Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Western Democracy Is Threatening Suicide [Post Debate - Yes 57%; No 37%; Undecided 6%]

Do the populist and nationalist uprisings that led to Donald Trump and Brexit signal Western democracy’s certain decline?

Or can recent events be seen as part of a healthy and regenerative antidote to policies that have challenged liberal institutions and marginalized the middle class?

Some predict that a resilient liberal world order will rally to triumph over fear, xenophobia and fractured political parties – others say that support for autocratic alternatives is on the rise.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Western Democracy Is Threatening Suicide [Post Debate - Yes 57%; No 37%; Undecided 6%]

Do the populist and nationalist uprisings that led to Donald Trump and Brexit signal Western democracy’s certain decline?

Or can recent events be seen as part of a healthy and regenerative antidote to policies that have challenged liberal institutions and marginalized the middle class?

Some predict that a resilient liberal world order will rally to triumph over fear, xenophobia and fractured political parties – others say that support for autocratic alternatives is on the rise.

The date October 12 has been much on my mind this year. It was on this day in 1936 that the fascist forces of General Francisco Franco celebrated El Día de la Raza, the Hispanic world’s alternate version of Columbus Day. Some three months earlier, Franco had begun a right-wing insurrection against the elected government of the Republic. His Falangist army soon controlled a large part of the country, including Salamanca. It was in the central hall of that ancient city’s university, founded in 1218 and the most renowned institute of higher learning in the land, that the fascists commemorated their “Day of the Race.” In front of numerous dignitaries and emboldened by a mob of nationalist youth and legionnaires, Franco’s friend and mentor General José Millán Astray desecrated that temple of learning with six words: ¡Abajo la inteligencia! ¡Viva la muerte! (“Down with intelligence! Long live death!”)

That phrase—so paradoxical, so absurd, so idiotic—would have been laughable had it not occurred in a Europe where Nazis were burning libraries and, along with their Italian allies, pushing innumerable artists, scientists, and writers into exile. In Spain, those words resonated no less ominously. Only weeks earlier, Federico García Lorca, one of the greatest writers in the Spanish language, a poet and playwright who had deployed the many angels of intelligence, had been executed in Granada by a nationalist death squad. Many more intellectuals were assassinated in the years that followed, along with peasants, workers, and students who had learned under the Republic to think and speak for themselves.

When I was growing up in Chile in the Fifties and Sixties, I was convinced that such a cataclysm could not happen to us. I was sure that intelligence was obviously to be hailed and death just as obviously to be deplored. The 1973 coup against the democratic government of Salvador Allende changed all that. Books were turned to ashes, musicians were shot, scientists and educators were tortured. Meanwhile, the military, inspired by the same fundamentalism and loathing that had raged in Franco’s Spain, derided intelligence and reveled in death. The intelligentsia, they insisted, was to blame for Chile’s upheavals and supposed decline.

Today, Chile is democratic and monuments are lifted to those who were martyred by the dictatorship. The generals who ordered such horrors are reviled and some have even been jailed for their atrocities. If I now feel compelled to evoke the words Millán Astray used eighty-one years ago in Salamanca, it is because they have gained a bizarre relevance in today’s America. The resurgence of nationalism in our time has not yet reached the homicidal extremes it did when Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco misruled their lands, but the United States still faces an assault on rational discourse, scientific knowledge, and objective truth. And this war on intelligence, too, despite the edulcorated pieties that come from those who carry it out, will lead to many deaths.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The Lincoln-Douglas debates still hold great sway in the public imagination, in part because they clearly articulate a moral turning point in American politics. The continued existence of slavery — and the racism that justified it — had undermined the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln saw the moral danger this posed, and warned against it; Stephen Douglas believed the status quo could be maintained, and stood in defense of it. Two giants of the 19th century clashed in seven public debates, and while the latter won the U.S. Senate seat they were fighting for in 1858, the former would go on to transform our national identity. Lincoln did more than critique the monstrous injustice of slavery; in those debates, and elsewhere, he established in the public mind a commitment to the Declaration of Independence. Ever since, our politics has been characterized by that great document, which has produced a tendency — however slow at times — toward greater political and social equality.

For decades, many of us took for granted that Americans shared the values that had been reaffirmed by Lincoln's "new birth of freedom." But the nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for president and his subsequent election to the office Lincoln once held ushered back to the public stage political ideas that had previously been rejected as unacceptable in a liberal society. The movement that has brought these ideas to the fore calls itself the "alt-right," and its members now populate influential right-wing websites, media outlets, and political organizations.

Unlike many white-supremacist groups of the past, the alt-right wishes to claim an air of intellectual respectability. In their article "An Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right," Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos insist that the alt-right is "dangerously bright," and that this intellectual sophistication is the "one thing [that] stands out above all else" when distinguishing them from "old-school racist skinheads." That intellect — and not moral decency — is the primary differentiator between the alt-right and skinheads should alarm anyone, but given their fervent desire to be treated as intellectuals, it may be worth reviewing the political arguments they believe are so compelling.

...

Lincoln recognized this threat to the unity and success of America's democratic experiment. In the Lyceum Address in 1838, he dismissed the idea of external threats to the nation, but warned against domestic ones:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?...I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.​

Our liberal democracy has blossomed into a pluralistic society more diverse than our founders could have imagined, but its success is not guaranteed by the march of history. It requires constant maintenance and renewal, and the alt-right's increasing influence is an explicit reminder that our principles can always come under threat. A free society can always die by its own hand, through the self-destructive impulses of oppression, intolerance, and mob violence, and these impulses are most acute when the moral basis of that society is degraded. Over the course of our experiment with democracy, our founders, Lincoln, and numerous statesmen, social reformers, and activists have nourished our commitment to the great moral proposition that "all men are created equal." Now it is our turn to defend it.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

(CNN) On Saturday October 7, the day the body of 25-year-old Army Sgt. La David Johnson was returned to Dover Air Force Base after he was killed in an ISIS ambush in Niger, President Donald Trump was golfing. It's not known if the President ever planned to attend the return of remains ceremony at Dover as he has in the past. But since the ambush on October 4 in Niger, he has not commented publicly on the deadliest combat incident involving US troops since he took office.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders did address the deaths on October 5, saying "our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the fallen service members who made the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of the freedoms we hold so dear."

The Pentagon has not provided a detailed accounting of the ambush by 50 ISIS affiliated fighters which left four US soldiers dead and two wounded and has said the incident remains under investigation. But CNN has talked to half a dozen US officials who describe details of the chaos and confusion which led to the troops being left on the ground for nearly an hour before help could get to the remote area of southwestern Niger where they were operating. In addition, officials still do not know how Johnson became separated from the party only for his body to be recovered nearly 48 hours later.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Hertha Berlin features players from 10 nations and plays in a city with a sizable immigrant population, with nearly one in five residents being foreign nationals.

“Hertha always stands against racism. If we can fight against that as a team, and as the city of Berlin, then that’s something we want to do,” Salomon Kalou, a forward from Ivory Coast, said after the game (again per ESPN). “I think Hertha is living a good example to fight against this phenomenon. The idea comes from the whole team. We stand against racism, and we will always fight this behavior as a team, as a city.

“As Hertha we always fight against racism. For us, kneeling down is a way of fighting against this kind of behavior. It should not exist in any kind of sport. Not in NFL, and not in football or soccer, like they call it in the U.S. — it shouldn’t exist in any sport, period. For us, it’s a good example to show.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The date October 12 has been much on my mind this year. It was on this day in 1936 that the fascist forces of General Francisco Franco celebrated El Día de la Raza, the Hispanic world’s alternate version of Columbus Day. Some three months earlier, Franco had begun a right-wing insurrection against the elected government of the Republic. His Falangist army soon controlled a large part of the country, including Salamanca. It was in the central hall of that ancient city’s university, founded in 1218 and the most renowned institute of higher learning in the land, that the fascists commemorated their “Day of the Race.” In front of numerous dignitaries and emboldened by a mob of nationalist youth and legionnaires, Franco’s friend and mentor General José Millán Astray desecrated that temple of learning with six words: ¡Abajo la inteligencia! ¡Viva la muerte! (“Down with intelligence! Long live death!”)

That phrase—so paradoxical, so absurd, so idiotic—would have been laughable had it not occurred in a Europe where Nazis were burning libraries and, along with their Italian allies, pushing innumerable artists, scientists, and writers into exile. In Spain, those words resonated no less ominously. Only weeks earlier, Federico García Lorca, one of the greatest writers in the Spanish language, a poet and playwright who had deployed the many angels of intelligence, had been executed in Granada by a nationalist death squad. Many more intellectuals were assassinated in the years that followed, along with peasants, workers, and students who had learned under the Republic to think and speak for themselves.

When I was growing up in Chile in the Fifties and Sixties, I was convinced that such a cataclysm could not happen to us. I was sure that intelligence was obviously to be hailed and death just as obviously to be deplored. The 1973 coup against the democratic government of Salvador Allende changed all that. Books were turned to ashes, musicians were shot, scientists and educators were tortured. Meanwhile, the military, inspired by the same fundamentalism and loathing that had raged in Franco’s Spain, derided intelligence and reveled in death. The intelligentsia, they insisted, was to blame for Chile’s upheavals and supposed decline.

Today, Chile is democratic and monuments are lifted to those who were martyred by the dictatorship. The generals who ordered such horrors are reviled and some have even been jailed for their atrocities. If I now feel compelled to evoke the words Millán Astray used eighty-one years ago in Salamanca, it is because they have gained a bizarre relevance in today’s America. The resurgence of nationalism in our time has not yet reached the homicidal extremes it did when Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco misruled their lands, but the United States still faces an assault on rational discourse, scientific knowledge, and objective truth. And this war on intelligence, too, despite the edulcorated pieties that come from those who carry it out, will lead to many deaths.

Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian and author of the book On Tyranny, gave one of the more fascinating talks of the conference.

Strangely enough, Snyder talked about time as a kind of political construct. (I know that sounds weird, but bear with me.) His thesis was that you can tell a lot about the health of a democracy based on how its leaders — and citizens — orient themselves in time.

Take Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. The slogan itself invokes a nostalgia for a bygone era that Trump voters believe was better than today and better than their imagined future. By speaking in this way, Snyder says, Trump is rejecting conventional politics in a subtle but significant way.

Why, after all, do we strive for better policies today? Presumably it’s so that our lives can be improved tomorrow. But Trump reverses this. He anchors his discourse to a mythological past, so that voters are thinking less about the future and more about what they think they lost.

“Trump isn’t after success — he’s after failure,” Snyder argued. By that, he means that Trump isn’t after what we’d typically consider success — passing good legislation that improves the lives of voters. Instead, Trump has defined the problems in such a way that they can’t be solved. We can’t be young again. We can’t go backward in time. We can’t relive some lost golden age. So these voters are condemned to perpetual disappointment.

The counterargument is that Trump’s idealization of the past is, in its own way, an expression of a desire for a better future. If you’re a Trump voter, restoring some lost version of America or revamping trade policies or rebuilding the military is a way to create a better tomorrow based on a model from the past.

For Snyder, though, that’s not really the point. The point is that Trump’s nostalgia is a tactic designed to distract voters from the absence of serious solutions. Trump may not be an authoritarian, Snyder warns, but this is something authoritarians typically do. They need the public to be angry, resentful, and focused on problems that can’t be remedied.

Snyder calls this approach “the politics of eternity,” and he believes it’s a common sign of democratic backsliding because it tends to work only after society has fallen into disorder.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

TrumpFuckingMoronDon ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]