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.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Observations On How Trump Attempts To Destroy Our American Values And Way Of Life


Donald Trump lies, denies, deflects any semblance of truth away from himself and ”gaslights” everything. When he talks from his delusional world, he sounds like the guy who is rousing up his base…when he talks about reality, he is incoherent, rambling, his thinking is fragmented and on a level of a fourth grader with language processing issues. What’s the difference?  When he is in his delusional world, he is at one with himself and has his delusional reality mastered…when he is talking in the world of reality, he is at a loss, stumbles all over the place and is an embarrassment to himself, to the citizens of the United States and a joke to citizens of the world. He makes claims that the tear gas we used on immigrants at the Mexican border are “very safe.” He blamed immigrants with children “for being in harm’s way.”

His past two years as President have been a time of destroying programs that were set up to assist and protect members of our American Family.  He has attempted to undercut our national security agencies, our judicial institutions, he has supported those who want to destroy public education, and reversed programs that ensure clean water and clean air. His has attempted to dismantle those regulatory efforts to make sure that when seniors seek information on their retirement programs, they are assured to have their welfare the center piece of their negotiations with their consultant, not the financial welfare of the consultant or the company he represents. His insistence that global climate change is not true despite the recently completed comprehensive report on the negative impact on climate change and our economy because 'I’m too intelligent to believe the climate change report.' At another point he asserted “I don’t believe it, that if every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good.”

He has had dealings with Russians to gain loans for his various business ventures. Both of his sons have publically stated that the majority of their money has come from the Russian Oligarchy and, yet, Trump denies having any business ties with the Russians. He has receive loans from the Saudis that have bailed him our of two bankruptcy situations, and he says he has no ties with the people who our CIA have identified as having murdered Saudi Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump’s time in the Oval Office is a freak show playing in front of our faces every day of the week.  Sadly, there are those who are ill informed, unschooled in how government is suppose to work, poorly versed in the writings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and, as a result, are easily influenced by the Fox News and other propaganda producing sources. 

Trump’s need to be the center of attention runs his efforts to do away with bilateral negotiations, people working together for the benefit of all and, instead, wants to be the center piece for making a deal…he wants to be the big deal maker that his delusional world says that he is. His ignorance about the facts and history of addressing issues involved with negotiations is evident in everything he touches. In addition, he was totally unaware that Putin mocked him in Helsinki when he offered to have his intelligence people join together with our CIA and FBI to find out about our election problems. Before that he was manipulated by Kim Jong Un to believe that North Korea was to be trusted to ‘denuclearize’ the Korean Peninsula when, in fact, reports have indicated that their program has expanded.

We deserve and can do better than this as American Citizens.  Our job is to listen, to learn about issues and to participate in our electoral process.  If people are getting exercised about some person or issue, use that conflicting energy as a warning that someone wants you to believe something that might not be true.  All of us are ignorant about something…ignorance is overcome by becoming informed…that is something we can all achieve. Our form of government depends on informed consent.  Without being informed, we are at the mercy of people like Donald Trump and Fox News, Putin and Un. There are facts and we need to be able to separate facts from opinions. Contrary to what Trump asserts, there is no such thing as alternative facts.  Alternative facts are a lie. And, we need to know the difference.


Friday, November 2, 2018

Trump's Delusional World On A Collision Course With American Values, Part II... The Portrait Of A Malignant Narcissist

With each passing day of his Presidency, Donald Trump is presiding over and orchestrating the demise of the United States, as we know it.  On so many levels the United States is wasting away through the slow death process that results from Trump’s delusional thinking, his ignorance, his of lack truth telling, his lack of regard for civility, his acts of cruelty against others, and for his deliberate attempts to undermine our American social, political and legal institutions. Trump is aided in this decline by a gutless, seemingly morally bankrupt GOP dominated Congress. The Congress appears to be transfixed by watching the slow motion train wreck that is going on before their very eyes.  

Trump’s emotional reactivity and his inability to maintain a sense of control over his emotional inner world are on full view for all to see.  His ‘tweet tantrums’ reflect his intolerance for and lashing out against those who he feels are critical of him.  He becomes consumed with anger when he feels attacked, and will relate on Twitter in ways that reflect the lashing out of an emotionally troubled prepubescent. His “James Comey is an untruthful slime ball,” is one such response that clearly reflects behavior that captures Trump’s emotional development and unfitness for the Presidency.

Trump’s ignorance is staggering as his lack of interest in learning about what needs to be understood in order to govern as the world’s leader in matters of defense, economic issues, and human rights throughout the world.  Instead of being briefed by those who are still on his staff, who are informed and manifest adult maturity, he turns to Fox news who is still fighting the Clinton and Obama Presidencies with conspiracy drenched theories that have been proven dead and buried on many fronts by noteworthy informed sources. 

Fox news has become the role model for ‘fake news,’ and the belief that opinion is equal to facts in its importance to understanding reality. Fox news is Trumps source of inspiration and information. News medias outside of Fox are fast becoming targeted by Trump with threats to increase libel laws in an attempt to eliminate all who speak against his perception of reality. The print media is also under attack for the same reason.

 In his first week in office, Trump’s insensitivity strained relations with the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Australia. In his first year in office, in addition to withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, and NAFTA, he has withdrawn American leadership in a world that we, as a nation, have spent eighty years attempting to build and strengthen, providing economic support, stability and safety for citizens throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas.  He has opposed the Iran Nuclear Treaty without his having any understanding about Iran, the history of the treaties creation, the issues that had to be addressed to arrive at an agreement. He has provoked the heightening of tension on the Korean Peninsula and initiated a trade war with China that will have a detrimental impact on various areas of our economy including our soybean farmers and those very people who supported his candidacy.

Added to this list of actions is his reversal of fifteen of President Obama’s Executive Orders. Three of Obama’s orders come to mind as examples of Trump’s attempts to destroy Obama’s legacy.  He has reversed clean water and clean air directives. He has reversed insuring that those who seek advise from a retirement program, have the assurance that it is the client’s best interest that counts and not the best interest of the salesman or company.  In effect, Trump supports the polluting of streams with the waste from coal mines, the polluting the air with relaxed emissions standards and subjecting retiree’s to greedy, predatory sales people around retirement issues.

During the 2016 Presidential Election, his need was to create a believable message for those who might vote for him including the unemployed of the Rust Belt.  He promoted the notion that his supporters are all victims. He did this by asserting that our American economy is flawed. In truth, our economy is the strongest in the developed world and demonstrated that strength by how it survived the 2008 recession. 

His idea about ‘Making American Great Again,’ is to return American back to the 1950’s in the days of strong coal and steel production. In fact, our steel industry will never be competitive in this current world because the American steel industry is obsolete. It is obsolete because over the years, it never upgraded its technology and equipment. 

The coal industry is being moved to pasture due to newer forms of less expensive energy that are making the coal industry and the need for coal miners obsolete, as well. Such assertions on his part give those, who are former coal and steel workers false hope that the coal and steel jobs will once again support their livelihoods.
 
 But for those coal and steel workers who are out of jobs, a con artist cons and sells his snake oil to those who want to believe. Trump’s plan is pure magical thinking and his word has been proven, over time to be worthless. His promise to the workers at Cutter Industries to keep their jobs was not kept. As of January 10, 2018 The Washington Post reports that Trump has made 2,001 false or misleading claims in 355 days which amounts to 5.6 false claim a day. As of October 30, 2018 his false or misleading claims have escalated over six thousand and average 30 each and every day.  The question needs to be asked, who in their right mind would believe anything Trump might say?

Trump phantasy world reflects his sense of vulnerability and poor self-esteem. As a result, he compensates for this by creating an exaggerated sense of self-importance and entitlement. His phantasy world allows him to make statements like “I know more than the generals,” or “I know the system better than anybody, I am the only one who can fix the economy.” “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.” “I am a very stable genius.” “Nobody has more respect for women, nobody.” Speech and Language Pathologists have indicated that Trump’s thought process and use of words is between the 6th and 8th year level of cognitive and language development. 

His lying is another aspect of his phantasy world. He can say anything because anything means nothing to him. He is able to live with his misstatements of fact because he has no mediating concern for right and wrong.  His recent statement about our trade deficit with Canada serves as an example of this. He readily admitted that he did not know the facts of the matter and yet, in a discussion with the Prime Minister of Canada made the statement that Canada owes us, when, in fact, we have a trade surplus with our northern neighbors. Such misstatements, such ignorance is not only embarrassing, it makes the United States the laughing stock of the world. They are also dangerous. 

Most recently, through a Tweet, Trump warned “ Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it.” Is this the behavior; are these the assertions towards a hostile nation that we expect from the President of the United States?

Trump also plays to the needs of his “base,” those who support and encourage him.  He is aware that there is upset with the way the white dominated society is declining in America. Barak Obama’s election to the Presidency drove the last nail into the coffin of the myth of white supremacy. Now, with Obama, those who used to be members of the slave class can be in the driver’s seat of our nations aspirations.  Conservative and Alt-right folks don’t like that fact and feel ill at ease about such realignment in American’s social structure.

Added together with this, is the ‘browning’ of American society.  There are more and more people in our American Family that are non-white.    He is the spokesman to rile those whites to act out against such realities. His emphasis against immigrants allows him to use the practice of scapegoating to mobilize his base against those who are new to our country, who speak languages other than English and whose religious beliefs are other than Christian. 

On another level, Trump is completely unconcerned about the feeling and needs of others. His ‘who would vote for a face like that?’ response to Carly Fiornia as a potential Presidential Candidate in 2016 is one such example of this behavior. His ‘Crooked Hilary, throw her in jail’ comments, his comment about John McCain being a war hero, ‘he was a war hero because he was captured.  I like people who weren’t captured. More recently, he referred to the Dictator of North Korea as “little rocket man.”

In truth, Trump creates and thrives on chaos, conflict and confusion.    His going from the Russian Probe, to his current trade war with China and other nations, to his affairs with a porn star and a Playboy Bunny, the firing of significant staff, his bombing of Syria, all of which creates a fire storm around him. The more he creates commotion, the more secure he feels at being at the center of the world he has created. Such outer world confusion mirrors the inner world confusion that rages on within him. Such chaos also serves as a way of deflecting attention from any single issue.  And, with the sheer number of issues in motion at the same time takes the edge off of any single matter so everything becomes a blur to someone looking in from the outside.

He also demonstrates a kind of cruelty that pours salt on the wounds that he inflicts on others. Trump’s public abuse of his staff, his threatening to fire someone, then reversing his decision, only to fire the person in the media, or through a Tweet has become a common practice.  Secretary of State Tillerson experienced a termination tweet while on a trip to Russia.  F.B.I. Director Comey was addressing FBI recruits in Los Angeles when he found out about his firing on television.

Nothing highlights this sadistic aspect of Trump’s personality more than his treatment of DACA immigrants.  This group had the assurance from President Obama that they were not to be deported from the United States. Trump even assured the DACA group that they would be safe from deportation.  He even asserts “the immigration solution should be a ‘bill of love.’ Instead, he changed his mind and put a deadline on DACA immigrants to register to remain in country.  He then proclaimed his intent to end the program so that all are subject to deportation. Where things stand with DACA individuals, in this moment, remains up in the air.

 His use of ICE agents to round up and tear families from one another is unconscionable and should be unconstitutional due to lack of affording people their due process rights.  Under Trump, the ICE agents are frightening reminiscent of Hitler’s Gestapo. His method of trying to keep the ‘murders, rapist and drug traffickers out of the United States’ is to make any immigrants’ life in the United States, a living hell.  He knows not nor cares about our promise to those “Give me your tired, your poor…Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me…I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

So, in the final analysis, we have a President who manifests all of the symptoms that Erich Fromm, the social psychologist termed Malignant Narcissism. He coined the term in 1964.  He refers to this “as a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, aggression and sadism.  Often grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families, organizations, communities and nations in which they are involved and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.  The malignant narcissism is a severe mental sickness representing ‘the quintessence of evil.’ He characterized the condition as ‘the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity.” Psychology Today, February 22, 2017

In Trump, we have someone who it is easy to dismiss or treat as a clownish man-child. All the while, he casts a dark, foreboding cloud over our way of life.  Our Congress can no longer sit on its hands and allow him to do what he wants. We need to take seriously Erich Fromm’s warning about such a person. Trump is unfit for the Presidency and we need to prevent him from continuing to destroy our essence as a people and as nation.



Monday, October 29, 2018

The Birth, Evolution and Consequences Of Today's Political Tribalism

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has written a book entitled ‘Them --- Why We Hate Each Other---and How To Heal’…In interviews he presents as a bright, articulate, intellectually honest politician who demonstrates insights into where we are as a society, particularly how various forces work to alienate us from one another.  One of his notions is that our current political tribalism has its roots in societal influences that impact on our politics. 

Contrary to Sen. Sasse’s view, it seems to me that our current political ‘tribalism’ is something that began on the morning of Barack Obama’s Inauguration Day when the G.O.P. ‘leadership’ met to pledge that they were going to oppose everything that the White House sent them to consider for the crafting into legislation. The politics of the ‘ends justify the means’ became the vehicle to carry out this action plan.

The Speaker of the House John Boehner went so far as to say that ‘the word compromise doesn’t exist in his vocabulary.’ This is a strange assertion for the leader of the House to make, especially when one of the foundations of politics is that it involves the ‘art of compromise.’ For Boehner and other conservatives to compromise was to show ‘weakness,’ and weakness was not to be shown.

One of Obama’s initial gestures of sincerity was his attempt to reach out to the members of Congress to work with the G.O.P. in an effort to gain traction on his legislative agenda.  His ‘YES WE CAN’ desire to work together met with the ‘NO WE WON’T’ on the part of the G.O.P.  His attempts to ‘compromise’ were seen as weakness on the part of those who opposed him. His efforts to work with the Congress only emboldened those who were working against him to redouble their efforts to resist his legislative offerings.

Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate, implied on December 7, 2010, in the heat of the mid-term election, that his top priority wasn’t health care, or attending to the needs of our homeless, emotionally and physically wounded returning veterans, or addressing the needs of public education or repairing our crumbling infrastructure. Rather, McConnell’s stated emphatically that his ‘top priority was to make Obama a one term president.’

And so for the eight years of Barak Obama’s Presidency, the G.O.P. was repeatedly guilty of not doing anything of import on behalf of those who elected them to office. It was an eight-year vendetta to destroy the efforts of an elected President whose candidacy excited 65 percent of registered voters to turn out at the polls on Election Day. The fact that Obama, working with W. Bush, was able to salvage our economy during 2008 financial crisis, and later, Obama’s effort to create a health care program that made it possible for millions of Americans to gain access to health care were ignored and even became a source of harsh criticism from the conservatives of the G.O.P.

During the Obama years, government was viewed as being gridlocked and a source of frustration to those whose lives had been devastated by the 2008 financial melt down. The focus of the politicians who opposed Obama and the citizens who wanted government to do its job on their behalf had a ‘Come To Jesus Meeting’ in the Presidential Election of 2016.

Donald Trump, ‘Don-the-Con, the liar, the misogynist, the racist, the xenophobic and the malignant narcissist, the man Michael Blumberg called a con artist and not fit for the Presidency, was elected President by the Electoral Collage. His opponent, Hillary Clinton defeated Trump in the popular vote by three million ballots. Trump, in an example of his delusional thinking that has become a hallmark of this Presidency, asserted that those who cast those three million votes were illegal immigrants and that had they not voted, he would have also won the popular vote.  

Why was Trump elected? There were seemingly three groups who voted for him.  The ‘deplorables’ as Clinton referred to them, those who were misogynists, racists, xenophobic, Alt-right and David Duke types. There were those who figured he was a businessman who might be the change agent who was needed to get something done in Congress. And, then there were the uninformed who were tuned into Fox Entertainment News.  As Senator Sasse has said, Fox had a formula of telling the uninformed that ‘liberals are evil, you’re a victim and you should be furious.’ So these folks were propagandized into being an unknowing support group who became part of Trump’s ‘base.’ Many of those who thought Trump, the businessman, might be an agent for overcoming government’s gridlock have abandoned Trump.  It is estimated that Trump’s base is realistically made up of twenty-two million, which is down from the nearly sixty three million who voted for him on Election Day.

There is another even more sinister reason why a Trump-like person was elected President. Obama scared the hell out of the alt-right, racist and uninformed segment of our society.  With Obama’s election to the Presidency, he drove the last nail into the coffin of the myth of ‘white supremacy.’ Those whose need to believe that they were better than others because they were white hit the wall of reality when a Black Man moved into ‘their’ White House and was elected twice to serve as Commander-In-Chief and leader of the free world.

A second and similar reality became evident. Demographers have shown that, it is just a matter of time, before ‘whites,’ will become surpassed in numbers by brown skin humans in the United States. For many these two realities, Obama the Black Man as President and the ‘browning of America’ is too threatening for those who were being faced with an America that would no longer remain a white dominated society. And, the ‘browning of America’ served as an excuse to mobilize Trump’s base against immigrants and anyone who opposed them as the 2018 midterm elections draws near.

And so, Trump era ‘tribalism’ continues to play a destructive role in American Society. The ends justify the means is still present. Promoting fear of immigrants is an added tactic. Added to this was the advent of alternative facts, fake news, minority group voter suppression, Trump’s suspected involvement in Russian attempts to influence our elections in his favor, treating the media as the ‘enemy of the people, treating others, especially liberals not as people but as an out of control mob, and the belief, that Trump was a ticket to returning to a 1950’s era America.

In the wake of today’s political tribalism is found the destruction of our values, the breaking of norms of our institutions, the disintegration of our relationships with one another, with our allies, and America’s diminished standing in the world community. The America of Trump is the personification of the Ugly American Way of Life. And, so tribalism will continue to exist in our American Society until it is neutralized by our overcoming of our fear, our ignorance and by our use of the ballot box.

We can overcome treating others as the enemy and as objects when we begin ‘to treat others’ as we would like to be treated’ and realize that ‘but by the grace of God, their go I.’ This is the way we will achieve the E pluribus unum, ‘out of many, one’ ideal of that our Founding Fathers hoped we would achieve 241 years ago.  It is, also, the only way that we will survive as a free and democratic society in the Twenty-First Century.


Monday, October 1, 2018

The Kavanagh Hearings: Some Reflections On The Despicable, Disgraceful and Disgusting…


The actions of the Judiciary Committee in relation to Prof. Ford are despicable, disgraceful and disgusting. The general mind-set of the all male G.O.P. members of the committee is unbelievably shallow and reflects an old male assertion of deniability that no longer stands up to the light of scrutiny in todays world: ‘If this happened, as Ford says it did thirty years ago, why didn’t she come forth before this?’ In point of fact, their painfully transparent thinking process is really an attempt to totally discredit a woman who has been attacked by a man who sexually violated her and who, in her mind, might have even killed her.

These servants of the people further bring disgrace upon themselves by suggesting that Prof. Ford’s coming out at this time, and in this way, is   only a political ploy to discredit their ‘fully qualified’ candidate for the High Court. They also cast dispersions on her stated desire to remain anonymous. In psychological terms, they might be projecting onto her how they would behave and are tone deaf to the sincerity of Prof. Ford’s feelings and motivations.

Then, you further add a splash of irony onto this scene by having Mitch McConnell asserting that the confirmation of a justice needs to be done forthwith, and with not a moment to loose. This sense of urgency resounds of hypocrisy in light of his refusal for nearly a year, to have Merrick Garland invited to answer questions before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when, in all probability, he would have passed a confirmation vote of the full senate.

So we have petty politics at its worse.  And we, as citizens, pay the price for such cheap motives and behavior.  Such goings on cast an atmosphere of doubt and distain over our whole body politic.  In truth, we are also diminishing the value of the two individuals who are involved in this real life tragedy. 

First, we have a woman who has lived with having been violated by a man, who felt that her very life was in jeopardy. The pain of that experience has, by all reports, been a constant fixture in Prof. Ford’s life for over thirty years. She finally wanted to come forth when she found out that Judge Kavanagh was a potential nominee to the High Court.  She must have felt that Kavanagh’s elevation to this court was inappropriate in light of his behavior in relation to her.  So she went to her representative and came forth with her experience and asserted that she wanted to remain out of the spot light.  She has a husband, family and profession that she wanted to keep from a media circus. 

Prof. Ford received assurances that her request for anonymity would be respected by Sen. Diane Feinstein, hence the delay in her story coming out weeks ago. Ford’s confidence was violated and when she began to hounded by members of the Press, she chose to discuss her experience with the Washington Post. Her motivation, as a result of this leak, has been questioned and she has been accused of being disingenuous in her assertions and she has been painted as nothing more than a vehicle to postpone the Kavanagh nomination to the high court.

Next, we have a man with an enviable record for his tenure on the bench, someone who has met the approval of such bodies as the American Bar Association.  His nomination has also, been roundly applauded by conservatives.

Prof. Ford’s assertion was that it was Kavanagh who behaved as he did as an intoxicated seventeen year old. He claims that he has no memory of such an event during his high school days and further states that it did not happen.   

So we have a situation of she said, he said. This is a woman’s worst fear in coming forward around being sexually molested, not being believed and becoming a target for innuendos and disparagement. To her credit, Prof. Ford subjected herself to a polygraph test that she passed.  She also requested that the F.B.I. do an investigation into what happened on the night of her experience of having been sexually attacked. 

Judge Kavanagh, rather than denying outright his part in what happened during that evening, would be well served to allow for the F.B.I. to investigate the evening and event in question.  It would be an act showing a willingness for transparency around the whole matter.  It would also be an act of a mature man, to acknowledge that, even though he did not remember his involvement in any such event, if it were he who had done what Prof. Ford alleged that he had done that evening while in an alcoholic stupor, for him to apologize for having caused her pain.  Such an approach, on his part, would allow for healing to take place, not only for Prof. Ford.  Such a gesture on his part would soften the otherwise dark cloud of doubt that would otherwise hang over his confirmation and tenure on the High Court.

The fact that the F.B.I. has been given the go ahead to make an inquiry into the this situation and maybe interview certain potential witnesses within the one week period of time that they have been given by the Senate Judiciary Committee, will hopefully be more than going through the motions of making the Senate Hearings more than the sham that it has devolved into being.

One final note. It is not at all true that a teenage young man is at the mercy of his hormones. The idea that once a young male gets sexually excited that he loses all sense of right or wrong and control over his behavior is, as Richard Reich would say, ‘rubbish.’ A part of a young man’s maturational process is to learn that women are people too. And, that we (boys and men) need to treat others as we would want to be treated.