As I listened to Rudy Giuliani unwind across the Sunday morning TV news shows, I was appalled at his fairly obvious attempts to get his completely fabricated conspiracy theories covered by the mainstream media. He even invented some new wrinkles, like a China connection. By that I mean, they were new to me because I’m not a Trump/FoxNews viewer. He’s been everywhere that’s anywhere on Trump/FoxNews over the last few months, dropping little crumbs that have amplified his idea that he’s an American hero by looping the State Department into his “investigative efforts” as well as his “client” the president.
From the perspective of the federal government, whatever he’s doing is not kosher. He says he’s representing his client which coincides with a patriotic attempt to unearth corruption by the Democrats. Objectively though, he’s a private citizen with his own personal political vendetta trying to get information from diplomats in a friendly foreign country. It brings to mind silver screen adventure stories like the Bourne trilogy, where a rogue intelligence agent must discover his own identity. The personal criminal investigation is a pop culture theme that resonates in a culture resplendent with unsolved crime. We are skeptical of the inclination and ability of police as well as the intelligence community to get answers.
But this is real life, not a commercial entertainment production even as the RealityTVPresident has tried to convince us otherwise. Rudy has gone to Ukrainian officials and taken depositions or at least that’s what he calls them. This may be possible in places like the Ukraine or Russia, where oligarchs grease palms to provide access, especially for a famous TV lawyer who says he’s representing the president. Even so, it’s not an everyman who can get to Ukrainian prosecutors, even when the government is in flux. The Washington Post has detailed the extensive security consulting work Giuliani has done in the Ukraine since 2008.
In the Ukraine, Giuliani has quite a reputation that mixes his various roles as security consultant, lawyer assisting some Ukrainian clients with stateside issues, influencer close to 45 and 45’s personal attorney. After all, Rudy says he’s been on the trail since November 2018. In fact, he may have initiated the Ukrainian election interference conspiracy when he says he was approached by 2 men who claimed to have evidence of it. Those men helped facilitate the flow of information to him. Even so, Giuliani’s access implied some cooperation from the State Department and possibly the CIA or FBI. That has now been confirmed with the latest revelations about Pompeo and interestingly Attorney General Barr. It wasn’t just the Ukraine for them, it’s other allies like the UK, Italy and Australia.
All this effort to create dirt on the Democrats and the man seen as the most dangerous opponent, Joe Biden. Oh yea, and to do a solid for Putin to get him off the election interference hook. That’s the Crowdstrike theory that the Ukraine not Russia interfered in the elections at the behest of Hillary Clinton whose email server is stored somewhere in the Ukraine. Remember, this derives from DJT’s never ending quest to erase the hint of illegitimacy from his victory which dovetails nicely with his ongoing attempts to support Putin’s propaganda to the West. Putin claims publicly that he didn’t mount an offensive against US elections. (At home, Putin’s encased his activities within his plan to return Russia to Eurasian supremacy from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.) And, in line with Agent Orange’s paranoia that the government is out to get him, it’s the rationale for investigating the investigators and the so-called deep state in the federal government. Sound crazy?
The Crowdstrike theory is 45 doing a solid for Putin to get him off the election interference hook. In doing so, he’s advancing Putin’s domestic propaganda that he’s making fools of the West.
Apparently not to the legions of Trump/FoxNews fans and the Stepford Pundits that populate its evening airwaves. Or to Agent Orange who never met a conspiracy theory that he didn’t like. Separately, there is the corruption scandal. That’s the lie that Hunter Biden was corrupt in his activity on the board of Burisma, an oligarch owned gas company and that Joe Biden, rather than rooting out corruption for the IMF and the international community, forced the ousting of the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma for his son’s benefit. The prosecutor was actually stonewalling investigations. The prosecutor fled Ukraine at the same time the oligarch owner also fled to Russia. The timelines are all muddled, the alleged corruption took place before Biden’s son joined the board, the prosecutor was indeed corrupt and Joe Biden’s activity had nothing to do with his son.
All of this has been investigated in the Ukraine and there is no, not a jot of evidence that what Rudy is peddling has any basis in fact, but he keeps repeating it because he’s delivering to his nose ring tugging boss the propaganda that will recreate the 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton in anticipation of Biden’s nomination. New evidence suggests that it was Giuliani who persuaded the prosecutor under the former Ukrainian president to initiate the Burisma investigation; he saw an opportunity to curry favor with 45 and put a feather in his cap if the then current president lost the election. The podcast Trump, Inc revealed that the 3 prosecutors central to Giuliani’s tale are well known in the Ukraine to be corrupt. In short, Ruby’s fingerprints are all over this ginned up scandal. Where there was no scandal, he stepped into the breach to create one. When you surrounded yourself with shady characters, stories just write themselves. There’s more detail about this tangled web in the Washington Post, the NYT and numerous podcasts, but that’s enough to suffice.
Over the last week, more involvement of multiple agencies and countries in this debacle has surfaced. The RealityTVPresident has used the revelations to mount a defense that his is a legitimate effort to examine the origins of the Mueller Report. For him, it’s another rhetorical strike against both Obama and the intelligence community. He’s pretending that he had to go outside the self evident corrupt intelligence community to investigate. He enlisted Attorney General Barr to get to the bottom of these plots because the security of elections is under threat from within the US, not Russia. He wants us to believe that the Clinton-Soros cabal worked through the Ukraine to rig the elections, forgetting of course that Hillary lost. But the involvement of Barr, in and of itself, is inappropriate, since the Attorney General is the nation’s not the president’s personal lawyer, an independent agent of the judicial system and is not supposed to respond to any directives from the chief executive to investigate. Or at least that’s what the Founding Fathers intended.
But here is the bigger picture. Pompeo, the Secretary of State was listening to the call (actually that’s the way diplomacy has been carried out historically) and so supported efforts to enlist Australia, the UK and others into investigating US intelligence activities. It would be shocking if Netanyahu’s name doesn’t come up, since Israeli intelligence is among the most aggressive and rumored to be one of the best.
These authorities make it official US policy. It undermines our country’s security. Our allies will hesitate to share future intelligence with such a loose cannon. How crazy does it look that the government is investigating its intelligence agencies in pursuit of crazy conspiracy theories to erase Russia’s machinations that all Europeans know their foe is playing in their own elections. They are asking the Australian government to investigate itself, since it was they who tipped off the FBI about George Papadopoulos. And the US government’s effort is in service of improving the president’s chances for reelection. How sordid can it get? Not the kind of thing normally associated with a leader in global security.
In the end, it is difficult to respect people who act like Giuliani, Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo and the CelebrityTVPresident. They have no integrity, morality or ethics. In full public view, they lie, they cheat, they bribe, they strongarm; they attack with personal insults. It is difficult not to characterize them as despicable human beings, regardless of how nice they are to their kids or their friends. DJT has a bad record on that; he’s a friend until they no longer serve his purpose. If one can’t respect a political rival, one can’t treat them respectfully or empathize with them, especially in the wake of an unrelentingly nasty assault from them. So politics descends into a scrum of nasty words. And nothing gets done for over 300 million citizens in need of improvements in their lives.
45 and Trump/FoxNews have succeeded in unhitching truth from fact. Those not seduced by its narrative still find themselves sometimes unsure of what is what.
As we move into the partisan street fight that will be impeachment, we must consider how the arguments will be heard. 45 and Trump/FoxNews have succeeded in unhitching truth from fact. Those not seduced by its narrative still find themselves sometimes unsure of what is what. This is particularly true of the mainstream media still struggling with the difference between “fairness” and “equivalence”. They routinely seize on the tweets of the day as if they are legitimate news, sending tweets out over the airwaves to the millions who don’t use Twitter. Talk about amplifying DJT’s often deranged ramblings into something with national significance. There is no such thing as government by Tweet; it cheapens government to pretend that there is. The CelebrityTVPresident is well aware that he has the mainstream press wrapped around his finger. His political strategy is to flick the press scurrying in all directions, distracted from what is important to focus solely on him. His strategy is working.
Raving Trumpophants should not be given a platform to spew lies out into the universe without facts or documentation just before or after a congressional representative struggling to come to grips with some new revelation, albeit with the Democratic Party spin. Those two things are not equivalent; it is completely legitimate not to report lies, that’s part of the role of the press, to ferret out the bullshit. Even to talk about the falsehoods is to give credence to them, especially when the disclaimers are several minutes after the crap has been repeated; if they come at all. Nor is there an obligation to include Trump apologizers in the pundit panels; it’s interesting to watch them squirm to defend their commander but it would be just as easy to have Alexa dispense the GOP talking points.
Kelleyanne Conway laid out the alternative facts approach that the current administration would use from the outset. People don’t have a “right” to their own set of facts; there is only one set of facts, which may change over time as more information emerges or become assertions when additional evidence reveals them to be mere hypotheses. But the rantings from Kelleyanne, Steven Miller or Pompeo are not facts.
The free press must begin to push back at what they know is not true, not just in separate articles but most importantly with the perpetrators of falsehoods. Their job is to ask the hard questions of those in power and to push back when they deflect and refuse to answer. The press needs to point out in real time when their questions are not being answered. They can simply “I’ll ask you again…”, even if the interviewer wants to move on to other topics. We’ve seen a bit more of this since the Big I raised its head. Of course, they’re afraid that they will lose access to administration spokespersons, but their programs will not be worse off for that. They can get the administration talking points from any number of people. They haven’t considered that the administration wants to be on those shows because they want to communicate their message to a wider audience. They will find a way to get there if the press makes stricter rules, including the anonymous source.
So how can one navigate the debate around impeachment? Information sources are critical; who are they and what is their perspective. I believe that the Post and NYT are reliable, but they’re not infallible. Sometimes you have to accept misdirects in the process of discovery. But I try to do my own process of confirmation and corroboration realizing that the mainstreamers all feed off information from the others.
I also know that Trump/FoxNews is not news; it is a full time propaganda factory that covers every event through an elitist, racist, xenophobic lens and completely ignores the stories that they can’t fit into their narrative. And yes, there are conservative elites like the Koch brothers, Steve Bannon, Roger Ailes, Steven Miller, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump who use their money to shield them from rubbing shoulders with even the white “common man”; they interact only with their eyes and ears. The MAWAPresident shouts to audiences from raised platforms, as in “my Hispanics” or “my African Americans” but he doesn’t shake hands with them. He flies into a venue; he flies out, and it’s not because of presidential security because he did it throughout his campaign. He says he’s a germaphobe. The only supporters he meets and greets are the Mar-a-largo and his golf clubs crowd who are literally paying for the privilege. They must have a better class of germs. 45 sold tickets to donors for hundreds of dollars to sit in a special section near him at his Fourth of July extravaganza. Fourth of July celebrates not just the leaders but the ragtime common men in the militias. Touching DJT requires some cash in almost every context, except Melania, whom he probably pays to touch him.
Trump/FoxNews has been joined by the Sinclair Syndicate to operate on the local level, but incognito. Local TV is dying and much of local news has become nationalized, while the rest is a mix of crime, heartwarming stories, weather and sports. But Sinclair has purchased local stations without notifying the public of their right wing agenda; their vision is to use the “trusted local anchor” who is familiar to local living rooms to inject Trump/FoxNews content.
And we can’t discount conservative talk radio, YouTube channels, Facebook channels and ads, disseminated through networks of friends and family and its much advertised public groups for common interests. These are spaces targeted for conservative defense strategies as Agent Orange rolls out its $6 million campaign to impugn Biden and defend the president’s behavior as the normal conduct of the business of government. But its not government as we have known it before, its government by Trump’s business rules, outside and above the law.
People should feel free to take a trip through the looking glass to sample the commercial propaganda channels in their quest for information about impeachment as long as they understand that it is propaganda first and foremost and they find evidence to support their creations. For the most part, what viewers will find are dramatic and entertaining tales without documented evidence. They should pay close attention to the stories they hear elsewhere that aren’t being covered there. A racist and xenophobic focus especially clouds the visual images, when people take the time to look.
Trump/FoxNews devotees are probably lost to reasonable consideration of almost anything. They won’t hear it, because that is not the story the outlet is selling. Their information is compromised because their source is. This applies not only to supporters but to GOP legislators, who seem to get all their news from Trump/FoxNews as well. It trumps their information from government agencies as well as their constituents’ input, not the Trumpophants but the other people who live in their district. Rumor has that Attorney General Barr is among the devotees. Still, there are probably other forces at work to keep Trumpophants in the fold.
One interesting idea comes from The Atlantic Magazine by James Hamlin, “The Rise of Identity Fusion and Allegiance to Trump” https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/identity-fusion-trump-allegiance/598699/. The piece examines the way human brains generally work. He explores “identity fusion”, “when someone’s personal and social identities become functionally equivalent.” In this case, they have fused with a leader who claims to be saving the country; in that context, he is allowed to do anything and everything in their name to defend it. Identity fused Trumpophants feel they too can explore any form of misbehavior or even commit murder. Interestingly, this is not unlike ISIS suicide bombers who, in willingly sacrificing their life for their belief, exhibit this same phenomenon. In the mind of the Trumpophant, for them to do otherwise, is to allow Satan to seize control of the country.
With identity fusion, it is not blind obedience that drives behavior, rather a reordering of self to embrace the values of the entity that subsumes the individual’s values. Here, people lie willingly because they’ve adopted a value system that condones lying. It’s not a matter of contorting their way of thinking, it’s outright suspension of their way of thinking. Once an identity has fused, there are no conflicts with their old value system; those values have literally been flushed out of their minds. No statement made can contradict any other even if they are diametric opposites. For the fused, it makes perfect sense that the president of the most powerful country in the world is applying no pressure on a small country president desperate for aid being withheld and new weapons when he asks for a favor right after they talk about more weapons. Looked at objectively, this is a classic situation of the powerful bullying the weak. And yet, Republicans in Congress, who suffer equally from personality fusion, see nothing wrong. Of course “no quid pro quo” when it is right in front of their eyes is a major party endorsed talking point. That’s why they’re all saying it. Many of them ran for office as mini Trumps; that could be political expediency or the melding of self with a leader. They live in the Trump/FoxTV world focussed on their guru.
A sense of deprivation, even if only imagined, fertilizes the ground in which identity fusion can grow. This is why the PiedPiperPresident replays his themes about what has been lost. It’s a culture overrun by the “others”, the shuttering of manufacturing, the fading of religion as a powerful force in life, etc.
Most people seem to think that voting decisions are rational, driven by self-interest and policy details. They are not. Hillary was all over policy advancement even as she was being consumed by MAGACandidate generated faux scandals, assisted by the mainstream media’s obsession with the salacious entertainment value of her opponent. GOP strategists and particularly organizations like the Heritage Foundation and other Koch funded operations understood what drives voters way back in the 1980s. In contrast, Democrats seem not to have yet grasped the way to voters’ hearts is through their implicit biases, long used by the advertising industry to create desire to sell stuff to.
Politics isn’t that different from consumerism, as crass as that sounds. For instance, people fear loss of something they have more than they enjoy getting something. This is another reason why the PiedPiperPresident is relentless in his elevation of things his movement has lost summed up in the America they remember when white males ruled the roost. In his inaugural address, Trump’s country was so gloomy that it was on the verge of completely collapsing under liberal mismanagement. The country has lost respect, money from trade deficits, money that NATO nations should have been spending on their own defense, jobs to China (but not lost by automation) etc. Democrats will take away your big gas guzzling trucks and your hamburgers in the Green New Deal, and your GUNS!!. And your white privilege!
In contrast, Democrats are hopeful, laying out the things they will bring to the country like access to medical care, higher education and a higher minimum wage. Democrats are hampered by their belief that government is good and they must support its institutions, even if they must adjust structures from time to time for the betterment of the people. On the other hand, Ronald Reagan said “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” The thrust of the Kochopulus strategic plan has been to dismantle what they call “big government” to eliminate taxation and regulations that interfere with corporate pursuit of profit. This allows the party to attack institutions, and norms in a quest to return to the Gilded Age of the 1900s, without guilt for jipping the other 99% out of their share.
And while conservatives have felt free to flip every switch, Democrats are circumscribed by the belief that the movement must embody the principles it wants to employ. Don’t get me wrong, Democratic politicians are spinning their words in political speak, because politicians operate in a government systematically corrupted by big monied interests, leaving us in a state of paralysis that isn’t dealing with any problems even as they loom larger. Still, much of the stalemate can be attributed to the GOP in power since 2000 except for Obama, who having been targeted by McConnell to be a one-term president, was stymied at every turn. The notable exception is of course Obamacare. However, these observations are from a theoretical perspective; of course there have been plenty of Democrats who have behaved dishonorably, bit by the money and power bugs that corrupt.
Implicit biases, human shortcuts to rapid decision making, abound in the political arena, obviously on both sides. Confirmation bias where we are biased in favor of our opinions and cheer for those who confirm them. It works hand in hand with the dismissal bias, the tendency to discount information that undermines our opinions. The tendency to stick with an opinion after we’ve made it, even in the face of contradictory evidence, perseverance bias, helps keep opinions once formed in place. We can almost observe projection bias looming over every Agent Orange thought and tweet; we think that everyone thinks the same way we do and will act the same way we would. Conservatives excel in this area as well. Interestingly, conservatives seem more susceptible to conspiracy theories than liberals.
Democrats need to consider carefully their approach to impeachment and how it will intertwine with the 2020 campaign. The candidates’ airtime is being swallowed up by impeachment, and if the presidential candidates are, state and local candidates can’t mount a whimper. But impeachment has always been a political process. And while this is sounding more like Watergate, Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. Nixon remained popular through the initial hearings, winning an election with 80% popularity. The dam broke with John Dean’s revelations about the tapes and what was on them. Americans became united in defense of their government even as the lasting result was an enduring cynicism toward government. Republicans, showing a splash of country over party, convinced Nixon to resign; it was just a splash because they worried that Nixon would bring the party down. To this day, the Nixon Library is a hub for clusters of rabid supporters who believe that Nixon did nothing wrong.
On the other hand, Clinton just gutted it out, refusing to concede that seducing a junior intern had anything to do with his ability to govern. Ah, the shield of misogyny, that discounts conduct with women as a blackmark on one’s character. Clinton refused to blink, daring Newt and the GOP to take him down and he triumphed.
The Daily podcast from the NYT theorizes that the BullyPresident, never one to back down or apologize for anything, is pursuing the Clinton strategy. He is after all, the King of Garbage Propaganda. As long he can keep his GOP stormtroops in line, and Trump/FoxNews can keep the Trumpophants in the dark, he’s got a good shot.
Ours may be a setting more like the Andrew Johnson impeachment, when the nation was exhausted from the Civil War and almost as polarized as it was before. Communication was slow then but so was the pace of government. And, since there was little to do outside work hard and go to bed, the population was totally engaged in politics; political debate was their entertainment and a reason for socializing. But words on paper are harder to escape than those on digital screens, so information travelled between partisan groups, if only to create responses.
Central to the effort to save the country’s institutions from total destruction is a broad based understanding of presidential transgressions and his mobilization of the government to indulge his Trump/FoxNews fueled dreams of two terms and beyond. Everyone must understand not only the evidence but the specific laws, regulations, norms and traditions that 45 has trampled.
Still it needs to be simple and straightforward. In essence the phone call is enough. Rudy’s activity is bad but it isn’t needed to make the case. The more stuff turns up and there will be more, lots more because outside the law is how 45 has always operated, it could lead to exhaustive investigations that will become confusing and will feed the deep state against Trump narratives from conservatives. Congress just needs to get on with it, draft the articles, pass them and wait to see what McConnell does. If they’ve made the case to the American people, McConnell will be forced to put it to the Senate; if he doesn’t it should spur the movement to “kick the bastards out”, not just from Washington but every state and local politician that sucked 45’s member.
In truth, everything about 45, his conduct of government, his failure to deliver on anything that he promised except tax cuts, as in the Wall, the tariff wars, the disarray of the global economy and the rumblings of recession at home is a reason to kick him and the GOP out. Rather than drain the swamp, he has jumped in, children in tow, deepening it into an ocean with new players from locations across the globe. Internationally, he has besmirched our international reputation, alienated allies, mocked human rights, walked back early efforts to combat climate change while pretending it isn’t happening and created a human tragedy at the southern border in a failed attempt to shut immigration off completely. He has increased threats to national security by pretending that the threat comes from the southern border, rather than Russia and China; by heightening tensions with Iraq; by ignoring new North Korean missile testing in a pretense that negotiations on denuclearization will begin soon; by dismissing Russian interference in 2016 elections; by stymying efforts to create an intensive federal operation to safeguard election security; by announcing that he’s open to any foreign election assistance; by soliciting foreign sources to generate false scandals about a Democratic candidate.
These should be part of the Democratic candidates talking points, i.e. this is what Donald Trump has taken from you. They should stop talking to each other and demonstrate how they will campaign against the MAWAPresident as their qualifications for electability. The policy details don’t matter as much the message; the general election will not be about details because there won’t be media air for that. The 2020 election will boil down to chutzpah, the Problem Solver against the Bully. Let’s hope that there are more thinking voters than identity fused ones at the polls. If not, we’re up a creek without a paddle.
oleblacklady 