Any Bets?

John McCain is gone. Also gone is the last gasp of moderation and decency in conservatism and the Republican Party.

While he never met a war he didn't like, and cursed our nation with the ignorance of Sarah Palin, McCain had a sense of honor and basic human decency that is no longer found in American Con-servatism. 

He is now a relic of the past.

While campaigning in 2008, McCain did the decent thing, and told a fearful low-information voter that he didn’t have to be "scared" of Obama. The very next moment a frightened woman said, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, um, he’s an Arab.” 

He did the decent thing again.

“No, ma’m,” he said. “He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that just I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what the campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].” 

Now those same frightened ill-informed people are listening to Trump. They are why Trump is in the White House, thanks to the Right's propaganda machinery.

In accepting the Freedom Medal at the National Constitutional Center in October, McCain condemned “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”

This is what separated him from the Trump Crime Cartel. If only he could have realized that is almost the entire MO of con-servatism.

McCain made one last decent contribution to his country. He invited George W. Bush and Barack Obama to share the eulogy at his funeral. Not inviting the current president was his last gesture of decency, briefly uniting Americans of both major parties. The Party of Trump was not invited.

The hated “liberal media” and “enemy of the people” are all running thoughtful tributes to the veteran, former POW and senator. It is a reflection of basic human decency.

John Kerry and Al Gore also put their lives on the line in Vietnam. Will con-servatives and FOX (R) and Breitbart show equal decency and respect, or any admiration at all for them?

Any bets on their decency? 

Big Brother Don And "The Brotherhood"

Has anyone else noted the tendency of those wrapping themselves in "liberty", the flag, and Bible are always shilling for the Orwellian agenda of the far Right and economic elites?

I pulled out my old copy of "1984", just to see how far we've descended as a nation. The frightening realization was this. We are not at the bottom yet, but the downward trajectory is steeper than ever.

“Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening.” Big Brother Don.
 
Very Orwellian. Rudy "O'Brien" Giuliani, the Right-wing Authoritarian 9-11 guy sums up the Orwellian Trump era doublethink even more concisely than his client.
 
"Truth isn't truth". 

That nugget of doublethink takes a place among Eric Blair's, "Ignorance is strength. Freedom is slavery. War is peace." 

This is Republican/Trumpism now. 
==
 Orwell:
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
 
The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

==

The rising white nationalism and far Right/Trumpist tribal beliefs and ideology are expressed with the same fervor as 1984’s “two-minutes hate”. It is also similar to cults and religious fundamentalism. As in, "Jesus sent Trump to save us!"

They are indoctrinated in the same authoritarian way, until they become fanatic crusaders for their Party and their tribe. (AKA the interests of corporate elites, white identity politics, and suppression of education, science, journalism and democracy.)

They are conditioned to despise and distrust all sources of information that questions their leaders and ideology. Corporate media rarely challenge Wall Street and capitalism in general, but since they call out the lies of the Right, they become the "enemy of the people".

Minorities, liberals, and the press have become the scapegoats of this new fascism.

It is very much an Orwellian cult, and they are programmed to hate liberalism and democratic socialism as the equivalent of "Goldstein's Brotherhood" or Stalinism. This is so ironic, while they embrace Putin over the majority of their fellow Americans.

Now their ignorance, resentment, fear, anger and hate are fueled to the point of dangerous extremism.

The white nationalists and Republican Party created this monster, There can be no good consequences of Orwellian rulers, austerity, and permanent conflict. It will be the norm until we see either Republicans put the country and the rule of law over their Party's power, or the opposition party finds a spine and conscience, as well as an overwhelming number of informed voters.

It will come down to either that unlikely scenario, or until some catastrophic upheaval eventually intervenes. 

The first option has an expiration date this November. After that, the inevitable awaits. 

Katy Tur Speaks To Evil

Trump made his intentions, and his authoritarian tactics, clear: "I do it to discredit and demean you all, (News media) so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you."

Journalists who report his lies and the truth he denies, are accused of being the "enemy of the people". This is the lowest depth any president has ever sunk to in the history of the nation. It is down at the very bottom, along with supporting Putin's disinformation campaign by siding with him against two bi-partisan Senate committees, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the CIA. 

“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

This Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" tactic is at the heart of his war on facts, the press, and dissent. 

Now Trump's fascistic attacks on the press and First Amendment are agitating his thug followers into a growing menace.  

Angry mobs shout their anger, hatred and insults at newsmen covering his rallies, as he raves from the podium that they are "horrible, horrendous people." 

There is only one fitting word for all this hate, blame and false accusation from a would-be tyrant. That word is evil. 

Spreading hate is evil. He is an evil man. End of discussion.

MSNBC anchor Katy Tur recently spoke out for journalism and human decency.

Yeah, we get it, you don’t like us. Fine. But do you have to put our lives in danger?

The president continues to call the press the enemy of the people, even after four journalists and one sales assistant were shot dead in a Maryland newsroom by a man who was angry with what they factually reported about him.

Even after the publisher of The New York Times stressed to him in a private conversation that his words were putting journalists in mortal danger. Even after CNN white house reporter Jim Acosta was shouted down and taunted in a rally the other night in Florida.

Sadly, the harassment and threats are not stopping, What you do not see are the nasty letters or packages or emails, the threats of physical violence. ‘I hope you get raped and killed,’ one person wrote to me just this week.

“Raped and killed". Not just me, but a couple of my female colleagues, as well.

In case you want to argue this has nothing to do with the president, the most recent note I got ended with MAGA.

It is both surreal and ominous that this even needs to be said in this country. 

Our free press is not the enemy of the people. 

Trump and the Party of Trump are the enemy of the people, the enemy of democracy, and the enemy of truth.

God bless Katy. And God damn Trump, for his vile evil against her, and against her peers, and against human decency, against the truth, and against our country.