Making Sense of What's What


Welcome to Making Sense of What's What!!!


This blog is devoted to addressing those issues which impact our daily lives. Political, educational, relational and transitional issues are all grist for the mill. Life is personal and my need is to personally share with you those things and issues that impact me and others of us as we move through our daily experiences.

Thank you for checking in.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Trump's Confusion About The Media, Himself and The American People


Donald Trump seems to be somewhat confused about the importance of the press in his political life.  The “enemy of the people” who creates “fake news” and “lies,” reported by “scum,” was the very press that was responsible for his being nominated for and elected to the Presidency. The media, it has been estimated, provided Trump with nearly 2 billion dollars in free media political coverage.  His outrageous words and behaviors, his defying “political correctness,” were consistently the lead stories on such highly regarded media outlets as NPR, each night for the months that led to the nomination process.

Now, Trump is castigating this same media for holding him accountable for his words and actions.  The media assails him when he says things that are not true and when he does something that is not fully thought out and causes confusion and hurt to people, witness his first ban on Muslims and his plan to deport immigrants.  When the media prints something he has said or done that he does not like, he attacks it mercilessly, even to the point of banning those media sources that he takes exception to from news briefings. His response ties in with one of the symptoms of his Narcissistic Personality Disorder. When a narcissist feels attacked, s/he will lash out against those s/he feels is an attacker mercilessly and will not be able to let the issue die a natural death.

In addition, Trump has a pattern of provoking confrontations with others. Trump asserts that Rubio started the “little hand” skirmish, that John McCain is a loser, that no one would vote for a woman with a face like that, that Clinton is crooked and lies, that the fake news media is the enemy of the people.

All of these assertions reflect aspects of what can be said about Trump, himself. Trump lies, feels insecure about his physical and intellectual attributes, is afraid of appearing like a loser and repeatedly says things that are not true.  In essence, he projects onto others what is true about himself.

 On another front, what is amazing about his refusal to reveal his taxes, various world wide business connections and his involvement with Russians is, that it implissedly says he is guilty of something that he doesn’t want the citizens of the United States to find out about.  His statement about his shooting somebody in New York wouldn’t cost him any votes suggests that he has a certain distain for the average American citizen, or really people in general.   He seems as if he has lived his life believing that people are gullible and can be conned and manipulated, and that he can get away with such behavior. Up to now, he has.

It is impossible for any responsible adult to believe anything Trump or his administration says, without fact checking.  And yet, there is a new spokesperson, spin master and enabler on his staff, a Sabastion Gorka who has the audacity to assert “if we say it, it’s true. If the media differs from what we say, they are creating fake news." The problem is that Gorka comes off like an authoritarian who is to be believed, regardless of the fact that he is a spokesperson on a team that is not believable, that has a history with not telling the truth.

In this connection, the notion of alternative facts and that opinions are as important as facts has become more and more ingrained into the Trumpian political culture by the day.  The notion is that if you tell the people a lie often enough, over time people will come to believe the lie to be the truth.  This is a tactic that Trump and his strategist czar, Steve Bannon are counting on to “deconstruct the administrative state.” What this really amounts to is that Trump and Bannon want to dismantle  our governmental structures along with their underlying values, as we know it.   Part of Trump’s delusional system is that he believes that he can actually get away with destroying our American values and way of life.

Trump asserts that he “knows more than the generals” and that “he is the only one what can fix what’s wrong with America.”  Our democratic institutions are designed to protect us from such delusions and delusional people.  Our Free Press, the Fourth Estate, is what assures us of this protection. And, thankfully, the majority of American’s who didn’t vote for him, seem to be difficult to con.


Parenthetically, if I were to create an action plan regarding Donald Trump’s gaining acceptance as the President of the United States, I would suggest the following:
    
·         Reveal your tax returns, unless you have something to hide…

·         Reveal your business connections in other countries to assure that, as President, there will be no conflicts of interest, unless you have something to hide…

·        Reveal your business connections and relationships within Russia, along with times, places and what was discussed in meetings between you, or any of your surrogates, and the Russians, within the past three years. Invite the F.B.I. to investigate this matter, again, unless you have something to hide…

·        Place your financial operation into a blind trust for the duration of your holding office, or resign your office and return to the world of business…

·        Behave like an adult and stop your twitter tantrums, they make you look unhinged and foolish...

·        Stop making false news statements and not telling us the truth...

And finally, it takes more to be Presidential than to read a speech that someone else has written, off of a teleprompter for a little more than an hour. It takes being honest with yourself and with the rest of us. And remember, actions speak louder than words.


farwelljs@yahoo.com


Friday, March 3, 2017

From King George to King Donald


I woke up one morning this week with a sense of joy and relief that I am an American and that, thankfully, I live in America in 2017. I realize that I live in a country that fought for our independence from England because we were facing taxation without representation.  King George saw us as a people who could be manipulated. Instead, we wrote a Declaration of Independence and fought a Revolutionary War, to gain our independence.  We wrote a Constitution and a Bill of Rights to ensure that we would never have to live under the rule of a tyrant, that we would have a government of checks and balances, and that we would become a society where all would be treated equally under the law.

To be sure, it has taken hundreds of years to inch our way towards the ideal that the Framer’s envisioned that our Constitutional Government would provide for us. We have endured slavery, the Civil War, the political game playing embedded in the Jim Crow period of our society.  Not until the passage of the Voting Rights Bill in 1965 have our African American citizens been assured of their place at the table of being equal to all. Then, in 2013, with the Robert’s Court gutting provisions of the Voting Rights Act, certain states have resorted to, again,  making it more difficult for members of our Black and Hispanic communities to vote. 

A definition of a conservative is “someone who holds onto to traditional attitudes and values and is cautious about change or innovation.” For four hundred years the social structure and economy of our the Colonies and fledgling nation thrived on slavery. Vestiges of those values are still ingrained in certain areas of the country and in certain people where there is a desire to make it difficult for Black People or anyone other than white, to vote.

It has also taken centuries for women to have the right to vote (1920) and to have the right to earn equal pay as men while performing similar work (2009).  Regardless of the Roe v Wade in 1973, women are still having to fight for their right to decide what they can do with their bodies in the area of reproductive rights.

Today, we are living hundreds of years later and yet, we are, in some ways, facing the same dynamic we were facing under King George.  In today’s version of oppression, our politics have become a tribal based, compromise is viewed as defeat, beat the other guy no matter what, and the ends justify the means way of life. Today we live in a political world where this has been extended to obstruct our first African American President, in an effort to guarantee his failure. In this effort, the conservatives did not pass any meaningful legislation to meet the real needs of our citizens during President Obama’s last six years in office.

 Infrastructure, health care, unemployment insurance issues, the needs of the poor, homeless, children going to bed at night on an empty belly, addressing the needs of our returning veterans, the funding of women’s health issues, funding for public education, to name just a few of the areas that have been neglected, have all been put on hold. With the gerrymandering that has been strategically performed to insure that a certain populations of Americans would keep their vested interests in tack, today, the majority of us face legislation without representation.

Our new “would be king” is Donald Trump.  He behaves like he knows nothing about the Bill of Rights, the workings of our Constitutional form of government of checks and balances, or the role that courts play in our American way of life. Where Obama was forced to use Executive Orders to get around a do nothing legislature and was roundly criticized as attempting to be a king, Trump is using Executive Orders in an attempt to change our way of life, without the involvement of the Republican controlled House and Congress. For Trump, the courts don’t seem to exist. And, that is what makes me feel glad to be an American at this point in our national history.  With George we said no to tyranny that led to a War of Independence. With Trump, the structures that were set up to safeguard us from future tyranny, are in place to protect us from his ignorance and dictates.

Trump has already been introduced to a “so called judge” from the state of Washington who said no to his Immigration Ban.  That ruling was heard before a Court of Appeals and was supported. So, Donald, welcome to a government of Checks and Balances.

The authoritarian Trump, who with the stroke of a pen, attempts to dictate that this will happen or that will not happen is, a part, living out his delusional world.  His view of people is that they can be manipulated and conned.  To be sure, tens of thousands of people have been, or he wouldn’t have been elected President, largely on strength of the “rust belt” vote.  For some his “make America great again” and “we’re going to build a wall,” “we are going to repeal and replace Obamacare,” and “we are going to cut taxes on corporations,” “we are going to cut regulations,” we are going to build up our military,” might seem like the answer to our problems. The devil is in the details. And, there are NO DETAILS. Where is he going to get the money for these projects? Some speculate that he is going to cut domestic spending, that is spending that is for the meeting of the needs of the very unemployed and hurting Rust Belt voters who elected him into the Oval Office.

In a March 2nd editorial that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Catherine Rampell, of the Washington Post, shares an Op-Ed piece entitled:  “America First Really Means American’s Last.” For many the title to her Op-Ed piece says it all.

It has been written, “ A con man makes you focus on what you think you can get and distracts you from everything you stand to lose.” A whole bunch of average American’s bought Don the Con’s play.  Only time and our government of checks and balances will tell how this turns out. 


farwelljs@yahoo.com