Something that really hit home today reading this post. I’d love to post this article by Joy-Ann Reid in its entirety, it is so on point.
The media can try to tell us that Trump and his gang rest within the regular American tradition. Millions know better.
— January 20th, 2017
What gave it extra relevance as I read it was the effect it had on me after watching all of the Sunday “news” talk programs for the first time in a long while. It was after that I realized just how far along the normalization process of popular vote loser-in-chief Donald Trump has progressed. And how much, I too had begun to accept..or rather, had begun to become numb to the metasticizing (and from the right — forceful, and aggressive/threatening) normalization of this in-coming republican administration
It’s a bad thing going on, so even though it’s one of those articles that we’d call a must-read-in-it-entirety — and it’s very much worth the time, I’ve tried to choose the most cogent parts so I don’t get in too much trouble for helping myself to it.
Here are some excerpts from Joy-Ann Reid:
Today, the reality of a Trump presidency sets in for a grim majority of Americans as they watch the most unpopular incoming commander-in-chief in our modern history, and one of the most actively vindictive and erratic, take charge of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the IRS and the nuclear codes.
There have been unprecedented protests outside inaugural events in Washington, American flags burned in the Philippines amid cries of “fascist!” and “KKK!”, and anti-Trump protests rippling around the world. Trump enters office with record unpopularity, and only around a third of Americans rating him favorably. He is, in short, despised the world over; like George W. Bush after the invasion of Iraq, which Trump so forcefully pretended to have opposed from the start. And yet, we are learning that despite the global outcry and anxiety, the incoming president won’t have to lift a tiny finger to have even his worst excesses normalized at home. The media, writ large, are doing it for him. [...]
His inaugural speech made token gestures toward bringing the country together, but quickly reverted to his dark campaign themes of American industrial decline and the need to turn inward in a defensive crouch against “foreigners,” “elites” and dangerous modernity. He threw in a call for “total allegiance,” [to himself] a great, international Christo-Islamic religious war, plus the odd, Euro-nationalist phrase: “We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny,” for that extra dose of early 20th century alarm. [...]
Never mind that his presidency is being met with a record level of dissent and protest, including spotty inaugural attendance, a boycott by nearly one-third of Democratic lawmakers and nationwide marches against him, including violent clashes in Washington D.C. on Friday and a massive women’s march in Washington (with satellite marches around the country)...[and around the world...]
Polls show that twice as many Americans object to Trump as approve of him. And there are few signs that a majority of Americans are quietly acceding to his vision of a kleptocratic, nationalist kakistocracy in place of a normal Republican administration, however one might object to the policies of the latter.
And yet, however jarring the spectacle of an anything-but-peaceful transition, or how outrageous his actions or those of his nominees—many of whom flouted or simply ignored the ethics rules normally attendant to joining a presidential cabinet—and no matter how many threads emerge tying Trump and his team to Russia’s autocratic regime, it is Democrats who are being challenged for straying from the norms of acceptable political behavior.
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Trump, for all the division he has sowed, is being force-fed into a narrative of utter normalcy. [...]
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Americans are locked into our traditions. It is uncomfortable in the extreme for people, and particularly for members of the press, to confront the notion that a president could be so far outside the bounds of tradition that he must be treated differently from his predecessors. There is a tick and a deep desire to normalize what we see; to make it fit what we’ve always known.
And so we hear endless parables about the “peaceful transfer of power,” but little more about Trump’s lewd and vulgar attacks on women; his belittling of African-Americans, his threats against Muslims or his racism against Mexican immigrants. All of that is allowed to quietly fade away...[...]
Trump’s most outré advisers —white supremacist Steve Bannon or neo-Confederate attorney general nominee Jefferson Sessions, or murky adviser Chris Kobach, who authored the apartheidesque “papers please” Arizona [missing noun here?] law from his perch as the Kansas secretary of state and the “Crosscheck” system for rinsing the electorate in key states of names like Gonzalez and Jackson—all are blandly remarked upon and allowed to fade into the presidential portrait. It’s as if there is nothing unusual about an administration that invites praise from the Ku Klux Klan.
His cabinet of billionaires—a foreclosure king, a burger czar who prefers robots to human employees, an education secretary who refuses to foreswear privatizing our nation’s public schools and an energy secretary who once vowed to eliminate the Department of Energy, plus a secretary of state who is close enough to Putin to call him a friend; a friend with a pending $500 billion oil deal just waiting for sanctions to be dropped by the Trump administration—will soon be benignly referred to as well, once the fire of Democratic interrogation cools. [...]
It is said, with no trace of irony, that it would be wrong for Democrats to attempt to delegitimize the new president—as if Trump’s own birtherism against our first black president never happened; that Democrats should seek to work with Republicans and the new administration—as if record Republican obstruction against Obama never happened; and that the change of administrations, from Obama to Trump, is simply history working its benign will.
• This as the Trump administration contemplates barring the press from the White House, and Trump muses about pushing his lackeys in Congress to drop the First Amendment shield protecting journalists from those they cover.
• This as Trump invents false realities on his Twitter feed with an alacrity that is at times breathtaking to watch, and his team fans out to media availabilities to do the same.
• This as Trump’s Justice Department stands poised to rip down the entire firmament of voting rights that invited three generations of African-Americans, along with Latinos and Asian-Americans and the young, at long last, to enjoy full citizenship. [...]
Joy-Ann Reid concludes with this:
...We in media erred long ago in ceding the notion of being arbiters of objective truth, in favor of pandering to people’s demand for endless, equalized choices, including choice in what facts to believe.
Freedom is neither guaranteed nor automatic; not even in the United States. Left unguarded, it can slip away like a thief in the night.
Authoritarianism doesn’t fall on a nation like a book falling from a shelf and striking you in the head. It rolls in like a slow tide. Over time you simply get used to the height and warming of the water; until before you know it, you’re drowning.
With Trump, his family and his team of billionaires set to drastically reshape the course of this country, in ways that could make us unrecognizable to ourselves, it’s clear that we’re going to need to be better guardians.
— Kudos Joy-Ann Reid :)
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- and this from Kos today, for all of us that needs doing — A few more protests may actually break him. Let’s snap him in half. ...and the entire GOP cabal — the reactionary GOP/Trump marching orders can be found here — the blueprint (pdf)
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— And now former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson has been approved by the republican majority Senate Foreign Relations Committee as the US Secretary of State with the in-coming republican administration’s agenda to “take the Oil” from sovereign countries in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions — an agenda to invade countries like Iraq...again (?)..or perhaps another country (?) — this saber rattling agenda sounds like the precursor to War and a Global strengthening/recruiting tool handed to ISIS
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— No, Donald Trump Can Never Be Made Normal
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note: I’ve added a few bullet markers, emphasis and links within the dialogue of Joy-Ann Reid’s work
Tuesday, Jan 24, 2017 · 4:04:18 AM +00:00 · Eric Nelson
This is an excellent conversation with Masha Gessen:
AM JOY 1/22/17
Joy Reid is joined by journalist Masha Gessen, who has written extensively about Putin, on how to address lies and apparent media manipulation from some of our own government officials.