Softening the Ground
A REAL scandal is the one-sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion? – Tweet from Donald Trump – 12/16/18
Sunday, the President of the United States stated that the First Amendment shouldn’t apply to network television. He wants to be able to sue them for defamation (and belittling, though that isn’t a legal cause of action.) And he claims that they are “colluding,” supposedly with his other opponents, though we know he knows “…collusion is not a crime;” at least that’s what he’s said many times.
I get it: the President doesn’t like getting laughed at. Saturday Night Live, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and most other network comedians are making their living poking fun at him. It is more than Chevy Chase imitating President Ford falling, or Will Ferrell saying “strategery” as President Bush. It is relentless, any network, any show; President Trump is the laugh line.
But it comes with the territory, and with the Constitution of the United States. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson didn’t like the fact the newspapers were making fun of his ongoing affair with slave Sally Hemmings (there was even a song put to the tune of Yankee Doodle about “Monticellian Sally”.) Abraham Lincoln was lampooned as an ape and a buffoon, and those were the Northern newspapers. The world laughed at Lyndon Johnson’s surgery scar, Richard Nixon’s jowls, and Jimmy Carter’s sweater.
But no one since John Adams (the second President) has actually suggested that we should regulate criticism of the President. Adams, notoriously thin-skinned, got Congress to pass the Sedition Act criminalizing “false” statements critical of the Federal government. The Supreme Court never had the opportunity to rule on the law, it was allowed to expire when Adams and the Federalists lost control of the government in the election of 1800.
Since that time, we have protected the right to criticize the President. And we all expect that protection will continue. We shrug off the Trump tweets as “dog whistles” to his base, without meaning or basis in reality. But, of course, that’s not true. The President conducts his business through Twitter; we learned of the new Chief of Staff, and the banning of transgendered individuals from the military, and the firing of multiple officials through Twitter. He conducts foreign policy there (my button is bigger than yours) so how can we assume he isn’t serious here.
The Trump Administration has engaged in an ongoing strategy of “softening the ground” towards restricting America’s foundations. The list is inclusive: the intelligence agencies, law enforcement, the press, citizenship, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, voting; all these rights and institutions have been challenged by the President. Whether he is successful in those efforts or not isn’t necessarily the goal. The strategy seems to be to raise questions about all of the long history of American progression, and what is today’s reality. It’s Orwellian; intelligence lies, FBI breaks the law, voters shouldn’t vote; the Ministries of Truth, Love, Peace and Plenty all doing the opposite or their titles.
You hear it from the President’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, as he tells us the President didn’t do something, but if he did, it wasn’t a crime, and if it was a crime, well he didn’t know it so it wasn’t really a crime. Following that logic…there is no logic here. It simply serves to distract and create confusion.
And we now have proof that the President isn’t alone in his strategy. While we intuitively knew that the Russians were attacking our electoral system, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report shows millions of Russian social media interventions in favor of Trump. They didn’t create issues, but they took them, many brought up by Trump, and echoed and amplified them across the internet. And after the election, they turned their sights on the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, undercutting his validity.
It’s a strategy to allow for “reasonable doubt” about whatever conclusions law enforcement reaches about the President’s conduct. But it’s even more than that. This constant undermining of American traditions and values enable an overall Administration strategy of changing America from a pluralistic society of many races, ethnicities, and beliefs, to a white dominated society of a mythical past. This is about the “shock” that some Americans felt about the changes of the last decade; the first black President, a national understanding that everyone deserves health care, and greater efforts toward universal suffrage. The Trump Administration MUST knock down the science of global warming and the value of American leadership in the world. It’s the only way they can move back to the “simpler time” that guaranteed white control.
It’s their plan of survival. Whatever the law and courts say in response to the Mueller Investigation, if the President’s men can go to the American people and convince them it doesn’t matter, then he has a chance of survival. As we now know more than ever, the Russians will probably chime in to help on social media.
James Comey, former Director of the FBI, spoke after his second round of Republican hearings. Comey is the flawed figure of our era, the man whose judgment is questioned by both Democrats and Republicans. Being questioned by both, perhaps he was right. But he is a man enraged by the faithlessness of the President, the chief of the executive branch, who is attacking his own agency. Comey stated: “It undermines the rule of law…it’s about what it means to be an American.”
It’s not normal, and it’s not right. We can’t let our values be undermined by the constant pounding of the lies. Soon, we will all be called to stand by our values, or stand with the President. There will be no middle ground.
