On Gingrich, Trump and Not Putting America First

America First was one of Donald Trump’s favorite slogans. This should be no surprise since this slogan encapsulates selfishness, ignorance, and prejudice, three of Trump’s favorite sentiments. But of course, Trump never really did put America first.

 

The first America First was a 1940 committee established to keep the U.S. out of World War II. It was criticized at the time for being too sympathetic to Hitler’s Germany and not sympathetic enough to Germany’s Jews.

 

Here’s a Dr. Seuss political cartoon from that era.

 

 

The Trump idea of America First is different from that 1940 committee, though it is no less self-centered and bigoted. He obviously never did put America or anything else besides his own narcissistic ego first. His corrupt ways were designed to fill his personal coffers not America’s. And as for genuine patriots, like those who fell fighting the Nazis in World War II, Trump reportedly dismissed them as suckers and losers. He couldn’t understand, he said, what was in it for them. He couldn’t grasp, in other words, what it meant to be patriotic.

 

There is a place for genuine patriotism in American politics when it is connected to worthy democratic institutions. But people who cling to the America First slogan never seem to be embracing that kind of patriotism.

 

Trump in 2016 seemed to think he could profit from a presidential run by parroting catchy slogans like, “America First” and “Make America Great Again.” Then, when everyone was distracted, he schemed to divert a big chunk of America’s wealth into his own bank accounts.

 

Trump is in trouble now for his prepresidential shady dealings, but the shady dealings he undertook while in office were not a threat to him. He was protected from impeachment during his presidency by hyper-partisan Republicans. The same people who described Trump as “kooky” and “a liar” in 2016, went on to protect him and his malicious kookiness once he was in office.

 

By 2019, the Republican Party had become so hyper-partisan that it actually approved of Trump using American foreign aid for Ukraine as a bargaining chip in his 2020 campaign. Then, in January 2020, most Republicans gave a thumbs up to Trump when he provoked a violent and lethal mob attack on the Capitol.

 

Hyper-partisanship can be found in both parties, of course, but it is originally, and mainly, a Republican thing. As Fareed Zakaria’s historical summary on CNN last week reminded us, it was Congressman Newt Gingrich who encouraged his fellow Republicans to always use disparaging nouns, verbs, and adjectives when describing Democrats. He even handed out a handy cheat sheet to GOP members listing words for attacking Democrats. He offered it as “a lexicon of terms that drive a wedge of distinctions between themselves and members of the opposing party”

 

Here are some of the terms he encouraged his fellow Republicans to use in describing their Democratic colleagues:

 

abuse of power
betray
bizarre
bureaucracy
cheat

corrupt
criminal rights

decay
deeper
destroy
 

destructive

disgrace
greed
hypocrisy
incompetent
 

insecure

lie
obsolete
pathetic
radical

self-serving
selfish
shame
sick
stagnation

steal
threaten
traitors
unionized
waste

Gingrich’s partisan nastiness was successful in that it helped boost the Republicans into control of the House of Representatives for the first time in over 40 years. But it in no way put America first, and its cost was an entrenched mutually hostile and uncooperative attitude between the GOP and the Democrats. We are paying for Gingrich’s temporary partisan victory today by having to endure Trump’s grossly unethical behavior endorsed and supported by practically all elected Republicans.

 

What we can see from Gingrich’s early onslaught all the way down to Trump’s manipulations today is a gradual collapse in our nation’s governability. We slipped steadily downward because of Gingrich’s movement putting the GOP ahead of the country and continued to decline when Trump put his own interests above all else. It’s going to be difficult to recover the ground we lost, and it may even prove impossible if Republican leaders continue to be fearful of confronting Trump and incapable of leading their party away from the likes of him and Gingrich.

 

 

GOP 2021

A couple weeks ago the Republican party looked to be on the verge of an internal war over its future. The issue was this: should the party fall in line behind the crooked, narcissistic ex-president, Donald Trump, or would it do better following the lead of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.

But alas, there was no war. The crook won without a fight. His final victory was confirmed yesterday when minority leader McConnell announced his surrender by saying he would “absolutely” support Trump if he were the GOP nominee in 2024. This promise of support came just 14 days after McConnell had described Trump as responsible for the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and referred to Trump’s behavior as “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

 

But Trump’s behavior was not, apparently, so disgraceful that McConnell won’t hitch his wagon to the Trump star should this prove convenient in 2024.

 

So the GOP is now saying - pretty much openly - that racism, misogyny, religious bigotry and profiteering from the Oval Office are all cool. Not only cool, but the essential defining qualities of the party. The Republican party has no platform, no coherent ideology, no reason for existing except to promote the Cult of Trump.

 

There is still an embattled handful of Republican office holders who reject the Trump Cult, people like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney. For them I feel a little sympathy, but only a little. They should have seen this coming. The collapsing of the GOP into a crude, irrational racist cult did not happen overnight. Different leaders from Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan and even George H. W. Bush helped shape the party with its southern strategy, its ludicrous racist claims that “welfare queens” were filching money from hard-working whites, its Willie Horton ads, and so on.

 

The Republicans have woven themselves into a web of racism, misogyny, and religious bigotry so tangled and illogical that it now seems to welcome any form of idiocy that helps promote hatred toward liberals, or Democrats, or Hollywood, or any institution that doesn’t fully embrace the premises of the Cult. Witness the recent entry of QAnon follower, Marjorie Taylor Greene into the House of Representatives as a newly minted Republican Congresswoman. Her most notable statement so far: the claim that space lasers might have been responsible for the California wildfires of 2018. The implication was that the California High-Speed Rail project benefited from the fires and so did certain specific individuals and companies.

 

According to Newsweek: “Greene implied that the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family frequently referred to in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric), space solar power company Solaren, and California officials all had a hand in profiting from the fires.”

 

Thanks GOP. We look forward to future speculations from Ms. Greene and other esteemed members of your caucus. When it comes to bigotry and hatred, you guys are tops.

 

Actually, some observers are wondering how much of a future the GOP has. Tom Nichols, writing for The Atlantic, has compared today’s Republican party to the Communist party of the Soviet Union just before it collapsed under the weight of its own nonsensical pseudo-ideology. Nichols emphasizes that he is not calling Republicans communists. Rather, he argues that neither the Soviet Communists of the 1970s nor the Trumpian Republicans of today have an ideology. Each is (or was) a personality cult surrounded by a loyal following whose members promoted themselves by spouting leader-approved gibberish. In the Soviet case, to advance your prospects, you had to talk about NATO and American imperialism. For today’s Republicans it’s important to claim that Democrats are radical socialists aligned with dangerously violent antifa supporters.

 

I don’t know if Nichols is right about the end of the GOP, but I hope he is. I’m not against having a moderately conservative party vying for votes (if only they would do so without suppressing the voters they don’t like). But what I can’t abide is a party so unmoored from reality that many of its followers believe that the Democrats are under the control of an elite group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Good God.

 

Please Republicans, I’m begging you: get help.

 

 

Dying Days of the Deplorables

The insurrectionist mob that forced its way into the Capitol on January 6 was markedly white and, for the most part, male. It was also thoroughly unpatriotic. Beyond that, who were these vandals?

You may recall a 2016 campaign speech in which Hillary Clinton used the phrase “basket of deplorables”:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And [Trump] has lifted them up.

Republicans pounced on her words and tried to present Clinton as contemptuous toward all Trump supporters. But the Republicans were lying (yet again) when they did this. By “deplorables” she clearly meant bigots. About other Trump supporters Clinton said this:

“[They] feel that the government has let them down”…they’re…“desperate for change.”  “[W]e have to understand and empathize with…” these non-bigoted Trump supporters.

I recall this voice from the past not only to express for the hundredth time my disgust for the Republicans’ dishonest caricature of Hillary Clinton, but also to connect the desecration of American democracy on January 6 with Trump’s deplorables. The people who trashed the Capitol building, broke windows, stole whatever they could haul away, and smeared feces on the inside walls were mainly male and overwhelmingly white. Their Confederate flag and brazenly antisemitic slogans tell us they were also overwhelmingly bigoted. These were the deplorables at their seething, snarling worst.

Their hatred for what America has become was evident both in their assault on the electoral process and in their brainless chant of

U S A!

U S A!

U S A!

They seem to think this chant makes them patriotic, but it does not. It amounts to nothing more than a tribalistic invocation that says “Us against you! Us against you!” Whenever I hear this chant I can’t help but recall the similarly tribal German chant of the 1930s “Seig Heil! Sieg Heil!”

I would consider it a great blessing to never again hear a mob shout “U S A!”

 

Meanwhile, about 500 miles to the south democracy roared forward driven by the force of genuine patriots. With the amazing Stacey Abrams taking the lead, voters in Georgia lifted an African-American pastor and a Jewish journalist into the Senate, putting an end to Mitch McConnell’s stranglehold there. The deplorables are truly on the run while American democracy surges. 

 

In a way the victories of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, along with Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, represent crucial victories in America’s ongoing Civil War. It’s not a coincidence that five of the six senators who objected to Biden’s Electoral College victory were from former slave states as were about two thirds of the objecting House members. The foul odor of the former slave-based southern patriarchy remains pungent in its old haunts.

America’s struggle to realize its ideals has been long and hard and certainly it’s not over yet. But the tide is with the real patriots and, despite the nastiness that Trump’s deplorables promise to stir up in the near future, their glory days are unequivocally behind them.

 

Martial Law

No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up with these assholes.

That’s a quote I swiped from Lily Tomlin, modified to match our current situation. By current situation I specifically refer to the cesspool that is the Oval Office. You may notice I’m not saying “swamp.” That’s because I like swamps. Swamps are wetlands. Swamps are teeming with wildlife and full of wonder for nature lovers of every kind. How dare anyone compare the foul, reeking habitat of the Trump family with the pristine wonder of a natural swamp.

 

In fact, Trump would drain all of America’s swamps if he thought he could make a dime in doing it. And he would cap Old Faithful. And grind the majestic edifices of Yosemite and the Grand Canyon into dust in search of fossil fuel – for money. He would, in fact, destroy any natural wonder to make a buck because he’s Donald Trump. He respects nothing worthwhile, he honors no moral principle, and loves nobody but himself. He doesn’t even seem to love his children or other intimates; he just keeps them close and constantly tests them to make sure they are ready to do his bidding.

 

You may have gathered by now that I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But wait - I digress. Back to this issue of my ever-deepening cynicism.

 

What shocks me this week (different, as they say, from all other weeks) is the talk of martial law that took place in the Oval Office.

 

Martial law.

 

Martial law!

 

Good God.

 

The martial law proposal was apparently broached by well-known nut case and disgraced general, Michael Flynn. In a public speech last week he aired the idea that Trump could send in troops to Michigan, Georgia, and other swing states, redo the election, and see that Trump wins them this time. You know, just like Saddam Hussein used to do in his “elections.”

 

Flynn was in the Oval Friday along with fellow wacko Sidney Powell and one of them apparently introduced the martial law virus into Trumps’ all-too-vulnerable brain cells. This reportedly provoked a shouting match. Those advisors who are not completely lacking in common sense or traces of decency pushed back vigorously against Flynn and his fellow fascists, ultimately squashing (one hopes) this latest fever dream of Trump’s.

 

Can you picture martial law? Tanks and troop carriers roll into Detroit, Phoenix, and Atlanta, armed men fan out into every precinct’s voting stations and citizens are instructed – by crackling loudspeakers, maybe? – to report to their voting stations and prepare to vote by order of the Great and Ever-Winning Fuhrer.

 

W  T  F?

 

How could there be a shouting match over this prospect? The first person who brought this up (Flynn, no doubt) should have been mocked into silence and asked to leave the Oval Office permanently. But no. This is the Trump administration - America’s cesspool. I expected horrible things in the Trump White House, but I did not foresee this.

 

So, you see? I swear I am doing my best to keep up with these assholes, but wow.

 

Equally distressing is the fact that millions of my fellow citizens apparently think martial law would be a peachy idea. I will conclude with Exhibit A: some pictures of a neighbor’s house. I wonder if these folks are as shocked as I am about this high-level talk of martial law. I’m guessing no.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quisling and Trump

 

My parents were born in the 1910s and 20s. They were among those Americans who experienced the Great Depression in their youth and then helped crush the fascist powers in World War II. You might say they are the original “antifas.”

I have great admiration for my parents and their contemporaries, though I’m reluctant to call them “the greatest generation” because, well, look at what a questionable job they did in raising us boomers.

But anyway, the World War II era was unmistakably a crucial turning point in history. It looms large for us today because it so profoundly shaped the world we live in. In some ways that era resonates with the fall of the Titans in Greek mythology whose rule ended when the Olympian gods revolted against them, took over the world and transformed it for generations to come. The World War II generation, by demolishing Hitler, Mussolini, and the other fascists, made our world one of ever-expanding peace, prosperity and fair play: the opposite of a fascist domain.

I’m guessing most people have forgotten the Norwegian fascist and traitor Vidkun Quisling, who was executed by his fellow citizens at the end of the war. When Hitler invaded Norway in 1940, Quisling threw in his lot with the Nazis who then allowed him to oversee his country as a puppet. His treason and other crimes were so abhorrent to the international community that the word “quisling” became a label of deep contempt not only in English, but in several other languages.

 

          Vidkun Quisling 1887-1945

 

I think we should revive the word “quisling” because -- you know -- Donald Trump. Technically a quisling betrays his or her country while it is being occupied by foreign forces. America hasn’t been literally invaded and occupied, but our enemies have certainly made inroads into the current administration. For Exhibit A we have Trump rejecting the CIA’s analysis about Russian interference in our elections and accepting instead the word of the dictator Putin. Exhibit B: Trump entertaining Russians in the White House and discussing American government secrets with them. Exhibit C: Trump’s call to Ukrainian President Zelensky in which he tried to extort Zelensky, hoping to force him to claim he had evidence that would damage Joe Biden. Trump’s leverage was American military aid that Ukraine desperately needed to defend itself against Russian invaders and Trump’s aim was to hold off the aid until Zelensky did his unsavory bidding. That to me says “quisling.”

Can you imagine that in 1940, when Churchill pleaded with Roosevelt for help in defending his country against the Nazis, Roosevelt might respond by saying, “We’ll see, Winston. But first, tell me what kind of dirt you can offer that would smear my political rivals?”

Of course not, because Roosevelt, unlike Trump, was loyal to America’s allies and neither a quisling nor a traitor of any kind.

Now we are faced with Trump’s final act of treason. As every reasonable person who has been paying attention to reliable news sources* knows, Biden won the presidency decisively. Trump, with the help of Bill Barr and other henchmen, is broadcasting the lie that election fraud puts the outcome in doubt. This is obviously false, but, when you have a cult-like following that will stick with you even if you “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody,” and you have the assistance of a pack of quislings at a major news network** promoting your lies, you can do a lot of damage. And Trump is doing a lot of damage.

I say damage because that’s what our country is enduring. Trump’s re-election bid is doomed -- done for, kaput, cooked like a Christmas goose, burned out, and belly-up. We can celebrate that.

But he seems unwilling to yield the spotlight. And now, by spewing out lies about the fraud that never was, Trump is trashing the image of American democracy for all the world to see. Not only will his Fifth Avenue kool-aid drinkers stumble through life believing the election was illegitimate, but millions of citizens in nations around the world who have long looked to the United States as a great bastion of democracy will start to wonder if their admiration has been misplaced.

That’s what makes Trump dangerous to the country now as he thrashes about in his inimitably garish way, hoping, it seems, to be remembered as the world’s greatest sore loser. What a chump. I believe his portrait is destined for the Vidkun Quisling Hall of Infamy and I fervently hope that his name, like that of Quisling, may become a noxious byword to the people of every nation for decades to come.

 

Footnotes

* i.e, not Fox

** i.e, Fox