Does Truth Matter?

Every American should be staggered by Adam Schiff's closing argument in Donald Trump's impeachment trial.  In his momentous and immortal speech, he states with brimming emotion, "If the truth doesn't matter, we're lost."  This is an almost unreckonable sentence.  Here is the chief House Impeachment Manager, standing before the Senate to make a cataclysmic claim.  The podium is physically small and yet the stance invites global judgement. 

Schiff is certain that his side's case is beyond reasonable doubt.  The president withheld crucial aid to pressure Ukraine.  Why?  Because he wanted our NATO ally to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, a political rival.  To smear him.  Trump, in other words, employed his vast executive power to monkey wrench the cogs of our sacrosanct electoral process.

Sadly, Schiff is correct.  Not only in rhetoric, but in substance.   The implication is beyond dire.  If Trump eludes congressional oversight, he escapes our failsafe of checks and balances.  He achieves the mantle of dictator, one who also happens to be the most powerful man in the world.

It's easy to balk at such an enormous conclusion.  Politicians will be politicians.  And yet this impeachment trial, only the third in the history of the United States, is extraordinary even among its peers.  Bill Clinton, the last president impeached, committed a sex act.  Andrew Johnson, right after the Civil War, fought to re-establish slavery despite the law.  But Trump is the first to seek out foreign aid to subvert the Constitution, something he swore an oath to protect.   

Even a casual look at Trump's behavior shows something frightening:  a rejection of the obvious for the fruits of the devious.  If Trump had wanted a serious investigation of Biden, why not ask the CIA, instead of Ukraine?  One might further inquire why the Republicans, who controlled Congress for the first two years of Trump's presidency, showed nary a spark of interest in Biden during that time.

When confronted with the above point, both the president and the GOP sidestep without agility. Indeed, clumsy is inevitable when you ignore every known fact to firebreathe conspiratorial claims--claims that mesh with Russian propaganda--and that lack even a scintilla of merit. 

For instance, US intelligence services have repeated stated that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections.  But both Trump and the GOP continue to weave webs around Ukraine.

Even more damning is what could be called "The Coincidence Con."  According to Trump's defenders, it is mere coincidence that Biden was the person singled out by our president for investigation.  The timing, they adamantly protest, is just a fluke of chance.  Trump's goal was merely to investigate corruption.  It had nothing to do with getting votes.  Nothing at all.

Adding another layer of absurdity to this response, Trump does not express any interest in corruption in the transcript where he talks to the Ukrainian president.  The word doesn't appear at all.  Trump does, however, ask for a "favor" and then goes on to push for an investigation of Biden.

The above are just specks of frost on the tip of a deep iceberg.  Throughout the procedures of the hearing and the trial, Trump's defenders have flouted logic and eschewed dignity to ballyhoo the specious and the fallacious   Some Senate Republicans have outrightly revealed that they have no inclination to be impartial. 

We know that, under established dictatorships, minions knuckle under at the threat of jail or worse.  Whatever the king or queen decrees.  Off with their heads.  But what to say about the Republican party in this cancerous moment for our country?  Why do they follow Trump when all reasonable roads lead to condemnation? 

However mysterious the failure of the GOP, while we flounder as a bastion of freedom, it shall go down in world history as a singular failure.  It presents us with a most awful scourge, a tragedy that tips a telecommunicated planet toward darkness, an indelible  exemplar of the most despicable in human beings.  

==

Essay: Political Abuse

Political abuse involves a tyrannous leader.  It has a lot in common with domestic abuse.  In both contexts, those disengaged from the cruel dynamic have trouble understanding the deeper level of what's really going on. 

The first reaction is to express outrage and exasperation for the abuse, which can crystallize into ignorant questions like, "Why isn't the abuser in jail?" or "Why doesn't the victim just leave?" 

Ending abuse isn't like showing someone how to solve a math problem.  Abusive relationships solidify over time.  They involve an insidious mind control both strategic and tactical.  It is a common misconception that the inflictor is  'just someone who has an anger problem' or otherwise not intending to inflict harm.  

Indeed, this appearance can be part of the manipulation.

Mental disorders may well present in an abuser.  But what's going on is something else entirely:  an observant, calculative, continuous process that moves in stages and cycles (like the honeymoon stage).  A house of abuse is built with a devious and sturdy carpentry.  It is malign, premeditated, and unrepentant.  

If you ask counselors at any domestic violence agency, they will tell you eye-opening stories.   An abuser can turn in seconds from ranting and raving at the victim to looking calm and polite to police.  The abuser is relentless.  He relentlessly blames others, especially the victim, spinning deceptive yet persuasive stories.  If mandated for anger management, he often employs that opportunity to share and improve his techniques with other perpetrators.

(I am using male pronouns here because in the very large majority of cases, a man is the abuser).

Make no mistake, then.  You're dealing with a cultivated dynamic, a pattern coordinated to achieve dictatorial control.

There are many layers and techniques involved.  Here's the iconic power and control 'wheel' used by shelters for education and outreach:

https://www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/power-and-control/

What about the government equivalent of domestic abuse?

The analogy is a would-be tyrant or fascist dictator who lusts for total power without conscience, or who is willing to crush their conscience for the malevolent goal. The person won't succeed without a certain aptitude and skill set.  The trust and faith of their followers is cultivated in stages; and that trust is then exploited to isolate them further from the facts.  This is similar to how a domestic abuser isolates the victim from her friends (she also is mind-gamed to blame herself and not the abuser).

This conspiratorial wooing in the would-be tyrant creates a tigher and tigher bond, until a kind of singularity event occurs:  the constituency becomes cultish, willing to sacrifice their dignity, freedom, health and money for the 'great leader' rather than question.  

At this point, they've bought into the loyalty-test framework, one that requires them to accept a false view of reality to retain their leader's approval.   As part of the loyalty test, the false reality includes obvious untruths or 'big lies.'  

Donald Trump's Big Lie is that the last election was stolen from him.

Abusers/tyrants are always looking to identify and latch onto insecurity and weakness.  If a victim has a certain fear, the abuser strives to become the sole source of comfort and understanding--while at the same time stoking that fear. 

In a political context, the abuse is similar to the domestic context:  intimidation and threats that involve bluster, blame, swagger and vicious insults attacks to get followers in line, or cow opposition.  Physical threats are marshalled, too, by identifying someone as 'bad'.  This can result in death threats through social media from across the country.  

The tyrant, engaging in plausible deniability, never has to threaten harm specifically, only slap a target with a 'bad' label.  Typical labels are things like "traitor" and "RINO" (Republican in name only); but also 'oppoganda' words like "feminist," "elite," and "liberal."

Acting in this way, the tyrant sends the same message as the abuser:   "I alone control the power.   I can destroy you completely." 

Here are some typical strategies.

The abusive leader (or abuser) always blames others, when they are the one clearly at fault.  Others are the hateful and prejudice ones, not the leader, even though this very act of lying spreads prejudice and hate. 

To demonstrate the sophistication of this kind of trick, consider this:  an abuser will take blame for something they didn't do.  This can cause confusion, baffle investigations, or simply make the abuser look noble in the eyes of followers or outsiders.

Flipping is common.  Flipping is a technique that focuses on making the victims blame themselves.  As in domestic abuse, the idea is to lower the self-esteem of the followers until it is so low they adopt a 'save me' mentality.

Another tool is 'Strategic instability.'   The leader/abuser's behavior can look erratic, spontaneous, or outright crazy.  One thing this does is keep the victims on edge and focused on the abuser (who likes the attention and playing puppeteer).  

Maybe the leader's behavior is, in fact, crazy.  Donald Trump is a diagnosed malignant narcissist.  But it also meshes with a larger strategy, creating useful crises, mudding the calm waters of objectivity, and in effect reminding followers of the need for continuous servitude and loyalty, no matter how uncomfortable it might make them; and the only way to escape that discomfort is blind faith in the abuser.

==========

Almost Shut Down

I seem drawn to painful truths, and have been so throughout my life.  The repetition, to an extent, inoculates me from matters that others habitually flee.  I often claim, maybe with some hidden pride, that I am tired or even exhausted.  Perhaps it is ironic to take pride in the analysis of tragedy.  But it is a necessary pursuit.  Otherwise injustice reigns unchallenged.  Yes, there can be joy in facing injustice--in wielding a sword of reason and light.  But of course, as everyone knows, the study of human darkness can be depressing and lonely.

This year my tiredness, my exhaustion, almost shut me down.  Donald Trump threatens to become a dictator.  If he does, America falls.  And if America falls, the world falls.  It would be the defeat of the epoch of democracy.  In its place, we would install a type of governance that already has a strong grip:  the rulership of populist fascists.  Putin in Russian.  Erdogan in Tukey.  Modi in India.  Xi in China.  Kim in North Korea.  Duterte in the Philippines, Trump in the United States.  And so on.

Here are some of the implications if fascism becomes world dominant. 

First, efforts to combat global warming will become even weaker than they are now, almost insuring a maximized environmental catastrophe.  Extinction.  Resource depletion.  Climate and geological havoc, leading to mass human migration, fear and panic.  Given the dissipation of human rights, the result will be massacre and genocide.  The wealth gap, already obscene, will stretch into a full-blown neo-feudalism.  Nobles behind walls, a servant professional and artisan class, and teaming masses of the poor.

Racism and sexism, along with other forms of traditional, cultural oppression, will become far worse.  In the USA, what we are looking at is this:  a white nationalist heteronormative patriarchy, with an emphasis on evangelical jingoism.  

Police functions employing advanced AI and robots will allow (a) quick enforcement, (b)  instantaneous identification, (c) ubiquitous surveillance, and (d) privacy-erasing 'citizen scores'.  Standardized 're-education' practices will insure not only conformity but also loyalty.  With police and army functions robotized, the chance of a successful revolution by a 're-educated' people will be minimal.

Furthermore, given a geopolitics of totalitarian dynasties, centered on charismatic tyrants, the genesis of World War Three seems inevitable.   Narcissists with god-complexes cannot back down.  Sooner or later they violently clash.

It might seem far too much to attach all the above to the success of Donald Trump.  But if you look at the high-tech facial recognition platform in China, and also the capacity for complete subservience evinced in North Korea, it becomes more plausible.  Take into account humanity's current willingness to continue to rape the planet Earth (a recent WaPo article says the Amazon rainforest is at a tipping point (1)), and also our eagerness to fall into line behind dictators, adopting their views with fanatic glory, and it becomes more plausible still.

The USA has the mightiest military in world, and the largest economy.  Once it goes dark, there will be enough tenebrosity to snuff out the rest of the light.  No one will be left to check tyranny.

As an ethicist, I've argued that people can be good, that we can eliminate war, that we can defeat oppression.  There are plenty of examples of people changing, culture shifting, and human rights rising up.  Women getting the vote was a big deal.  So was, before that, the idea that people should get to vote.

Looking at the world now, however, I see that human psychology is even more labyrinthian than I feared.  How could so many Americans embrace Trump and his hate, worship him, in fact, Christian people even, at the expense of their country, their dignity, the environment, and world stability?

It's much easier to understand why third-world minions, under mortal duress, obey a dictator than it is to fathom why the Republicans in the Senate of the United States are throwing away our country's two-hundred year old project of rationalism and freedom.   

As for me, I've had a good life.  I was born in a lucky place and time where the middle class was able to enjoy freedom of speech to a large degree, and where the women's movement and the civil rights movement were making progress.  I lived on a planet that was not yet showing obvious massive strain from vast climate change, a change taking place far faster than any other before it in the 4 billion year history of life on Earth (2).

Whatever happens to me next, I at least had these things, and others, that were very special.  I had tragedies and terrible hurdles to overcome, and I'll have more, no doubt.  I've been desperate and on the edge many times.  Maybe I'll go down pathetically.  But on the whole, I've had the chance to get an education, to improve my psychological health, and spend time on creative, philosophical and artistic projects that relied on freedom of thought.  I've enjoyed much time hiking and meditating out in 'nature'. 

For some reason, though, like billions of other people, I am not entirely selfish (Imagine that!).  I am still tremendously saddened by the possibility that democracy is going to die, that our planet is going to be wrecked, and that nuclear war will probably come.  And yes, that Donald Trump is ascendant. 

The problem, in the end, is that, while billions of people feel saddened and worry for the future, billions of others, those who praise and prop tyrants, do not seem to care, not in their public actions or beliefs.  Perhaps they have no choice, either because they were born with no choice, as in North Korea, or they gave up their ability to choose, somewhere along the way, as the people of the United States are in the process of doing now.

(1)  https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/top-scientists-warn-of-an-amazon-tipping-point/2019/12/20/9c9be954-233e-11ea-bed5-880264cc91a9_story.html

(2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/06/ghosts-future/      



===

Poem: Drifts

Dust swept off the surface.  A poem's flirt with obscurity stalled.  For a while.


==


Drifts

clouds drift in leonine fever,
laced with ennui and tinsel,
doomed to stalk the hauteur 

of a perfect plane.

their scavenge strays hopeless.
as dismantled as the motives of pterodactyls,

or glassy, strewn toadfish
whose gills swirl with fluid ribs.

the drifts

they are a road sign
scattered from a halycon aftermath,
only hints of lurid pagan beasts left.
consummated, bliss-fled remnants.

and yet 

the fire grips them just before night,
renewing the swells and vales of their lust,
magenta-fierce-citrus-cherry reds,

ablaze to the horizon.


=======

Poem: Written

I have poems lying around, buried and crumpled under books, squashed in miscellanea, etc.  Here's one

======



Written

it was done.  written.
the holes in the letters formed small eyes.
looked up.

so many poems coursing the Earth.
parades of happysad tomorrows,
giddy, brutal, mindless, thankful, shamed, 

thoughtful, giving, cursing, cruel or indignant,

prayerful and infernal, 

all of it mostly ignored

and yet always read.

the phrases

tended to make revisions,
rescript the plot,
fruit the novel's weight.

the intent ab ovo  

had never been to finish

or to specify a start.

the twine of the characters 

rewrote the writer,
yanked that very first plot
into their own expanding personas.

offshoots, once fiction,
launched on unprecedented trips.

no one, it was said, 

could really take credit or suffer the blame.

the garden had existed before the growth.
its unborn thorns had pricked the pace.

those first flowers,
they had wanted to capitalize Love;
and in that critical, crucial moment

had seized the pen,

stroking dutiful and quick--

just before the nuances in the ink
settled into a glisten of skins
to breathe.



========

8/2/25 eds... took out some rare words, like "afflatus" for words people know

We Can't Just Let The Next Election Decide

==

The evidence is clear that Donald Trump extorted a foreign government, not for any old sort of personal gain, such as vulgar lucre, but instead with a turpitude that cracks a cornerstone of our essential way of life:  the electoral system.

Alarmingly, GOP leaders have produced an absurd and grotesque defense, remonstrating with crude tactics that struggle to even qualify as guile.  From behind a slapdash barricade of featherweight theories and evasive accusations, they toss out a dismissive claim:  that whatever Trump did, or didn't do, it wasn't so bad.  Let the voters decide.

Given the temptations of power and the frailties of the human psyche, some might tend to forgive such flip-the-script mendacity from the GOP, disheartening and benighted though it is. 

And yet we should not accept such a facile excuse for their behavior, nor does it dilute their timeless condemnation.

Humor me.  Assume, even if you balk, that the president did the deed.  Granted, this could be difficult, even though it is evident.  The implications are beyond tremendous.  Let's see why it would be utterly nation-changing.

If you dare the assumption of extortion--that is, if you go with the body of evidence--then the fig leaf for the Republicans, their 'shady politics as normal' claim, gives way to a bottomless trench. 

First of all, if Trump can seek dirt on a rival candidate using foreign muscle--and get away with calling it "perfect," which he did--what 's to stop him from doing it again and again, until multiple countries or international agencies pour their efforts into a psy ops crusade on his behalf?

Realize that the kind of shock smear roused by such grift has already been dreadfully effective.  Birtherism, Pizzagate, West Coast voter fraud, these and others have found much serious traction to energize blinkered outrage. 

Right now, the Republicans are peddling what could be called Crowdstrike mania, which pins 2016 election interference on Ukraine.  US intelligence agencies have assiduously established the culprit as Russia. 

A terrible revelation emerges:  If the US intelligence community is powerless to blunt Trump's big lies, who can?  If the failsafes in the Constitution cannot prevent the president from turning other countries into his personal Monopoly cards, what will?

The next link in the above chain of reasoning merits a full precautious seriousness.  Namely, if left unchecked, Trump will likely win the 2020 election.  Not through democratic struggle, not through legitimate debate, but rather because he has already succeeded in becoming the tyrannous king that our Founders feared.

The proposition, then, that we should 'let the election decide' cannot be accepted.  We should not hang the fateful choice between two inimical types of governance--crown jewels versus common vote--on a process overlorded by an impervious president, who with invisible conscience suborns foreign meddling. 

Meddling, actually, is a euphemism.  Psy ops, originating in foreign lands and hence beyond the reach of our laws, will seed the populace with slanderous fear, hate, and disgust.  It is a design intended to prejudice the vote, yes, and yet also to cripple and rupture whatever remains of our national comity.

Our very country, in other words, totters on the brink.  That's why Republicans cannot be forgiven for their shameless anti-truthism.  There are cliffs, even in the twisted odysseys of politics, that, once crossed, plunge a people into a depths from which their 'city on a hill' can never be regained.

Understandably our sensibilities shy from such painful matters.  And yet when you accept the obvious, the extortion, and draw reasonable conclusions, the abstract picture, ominous enough at a distance, takes form and flesh.

It's certainly true that Trump might not win.  Even copious underhanded support, which Senate Republicans are poised to allow, might not be determinative. 

But the magnitude of the gamble urges us--urges us-- not to stake our democracy on the roll of such weighted dice.  The words "Let the Election Decide" are happy morsels for a hungry narcissist, one ready to sully the mightiest office in the world to win at all costs, and thereby ensure his mass and continuous praise.





============

The L'Etat C'est Moi Defense

The impeachment hearings mark a titanic event in our nation's history.  Can a sitting president coerce a foreign government to publicly investigate a political rival for personal benefit?  The implications are unimaginable for those of us raised on the sacrosanct principle of free elections, that is, the integrity of the United States.

The GOP has said that no such attempt took place. But testimony given behind closed doors undercuts that claim.  The testimony came from non-political career officials, many of whom possess outstanding, bipartisan reputations.   Their statements reveal a shadow operation that circumvented official channels.  The players in this secretive process include Rudy Giuliani, president Trump's fixer-lawyer, the apparent replacement of his previous one, who is now incarcerated for illegal campaign hush payments. 

The public hearings, if at all like the closed-door sessions, will be dramatic.  They will overwhelming show a calculated extortion of Ukraine, one that involved withholding vital military aid--aid already approved by Congress--even while Ukranian citizens were dying in an ongoing war with Russia.

Republicans claim the military aid wasn't withheld in the end.  No harm, no foul.  First of all, there was harm:  the death of Ukrainian citizens while the aid was delayed.  Second, aid was only released because of the now famous whistleblower, still tenuously anonymous, who followed the letter of the law and who, in consequence, has been maligned virulently and incessantly.

Republicans have shuffled through a bunch of defenses for Trump, a confused parade of prevarications.  The president merely wanted to root out corruption.  He had no bad intent.  The situation is unethical, perhaps, but not impeachable. 

All these, however, have been countermanded by Trump's own tweets.  His vociferous defense is that his behavior was "perfect."  He demands that congressional Republicans, who have already exhibited extraordinary toadyism and spinelessness, fall into line.

Trump has always claimed, without evidence, that his actions are the biggest, the bravest, the boldest, the best.  Only he can save the country.  Only he is always right.  Among many notable narcissists, both pompous and grandiose, perhaps the most comparable is Louis XIV.  L'etat c'est moi.  I am the state.

Mir a lago becomes Versailles.  Monarchic intrigue becomes the golden T of Trumpian Truth, which stands for "alternate facts" that call out for absolute devotion and faith.

And so we reach a dangerous, pivotal moment in the 243-year-old lifespan of our nation.  If a president can subvert our elections by inducing foreign nationals, even an entire government, to become a propaganda arm for his purposes, and get away with calling it "perfect," what remains of our freedom?  What is left of our values to cherish?

What is to stop such a president from targeting any citizen of the United States, via foreign agents, for harassment or worse?

This is a unique time.  It tests the mettle of every citizen, and the decency of our United States.  Will we accept the imposition of a national loyalty test, one that requires us to ardently believe the claims of one man, even if those claims are lies?  One that requires us to subject ourselves with devotion, however capricious and wicked the dictates? 

Or will we defend the Constitution and the Declaration, which have always been mighty, stalwart trees; and yet, as the Founders warned, quite vulnerable unless watered with bravery and vigilance.


=====

The Sky Is Red

The sky is red, even though we see blue.  That in effect is what Republican defenders of Trump are claiming.  They see no wrong in a president who solicits a foreign country to investigate Joe Biden, an opponent far ahead in the polls.   If this isn't election interference, nothing is.  The transcript of the phone call is clear.  Trump asks for a "favor" and urges investigation of Biden.  The Ukrainian president does his best to flatter.  Trump held up military aid a week before, and Ukraine is at war, 13000 citizens dead, and Crimea already taken by the Russians. 

There's no evidence of Biden corruption, but even if there were, that's not the point.  The Republicans are gaslighting on a national scale.  Using their power, not only to deny reality, but also to confer carte blanche on a president eager to import foreign influence in the 2020 election.  If they succeed, it means Trump is much more likely to win.  If he seizes another term, abetted by the dreadful ability to commit high crimes and call them "perfect," the deterioration of our already wobbly democracy will be complete. 

Those with open eyes are rightly shocked that Republicans somehow 'just can't see' the blue; that they claim, with blinkered will and fulminous bluster, that the sky is in fact red.  In the ranks of Trump's avid claques, his leveraging of a foreign leader to find dirt on Biden makes him a hero.  He is a champion against the "deep state," a fictitious entity as absurd and yet menacing as Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory turned violent that grew out of a crazy reading of Hillary Clinton's emails.

 The danger of a 'sky is red' psy op is great. The perversion of justice vast.  The result unspeakable.  It is a Constitution-trampling threat, in effect the engine of a coup, that shreds the separation of powers by elevating a glorified Trump to an impervious, monarchic status.

The GOP blindness is a manifestation of force and deceit.   It is akin to the tactics used by other gaslighters to sculpt a powerful form of mind control.  In a household, this means fawning servitude, and absolute belief in the domestic abuser's irreality.  These traits, servitude and belief, constitute a kind of implicit loyalty test.  On a national scale, this loyalty test also means striving with devotion to spread the propaganda, however Orwellian, of the charismatic authoritarian leader.

Recognize that the word "transactional," often used to describe Trump and his worldview, is a pretermitting term for gaslighting.  We associate transactions with legitimate business deals, but Trump's 'transactions' are ridden with force and fraud.   Euphemizing this malignant narcissist initiates a process of scary normalization, one that brings out an important point: What is unsaid is often far more important than what is said, when it comes to systematic oppression.

Those woke in the fight against racism know all about the silences and deceits of privilege--how White patriarchy inflicts its own loyalty tests and irrealities.  In asking why GOP leaders, and Trump's base, give him such praise, we cannot ignore that we live in a moment where longstanding mechanisms of racism are facing a serious, perhaps unique, challenge, due in part to changing demographics.  Equality is on the move.

When you realize that Trump's gaslighting is a way to reinforce traditional, racist gaslighting, a fuller picture emerges.  A fight against Trump is a fight against racism itself.  It is a fight against a powerful dark force that often controls from the shadows of minds, and orchestrates social conduct through the psychological template of the tyrant and the abuser.

=============

The End Of Ethics

Whether or not it turns out that Trump resorted to bribery, in the form of US aid, to pressure the Ukrainians to investigate Joe Biden's son, it is yet another example of an impeachable offense. The Mueller report's evidence of obstruction of justice.  Violation of the Emoluments Clause through money paid by foreign officials to Trump's hotel chain.  Hush money, breaking campaign finance law, given to a porn star by a fixer, something our president at first denied knowledge of, but then admitted.  The list could be expanded.  And yet neither the Democrats nor the Republicans stand up.  Neither will do what's right, even when faced with an urgent threat to the very nature of our country and its dignity. 

The Constitution  provides checks and balances for dealing with a perilous president.  None of those have been employed.  Oaths to protect the Constitution have not been honored.  The implication is that there is no faith in the nation's core values among our congressional leaders.  Our most cherished principles are seen, at best, as feeble tools, and at worst as loadstones. 

Implicit in the dismissal of standards like equality, truth and justice is another force just as chilling:  a denigration of the American people themselves.  There's no confidence among our leaders that confronting  a would-be tyrant will result in effective public support.  Instead of trying to lead, instead of trying to change minds and hearts, the politicians cower.  Instead of being ethical, instead of asserting the spirit of freedom that made America a marvelous, maverick nation, a daring champion of a higher state--rationalism above monarchy--our leaders acquiesce while a would-be monarch grows more emboldened and reckless.

Our leaders now endorse, de facto, the corrupt tactics that flow from Trump like an incessant stream of noxious sludge.  Demagoguery.  Duplicity.  Division.  Our president has brought everyone down into the muck of darkest cynicism.  His provocations keep pulling us deeper, toward a place where we cannot recover our torch of freedom and light.  It's an abyss without virtue, where the norm is to get away with whatever you can, to sow chaos, spread ignorance, and revel in double standards in a quest for plaudits, power and spotlights.

The Republicans, who once called Trump out, have utterly fallen at his feet in lickspittle subservience.  They have joined his quest to create a fiction-fueled hierarchy, one based on loyalty, not truth.  Part of this loyalty requires an aggressive, passionate defense of Trump, regardless of his behavior.  It was a soul-crushing moment when the GOP capitulated.  It will go down in US history as one of the worst.  We don't know exactly why they did it.  A cynic would say to gain their own little perch in the kleptocratic pyramid.

The Democrats are the best hope to inject decency back into politics.  And yet they evince exceptional spinelessness.  Stymied by the quotidian numbness of an obdurate Nancy Pelosi, they do nothing.  And as long as they do nothing, they kneel before Trump's view of human nature:  that to act for a higher cause, to seek the good, is to be foolish and weak, even in defense of one of humanity's greatest achievements:  the conception, enactment and evolution of human rights.

While our leaders cower in pathetic fear, or hop on the bandwagon of white nationalism, Trump wheedles help from foreign governments to influence our next election.  He usurps the congressional power of the purse to build his wall.  At this point, the politicians on both sides are fully repugnant.  They need to lead, to wake up the spirit of freedom in the populace, not fret about statistics and polls.  Otherwise, they surrender to a heavy premise, one that takes America back to a time before 1776:  the idea that humanity simply wasn't meant to be free, honest, or ethical.

===================

Fascism Rises

In this age of the recrudescence of fascism, there is just one lesson to learn:  that the human race cannot afford it.  Charismatic leaders who summon visions of halcyon times to manipulate a targeted slice of the population are not only narcissists; they are required to be beyond reproach or shame.  That is how the dynamic works.  The chosen people go all-in on a messianic savior.  Leader and follower spin each other in a centrifuge of mind-narrowing ideology.

A faith-propped fascist is not concerned for future generations or even reality.  The goal isn't a strong country on the world stage.  It is self-aggrandizement.  Success in this goal insures dysfunction.   Instead of facing the titanic magnitude of the Amazon burning, the leader of Brazil blames liberals and demands apologies.  Donald Trump pulls the USA out of the Paris Accord, ignoring scientific consensus on global warming.

It has been said that in the nuclear age, war itself is the true enemy.  And yet Modi, envisioning India as a nationalistic Hindu country, eliminates the Kashmir's special status with police state tactics, shutting off internet and other media, while cordoning the area block by block.  This enrages Pakistan.  Both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and a history of modern, violent conflicts.  The repression in Kashmir is a reckless gambit in which no doubt there is some significant probability of sparking nuclear war.  Maybe it is even something like 1% or 10% or more.  We don't know.  No one does.

As worshipped fascists multiply, feeding off of fear and spreading us-vs-them extremism, the possibility of nuclear armageddon grows.  Two fanatic governments, neither able to back down, rattling sabers at each other, except now the sabers are ICBMs.

We can't do this.  For both military and environmental reasons, we can't abide fascist demagogues, The dynamic of a god-like leader with unthinking followers is inevitably cataclysmic.  The technologies we control now, and the eco-habits we develop, coupled with a population of 7.7 billion and growing, are self-destructive without farsighted wisdom.  They are too capable of inflicting a scale of tragedy never before seen in the history of civilization.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said we "are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

The only things that can save us are the advancement of reason and ethics.  Both are completely compatible with spirituality and emotion.  Indeed, they require them.  The more politics drifts away from the real and virtuous--the more it becomes about acquiring power for the in-group at the expense of the 'enemy'--the more evil it becomes.  Hate-mongering, race-baiting, misogyny, military repression, Orwellian mind games, and the cynicism of parasitic, plutocratic greed--all these and more result when ethics is abandoned for the national manifestation of egotism , which is fascism.

All countries have flaws and can learn from others.  What diversity teaches us is that people are amazingly malleable.  A great deal depends on how they are taught.  Think of this:  No human being born yet, not a single one, has ever been raised in a truly good society.  How would we turn out if we were?  We've made progress.  Incredible progress that many in the past called impossible.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we gave future generations a chance to get closer and closer to the ideal?




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