AFFLUENZA

Definition of affluenza

: the unhealthy and unwelcome psychological and social effects of affluence regarded especially as a widespread societal problem: such as 

feelings of guilt, lack of motivation, and social isolation experienced by wealthy people

Affluenza is a expression that had been kicking around for years before it became well known in 2013 after a teenager was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and valium and killing four people.  At his trial, his family's high priced lawyer used the term to make the claim that the boy shouldn't be sent to prison because his wealthy parents had indulged him all his life, setting no boundaries and never teaching him right from wrong.  Amazingly, this absurd argument worked, and he was given ten years of probation, a pathetic display of everything wrong with our legal system.  It also placed the word firmly into the public's consciousness ( the above definition came from the Webster's website).  Personally, I think the time has come to use the term to describe our president and his often crazed response to the current impeachment process.
Since the beginning of the Ukraine scandal that has led to the impeachment proceedings going on right now in the House of Representatives, one thing has stood out: President Donald Trump has never admitted the tiniest bit of regret about his phone call with the Ukraine leader in which he openly asked for "a favor" regarding investigating his potential presidential opponent Joe Biden's son.  Not only has the president expressed no regrets about the possibility (now an almost certitude)   that he used the with holding of financial aid to a country, spending which had been  voted on and passed by congress, as a means to help him win reelection, but he has continually said that he has done nothing wrong, calling his phone conversation "beautiful" and "perfect."
This kind of deranged behavior in the face of what surely should be  impeachable  is just the latest example of Trump living a life in which he got to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted without ever facing any real consequence.  I think that the president is clearly a sociopath, which is an inborn trait, but I also think that his extremely privileged upbringing  has enabled and focused his sociopathic tendencies to the point where he thinks everything he has ever done is perfect.  There are numerous examples of  his believing this, like when, during the campaign, while discussing religion,  he was asked if he ever sought forgiveness from God and, he said “I like to be good. I don’t like to have to ask for forgiveness. And I am good."  Amazingly, this rejection of the Christian virtues of forgiveness and humility didn't hurt him a bit with the Christian Evangelical vote.
This utter belief in his own rightness has lead to some horrible actions in Trump;s life: it would be seem to be apparent that in the past, if we are to believe multiple allegations and his own words on the Access Hollywood tape, Trump's way of expressing an attraction towards a woman is to get her alone in a room and shove her up against a wall while kissing and groping her.  Given the number of women over the years who have accused him of such behavior, it's safe to say that the he has been acting this way, (and more importantly, getting away with it) for years.  He has also gotten away with not releasing his tax returns,  multiple bankruptcies, and paying out twenty million dollars in a class action lawsuit over Trump University.  So of course he thinks that he did nothing wrong in his phone call and in his administration pressuring a foreign country to help him politically; it's just the latest in a long line of things he's never had to account for in his entire life. Putting it simply, Trump will never admit to any kind of mistake because he has never had to pay for one; his family's wealth and power have always bailed him out, so why shouldn't he continue to get away with everything?  While he never drinks alcohol or takes drugs, Trump clearly is a man addicted to his own bloated self worth and ego.  And sadly, the Republican party in the Senate appears poised to bail him out and enable him once again, allowing a man who never should have gotten near The White House to claim absolution for an obviously impeachable offense.  As America continues to sink into divided chaos...

ARE THE DEMOCRATS BLOWING IT?

A majority of Americans now support impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office, he has never had an approval rating that surpassed 50%, his recent decision to remove troops from Syria has been attacked by members of his own party, including some of his biggest defenders.  And yet he still has a good chance at winning reelection next year.
How can this be?  How could America make the same mistake twice and give a second term to an obviously corrupt, impulsive and perhaps even mentally unstable president?  Part of it that his base are completely unwavering in their adoration, with the president casting a cult like spell over his followers that no impeachment trial can shake.  Proof of this is seen in the fact that while his approval ratings may never get above half of the country, they haven't gone down as the impeachment proceedings have been going on and further evidence of his corruption have become apparent.  Trump also has the power of the incumbency, which allows him to drive the agenda more than a challenger, plus he will benefit from a strong economy that probably won't tank before election day, and he's also amassed an enormous financial war chest and will probably run a far less chaotic campaign then his first one.  Another advantage is that, as with the last election, he can win the electoral college without winning the popular vote just as long as the right voters in the right states turn out for him.  These are all strong reasons why we may suffer through four more years of disastrous leadership.
But there's another reason.  In the mad scramble to gain the Democratic nomination that has left us with no less than twelve candidates only a year away from  the election, the candidates have all made promises to the progressive base of the party, promises that may push away the moderate swing voters needed to win the White House. 
The most prominent promise made by most of the candidates is Medicare for all, essentially a nationalizing of our health care system.  In principle, I totally agree with this idea: every other industrialized nation in the world has a national healthcare system.  Americans spend twice as much per capita on healthcare than people in those countries, and still tend to be less healthy and have shorter life spans.  But the details of the program are going to be difficult to sell to the American public.  In some ways, "Medicare for all" is the same kind of promise for progressives that "Build a Wall and get Mexico to pay for it" was for conservatives, that is, a base rallying cry that could  prove far easier to say than carry out.  First, it must be admitted that the Democrats will never be able to pass such a plan in congress if they don't retake the Senate, which might not happen.  Even if the Dems do get a majority, they won't have enough to break a filibuster, which the Republicans will certainly use against such a plan.  So the filibuster will also have to be tossed out (something I think should happen).
But even before a Democratic president could try to get the plan passed, he or she would have to win the White House, and the boldness of the Medicare for all plan might intimidate some swing voters.  Right now, most Americans get their healthcare through their employers.  A switch to a national plan, even one that may be better, could be jarring to some people.  And it will result in higher taxes for many people, even those in the middle class.  Now, Bernie Sanders to his credit, has pointed out that for most people the rise in taxes will be less than the current cost of premiums and prescription drug costs, but a tax increase is a tax increase, a fact that the Republican party and Trump will scream to the high heavens.  Also, our massive healthcare industry employs hundreds of thousand of workers, most of whom are not wealthy CEO's, and all of whom will face unemployment if the plan is passed.

So, again, while I agree with the principle of Medicare for all, I think phasing it more slowly than the two year switch that it's proponents call for might be a wiser path.  More moderate candidates are pushing for passing a public health care option that allows people to choose, rather than a massive switch, which makes sense to me.  Also, I think considering lowering the age of Medicare eligibility and increasing the expansion of Medicaid would be good alternatives. 
While the anger and horror that president Trump's horrendous presidency has inspired and inflamed progressives in this country, letting the left wing of the Democrats push the party to a point where many moderates will go with the devil they know (even if that devil is Donald Trump) is a possible and frightening idea.  Trump holding onto to the White House for another four years will be a terrible outcome for both the country and the world, and the Dems must avoid that outcome at all costs, even it means scaling back ambitious progressive plans that probably won't get passed anyway.  The stakes are too high to blow this election.

IMPEACHMENT AT LAST

Not to brag,  but in December of 2016 I posted these words about newly elected president Donald Trump on this very blog:

I'm saying that some kind of impeachment is possible in the next four years.  Understand, I'm not just predicting this out of angry sour grapes or my personal intense dislike of the man, I'm just honestly looking at him through media reports on his manner and disposition and finding that he is probably a psychopath, with inflated self esteem and an inability to care about any other person in the world.  Meaning that he very well may stumble into something impeachable as he childishly tries to increase his own wealth and importance...

I can honestly say that that opinion was far from being particularly insightful or prophetic; I think any person looking at Donald Trump's behavior as both candidate and unlikely president could  easily see this day coming.  It's always seemed inevitable.

Trump has lived his life like a human bulldozer, utilizing his father's wealth and successful real estate business to match his own hugely inflated self image.  And that wealth (according to The New York Times, Trump's father gave  him hundreds of millions of dollars over the years) has allowed to get away with multiple bankruptcies, hundreds of lawsuits, and nineteen separate charges of sexual assault.   And all the while he has promoted himself as a self made billionaire and "stable genius."  
But soon that stable genius may very well join a small but exclusive club of impeached presidents; yes, after months of prodding from other members of her party, last Monday Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally did the right thing and began impeachment proceedings against Trump.  It wasn't his violation of the emoluments clause of the constitution, his obstruction of justice or his payoffs to a porn star and a centerfold that finally pushed Pelosi over the edge.  No, it was the news that a  (still unknown) whistle blower inside the White House  heard Trump on a phone call pushing the president of the country of Ukraine into launching an investigation of Joe Biden's son as a way to smear his Democratic challenger before the 2020 election.  Trump appears to have gone as far as withholding congressionally approved financial aid to that country if the investigation did not begin.  In other words, he pressured a foreign country to aid him in an election, even using the with holding of US tax dollars as pressure.  This is certainly no small thing for any elected official to do; it appears criminal.  
Predictably, Trump has claimed that he did nothing wrong, and that his phone conversation with the Ukrainian leader was "perfect"(?).  But, thankfully, Pelosi and other Democrats in the house disagree, and so the process has begun.  
Personally, I think this is absolutely the right thing to do, even though the odds of him being removed by the Senate (which would require sixty votes) are small, we cannot as a country continue to pretend that the past three years haven't been the insane, chaotic mess that they have been.  From his openly bigoted tweets and statements, to his numerous lies and childish boasts, to his open corruption, there has never been a president like Trump before, and it is right to for Pelosi and company to show the world that not all Americans are accepting of his behavior.  Even if he isn't removed from office, he will join the exclusive club of impeached presidents that includes Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton (Nixon resigned before his inevitable impeachment), and that will always be a stain on his reign.  
There has been much speculation in the press that Trump being impeached may actually help in 2020, since it will fire up the cultists in his base and perhaps alienate swing voters.  While the prospect of Trump being a two term president is horrifying in the extreme, I still feel that these proceedings are the right thing for the house to do morally.  Future presidents must be made aware that there are limits to their power, and abuses of those limits as severe as Trump's must not be condoned for the good of the country.

GAMING THE SYSTEM

Joe Biden is out of it.  Flummoxed, a gaffe machine, too old and out of touch.  This is the narrative drum beat we have heard about Biden since he first announced his candidacy, and that has persisted even as he has consistently led in the polls against his Democratic rivals.  Inevitably, president Donald Trump has joined in the insults, dubbing Biden "Sleepy Joe", and bragging about how much younger he feels than Biden.  Of course, Trump is only three years younger than him, and. like Biden, he clearly seems to having trouble with his memory.  Recently he stated that his father was born in Germany (he wasn't) and has claimed no less than six times publicly that he was once given the Michigan Man of the Year award, despite him never having received that award, which doesn't even actually exist(!).  Imagine the mentality that not only dreams up an award for himself, and then boasts about it multiple times.  Trump's verbal mistakes (of which these two are only prime examples of many) have been reported on by the media, but it seems that it is Biden more than Trump who is being tarred as having age related mental problems.  Why does this image persist for Biden and not Trump? 
While there are a number of factors, one big reason is that the right wing media can focus in on an issue and yell so loudly that it can pull the mainstream media along with it, until what was once a right wing talking point becomes the subject of serious journalism.  And they've been playing this game for years.
Although there has always been a right wing media in America (from pro slavery pamphlets to the John Birch society), it first really took hold when Rush Limbaugh began broadcasting nationally in 1988; his mixture of childish insults, boasts, crazy conspiracy theories, misogyny and bigotry (which are echoed in Trump's rally speeches) sadly found a large audience, spawning a cottage industry of right wing radio personalities who seemed to compete with each other for the award of the  most extreme conservative.  From the start, these right wingers saw that they held an advantage by accusing the mainstream media of having a liberal bias, while blatantly having their own, realizing that if they ranted about issues loud enough and long enough, these issues could eventually make their way beyond their audience and into the mainstream media.  Putting it simply, if you throw every possible glob of mud at your target, inevitably some of it is going to stick.  It was a formula that Fox News also picked up and perfected shortly after it began broadcasting in 1996.  While sometimes their pathetic attempts at finding scandals are laughable (Fox News once spent hours of broadcast time attacking then president Barack Obama for wearing a tan suit!), they often can successfully pull the whole country to the right even while only broadcasting to a few million people.
There was no better indication of this than in the 2016 election when the so called scandal around Hillary Clinton emails became a rallying point for the right wing media that led to multiple stories covering it in the mainstream media in the interest of "fairness".  Meanwhile, negative stories about Trump (like say, the chicanery of Trump University, or his multiple bankruptcies)  were ignored by the right wing media and only lightly covered by the mainstream media, leaving us with the spectacle of Clinton having to apologize more than once during the debates for her email kerfuffle, while Trump's numerous ethical and legal issues were glossed over.  The right wing media successfully got the rest of the media world to conflate Clinton's scandal while deflating Trump's multiple scandals.  And it worked like a charm. 
The central dishonesty of  the right wing media  became apparent once Trump was elected: back in October of 2018 the New York Times reported that Trump was using  unprotected iphones to make calls (despite his aides begging him to use secured land lines) in which he may have been discussing confidential national affairs.  Those calls were almost certainly monitored by China and Russia.  This is essentially the same national security related scandal that hurt Clinton so much.  But this story never gained traction, entering into the ether of the new reality in America in which our president does whatever he wants without consequence and right wing media ignores or defends any potentially scandalous behavior by him and many of  the mainstream media's stories seem to wind up being ignored by the public. 
The influence of the right wing media  has of course now reached the highest office in the land, with Trump repeating talking points from Fox News and often communicating with their onscreen personalities like Sean Hannity.  At times, it seems that our president trusts the people on TV more than his own  cabinet members!  Is there any way that the influence of the right wing media can end?  The only possible hopeful sign is that Trump's approval ratings have never crested over the 50% marker, and that as he leaves an a foul stench of bigotry and corruption over the Republican party for years to come, some of that stench will waft to the fawning members of the media who have refused to accurately report or discuss on the moral bankruptcy of his presidency.   But for know we just have to get used to the fact that we have a president who veers between spouting his own lies and repeating the lies told on Fox News. 

THE NEW "S" WORD

 

Sociopathic: of, relating to, or characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior or exhibiting antisocial personality disorder

There are many words that can be used to describe Donald Trump:  liar, bigot, misogynist, egotist, narcissist. immature.  Another that really needs to be added is sociopath.   I don't put that word out there lightly, but I definitely feel that, time and time again, Trump has showed that he is lacking in the most basic human emotions other than anger and rage.

We've all seen the picture by now:  President Trump, visiting families in El Paso Texas, grieving from a mass shooting, took a picture with a baby, orphaned from the shooting.  And how did our president mark this somber, sad moment.  By grinning like an idiot and giving a thumbs up.  It's no surprise at all, really.  I'm sure in Trump's mind, this baby is lucky to be in a picture with him, the most important and god like person who has ever lived.  As conservative columnist David Brooks put it on NPR: 

…”I look at that photo and I think, well, he’s a sociopath.  He’s incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.”  And the context of that photo gets even worse when you realize that that baby was orphaned by a shooter who targeted hispanics and posted an online white supremacist manifesto that echoed many of the words that Trump himself has used in his speeches shortly before he began his killing spree.   Other presidents have dealt with moments like this with the right kinds of emotions: Barack Obama teared up while talking about children being gunned down in Sandy Hook, George W Bush (despite being a terrible president in my opinion) was resolute after 9/11.  But Trump cannot publicly express any emotion other swaggering pride and insulting exasperation.  And from all accounts, his lack of empathy for any living being other than himself publicly is exactly how he also acts privately.  Look at how his media coverage over the years has been filled with his constant womanizing and bragging about it to the press, with little to no regard for the women themselves as anything other as something to conquer and then disregard.  It's no surprise that twenty different women have accused him of sexual assault, or that he can blithely dismiss them all as liars.  Even his own son, Donald Jr., according to a 1990 article in Vanity Fair magazine, is quoted as having once yelled at him at the age of twelve “You don’t love us! You don’t even love yourself. You just love your money!” after his ugly and very public divorce with his first wife Ivana.  Although Donald Jr may have since returned to the fold, he really hit upon a truth back then; his father cannot express the tiniest bit of emotion of sympathy for anyone else.  From his constant bragging about the size of the crowds at his speeches to his complete willingness to embrace any conspiracy theory, (saying millions of undocumented immigrants voted in 2016, or that the Clintons may have had  Jeffrey Epstein killed), Trump is a human bulldozer who shoves aside anyone that does not adore him as much as he so obviously adores himself.  And the fact that his tax cut and trade war has hurt the very voters who propelled him to the presidency in the first place obviously doesn't matter at all to him.  In his mind, those voters are just stepping stones for him to reach his own greatness.So if Trump is an unfeeling sociopath, how could he have possibly reached the  White House?  Sadly, his sociopathic tendencies have actually helped him out enormously: his unfeeling nature allowed him to channel his lack of caring onto undocumented immigrants, which sadly tapped into the loathing and anger that drives the modern Republican party.  Now, there is undeniable proof that Trump himself has often employed undocumented immigrants at his own properties, and he probably couldn't really care less about them either way as anything other than a source of cheap labor. (Even his infamous "build that wall" rhetoric was something devised by his handlers as an easy to remember phrase for him to repeat in speeches.)  But before he announced his presidential candidacy he immersed himself in conservative media and found that "illegals" were seen as an easy shorthand for everything wrong with this country, hitting that conservative sweet spot of racism and xenophobia.  And he, of course, wasted no time in attacking Mexican immigrants in his opening campaign speech, branding them as "rapists" and saying that they were bringing "drugs and crime".  And now years into his presidency, whipping up hatred  hatred of immigrants, using words like "invasion" when talking about them, is still his signature move, because he knows that his adoring crowds will cheer him for it, which is all he really cares about.Naturally, there is nothing that the country can do but try to ride out this national embarrassment and hope that the hate filled rage that he has tapped into will not lead him into a second term in the White House.  If so, our nation, and indeed the world, will be greatly diminished both environmentally and economically.  

RAGING BIGOT OR SCHEMING TACTICIAN?

     
        It's been over two weeks since President Donald Trump launched one of his more overtly racist attacks by tweeting out against House Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna S. Pressley, all women of color,  telling them that they should go back to where they came from.  This a despicable taunt that bigots have directed at non white people (and even white immigrants) for decades.  It appears that Trump based his hateful statements on a broadcast from Fox News  that had deeply criticized the four House members that he had seen that morning, and, in typical fashion, he vented the rage it created in him out onto twitter with any reflection or insight.
         There are contradictory reports as to how his advisors in the White House reacted to his statement, with some of them realizing that this attack was over the top, even for him, as he plead ignorance of the racist nature of what he had said and tried to shrug it off. But there are other reports that his tweets were made with full knowledge of just how the public would react.  Sadly, Trump seems to realize that the more offensive and racist his comments are, the more it fires up his base of almost entirely white voters.  It also distracts the  media from covering things like Bob Mueller's recent testimony to congress or his administration's mostly failed attempt to round up undocumented immigrants.   In any event, in later statements to the press, he refused to apologize for the tweets (just like he has never apologized for anything in his life) and instead lashed out Ilhan Omar specifically, attempting to turn the argument over to her alleged anti semitism.
          A few days later, Trump again ranted over twitter after watching another Fox News broadcast.  Another House Member, John Lewis, was the target this time, with Trump assailing Lewis's district in the state of Baltimore as a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess" adding that "No human being would want to live there."   While this may be another example of our childishly impulsive president posting on twitter without thinking, it also may be yet another calculated attempt to speak to his voters.  Quite simply, Picking a fight with an African American civil rights hero like Lewis is just what a lot of people who voted for Trump want to see.  Some of his advisors have freely admitted that that is what is going on here, that turning out the same white blue collar voters that voted for Trump in 2016 means running the same kind of campaign tinged with the same kind of race baiting statements that he did before.  Why shouldn't he repeat the formula when it somehow worked once already?
         The message from President Trump to his base is simple, horrible and resounding: sure, I may have not built the wall that I promised (blame congress!), my tax cut to the rich didn't benefit blue collar workers, and my trade war with China is hurting states that voted for me the most, but I can still channel your hatred about non white people (especially immigrants) and boldly state it to the world.  It's a raw, emotional argument in which the reality of America's rapidly changing demographics no longer exist, in which some wondrous past image of  America as a place created by and for white people to rule alone is somehow still here.  It's depressing to consider that this message may work again, and that Trump may very well win reelection.  But how much of this does Trump really mean?  Is he really a bigot, or is just someone who has tapped into a line of bigotry that makes him popular, so he's decided to just go with it?  It's hard to say, since, with his massive ego and enormous desire to be worshipped, he clearly would say or do almost anything that would gain him the kind of applause he gets at his rallies. (Notice how he's gone from being "very pro choice" to anti choice in the space of a few years).
        As disheartening as this all is, there may be a silver lining: even though Trump may manage to win reelection, the Republican party will never be able to wash off the stench of their support for him, and those changing demographics I mentioned before won't help them.  Yes, the Republican party can cling to the lie of voter fraud, the immorality of gerrymandering and the absurdity of the Electoral College for a while, but at some point their appeal to only white voters will come back to haunt them.  With America becoming more diverse, and with younger voters being more progressive than their elders, the clock is ticking on their party's continued relevance nationally.  Trump may win two terms in the White House, but he just may destroy the Republican party while doing it.  And it's hard for me to sympathize.

THE DEAFENING SILENCE

              Way back in the 0's, when George W Bush was president, there was serious talk of working out some kind of immigration reform deal in congress, until congressional Republicans, faced with anger from their voters, backed down.  After Barack Obama won reelection in 2012, for a brief time the Republican party started once again to consider passing some kind of immigration reform, with Sean Hannity of all people, saying it needed to be done.  Sadly, it was once again shot down by anger from conservative voters. who saw any kind of reform as amnesty for "illegals", forgetting, of course, that conservative icon Ronald Reagan did that exact thing for over a million undocumented immigrants when he was president.  The general consensus from the party at the time was that if they had nothing to offer the growing Hispanic population of the country, they would never win  the White House again. 
        Sadly, we all know how this turned out, with Donald Trump openly courting the anti-immigrant vote in 2016 and, with a combination of luck and  Russian interference, somehow winning the presidency.  Not only did he win, he single handedly changed the Republican party from a party that appealed to mostly white voters through dog whistled racial statements (supporting states rights and opposing Welfare queens), to one that openly defended the brazenly racist statements of their party leader.  The change in members of the party has been depressing:  during the campaign, House Speaker Paul Ryan called Donald Trump's vile comments about a Mexican American judge not being able to fairly rule on a case involving Trump as "the textbook definition of racism."  Once Trump was president, Ryan would describe his leadership as "elegant"(!).  Meanwhile, Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted in 2016 that “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it”, even going so far as to say in one interview that Trump is "... a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot."   He is now one of the president's biggest defenders in congress.
         Which leads us to the president's recent tweets in which he specifically called out four new Democratic members of the House of Representatives, all women of color, saying, among other things, "Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?" .  Not only is this factually wrong (of the four women, three were born in the US), it's also openly bigoted and offensive.  The terrible trope of telling non white people to go back where they came from is one that racists have wielded for years; the fact that it is now coming from the president makes it so much more offensive.  In the face of these horrible tweets, the Democrats in the House voted to officially (if only symbolically) condemn his tweets, the Republican party reacted with....silence.  While four Republicans in the house voted with the Democrats, one hundred and eighty seven did not.  And, somewhat inevitably, Senator Graham defended the president on Fox News by attacking the four congresswomen again, calling them Communists (yes, Communists!).
           As for the president, he is predictably refusing to back down while somehow stating that he doesn't have a racist bone in his body.  Trump has now so completely taken over his party (according to Vice magazine, his approval ratings in the Republican party went up after the tweets!)  that he could host a cross burning on the White House lawn without losing their support.  But, even if he somehow manages to win reelection in 2020, Trump won't be president forever, and the stench of hateful bigotry that he has attached to his chosen party may not wear off quickly.  Remember that back in the 90's Republican Governor of California Pete Wilson  ran a reelection campaign that demonized undocumented immigrants much like Trump's, and while he won that election, the Republican party was so  linked to him that they now have almost completely faded as a political force in that state.  While national elections are obviously different, the demographic changes the country is going through can't be avoided or gerrymandered by the Republican party forever.  Someday they will have to pay for having attached themselves to Trump's hateful ways.  I just hope it happens soon.