4 V 2019: Freedom of speech no guarantee of an audience

We’re hearing rumblings from the left and from Trump and associated crazies about Facebook’s banning Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, and other sociopaths from its facilities. This is viewed by some as a blow or, at least, a menace to freedom of speech.

I think there is here an underlying assumption that freedom of speech implies a guarantee of audience. Now no one can stop me from going into Kirkwood Park, setting up a soapbox, and denouncing Monothelitism vehemently and at length, but I think that only a substantial cash incentive could provide me with an audience.

The worst threat to freedom of speech these days is that society allows semi-criminal rabble rousers such free access. It is virtually routine for totalitarian movements to subvert and destroy democracy by exploiting the freedoms that democracy guarantees.

I cannot propose an answer to the dilemma that this presents, but I can say that unless our democracy finds a way to obviate or moderate the voices of hate-mongering and uninhibited deceit in the public sphere, they will tear us apart.

2 V 2019: Trump’s antisocial personality disorder

A posting on the Psychology Todayblog by Dr. Vinita Mehta entitled “Is there a Criminal Mind? What Does It Look Like?” provides the following description of the antisocial: “A putative definition of antisocial personality disorder states that it is a mental health condition in which a person has ‘a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others.'” To the question of what people with an antisocial personality are like, Dr. Mehta replies: “antisocial offenders with borderline personality disorder are emotionally reactive, unable to regulate emotions, bereft of cognitive empathy (knowing how the other person feels), rageful, and reactively aggressive.” 

When I stop and ask if there is anyone I know who exhibits these indications of antisocial personality disorder, I think immediately of our President Donald Trump.

19 IV 2019: Mueller Report and Trump talk

The partial publication of the Mueller Report fails, I think, to settle much of anything. Of course, the Trump crowd will continue to tell lies – oops, will continue to speak in the “heat of the moment.” Trump will continue to try to rule by impulsive diktat. His critics will nurse  their impotent anger and the Republicans in Congress will continue to play “Let’s make believe that Trump is not a monster.”

I may have been unduly influenced by all the talk of conspiracies and intrigues, but I cannot keep from wondering, at least momentarily, if anyone at all really meant for the Report to settle anything. The Report will very likely end up as more wet paper thrown onto the garbage fire that is American political life.

I was impressed by Trump’s answers to the Special Counsel’s questions. These answers show either that his use of English is not limited to the verbal grunts of his public speaking or that with enough money you can hire lawyers to write English for you. I was also struck by Trump’s fierce indignation at any who told the truth about him expressed in terms “spying” and “treason.” We will hear more of spying and treason as time goes on.

15 IV 2019: Trump, high-achievement potty-mouth

When he was just a little boy Trumpy figured out that he could get a rise from adults who preferred to ignore him only by saying something dreadful and/or untrue. He has not changed at all, as can be seen in his latest attacks on Repp. Omar and Pelosi.

I might say that we should ignore him – that’s what one does with children who behave like Trumpy. Healthy children usually get the message and give up their anti-social behaviors. But for little hard-core haters, attention-getting and giving offense are more important than anyone’s good opinion, because outrageous behavior and its rewards are their security. And so, when they find they are ignored the terminally insecure will escalate their anti-social behavior, figuring that if a little bit once worked, a larger dose will probably get the desired result. 

So I am afraid that if all truly patriotic people were to frustrate Trump’s attention-seeking devices, Trump would try to broaden the divisions in American society, or start a war with Iran, or launch missiles at North Korea, would do anything his childish mind suggests in order to retain the world’s attention.

10 IV 2019: Reparations to whom?

We are now hearing demands that reparations be paid to the descendants of black slaves. But why slaves only? If the United States should decide to pay reparations to all the groups it has subjected to genocide, starvation, exile from home, slavery and wage-slavery, the list would be a very long one. But the American establishment tolerates, even encourages a penitential preoccupation with black slavery in order to deflect attention from our many other atrocities on which a scab has hardly yet formed.

21 III 2019: Golan Heights, Spanish America, Crimea

Trump has tweeted that the U.S., against all world opinion, is going to declare the Golan Heights Israeli property. In doing so he is trying to make legitimate Israel’s seizure of this territory by conquest in 1967. This is virtually to say that if you steal something and hang on to it long enough it must be yours. 

In our case, the United States has held on to territories stolen from the indigenous peoples of North America and lands seized from the state of  Mexico. We’ve shown greater restraint with more recent conquests. On Cuba we have only “leased” the Guantanamo Naval Base to serve as part of the federal penitentiary system. We have not yet annexed Puerto Rico because we are not sure that we want it. We have given the Panama Canal Zone back to the locals because we no longer needed it.

 This fiat of Trump’s gives comfort to our fellow thieves, Israel and Russia. So I predict we will see new and greater landgrabs by Israel and the annexation of the Baltic states by Putin. We are in no position to object.

18 III 2019: Portrait of a Leader

I came upon the following in the Wikipedia site “Big lie.” The first is from an OSS Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler and the second from Henry A. Murray Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of His Future Behaviour and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany’s Surrender:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Never admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame the enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.

Who could read these and not think at once of President Trump. Trump does not quite conform to the “concentrate on one enemy at a time” rule, but, of course, Hitler did not have Twitter. To avoid pathologizing Hitler, we can say that he was an “unconventional politician” which is the way Republicans describe our President.

17 III 2019: Donny Dogwhistle

[I wish a happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who care.]

1) Trump has urged Fox Mendax to put Janine Pirro back on the air. So now he’s a television critic? No. He is just expressing a personal preference for Islamophobes.

2) CNN reports: “The President is not a white supremacist,” Mulvaney said on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ “I’m not sure how many times we have to say that.” 

I do not care how often he says this, he cannot make it true. Trump’s entire campaign was an appeal to white supremacists whom he tells they are losing control of “our country.” Mr. Mulvaney would have us think that Donny Dogwhistle’s presenting himself as a white supremacist who cares only for white supremacists does not make him a white supremacist as well. Trumpian logic at its best!