Ellen Lubic is a professor of public policy and a frequent commenter on this blog. This article appeared in City Watch in Los Angeles.
She writes:
Many of us in this election season have referred to the Trump ‘anshluss’ as a world of ‘smoke and mirrors’, and we were correct. But now we know from the twisted mouth of his hired gun, KellyAnne Conway, that it is really not so much calculated duplicity, but rather it is a presentation of “alternative facts.” She says we must look at the news as “BROADcast, not NARROWcast.” A whole new political vocabulary has emerged from the Trumpists in our new ‘post factual’ world. Veracity is now in the eyes and ears of the beholder.
As a student, and then a professor, of public policy, I learned early on that a fact was considered true when, as a thesis, it was proven by non biased investigation. However, we have changed course in epistemology and linguistics to find that we now live in a world where there is a sliding scale of what registers as fact and what is fiction, and either or both can come out in every sentence of the limited vocabulary spouting from Donald Trump’s mouth.
As I listened carefully, admittedly with tears in my eyes, to the inauguration speech of this deplorable new President of the US, and leader of the Free World, who was standing only feet from four of our past Presidents as he defamed each of them with his rhetoric about how he finally, for the first time, is giving the nation back to the people, I was amazed at his bizarre gall, his ignorance, and his despicable manners to insult Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Carter, by asserting that they were all inept, uncaring, and failing in their duty to America. He vilified them in so many ways that it was mind blowing, and watching their faces, the faces of their wives, and the others on the dais, I came to finally understand what a villainous demagogue this new President is, and how dangerous he is, and what is even worse, how dangerous and uninformed his followers are.
I have read much in these past weeks since he won this questionable election by a fluke of the Electoral College, but without the popular vote, and with the interference of both Russian hacking and Comey’s false Clinton report and the NY Times knowing about it all for weeks before the election but choosing not to report any of it. Much has been written by groups of psychiatrists who go beyond his personality disorders like Narcissism and megalomania, to discuss his potential brain dysfunction and the possibility of dementia which rules his lies and loss of control as with the endless tweets at the smallest and the most inconsequential of slights. Yesterday, sending his lackey, now known as Afghanistan Sean Spicer, in to the first formal White House press announcement only to admonish the media for “fake” reporting on how many people were standing to watch this nonsensical reality show of an inauguration was incomprehensible and will be recorded in the history books for posterity. This man continues to make himself, and America, the laughing stock of the planet.
Facts on the emerging Russian connection now being investigated by the CIA and the FBI, not only with the Putin hacking of the US election process, but with the years of contact and ‘deals’ between Trump and Putin and Manafort, and the Russian Oligarchs who now seem to be bankers to Trump, and all of them also possible black mailers of Trump, and purveyors of films of “golden showers” which is a topic most never heard of before this election, all of this boggles the mind of voters and citizens of the US and is even more terrifying to the other nations of the world which have to deal with his nuclear threats and the angst of being his target if he gets insulted. I suspect his family knows how deranged he is and that is why they have Jared Kushner, who is evidently the smartest among them, posted in the West Wing as his closest advisor. Jared strikes me as playing Iago to his father-in-laws madman, Othello.
Not only do we Americans have to worry about his little fingers on the button of the cataclysmic nuclear coded football, but the world now wonders who he will blow up first.
Democrats are asked by Republicans to foster unity and support him…to give him a chance, yet everything he says brings us back to his lack of intellectual stature, lack of political experience, lack of calm judgment, and his over arching greed, mendacity, and self aggrandizement. It is not rational to support anything or anyone he recommends for his edicts do mirror the manipulating and false populist claims of tyrants from Nero to Hitler. His speeches about giving the decision making “to the people” are almost word for word the speeches of the Third Reich and they are a page out of his favorite bedside book, Mein Kampf. The Drumpf family has long been known known to consort with others of the underworld like Roy Cohn, and their Mafia ties, and most probably the similar Russian mob. Why would anyone think that due to this ‘trumped up’ election, Donald has changed from his lifelong playboy, misogynistic, self serving, highly bigoted persona?
Just look carefully at those he has chosen to run OUR country with him as their leader, their Commander in Chief. Keep wearing the pussy cat hats and speaking up without fear. Keep Rex Tillerson at Exxon Mobil instead of in the role of the US Sect. of State where he will be dropping US sanctions (to insure vast profits for the oil barons) against an aggressive Putin Kremlin which is committing war crimes, and keep the ignorant and spoiled, religious ideologue debutante, Betsy DeVos, out of the Dept. of Education, and keep the well determined bigot, Jeff Sessions, from being America’s AG … and send all the rest of this crew of US oligarchs back to their well padded nests under the rocks from which they crawled into Drumpf’s daylight including HUD, Labor, Health and Human Services et al. What a bunch of over privileged thugs they all are.
What can you do about it? For one thing, join the over 100,000 people that have signed the ‘Impeach Donald Trump Now’ petition and get your voice on record.
(Ellen Lubic is Director of Joining Forces for Education, a public policy educator and journalist and an occasional CityWatch contributor.)
