I see a bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin’
I see bad times today… From “Bad Moon Rising” by John Fogerty
Ever since he descended the gold escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the presidency, through the primary season, his take-over of the Oval Office, and until this very day, Donald Trump has painted a grim apocalyptic America replete with vicious murderous marauding intercity gangs, crumbling crime-laden cities and towns, foreign nations fleecing our economy, and invading hoards at the borders bent on gobbling up our jobs and rapping our women. And he promised that “Only I can fix it.”
The U.S. Department of Defense informed Private Bonespurs that he cannot have his military parade, so, instead, he decided to parade the military on our southern border.
Even before many of the ballots were counted in the mid-term elections, and a couple of hours before the White House announced the forced retirement of Attorney General Jeff Session, Trump held one of his increasingly rare official press so-called conferences in front of the assembled media.
Though he was willing and relatively able to answer directly some of the reporters’ softball questions, such as his impressions about the results of the elections, he rarely if ever allowed people to complete their questioning before he interrupted by either diverting into a topic he wished to address, whether it had anything to do with the focus of the intended query, or he lodged into unhinged insults and threats.
And, as per the Trumpian style, he accused anyone and everyone but himself for all problems. He blamed former President Obama for Russia’s march into and annexation of Crimea, and, therefore, seemed to justify his not confronting Putin on the illegal invasion.
Each hour of every day, Trump tosses into the press pool a worthless nugget of sparkling fool’s gold or shiny mica as diversionary and distracting lures to reporters whom he sees as hungry and eager hunters for scoops and meager scraps of breaking news. Often, these lures include attacks on the media itself.
At the press conference (a.k.a. ranting tantrum), Trump accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of being “a rude, terrible person” for pressing him on why he refers to asylum-seeking hundreds of miles from the southern border as “an invasion.”
After NBC’s Peter Alexander defended Acosta, Trump told Alexander “I’m not a big fan of yours. Just sit down, please.” He also demanded that Urban Radio’s April Ryan sit down when she tried to direct a question.
Yamiche Alcindor, a White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, stood up and asked whether Trump’s frequent embrace of the term “nationalist” was a nod or a dog whistle to “white nationalism,” as many of the President’s detractors claim. Trump erupted once again by accusing Alcindor:
That’s such a racist question,” he charged. “What you just said is so insulting to me. It’s a very terrible thing that you said.
Trump has constructed a false dichotomy with “nationalist” on one end and “globalist” on the other. Throughout his run for the White House and up until today, he has been very deliberate when screaming into his bully bullhorn in his adoption of the term “nationalist” over “patriot.” The former term traditionally refers to an extremist form of “white” national identity or jingoism.
Speaking at the historic Arc de Triomphe in Paris at a ceremony commemorating World War I in which Trump was in attendance, France’s President Macron directly cleared up any confusion between the terms, while warning of the deadly perils of the past:
Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” said Macron. “By saying our interests first [a not-so-subtle rebuke of Trump’s ‘American first’ policies], who cares about the others, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values.
On the right-wing side of the dictatorial strongmen’s political spectrum, we find the philosophy and practice of “fascism.” While also deployed as an epithet by some, fascism developed as a form of radical authoritarian nationalism in early-20th century Europe in response to liberalism and Marxism on the left.
Macron was very mindful of history in his remarks:
I know there are old demons which are coming back to the surface. They are ready to wreak chaos and death,” he said. “History sometimes threatens to take its sinister course once again.
Umberto Eco, who grew up under the fascist Mussolini regime, enumerates the characteristics of what he calls “Ur-Fascism,” or “Eternal Fascism” in 14 “typical” features. He stressed that “These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”
Trump, in his words, actions, and policy declarations fully embraces most of Eco’s tenets of fascism. For example, “the cult of tradition” (“Make America Great Again”), “the rejection of modernism” (globalism), “disagreement is treason” (no comment needed), “fear of difference” (ditto), “obsession with a plot” (“it’s a witch hunt,” “Democrat election fraud”), “machismo,” and others.
Once identifying himself as a Democrat, Donald Trump has twisted himself, at the very least, into the mouthpiece of the far-right-wing of the Republican Party transforming it into a Trumpian Party.
By turning his back on former U.S. alliances, pulling out of prior treaty agreements, collapsing into nationalist isolationism, this President encourages conditions that led to the rise of fascism in a post-World War I world.
And I don’t believe it mere coincidence that as I’m writing these words, on my radio comes the sounds of Jean Sibelius’s Symphony # 3, final movement subtitled: “The Crystallization of Chaos.”
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