blueseas
blueseas's JournalWhat Those Who Studied Nazis Can Teach Us About The Strange Reaction To Donald Trump
While it’s important to watch the president-elect closely, we also must be mindful of our own response to him.
SNIP:
The word Gleichschaltung is often translated from the German as “coordination” and refers to the process of ― politically speaking ― getting in line. It often appears in books about the Nazi era. German Jewish philologist Victor Klemperer and German journalist Joachim Fest wrote about the personal cost of coordinating in their respective memoirs. German author Sebastian Haffner and Americans including journalist William Shirer wrote about the propaganda and politics of coordination.
MORE:
While on the campaign trail in February, Trump urged followers to “knock the hell” out of protesters, promising to pay their legal bills if they were arrested and charged. That same February in Fort Worth, he promised a crowd that he would “open up our libel laws” so that news outlets can be sued for writing “false” or “purposely negative” articles. In July, he urged Russia to interfere in the election on his behalf, later saying he was joking. In September, he urged still other supporters to “monitor” polling stations. In October, he promised when victorious to throw his rival, Hillary Clinton, in jail. And just recently he advocated revoking the citizenship of Americans who burn flags.
So, in the last year, Trump has flirted with or, maybe more his style, groped and pawed at totalitarianism, yet the advice from many is to “give him a chance” ― or to coordinate.
This make sense:
We should not waste our time or imaginations trying to reconfigure Trumpism to explain why all of the “good people” supported him. It is more important to see it for what it is and resist. Hopefully, they will join us. If not, it will not be necessary to call them names, they will have named themselves.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-nazi-propaganda-coordinate_us_58583b6fe4b08debb78a7d5c
7 Survivors On What It Means To Have A Man Accused Of Sexual Assault In The White House
Snip:
Now that Donald Trump, a man who’s been publicly accused of sexually assaulting over a dozen women, will be the next president of the United States, Ortega is ready to take action.
For Ortega, that personal call to action meant creating a photo campaign featuring seven WSU students, including herself, who are all survivors of sexual assault. In the coming weeks, the images (shot by local photographer Cynthya Porter) will be turned into posters that will be hung around WSU’s campus. Each poster will feature a photo of a survivor and information about online resources for victims.
Ortega hopes that the campaign, which she created for her Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies minor, will foster conversations surrounding sexual assault on WSU’s campus.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/7-survivors-on-what-it-means-to-have-a-man-accused-of-sexual-assault-in-the-white-house_us_583c7163e4b01ba68ac5732a
Robert Reich: Trump's 7 Techniques to Control the Media
Make no mistake, there is a real campaign to control the media going on here.
1. Berate the media. Last week, Trump summoned two-dozen TV news anchors and executives to the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower to berate them for their reporting about him during the election. For twenty minutes he railed at what he called their “outrageous” and “dishonest” coverage. According to an attendee, “Trump kept saying, ‘we’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong,’” and he called CNN a “network of liars.” He accused NBC of using unflattering pictures of him, demanding to know why they didn’t use “nicer” pictures.
Another person who attended the meeting said Trump “truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment. He thinks we are supposed to say what he says and that’s it.”
2. Blacklist critical media. During the campaign, Trump blacklisted news outlets whose coverage he didn’t approve of. In June he pulled The Washington Post’s credentials. “Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post,” read a post on Trump’s Facebook page.
After the election Trump agreed to meet with the New York Times and then suddenly cancelled the meeting when he didn’t like the terms, tweeting “Perhaps a new meeting will be set up with the @nytimes. In the meantime they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone!” (He then reversed himself again and met with the Times.)
Snip: 3. Turn the public against the media. Trump refers to journalists as “lying,” “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.”
http://www.alternet.org/media/robert-reich-uncovers-trumps-7-techniques-control-media
There is a method to the madness - artlcle
SNIP:
"Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter for his Art of the Deal best-seller that was the basis for his reality TV show “The Apprentice,” answered Trump’s Sunday tweets with: “Trump loses it whenever he feels vulnerable, which is often. Must recognize reality: We have a president-elect who is mentally unbalanced.”
And Evan McMullin, a Republican who ran as an independent candidate, responded to Trump’s “millions” of illegal votes tweet with the warning: “It should not go unrecognized that @realDonaldTrump’s effort to inflate his election performance without cause is typical of autocrats.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-false-tweets_us_583b97c4e4b000af95eeaf53
Kellyanne Conway: Trump Is Receiving Intelligence Info From A Number Of Sources
Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager to President-elect Donald Trump, refused to say Sunday if Trump is turning away daily intelligence briefings, claiming that he is receiving information “from a number of sources.”
Last week, the Washington Post reported that Trump has only received two intelligence briefings in the two and a half weeks since his election. His predecessors typically received the briefings on a daily basis.
Snip:Traditionally, the State Department coordinates the president-elect’s contact with world leaders and provides briefings before he speaks to them.
Trump’s eschewing of protocol is a concerning sign, given his utter lack of foreign policy knowledge and experience. His foreign policy proposals during the campaign included a “secret plan to fight ISIS” and an insistence that the U.S. should “take the oil” in Iraq.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-intelligence-briefings_us_583b0526e4b000af95ee829a
My Descent Into The right-wing Media Vortex
Upon Trump’s win, I consumed only right-wing media for a week, where I learned about “snowflakes,” “self-respecting Nazis,” and the future of our divided country.BY KEN STERNNOVEMBER 23, 2016 12:30 PM
One of the things you will quickly notice, if you are browsing 10 conservative outlets at any given time, is the amazing overlap in coverage, the same story told over and over again. Don’t get me wrong: mainstream media (or M.S.M. as some of the conservative sites refer to it) is plenty fond of pack journalism. But this is different. None of these outlets, with the possible exception of Fox, are news organizations in the ordinary sense. Rather, they are all thinly staffed; most of the “reporters” spend their time cherry-picking information from other sites and even repackaging their own materials. An interview on Breitbart radio, for instance, or a campus appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos gets quickly repackaged as a “news article.” I’m not sure whether this is an efficiency play or an intentional strategy, but it has exponential amplifying effect that affords any old piece of news (if it even is that) outsized importance and credibility.
On the site Townhall, Dennis Prager was making a last appeal to the Never Trumpers to come home and, if not vote for Trump, at least vote against Clinton. Prager himself was hardly a fan of Trump, but he argued that the candidate was a better bet on various conservative policies—ranging from the Supreme Court, abortion, the Second Amendment, immigration, energy, regulatory reform, and so forth—than Clinton. He didn’t display much faith in Trump’s instincts, but he refuted Clinton’s entirely. To those who still have doubts, Prager will admit only one credible argument:
“[Some people say that they] are certain Donald Trump is so psychologically imbalanced that he will jeopardize America and the world. But they have to be certain of this. If they have any doubts, they have to vote for him—because they are certain about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. And between certitude and incertitude, one must always act on what is certain.”
MORE: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/my-descent-into-the-right-wing-media-vortex?
Fly on the screen on HRC
Anyone remember this? During the debates, a fly was shown on the screen. I think this was deliberate.
Kennedy Family Writes Anti-Trump Op-Ed In Washington Post That EVERYONE Should Read
http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/11/17/kennedy-family-writes-anti-trump-op-ed-in-washington-post-that-everyone-should-read/Snip:
Political violence is a terrible inherent risk to any free society. Dictators and strongmen like Vladimir Putin have an answer. They are surrounded and shielded by force at all times. They do not brook dissent. In democracies, we expect our leaders to be accessible and, by and large, they want to be. Inevitably, that makes them vulnerable and the loss of a leader at a crucial time impacts family, country, and even the world, for generations. Anyone who loves politics, the open competition of ideas and public participation in a free society, knows that political violence is the greatest of all civic sins. It is not to be encouraged. It is not funny. It is not a joke.
By now, we have heard enough dark and offensive rhetoric from Trump to know that it reflects something fundamentally troubled, and troubling, about his candidacy. Trump’s remarks frequently, if not inevitably, spark outrage, which is followed by a clarification that, in lieu of an apology, seeks to attribute the dark undertones of his words to the listener’s twisted psyche. This fools no one. Whether you like what he is saying or, like a growing segment of the electorate, you reject it, it is easy to grasp Trump’s meaning from his words. But what to make of a candidate who directly appeals to violence, smears his opponents and publicly bullies a Gold Star family, a decorated prisoner of war, and a reporter with a disability, among others? To borrow the words of Army Counsel Joseph Welch, directed at another dangerous demagogue: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
The truth remains that words do matter, especially when it comes to presidential candidates. On that basis alone, Donald Trump is not qualified to be president of the United States.
TRUMP TEAM OUTLINES PLANS TO TURN AMERICA INTO A RACIST POLICE STATE
Vanity Fair November 16 2016
Snip:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/donald-trump-kris-kobach-muslim-registry?mbid=social_facebook
When Trump first introduced the idea of a Muslim registry during the Republican primary, he offered scant details as to how such a database might operate in practice. “Different places. You sign up at different places. But it’s all about management. Our country has no management,” Trump explained, vaguely, at the time. When asked how it would differ from the forced registration of Jewish people, Trump’s response similarly came up short. “You tell me,” he repeatedly told reporters. On the campaign trail, this level of dubiousness was routine for Trump: throw out a controversial idea, refuse to be pinned down by policy details, rinse and repeat. But now, as Trump prepares to take over the White House, the president-elect is assembling a team of immigration hardliners and extremists who can—and want to—turn the billionaire’s most terrifying ideas into reality.
Foremost among Trump’s far-right policy advisers is Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach. Derided by his critics as an “anti-immigration zealot” and beloved by “far-right nativists,” Kobach is among the loudest voices in the anti-immigration movement in the U.S. and has played an influential role in enacting the strictest immigration legislation in the country. (One law, SB 1070, authorized Arizona police to demand papers proving citizenship or immigration status from anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. Parts of the law were subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.) Kobach, who joined the Trump transition team last week, is already working to reinstate the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, a program created in 2002 in response to the 9/11 attacks during the George W. Bush administration, Reuters reports. Under the program, Muslim males over 16 years old entering the U.S. from roughly two dozen countries classified as “higher risk” for terrorism were forced to register. “It was clearly discriminatory because the nations listed were only Arab and Muslim nations,” Abed Ayoub, the national legal and policy director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told The Wall Street Journal last year, adding, “They just put in North Korea for good measure.” Amid backlash and criticism that the program was discriminatory and violated civil rights, the registration process ended in 2003. In 2011 President Barack Obama effectively ended the NSEERS by removing all of the countries on the list, but New York magazine reports that the regulation that created the program does still exist, meaning that Trump could resurrect the controversial program.
Even at this early stage, we are likely catching a glimpse of what life will be like under President Trump. With the president-elect already showing signs of waning interest in the job, it is safe to say that advisers like Kobach—who, according to New York, is rumored to be a top contender for attorney general—will play an expanded role in policymaking and have unrivaled influence over the executive branch. And Kobach is already putting his mind to work on proposals to keep the future president happy. Confronted with the possibility that Congress could hamper Trump’s plans for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Kobach has devised a strategy to circumvent Capitol Hill, employing an executive order to direct funds from the Department of Homeland Security's budget to pay for its construction. Checks and balances, after all, are no match for a good loophole.
Frank Gaffney - Slate says keep an eye on him
What do we know about him?
I did find this article:
uesday, it was reported that Frank Gaffney, president and founder of the Center for Security Policy, had been named as an adviser to Donald Trump’s transition team. Wednesday morning, Trump officials are reportedly strenuously denying Gaffney’s on board. The slipperiness of what’s been happening with Trump’s transition suggests we should take their denials with a grain of salt. Tuesday, for instance, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell tweeted that Trump had requested a top secret clearance for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Wednesday morning, however, Trump denied those reports, contradicting a Trump official who had earlier said a low-level Trump staffer requested the clearance. If it is always hard to know what to believe when covering politics, it is now even more so. But even if Frank Gaffney’s not officially on the team technically speaking, it seems likely that he is or at least was in Trump’s transition orbit.
So just who is Gaffney and why would his hiring matter?
Anyone unsure about the extent to which Trump will follow through on proposals like the ban on Muslim immigration should be deeply troubled by Gaffney’s name floating around Trumpworld. For nearly two decades now, Gaffney has been one of America’s most successful professional Islamophobes, pushing wild conspiracy theories about Muslim infiltration through columns and regular appearances on Fox News that have acquired wide currency on the right-wing fringe. Like Trump, Gaffney was a birther. In a 2008 column for the Washington Times written weeks before Obama had even been elected, he advanced the idea that Obama had been born in Kenya and outlined his alleged ties to dangerous “Islamists.” These themes would be revisited again in an MSNBC appearance in which he claimed that Obama bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia was a code for submission......
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/16/frank_gaffney_anywhere_close_to_trump_is_bad_news.html
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