I am fascinated by the various verbal and media slings and arrows levied at opponents. They backfire if they are too inflammatory, so some semantic dithering occurs. These are notes to myself to keep in mind as I write opinions that may include criticism of Donald Trump.
Some verbal combat slogans are justified if, for example, there are actual court findings to back them up. Others are just various degrees of nasty and insulting words hurled at a candidate's personality traits or appearance. Whatever terms are used should be precise and tied to well-known, acknowledged behaviors relevant to governing as a president.
Others are naive about Trump's behavior and character problems but, while ignoring and/or acknowledging these issues, see it in their business as ideological evangelism or political interests to support him. Character will be on the ballot in 2024 to some extent, as well as other controversial issues and behaviors in contention. Update 4/29/23: Barr, McConnell, and Desantis have announced they will support Trump in spite of all of these issues. These chicken chickens are all going home to roost as they come to the aid of their party. Barr, when pressed, said all of Biden's issues and progressives were a disaster for the country, and he even said it with a straight face. Clearly, ideology and party loyalty are way above democracy's future or any other consideration. Barr should be pressed to deny any and all of Biden's accomplishments. Sick. Those business interests still support Trump because they think he will keep their taxes low, give them a financial advantage, and keep regulatory agencies off their backs. They have traded their business interests for a con man and sleazeball, a demagogue, a thug boss, an adjudicated liar, fraudster, and rapist, and a wannabe self-admitted "dictator on ( or for) day e one."Other names with enough evidence from professional or professorial observers may be justified, but need an explanation and definition. I will use those sparingly and in context. Some of those are wannabe fascist and narcissistic sociopath.
Update: 5 16 2024
A puzzle that probably answers itself: The GOP was once the party of the Moral Majority, but the white Christian Evangelicals have looked the other way, excusing their favored candidate of winning the award for his indecent behavior. They even see Trump as their Second Coming. My guess? The issue of abortion. On that one issue alone, the Moral Majority has become the A-moral Minority. https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-march-2024-abortion-in-the-2024-election-and-beyond/
An essay on Trump's contribution to American culture: indecency https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/04/trumps-greatest-contribution-to.html
To become a dictator requires being the king of chaos in the short term. That is a formula for strife as he uses and abuses his power and tries to violate laws. and deal with legislatures not yet fully in his control to amass big government, federal, and local political power for himself. His ability to abuse the judicial process is on display every day now, and with more appointments to the federal bench and Supreme Court, it will only be worse in a second term. Note updated: while he has been indicted in multiple federal and state criminal cases, he has also been suspected as being a suspected twice unindicted co-conspirator in criminal cases: the most recent Ariaona state fake elector case, and in the already completed first Stormy Daniels case that landed his fixer , Michael Cohen, in jail. It is fair to call him a two times unindicted co-conspirator because those will never go to trial.
This chaos is not conducive to a good business climate. However, busines see short-term benefits. They are not a naive bunch, but I think since the polls show today that Trump, the supporter of crony capitalism, still has a good chance to win, and they want to count themselves into his crony capitalist club.
Dictator or autocrat? Trump now owns the word of how he wants to govern: dictator. He used it himself. Most media prefer to call his plans to take over the executive branch and continue his takeover of the judiciary "autocratic." It is less inflammatory and implies even one-man rule has its limits, in not totalitarian control over some freedoms once enjoyed, or is a kind of power grabbing without the ovens of Auschwitz. I prefer " dictator "because that is how Trump sees himself: becoming a strong man above the law like Putin and keeping himself in power by taking control of all the branches of government and the media. He rationalizes why he can get stuff done without significant opposition from either a minority or a majority. That is not a democracy I ever heard of.
He is no law and order person, promising to use the DOJ for retribution and persecution against his opponents. He is for law with oder of corruption and bias and not even a pretense of fairness or protection of civil rights. That just stinks. He supports political violence and suppression of protests using active military. He has used fear and threats of strong-arm tactics to get himself where he is, calling the shots even from exile in Mar-a-Lago. It works. Bully is not a kind term, but fair. When bullying crosses over to threats of violence, pardoning violent political acts, and encouraging known violent actors to do his dirty work, as on January 6, that is more like the characteristic of a Mafia boss-style thug. That is a formula for being king of chaos and strife as he uses and abuses his power and tries to violate laws. and deal with legislatures not yet fully in his control to amass big government, federal, and local political power for himself. The trial of January 6, now delayed until after the November elections, will provide more insight into his role in its planning. However, his words, come to DC, it" will be a wild time," and "Go fight like hell, or you won't have a democracy anymore," are hardly coded exhortations to commit violence. That is a formula for being king of chaos and strife as he uses and abuses his power and tries to get others to violate laws on his behalf risking violating their own laws. (Just find more votes for me in Georgia and Zelensky, go find more dirt on Hunter and Joe Biden, and for thuggish militia leaders to fight like hell to stop Pence from certifying the 2020 election). The violent thugs ended up in jail (convicted of felonies or pleading guilty in courts of law), and Trump plans to pardon them because he considers them "hostages." Zelensky is paying for his failure or refusal to dig up dirt as Trump tells his minions in the House to vote against aid to rescue Ukraine from a Russian takeover. (Fortunately, he failed when the Democrats and rational and national security-minded Republicans joined hands to fund Ukraine on April 20.)
There are some examples of failures and examples of opponent partisans trying to tie Biden into the admitted actions of a son and then calling it the "Biden Crime Family." Saying it often did not make it true. That one fell out of vogue when the GOP House committee lost its witnesses to any gain or conspiracy related to Biden's avarice. No, Biden is in no way an accused criminal subject to impeachment or prosecution. Still, Donald Trump and his profiteering son-in-law(given cushy funds management of Saudi investment funds even though he never had funds management experience)after leaving the White House are given a pass by Democrats. Funny how that works.
Is Trump a liar? He is not the first sitting president to tell a lie. It is not simple to just call him a liar. Political lies are protected as free speech. Calling out and proving lies are the duties of political opponents. Being unethical is not a crime; not every act violates the law. If it causes damage to someone, it may or may not end up in court, but the damaged party has to have proof and attached proof of the damages. Calling a person a liar is free speech, but whether it is relevant to an illegal act is a different issue. In Trump's case, fact-checkers have a field day, but do voters care? Some do: A classic line that will live forever came from the mouth of a prospective juror in the hush money trial: "I wouldn't believe him if his tongue was notarized." The phrase has a history, but it became a legend in the trial when a prospective juror applied it to her opinion of Trump.
Sometimes lies have consequences that lead to court suits and legal actions that find proof of intentional lies and have relationships to other related laws, civil and criminal. Trump can be called a liar because he has lost court cases lately in which it was judged he lied. The findings in the Trump University were that fraud was involved, and restitution was required. Trump and his company's real estate have been found liable for misrepresenting property values, and the E Jean Carroll trial found Trump lied and Carroll was truthful, given credible evidence. Do these findings and judgments relate to the ability to govern in a democracy? In the case of Nixon, lies were a part of the Watergate cover-up that led to his resignation under threat of impeachment. That is the significance of the hush money, January 6, Georgia elections, and document cases. Except for the hush money case, these may not be adjudicated until after the November elections. They all relate to the constitutional provisions of the election process. If there is a criminal law involved, the proof required is beyond a reasonable doubt that the lie was intentional to break the law. The burden is on the prosecutor to prove it. The advantage goes to the defendant, who does not have to prove innocence.
It is fair game for Trump to be called a con man. That was the significance of both his real estate fraud cases and the Trump University case, where he was found liable. He is usually so convincing with his oratory he could sell coals to Newcastle (the one in England or Colorado coal mining country)."Don't believe what you see on Jan.6; they were just innocent, not violent assaults on police," he tells his followers, who then a close their eyes and tell themselves such tall tales no Constitutional process was nearly upended by violence egged on by Trump. I am not sure whether Trump gets away with it because he is so convincing or if those who believe that are fools or are cynically pledging allegiance to "the Boss," but there is truth to the saying attributed to PT Barnum, an epic huckster," a sucker is born every minute. " Juries have found his business enterprises to be frauds in recent high-profile court findings and have levied crushing fines. All of this is on appeal, but the attacks are still valid if a jury of peers found him liable, or guilty, for fraud and lies, and calling Trump a con man or a fraudster is fair game
Trump so far has been able to delay, delay, and delay the Special Council Jack Barr's two federal crime cases concerning records and Jan.6 with appeals and claims Trump is not subject to any law while in office. Some of the delays have been due to finding a sympathetic or inept judge in Florida, and the other is a sympathetic majority of justices in the Supreme Court delaying a trial on Trump's outrageous immunity claim until it is too late to hold the trial before the November election. The Georgia criminal case against Trump's actions in 2020 has been delayed or damaged due to the misbehavior of the prosecutor's personal life spilling over into the process.
There have been those. both professionals and lay people who had worked with him, from Conservative attorney George Conway to his niece Mary, who has called Trump narcissistic and a liar and a sociopath, and others have tagged Trump with being a...hole, an idiot, a dope, a moron. Calling him that alone must be coupled with why he should not be a president again, such as being a demagogue or a dictator ruling like dictators he admires.
We have had liars and corrupt politicians aspiring to be president or even occupying the Oval Office before. Andrew Jackson was one, and Nixon was not a truth-teller. Jackson was famous for the corrupt system of spoils, so abusive it inspired the creation of the civil service system. Project 2025, the plan funded and already being prepared by the Heritage Foundation to enact day one to turn Trump into a dictator., wants to replace civil service with the corrupt spoils system, firing all who are not loyal to Trump and replacing them with Trump loyalists. The spoils system is an institutionalized opportunity for corruption. Bribery is unnecessary; loyalty to benefit the boss is reason enough to rule one way or another. Trump tried that same stunt with an executive order when he was president but failed.
However, the goal to amass power like a dictator using the demagogic oratorical skills of Donald Trump, and civil court cases ruled against him for being a con man and a rapist, puts him in a totally different class of narcissistic sociopath that is relevant to how he intends to govern as President of the United States if he wins in November. He will use all means to give himself more power and to control the power centers of government to support his power-lusting quest to claim he does not have to abide by any law while president and is immune from prosecution for any crimes he commits. It is" me, me, me, mine," and "only I can fix it."
What about fascism? Is it fair to call Trump and the GOP fascists? It is, but so inflammatory in need to define what fascism is at the same time, it may not be the best strategy. However, both Trump and the MAGA faction of the GOP walk like a duck and quack like a duck, which is classically fascist. https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/no-longer-pussyfooting-around-calling.html No less than the New York Times has made a case for calling Trump a fascist. He is at least a wannabe fascist, which I think is ok, but I will use that one sparingly.
My own seat-of-the-pants shorthand definition of fascism is that it is just like the communist dictatorships of the Cold War without the "communism" ideology. Nationalism becomes the driving ideology, often joined with religion and crony capitalism. Dictators are required to put it into practice. The techniques of governing and control of its citizens are similar to those used by communist dictators, sometimes including violent and military-aggressive actions.. What is different is that racism and mutual coziness to big business or oligarchs also are the drivers of most modern fascist dictators.. Crony capitalism is also a characteristic of modern dictatorships, from Hungary to Russia. Perhaps a better word is the Russian one for crony capitalists: Oligarchs. There is a recent book making the case that American oligarchs are the new political class. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p082825
Current fascists and dictators may not include the ovens and genocide or central control of the economy, but to be called a fascist does not need to go that far. You do not need to be a Hitler to be a fascist. Trump's idol, Vladimir Putin, fits my definition of a fascist dictator. Edergan of Turkey has elements of fascism, controlling all the power centers of government. The military once was poised and activated if the government got too oppressive, but Erdogan got control of them, too. I am not sure if Erdogan has an ideology above a lust for power and control and a fear of extremists in his own Muslim religion sabotaging and invading his country. Orban of Hungary is a "fascist light," using the levers of government to do his work in a country that is already 95% pure ethnicMagyars and afraid Middle Eastern immigrants would contaminate their blood. Where have I heard that one before? Like all of his related fascists, he controls the media, the message, and the "news", and as he gathered the reins of power, his first goal was to destroy the freedom of the press. This just illustrates the problem: the definition and case/reasons/evidence need to accompany any designation of Trump and MAGA as fascists and should be made at the same time the tag is applied.. https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2023/08/is-trump-fascist-now-his-followers.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-and-the-success-of-the-narcissistic-sociopath
https://www.britannica.com/topic/spoils-system
https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-jurors-hush-money-criticism-b4fe05a61ed566a587523d1120b46a76
https://www.amazon.com/Assholes-Theory-Donald-Aaron-James/dp/0385542038Asshole theory of Trump
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/04/trumps-insults-idiot-woodward-806455
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plan-gut-civil-service-triggers-pushback-by-unions-democrats-2023-12-
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plan-gut-civil-service-triggers-pushback-by-unions-democrats-2023-12-22/
https://azmirror.com/2024/04/25/who-are-the-five-unindicted-co-conspirators-in-arizonas-fake-elector-criminal-case/
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/08/22/cohen-plea-deal-trump-watergate-prosecutor
A classic line that will live forever came from the mouth of a prospective juror in the hush money trial: "I wouldn't believe him if his tongue was notarized." The phrase has a history, but it became a legend in the trial when a prospective juror applied it to her opinion of Trump. https://www.google.com/search?q=tongue+notarized+quote&rlz=1CAJFMC_enUS1016US1016&oq=tongue+notarized+quote&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigAdIBCjIyOTI1ajBqMTWoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1&vhid=6HE2sDKVxk0rGM&vssid=l
