It’s been awhile since my last T.H.R.E.A.T. (Trump Human Rights Erosion And Termination) Watch post. That’s because things haven’t deteriorated as rapidly as I feared in the areas that worry me most: the suppression of free speech, including suppression of the press, and the targeting of minority groups and immigrants. All kinds of other things have gone to hell, but the press has risen to the challenge and spoken truth to power instead of cowering behind weak condemnations and false equivalencies, and the courts have blunted Trump’s assault on immigrants. Things could be much worse.
But we have to be wary of the “frogs in a pot of water” scenario where we don’t notice a gradual increase in heat until we find ourselves up to our necks in boiling water. Over the past few weeks, I’ve felt a gradual, worrisome temperature increase, and it’s not from the Tucson heat wave.
The media has not only been standing its ground against the assaults from Trump, it’s been going the extra mile, doing what the press is supposed to do. It’s been a watchdog, scrutinizing the daily outrages of the Trump administration and putting extra staff on investigative duty, trying to ferret out possible/probable wrongdoings by the Trump campaign and the possible/probable coverups of the wrongdoing now that he’s president. Recently, however, Trump has stepped up his attacks on the media, which worries me because I’ve seen how quickly members of the press can go from brave to bullied when they’re hit by a flood of negative pressure. Trump reached back to the haemophobic [fear of blood] attack he used against Megyn Kelly, this time targeting Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski with a despicable tweet. Days later Trump retweeted a video of him putting a body slam on CNN. In a July 3 tweet, he predicted that the press will praise him at some point, tellingly using the verb “forced”:
At some point the Fake News will be forced to discuss our great jobs numbers, strong economy, success with ISIS, the border & so much else!
“Forced.” Trump would love to have the power to force the press to bend to his will. He hasn’t figured out how to do it, but he’s trying harder with each passing day. Whether he thinks the walls are closing in on him with the latest revelations in the Russia probe or he’s just pissed, he’s growing increasingly aggressive toward the press. Members of the media are standing their ground, but that can change.
Trump’s ban on people traveling to the U.S. from six predominantly Muslim countries has finally begun, though in a limited form. The courts have said he can only keep people out who don’t have a “bona fide relationship” with someone in the U.S., so his administration is using the most restrictive and punitive definition of “bona fide relationship” it can, excluding, among others, grandparents, aunts and uncles. People from the six banned countries tend to have strong extended family ties which go well beyond the nuclear family. The Trump administration’s limits on what is considered a bona fide relationship are culturally insensitive and insulting, which, I imagine, is the point. And a future Supreme Court ruling favorable to a complete travel ban for those six countries is always a possibility, given the conservative makeup of the court.
Meanwhile, undocumented immigrants in this country are feeling an escalation of the pressure being put on them and their families. Detentions, arrests and deportations are becoming increasingly frequent and arbitrary, even for people who have been here for years and haven’t done anything to make them likely targets for deportation. Picking your child up from school, driving in a car and going to the courthouse all put undocumented people at increasing risk. Even picking up a child from a detention center can lead to arrest. And at any time, a knock on the door can be the signal that a family member will be taken into custody, tearing a family apart. It’s not simply the number of people being picked up. It’s the randomness of the events. One purpose of terrorism is to make people feel unsafe. “At any moment, without warning, I could be next.” Random roundups of undocumented immigrants, and stopping of people who look to the immigration police like they could “illegals,” are designed to strike terror in the hearts of communities where undocumented immigrants live.
Things could be worse, but things definitely aren’t good. The damage Trump has wrought on the nation has been slowed by the courts, the media and his low approval ratings. But no question, it’s getting hotter out here.
This article appears in Jun 29 – Jul 5, 2017.
The Viability of our Political System is being tested like it has never been tested before. Congress must put Country before Party and Remove this Inveterate Liar and Crook, Donald Trump, from Office.
First, the President is right to point out that the media have abandoned even the pretense of objectivity, and are now acting essentially as an opposition political party. Safier has it backwards when he says the media speak truth to power. It’s the opposite. The media are the powerful in this country. They define the culture. They mediate which opinions are acceptable, and punish those that are forbidden. They are the mouthpieces of the coastal cultural elite and the enforcers of their public morality. Trump, by contrast, represents a sort of dissident, populist counterculture. When Trump resists the media, he is speaking truth to their power.
Second, let’s remember that Trump’s travel ban has widespread popular support, garnering 60% in a recent poll. The people of our country have the right to determine who we invite to join our national community. Prospective immigrants (and unelected judges) don’t get to make that decision – we do. If national sovereignty means anything, it means that.
Third, lawbreakers, like illegal immigrants, should feel pressure and anxiety. That’s right and proper. If illegals are anxious about being deported, maybe they should go home.
Nathan K: In response: Mr. Safier is on the Mark!!!!.
“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship (Donald Trump) to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you (Donald Trump), the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history (Donald Trump).
On the receiving end you get not only one lie..a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please. “…(the Plan of Donald Trump)
John Adams Letter to Thomas Jefferson (15 July 1817)
“Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.
Yes, David. Keep the focus on Trump. That way you don’t have to deal with the issues that matter to most of the electorate or with what’s happened to the Democratic Party, which Ralph Nader outlines very well in the quote below, emphasis mine:
“The Democrats began the process of message preceding policy. […] That means they kept saying how bad the Republicans are. They campaigned not by saying, look how good we are, were going to bring you full Medicare [for all], were going to crack down on corporate crime against workers and consumers and the environment, stealing, lying, cheating you. Were going to get you a living wage. Were going to get a lean defense, a better defense, and get some of this money and start rebuilding your schools and bridges and water and sewage systems and libraries and clinics. Instead of saying that, they campaign by saying ‘Can you believe how bad the Republicans are?’ […] they say to their progressive wing, ‘Youve got nowhere to go, get off our back.’ And this went right into the scapegoating of the last twenty years. ‘Oh, its Nader, oh, its the Koch Brothers, oh, its the electoral college, oh, its misogyny, oh, its redneck deplorables.’ THEY NEVER LOOK AT THEMSELVES IN THE MIRROR.”
When it comes to why we are where we are, with Trump in the White House, it is indeed the mirror that the Democrats need to consult. They have lost credibility with the working class and with much of the professionally educated middle class. They can’t and / or won’t stand up to corporate America and its lobbyists and they continue to pretend that all that matters is identity politics. They will lose again if they cannot recognize that it’s the ECONOMIC REALITIES people who work for a living face that can unite and mobilize the base that used to trust the Democratic Party, but no longer does. You know: all those people who voted for Obama and then Trump. We would not be where we are now if those ECONOMICALLY motivated voters had been given a candidate with a Sanders-style, not a Clinton-style message.
Francis, with respect, come on! The president criticizing the press does not threaten the free press. No one is being stopped from printing anything.
The press deserves to be taken down a peg or two. Let’s stop pretending that journalists are saintly warrior-monks fighting selflessly for the Truth. In fact, these people are 110 IQ liberal arts majors who couldn’t pass calculus in college, scored too low on the LSAT to get into a good law school, and got stuffed into lockers by all the kids going to business school when they were in high school. They are just a pack of half-bright political activists, no different than a party or a PAC.
The press represent a particular, narrow range of opinions held by the coastal elites. Something like 90 percent of them vote Democrat. They have an axe to grind, and they are happy to lie to advance that agenda. For example:
In just the last six months, the Washington Post was forced to retract two Russian hacking stories (one about the “penetration of the utility grid” that didn’t happen, and one about the “secret back channel connection between a Trump Tower server and a Russian bank”);
The New York Times was forced to retract their claim about “17 U.S. intelligence agencies” concurring in an assessment regarding Russian hacking, they printed a libelous editorial blaming Sarah Palin for the Gabby Giffords shooting (for which they will be paying out healthy settlement), and in sworn testimony, Comey said that a Times story claiming frequent contacts between Trump campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government was “almost entirely wrong.”
CNN was forced to institute new editorial approval procedures and fired three reporters after printing a completely fake story about Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian hedge fund manager.
And I could go on. These people deserve to be criticized.
The Press has exercised their freedom. And with it they have chosen to lie.
Nathan K.: There is No Perfect System…and the Press has, as you have aptly pointed out, made mistakes. But…when these errors are discovered, they are quickly corrected!!!
There is, of course a diversity of opinion and a tendentiousness in the Press. It is for the Citizen to review, Critically, what has been said and make an informed decision!
“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.” –Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491
“Meanwhile, undocumented immigrants in this country are feeling an escalation of the pressure being put on them and their families”
— Oh my gosh we are enforcing our immigration laws, call the police!
We’re not just enforcing immigration laws, bslap. If that were all that was happening, maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal.
What we are in fact doing is terrorizing entire demographics of people based on their skin color, heritage, style of dress, etc. No one is banning or harassing or racially profiling Canadians, even though real live terrorists actually did enter the U.S. from their country and even though Canadians make up a big portion of the people who are in the U.S. without proper documentation.
Our immigration policies and enforcement are racist, plain and simple–which is not only morally indefensible, it’s unconstitutional, as Tchump is discovering, much to the dismay of his tiny racist heart.
Skinnyman, 5.3% of the U.S.’s illegal alien population come from Canada and Europe. That’s not a “big portion”. By contrast 74% of our illegal aliens come from Mexico, Central America or South America. See http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/11/18/chap….
American immigration laws (and their enforcement) do not become “racist” simply because most of the people choosing to break them have dark skin.
Francis( Big Words) Siatta is big on the constitution. Wonder how he feels about the 2nd amendment? Or does he just like the ones he agrees with.