By James Moore
“But let’s all remember Donald Trump is just a flatulent old man with an orange spray-tan who fell asleep at his own trial,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker
Donald Trump is such a vulgar human being we ought to be ashamed to be members of the same species. Even more disgusting and tragic, however, are the individuals in public life who surrender their last shreds of dignity, and the remaining crumbs of their principles, in exchange for access to Trump. The notion that anyone can accept the idea that the former president is the last, best hope to save American democracy is repulsive in the extreme. The opposite, in fact, is true. Trump’s restoration to the White House, based only on his threats, would begin the complete disassembling of the past two and a half centuries of America’s aspirational journey to create a “more perfect union.”
If you want to understand our failures as a democratic republic, the easiest approach would be to examine Trump’s sycophantic cult members. The Speaker of the U.S. House has suggested he was going to try and abridge the judicial process and see if he could get the Supreme Court to intervene in Trump’s felony conviction. The convict Trump, who has no understanding of democratic norms, went to Johnson and told him, “You’ve got to help me overturn the conviction,” as if Johnson, the man who considers himself a Moses for the new millennium, had the power to pass legislation overruling a jury’s decision. The house majority is, nonetheless, pushing a new law to empower the removal of criminal cases from state courts and transfer them to federal jurisdictions, which would give politicos the ability to avoid facing criminal prosecutions they consider unfair, an absurd proposition that violates several tenets of law and the constitution.
The stupidity at the leadership level of the Trumpublicans seems contagious, and it jeopardizes the entire two-party system in the U.S. Republicans have no policies to talk about in their campaign other than their support for Trump, a decision that is almost certain to lead to either the self-destruction of the party of Lincoln or the ruination of the nation he saved with his courageousness during the Civil War. The lickspittles who follow Trump around, polishing his shoes and his ego with their tongues, are not our only national problem. The justices he managed to place on the U.S. Supreme Court appear poised to offer their benefactor a limited immunity for his crimes. The fact that the court has taken months to issue a ruling is an obvious indication it is parsing language to explain why its majority believes Trump cannot and should not be punished for the January 6th insurrection and for creating slates of fraudulent electors to steal the White House from President Biden. Leaking legitimacy with every new ruling, the high court appears determined to keep stacking kindling in the tinder dry forest of democracy.
There is an ocean of evidence that Trump is a blithering idiot and has still been embraced by more than 70 million Americans in the last election. It is not a minor problem that forty percent of the U.S. population, either cannot recognize evil and ignorance when they see it, or worse, they simply do not care. In a recent meeting with dozens of CEOs wanting to learn about his policy plans for business, the executives came out of the gathering claiming Trump could not make a complete sentence or assemble a cogent thought. Had they paid no attention to his ramblings at rallies for the mentally challenged? The CEOs showed their own idiocy by wasting time giving and audience to a man who is visibly coming undone before our eyes.
Americans have only themselves to blame for putting their country, and maybe the free world, on the precipice. We allowed Ronald Reagan to get rid of the Fairness Doctrine, which removed the responsibility for broadcasters to comply with the 1936 Communications Act requiring users of the public airwaves to operate in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” With that law eviscerated, along came cable political yak shows and, eventually, Rupert Murdoch, who sold his version of the world as facts to unsuspecting and unintelligent citizens. Political candidates realized they could use lying as a tactic and it would not harm their chances. Denial was a reliable practice, and became even more powerful when the conservative Supreme Court justices decided that “corporations were people” and could, therefore, turn on the spigots to create rivers of cash to elect radical conservatives, who, in turn gutted regulations on business that were designed to protect the environment and the public. Taxes were also cut to corporations, which drove the national debt skyward.
At a critical moment in history, we are once more divided against ourselves. Russia is on the move against Eastern Europe under the leadership of a madman, who has only been constrained through the years by the NATO Alliance. Putin threatens nuclear holocaust to end resistance to his slaughter while our homegrown madman offers to end the war by giving the lunatic leader what he wants in Ukraine. Israel is conducting a war of revenge against Hamas terrorists and is content to wipe out tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the process. There seems no restraint and this country keeps feeding the killing machine with bombs and billions. Christian Evangelics push a Seven Mountain Mandate to ready the world for the return of their messiah and the acting out of Armageddon in the Holy Lands. Too many politicians bend to that magical thinking. Our economy, though, continues to thrive with record low unemployment and constantly ascendant numbers of new jobs and our uninformed masses still refuse to believe facts.
Into this fragile geo-political construct, we bring two men with a combined 160 years of living to lead us, though their plans are wildly divergent. One is accomplished as a legislator and statesman and has had four of the most consequential years of presidential leadership in modern American history. Even the voters who give him credit for saving the economy and jobs and businesses during the pandemic, however, think he might be too old, and that is a legitimate risk. Trump, who is only a few years younger, is more problematic for the rational thinker. He views every person and political issue and social dynamic as a mirror that must reflect compliments and greatness in his direction. His interest in governance is only to use its institutions for revenge. He was born into wealth and has used consistent failure as a marketing tool, refusing to pay his bills and lying about his businesses.
We may learn more on June 27 when the two meet at a debate in Atlanta to be aired on CNN. Trump is likely to sound like the drunk pushing an empty grocery cart through your neighborhood and there is a chance President Biden could have a Mitch McConnell moment, and freeze, uncertain of where he is and what he was just saying. Trump can be expected to slur words, insult minorities, and, as he already did, even denigrate the city where his party plans to nominate him as its candidate for president. There will be no hiding for either man. Microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to talk and there will be no audience to applaud or defy moderators who order them to be quiet at all times. This will be two men, too old, in many ways, to be president of the United States. President Biden has been a good president and is a good man, but the electorate clearly has doubts about whether he is up to the job for another term. Trump, of course, is an angry, divisive, convicted felon, and nothing more. What are we left with if both of these men falter on the debate stage and prove neither is right for the job?
Go ahead, pray for America. Or wish. Or hope. Or yearn. Just do something that helps.
This article was originally published on Texas to the world.
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James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.
He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).
His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.
Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”
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I enjoy articles by James Moore for the objective analysis of America, especially American politics, that is ignored by the Murdoch Mainstream Media Monopoly. So, America has thrown up another FRWNJ trumpery playing power games to boost their personal ego at enormous expense to the national best interest. It also distracts American citizens that the Hollywood version of ”the American Dream” souring into the” Nightmare on Main Street” as the predominant parasitic capitalist system drains the opportunities from the common people.
I hit the “like” button because I agree with the author’s analysis of where the US (one of “my” countries due to birth, relationship connections and normal inclination in many regards). But I am also sad that it has come it finds itself at such a pass. At the very least a massive rebuke to the former GOP is needed in November. Giving the only sane and democratic party (at this point the Democratic party) control of the House and Senate, along with returning Biden to the White House would be the first step in bringing the course of the country back to at least a semblance of sanity. But it will take years more to get it back to real health. And to bring back some sense of progress.
I am awaiting, with some trepidation, for the first and perhaps only debate between these two old guys.
Biden’s vagueness and lack of orientation in recent times is a real worry particularly in an unscripted encounter.
The debate, which will be hosted by CNN is in Atlanta on June 27. The 90-minute debate will include two commercial breaks, according to the network, and campaign staff may not interact with their candidate during that time.
Microphones will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak (so no backchat). While no props or pre-written notes will be allowed on the stage, candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper for notes and a bottle of water.
This encounter could be revealing and may also be embarrassing for the audience and for these two contestants who are used to reading from teleprompters which, on this occasion, will not be available, so every response will have to be spontaneous.
One watches in angry helplessness, as events unwind elsewhere to shape one’s life and destiny. Events in my life have directed much regardless of disdain, dislike, distrust, in the USA, U K, Germany, Russia, elsewhere. “We” control little, far less than we may believe. Old empty grubs everywhere, in goverment, military, finance, corporations, media, tend to ruin things because they know “best”, actually a variation of greedy drives, ignorant aims, ambition gone lost and astray. Profiteering is primary, pleasing us is secondary. Honesty is optional, results for the big “ME” are all that matters usually. What a blunderful world.
I speak only as an observer, but it seems to me that the whole political system is substantially inferior to ours.
At least here, anyone with any behaviours or reputation like Trump, would have no chance of being elected to any level of government except by accident, and then wouldn’t last long.
While I have in principal support for Australia becoming a republic, I would not support any proposal that in any way allows someone like Trump to be considered, let alone elected.
I just want to see the orange madman’s reaction if CNN follows through on the muting of the microphones. His rabid, raging and raving meltdown will be a sight to behold.
James Moore may well be right in his sense that Joe Biden is a good man but the genocidal cruelty on display in Israel has been largely aided and abetted by Biden’s inability to curb the constant flow of munitions used to slaughter the Palestinians or to enact any sanctions of significance against that evil Zionist regime. His legacy is tainted by his actions & inactions over the last months and brings into question what is meant, exactly, by the description of a ‘good man?’
And as a side note, it sounds like a place where Scotty will feel right at home, amongst the madmen, when he finally ups stumps and relocates to the States.
I agree with you regarding Israel, obviously, and don’t understand how a man of conscience can allow it to happen. Politically, the problem is tied to evangelical Christians, who vote in massive numbers. They see Israel as playing out an important role in Christ’s return and armageddon, and Israel must be allowed to act in a manner that fulfills nonsensical, ancient prophecies. But there is no excuse for Mr. Biden’s intransigence on the genocide underway in Gaza. And, in the end, he will lose many voters because of it. The largest Arab community in this country is in Michigan, a critical swing state, and they have more than enough votes to control his electoral fate there, and they are angry. – James Moore
Thanks James Moore, an excellent account of the disintegration of America.
I have been to America many times, but not since the early 90s. My trips in the early 80s revealed to me a country of diverse and wonderful people exuding optimism and enterprise. All with demonstrable hope and endeavor towards learning and moving along from the awful pasts most of them had endured. Doing business there with the likes of Boeing and their subcontractors and later with environmental clean-up companies was a joy.
Underlying the public face of those I met, were serious concerns about matters such as guns and gun laws, management of the economy, the plight of the poor, and America’s incursions into other states and how it was seen by the rest of the world.
After Reagan, there was a noticeable deterioration. At a casual lunch of professionals at a pub across the river in Elizabeth NJ, a pumped up project manager in his 30s, an ex-marine, on the subject of Gulf War I, said of Iraq, “We shoulda just turned ’em all to glass.” The 20+ at the table, from all corners of the globe, including several black Americans were palpably disgusted and horrified. I gave the neophyte a withering serve, saying that’s what gives America a bad name, and received applause from the rest of those at the table.
From the time of the Vietnam War onwards, the whole world’s hope that America would revert to a steady-handed policeman role, and bring cold war escalations to an end was dashed. It only succeeded in bringing down nukes to a level sufficient to obliterate the modernized regions of the world. Instead, in its vacuum of convenient xenophobia, it failed to learn the lessons of it’s own serial murderous stupidity and waste, and instead mired itself in hubris, criminality, exceptionalism and self-righteousness. In doing so it increased its paranoia about the efforts of its good folk, and press-ganged them into obeisance, confusion and exploitation for the purpose of their commercial and/or military hegemony. All for slaking the false glory, hubris, and greedy aspirations of wretched old men and women.
Indeed, James Moore, the politics of modern America has been hoist by its own petard. Its system of fine laws of health, safety and equity have been so subverted by a mutually corrupting devil-may-care dance between the ignorant wretched old men and women and their apparatchiks, networks of religious charlatans pumping superstition, and the entangled worm can of corporations and banks grasping for dominion thereby concentrating wealth and strangulating supply and demand.
Indeed, trickle-down economics, making corporations as people, the subversion of gun laws and the Fairness Doctrine coupled with abuse of Freedom of Speech, the militarized and brutal police forces, and the toadying dysfunction of the electoral college system, have dragged ordinary folk to fear, truth uncertainty, hopelessness and drug abuse in what they instinctively experience as systemic disenfranchisement, and a gift for criminality and armed rebellion. All but the psychotic don’t want to kill, but the strains of subversion and disenfranchisement are driving more and more towards psychosis. Prone to their own mythology and adoration of celebrity driven by Holywood, it’s no surprise, in desperation many fell for the drivel of Trump.
His neo-nazi kleptocratic authoritarian narcissism and misogyny quickly dismantled the objectivity of the legislature, and railroaded the judiciary from separation of powers into a partisan dogs breakfast barely able to hold itself together. A mirror of his miserable hateful life.
The honest thinking world stood by aghast and pummeled by America’s despotic plunge. It had borne witness to America’s erosion of equity and fairness, its importation and increasing indulgence in criminality and corruption based on othering, its exploitation via bling, and the increasing collapse of the affected GOP. But nothing prepared it for the advent of Trump.
As if nothing was learned over the previous 150 years, it appeared that the cycle of fascist plutocracies that have plagued humanity was on the rise again. And never mind the pandemic, it had brought the nasty, greedy, wretched old men and women out of the woodwork to blight the minds of the uneducated, and the inexperienced and disenfranchised young.
In a world now inextricably ‘globalized’ and interdependent, rather than conveying the message that the poor states would necessarily rise, and the exploitative wealthy states would necessarily give way to attain equity and equilibrium. The divisive voices of the greedy wretched old men and women are blowing the minds of the already disenfranchised uneducated and young, and drawing them towards fascism and othering. And they can hold the votes of swing in a democracy.
It’s spread like a plague, and entered the mainstream of politics across the world. That the gradual development of universal fairness, equity and natural co-operation and altruism is being held to ransom by anti-science peddling charlatans and aspiring plutocrats is a truly dangerous regression. Is this the recurrent virus that sees from time to time the election of psychopaths as our representatives?
Try as Biden might to bring renewal to America and a more reasoned balance to the now timorous world, maintaining his franchise requires walking the edge of a cutthroat razor and exercising awful guile whilst facing the mind-blown absolutism and open sewer championed by Trump and his can-o-worms.
Meantime the honest thinking world looks on with bated breath, whilst others expect fortune lays with blame and revenge or complacency.
No doubt, everyone hopes and tries, but most often after looking after themselves first, and perhaps too often recklessly. We shall see.
I stumbled across The Invisible Man decades ago – a brilliant revelation like finding a diamond in the backyard.
How tragic to have worked on his next novel for decades only to have most of the manuscript destroyed in a fire.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/12/ralph-ellison-juneteenth-excerpt-mr-movie-man?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_SundayArchive_041924&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=64c7918e40fb7d37d0015c3d&cndid=74616943&hasha=9ab6dc1aebcdea53c019d20c8dd41879&hashb=a92a92bd0ae234b02d8cae160cc269b134158be6&hashc=3a0a3f52b16483dbb161caa314a431fe27a682837a1f9654cdd215c222e19f5e&esrc=subscribe-page&mbid=mbid%3DCRMNYR012019&utm_term=TNY_SundayArchive
Happy Juneteenth, Mr Moore.