Fake News and Trump: A Lie By Any Other Name

What does the president imply when he cries out “fake news”?  

He means that the news media have made up a story about him: that the story is fiction, something someone dreamed up out of whole cloth.  The report is an “imaginary story” with no factual basis in reality, in other words. 

Now what does that tell us about Trump’s knowledge of journalism?  It is not a profession in which he could have found success.  Since he has such a fuzzy sense of where the line is drawn between truth and fiction, he could never have achieved a reputation for honest reporting. 

His gigantic ego would prevent him from down-sizing his exaggerated use of superlatives and frantic denials to manageable bite-size chunks of reliable information and facts, otherwise known as the truth. 

Trump appears contemptuous of the reliable and demonstrable distinctions between falsehoods and truth and hence could never be depended upon to speak or write truthfully.  His first year in office has demonstrated his ignorance and weird Twitter double-speak over and over again.

He seems oblivious to the fact that real journalism has very high standards, that it requires a college degree and hands on practical experience working with skilled veteran reporters. 

Journalists routinely practice double-checking of sources and even triple-checking of facts for the most important stories: multiple reliable sources are required that go well beyond just a rumor or gossip sheet.  Reliable journalists do not make up stories but report their findings.    

There is also a huge difference between subjective opinionated venting and objective fact-based writing.  As huge a difference as there is, Trump does not seem able to grasp the fundamental distinction.  He has no moral compass, no truthful center with which to control his narcissism, paranoia, and Machiavellian duplicity. 

Instead, he favors substituting his own subjective judgment for approving or disapproving of news articles: what he likes he approves; what he doesn’t like he calls “fake news”. 

Even here, he doesn’t understand the difference between disliking a news report and insisting it is “fake”, made up, and therefore of no further consequence.  Meanwhile, news reporters have been educating the American people about the inconsistencies of Trumps’ behavior and beliefs. 

For the president to try and wave off a year’s worth of in-depth investigative reporting in the age of the Internet, is as pathetic as it is alarming.  Has the man no sense of decency? 

Certainly, anyone is free to criticize an irksome article for its point of view; if a person (including the president) has additional facts to enlighten others, he can cite them.  

When Trump doesn’t bother to do either—criticize rationally or offer new factual material—he is left looking like a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum.  "I'm the greatest but I can't get all the papers in the country to agree with me!"    

There are times when reporters merely attribute to him certain well-known remarks he has made, which he then denies—and yet there is often video available showing him making those remarks!  

He has become lost in Alice in Wonderland, depending heavily upon derisive and insulting language to put people down rather than cultivating thoughtful and rational responses.

To claim the reporters are “faking the news" when there is incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, is worse than egotism and narcissism—it has the smell of arrogance with which despotism begins. 

He is deliberately attacking the free press, a fundamental blessing of the American nation!

Of course, Trump can’t bring himself to simply say “it’s not true” because any further discussion would soon make clear who is factual and who is covering up.  

That’s why he relies so frequently upon a short two-word phrase that he can utter quickly and dismissively before he is forced to field any probing questions for which he has no real answers: “Fake news, fake question, fake you, bye!”    

What is Trump really saying about himself when he throws out the term “fake news” so indiscriminately?  

He is saying: “You caught me in a lie.  I have no better response since the truth is not on my side.” 

He means: “I often make up excuses and insults when I have nothing of substance to say.  You see, I regularly deal in half-truths and innuendos when my critics make points I cannot answer.”

The ridiculous arrogance is bad enough; narcissistic personalities seem to have a whole range of questionable traits and poor-judgment issues. (He would make an excellent case for psychiatric study were it not for the fact he's the president.)  

Yet beyond the clown-like buffoonery of a megalomaniac, this particular kind of unrepentant conceit is especially dangerous.  It represents an embryonic step that typically precedes the emergence of a dictatorship: such as the attacks on a free press by Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler. 

None of them could abide an unfettered press for obvious reasons.  The Nazis swiftly seized control of newspapers.  Trump is now launching his first tentative attacks upon a free press--a stalwart guardian of our liberties--with outrageous accusations and falsehoods.

The shift to the right that leaves the democratic arena must start somewhere: and this is, historically, one of its best-known- and most infamous starting points: attack the freedom of the press.   

If ever in the future the United States government starts down the slippery slope toward dictatorship, future historians will search out and mark the date the slide began as coinciding exactly with the administration of Donald John Trump. 

When Trump cries “Fake news” he is telling the world the truth is not on his side.  He long ago decided that his only recourse would be to try and damage news-reporting through insult and smears. 

A man who has so little respect for America’s democratic freedom of the press--a man who fails to recognize the high journalistic standards reporters set for themselves--is no longer a representative of the people acting on his pledge to defend the Constitution and its freedoms. 

At times he behaves more like a dictator-in-the-making than a president carrying out his sworn oath to defend individual and institutional liberties, including freedom of the press. 

His unbridled arrogance has grown especially dangerous because he has taken the first step on the path away from American democracy and toward controlling the press with dictatorial pretensions.

We should not be fooled by Trump's repetitious cry of “fake news!”  His response betrays better than anything else a fundamental flaw in his character as well as a gaping hole in his knowledge of the responsibilities of the presidency: his inability to distinguish truth from fiction. 

What we see is a grotesquely swollen ego unable to handle even the smallest criticism gracefully and thoughtfully.  We see repeatedly in the president’s actions a stubborn unwillingness to treat journalists decently and their investigative findings with the appreciation and respect they deserve.   

He has apparently not yet learned another valuable lesson, that facts also are quite stubborn things; they do not go away because of narcissistic wishful thinking and bombastic fallacious accusations. 

The next time Trump cries “Fake news” the American people must hear what he is really saying:

“You have caught me in a lie.  I can have no other response since the truth is not on my side.”  

Women's Rights: The Fight Goes On!

American society has undergone a number of major changes since its founding, perhaps none more striking than the transformation of the role of women from a position of subservience and obedience to men, to one of far greater independence in nearly all spheres of life.

While Thomas Jefferson’s famous phrase “All men are created equal” is generally interpreted as a universal declaration of human rights and a belief in the inherent equality of all people, in a practical sense the new nation did not extend equality to all people; women, African-Americans, and Native Americans were excluded.

Only white men who owned property could vote, not women; this was a right women did not acquire until the 19^th Amendment passed in 1920, some 144 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

Even then it was not given to them, as though everyone woke up one day from a long dream and said: “Oh my god, we forgot to give the women the right to vote!”

Quite the contrary—a vigorous struggle for the vote, despite vigorous opposition, began as early as 1850.  In other words, a woman’s right to vote was granted by Congress only after an intense seventy-year struggle by women to achieve it!

In 1848 the call went out for the first women’s rights convention.  Among the new leaders, no others stand out more than Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott. 

These three women were determined to bring about a revolution in social values and the legal rights of women--and they succeeded to a remarkable degree. 

Even so, Susan B. Anthony, her friends and co-workers, soon found they were hemmed in on every side no matter which way they turned; it appeared at first as though they did not have enough room, resources, and support to even begin the struggle!

However, these three exceptionally determined women were not about to be stopped by men, the law, or social prejudices against women taking matters into their own hands. 

There were several key reforms they hoped to bring about for women, including suffrage (the right to vote), the right to own property, and changes to the divorce laws. 

Moreover, they demanded greater opportunities for women in education and the workplace while at the same time they actively supported abolitionism and temperance.

As they began this Herculean feat of organizing women, they often found their proposals being defeated in state legislatures controlled by men. 

It was Susan B. Anthony’s genius to realize that all of their goals should not be given equal weight—one reform above all others was desperately needed first: the right to vote. 

Why?  Because women could not hope to pass laws favorable to improving their own condition if they had no opportunity to vote—and so began that long seventy-year struggle for the right of suffrage: ultimately successful in the year 1920 when Congress passed a new amendment to the Constitution:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied

or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. 

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate

legislation.” (Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution)

This was a great day for women but this was hardly the end of the movement started by the suffragists.  To the contrary, this was an accomplishment that meant women could start pushing for their equal rights even harder!

With the vote, they could start pushing open the door to full social and legal equality with men.  

Gaining the right to vote had proven something quite valuable: women had the capacity to define their own needs and goals. They also learned that by working together (along with enlightened male allies) there was no longer any reform that was out of reach.

However much opposition they would encounter from narrow-minded men, they had gained great confidence in their own abilities and new sense of purpose. 

The difficulties the early pioneers of the women’s rights movement faced in organizing had been largely overcome; they had created a movement that was picking up steam rapidly and which, in truth, could no longer be stopped. 

Women had proven to themselves that their time had come.  The struggle for equality with men did not end with the passing of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution; rather, it had only just begun!

Gaining the vote soon raised new questions for women concerning which candidates and legislation to support.  The vote of women working together could now make the decisive difference in the passage or defeat of proposed new laws. 

Soon women would be running for office themselves and were being elected to local offices in cities and counties—after that came election to state offices and finally to Congress itself: the House first and then the Senate. 

Their numbers in the Senate remain disproportionately low seen as a percentage of the total population, but they at least cracked open the door that was once closed to them.

Four women have been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court: the first being Sandra Day O‘Connor in 1981, followed by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993, Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 (the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice), and the most recent being Elana Kagen in 2010.

Senator Hilary Clinton ran for president in 2008; despite a hard-fought primary campaign, the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama.  She ran again in 2016 and won the popular vote by nearly three million votes but still lost in the antiquated Electoral College.  

Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly clear that the election of the first woman president of the United States is drawing ever closer.

Way back in the mid-nineteenth century, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott were starting a conversation about something needing to be done.

They could not have foresees all the outcomes of their struggle but they understood that women had to begin this fight for equality, come what may.

They would face ridicule and scorn; efforts were made to prevent them from speaking in public; platforms were upturned and mobs drove them from meeting halls; Susan B. Anthony and others were arrested when they tried to vote.

Female demonstrators faced hostile crowds and physical danger from hostile onlookers; when on hunger strikes while in jail they were force-fed in a most excruciating manner against their will.  

They were treated as social outcasts, trouble-makers, and radical non-conformists who threatened the “social order”--meaning the status quo as defined by men, of course!

Through it all, through all the storms, through all the highs and lows of a very long struggle, they persisted--and from each new generation stepped forward more brave women to carry the struggle forward. 

The women had the momentum of history, of progressive change on their side, and they had the language of the Declaration of Independence on their side.  

These pioneers in the women’s movement believed that the American people are committed to fairness and justice and that, through simple moral persuasion, ordinary people can and will be convinced that the law must be equal for all.

These earliest champions fighting for women’s rights expressed a burning desire to bring about dynamic change in the lives of American women—and I believe we can all agree that we have benefited, as Americans, from their courage and determination.

They did it well, making it possible for women today to enjoy freedoms they themselves never knew.  We are their children grown of age, pledged to honor their struggle and sacrifice!

It is up to us to keep alive the story of the courage and resolve they showed in the face of strong opposition, grave danger, and the limiting inequalities of the past. 

It is our turn to share, and pass on to others, this heroic story of their bold commitment to the American promise of justice and equality for all people everywhere!

IN HONOR OF

       SUSAN B. ANTHONY

ELZABETH CADY STANTON

LUCRETIA MOTT

And All the Other Brave Women

In The Never-Ending Struggle for Women’s Equality

Trump No Draft Dodger He

Let’s get one thing straight:

The president is Commander-in-Chief so how could President Trump ever be a “draft-dodger”?  Naw, not the rich!  It’s their draft!  They draft others, not themselves!  You can’t hold a president responsible for being a draft-dodger just because he had tons of money.

Why, it would be like looking at a slave owner and calling him a “slave dodger”.  What sense does that make?  None whatsoever!  Southern masters were born to own black people the way sons of rich people are born to avoid military service lest they hurt themselves.

Trump had a rendezvous with Lady Destiny: Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, lots of golf courses, the White House.  Expecting somebody like Silver Spoon Trump to serve is unrealistic.   It would be like expecting him to join in a march to protest injustice! 

He’s got better things to do and if he didn’t do them, who knows who would do them or if such things, whatever they are, would ever even get done?

The latest crop of presidents did not reach the White House by fighting alongside their fellow Americans.  They know how to make and spend a buck, not how to sing freedom songs in jail.  That takes a different kind of man to risk his life for freedom, like the first president. 

Washington was a soldier but only because there was no television.  Washington was the Father of his Country—and Trump, the Father of a reality TV show.  There’s no difference, see? 

The only risks rich sons take is usually of the financial, not the physical, kind.  Today Trump has men guarding him wherever he goes, with good reason.  Trump wasn’t born to be drafted; he was born to be guarded. 

Even if he was a draft-dodger, well, chalk it up to Destiny, Fate, Lady Luck, or whatever else you may wish to call it.  Other young men served, bled, and died but Trump had a date with destiny--on a golf course called Mar-a-Lago.

Trump v. Journalists

It seems to me our journalists are getting a mite soft in the head lately. They are forgetting how to ask tough questions.

It’s not enough to join in the debate over whether Trump used a naughty word.

It’s not enough to ask Trump: “Are you a racist?”

We already know he can muddy the water faster than a 200 pound catfish settling on a river bottom. We already know he can deny, twist, and distort any such question. He delights in doing so! There are other questions to ask:

Mr. President, do you believe Black people are equal to white people?

Did you go to segregated schools?

Did your father discriminate against Black people in apartment rentals?

Did you have any Black friends growing up? (Do you have any today?)

Do you think all Americans are entitled to justice and equality, regardless of skin color?

And these questions are just for starters! We need tough, probing questions that can dig into the real Trump. Our journalists are becoming powder-puffs afraid to ask the daring question:

“Mr. President, if your daughter had wanted to marry a Black man, what would you have said?”

Now he may hesitate and search for the “politically correct” answer but that hesitation would speaks volumes! and be worth more than his answer.

Asking “Mr. Trump, did you or did you not say ‘shit-hole’?” is not enough!

Asking “Mr. Trump, are you a racist?” is not nearly enough!!

Our journalists need to ask much tougher probing questions to get beneath the surface of his thinking. Anybody can teach him to say “I am not a racist.”

Does anyone think he would answer differently? He won’t admit that he is, even if he is.

His true feelings will not become visible until he is asked some mighty tough questions.

Where are our sharpest journalists when we need them the most?! 

Born Again Christians: Remarks on Glory

(Remarks made at the 8^th Annual Convention of First Borners and Born Again Reconveners)

“Born again Christian”: now there’s a phrase to give one pause!  I reckon it must have something to do with reincarnation as there are born again Buddhists too.  I’m not sure if mothers are asked how they feel about having to go through labor twice in order to comply.  The hospital bill would skyrocket (insurance premiums might go up) so then hubbies would get upset and want to know why their wives have to give birth twice to the same kid.  That’s what twins are for, right? 

“Just a moment . . . note here delivered . . . OH!  I see, I’m barking up the wrong apple tree, it appears . . . it’s a religious idea and not a biological phenomenon . . . well, they should have thought of a better name . . .”  

            Well, now it’s even more of a head-scratcher than before!  If a Christian is a Christian the first time through and through, then what in thunder does he need to relive what he is and what he’s done, hmm?  Was he not sure the first time?  Better that than a dead again heathen?  It would make more sense to become a Born Again Luncher, at least then you would get to eat two lunches . . .

“Just a moment, what’s that you say?  I’m missing the point?  Why confound it, if a person is to be born all over why in tarnation can’t he just choose which . . . oh, never mind.  The matter is confusing enough as it is!”

            I reckon the Anabaptists, if there are any left, would be pretty pleased with the whole kit and caboodle.  Yes, I believe it was them who said it wasn’t enough for a baby to be born a Christian one time, that all that Christianizing still didn’t amount to a hill of beans until the baby grew up and was old enough to want to be a Christian and would say so and invite friends to watch as he took the necessary steps to make it so . . . this “born again” stuff is right out of the Anabaptist playbook for sure! 

The only odd thing about these chaps today needing to do the same as the old Anabaptists were a-choosing to do is this one tiny little hiccup: THE ANABAPTISTS WERE HERETICS!  And not just any old run-of-the-mill heresy-spouting Heretics neither but they wuz way up high on the list near the top when they weren’t number one which was most of the time! 

The only difference between “born again” and “baptized again” is . . . I forget now but there is a difference and even is there isn’t that just confirms my first point I was trying to make which is there isn’t any difference, not really. 

The “Born Again” group controls so much already with their wealth and mega-churches it’s amazing they even remember which denomination they is or why they thought it wise to go after catching the Relapsers and build a road for them who were already christianized at birth or childhood or adolescence and who were doing a mess of backsliding until they decided they needed to be reborn (you know, borrow from the supernatural like Lazarus rising from the dead) and then there was that road already a-built and a-waiting for them.

“Born Again” is an invite to Relapse into Sin without too much to worry about since all dangers fragmentary or substantial will be dissolved later when the escape door opens and the church rounds up the Relapsers and bops them over the head and tells ‘em they done forgot what they wuz so now they needs to remind themselves by going through it all a second time. 

This done give them some powerful bragging rights too since the first-time-born Christians who stayed true were a pretty passive lot with not much flash or color and hardly any good Relapsing stories to tell.  They got born, got baptized, attended Sunday School, and had stamped on their hands and foreheads “You’re a Christian” and they never really tried to question the stamp or wash it off, 

their philosophy being “once a Christian always a Christian” which is a fairly ordinary lifestyle when you consider it (take a deep breath) but Born Agains tend to add onto life’s little pleasures many stories of great extreme and unctuous hardship far worse than anybody else’s, real or imaginary, followed by a timely eye-uplifting epiphany of sorts that raises them far above the First Borners inasmuch as the Second Borners practically had an invite from Christ Almighty his own glory self to return to the path which made them almost able to see god-in-the-flesh to hear them bragging about it . . . .  

            Why, this pattern got so obvious that a whole bunch of First Borners decided privately to go off the road—the tried and true narrow path of perpetual righteousness--and indulge in all kinds of drinking and whoring and excesses of sin-and-shame of just every old kind you can name just so they could sober up later and come back to the flock and cry out unto the congregation “Forgives me but I is now born again!” and the congregation would rise to their feet and surround the lucky chap and pound him on his back and shake his hand and even invite ‘im over for dinner and praise the lord! 

            “just a minute . . . been handed a note . . . hhmmm, the First Borners are complaining I done  insulted them when I said they wuz too wealthy already and had mega-churches and big fat bank accounts and that I wuz dealing in stereotypes, lies, falsehoods, calumnies, vicious vilifications, slander, and other such . . . and they demands an immediate apology because I am insinuating their prestigious religious power helps them maintain their prestigious social power and vice versa when (they affirm) nothing of the sort is true . . .”

            Well, I reckon they done chased me up the old apple tree a second time!  Fact is, I made a pretty big mistake pure and simple which I is about to fix, you’ll see.  I misnamed the wrong group, that’s all.  I didn’t mean to say it wuz the Christians who controlled society for their own benefit and to satisfy their longings of greed; it was the Jews, although I’m not sure if they are First Borners or Second Borners or a mix of both but still there’s a connection between . . .

            “Just a moment, been handed another note from the Committee to Protect the Honor of the First Born and Second Born Christians . . . let’s see what it says: they writes, “If all those Stereotypes, Lies, Falsehoods, Calumnies, Vicious Vilifications, Slander, and other such were aimed at the Jews and not the Christians then they find my statements to be perfectly factual on the face of it and 100% genuine accurate and they apologize and ask my forgiveness.”

            Hmmm, now all that turns into a “valid point”?  Well that’s not a problem for me.  I’m an old master of tracking Stereotypes as they fly from one group to the next . . . you know, cranium is wrong size or shape, too big or too small . . . the forehead is too high or too low . . . the eyes are too dark, the pupils too small, too slanted, too round . . . to say nothing of shades of skin color, smell, and just plain ugly-looking.  Sometimes I forget which group and which features is at the top and which group is at the bottom . . .

Nordic, Aryan, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, European, American . . . it’s hard to keep all the groups straight ‘cuz human beans come in so many sizes and shapes and features.  Me, I’m none of that high-falutin’ stuff—I’m just plain old me and that’s good enough for me, for you, for me-and-you.  I figures if you is born again then you can be dead again too and why repeat that experience twice?  Once is enough of life and death but if I is duplicating myself in any regards I reckon my choice is simple: I’ll be a Born Again American (regardless of how many times)—shucks, I would just choose to be a born again human being.