I pointed out how D.Trump’s use of language puts him in the company of the most vile leaders who ever existed. Unlike Stalin who attached the label “enemies of the people” to the kulaks and other opponents of his rule; or Hitler who attached it to the Jews and then the others he decided to vilify and exterminate, D.Trump knows he cannot use it to denounce a specific group as he tried doing with Muslims.
That is because a free press will rise up and publicize and condemn such an act. He is forced to first attack the core of the American experience — one of the major things that has kept us free – – a thing that some have said is more important than the three branches of government, the Fourth Estate.
Edmund Burke said: “that there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important by far than they all.” The article that contained Burke’s statement started off: “The fourth estate is a term that positions the press (newspapers) as a fourth branch of government and one that is important to a functioning democracy.”
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot had no worries about free press having suppressed it. For D.Trump to gain the true ascendancy he seeks which is to rule without any opposition he understands what stands between that goal, the destruction of a democratic state, and his absolute Stalin-like control is the Fourth Estate. Which explains in part his tremendous fondness for Vladimir Putin who understood this and quickly destroyed all vestiges of a free press in Russia.
D.Trump is on a path to do this with his adjective “fake” before true news and his use of “failing” to attack some of the news media. How soon will it be before he starts using more degrading adjectives or malign metaphors? On February 24 he tweeted “FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn’t tell the truth. A great danger to our country. The failing @nytimes has become a joke. Likewise @CNN. Sad!” (my emphasis)
Fortunately, unlike in Russia with its long history of dictators and the media’s cringing before the state, America’s long history of democracy and support of the free press (as opposed to government controlled or lackey press) will prove to be more difficult to suppress. How then does D.Trump reach his goal of silencing the media so that there are no voices raised against him? The first step, is as he is undertaking, is to make the American people distrust the one group that can stop his total take over.
(2) Fragility of American Democracy:
I noted how reading the words “America is not burdened with the history of tyranny and totalitarianism that haunts Russia. We have a 229-year record of success with constitutional democracy that should outlast the Trump era” compelled me to write.
Our history is not as successful as you may believe. We have been fortunate because all our previous presidents were imbued with a sense of public service and an understanding of our system and willing to operate according to the ideals set in our Constitution. Keep in mind D.Trump never performed an act of public service in his life.
When emergencies came prior presidents kept the onerous deprivation of rights they placed on the people only for the minimum time necessary to achieve their object. What if a president decided not to restore civil rights which he suspended but kept them on until the duration of the emergency which is endless?
Since 2001 we have been engaged in a War on Terror. Part of that war has been our battles in Afghanistan that began in 2001 which makes this our longest ground war ever. It, like the debacle in Iraq that followed, are only part of the War on Terror. Understand the significance of that? The war will never end. D.Trump’s stirring up the bowl of hysteria in the U.S. over a practically non-existent threat from Muslims will only heighten it.
Any emergency that might be declared will have no end. The measures put into effect during that emergency will give the right type of president, such as D.Trump who so admires V.Putin, the ability to rule like him under the guise of this endless emergency.
In a national emergency the first aim will be to go after “the enemies of the American people.” These are the media outlets, unlike Fox News, that do not cower before D.Trump. He knows if he can silence the media not controlled or in league with him then only one voice will be heard. It will not be the voice of a democracy. It will be that of Big Brother D.Trump. Democracy will in all effect have disappear.
Who could stand up against it? Congress, already has crawled before D.Trump and as he grows in strength it becomes more enfeebled. The courts — you mean those so-called judges. True though it may be that President Andrew Jackson in the dispute involving the Cherokees never said: “[Supreme Court Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.,” as Horace Greeley suggested, the expression reminded Americans that the Supreme Court and all other federal courts depend upon the executive branch to enforce their orders. The so-called judges can write until they are blue in the face but nothing they order will come about if D.Trump decides otherwise.
Right on-iths helped me sort things right out.
Afterthought: Reading the Herald persuades me that John Connolly may actually get out on parole. This would big news for readers of Matt’s blog, no? I haven’t see a single word in the Globe. If there are no grounds to believe Connolly will be freed, the Globe should have had a story by now knocking down the Herald’s reporting. Go figure.
Good job, Matt. I like the fact that you’re bringing some passion to this debate. And it increasingly looks like your suspicions about Trump and Putin/Russia should be thoroughly investigated. Let’s find out what happened — or didn’t
for more on the police committing voter fraud in
Cincinnati during the 1980’s Google Leonard gates Bob draise
FBI voter fraud
breaking story on evidence linking FBI agents
to the creation of 911
Miami judge slams ‘shameful’ FBI delays in making 9/11 documents …
Miami Herald
A Miami federal judge Tuesday excoriated the FBI for what she called its “shameful” delays in making public certain records about the bureau’s 9/11 Review …
my friend Ed Tatro and I talked this morning about
Tatro sharing the lectern this past year
with Trump advisor Roger
Stone where they both spoke on the JFK assassination
Stone acknowledged Tatro as a trailblazer on JFK
while autographing his new book about LBJ /FBI
assassinating President Kennedy.
Roger Stone introduced Roy Cohn to Trump.
ugh!
BBC for the latest on Mosul. Detailed maps of forward progress in the battle.
SF Soldier’s Ryan Owens’ wife moved Congress to tears and the longest sustained ovation perhaps ever given by that body during Trump’s composed and commanding address to them last night. People recognize and respond to genuine grief. It was embodied in this case by a young widow in a paroxysm of intensely felt painful emotion. People respond instinctually to The Real ; that which cannot be feigned ; that whose mysterious power is terrifying in its being ultimately unfathomable to mortal beings ; that in which we are born, struggle and die, knowing all along that all we know is the knower who is at the same time us, yet, tantalizingly , a being who looks back at us in the mirror as we distinctly divine that who is looking back at us comprehends infinitely more than we do. It is this … instinctive feel of the Real, the Mysterious, and the Divine that transports people out of the profane and humdrum into the Sacred. We saw that last night. You could have written about it. Instead we get faux outrage about the phrase ” enemy of the people. ” Nobody expects any impartiality from you when it comes to a man you revile , Donald J. Trump. Ditto ” The Press.”
When Trump suspends haebeas corpus as Lincoln did or puts 100 thousand Japanese Americans in concentration camps as FDR did or enacts the Sedition Acts as Adams did then complaints are justified. Hysteria over some mild criticism of the press is uncalled for and a substantial overreaction. 2. Hitler built the Autobahn. Ike built the interstate highway system. Is Ike like Hitler? A freshman in college would flunk her logic exam if she so concluded.3. All the pundits were wrong on their election predictions. They proclaimed that only angry white males would vote for Trump. No females would select him. He got the majority of White females and more than eight million Black, Asian and Latino votes. Trump made his critics look silly and that explains the vitriol. His critics badly misjudged the American people. 4. Tell the people in Orlando that the threat from Muslims is non existent Muslims have murdered thousands of Americans. The threat is real.
Imagination is the father of all terrors. So goes the old saying. Yours has run riot. Press on though. If it bleeds it leads! 🙂
Matt:
As always, you write well, creatively, but like all of us, you sometimes let your imagination get the better of you. Nevertheless, I enjoy your history lessons, even when I disagree with their relevance.
1. Trump delivered a great speech last night. The very liberal Michael Smerkonish called it “a great speech”; Chris Wallace called it “great” and among the best he’s heard before Congress in forty years. Even Van Jones praised it. Most praised it as presidential. Of course, as always in America, there were critics on the left.
One leftist writer for the Washington Post somehow connected the speech to a T.V. show about the NAZIs.
One poll said 70% of Americans found it positive and optimistic.
2. Previously I’ve posted the words of all the Founding Fathers who’ve excoriated the Press. Nothing new! And as Tadzio has said, when the Press distorts, it can rightfully be said to be an enemy of the truth, fairness and the American people, who rely on it for fairness, balance and accuracy, not liberal spin and leftist propaganda.
3. You write that Trump has “never performed an act of public service.” I’d say any businessman who employs 10,000 people performs a greater act of public service than 99% of bureaucrats (paper pushers, lawyers, pols.) Let’s recognize the great public service done by those in the private sector (businessmen, scientists, inventors, physicians, artists, musicians, barbers, and many other ordinary folks raising families, running mom and pop stores, the local hardware, etc.) Too often people confuse public service with public employment. Most everyone values the public service of the military, first responders, firemen and the police, except those who view law enforcement as “the enemy”.
Frae ghoulies and ghosties, long-leggetie beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.