Donald Trump Archives - Institute of History, Archaeology, and Education

Trump Muskacre: Inauguration Day to Liberation Day

April 22, 2025
by Peter Feinman

The Trump Muskacre will become a distinct period in American history. True it continues to unfold so determining the true cost of the purported cost-savings project will take time. But it appears that its days are waning although its affects will be ongoing. Ostensibly it is commissioned to detect cost savings, inefficiencies and waste in the federal government in the amount of $2 trillion. In practice it brought a chainsaw to the federal government. It did so except perhaps based on the government programs and departments Trump does not like and then brutalizes them devoid of any intelligent thought.

In this Trump Muskacre, there was no indication of any identification of fraud, waste, or inefficiencies. Instead, its accomplishments are in imagination and ignorance. It has unleashed no-nothings on the government except for the desire to download personal data on American citizens and perhaps to make databases accessible to Russians and who know who else. Its alleged savings fall far short of the stated goal and are inaccurate. They display ignorance about how the government operates and a lack of desire to learn.

Still, there are lessons We the People can learn from the Trump Muskacre.

AREAS NOT TOUCHED

The areas not touched in the Trump Muskacre are an indicator of the goals of the assault.

“The Big Federal Contracts Musk’s Team Hasn’t Touched” NYT 3/7/25 full page article

“Psst, Musk, Look Over Hear” NYT 3/8/25 Michael Grunwald – Department of Agriculture

“Budget Ax May Benefit Contractors” NYT 3/15/25

The ten highest paid consulting firms scheduled to receive $65 billion in fees this year.
The government has cancelled few large contracts so far.
The increase in cutbacks up will increase the reliance on private firms.

The cutbacks have been imposed on the people who need help the most and where research can make the most difference.

HUMANITARIAN

“America Is Silent on the World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis” Nicholas Kristof March 20, 2025

“the Trump administration is now cutting back on humanitarian assistance, aggravating the situation” in Sudan. Soup kitchens are closed

“Our cutting of humanitarian means more children starving, and our silence about the U.A.E. probably means more atrocities.”

“Feds no longer offering free COVID home tests” USA Today March 19, 2025

“Experts Doubt Kennedy Timetable on Autism Cause” NYT April 12, 2025

“Children With Cholera Die Seeking Aid After U.S. Cuts” NYT April 12, 2025

This list could be expanded exponentially. It only increases with each passing day. While big contracts and agriculture are off limits, the people in need at home and abroad have suffered the most from the assault. Indeed scientific research seems to be a particularly favorite target whether it is directly by the government or funded by it at a university. These excludes all the cultural institutions who are being decimated either directly as federal organizations or indirectly as small museums, historical societies, and arts organizations throughout the country who receive federal funding. It used to be said that the Pentagon shared the wealth on large contracts nationwide to individual Congressional districts. The Trump Muskacre works in reverse: it spreads the pain nationally or wherever there are day-care centers or libraries. And this excludes national programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Veterans.

DOES THE RIGHT HAND KNOW WHAT THE LEFT HAND IS DOING?

“DOGE Cuts Hobble Experts in Moon and Mars Landing” (NYT April 16, 2025)

GPS doesn’t work so well on Mars and the Moon. In its place is the Astrogeology Science, part of the U.S. Geological Survey Center in the Department of the Interior. So in case the United States wanted to return to the Moon before China arrives or wanted to go to Mars, a Musk goal, there are people charged with mapping the landing sites and locating the hidden water-ice deposits that would make the journey a success. At least there were. And when the experienced people left due to retirement offers or simply being cut, they take that experience with them. Score one for China.

It’s a little like mandating k-12 schools to do something and then eliminating the Department of Education which would monitor it.

“A Story about the Environment that Almost Had a Happy Ending” (NYT March 23, 2025)

This article is about the restoration of the Klamath River valley through dam removal. It would bring back salmon and the small farms that have been suffering for so long. Just as these small rural communities and the Klamath Tribes of Oregon were on the brink of success from funding authorized in 2021 under President Biden, the funding was suspended. So close but so far away.

“Musk’s NOAA Staffing Cuts Put Salmon Harvests as Risk” (NYT April 11. 2025)

The Chinook salmon ecosystem is at risk. This affects tribal, commercial, and recreational fishing and they are a main source of food for endangered whale.

“But this year, almost a dozen hatcheries in the Puget Sound region are in limbo because a single employee from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was terminated in February.”

This example is but one that the elimination of the scientific research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This cessation was of scientific work comes on the centennial of the infamous Scopes Trial as a sign of how much things haven’t changed. We may not only be marching back to the 1950s in lifestyles and to 1932 in the financial markets but to the 1920s. If you were an up and coming scientist why would you want to come here assuming you were even allowed into the country?

SOLUTIONS

Suppose we were serious about wanting to cut waste, reduce inefficiency, and save money, what would we do?

“Don’t Kill Fema. Find a Way to Fix It” Senator Peter Welch NYT op-ed January 28, 2025

Welch shows there is another way. It is slower, less flashy, and smaller, but it would get the job done. He agrees with President Trump that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is broken and needs serious reform. But he thinks it is crucial that FEMA helps all Americans in times of chaos and crisis. All Americans deserve to know that Washington will have their back when disaster strikes

He recommends what needs to change is the agency’s long-term recovery process, which kicks in months after the floodwaters recede. There is far too much delay and bureaucracy. More control, leadership and resources must be given to local governments to ensure that disaster recovery efforts are carried out in a timely way. He notes that administrative costs have greatly outpaced the distribution of disaster aid in Vermont.

One notes that in the Trump Muskacre, there have been no recommendations about how to streamline operations to make them more efficient. All there has been has been the elimination of projects and people.

Others have noted the need to end business as usual.

In the Sean Duffy Transportation Secretary confirmation, he noted that another priority is to reduce the red tape that “slows critical infrastructure projects.” (“Senate conforms Trump picks Bessent, Duff7” USA Today January 29, 2025).

“Russell Vought Is Probably the Most Important Person in Trump 2.0” Damon Linker NYT January 26, 2025

Strangely enough, even Russell Vought of all people offers sage advice.

What we need are not plans to burn down the federal bureaucracy — or to transform the presidency into a quasi-authoritarian office empowered to micromanage regulatory policy across the entirety of the executive branch. We need smart ideas for incremental reforms that make the bureaucracy at once more nimble and more humble.

DEMOCRAT FAILURES

The Democrats bring years of failure to the problem of government management.

“Farewell to Foreign Aid as We Know it” Farah Stockman NYT op-ed March 22, 2025

“If you think the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was bad, consider the chaos and death since this administration’s abrupt withdrawal from the entire world.”

We do need to re-imagine foreign aid. It should be leaner and less bureaucratic. It should be based on partnerships that respond to local needs, not pronouncements from Washington. The first step is the acknowledging that the old system had flaws. “Let’s be honest. U.S.A.I.D. could be inefficient and wasteful.”

– Congress, loaded up U.S.A.I.D. with burdensome regulations.
– Year after year grants and conflicts flowed to the same American behemoths that perfected the art of federal fund raising – rent, overhead, salaries and not local partners.
– Local groups are far more cost-effective and attuned to what communities need.

The Democrats did nothing to address these shortcomings leaving it to MAGAs who have been clamoring for reductions/eliminations to fill the void.

“The Republican Party’s NPC Problem — and Ours” Ezra Klein op-ed full page February 26, 2025

It’s a genuine failure of Democrats that they didn’t put more energy into making the government faster and better when they were in charge.

Democrats became champions of a government that didn’t work.

[Trump] didn’t want policy. They didn’t want to go line by line through U.S.A.I.D. and figure out what worked and what didn’t.

They did not want to think through new civil service regulations.

The weak point is Congress.

“Democrats Must Think Beyond Musk” NYT February, 2025

Their goal must be a muscular, lean, effective administrative state that works for Americans.

Mr. Musk’s reckless will not get us there, but neither will the excessive caution and addiction to procedure that Democrats exhibited under President Joe Biden’s leadership.

For example:

$42 billion program for broadband internet in 2021 – has not connected a single household as of December 2024

$7.5 billion electric charging stations – 47 in 15 sites as of December 2024

More than half of the $1.6 trillion appropriated under Mr. Biden’s four signature bills remain unspent and vulnerable to clawback

Imagine designing simple web form to allow companies to express interest in funding under CHIPS and Science Act. It would require:

– Extensive review by lawyers and dozens of others in your agency and the federal government
– Review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, 9 months
– Posting plans to the Federal Register
– Addressing comments from the public
– Posting it again

One soon realizes all one’s energy goes into navigating the bureaucracy for months on end. The

1980 Paperwork Reduction Act has not been updated.

“It’s Not Too Late for Congress to Stand Up for Itself” Brendan Buck NYT February 26, 2025.

The failure of Congress to assert itself makes it easier for some members of Congress to support the plundering of an agency.

As it turns out, providing oversight is hard plodding work. It requires intense study, pulling in experts and questioning agency leaders. It requires digging through reports from the Government Accountability Office and an agency inspector general both of which help to identify waste, fraud and programmatic failures.

Needless-to-say, in the Trump Muskacre, none of this occurred.

Perhaps the goal for Americans can be seen in the comments of Scott Siskind who blogs about Silicon Valley under the pseudonym Scott Alexander (“The Vibe Shifts Against the Right” Michelle Goldberg, NYT April 17, 2025). He wrote:

We wanted a swift, lean government that stopped strangling innovation and infrastructure. Instead we got chainsaw-style firings, total devastations of state capacity in exactly the way most likely to strangle innovation more than ever, and the worst and dumbest people in the world gloating about how they solved the “grift” of sending lifesaving medications to dying babies.

Ride Paul Ride: The 2025 Showdown between Patriots and Loyalists

April 18, 2025
by Peter Feinman

The America 250^th is alive and well. For so long the celebration has been in the doldrums. With that funny hard to pronounce name – semiquincentennial – the 250^th has had a tough time competing with the Bicentennial. The 250^th was a pale imitation of what had transpired a mere 50 years ago. The national organization was in turmoil. The federal funding was non-existent. Time was slipping by with little to show.

Last June, I wrote a blog suggesting that a mock First Continental Congress be held in recognition of its 250^th anniversary. I concluded the blog with the following:

Hold a Mock First Continental Congress

The way things are going, 1774 is going to pass by without any national or statewide activities as if the First Continental Congress didn’t exist. Yes, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) will have roundtable of July 19 on the First Continental Congress at the semiquincentennial for the scholars in attendance at its annual conference. Yes it will follow with a private tour on July 20 of Carpenter’s Hall where the First Continental Congress was held. But these are hardly national events. Mock congresses where students debate on being a Loyalist or a Patriot in October when the 2024 Presidential election heats up surely will bring home the mood and atmosphere of the First Continental Congress more than any academic paper, journal article, or book will. Imagine televising those debates.

But now after a slow start, the 250th is ready to enter the national consciousness. The presidential election has been held. The self-proclaimed would-be king has taken office. Suddenly the 250^th is front-page news and on cable talk shows. The catalyst for this transformation from peripheral to center stage is President Donald Trump along with an assist from Elon Musk.

PATRICK HENRY

The warm-up act occurred a scant few weeks ago on the 250^th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s famous speech. At that time, Virginia held its annual 250^th conference. I reported on the event in my blog Patrick Henry vs. Glenn Youngkin: Déjà vu All Over Again

As part of the conference to mark the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s famous “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, VA250 and St. John’s Church livestreamed the historical reenactment event that took place on March 23, 2025. But something unexpected occurred as reported by Fox News.

After delivering remarks at the annual enactment of Henry’s iconic speech, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., was met by loud boos, “shame” chants and protest cries while exiting St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. Protesters held up signs like “deport Musk” and “Youngkin is a Trumpkin” as the governor was escorted through the raucous crowd by law enforcement.

Someone who attended the conference told me she had no idea what was happening outside the church.

“We resisted King George. We will resist Trump,” the flier for Sunday’s protest said, comparing the resistance of President Donald Trump to the American Revolution.

The Reddit user who organized the protest said: “Trump continuously violated the Constitution, declared himself the sole legal authority in the land, and called himself ‘KING.’ Trump must be removed from office!”

I concluded the blog with some predictions:

1. The more events are held, the more 1775 and 2025 will merge together. The war by patriots against loyalists to the king will become part of the political discourse. It will become part of the political campaign in 2026.
2. Related to the above, a new Declaration of Independence will be written. In this one the charges will be against Trump and Musk especially if the Democrats ever catch on to the opportunity they have been given.

In other words, we will not only remember, commemorate and celebrate the events of the American Revolution, we will live them. The event for Patrick Henry may only be a harbinger for the events of April 18-19 for the ride of Paul Revere and the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

Now here we are on the eve of that famous ride.

In-between, at the annual conference of the Organization of American History which I did attend, there was a session on April 4, 2025, “How Do We Defend Historians & Higher Education from Today’s War on Knowledge?” At that session, the chair Professor Nancy MacLean, Duke University, said “We will not go gentle into the night” or words to that effect. She was referring to the poem by Dylan Thomas “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Those words immediately triggered in my mind the stirring speech by President Bill Pullman:

In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world, and you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. Mankind, that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interest. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression or persecution, but from annihilation. We’re fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. We’re going to live on. We’re going to survive. Today, we celebrate our independence day. (Independence Day, 1996)

They also called to mind the words of an actual president, Lyndon Baines Johnson. In his March 16, 1965, address on Voting Rights to Joint Session of Congress. In that speech, he said:

At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.

So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Ala….

Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country–to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.

The bulk of the speech was about voting but this snippet about Lexington and Concord still rings true today. So at the risk of going out on the limb again, I predict the ride of Paul Revere and the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 2025 will again serve as a patriotic call in 2025 against our current king. There are many issues to be addressed about our would-be king. They are all simultaneously coalescing at this particular point in time against someone who has no intention of blinking but will double-down. They will have wait for subsequent blogs to be addressed. In the meantime:

RIDE PAUL RIDE

P.S The next big 250^th event is the Second Continental Congress which began in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775.

Trump’s Riviera versus Gaza’s Riviera: River to the Sea

February 19, 2025
by Peter Feinman

Another One Bites the Dust (Trump Casino) (PHOTO BY JOSEPH GRANT JR., COURTESY CONTROLLED DEMOLITION INC.)

From out of nowhere our President has wreaked havoc in the Middle East with his suggestion to create a Riviera on the Mediterranean without the people who live there now. This suggestion from Earth 2 is so off-the-wall he neglected to even to mention it to anyone before springing it upon an unsuspecting world.

At some level he may have realized that even to mention it to anyone on Earth 1 would subject him to ridicule. Even when surrounded by his Flying Monkeys who support whatever he says and does, Trump has the skill to recognize when people are laughing inside at the lunacy of his suggestion. Hence the need to spring it on the world so even the Flying Monkeys have to rally round their leader while the rest of the world remains aghast.

Somehow in his child-like understanding of the real world:

1. Over 2,000,000 would peacefully and happily relocate to a place that is nice and beautiful even though it is not their home
2. Land somewhere would be found perhaps in one of the neighboring countries which are more than willing to accept over 2,000,000 Palestinians… except that they are not.
3. And once the land had been cleared of rubble, debris, and military ordinance a sparkling new Riviera could arise from the ashes, a Trumpviera that would put everything he has built so far in his life to shame.

Right now all the Arab and Palestinian Americans who refrained from voting for Harris must be jumping up and down in joy for what God’s gift to humanity is offering them. So too all the progressives who must be thankful that they did not vote for Harris either. Little did they know what Trump had in store for them.

GAZA RIVIERA

Let’s stop and think for a moment before throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Right now there is a stalemate between two opposing ideas for Gaza: will it be occupied by Israel or ruled by Hamas. Either way the people of Gaza lose. Yet no one has any idea how to break the stalemate with a plan for the future.

The Gazans themselves are almost always overlooked. All Gazans are not Hamas. In fact very few are. The Gazans suffer at the hands of the Israelis only during the intermittent wars plus from the blockades. The Gazans suffer at the hands of Hamas every day.

The Gazans did not want October 7. The Gazans know that if Hamas remains in power it is only a matter of time before the next round of fighting. The Gazans know that they will bear the brunt of the next round. Even now, there are many Gazans who would like to vote with their feet and leave Gaza hopefully for a place without ruins and the sword of Damocles perpetually hanging over their head. Yet for some strange reason, American college campuses think the Gazans want to be ruled by Hamas and that the chant “river to the sea” applies only to Gazans. Apparently it never occurred to them that Gazans do not want to be ruled by Hamas and that Israelis support “river to the sea” too.

Suppose our President instead had proposed a Gaza Riviera instead of a Trump Riviera. Suppose the resort builder had presented to the world a plan to create a Gaza Riviera, something no has suggested so far. Suppose he proposed a vision with beaches, hotels, stores, restaurants, recreation areas, a port for tourist ships, an airport for tourist flights, and roadways and transportation links to connect them. Suppose he had suggested connecting Gaza to the West as Tel Aviv is and Beirut once was. What would the reaction have been then?

How many people (Gaza jobs) would it take to clear the area so this vision could be fulfilled?

How many people (Gaza jobs) would it take to build the vision?

How many people (Gaza jobs) would it take to operate the vision?

True he had failed in Atlantic City but this time he would not be on his own.

Think of the difference in the response, if he had proposed an adult vision to bring peace to the area. Biden had rallied nations to the cause to resist the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Bush had rallied a coalition of the willing in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Now an American president would create a coalition of nations and international organizations to build a better tomorrow in Gaza. Even China might want in on the gargantuan project. For creating such a coalition on behalf of the Gazans, he might even win a Nobel Peace Prize.

CONCLUSION

As a gesture of good faith towards the construction of a beautiful and nice place where the Gazans could live in peace and with hope for the future, the Democrats should pledge $100 billion in the next budget to build such a place for the Gazans. Since neither Jordan nor Egypt wants 2 million Gazans in the land, another location needs to be found. The best location is Gaza itself where the people living there could help build a better tomorrow for themselves.

When all is said and done, the American President has shown a path forward towards peace in the Middle East. Democrats should not waste this opportunity.

Election Postmortem #1: Where’s the Civil War?

November 8, 2024
by Peter Feinman

America's Third Civil War (The Atlantic)

This post in the first in a series of posts analyzing the results of the 2024 Presidential Election. I am starting with something that as of November 8, 2024, does not appear to have happened. To the best of knowledge there is no civil war at this time. In fact the country seems remarkably peaceful with no carnage in sight.

Let’s start by reviewing what did not happen. I will focus on articles and issues from The Atlantic which I have been patiently saving for this moment. I have lots of articles fully highlighted in yellow that I expected to serve as the basis for many blogs to come. I intended to review those articles and compare them to what was happening in Earth 1. Now it appears as if these well-meaning articles are the ones from Earth 2 and I have to decide whether to save them for posterity or to recycle them.

HOW TO STOP A CIVIL WAR

“How to Stop a Civil War” was the title on the cover of the December 2019 issue, just about five years ago. Editor Jeffrey Goldberg opened the issue with some comments by me from “America’s Third Civil War: An Update” (December 13, 2020)

A NATION COMING APART BY JEFFREY GOLDBERG

Goldberg tactfully opens his “Editor’s Note” with:

The 45^th president of the United States of America is uniquely unfit for the office and poses a multifaceted threat to our country’s democratic institutions.

Truer words were never written, but I suspect they understate the problem. I doubt that Goldberg anticipated a frontal assault on the democratic process including an attempted coup to steal the election with the support of the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives and 125 accomplices. To imagine an attempted coup by this particular President requires no stretch of the imagination. To see how widespread the support was and is would have been unimaginable. These 126 traitors are from the present House of Representatives. It is quite likely that in the new House where the Democrats will have only the slimmest of margins, that the number of representatives who support the President in-exile will be even greater. There is no margin of error.

Goldberg went on to write:

The structural failures in our democratic system that allowed a grifter into the White House in the first place⸺this might be our greatest challenge.

I strongly doubt that Goldberg anticipated that the con artist only needed to ask for money to receive over $200 million from his Trumpican base. That is an astonishing achievement in the history of scam annals. He has perfected the ability to raise enormous sums of money in small amounts without having to fleece few bigtime marks.

Finally, Goldberg announced as the editor, the purpose for the special issue.

Out of our conversations, and others like it, emerged the idea for the special issue you are now reading, what we have called “How to Stop a Civil War.” … (W)e worry that the ties that bind us are fraying at alarming speed ⸺ we are becoming contemptuous of each other in ways that are both dire and possibly irreversible.

If these words reflect Goldberg’s assessment of the situation in December 2019, then one can only imagine what he must think in December 2020. For now the coup to steal the election temporarily has been stopped by the Supreme Court. One should expect the final stand where the last ditch effort to overturn the election will be undertaken will be when the new House convenes to ratify the vote of the Electoral College. He still thinks he can overturn the election and has roughly 126 people who will help him. The fat lady still hasn’t sung yet.

REMAINING ARTICLES

This issue and my comments above were written prior to the peaceful political discourse on January 6 by patriots who deserve to be pardoned because the election was stolen. The articles in order of appearance in the “How to Stop a Civil War” issue consists of a series of dispatches, a nice military term to convey the war atmosphere.

Opening Argument: When Trump Goes – Somehow, sometime, he will leave office. Will our politics get better or worse? By David Frum.

Sketch: The Secessionist – Daniel Miller, the leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement, wants to divorce the state from the union once and for all. By Graeme Wood.

Part 1 On the forces that Pull Us Apart

“How America Ends: A Tectonic Demographic Shift is Under Way. Can the Country Hold Together,” by Yoni Appelbaum

“Left Behind: The Real Roots of the Urban/Rural Divide,” by Tara Westover in conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg.

“Why It Feels Like Everything Is Going Haywire: Social Media Rapidly Changed How We Communicate, in Ways the Destabilize Democracy: What Can We Do about That?” by Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell.

Too Much Democracy Is bad for Democracy: The Major Parties Have Ceded Unprecedented Power of Primary Voters. It’s a Radical Experiment – and It’s Failing,” by Jonathan Rauch and Ray La Raja.

Part 2 Appeals to Our Better Nature

“The Things We Can’t Face: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk about Abortion,” by Caitlin Flanagan.

“What Would Mister Rogers Do?: I First Met Him 21 Years Ago, and Now Our Friendship Is the Subject of a new Movie. He’s never been More Revered — or More Misunderstood” by Tom Junod.

“Can this Marriage Be Saved? Applying the Techniques of Couples Counseling to Bring Reds and Blues Back Together Again,” by Andrew Ferguson.

Part 3 Reconciliation and Its Alternatives

“The Road from Serfdom: How Americans Can Become Citizens Again,” by Danielle Allen.

“The Enemy Within: Have We Taught Our Children the Principles of this Democracy Must Live By? Do We Even Remember those Principles Ourselves? by James Mattis.

“Against Reconciliation: The Gravest Danger to American Democracy Isn’t an Excess of Vitriol — It’s the False Promise of Civility,” by Adam Server.

There is much food for thought in these articles. I used a lot of yellow highlighter when reading them. A glance at these pre-January 6, pre abortion ruling, pre “the enemy within” suggests how easy it would be a write of series of blogs just dedicated to the articles in The Atlantic from nearly five years ago. They would provide an update now that the battle is engaged. However, the battle is not engaged.

GEORGE PACKER

George Packer contributed two articles in The Atlantic relevant to this issue.

“The Four Americas: Competing Visions of the Country’s Purpose and Meaning Are Tearing It Apart. Is Reconciliation Possible? (July/August 2021)

“Imagine the Worst: How to Head off the Next Insurrection,” (January/February 2022) the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.

BARTON GELLMAN

In the same anniversary issue, Barton Gellman wrote a piece which garnered widespread notice among the chattering class:

“January 6 Was Practice: Donald Trump Is Better Position to subvert an Election Now that He Was in 2020.”

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE

Way back on President’s Day in 2023, acclaimed scholar Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that we need a divorce. The time had come to separate red states from blue. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last polices, we are done.”

Peter Wehner responded on February 21, 2023, in an on-line piece in The Atlantic.

David French responded “Take Threats of ‘National Divorce’ Seriously,” (NYT March 6, 2023, print).

So now I have this folder of articles clamoring for attention. It should be possible to write more than a dozen blogs on the subjects of the looming Civil War and/or the divorce. Yet what would be the point? One concern, of course, is taking seriously these people as prognosticators. Perhaps authors should have their articles accompanied by a batting average.

But the topic now is a postmortem on the recent presidential election. At this point I don’t have time to be distracted. There are a plethora of blogs to be written about the election. This is only the first one.

New York Times Magazine, November 10, 2019, by Paul Sahre

Why Vote for Donald Trump?

November 4, 2024
by Peter Feinman

“Teaching, Anti-bullying Policies and Trump” was an op-ed piece in the Sunday paper in Westchester by Tony Monchinski, a local high school teacher. He states:

… the biggest issue I have with my fellow Queens native is that he’s a bully.

I have always located him in middle school as a seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck. Think of the pleasure he receives when he can act out in front of the class and say the words you are not supposed to say. Think of all the crass behaviors he exhibits.

Any of these behaviors exhibited by a student in my school would lead to disciplinary action and possible expulsion; any exhibited by a teacher would lead to an investigation, removal from the classroom, and probable termination of employment. All would violated my district’s anti-bullying policy.

Think about it. On the one had due to his deteriorating mental necessities you would take the car keys from a parent or grandparent who displayed these behaviors. On the other hand, such behaviors would not be tolerated in the classroom.

Trump has always been this way and always will be.

“When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself , I’m basically the same.”

Exactly.

In the book “The Toddler in Chief,” political scientist Daniel Drezner collect the over 1,000 instances in which Trump was described by those around him in terms befitting an impetuous child (Ezra Klein, “What’s Wrong with Trump?” NYT October 27, 2024, print). Klein then cites a few examples:

1. Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Walsh described working with the President as “trying to figure out what a child wants.

2. Steve Bannon, co-conspirator in the January 6 attempt to overthrow the government said, “I’m sick of being a wet nurse for a 71-year old.”

3. James Mattis and John Kelly “often described themselves like babysitters; they made a pact to never be overseas at the same time, lest Trump do something truly deranged.”

Klein observes that under pressure he loses control of the ability to inhibit himself.

That is why he lost the debate with Harris so decisively. When he is pressured, when he is emotional, he cannot stop himself. He cannot stop himself. He can’t inhibit himself.

The man cannot help himself. HE IS MISSING THE PART OF HIS MIND THAT TELLS HIM WHAT NOT TO SAY, WHAT NOT TO DO….. But he cannot control himself.

Exactly. Brain scans would show that the portions of the brain that would do that are missing. That is why a child psychologist should be one interviewed on the talk shows. There is the normal brain in adolescence that reflects the growing maturity of the child so that as an adult, he does know how to behave. Then there is the brain of the arrested development child who never matures into being a responsible adult. Go to a high school reunion and see if you cannot pick out the physical adult who still behaves like an immature child in middle school or high school.

For Klein, Trump’s age only makes things worse. Aging can make disinhibition worse.

The August 2020 edition of the journal Psychology and Aging was entirely devoted to research on how the ability to control our behavior appears, in many studies to decline as we get older.

Trump rambles for even longer on stage today. It is not a sign of his continued vigor.

I think it it’s the opposite. I think his inability to stop rambling on stage is evidence that what little capacity he once had to control himself is weakening.

The Arnold Palmer incident is right out of junior high school.

Donald Trump is not cognitively fit to be president.

Unfortunately the Constitutional requirement to be at least 35 years old only applies to physical years. It never occurred to the Founding Fathers that the president should be tested for mental acuity to demonstrate the mental necessities to function as an adult. All the focus now on the age of the president disqualifying him to act as president, focuses on the wrong age in Trump’s case. He never had the mental necessities in the first place. In his administration, there were guard rails, not always successful, to ensure the immature child did not go off the rails in the first place. But now it is taken for granted there would be no such guardrails in the second administration. The more they are needed as he continues to deteriorate, the less checks and balances on his personal behavior there will be.

THE MAGA BASE

Trump feeds off the energy of the MAGA base. He is even wistful because he knows this is his last hurrah. He will never run for president again. He would be a lame duck president from Day 1. Today, Monday, November 4, 2024, marks the end of the line for his campaign rallies. Yes, he would still make public appearances but he would not be campaigning for himself. Already the more he rambles and weaves right now, the more his audiences dwindle. They have seen the act before. They have heard his act before. They have read his tweets before.

And if he doesn’t win, the degeneration will be even worse. He will no longer be the center of attention except when he is in court and is advised by his lawyers to remain silent. Then at last peace will come to the shire. On the other hand, he could win and then all hell will break loose.

CONCLUSION

Why then should anyone vote for this immature child?

To return to Ezra Klein,

He is saying what many people want somebody to be saying. He’s saying what people are saying in private but often re not saying in public.

Trump is not an inauthentic candidate. He does not use algorithms to calculate what he is going to say. It is unlikely even knows where his mouth will take him during his rambling weave.

But there is something undeniably electric to watch someone unchained from the bundle of inhibitions the rest of us carry around.

He has no use for briefing books and position papers which he can’t read anyway.

“I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”

That same gut enables the con artist to connect with audiences in a way no other politician in the United States can do today. He is unique and it is not a talent that he can pass on to anyone. He knows what his audience wants and he knows how to exploit it. He can reaches audiences that no Republican has before and which Democrats are scrambling to retain with their more conventional candidate. If only Trump wasn’t an immature narcissistic criminal, he could be a powerful force for building a better tomorrow. But then he wouldn’t be Donald Trump.

He Lost By a Whisker So He Ate the Cat: A Second Debate Update

September 30, 2024
by Peter Feinman

The debate line that has been lost in the chaos.

The current presidential election cycle has been and continues to be an unusual one for many reasons. Both debates have been memorable. In the first debate, one candidate lost so badly he ended up withdrawing from the race. In the second debate, one candidate also lost but instead of acknowledging his humiliation, he claimed victory, and has no suffered no consequences for his defeat. If anything, he emerged stronger.

Many words have been spilled in the analysis of the second debate, but there is still much to learn from it.

1. PROJECT 25

Project 25 has received a great deal of attention. People have scoured its pages as a virtual blueprint for what the former President would do if he is restored to power. Many of the planks have become talking points for the Democrats as to why not to return the former President to the White House.

Sure enough, Project 25 became a debate point raised by the Democratic candidate. Sure enough also the Republican candidate was ready with a response. He claims not to have read Project 25 and refuses to be held accountable for its contents even though his own people compiled the blueprint.

However in this instance he is telling the truth, He has not read the 900+ pages of Project 25. What is being ignored is that he is not capable of reading the report. He lacks the mental necessities to read such a report. He could not read it if it were 90 pages. He may or may not be able to read the read the report if it were 9 pages triple-spaced large font but I will hold off judgment on that.

In the NYT book review section (Sunday, September 29, 2024 print) of At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House by H. R. McMaster, the reviewer attributes to McMaster the following insight:

Time and time again, Trump can’t seem to focus on briefings and responds to serious problems with inane suggestions.

McMaster observes how a 13-day trip to Asia tired him and stretched his patience — and that was seven years ago.

His limited attention span has been known for decades. In “He Wasn’t a Billionaire. He Just Played One on TV (NYT September 15, 2024, print), he was limited in his mental necessities two decades ago.

Several producers remember him completely losing focus when a woman he found attractive crossed his field of vision. He would accept only the shortest of briefings. Mr. [Dan] Gill [a senior brand integration producer] said he would often have no more than four minutes to brief Mr. Trump about the sponsor before taping began.

His current handlers undoubtedly performed yeomen work preparing debate binders for the candidate only to have their work undermined by the immature child with the emotional maturity of a child who decides to wing it.

His inability to read at an adult level is no fault of his. His brain simply is not wired that way. There is no surgery, no drugs, no therapy that can compensate for his inability to concentrate and read. If he were in school today, he would be considered “special.”

2. SIMPLE-MINDED

Along with his lack of reading skills is his simple-mindedness what he does hear or read. Something or someone is the greatest or the worst ever. The worst Secretary of State ever. The worst treaty ever. The worst presidential candidate ever. The worst president ever. The greatest president ever (except maybe for Lincoln.) No one has done for Black people than he has. Jews who not vote for him are traitors.

One day a grad student looking for a thesis topic will compile a list of all the greatest and worst ever usages by a person who can’t read and has limited knowledge of American history. It will be astounding to know how frequently the best of times, the worst of times, occurred precisely during this narrow window of time when he was running for president. The odds really are astronomical that so many extremes of the best and the worst could be so concentrated in time.

Now think about his answer to his favorite book in the Bible. He could not identify one. He probably does know the name of some of the books of the Bible. But if he should select one book to the exclusion of the other books, the follow-up question would be “Why?” At that point he would be at a complete and total loss to explain why he preferred one book out of the many he had to choose from. Try giving him a list of treaties, Secretaries of State, Vice Presidents, and Presidents and asking him to rank them. Even assuming he knew who they all were, he lacks mental necessities to differentiate them. The four presidents of Mount Rushmore probably are his limit.

3. SIZE MATTERS

Numerous people have commented on how the Democratic candidate baited the MAGA candidate during the debate. One example hearkened back to the first days of his presidency in 2017. There we learned not to believe our eyes but to believe the spin about the crowd size. How could Obama have had a bigger crowd!

Crowd sizes proved important in the 2020 campaign as well. At that point he cited his crowd sizes as proof of his lager vote totals. Naturally he offered no proof of the connection between crowd size and vote totals. It simple was something his simple-mind took for granted. If his Georgia crowds exceeded Biden’s in size then he must have won the state.

That limited correlation has taken a beating this time around. In this this election, it is the Democratic candidate who has had huge crowds. For the immature child with the emotional maturity of a three year this fact in the real world was more than he could handle. Instead he resorted to temper tantrums of childish nonsense. NOBODY ATTENDS HER RALLIES. SHE HAS TO PAY PEOPLE TO ATTEND. His rallies are the best and biggest rallies of all time. No one leaves early. This is the limit of his analytical skills. He literally cannot cope with reality except through gibberish and nonsensical lies.

4. TAYLOR SWIFT RETRIBUTION

At times the immature child with the emotional maturity of a three-year old must be drooling in anticipation over the divine retribution he will inflict on those who have opposed him. Most of the people are politicians. They know full well that Trump will unleash his Brandons on them just as he did on January 6 against Mike Pence. They know that the full weight of the government including the IRS, Department of Justice, and whatever committees he controls will be marshaled against them. No one has any illusions about the importance or revenge to the thin-skinned wounded child.

5. Haitians Eat Cats

Of all the words spoken during the debate, the ones that will be remembered most not only for this election cycle but for American history, it is the claim that illegal Haitian immigrants are eating the beloved pets of real Americans. Here we see just a glimpse of the chaos which can ensue when the immature child has the bully pulpit. A thoughtless phrase here, another one there, and suddenly towns that are minding their own business are sulked in the Trump maelstrom. One shudders to imagine what disruptions he will cause from out of nowhere if he is returned to power.

We see now that he spiraling out of control. His insults on the mental necessities of his opponent from birth crossed the red line even for the few remaining Republicans. No gag order can be placed on him for his wild accusations. Instead it is business as usual. The more he is forced to live in Earth 1, the more unrestrained he will become until he is constantly babbling nonsense.

Despite all this, the race remains neck and neck. There is no final straw that will break the Brandon back including open fealty to Putin. The best Harris can show for all the enthusiasm, all the volunteers, all the funding and all the joy is maybe at the national level she can eke out a 3% victory in the popular vote as one would expect from a generic Democrat following 2016 and 2020. That still leaves the battleground states with their voter suppression as the sites of World War I trench warfare in the weeks to come where the ground game may make the difference…. and the Trump Court is on standby to help push him over the top. At least this time everyone knows, Election Day is not the end but only the beginning of the next round of warfare.

ZOOM AND PROFESSIONAL POLITICAL WRESTLING ARENAS: A TALE OF TWO CAMPAIGNS

September 9, 2024
by Peter Feinman

Before Zoom there were teenagers on the telephone (Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. "Bye Bye Birdie, original Broadway production" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1960 - 1961)

The two presidential campaigns in 2024 have two different ways of communicating. One has used a heretofore unused form of communication taking advantage of changed technologies since COVID. The other employs the same venue he used in prior presidential elections.

PROFESSIONAL POLITICAL WRESTLING ARENA

For Trump, the standard mode of communication continues to be the professional political wrestling arena, a format that has been the subject of multiple blogs in the past. Here the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck gets to act out to his heart’s content. For the immature child with the maturity of a three-year old, it is the perfect format.

He can say and do whatever he wants without reproach.
Everyone is two-dimensional or in his childish terms, the greatest ever or the worst ever.
His fights are rigged when they occur.
He gets to insult, defame, and besmirch people in vile, disgusting, racist, and sexist manner.

What’s not to like? His Magadoons and Brandons cheer him on.

And he can always use his own twitter account.

The Wharton school graduate even gets to call tariffs a tax on foreign nations and proudly proclaim that he will be the tariff president.

So what’s the problem?

As every musician knows, tours take a toll. Trump doesn’t have the mojo he once had in 2016. Eight years older is a long time for the aged politician.

He needs fresh material. Some performers can get away with only repeating past hits. It’s hard in the professional political arena. He might think he is running against Barack Obama or Crooked Hillary but the old chestnuts of “Show me your birth certificate” and “lock her up” no longer work. Even the “forever war” is stale.” His audience has heard for years about “carnage.” How many years can he prosper off his eve of destruction mantra?

STRESS

A new element to the mix is stress. Back on December 28, 2023, I wrote Rudy and the Donald: The Downward Spirals

We should not overlook the impact of stress on his life despite his “witch-hunt” bravado. While Biden may stumble now and then, Trump is the one whose mental necessities show signs of deterioration. His repeating of errors are not the signs of a “senior moment” or slip of the tongue. They are the signs of a loss of mental acuity, of a person who keeps thinking a deceased spouse is still alive or he still lives at home and not in a facility. Regardless of any normal deterioration in his mind, the constant stress of the legal cases even before a parade of Republicans start testifying against him will make Giuliani seem normal by comparison.

He is on a one-way track downhill. He can’t admit he was a failure in business. He can’t admit he was a crooked failure in business. He can’t admit he lost the election. He can’t admit he was the one who tried to steal the election. It is easier for some of his codefendants to reach plea deals. They still have a life to lead free of Trump. He has no such luxury. He is in this until the end because the alternative of facing and living the truth is a threat to entire life and self-identity. It’s no wonder the prospect of prison frightens him. One has to wonder then if it will be safe to leave him alone.

For months now, Anthony Scaramucci has predicted that the “stressed” out Trump over the indictments will drop out of race. Lately he has tempered his prediction about a pre-Iowa caucus withdrawal. The change was due to the slow pace of the cases. While it is possible he might go to jail for contempt of court in 2024, there is little likelihood that he will go to prison in 2024. Still one should not discount the impact of the constant stress due to the various cases. Think of how much he has to lose if he loses to Joe Biden again this coming November. Care to take bets on when he will start claiming rigged election this time around too?

The revival of various legal cases will only accelerate the stress. If he starts to believe that his losing the election, meaning “Delay, Delay, Delay,” ends in a little over two months then the stress will only magnify accordingly. Plus, what happens when his followers are forced to face that their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name admits that he lost the 2020 election? Could that admission become the October surprise of this election?

HAPPY WARRIOR ZOOM CALLS

Meanwhile there is a new technology on the campaign trail: the on-line zoom call. Even before the professional campaigning began, there was the amateur hour of the zoom call. Participants are in the comfort of their home and in the comfort of the clothes they wear at home. Prepared remarks are out. Interruptions by children and pets are in. It all seems so real.

The joyful upbeat mood of the post-Biden withdrawal continued in these calls. Thanks to modern technology, the number of participants skyrocketed. “Win with Black Women” went from 150-200 people at a weekly event to 44,000. These numbers pressed Zoom’s capacity the limit. After all, who wanted to anger White Dudes for Harris which eventually exceeded the cap of over 200,000?

These online calls were part of the irrational exuberance which swept through the Democratic Party following the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the Presidential pace. In the matter of mere moments the political dynamic shifted from Magadoons measuring the drapes in the Oval Office to we have ourselves a horse race.

The question then became with all the donations and volunteers, could that happy warrior mentality be sustained through the convention and afterwards when the campaign officially begins. It is too early to tell at this point but it is important to remember that being back in the ballgame is not the same as winning it. Normally Democrats win the popular vote in presidential elections. They did in 2016 by over 3 million and in 2020 by over 7 million. Putting the battleground states aside, a margin of 50-48% or thereabouts means Harris has not yet closed the deal even on the popular vote. With the change in the national demographics since 2020, one would expect a generic Democratic candidate to do better. Running neck and neck means she has not reached the level of a generic Democratic candidate.

And let’s not forget the Tom Bradly effect. It postulates that likely voters lie to pollsters so as not to appear racist. The result is a difference between what the polls show and how people actually vote. To compound that effect, there may be a gender discrepancy as well. We won’t know until after the votes are counted.

Finally, let’s not forget voter suppression. All the effort from the past four years may finally payoff this year with people who think they are eligible to vote finding out they are not. Again we will not know until after the votes are counted and certified.

Traditionally, Americans have been an optimistic people (Happy days are here again) and not a people of carnage. But these are not normal times. We will have a better sense of where things stand after the debate and possibly some looming judicial decisions.

If Biden Makes a Gaffe, How Will Trump Know?

June 26, 2024
by Peter Feinman

The Thrilla in Manila (Neil Leifer for Sports Illustrated)

The thrilla in Manila is upon us. Or the Devil and Daniel Webster. Or Williams Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. Or Earth 1 versus Earth 2.

We are at point which tonight may determine the outcome of the American Presidential race. For all the talk about it being too early, it really is not since the campaign for the 2020 election never ended. For one contestant, it may be his last chance to show he belongs in the ring. For the other candidate whose home is the professional political wrestling arena, it may be another chance to show that the real world cannot touch him.

Let’s consider some of key points over the debate which may be obscured.

1. Joe Biden is not dead. That is a funny way to begin a description of the confrontation. It attests the success of his opponent and Foxhub in painting Biden as someone still at death’s door after five years. Nothing Biden does seems to shake this image so even if he is still standing after the metaphorical 15 rounds it will be explained away that he was drugged like a Russian athlete to over perform. It also attests the stark reality that Donald Trump controls the narrative and not the President of the United States

2. Donald Trump is an elite stander. I am still not sure what it means to be an elite stander but if Biden is standing too that will be explained away. On the other hand, this absurd comment provides an opening in the match should Biden want to take advantage of it.

Was Franklin Delano Roosevelt an elite stander?
Is Texas Governor Greg Abbott an elite stander?
Are the participants in the Special Olympics all elite standers?
What about the wounded veterans who may not be able to stand? Besides being losers and suckers do they also fail to measure up?
What about for people with disabilities in general?

Here we see the limits of the mental necessities of the seventh-grade smart-aleck-dumb-aleck. It’s a funny line unless you stop to think about it. Then it is simple-minded at best and an example of someone and his staff who lack the mental necessities for the White House due to their inability to think things through.

3. Donald Trump is always the dumbest person in the room except at a MAGA rally. Suppose Biden discusses his foreign policy actions and mentions a slew of countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Then suppose he commits a gaffe in naming the country or its leader. How would Trump know? The usual way is denied him. Foxhub will have the opportunity to take Biden to task after the debate but will be unable to do so during the debate. This means the people who watch Foxhub will be able to laugh and laugh at the gaffe after it is spun to them. Meanwhile the people who watch CNN or MSNBC or who read the real morning papers will not. By that time, the Biden side will have the opportunity to issue a corrective. It won’t matter to MAGAs but it will to others.

4. Singing in the Shower – As everyone knows, in the shower, you are the world’s greatest singer. It is only when you leave the shower for the real world that the truth catches up with you. So as long as Trump is on Foxhub or in his professional political wrestling arena he is on safe grounds. He can say anything with fear or even awareness if what he is saying is true in the real world. However, he will not have that luxury in the CNN debate. No doubt he will do his best to transform the stage into an arena on Earth 2. But there will be no live audience to provide him the energy he needs to sustain himself. He will be muted if rambles on for too long. In short, the conditions of the debate are configured as best as is possible to keep Trump in the real world, a place where he is not very comfortable.

Think of his recent comments about Milwaukee. First, given his limited mental necessities, he is only capable of judging something in a strictly binary manner. It is either the greatest ever or the worst ever. The worst Secretary of State ever. The worst treaty ever. As if he has studied the history of the United States and can intelligibly make such an argument. He speaks in binary, apocalyptic terms about what would happen if various legal actions were taken. On the one hand the President should have immunity if he sends seal team 6 after his opponents. On the other hand, Biden is condemned for sending armed FBI agents to violate his home with orders to kill him. But there is no contradiction there because Biden is not the real president anyway.

Second, Milwaukee is a city, therefore it is carnage. What else do you need to know?

Facts are meaningless to Donald Trump and to MAGA, so if Biden decides to speak in facts, he should be aiming for the national audience and not waste his time trying to convince Trump to leave his alternate world for Earth 1.

The issue will be not only what happens in the debate but how it is spun afterwards. Think of January 6. People saw the insurrection live on TV as it was happening. People saw elected officials running for their lives. People heard Republicans condemn the actions and inactions of the President of the United States in fomenting the action.

Then what happened?

There were FBI plants?
There were Antifa agitators.
It was peaceful political protest.
They are hostages.
They will be pardoned.

See how the description changes. Have the number of people who think the election was stolen from Trump instead of him trying to steal the election changed in more than two years. Now Trump is a champion of freedom in the United States!

No matter how people have been convicted; no matter how people have lost their license; no matter how people are waiting for their day in court, nothing has had any impact on MAGAs. And nothing ever will.

So even if Biden holds his own and wins in the same way Nixon won the debate on radio while Kennedy won the same debate on television, what will change in the American electorate? We are a storytelling species and the fact is Earth 2 has a superior story told by a persistent and robust storyteller even if he does not have the facts on his side and his mental necessities are deteriorating.

The Lost Cause: A David Blight Perspective

January 28, 2024
by Peter Feinman

Yale historian David Blight has been in the news lately. Even he is surprised about the frequency of his cable news appearances. His increased visibility derives from two related by difference sources: The Lost Cause and Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In general terms, his expertise as an historian in the Reconstruction is what draws attention. But he muses at times about the need to be a lawyer, too. Either way, his “15 minutes in the sun” attests various adages about history not being dead and not in the past. There is a battle raging to control the past so those who call for the cutbacks or dissolution of history departments at the college and/graduate school level may wish to reconsider. For that matter the same applies to history in k-12 as well.

EUROPE IN 1989, AMERICA IN 2020, AND THE DEATH OF THE LOST CAUSE

This article from the New Yorker dated July 1, 2020, provides a snap shot into Blight’s thinking a little less than four years ago. The article begins with a vignette about his fallen Berlin Wall souvenir and the watching of Confederate monuments in the United States likewise being reduced to pieces. He calls those monuments “public vestiges of the Lost Cause tradition.” He raises the possibility that the summer of 2020 like autumn of 1989 “could mark the death of a specific vision on history.”

Blight advises caution: don’t celebrate too much. “The Lost Cause is one of the most deeply ingrained mythologies in American history.” He calls it a twisted version of history encouraging the revitalization of a vast system of oppression that can poison a civil society.

Some myths are benign as cultural markers. Others are rooted in lies so beguiling, so powerful as engines of resentment and political mobilization, that they can fill parade grounds in Nuremberg, or streets in Charlottesville, or rallies across the country.

The Lost Cause was bot about the preservation of slavery. The Confederacy was never truly defeated on the battlefields of glory. The Confederacy stood for civilization “in which both races thrived in their best ‘natural’ capacities.” Robert E. Lee was transformed into a godlike Christian leader and genius tactician who could only be defeated by overwhelming odds.

Blight goes to describe the ongoing development of the Lost Cause. There were:

The United Daughters of the Confederacy
The United Confederate Association
Ku Klux Klan
Jim Crow.

Monuments mushroomed across the Confederacy. Every town center and city square had one. The names of Confederate heroes adorned schools, streets, and parks. The Lost Cause had become a victory narrative where the South shall rise again.

Blight cites Jefferson Davis, the “ultimate sick soul.” Drawing on the 1279 memoir of Davis, Blight reports of some of the staples of the Lost Cause. Slavery was not the cause of the war. In fact slavery had been good for Africans where slavery already existed. Now they had been “’trained in the gentle arts of peace and order.’” They had “advanced from ‘unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers.’”

Blight chooses to end the article optimistically:

But if this is to be our 1989, we must make the most of it. The whole world may be watching.

One might add, we are a city on a hill and the eyes of the world are upon us as the last best hope of earth.

CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY

Confederate Memorial Day, as the name suggests, is a holiday dedicated Confederates. In an article entitled “Engaging Toxic Nostalgia on Confederate Memorial Day” (History News Network, May 7, 2023), a somewhat shell shocked, Richard Brown PhD, senior executive editor for Religion at Rowman & Littlefield, described his close encounter of the third kind with Confederate Memorial Day.

Up ahead on the steps were clusters of Confederate Army reenactors, some wielding period rifles band nearby was blowing Dixie, and an unfurled battle flag of the Confederate States of America, roughly forty by sixty feet, was draped on the steps of the gold-domed Capitol building. We stopped at the traffic light on Gervais Street, next to a group of Black protesters. When the light changed, I turned to my daughter. She had witnessed Southern iconography during her college years in Richmond, living near Monument Avenue with its oversized statues of Confederate heroes, now vanquished. But even she was shell-shocked.

As Brown reports, Confederate Memorial Day continues to be a legal holiday in the state of South Carolina. Observed on May 10, it marks the anniversary of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s death in 1863. With the passage of Act 80 in 1896, South Carolina recognized two legal holidays: May 10 for Stonewall Jackson, and January 19 for the birthday of Robert E. Lee. Every April, state offices in Mississippi and Alabama also shut down for their Confederate Memorial Days. Legislators and advocates in all three states trumpet “Heritage, Not Hate.”

For those of us who have a visceral objection to Confederate Memorial Day—who are appalled at not only commemorating but celebrating an economic and social system that oppressed a race for over two centuries—how should we engage a worldview that doesn’t see the harm of such celebrations, or that embraces the mythology of the Lost Cause?

“TRUMP’S ‘LOST CAUSE,’ A KIND OF GANGSTER CULT, WON’T GO AWAY” (LA Times, January 14, 2024)

Blight returned to the Lost Cause this year, this time in reference to Trump’s failed attempt to steal the election. In his description of the failed insurrection of January 6, Blight writes about the event:

For the next four to five hours, in the most recorded event in American history, the world watched as a new “lost cause” was born in violence and spectacular lies.

Blight writes that there have been three lost causes in modern history,

1. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy
2. Following their bloody defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the French exhibited an intergenerational cultural need to avenge the loss. [Blight did not mention the Dreyfus Trial decades later.]
3. “Then, following Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Nazis gained traction by blaming Jews and leftists, who were depicted as ‘poisons’ in the blood of the body politic [a term Trump has now brought back when speaking of vermin immigrants.]

In a letter to The Atlantic (March 2023), Peter V Huisking writes:

Germans didn’t avoid their own “Lost Cause” movement by accident. At the end of World War II, the Allies set policies to ensure that there would be no tolerance for anything memorializing German military traditions or the Nazi Party. …

This established an environment that required the defeated Germany to face responsibility for what happened. The defeated American South never faced such a reckoning, and we still live with consequences.

Neither Confederates nor MAGAs have had to face such a reckoning.

Blight compares our “lost cause” today to a gangster cult. It is still early in the process. For example, eventually a parade of Republican witnesses will testify against him in criminal cases for his actions in instigating this failed insurrection attempt. But will the latest lost cause survive Trump?

Blight writes:

Lost causes can turn lies into common coin and forge deep and lasting myths. We are a long way from knowing how much staying power the Trumpian “lost cause” will have, regardless of whether he survives his criminal charges and the election campaign. What we do know is that we have already witnessed its formative years.

There is a lot riding on the presidential election this year. If Trump loses again despite voter suppression and against someone who was practically at death’s bed last time, the repercussions could be violent. On the other hand, Biden controls the military and police forces in the Capital, he knows Nikki Haley from Nancy Pelosi, the MAGA forces may be willing to talk the talk but not so much to walk the walk this time. They have seen what has happened to the people who participated in the failed attempt last time. They will see the unleashing of civil and criminal cases which have been delayed until after the election. They will have seen that the world has not come to an end in brutal carnage despite Trump’s wishful thinking.

And perhaps, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, they will be ready to get on with their lives especially if MAGA candidates don’t do so well again. Instead of a ongoing lost cause, we should also think about post-trumphatic stress disorder and how to treat scammed people who want to return to Earth 1. On the other hand, Trump could win and the Stolen Election will be enshrined in American history.

Presidents Are Not Above the Law: Our Lord and Savior Is

January 23, 2024
by Peter Feinman

The Greatest American President (LordsArt Trump Rushmore by Jon McNaughton)

Besides slavery, another way the Civil War has become part of the current political discourse is with the figure of Abraham Lincoln. In the Union, he is a revered figure. His Memorial at the nation’s capital has been the site of political gatherings, most famously the “I Have a Dream” march with Martin Luther King. He is renowned throughout the Union with schools, streets, parks, and cities named in his honor.

By contrast, in the Confederacy, Lincoln remains a forbidden person. The statues, parks, streets, named after Civil War figures are not named after him. When it comes to Lincoln we are not a “house divided” but two separate houses barely tied together. The social fabric that binds these two peoples grows weaker every day. One wonders how much longer the mystic chords will join the two parts before they are rendered asunder and the two separate peoples can each go their own way. In the meantime at least until the 2024 presidential election, we trudge on as if we will still be a single country a year from now when the President takes the oath of office in 2025.

TRUMP ON LINCOLN

When describing the Civil War, Trump brings an odd perspective to the discussion. The conflict was “so horrible, but so fascinating… [S]o many mistakes were made….That was a tough one for our country,” Trump said.

But then he reveals what really is important to him. “See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that.” He later added, “Abraham Lincoln, of course, if he negotiated it, you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was.”

In response Liz Cheney wrote on X: “Which part of the Civil War ‘could have been negotiated’? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union?” She continued: “Question for members of the GOP — the party of Lincoln — who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you possibly defend this?”

What is being overlooked here is that everything he says always is about him. To understand these comments one must put aside his preference for the Confederate side and racism and instead ask, “What’s in it for him with these derogatory comments about Lincoln? Remember after 9/11 Trump bragged that he now had the tallest building in lower Manhattan. If Lincoln had negotiated the war, we wouldn’t even know who Lincoln was. He would not be considered America’s greatest president. He would not be on Mount Rushmore.

Now we are getting to the heart of the Lincoln disparagement.

TRUMP ON RUSHMORE

According to South Dakota Republican Governor and non-Vice-Presidential candidate in 2020 Kristi Noem, she was told straight-faced in 2018 by the current President that his dream was to become the fifth face (“Mount Trumpmore? It’s the president’s ‘dream,’ Rep. Kristi Noem says,” Sioux Falls Argus Leader, April 24, 2018).

“I shook his hand, and I said, ‘Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.’ And he goes, ‘Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’ I started laughing. He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”

Apparently she even gave him a miniature Rushmore with a fifth face on it! There is a certainly irony in this dream or nightmare. He actually had the opportunity to be a Mount Rushmore caliber president (Mount Rushmore Opportunity for a Little Little Boy: Does He Know It? June 5 2020). When one considers the coronavirus, economic collapse, George Floyd, and China, he has had abundant chances to display leadership on a heroic scale. If he had the mental necessities, cognitive skills, courage, and strength of character to rise to the occasion, he would qualify as a Mount Rushmore quality president. But how can a child in the body of an adult with the emotional maturity of a three-year old (per Mary Trump) ever be worthy of a 60 foot carving? (The Five Faces of Mount Rushmore August 10, 2020)

Just two months earlier, I had written the following Mount Rushmore Opportunity for a Little Little Boy: Does He Know It? June 5, 2020.

With America’s Third Civil War, the choice also was simple. The winning candidate (in 2016) made no attempt to be President of We the People. He made no attempt to be an e pluribus unum President. He saw that America was not a house divided but two houses. He did not divide America, he exploited the divisions which existed. The longtime pretend Democrat and Clinton supporter realized he had no future there just as he had none with the New York elitists whose approval he craved and never received. Instead he became a fake Republican, heard the call of Sarah Palin to take back the country from you know….those people, and answered the call. As long as Trumpicans think he is fighting for them against the terrorists, they will continue to accept him as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name no matter what else happens. He is meeting expectations and still fighting as the battle is not yet over.

Obviously it is only because of Divine Providence, that at this moment of existential crisis, that our Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, is here as President of the United States. He saved the economy once, he will do it again. He saved the country from the coronavirus. He will take back the country for real Americans. Truly we are blessed that at this moment of existential crisis, we have a President equal to if not superior to Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. And if you don’t believe me, just ask him.

For all his talk about having the greatest first year of a President ever,

For all his talk about having the greatest first two years of a President ever,

For all his talk about having done more for black Americans than any President except Lincoln,

He had a legitimate opportunity in the real world to become one of America’s greatest Presidents if only he knew it and was capable of rising to the occasion.

These words from 2020 are still relevant today.

He shares the Confederate disdain for New York elitists who look down on him.

He shares the Confederate disdain for Abraham Lincoln since he is America’s greatest president.

He agrees with the MAGA belief in him as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name.

Now he stands revealed as the true savior who will reap divine retribution on the vermin and the disloyal RINOs, those who oppose him once he is back in the White House where he belongs. He is America’s greatest President. He belongs on Mount Rushmore.

TRUMP ON JESUS

Mount Rushmore is no longer sufficient of contain the ego of the immature child indicted former president. In his “So God made Trump” video, we now see him revealed in all his divine glory. The more his mental necessities deteriorate, the grander the self-image of who he is becomes. Now he stands revealed as the pretribulationists premillennial Savior (Mike Johnson’s Bible and America: Which Bible?) not that he knows any of those terms. As he vanquishes all within his party who would rise up against him and even his would-be foes jump on his band-wagon, we see the truth of who he is: Donald Trump is the Christ, the Savior of America. The day of retribution is coming.

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