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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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This week’s passage of the Republicans’ tax bill was largely seen as a major legislative victory for President Trump. In a meeting of Cabinet members Wednesday, Vice President Pence got right down to business singing his boss’s praises.
In a three-minute speech, the vice president gushed about Trump’s accomplishments once every 12 seconds, as The Washington Post pointed out. Pence’s pep talk included memorable praise such as telling Trump that he has “unleashed American energy,” “signed more bills rolling back federal red tape than any president in American history,” “restored American credibility on the world stage” and “got Congress to do what they couldn’t do for seven years, in repealing the individual mandate in Obamacare.”
Pence’s speech was fodder for plenty of eye-rolling and jokes online, including from an unlikely source — Dictionary.com.
“There’s a word for a person who would praise someone every 12 seconds,” the site’s Twitter account posted Thursday, before linking to the dictionary’s entry for “sycophant.” The tweet ended with the hashtags “VP” and “Pence.”
Sycophant, according to Dictionary.com, is a noun referring to a “self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite.” Synonyms, it said, include “toady, yes man, flunky, fawner, flatterer.”
In a long list of energy policies, actions, and leaked intentions, some of which may or may not come to pass, it’s difficult to predict what will ultimately have the biggest impact. But here’s our best effort to identify the five things that could most significantly undercut efforts to reduce the risks of climate change, and undermine the nation’s leadership on some of the defining technologies of the century ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about this comment that you made that the Republican Party, you said, is the most dangerous organization in world history. Can you explain?
NOAM CHOMSKY: I also said that it’s an extremely outrageous statement. But the question is whether it’s true. I mean, has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth? Not that I’m aware of. Is the Republican organization—I hesitate to call it a party—committed to that? Overwhelmingly. There isn’t even any question about it.
Take a look at the last primary campaign—plenty of publicity, very little comment on the most significant fact. Every single candidate either denied that what is happening is happening—namely, serious move towards environmental catastrophe—or there were a couple of moderates, so-called—Jeb Bush, who said, “Maybe it’s happening. We really don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, because fracking is working fine, so we can get more fossil fuels.” Then there was the guy who was called the adult in the room, John Kasich, the one person who said, “Yes, it’s true. Global warming’s going on. But it doesn’t matter.” He’s the governor of Ohio. “In Ohio, we’re going to go on using coal for energy, and we’re not going to apologize for it.” So that’s 100 percent commitment to racing towards disaster.
Then take a look at what’s happened since. The—November 8th was the election. There was, as most of you know, I’m sure, a very important conference underway in Morocco, Marrakech, Morocco. Almost roughly 200 countries at the United Nations-sponsored conference, which was—the goal of which was to put some specific commitments into the verbal agreements that were reached at Paris in December 2015, the preceding international conference on global warming. The Paris conference did intend to reach a verifiable treaty, but they couldn’t, because of the most dangerous organization in human history. The Republican Congress would not accept any commitments, so therefore the world was left with verbal promises, but no commitments. Well, last November 8th, they were going to try to carry that forward. On November 8th, in fact, there was a report by the World Meteorological Organization, a very dire analysis of the state of the environment and the likely prospects, also pointed out that we’re coming perilously close to the tipping point, where—which was the goal of the—the goal of the Paris negotiations was to keep things below that—coming very close to it, and other ominous predictions. At that point, the conference pretty much stopped, because the news came in about the election.
And it turns out that the most powerful country in human history, the richest, most powerful, most influential, the leader of the free world, has just decided not only not to support the efforts, but actively to undermine them. So there’s the whole world on one side, literally, at least trying to do something or other, not enough maybe, although some places are going pretty far, like Denmark, couple of others; and on the other side, in splendid isolation, is the country led by the most dangerous organization in human history, which is saying, “We’re not part of this. In fact, we’re going to try to undermine it.” We’re going to maximize the use of fossil fuels—could carry us past the tipping point. We’re not going to provide funding for—as committed in Paris, to developing countries that are trying to do something about the climate problems. We’re going to dismantle regulations that retard the impact, the devastating impact, of production of carbon dioxide and, in fact, other dangerous gases—methane, others.
OK. So the conference kind of pretty much came to a halt. The question—it continued, but the question was: Can we salvage something from this wreckage? And pretty amazingly, the countries of the world were looking for salvation to a different country: China. Here we have a world looking for salvation to China, of all places, when the United States is the wrecking machine that’s threatening destruction, in—with all three branches of government in the hands of the most dangerous organization in human history.
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On Tuesday night’s Anderson Cooper 360, veteran journalist Carl Bernstein addressed the claims made by Donald Trump that the Russian dossier is “bogus,” and that the FBI is “tainted.”
Jim Sciutto, filling in for Anderson Cooper, noted how Trump is trying to conflate the entire Russia investigation with the dossier and that the president is painting any organization questioning Trump as “not to be believed.”
Bernstein said the argument here is, “Everybody else is the issue here, not Donald Trump.”
“The key word… that he keeps using is ‘tainted.’ There’s really only one institution that has really been tainted through these months and that is the Trump presidency. It’s tainted by the president’s lies, by his disrespect for American institutions operating under the law with traditional American democracy and the instruments thereof,” Bernstein said. “He’s contemptuous of those instruments.”
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Many of us came into 2017 expecting the worst. And in many ways, the worst is what we got.
Donald Trump has been every bit as horrible as one might have expected; he continues, day after day, to prove himself utterly unfit for office, morally and intellectually. And the Republican Party — including so-called moderates — turns out, if anything, to be even worse than one might have expected. At this point it’s evidently composed entirely of cynical apparatchiks, willing to sell out every principle — and every shred of their own dignity — as long as their donors get big tax cuts.
Meanwhile, conservative media have given up even the pretense of doing real reporting, and become blatant organs of ruling-party propaganda.
Yet I’m ending this year with a feeling of hope, because tens of millions of Americans have risen to the occasion. The U.S. may yet become another Turkey or Hungary — a state that preserves the forms of democracy but has become an authoritarian regime in practice. But it won’t happen as easily or as quickly as many of us had feared.
Early this year the commentator David Frum warned that the slide into authoritarianism would be unstoppable “if people retreat into private life, if critics grow quieter, if cynicism becomes endemic.” But so far that hasn’t happened.
What we’ve seen instead is the emergence of a highly energized resistance.
As described by sources familiar with various aspects of the investigation, the Mueller probe is fast approaching a critical crossroads. The president’s lawyers, Ty Cobb and John Dowd, are pressing Mueller to wind down the investigation and exonerate their client, which they have assured the president will happen by early next year.
But the sources familiar with the probe say that such a rapid conclusion is — as one put it — “fanciful.” Mueller and his team, they say, are pursuing new leads, interrogating new witnesses and collecting a mountain of new evidence, including subpoenaed bank records and thousands of emails from the campaign and the Trump transition.
In just the last few weeks, his prosecutors have begun questioning Republican National Committee staffers about the party digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states. They are seeking to determine if the joint effort was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate, according to two of the sources.
In what is potentially another ominous sign for the White House, the lawyer for Jared Kushner, the president’s son in law and senior adviser who was in charge of the campaign’s digital operation, recently began searching for a crisis public relations firm to handle press inquiries — a step frequently taken by people who believe they may be facing criminal charges. (Kushner has denied all wrongdoing, and his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said he is cooperating with the Mueller investigation.)
People are very good at finding ways to believe what we want to believe. Climate change is the perfect example – acceptance of climate science among Americans is strongly related to political ideology. This has exposed humanity’s potentially fatal flaw. Denying an existential threat threatens our existence.
But that’s exactly what many ideological conservatives do. Partisan polarization over climate change has steadily grown over the past two decades. This change can largely be traced to the increasingly fractured and partisan media environment that has created an echo chamber in which people can wrap themselves in the comfort of “alternative facts” (a.k.a spin and lies) that affirm their worldviews. We’ve become too good at fooling ourselves into believing falsehoods, which has ushered in a dangerous “post-truth” era, with no better example than the subject of climate change.
In its December 2017 issue, the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition published a paper by Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich Ecker, and John Cook, along with an impressive 9 responses from other social scientists, essentially investigating how we can make truth great again.
This is the first of a three-part series based on never-before-published training manuals for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence organization that Vladimir Putin served as an operative, and that shaped his view of the world. Its veterans still make up an important part of now-Russian President Vladimir Putin’s power base. All were trained in the same dark arts, and these primers in tradecraft are essential to an understanding of the way they think and the way they operate.
U.S. intelligence operatives understand this only too well. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told CNN earlier this month Putin is “a great case officer,” suggesting he “knows how to handle an asset, and that’s what he’s doing with the president”—that is, the president of the United States.
“I am saying this figuratively,” Clapper went on, when asked to clarify his remark. “I think you have to remember Putin’s background. He’s a KGB officer. That’s what they do. They recruit assets. And I think some of that experience and instinct of Putin has come into play here, and he’s managing a pretty important ‘account,’ if I could use that term, with our president.”
The first installment of this series, directly relevant to the question of how Putin’s minions played members of the Trump campaign, looks specifically at the use of third parties to target individuals and organizations.
The Lancet. Dangerous words. The Lancet 2017;390:2740. Redirecting
Medicine is underpinned by both art and science. Art that relies upon strong therapeutic relationships with patients and populations. And science that brings statistical rigour to clinical and public health practice. If allegations reported in The Washington Post on Dec 15 are credible, the Trump administration has seriously undermined both foundations by banning the words “vulnerable”, “entitlement”, “diversity”, “transgender”, “fetus”, “evidence-based”, and “science-based” from government documents for the US$7 billion budget discussions about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Another phrase allegedly forbidden is “health equity”. A spokesperson for Health and Human Services told The Lancet that “science should always drive the narrative” and that “recent media reports appear to be based on confusion that arose when employees misconstrued guidelines”.
If true, the administration’s Orwellian diktat is both absurd and sinister. As the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine observed: “such a directive would be unprecedented and contrary to the spirit of scientific integrity”. With individuals and science censored, how would the CDC realise its mission to protect people from diseases? Improve maternal and child health without making the fetus central? Control the opioid epidemic without addressing vulnerability? This interference is a crime against intelligence and insults the diversity and freedom of speech that the USA espouses.
The disenfranchisement of people and perversion of science undermines trust in government and places the health of Americans at risk. The administration needs to provide a full account and explanation of the circumstances around the “misconstrued guidelines”. Failure to do so—or confirmation of the ban—would demand a forceful response, not only from within the USA, but also from her friends and from health leaders around the globe, particularly from WHO, whose constitution specifies a government’s responsibility for the health of its people, recognises the importance of research, and calls for all necessary action to attain the objective of the organisation. Only with loud and united condemnation can this foolishness be overcome; with silence, it will spread.
I worked for CDC: the 7 “banned words” are just the beginning…
When I heard the recent news — that CDC experts have been banned or discouraged by the Trump administration from using key words, including “evidence-based” and “science-based,” in formal budget submissions to the White House and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — I was horrified but not surprised. (Also on the banned list are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” and “fetus.”)
I’m a medical doctor and public health expert, and I’ve worked for the CDC 11 out of the past 18 years, serving under four different presidents:first as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, later as Director of CDC-Zimbabwe, and most recently as Director of the Division of Global HIV & TB, where I led an expert team of nearly 2,000 people across 45 countries and was responsible for a budget of about $2.4 billion, saving lives and stopping disease.
I was horrified because CDC, as the agency Americans rely on to keep them safe and healthy, usually receives widespread bipartisan support.It’s usually understood that CDC’s world-class scientists and doctors follow the evidence — irrespective of the popularity of its findings — and apply scientific solutions to difficult problems in order to avoid widespread illness and loss of life.
I was not surprised, however, because I’d already seen the beginning of non-transparent, insidious approaches that can purposely set programs up for failure or block them altogether. I witnessed new steps that “slow-rolled” critical decisions, potentially delaying congressionally appropriated funds from going out the door to important programs. For example, routine Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs), are now required to be reviewed outside the agency, at HHS level, for unclear reasons and without specific criteria for approval. Questions — often raised verbally down a chain — were raised about topics such as LGBTQ health, and at one point, it was suggested that my team and I put together a tool to accompany the FOAs to help flag terms that could be perceived as sensitive. Not knowing how such a tool would be used, we deferred. We also saw hiring freezes at certain positions. Although medical doctors and epidemiologists received critical exemptions, staff needed to analyze data (informatics specialists and statisticians, for example) were not seen as mission critical.
Now, we learn about the much-discussed “banned words.” Here, the implications are beyond just that of censorship or the budget narrative itself. Words matter. “Erasing” words can be tantamount to “erasing” people and priorities. And when the restrictions are attached to “budget justifications,” the intended threat is clear: comply, or risk losing the funding for critical programs that protect the public’s health. For dedicated health professionals who truly care about saving lives and eradicating disease, this has an enormous chilling effect. It takes away the ability to address issues that are specific to particular groups, such as “transgender” individuals and those who are “vulnerable” to health threats. It leaves these professionals caught in a potentially unwinnable situation: either comply so that funding continues to allow you to do as much of the “right thing” as you can, or refuse, and risk losing the ability to help at all.
That’s why I recently left CDC — I left because I fear these insidious practices are only the beginning. I left because we deserve a government that serves our communities, not narrow political agendas. I left because I can now be free to help shine a light on the intentional dismantling of programs that keep us safe. I left to help hold this administration accountable for their attacks on science, facts, and America’s leadership in the world.
I call on the Director of the CDC, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, to do the right thing. She must stand strong against any suggestions to censor our scientists. Her recent tweets and messages assure us that “there are no banned words at CDC.” She must now follow through to protect and actively defend her dedicated staff against any pressures that would impede their confidence to make science and evidence-based decisions. And she must lead us toward safer and healthier communities, fulfilling her oath to protect the public’s health.
Medicine is underpinned by both art and science. Art that relies upon strong therapeutic relationships with patients and populations. And science that brings statistical rigour to clinical and public health practice. If allegations reported in The Washington Post on Dec 15 are credible, the Trump administration has seriously undermined both foundations by banning the words “vulnerable”, “entitlement”, “diversity”, “transgender”, “fetus”, “evidence-based”, and “science-based” from government documents for the US$7 billion budget discussions about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Another phrase allegedly forbidden is “health equity”. A spokesperson for Health and Human Services told The Lancet that “science should always drive the narrative” and that “recent media reports appear to be based on confusion that arose when employees misconstrued guidelines”.
If true, the administration’s Orwellian diktat is both absurd and sinister. As the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine observed: “such a directive would be unprecedented and contrary to the spirit of scientific integrity”. With individuals and science censored, how would the CDC realise its mission to protect people from diseases? Improve maternal and child health without making the fetus central? Control the opioid epidemic without addressing vulnerability? This interference is a crime against intelligence and insults the diversity and freedom of speech that the USA espouses.
The disenfranchisement of people and perversion of science undermines trust in government and places the health of Americans at risk. The administration needs to provide a full account and explanation of the circumstances around the “misconstrued guidelines”. Failure to do so—or confirmation of the ban—would demand a forceful response, not only from within the USA, but also from her friends and from health leaders around the globe, particularly from WHO, whose constitution specifies a government’s responsibility for the health of its people, recognises the importance of research, and calls for all necessary action to attain the objective of the organisation. Only with loud and united condemnation can this foolishness be overcome; with silence, it will spread.
I worked for CDC: the 7 “banned words” are just the beginning…
When I heard the recent news — that CDC experts have been banned or discouraged by the Trump administration from using key words, including “evidence-based” and “science-based,” in formal budget submissions to the White House and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — I was horrified but not surprised. (Also on the banned list are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” and “fetus.”)
I’m a medical doctor and public health expert, and I’ve worked for the CDC 11 out of the past 18 years, serving under four different presidents:first as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, later as Director of CDC-Zimbabwe, and most recently as Director of the Division of Global HIV & TB, where I led an expert team of nearly 2,000 people across 45 countries and was responsible for a budget of about $2.4 billion, saving lives and stopping disease.
I was horrified because CDC, as the agency Americans rely on to keep them safe and healthy, usually receives widespread bipartisan support.It’s usually understood that CDC’s world-class scientists and doctors follow the evidence — irrespective of the popularity of its findings — and apply scientific solutions to difficult problems in order to avoid widespread illness and loss of life.
I was not surprised, however, because I’d already seen the beginning of non-transparent, insidious approaches that can purposely set programs up for failure or block them altogether. I witnessed new steps that “slow-rolled” critical decisions, potentially delaying congressionally appropriated funds from going out the door to important programs. For example, routine Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs), are now required to be reviewed outside the agency, at HHS level, for unclear reasons and without specific criteria for approval. Questions — often raised verbally down a chain — were raised about topics such as LGBTQ health, and at one point, it was suggested that my team and I put together a tool to accompany the FOAs to help flag terms that could be perceived as sensitive. Not knowing how such a tool would be used, we deferred. We also saw hiring freezes at certain positions. Although medical doctors and epidemiologists received critical exemptions, staff needed to analyze data (informatics specialists and statisticians, for example) were not seen as mission critical.
Now, we learn about the much-discussed “banned words.” Here, the implications are beyond just that of censorship or the budget narrative itself. Words matter. “Erasing” words can be tantamount to “erasing” people and priorities. And when the restrictions are attached to “budget justifications,” the intended threat is clear: comply, or risk losing the funding for critical programs that protect the public’s health. For dedicated health professionals who truly care about saving lives and eradicating disease, this has an enormous chilling effect. It takes away the ability to address issues that are specific to particular groups, such as “transgender” individuals and those who are “vulnerable” to health threats. It leaves these professionals caught in a potentially unwinnable situation: either comply so that funding continues to allow you to do as much of the “right thing” as you can, or refuse, and risk losing the ability to help at all.
That’s why I recently left CDC — I left because I fear these insidious practices are only the beginning. I left because we deserve a government that serves our communities, not narrow political agendas. I left because I can now be free to help shine a light on the intentional dismantling of programs that keep us safe. I left to help hold this administration accountable for their attacks on science, facts, and America’s leadership in the world.
I call on the Director of the CDC, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, to do the right thing. She must stand strong against any suggestions to censor our scientists. Her recent tweets and messages assure us that “there are no banned words at CDC.” She must now follow through to protect and actively defend her dedicated staff against any pressures that would impede their confidence to make science and evidence-based decisions. And she must lead us toward safer and healthier communities, fulfilling her oath to protect the public’s health.
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