LAT Brutal Op-Ed: America still hasn't reckoned with the election of a reckless con man as president

[kpete]

...........

“What is it, in our American soul that allowed the Russians to be successful?” he asked.

“Those were not Russians voting in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, handing the election to the Republican candidate by a bit more than 80,000 votes. They were American men and women,” Dorfman wrote. “As were the 62,984,825 others who decided that such a troublesome, inflammatory figure expressed their desires and dreams. Trump could be impeached or resign, or his policies could simply implode under the weight of their malice, divisiveness and mendacity, and the country would still be defined and pressed by the same conditions and dread that enabled his rise.”

“Now, every desperate American must gaze in the mirror and interrogate the puzzled face and puzzling fate that stares back: What did I do or not do that made the cataclysm possible?” he continued. “Did I ignore past transgressions that corrode today’s society: the discrimination, the sexism, the violence, the authoritarianism, the intolerance, the imperial ambitions, the slavery and greed and persecutions that have darkened America’s story? Did I overestimate the strength of our democracy and underestimate the decency of my neighbors? Was I too fearful, too complacent, too impatient, too angry? Whom did I not talk to, whom did I not persuade? What privilege and comforts, what overwork and debts, kept me from giving my all? What injustice or humiliation or bigoted remark did I witness and let pass? How can I help to recover our country, make it once more recognizable, make it luminous and forgiving?”


“We must vigorously protest the president’s craven actions, but above all we need to acknowledge that what ultimately matters is not what a foreign power did to America, but what America did to itself,” he lectured. “The crucial question of what is wrong with our country, what could have driven us to this edge of catastrophe, cannot be resolved by a special counsel or a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives or spectacular revelations about Russia’s interference.”




MORE:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-dorfman-reckoning-trump-election-20171217-story.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Excellent op-ed. The point is that even if we rid ourselves of Trump

we have to think hard about what it is about our society that made his election possible in the first place.

[Perseus]

14. IMHO, his election was made possible

because of the well conducted propaganda the republican party has been pushing for many years, the fact that people have lost their will to find out the truth, the fact that people have become very lazy and don't read anymore, they don't want to learn from other cultures, other countries.

There is a documentary on Hillary Clinton out there, the republicans saw her potential even after graduation, when she first went to Washington DC, they realized she would become a power and right then they started a campaign against her. It has gone on for years, and the people have bought it. It is not difficult to understand why people voted for the con man and not for Hillary, even though there were so many stories, even some happening during the campaign like the audio tape from the bus, Trump University that showed his true character, but because people are ignorant, they bought the anti-Hillary crap instead.

I have a friend who still believes the USA found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, she swears by it.

There has been a push for making USA citizens intellectually challenged because the more ignorant a society is the easier it is to control. I remember when comedians used to joke about "who needs to speak french, or another language?". The farce that the USA is the best country in the World preventing the citizens to look for faults and try to fix what is broken.

The acceptance of lies. The USA used to be a country where lies were the #1 sin, if you lied you were shown the door out to never come back. The USA used to shine in the truth department and people considered honesty a requirement in their kids education.

All of that has been eroded by TV, radio, and people have allowed it. The fanatism that exists for ones political party is another problem. I know people who have no clue of what is going on, but they vote for their party because their grandparents, and their parents belong to that party, so they belong to it as well, no questions asked.

If you read authors like Sinclair Lewis, you will find that his novels were warnings to the people in USA, there are movies that try to teach people but most all they talk about when they come out of the theatre is the special effects or how hot the blue woman was, the message is lost.

There needs to be a campaign to educate people, to promote reading. Do you think it is coincidence that "Bookstores" have gone down the wayside? Don't blame it on Amazon, electronics is their #1 source of revenue, not books. Why are republicans wanting to get rid of public libraries? They want stupid people.

Anyway...I could go on.

[LiberalLovinLug]

22. Nice rant

I wasn't a Hillary backer in the primaries.
But she has probably gone through more BS than any woman politician in US history. And there could and should probably be a movie about how this relentless and "vast right wing conspiracy" molded the American consciousness against her.

[erronis]

25. Agree - a great intelligent rant. We are being bred to be dumb and susceptible

The brain-numbing T.V. in airport terminals, the flashy video effects across our screens (phones, computers, T.V.s), the incredulous situations in movies and shows. I don't know if this susceptibility to dumbness and acquiescence can pass from generation to generation, but it seems that whole families and generations are affected.

Cats are known to infect rodents (and people) with a virus(?) that makes the little rodents less afraid and cautious. You have to wonder if the CIA (or other non-US lettered agencies) haven't experimented with the populations. Genetic engineering anyone? (Jeez, today is my paranoid day.)

[dalton99a]

2. Still, one cannot minimize Putin's disinformation campaign against Hillary

which proved critical in the election.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. But we still have to think about why that disinformation was believed

by enough people to influence the way they voted. What is it about our society that makes it possible for at least some people to believe that a pretty conventional, basically centrist politician like Hillary Clinton was so dangerous? How could anybody with two functioning brain cells to rub together possibly believe she was running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor or any of the other outlandish stuff that turned up on social media, spread by Russian trolls (if not originated by them)? What did the Russians figure out about the rot in this country that made their influence effective?

[dalton99a]

6. +1

[LiberalLovinLug]

28. It was a slow burn

Republicans wrote the playbook. As soon as they saw, not only Hillary, but Bill as being a populist threat, they started. So that by 2016, many people had at least cloudy memories of the Clintons being under suspicion for the murder of Vince Foster. The White Water, Travelgate, on to Benghazi and emails. So not only was there smoke, there were many different smoke signals going up and it had been smoldering for a long time. So SURELY there must be some fire under there. And this spark was kept alive by constant CT bullshit by RW radio dominating middle America.

Its all fascinating in a cold objective way. Much like how Hitler and the Nazis were able to win over the majority of seemingly decent, well meaning German citizens.

[ProudLib72]

33. It was a continuation and further expansion of the RW narrative

People had been lapping this crap up for decades. Their minds were preconditioned to believe the torrent of nonsense that spewed forth last year and this year. I won't call anyone a victim because they made the choice to listen to this crap in the first place. What I will say is that this did not just happen overnight.

I am going to side with the article on this one because those people had tuned in to Rush and Alex Jones and Faux because they felt marginalized for some reason. Mexicans were stealing their jobs, or POCs were daring to move in next door. The message always resonated with their racism, xenophobia, misogyny, or pure hate of whatever. tRump/Russia just turned up the volume to 11.

[RandomAccess]

8. I think a lot of people underestimate that part

I saw an amazing onslaught of negative Hillary posts on both Twitter and FB. They were vicious, misogynist, robust and absolutely everywhere.

[FreeStateDemocrat]

3. The damage has been and is being done that we may never recover from for decades if ever.

America in peril due to one one maniacal monster with the aiding and abetting of the puke congressional and judicial rats for their nefarious personal gains.

[AJT]

4. Do not underestimate 30 years of rightwing propaganda radio and TV.

And the deep, dark pockets of rightwing "think tanks".

[RandomAccess]

9. VERY important point. One that isn't being addressed

satisfactorily by almost anyone.

The right has inocculated its followers AGAINST facts and the truth, and made the left out to be the actual liars. That has created a closed system which is impervious to any countervailing outside influence whatsoever. It makes it very easy to control them, and very difficult to sustain democracy.

I like the way Charlie Sykes, former conservative talk show host who's on MSNBC sometimes put it:

[Sentath]

20. I HATE pictures of text, and it isn't very friendly to adaptive tech

Is the text, just text, of those images available anywhere?

Please?

[RandomAccess]

30. You can google it.

I'm sorry -- typically I agree with you. I had no choice in this. It's NOT typically how I share information because I feel much the way you do.

[Sentath]

31. No original copy yet, but a decent reaction

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/does-charlie-sykes-understand-how-the-right-lost-its-mind.html

[tazkcmo]

29. FU Sykes.

You aided and abetted in this behavior so washing your hands of it isn't that easy. What are you doing now, Mr. Sykes, to repair the damage you helped cause? What responsibility have you accepted and paid the consequences for? You ask, "To what extent did I contribute?", but you don't answer the question. There's blood on your hands Chuck and they won't be cleansed so easily.

[dalton99a]

10. Absolutely - people were brainwashed

[dchill]

15. In a nutshell.

[SunSeeker]

7. K & R

[Perseus]

11. Very good article, but I have to disagree

with his notion that the chaos we are slowly going into cannot be solved by a Democratic win in 2018 and Muller's investigation, that has to be the first step because unless these people are uncovered and unless they are taken out from positions of power, the fight will be much harder, we would set ourselves up to a two-step forward and one-step backward. To fix what these people are destroying must be done with steady steps while disallowing any steps backwards.

All the filth these people have done must be also shown to the country and the World once Muller indicts, accountability is a must in this situation, to have the man-child go back to his golden palace in NY, and to allow him to pardon ciminals would be a slap in the face to the country.

One thing that I have learned from this experience is the fact that the president of the USA has too much power, that power needs to be reigned in to prevent another con man from taken such a spot.

Germany just declared they, and Europe, don't consider the USA an ally or a leader in the World anymore, this is dangerous territory because that is what dictatorships look forward to, isolation, they want to keep the World away from their evil deeds.

This is reaching a point of very hard return, the complicity from the GOP and some in the military is a scary proposition.

[not fooled]

16. Another big undercurrent

is that the peculiar strain of religiosity and racism masquerading as "evangelical christianity" has a long-term agenda to take over and subvert the government at every level. These nutjobs are in league with the billionaires to deconstruct a nonpolitical civil service and public education in order to create an ignorant, pliable populace that aligns with authoritarian control, as long as the facade of "christianity" is in place.

Democratic politicians can't reach these people because they believe any puke is better, no matter what, because of the abortion unicorn.

Excellent posts, btw.

[erronis]

26. Agree. But to ask another question: How are we going to communicate like this

When the internet is closed down to these conversations?

All alternate solutions welcomed!

[2naSalit]

12. I suspect

few of those who are in favor of our current troubled atmosphere are likely to take even the slightest glance at themselves in the cosmic mirror. They prefer to point fingers at others and place the blame there.

[Dustlawyer]

13. I will give you three reasons:

1. The rise of huge multi-nationals with limitless money and influence;
2. Their ability to buy politicians of both Parties with campaign contributions, Super PACs, Dark Money and the Revolving Door; and
3. Corporate media and it's propaganda not limited by truth but posing as news. They have "programmed" a large percentage of disaffected Americans into believing whatever their "news sources' tell them to believe.

We no longer have Representative Democracy, they represent Donors instead. Regulatory Agencies are run by the industries they regulate.

We are controlled by a shadow government of corporations and the ultra-wealthy. Sounds crazy I know, but it is true! Our system is tailor made for this!

[not fooled]

17. Yep

but when I tell the average 'Muricans I come across about these factors, they look at me as though I'm wearing a tinfoil hat.

People have been so programmed to believe that this is the "land of the free" where everything is basically fair and aboveboard that they think large-scale propagandizing would never happen here. I think they also have a hard time believing that the entire apparatus of government could secretly be taken over, which is exactly what has happened.

Perhaps the recent decision on net neutrality and the abominable tax bill will open their eyes.

[L. Coyote]

18. Maybe they should analyze the integrity of the vote counting too.

At the end of the day, who trusts the vote counting in 2016? That trust is going to erode too, mark my words.

[ffr]

19. Hand wringing LAT. Didn't have a problem carrying water for those same criminals in 2016.

Now they're all against the same criminals they helped elect. Come on, man!

Better late than never. But catastrophe lies ahead. Did not come on election day. 66 million tried to warn the other 62 million.

[stevenleser]

24. Did Dorfman write any of the water carrying articles?

He is the one who wrote the editorial

[ffr]

32. Dunno

Just know that the LAT overall was dishing cold water on Hillary, like the other papers and M$M to keep the race as close as possible.

[Puzzler]

21. K&R

[BadgerMom]

23. K and R

[smirkymonkey]

27. K&R