Trump and his family are self described business folks. While their legacy in business is debatable, that they come from the corporate world not political becomes more obvious everyday. We don’t know yet if Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia last year but the Trump family isn’t making it easy for innocence to be considered.
This week Donald Trump Jr. became the center of the Russian storm. After days of having his ever changing story disproven by leaks, he released the emails in question. They did not vindicate him. When asked if he would like information on Clinton gathered by Russia to aid his father, he says he would love it. He brought Kushner and Manafort to the meeting, the Russian lawyer ended up not having anything on Clinton. Leaving us in a situation where we know that the Trump campaign would have colluded but not if they did.
Ignore the discussion of impeachment for a moment. What other implications are there? One is a revelation behind the curtain. Political operators have long been portrayed as ruthless anything goes types in movies but the real political world always had norms and bounds. I’m not saying they are knights of the round table. Yet even the Gore campaign called the FBI when someone leaked Bush’s campaign bible to them. This event shows the business world core of the Trump universe one where damning emails end in a fine and mea culpas but in politics things end differently just ask Abramoff.
The anti-left media keeps yelling Ukraine like its Benghazi (as a waste of time). A low level former staffer is not the same as a high campaign advisor and candidate’s child. Manafort did in fact lobby for pro Russia candidates in Ukraine and was unable to hide it. Whether the decision to remove support for Ukraine in its war against Russian invasion from the GOP platform came from Manafort is unknown. In the end, evidence from a foreign public investigation is not close to the same as a foreign nation stealing documents from a political opponent to aid a candidate. As Watergate taught us having your own countrymen steal documents is damning without foreign involvement.
The emails aren’t a smoking gun for criminal proceedings but they without a doubt bolster Mueller’s investigation. One can only wonder what subpeonas will uncover.
-E.C. Fiori
Tag: supreme court
Day 151: Found Them
Day 15: How Do We Rise From the Carnage
We are not the Nation that crushed the horrors of Germany anymore. We aren’t the nation that build with our hands the largest roadway system in the world (at the time). We aren’t the Nation that illuminated the alternative to communism. We just live in it’s shadow.
We chose to be a smaller nation long before Trump announced his candidacy. The American Century is defined by our commitment to our values and holding our partners abroad to the same high standard. Instead we lowered our expectations for ourselves and ignored the violations for luxury. We all know how the iPhone gets made and that sausage pales in comparison. Yet when we discuss the impact of technology we only ask if the screen hurts our own eyes and communities. The American Century was never measured by trade profits, how many census checkboxes our elected officials can fill, or our ability to kill: it was how we embraced our better angels.
We left the information age and entered the post information age I believe with the widespread adoption of the internet. The experts who once maintained knowledge have seceded that role to servers. Information no longer is knowledge in the sense that it can be believed as true. It also comes through as too much information. History has split into a billion threads and we as a nation are left adrift. We don’t teach who we are anymore. My education consisted of a litany of our sins and ways to repent for the creation of the greatest country/empire the world has been blessed with. The wonder that is America and its founding seems to have become unfashionable for the cosmopolitan teachers filling the classrooms. There isn’t a national narrative or wasn’t until Trump appeared on the Horizon. You can disagree with the content but you can’t argue it isn’t a single thread. The left jumps trying to recognize each individual as civilization, the trees over forest.
An example is the recent op-ed by Senator Merkley (D-Oregon) that Democrats should force the nuclear option over Gorsuch because “This is certainly a possibility, since the Republicans have already shown such disregard for Senate tradition and the integrity of the Supreme Court”. This statement ignores it was the Democrats who first went nuclear. One could counter Republican obstructionism forced their hands. That narrative was worn out in 2011. For as big of a tent the Democrats claim to represent, they seem to have a hard time communicating. Instead they turn to condescension when denied. They don’t reach out to those who question and even if they are the future as they claim. Their worldview isn’t any more free than Trump’s. We can vehemently disagree without silencing. When violent protests counter a speaking engagement and people justify preventing words the American Spirit is lost. We must defend the rights of those who make our blood boil. There is no wavering in that ideal. There are no self expression values without that social contract.
To rebuild from the carnage, we need trust. That requires a single narrative that contains all voices.
-E.C. Fiori
Day 32: A Rose by Any Other Name
Identity politics has always existed. White Supremacy is perhaps the oldest modern form. In all forms it relies on tribal dogma to create a world view. This world view does not always conform to the world. In an piece for NPR, Tasneem Raja writes “why it’s never been more important to continue talking — and arguing, and complaining, and venting — about identity in America. To continue interrogating whiteness as a construct, even as we discuss the economic woes of many white Americans. To continue asking why so many of our superheroes are white and male, even as we push to better understand the defeat and humiliation felt by many flesh-and-blood white men in our country.” Superheroes aren’t real. Movies and television aren’t real. The media wastes an incredible amount of time watching other media and reporting on what the media tells them. No wonder we built our own echo chambers, the mirror that was journalism has become a fun house. There are serious deep seated economic ills that affect all Americans that creates a fear of the other. While diverse entertainment options are important. Everyone should be able to share their voice. Art is not as important as economic stability. Few liberals argue that many of the goals of identity politics aren’t noble, but the tactics are ineffective at best. As television moves from viewership numbers to subscriber totals, the actual viewership of any given program matters less. Thus the explosion of perspectives on pay or SVOD entertainment. These shows at their peak with the rare exception have a twentieth of the viewership of the classic model flagship CBS. If content can shape the viewership than the viewership matters. Identity politics by dividing citizens based on birth features encourages white nationalism. If being matters then Whiteness matters. If what was pop culture is white culture then the Whiteness of it matters too. In a country that is still majority white for the next three decades and depending on immigration changes longer, that demographic has power.
The average American white male was the loser of globalism. The Trump supporter is similar to a study on rats as written in the New York Times, “The best verified animal model of depression consists of social defeat. A dominant rat is placed in a cage with a younger, stronger rat from another group. When the dominant rat is defeated, several features emerge. The defeated rat is reclusive, hyper-vigilant, avoidant, and shows an incapacity to experience pleasure.” The Obama coalition was a moment for a future America. A moment of change. The now reviled and then reviled as well white American male was an important piece of the coalition, the Midwestern firewall. The professional class has always been dominant; the working class had their fiefdoms maybe not to the charm of a New Yorker but a loving community home to the residents. That has been stolen and the working class re-dominated. The recession recover deepened the destruction of their middle class world of the last thirty years. Longer than many of the preachers of Identity have been living. 2016 will be remembered as the year that Americans first had the chance to elect a government focused on all citizens but both Trump and Clinton relied on identity. Trump did the math and Clinton expected shame to continue to hold the peace. The basket of deplorables comment probably ended her campaign. Trump did a barebone dog whistle to be sure but Clinton attacked the one group she needed because of identity politics. Being a first isn’t an enough, a campaign is more than a self- esteem booster. That last part is intended to the Trump voters and the chaos they chose as well.
We are a broken people divided. The New York Times has an op-ed about not going easy on the failures of men. Especially taking aim at the concept as men as the breadwinner and that being the sole responsibility. While I agree that men and woman should do portional housework based on earnings level. The problem is not just that men do less housework or are selfish about the tasks. It is that the stay at home dad is an undesired solution. Here is an interesting Dear Sugar on the subject. Women are more likely to cheat and divorce as the breadwinner. This dissonance is tearing apart our families. We cannot just shame a better tomorrow. So much of the strife and divisions center on money and for some luxury. I think if the pay ratio dropped from the average of 204: 1 CEO to worker to 50:1 at every company, we would see an American renaissance. I think that it would aid the race and gender and sexuality pay gap and earnings gap. I think it would ease the financial burden on families and save marriages. It would rise up all peoples and exclude no American from the better tomorrow. New divisions will not heal the old ones. Shame is not persuasion.
-E.C. Fiori
Day 26: There is no House
Everyone knows the house always wins. The American republic may have an elite, but as this election show, they don’t own the system. Trump showed that for both media output, both left and right publishers endorsed Clinton. They might pay eighteen bucks to see a celebrity, but they won’t let that celebrity decide their fate. There is no house in America, just we the people.
-E.C. Fiori
Day 8: The Eye of a Neon Hurricane, The Nation of Patty Hearst, Democratization of Fear
When reading the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the UNABomber, currently serving eight life sentences in a supermax prison in Colorado, he comes off as surprisingly sane. This is troubling, because one has to ask the question why a sane person would spend 17 years mailing bombs all around the country, claiming three lives and wounding 23.
Through my close reading of his work and original published manifesto, I’ve come to the conclusion that he is a fanatic. It is not that he is divorced from reality in a medical way, but in an ideological one. The crux of his ideology is that the industrial revolution was a disaster for mankind: technology is destroying the natural world, and robs humanity of its autonomy. To cope with the crippling personal effect of technology we increasingly turn to it as our salvation, the cycle continues, et cetera, et cetera.
Written in 1995, the manifesto does strike a certain chord in me. As someone who has lived in cities for the past decade, I have felt the effects of urbanization and a complete alienation with the natural.
What interests me, however, is the increasing sense of an urbanization of the mind. With the leaps forward in technology, we are increasingly surrounded by ever more hysterical media apparatus, that exists not to push an ideology as conspiracy theorists would have us believe, but for our attention.
We’ve become the nation of Patty Hearst, all trapped in the closet with the megaphone blaring the ragged mantra over and over: “Keep watching.” The neon hurricane is ever present, and the eye is fixed on us. It’s no wonder everyone is trapped in their own echo chambers politically, no wonder there is so much fear and loathing in a country where there is no great war or depression.
Most damaging is the painful truth that the urbanization of the mind has led to a loss of identity en masse. Some retreat to the old answers of tribalism (both the right and the left). We do not know who we are anymore: culture, our connection to the land- all of it has been painfully stripped away by our modern life, a life that only exists because of technology. Entertainment is the only “culture” left, given more importance than ever before because of the crucial release it provides. Because it is all we are left with, it alone reverberates with the anxieties we share- a democratization of fear. All of our science fiction asks the question “what does it mean to be human”. The very question we desperately seek an answer to.
-Jack Delaney
Day 7: The Audacity of Denial
America voted for Donald Trump, not choosing the name out of thin air but based on his eighteen month campaign in which he presented ideas that vanquished nineteen other contenders. He was far from the only “outsider” that stood on the stage. If you are wondering why I am saying this, it is because many people have reacted to Trump’s election with “we don’t know what he will do”. We aren’t discussing what happens in a black hole. The man may have not laid out clear policies, but he did propose many ideas for executive orders and laws.
We cannot deny the words, he ran on. Whether it is dancing with the notion of a forced registry for muslims or withdrawing from NATO. He has time to announce new plans. While we wait we can see his daughter using the presidential light to advertise her jewelry line. As Giuliani said we won’t want to put his kids out of work by putting his assets into a trust like every past president in the modern era. We would not want a separation between wealth and authority. Not that they couldn’t start new ventures quite easily, I wonder if Ivanka or Trump owns the jewelry company. I doubt he will put his other unknown economic interests both domestic and foreign outside Trump corp. We never saw the tax returns, another modern precedent from the richest nominee in history that includes George Washington. Along with the hacked emails, I feel I am looking at a Nixon. Post watergate pre hearing, speaking of past presidents with IRS and legal issues. This is the man is currently mulling arresting his defeated political opponent. This is not American democracy. This is a banana republic. Brietbart is Trumptv. He never needed to start his own network.
On the Supreme Court, he will seek a nominee that will overturn Roe v Wade, but keep Obergefell v. Hodges. Not sure what the logic is behind that. The Roberts court oddly enough is the last institution that could redeem itself. The final guardian of the constitution. Each justice must live up to the higher ideals bestowed upon the court by our Founders. Equal justice for all. Ensuring freedom continues by preventing government overreach. I trust the court will fulfill its duties and pray that no harm befalls any of the current justices during Trump’s presidency.
-E.C. Fiori
The Radical Centrists 