Trump Admin Should Be Call to Arms for Decent Americans

Another perceptive commentary on Trump and the Nuremberg-lite State of the Union comes from Roger Cohen in a New York Times op-ed column.

The piece entitled, Trump’s Volk und Vaterland, explains and denounces the mocking, racist call for nationalism, more walls, prisons, police, military against the dark enemies within and without our glorious borders.

Cohen's use of the German words Volk and Vatherland refers to mythical and virtuous German people, the Volk, propagandized as beset by foreign, Jewish, Communist and other unclean agents of evil despoiling the fatherland, Vaterland.

Writes Cohen:

President Trump declared in his State of the Union speech. 'There has never been a better time to start living the American Dream.'

But which American Dream? Trump portrayed a dark and menacing world in which immigrants, who stand at the heart of the American idea, were equated with gangs, murderous criminals and 'horrible people.'

In his 80-minute speech, the word 'woman' did not come up once. Other words or phrases never mentioned included 'peace,' 'human rights,' 'equality,' 'Europe,' 'multilateral,' 'civil rights' and 'alliance.' The Constitution flitted onto Trump’s radar chiefly in the context of appointing his kind of judges.

If there was a theme, it was the demonization of immigrants and of the rest of the world, combined with an exaltation of American might. ...

He spoke of building a 'Great Wall' on the Mexican border, but it may as well have been against the rest of humanity. Trump once again put the world on notice that the rules-based, post-1945 world order founded on alliances like NATO and American-backed multilateral organizations is one he would rather shred than bolster. ...

Trump spoke of American grit, of 'total American resolve,' of American heart and American hands, whipping his audience into chants of 'USA! USA! USA!' Trump’s America is, in the end, a reflection of himself: male, militaristic, white, mean and macho. ...

This was 'Volk und Vaterland' in American guise, stamped with his speechwriter’s clunky and cliché-ridden prose. ...

In the place of hope, Trump needs fear, a lot of it, to build the cult of his personality. His so-called American Dream is made up of the nightmares he imagines and that now hang over the world.

Like all dictators, Trump remains a frightened, immature child, not capable of perceiving humanity in other people.

Classical liberal values were never learned, so Trump concluded his address with his partisan slogan:

[I]t is the people who are making America great again.

As long as we are proud of who we are, and what we are fighting for, there is nothing we cannot achieve.

As long as we have confidence in our values, faith in our citizens, and trust in our God, we will not fail.

Our families will thrive.

Our people will prosper.

And our Nation will forever be safe and strong and proud and mighty and free.

Thank you, and God bless America.

Fuck Trump, this white supremacist human garbage is an continuing assault.

Any member of Congress who legitimized this crap by attendance owes his or her constituency a long list of explanations why.

Only 12 members of Congress boycotted the State of the Union.

None were from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

David Duke: Thank you President Trump. Americans are "Dreamers" too

America's first white supremacist president* hit his applause lines well last night.

Fascist overtones, explicit demonizing of immigrants, calls for increased militarization and policing of our country, this repulsive display by Trump continues.

David Duke, Stormfront and myriad other white supremacists were listening.

The reviews are in:

Thank you President Trump. Americans are "Dreamers" too.

— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) January 31, 2018

Charlie Pierce in Esquire offers words of sanity, commentary that is succor roughly one year before we declare war with Iran.

It was the most elaborate of charades, the most sophisticated of masquerades, that played itself out in the chamber of the House of Representatives on Tuesday night. The amount of pretense required to keep all sensible people—which is to say, any person who was not a Republican—in their chairs must have been heroic.

All involved had to pretend that Donald Trump makes sense as a president, that his administration makes sense as a government, and that his first State of the Union address made sense as either a description of national policy, or as a rhetorical summons to national unity. All involved had to pretend that his thoughts were coherent, that his words made sense, and that the complete and universal collapse of civic responsibility that propelled him onto the podium was not the most singularly destructive event in the history of American democracy since the Civil War. Everyone had to pretend that a freak show was Shakespeare, and that a rumbling, stumbling geek was Lincoln, and that the whole tableau unfolding before the Congress was somehow made noble despite the obvious fact that the whole event was an endless procession of lies and half-truths, and that the only truly remarkable thing about the speech was that it was such a perfectly round and complete crock of shit.

I don’t know how long the institutions of the republic can sustain this much pretense. Over my lifetime, the American presidency has tested what were believed to be the outer limits of counterfeit grandeur, but now we see that there is a vast universe of untruth and malignant fantasy of which we were painfully unaware. It is a burden to maintain the masquerade. It is beyond the strength even of the sturdiest democracy to be led by such a vanguard of unreality. Why anyone showed up on Tuesday night is a mystery to me.

Yes, Trump is happening, right now. Norman Cohn would have been impressed.