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fapangel · 7 years ago

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>>trump is inciting hatred against CNN / trump is seeking to shut CNN down by any means necessary || Are these fuckleheaded libs fucking serious?

Not only that - CNN has doxxed the reddit user who made the dank meme mocking them, and have openly threatened to reveal his identity if he fails to keep groveling and begging for apologies:

CNN is not publishing "HanA**holeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same. CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

Naturally, this has blown up in CNN’s face, with CNN attempting damage control on Twitter, which is failing miserably because there’s no fucking way to talk around the paragraph above. That’s as blatant, direct and open a threat as you ever see.

But this isn’t the real gem. Oh no. As usual, that dubious distinction goes to the class act, the Crown Prince of Clowns, the fucking Washington Post’s screed defending this shit, and doubling down. It’s a hilarious read, but it’s also very revealing of the mindset behind the media fucks (like the ones at CNN) that is making them think doxxing random memelourdes on the internet is an ethical use of their power and platform:

The ethical question of whether a news outlet should withhold the identity of a private citizen who posted extremely offensive things online on the apparent condition that they behave better in the future is one that resonated well beyond the bubble of the Trump Internet.

An aside - there is no “ethical question” here. This is Journalism Ethics 101 - literally, I learned this in my senior Newspaper class before getting it again in a Journalism 100-level class at Eastern Michigan - a random internet user who made a 30 second meme clip is not a “public figure”. This is why so many news stories, i.e. on someone arrested for misdemeanors, decline to name the subject - to protect their privacy. This is run-of-the-mill journalism ethics. The President endorsing it via retweet effectively makes it “his” speech; you can gun for him all you want, but it is not ethical to actively hunt down the name of the random private citizen who made said clip, and then threaten to reveal them. You report on the stories, you do not make the fucking stories.

But the meme that Trump supporters have picked up and spread is a mix of fact and fiction, of genuinely outraged conservatives and the gleeful meme-literate arsonists who just like to see the Internet burn with fury.

Oh, right, those fucking alt-right trolls are in the wrong here because their narrative is filled with filthy liiiieessssssss

The media has often struggled to cover Trump’s online supporters, whose skepticism of mainstream publications has evolved into a total rejection of the idea that places like CNN are even trying to report the truth. At the head of that rejection is the president himself, who regularly tweets that news outlets he doesn’t like are “fake news.” Media ethics experts who look at CNN’s article on all this might discuss it in the context of a long and tricky media discussion about outing anonymous, racist Internet trolls. On the Trump Internet, however, the subtext of the meme is that “blackmailing” sources is a normal part of mainstream journalistic practice. The difference is, they believe, that someone finally got caught.

(Emphasis added.) Again, there is no fucking “long and tricky media discussion” about this - anonymous people on the internet are by definition not public figures, and there is no news value in doxxing this person. In fact, this is outright suppression of free speech via the chilling effect. Their “racist trolling” doesn’t change this one bit. It is not CNNs, nor any other media outlets right to decide who’s speech is legitimate, nor to police it.

Overnight, the r/The_Donald board that once hosted HanA‑‑‑‑‑‑Solo’s apology and plea for peace was filled up with even more anti-CNN memes, and posts calling for a full-on war against the network. The Trump-supporting Redditors picked up an idea from 4chan’s /pol/ board, organizing mass calls and tweet-storms to a long list of companies, demanding they stop advertising on CNN. The story soon spread to Trump-friendly publications like Gateway Pundit and Infowars. It was the front page of Drudge:

Awww, poor CNN, being bullied by all those fucking alt-right trolls, amirite? Of course, the many, many times this kind of public shaming and defaming campaign has been run against conservatives, we’re snottily told that “Freedom of Speech” just means freedom from government censorship, and that private citizens are free to tell them to fuck off, an argument neatly summarized by XKCD.

Meanwhile, a tantalizing but extremely unconfirmed detail began to attach itself to the meme. Was HanA‑‑‑‑‑‑Solo a 15-year-old kid, as many posts on the #CNNBlackmail hashtag repeat as fact? Even though CNN, and screenshots of HanA‑‑‑‑‑‑Solo’s own Reddit history seem to contradict this, indicating that the user is significantly older, the notion that CNN had just threatened to dox a minor was extremely shareable among Trump supporters, including one of the president’s own sons:

Witness the wicked falsehoods that poison the alt-right racist’s tweetstorm narrative - they’re saying a redditor is 15 years old, but he’s actually older! This is entirely fucking immaterial to the discussion, of course, but fuck that. This justifies calling the natural and expected backlash a “mix of truth and fiction.”

Others called for a very personal form of revenge against CNN, and Kaczynski specifically. A link to a pastebin page that appeared to contain the personal identifying information of Kaczynski, some of his family members and his colleagues circulated on 4chan Wednesday morning.

Reporters are public figures by definition - at the very least, the place where the reporters work is public information by dint of reporters putting their names on their fucking articles. It’s called a by-line.

And the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website called for even more. A popular post called for CNN employees to quit their jobs and denounce the network, or face consequences if they didn’t:

In one breath, the twitter backlash is directly associated with a fucking neo-Nazi website. No justification, no elaboration, just straight-up, straight-faced smear-job. The Dire Threat voiced by these neo-Nazis? Threatening to "track down” reporters families. Which is all publicly available information to begin with, mind you - “doxxing” is explicitly the de-anonymization of internet speech by linking an internet username/handle with a real-life identity. So even the scary Neo-Nazis are threatening to do fucking nothing past copy-pasting the reporter’s name off his CNN article’s byline into Facebook search. Oooh scaaary

It’s a particularly threatening version of an inversion that is common on the Internet today: keep reporting on the Trump Internet, and the Trump Internet will decide it’s “reporting” on you. And many mainstream outlets are still struggling to contend with it.

This, the last paragraph, is the crown jewel of the article. Yes, the media is the real victim!

When I was earning my Journalism degree, discussion of the media’s failure to adapt to the new paradigm of Twitter et al was a major and ongoing discussion, as journalists scrambled to understand where their niche was in the digital age. Instead of recognizing that they had what every asshole on the streetcorner with a smartphone and a Twitter app did not - professional training, a list of Important People who’d answer the phone when they called, and credibility - they tried to compete with every asshole on Twitter vis a vis getting the “scoop” or being “timely,” and naturally, they’re failing miserably, which is why the New York Times is laying off a bunch of their employees. That they’re financially threatened by “alternative media” is so well known that Washington Post reporters are openly joking about it in interviews:

What advice do you have for a 32-year-old stuck in a dying medium who is sent to interview 9-year-olds?

Thus nobody’s blinked in the past when the traditional media attacks alternative media - it was seen as a natural reaction to the looming threat to their very livelihoods. It’s hard to give equitable treatment to people taking food out of your kids mouths. But this is something else - this is media privilege on full display.

The media having an arrogance problem is nothing new - former CBS News Emmy Award-winning journalist Bernard Goldberg wrote a book literally titled Arrogance about the problem back in 2004, and I myself blogged about the astounding gall the media had to think they could demonize Trump and literally call him Hitler for eight months, then waltz into his office to discuss “access” with his administration. Or CNN telling people on-air that it’s illegal for anyone but the media to see Hillary’s wiki-leaked e-mails, a claim so asinine that even the Washington Post couldn’t swallow it.

But despite that - despite all of that - this latest debacle still shocked me. The depths of their arrogant belief in their own sacrosanct status as harbingers of truth is so deep, so pure, that they’re willing to make fools of themselves to punish some random chucklefuck on Reddit becuase he made le dank meme video. And punishment is exactly what they’re handing out, here. There’s already a term to describe this kind of mindset, when it’s so pervasive and complete that any challenge to it is met with force and fury. “Privilege.”

It’s truly fucking incredible. Even more incredible is the WaPo’s complaining like they, the media giants with control of a massive megaphone and the worship of the far left, are the victims here, because people on Twitter disagree with the media’s blatant thuggery. I’ve covered before how deep they’ve retreated into their own fantasy worlds, their own hallucinatory version of reality, but once again, they exceeded even my expectations. A boundless confidence in their own righteousness is one thing, but they truly think they are untouchable. They didn’t judge the predicted backlash to be inconsequential, or contemptible because it’d come from the filthy conservatives - because if they had, they wouldn’t be scrambling to do damage control against fucking Twitter.

Anyway, while we’re at it, there’s some less significant things I wanted to have a giggle at - Sargon of Akkad (who’s videos I’ve been listening to now, at long last,) does a weekly “This Week In Stupid” segment, and now I can see why - so much piles up, so fast, and all of it’s worth mocking. Again, the WaPo is our go-to source of giggles.

Trump’s Voter Fraud commission recently asked all 50 states for as much info on voter information as they could provide, including the last four digits of their Social Security number. The great majority of states replied with a simple shrug and nod - as this state-by-state breakdown details, many states already provide voter roll data publicly, and others release it for a processing/handling charge to anyone who requests it (often political campaigns looking to get demographic data.) Every state demurred on the “last-four digits of the SSN”, simply because their state laws forbid such information disclosure due to privacy concerns - but aside from that considered the request mundane as hell.

Of course, the dissenters were most amusing, and - before you read this - I wish to stress that, as stated by other states SecStates in this very article, many states publicly post this information online for free download:

California: "California's participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud," Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Kentucky: “As the commonwealth's secretary of state and chief election official, I do not intend to release Kentuckians' sensitive personal data to the federal government," Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said in a statement. "The president created his election commission based on the false notion that 'voter fraud' is a widespread issue. It is not."

New York: Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday his decision not to comply with the commission's request for information. He said state laws include safeguards to protect sensitive voting information and that the state "refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election."

“WE HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE!” scream people hiding information most states publish publicly.

New Mexico: Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse-Oliver says she will never release personally identifiable information for New Mexico voters that is protected by law, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth. She also declined to provide information such as names and voting histories unless she is convinced the information is secured and will not be used for "nefarious or unlawful purposes."

Yes, the information most states literally give away free might be used for ~nefarious purposes.~ But it gets better. It gets so much fucking better:

Mississippi: Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said in a statement Friday that he had not received the request for information from the Trump commission, but another secretary of state had forwarded the correspondence to him. In a federal court case after a contentious U.S. Senate primary in Mississippi in 2014, a group called True the Vote sued Mississippi seeking similar information about voters, and Hosemann fought that request and won. Hosemann said if he receives a request from the Trump commission, "My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from." Hosemann also said: "Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state's right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes."

“DROWN YOURSELF.” How rational and polite.

Vermont: Vermont's top election official, Democrat Jim Condos, said Friday he is bound by law to provide the publicly available voter file, but that does not include Social Security numbers or birth dates. Condos said he must first receive an affidavit signed by the commission chairman, as required by Vermont law. He said there is no evidence of the kind of fraud alleged by Trump. "I believe these unproven claims are an effort to set the stage to weaken our democratic process through a systematic national effort of voter suppression and intimidation," he said.

Virginia: "At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump's alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression," said Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat.

Ah, yes. Asking for this data most sates make available publicly is really part of a vast-right wing conspiracy to bully voters! Good old voter suppression. That easy, sweeping catch-all claim applied by Democrats when possible voter fraud is brought up. They claim voter fraud never ever ever happens, but that those evil rednecks go around intimidating people away from the polls just like those Jim Crow racists did in the 60s. Speaking of - isn’t it curious that Kentucky and Mississippi - very conservative southern states - would resist disclosing information? And that Mississippi’s Republican SecState - which has already fended off grassroots attempts to dig into their voter roll records - would have such a curiously vehement response? Gee, really makes you think, doesn’t it?

Naturally, the WaPo has the best comedic value for the column-inch as they detail their foaming-mad delusions:

It’s no secret: Under the guise of fighting “voter fraud,” they’ll use it as a tool to disenfranchise thousands, perhaps even millions of people, in order to solidify the Republican advantage in elections.

But how, WaPo? Are they going to round them up and execute them en-masse? Shove them in concentration camps? Steal the wheels off their cars on Election Day?

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Kansans have been blocked from registering by the 2011 law he championed that requires documentary proof of citizenship in order to register.

You can prove citizenship with your fucking ID card (Kansas, like most states, will issue “state ID cards” for people who don’t drive or otherwise have no need of a driver’s license,) a tax return, or anything else. For fucks sake, you even need to disclose your residency status (citizen or non-citizen) to enroll in welfare. So who exactly are these tens of thousands that are being excluded? Oh, do you have a single fucking cite for that breathtaking claim, oh journalist?

We see this pattern again and again: Republicans complain that there is some huge voter fraud problem that requires sweeping new laws in order to solve, but when it’s investigated, it turns out that the problem is somewhere between microscopic and nonexistent. But in the meantime, they’ve stolen thousands of people’s voting rights — people who just happen to disproportionately be Democrats.

“Disproportionately be Democrats.” Like the illegal immigrants, amirite?

The second apparent goal is more direct: Create lists of allegedly questionable voters that they’ll give to states in order to convince them to purge those people from the rolls, by showing that they might be registered in more than one place.

Pure speculation based on a grand total of fucking nothing. Much of the article revolves around this assertion that Kobach just wants to blindly de-register duplicate names, instead of, you know, updating the fucking voter rolls so they’re current, or something. Which would make them actually useful for detecting fraud. Gee, why do left-wingers consistently sue to prevent voter rolls from being updated? And note the New York and Ohio cases involve purging the rolls of voters who haven’t voted - in New York’s case, since 2008. If you don’t do something, how the hell do you purge dead people from the rolls? And why would Democrats have a vested interest in keeping these records too cluttered and useless for detecting actual fraud, if there’s none going on? Really tickles the fuckin noggin, doesn’t it?

Let’s be clear: The sole purpose of this commission on “election integrity” is to suppress votes and give the GOP a structural advantage in every election. It’s being led by Kris Kobach, whose twin missions in life are to scale back immigration and to make voting more difficult.

Are they implying that mass immigration benefits Democrats at the polls? Could that possibly explain why Democrats have done everything in their power - especially under Obama - to inhibit any attempt to enforce Federal immigration law? Gee fuckin whiz.

These people are not trying to determine whether there are problems with our voting system and find the best solutions to those problems. They have come together to promote the myth of voter fraud and enable vote suppression in order to advantage the Republican Party.

“The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy - evidence, MY ASS!” HEY GUYS, QUICK FACT CHECK - HOW MANY TURRETS DOES ARIZONA HAVE?

And last, but not least - witness this demented screed arguing that Trump’s second scoop of ice cream will make us all sick, and that Trump has a duty to the nation to be skinny and hit the gym while listening to cool music on his Ipod.

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nebris · 8 years ago

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Paraniod America: Birthers vs Truthers [2010 edit]

Aug. 5th, 2010 at 8:12 PM

...reposted from Sep. 28th, 2009 at 4:49 AM... ~I have managed to scrape together some Wisdom in the fifty odd years of my adulthood and that has led me to realize that the most Essential Spiritual Lesson is how one takes Responsibility for one's Powerlessness. That may seem a bit contraindicative, so let me say it again with more emphasis: the most Essential Spiritual Lesson is how one takes Responsibility for one's Powerlessness. Okay, hold on to that thought, we'll get back to it. There is a man who has demonstrably saved more souls than Jesus Christ ever did or ever will and most of you have never heard of him. His name is Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov. He is a former lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Force. "On September 26th, 1983, Colonel Petrov was watch officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow, monitoring for a US missile attack on the Soviet Union. Suddenly, the computer-based warning systems reported several US Nuclear Missiles approaching Soviet territory. Colonel Petrov believed the information to be false and did not alert the Kremlin to the data he was receiving. Given Cold War tensions at the time, such information would likely have convinced the Soviet leadership that the US had launched a first strike attempting to "cut off the head" and they would have launched their forces in the belief it was a "counter-strike", not a first-strike." In other words, he prevented a global thermonuclear holocaust provoked by a computer glitch. [Source] That could certainly be a good example of 'taking Responsibility for one's Powerlessness' -Petrov certainly would seemed have been utterly Powerless in that moment, but choose to take on a terrible Responsibility - but that is actually not my point in relating the incident. I relate this because I believe this event was the key, the turning point, to what has happened globally in the years since. Clearly, this would have scared the crap out of the Soviet leadership and then their American counterparts once they found out about it. But most importantly, I believe it laid the psycho-political ground work that caused the Soviet leadership to reject the Cold War paradigm and that led to the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev. And his efforts to reform the unreformable led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Hold on a minute,” you're thinking, “What does this have to do with the title?” Trust me, I'll get to that. Many had predicted the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, most notably Zbigniew Brzezinski, but all those predictions largely cited Muslim demographics as the principal cause and estimated the collapse would take place, well, right about now. That it came two decades 'too early' badly disrupted American planning on several levels. The key areas of disruption were economic and domestic politics. The American Economy has been – and largely still is – centered around War Production since World War Two. Having a war that we had been planning to continue for another twenty years or more suddenly just stop threw the war planners and manufacturers into great confusion...and distress. A lot of money was at stake and there was all this talk about a 'post-war dividend'. The problem for domestic politics was less obvious, but actually more acute. In the later course of The Cold War, The Powers That Be had made alliances with two volatile groups, the Neo-Conservatives and The Religious Right, in order to maintain political control. With the end of The Cold War, these alliances now become problematic, something that was clearly demonstrated in 1992 with the defeat of George Bush Senior for a second term in the White House and then underscored with the ongoing troubles of the Clinton presidency. These groups needed to be neutralized and how better than to give them a president they could love who would turn out to be a total dud: Dubya. Remember pre-9/11 2001? Remember his numbers were in the crappier? Remember “That's My Bush”? He was well on his way to a single term, watched over by a loyal courtier of The Powers That Be: Richard M Cheney. But Evil Dick was a very resentful man and he had plans of his own. The vigilance of the Clinton White House regarding Jihadis was defused into wild goose chases after suicide doctors in Oregon and hookers in New Orleans, all in the hope that 'something would happen', maybe on an Oklahoma City scale, and then Dick and Rummy, backed by one faction of The Powers That Be, could proceed with their agenda regardless of what most of the rest of The Powers That Be wished. We now see how that turned out; two unwinnable wars, the Patriot Act, a global financial meltdown, and finally the most marketed president in our history. Some days it seems like we've been living out an alternative history scenario. This was not The Future that most of you envisioned ten years ago. In the context of 'taking Responsibility for one's Powerlessness,' we've done a pretty lousy job, being terrorized and bullied by madmen, ours and 'theirs', into coming very close to destroying our entire country and possibly the rest of global society, as well. It is out of this decade of madness that both Truthers and Birthers have been born, mirror images of each other, both driven by an existential paranoia and deep seated feelings of impotence, and seeking some reason for that solely outside of themselves. Of course, this type of paranoid thinking is an American tradition, going back to the Masonic Conspiracies of the 1820's. A key metaphor to explain how this works is the FEMA Concentration Camp meme. Under Bu$hCo, it came from The Far Left. Under Obama, it's now coming from The Far Right. And each is saying exactly what the other said, only the focus has changed, the paranoia simply shifting with 'the party in power'. That the so-called 'camps' are abandoned military bases 'converted' by KRB, an old Cheney company, is the giveaway; it's a corporate boondoggle. Billions were allocated for “National Security”. KBR ran up some new concertina wire and slapped on a few coats of paint, and 'poof!' new Detention Facilities. If they spent even ten cents on the dollar I'd be surprised. And these joints probably could not keep my cats detained. But they make a great excuse for freaking out and ranting endlessly about THEM [The Hosts of Evil Motives] and, in the final analysis, really just giving up. “How can I prevail in the face of such concerted evil?” That is NOT 'taking Responsibility for one's Powerlessness.' This brings us to Shit Happens. Remember Colonel Petrov? In that situation, there were vast amounts of War Panning and Command Structure in place, set up over decades and costing trillions, and in spite of all that is was only the action of a single, and highly ethical, military professional that saved the world from a disaster of obscene proportions. I don't know about you, but that turns my bowels to water. So, yes, I abuse the metaphor, but Shit Does Happen. Most of us cannot face such a random form of terror. A sociopath games his way into power and randomly allows nineteen lunatics to kill three thousand of his fellow citizens so he can implement his personal political agenda. A mass marketing blitz propels a highly charismatic member of a traditional underclass onto the presidency, something that tens of millions of the so-called 'Superior Race' will never, ever have a chance at doing. No, that is a Loss of Control that is utterly intolerable for all too many people. Even if an Evil Cabal is controlling things, well, shit, at least somebody is In Charge! Funny thing is, the Birthers have a far better case than the Truthers. Over four or five years all the various documents could have been switched out. That would be an easy low key operation and in venues where no one was really paying attention at the time. As opposed to running miles of wire and planting tons of explosives in three of the most heavily trafficked buildings in the world, all in utter secrecy and with not a single one of the large crew of highly skilled technicians ever saying a single word about it. I'll let y'all 'do the math' on those. But both are just delusions used to avoid the far more frightening reality that no one is really in control, that all too often Shit Just Happens. That certainly does generate "existential paranoia and deep seated feelings of impotence.” To deal with that level of discomfort, one that makes you want to claw your skin off, that requires a lot of Spiritual Work, which brings us full circle: the most Essential Spiritual Lesson is how one takes Responsibility for one's Powerlessness. Most do not have either the Patience nor the Willingness to do that kind of Work. They're much 'happier' indulging in the above types of paranoia. Those have a comfortable structure, much like porn does, and to surrender that would cause both embarrassment and a form of withdrawal, as well. Like the addict confronted with recovery, an 'old self' would have to 'die'. One can change nothing in the thrall of such delusions. To change the world, one needs Power. To understand your own Power, one must acknowledge one's own Powerlessness. That is a relative, not an absolute, state. When you see what you are Powerless over, then you see where you do have Power. Then, and only then, can you take Responsibility for your own life and begin to change what can be changed...and being in that place is both terrifying and invigorating.

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cstreetdemocrats · 8 years ago

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The Trump Administration and Religion: In the End, the Same Republican “Small” Government Crusade

My post election conversations with friends, none of whom voted for Trump or would have thought of voting for Trump, were testy. I found myself irritated at talk about finding “common ground” with the other side and, especially, with getting in a contest for who could say the worst things about Hillary Clinton and the way the Democrats ran their campaign. Clinton was accused of being too cautious and not making a strong case for the Democratic Party’s vision and platform. True or not, Trump was so much the worst candidate that I wanted a relentless focus on resisting the values and ideas he was bringing to Washington. Then I changed my mind. I now strongly believe that Hillary didn’t hit back hard enough, but not on conflicting agendas and policy proposals. She didn’t hit back on Trump’s totally immoral personal attacks on her. As well as unethical, Trump was unpatriotic every time he encouraged supporters in his rallies to chant, “lock her up”, and called her “crooked Hillary”. On at least one occasion he appeared to endorse assassinating her. The viciousness worked. The relentless shouting “She’s a crook” worked. The voters thought Hillary was a crook. Every day he said something unacceptable she should have blasted back. The press would have had to carry her response and maybe Trump’s lies and bullying would’ve sunken in with the voters. Never forget that Trump’s lies and incitements had real consequences. Remember Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria” in Washington DC? That was the restaurant to which a young father, Edgar Welsh, from South Carolina, drove with a gun to act on the story he got from “fake news” that Hillary Clinton ran a child trafficking operation in the back rooms of the pizza parlor. He believed it. He didn’t kill anyone but he did shoot his gun off in the pizzeria. Alexandra Zapruder (NYT 12 /11/16) pointed out that the action Welsh took was immoral not only because trying to kill someone is immoral but because propagating fake news is immoral. She said, there is “no justification for accusing Clinton of child trafficking.” She added that whether Republicans will accept that “depends on whether they accept that there is such a thing as truth and that we are morally obligated to defend it. This may be a political problem for our Republican friends but it shouldn’t be a moral one. They should stand up for the truth” Even if a strategy of “working with the Republicans” doesn’t look likely, it is worth emphasizing that an aura of accepting Trump’s election victory, and “getting past it”, in effect accepts the unethical campaign he just waged. It also “gets past” his qualifications for Presidency. These are, in theory, his success as a businessman in making a lot of money, or, more accurately, his success as a reality show star and brand name hawker. Also in theory, running for the high office of the Presidency with a professional background in business the candidate’s qualifications should include a record of straight dealing and honesty. Trump stiffed his investors and cheated students of promised education at his so-called university. The word “unethical” is rarely used, as of significance. He is only doing what a good businessman does. In all the many long articles that have appeared in leading journals on “why Trump won” the words “unethical” or “amoral” are almost never used. Now it is too late. We have gotten past any discussion of Trump’s ethics as he criticizes the Republican House for making its first action of the new Congress watering down the independent oversight committee, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). Ironies abound. The House members that voted to water down ethical oversight contain a large cadre of the incoming Congress who believe they are called by God to do good. “Good” evidently has little to do with the OCE’s main subject, corruption, but rather with banning abortion and gay marriage. Trump’s proposed Cabinet and senior advisors have a confusing range of moral and religious concerns, but certainly Vice President elect Mike Pence is not alone in putting his religion as the top priority in his life, and in favoring a constitutional amendment banning abortion, contraception and defining marriage. Trump, on his record, probably doesn’t care much, but will go along with all of these initiatives. He has said of harsh anti-abortion laws in Texas that, if someone can’t get an abortion they should “leave Texas”. Pence calls himself a “religious restorationist” and will be on Trump’s Religious Advisory Board. His priority is for Congress to roll back governmental intervention in education, health care, and business and environment regulations. As governor of Indiana he had legislation passed that allowed Indiana businessmen to deny services to LTGB community. Mike Pompeo, the new CIA director, would defund Planned Parenthood. Jeff Sessions, who is up for Attorney General, favors a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Betsy de Vos, the proposed new Secretary of the Department of Education wants to put education funding into vouchers to encourage parents to put their children into parochial schools. Steve Bannon, Trump’s senior advisor, has cited his adherence to “Church Militant” theology, a Catholic doctrine that has been politicized. The executive producer of ChurchMilitant,com has said, according to a NYT report, that the website was a defense of patriotism and morality against attacks from liberals, secularists and global elites. Defense against these elites includes anti-abortion, anti-social welfare programs and anti-immigration policies. Bannon has been said to believe that poverty is a “choice” of the individual. On the far outside, the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, believes in creationism, that the world was created in 6 days, and has linked Hillary Clinton to Lucifer. To return to Alexandra Zapruder: the words “moral “and “ethical” aren’t going to have much to do with truth. In addition, and in another irony, these “small” government crusaders want government coercing compliance with religious dictates (“sorry, if you want an abortion, you will have to leave Texas”). This view is of “big” government, in terms of power. These Republicans have a morality of big government. They should be asked to discuss and defend it. As Trump’s new government pours through the pearly gates of Washington, it won’t be that easy to sort out the variety of religious convictions they will bring with them, despite the prominence of abortion and homosexuality. To say that Republicans define moral and ethical in relation to human sexuality is too simple an analysis in any event and that is because there is a second religiously dictated creed that most of the new cadre of politicians bringing salvation to Washington share and that is the creed that government must be not so much “small” as limited to certain functions. These functions exclude social welfare functions like education and health and work place conditions. This is not a new creed, and it is instructive to analyze how important a “born again” President George W. Bush was in legitimizing it. What did George W. Bush mean when he said government can only “write checks” in the social welfare arena? It is clear that he meant that those checks should facilitate face-to-face initiatives but not that the government resources should be used to hire people who are professionally trained to deal with drug addiction or poverty, for example. In Bush’s view, only faith can bring an individual to “responsibility.” Bush was looking for individuals to be saved one at a time. This small government position is not a pragmatic choice but a moral choice for the Republicans who are now going to be staffing the Trump administration. The government does not belong in the arena of moral action. Problems are excluded from government action because the only moral way to solve them is in the private sphere. A secular community – government – through its taxpayers – cannot express the moral values of their members in their desire to create institutions that make it possible for example that all children should have health insurance. Governments are not bad so much because they are facilitating abortion but because they’re doing anything in this area of social welfare. The Bush value system limited the sphere in which the individual can take non-economic action The rich make a choice to help the poor with their charitable gifts. The rich it turns out, on the small government ideology, get to be richer and feel morally better about themselves at the same time. Fast forward to the inauguration of Donald Trump. What does the word “good” mean to Christian evangelicals who overwhelmingly voted for Trump? If Trump is “moral,” “ethical” and “good” doesn’t that mean that the evangelicals are actually saying money is “good”. Indeed one of the most prominent evangelicals, David Holt, pastor of the Evangelical Word of Life Church in Texas, has said that “capitalism is the most compassionate system; capitalism is the best way to reduce poverty.” Governments are formed in democracies to express the will of the people in their elected communities dedicated to working for goals that benefit members of the community. Since that will include citizens who are not members of a religious body it is by definition a secular institution. As long as you are a voter you have no reason to reject membership in that secular community, or to take on bettering people’s lives through actions that members of some religious order believe belong only to the individual - whether the individual must be left to “choose” on not choose poverty, or choose or not choose to help individual’s education, health and welfare. We cannot allow people to define social welfare initiatives as inappropriate for government on the ground of their religious objections. Action for the good of a community like education, health and decent working conditions is not to be dictated or forbidden by religious entities. The moral and ethical framework behind the small government ideology is almost by definition against any idea that we are on the equal basis with our fellow humans. We must hold fast to our communities and reject this creed. And we must fight to articulate in our communities, laws and norms that reject the violent bullying and incitements of a Donald Trump. --Elizabeth Spiro Clark

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