspectives.
Entire books could be written debunking that “paper”, which is an embarrassment for Psychology Today and, much more, the so-called “Journal” of Social and Political Psychology that originally published it. The two biggest problems are (a) they define their terms in cyclical ways to show what they want shown upfront and (b) there is embarrassingly little that approaches actual research, and what research there is is highly unscientific, even by the rather loose standards usually found in psychological research.
The tobacco industry has put out better “research” showing the “benefits” of smoking. Sheesh.
You nailed it, Dienne. “It’s pretty well documented that far-right extremist ideas don’t take hold when people are basically secure in their safety, jobs, homes and basic needs and when they have reasonable leisure time and leisure activities worth pursuing.” The socio-political scene developed directly from our govt’s pusillanimous reaction to the shrinking pie brought on by automation/ globalization in the late ’70’s: first those in power grabbed & sorted out the big pieces, now the powerless are fighting over the scraps.
I specifically reject the idea that “we could assume that all people have reasons for what they do, based on how they experience the world” and its implication that those experiences make their views valid. Often views are invalid and they do not fall on the legitimate spectrum of political debate. We do not, for example, have to give a Holocaust denier a seat at any public policy table. The examples go on and on. If one’s bitterness about how “‘the system’ has failed them” is rooted in a strong belief that one’s skin color or accent makes another “different” or “privileged” by “the system,” then I am free to reject that opinion and I will fight against it in any public forum.
“Intellectual” and “Trumpism” together create an oxymoron.
Maistre described the benefit of fear. If only Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, wasn’t afraid, he wouldn’t need to close 7 precincts in rural Georgia just in time for his election bid against his Democratic opponent- a progressive. Kemp lacks the same decency that oligarchs do.
There is no “intellectual” in Trump’s roots. His roots sprouted in ignorant, lying, toxic, racist, crime-infected, swamp gas.
I cannot embrace de Maistre’s conclusions, but it seems to me there’s something to his fundamental insight about the durability of the irrational and the fragility of the rational –which reminds me of Nietzsche. Deep thinking Democrats and democrats would probably be wise to take note. Hillary’s gales of wonky rationality were impotent with the masses. Liberals need to learn how to play with the black magic of irrationality the way Trump does –but, of course, using it for good, not evil. De Maistre nails the cluelessness of scientific Silicon Valley-types who thought high-speed Internet for the masses would lead to mass enlightenment and utopian society. Au contraire! If only these techie nerds had stayed at Harvard long enough to take a few more humanities classes they might not have been so clueless about human nature. De Maistre is actually a much deeper thinker than many so-called educated Americans.
“In place of science, he preached the primacy of instinct, superstition, prejudice. In place of optimism, pessimism. In place of eternal harmony and eternal peace, the necessity—for him the divine necessity—of conflict, of suffering, of bloodshed, of war.”
“Good men—family men, men who have traditions, faith, religion, respectable morals—do not leave their countries. ”
…………
I find this lowering of the greatness of man abominable. However, it fits Trump perfectly.
Trump shows prejudice in place of science. He sees the necessity of unending wars and wants a parade so he can be recognized as powerful. He says that immigrants are all people so worthless that we can’t let them into our country….following the belief that ‘good men do not leave their countries’.
Mankind has been let down many times in the past. We do not always live up to the goals and ideals that we aspire to achieve. However, we do a lot of good work. Many people work to help others, sometimes at great risk for themselves. Look at people who help those who have been bombed out by ruthless dictators. There are always people on the ground helping behind the scenes. Bigots are always around but, hopefully, the goodness of man will prevail.
Trump is an abnormality that will, we can hope, fade into the past. We will look upon this chapter in our history as a bad time. What will happen next? Don’t know but no matter how bad things get there will always be the best of humanity working behind closed doors doing good things. Mother Theresa does exist in many others in many different ways. Mankind is NOT bad. Power makes people too often not be as good as they could be. Power and wealth make a bad combination.
Sure is hard for many to realize there is a real a running the show not some girly one as we had the past 8 years under Obama. The results show it and the rest of the anti-Trumpers can go to ….
Jimmy: “Sure is hard for many to realize there is a real a running the show…”
You forgot to finish that word. I’ll do it for you…ass.
Who is running the show? “A real a.”
True. But add to that, an ignorant insecure bully. A guy who adores Putin. A man so vain and egotistical that he lives for flattery. A man so gullible that he thinks he denuclearized North Korea and refuses to believe they lied to him. A man surrounded by sycophants and grifters. A real man who has a long history of buying the silence of women with whom he committed adultery. A man who is destroying the Western alliance. What do we call that man? A charlatan. A danger to America and the world. A contemptible liar. Just “a.”
I’m confused. Do you think Trump is a real macho guy and Obama was girly?
I’m still confused with this: “The results show it and the rest of the anti-Trumpers can go to …. ”
Did you leave out “hell”?
If “hell” is the missing word, then you seem to want the majority Americans to end up in an icy, frigid Trumpland, the recently added tenth circle of Dante’s Inferno.
if “hell” was where you want to send most of America, I’m pleased to disappoint you because the only people going to the new tenth circle of hell is Trump’s supporters.
Thugs like Jimmy Kilpatrick will run a fascist America if we don’t get young people, Latinos, blacks and poor people to the polls on November 6. Democrats, get off your butts and start hitting the sidewalks to persuade these groups to vote!
Stand on the sidewalk outside the local Walmart and talk to people. We have this right –the managers can’t drive us away –for now…
This should be assigned reading for all who were shocked at Trump’s
election and his continuing influence. I need more instruction on how best to counter this threat to our democracy.
Rule 1: vote in November.
Rule 2: get friends and family to vote
Rule 3: Engage with local party and public officials—and always bring it back to education. Always.
Rule 4: Peat and repeat over and over again.
This is the most important election of our lives. I agree with Krugman that Trump will go full authoritarian if the Dems don’t take the House. We may lose our democracy. Drop everything and make this Job #1.
And all this time I thought that the “intellectual” roots of Trumpism lay in the book Rasse und Seele
It’s pretty weird to read the words “intellectual” and “Trump” in the same sentence.
Everyday there are reports of the atrocious behavior of ICE towards immigrants. ICE agents are being honored at the WH today. Trump has no compassion…just the need to create more hatred and fear so that he can be re-elected.
………….
The HIll’s Morning Report: The decision to honor ICE agents at the White House comes as Trump and Republicans scramble to energize the GOP base amid an increasingly bleak election outlook for the party in power.
I do wish Trump would shut up. The GOP ‘witch hunt’ into Hillary’s emails took much longer. The Repubs have such short memories.
……………….
Trump: Mueller Is Trying to Swing the Midterms for the Dems
President Trump accused special counsel Robert Mueller of deliberately manufacturing criminal allegations against him and his allies in order to help the Democrats win in November’s midterm elections. “Mueller’s Angry Dems are looking to impact the election,” he wrote on Monday morning on Twitter, explicitly accusing the FBI veteran of election interference. “Anybody needing that much time when they know there is no Russian Collusion is just someone… looking for trouble,” he ranted. “They made up a phony crime called Collusion, and when there was no Collusion they say there was Obstruction.”
So now Trump is bragging that he could run the Russian investigation. How sweet that he has decided to ‘stay out’. Trump can do everything. Just ask him. He should be worried about a ‘perjury trap’ since he would get caught lying.
……………………………….
Reuters: Trump concerned about perjury trap in interview with special counsel
Sophie Tatum
By Sophie Tatum, CNN
Updated 12:58 AM ET, Tue August 21, 2018
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump said he’s concerned about potential perjury charges that could be brought against him if he were to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump told Reuters in an interview on Monday that he was worried investigators would put his statements up against those who have testified, like ex-FBI Director James Comey.
“Even if I am telling the truth, that makes me a liar,” Trump said, according to Reuters.
Trump’s legal team has previously warned against walking into such a scenario if the President were to sit down for an interview with the special counsel…
Trump also told Reuters he has chosen not to be involved in the investigation into Russian interference but “could run it” if he wanted to, according to Reuters.
“I’ve decided to stay out. Now, I don’t have to stay out, as you know. I can go in and I could … do whatever, I could run it if I want,” Trump said to Reuters…
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/20/politics/donald-trump-interview-special-counsel-robert-mueller/index.html
During the campaign, he asserted that he could run the Trump Organization and be president.
On this count, he came through. Unlike any previous president, he refused to divest himself of his business interests or to reveal his many conflicts of interest or reveal the business he is engaged in with foreign governments and businesses. A case is wending its way through the justice system charging him with violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which forbids the president from accepting any kind of payment from any foreign government. By his insistence on retaining the lease to the Trump hotel near the White House, he violates this clause every day. Foreign potentates book suites there and pay as much as $22,000 a day to the president and his family.
I just received a form letter from Senator Joe Donnelly [D-IN]. He is very worried about getting re-elected since he is running against a die-hard Republican millionaire who loves Trump. I’m proud that Donnelly had this to say:
……
I deeply respect our nation’s intelligence professionals, and I am proud of the work they do to protect our country. President Trump’s comments at the Helsinki Summit were inappropriate and harmful to our national security. When given the chance to stand up for our country and its security interests, President Trump chose instead to embolden President Putin. We must not condone, tolerate, or fail to condemn efforts by Russia or other actors that disrupt our democracy or undermine our allies and interests around the globe.
A ‘perjury trap’ isn’t the real reason Trump won’t answer Mueller’s questions
…That’s the real danger that Trump faces: not legal danger, but political danger. An interview with Mueller might not make impeachment and removal from office more likely (he has a firewall of Republican support in Congress to prevent that), but it will almost certainly make a defeat in 2020 more likely.
If Trump continues to resist, Mueller can just subpoena him, as Starr did to Clinton. All indications are that Trump would fight the subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court. We don’t know how that case would turn out, but we do know this: The president is afraid to answer questions in front of the world, and he has good reason to be.
https://www.newstimes.com/opinion/article/A-perjury-trap-isn-t-the-real-reason-Trump-13170986.php?utm_campaign=email-desktop&utm_source=CMS%20Sharing%20Button&utm_medium=social
If Trump’s resistance to a subpoena goes to the Supreme Court, how would it rule? That’s why Trump needs Kavanaugh as soon as possible given his opposition to any legal proceedings against a sitting president (except for Clinton, when Kavanaugh worked for Ken Starr and wanted Clinton impeached).
Looks like the Orange one is getting deeper in trouble. Love it.
…….
The New York Times
Breaking News Alert
August 21, 2018
NYTimes.com »
BREAKING NEWS
Michael Cohen said in court that he paid Stormy Daniels “at the direction of” Donald Trump for the purpose of “influencing the election.”
Tuesday, August 21, 2018 5:10 PM EST
Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to campaign finance and other charges.
He made the extraordinary admission that he paid a pornographic actress “at the direction of the candidate,” referring to Mr. Trump, to secure her silence about an affair she said she had with Mr. Trump.
People who are in prison need help. Most come from dysfunctional families. Instead, we subject them to inhuman conditions. They can join the ever growing list of those who are ‘worthless’.
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Prison Strike Organizer Warns: Brutal Prison Conditions Risk “Another Attica”
…“Seven comrades lost their lives during a senseless uprising that could have been avoided had the prison not been so overcrowded from the greed wrought by mass incarceration, and a lack of respect for human life that is embedded in our nation’s penal ideology,” read a statement from Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a national collective of incarcerated people who provide legal assistance behind bars. “These men and women are demanding humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation and the end of modern day slavery.”
The strikers have put forward a list of 10 demands, including “immediate improvements to the conditions of prisons,” an end to life-without-parole sentencing, an end to racial over-charging and over-sentencing, voting rights for all imprisoned and formerly imprisoned individuals, the reinstatement of Pell Grants, and that incarcerated people be paid the prevailing wage for their labor. Just this month, 2,000 incarcerated people, including 58 imprisoned youths, were paid just $1 an hour to battle California’s wildfires — a dangerous job which ordinarily pays six figures, and for which former prisoners are often ineligible upon release….
It was not until 1964 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous vote that prisoners had the right to protection under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. As recently as 1996, under the Clinton administration, the Prison Litigation Reform Act was implemented to make it harder for incarcerated people to file lawsuits in federal court….
https://interc.pt/2vX8dfh
Trump, with his extraordinary intuitive skills, picks only the best. The NYT nails this Orange Creep.
…………………………………..
All the President’s Crooks…NYT Editorial Board
Posted Tuesday, 21 August 2018 ‐ The New York Times
From the start of the Russia investigation, President Trump has been working to discredit the work and the integrity of the special counsel, Robert Mueller; praising men who are blatant grifters, cons and crooks; insisting that he’s personally done nothing wrong; and reminding us that he hires only the best people.
On Tuesday afternoon, the American public was treated to an astonishing split-screen moment involving two of those people, as Mr. Trump’s former campaign chief was convicted by a federal jury in Virginia of multiple crimes carrying years in prison at the same time that his longtime personal lawyer pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to his own lengthy trail of criminality, and confessed that he had committed at least some of the crimes “with and at the direction of” Mr. Trump himself.
Let that sink in: Mr. Trump’s own lawyer has now accused him, under oath, of committing a felony.
Only a complete fantasist — that is, only President Trump and his cult — could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a “hoax” or “scam” or “rigged witch hunt.”…
https://www.newsstandhub.com/the-new-york-times/all-the-presidents-crooks
The President said almost nothing about Cohen or Manafort during his rally last night in West Virginia (though the crowd did do — we kid you not — a “lock her up” chant at the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name).
Must change that to: “Lock him up!”
Cohen, Manafort, etc.
Eugene Robinson nails Trump for being the criminal boss that he imitates daily.
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Trump doesn’t care about justice
POSTED: 08/23/18, 8:00 PM PDT | UPDATED: 9 HRS AGO
By Eugene Robinson
Washington Post
…Trump speaks as if the Trump Organization, the Trump campaign and the Trump administration were one long continuing criminal enterprise. The man charged with faithfully executing the nation’s laws paints his own Justice Department as a villain and celebrates criminals who stoically go to prison rather than inform on higher-ups. Nixon talked that way in private, among friends and co-conspirators; Trump just blurts it out. He makes no bones about valuing loyalty over respect for the law…
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20180823/LOCAL1/180829856