Donald Trump, the Worst of America by Charles M. Blow ( Republished with permission of the Author and the NY Times in which the article first appeared)
CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times
Donald Trump has virtually stopped trying to win this election by any conventional metric and is instead stacking logs of grievance on the funeral pyre with the great anticipation of setting it ablaze if current polls turn out to be predictive.
There is something calamitous in the air that surrounds the campaign, a hostile fatalism that bespeaks a man convinced that the end is near and aiming his anger at all within reach.
As his path to victory grows narrower, his desperation grows more pronounced.
Last week a steady stream of women stepped forward to accuse Trump of some form of sexual assault, abuse or inappropriate behavior. Trump’s response has been marked by a stunning lack of grace and dignity, let alone contrition or empathy, a response much like the man himself.
Instead, he is doubling down on sexism.
On Thursday, Trump said of the People magazine reporter who accused him of forcibly kissing her: “Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so.”
He said on Friday of the woman accusing him of groping her on an airplane: “Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.”
He also said of Clinton, “When she walked in front of me, believe me, I wasn’t impressed.”
His response to these charges has been surprisingly — and perhaps, revealingly — callow. He has mocked, whined, chided, bemoaned and belittled. It’s as if the man is on a mission to demonstrate to voters the staggering magnitude of his social vulgarity and emotional ineptitude. He has dispensed with all semblances of wanting to appear presidential and embraced what seems to be most natural to him: acting like a pig.
Furthermore, everything is rigged against him, from the media to the election itself. He’s threatening to sue The New York Times. He says he and Clinton should take a drug test before the next debate.
These are the ravings of a lunatic.
Trump is back to carelessly shooting off his mouth and recklessly shooting himself in the foot.
It is sad, really, but for him I have no sympathy. He has spent this entire election attacking anyone and everyone whom he felt it would be politically advantageous to attack. Trump, now that you’re under attack, you want to cry woe-is-me and have people commiserate. Slim chance, big guy.
The coarseness of your character has been put on full display, and now the electorate has come to cash the check you wrote.
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Trump now looks like a madman from Mad Men, a throwback to when his particular privileges had more perks and were considered less repugnant. He looks pathetic.
He is a ball of contradictions that together form a bully, a man who has built a menacing wall around the hollow of his self. He is brash to mask his fragility.
But in a way, Trump was authentically made in America.
America has a habit of romanticizing the playboy as much as the cowboy, but there is often something untoward about the playboy, unseemly, predatory and broken.
For years, Trump built a reputation on shuffling through women, treating his exploits with jocularity and having too much of America smiling in amusement at the bad boy antics.
But he’s not a kid; he’s a cad.
And he seems constitutionally incapable of processing the idea that wealth is not completely immunizing, that some rules are universally applicable, that common decency is required of more than just “common” folks. He seems genuinely offended that he should be held to the same standards of truth, decorum and even law as those less well off.
Trump is in fact the logical extension of toxic masculinity and ambient misogyny. He is the logical extension of rampant racism. He is the logical extension of wealth worship. He is the logical extension of pervasive anti-intellectualism.
Trump is the logical extension of the worst of America.
With him you get a man who believes himself superior in every way: through the gift of fortune and the happenstance of chromosomes. He believes the rules simply don’t apply. Not rules that govern the sovereignty of another’s body, not rules that dictate decorousness.
And the Republican Party was just the right place for him to park himself.
When you have a political party that takes as its mission to prevent government from working instead of to make government work, a party that conflates the ill effects of a changing economy with the changing complexion of the country and is still struck by fever over the election of President Obama, Trump is a natural, predictable endpoint.
Furthermore, Trump is what happens when you wear your Christian conservative values like a cardigan to conveniently slip off when the heat rises.
Trump is fundamentally altering American politics — coarsening them, corrupting them, cratering them. And America, particularly conservative America, has only itself to blame.
Republicans sowed intolerance and in its shadow, Trump sprang up like toxic fungi.
Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President..Donald Trump is a man who dwells
in bigotry, bluster and false promises.By THE EDITORIAL BOARD SEPT. 25, 2016
When Donald Trump began his improbable run for president 15 months ago, he offered his wealth and television celebrity as credentials, then slyly added a twist of fearmongering about Mexican “rapists” flooding across the Southern border.
From that moment of combustion, it became clear that Mr. Trump’s views were matters of dangerous impulse and cynical pandering rather than thoughtful politics. Yet he has attracted throngs of Americans who ascribe higher purpose to him than he has demonstrated in a freewheeling campaign marked by bursts of false and outrageous allegations, personal insults, xenophobic nationalism, unapologetic sexism and positions that shift according to his audience and his whims.
Now here stands Mr. Trump, feisty from his runaway Republican primary victories and ready for the first presidential debate, scheduled for Monday night, with Hillary Clinton. It is time for others who are still undecided, and perhaps hoping for some dramatic change in our politics and governance, to take a hard look and see Mr. Trump for who he is. They have an obligation to scrutinize his supposed virtues as a refreshing counterpolitician. Otherwise, they could face the consequences of handing the White House to a man far more consumed with himself than with the nation’s well-being.
Here’s how Mr. Trump is selling himself and why he can’t be believed.
A collection of The Times’s endorsements for the presidency, from Abraham Lincoln in 1860 through the editorial board’s choice of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
OPEN TIMELINE
A financial wizard who can bring executive magic to government?
Despite his towering properties, Mr. Trump has a record rife with bankruptcies and sketchy ventures like Trump University, which authorities are investigating after numerous complaints of fraud. His name has been chiseled off his failed casinos in Atlantic City.
Mr. Trump’s brazen refusal to disclose his tax returns — as Mrs. Clinton and other nominees for decades have done — should sharpen voter wariness of his business and charitable operations. Disclosure would undoubtedly raise numerous red flags; the public record already indicates that in at least some years he made full use of available loopholes and paid no taxes.
Mr. Trump has been opaque about his questionable global investments in Russia and elsewhere, which could present conflicts of interest as president, particularly if his business interests are left in the hands of his children, as he intends. Investigations have found self-dealing. He notably tapped $258,000 in donors’ money from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit businesses, according to The Washington Post.
A straight talker who tells it like it is?
Mr. Trump, who has no experience in national security, declares that he has a plan to soundly defeat the Islamic State militants in Syria, but won’t reveal it, bobbing and weaving about whether he would commit ground troops. Voters cannot judge whether he has any idea what he’s talking about without an outline of his plan, yet Mr. Trump ludicrously insists he must not tip off the enemy.
Another of his cornerstone proposals — his campaign pledge of a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim newcomers plus the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants across a border wall paid for by Mexico — has been subjected to endless qualifications as he zigs and zags in pursuit of middle-ground voters.
Whatever his gyrations, Mr. Trump always does make clear where his heart lies — with the anti-immigrant, nativist and racist signals that he scurrilously employed to build his base.
He used the shameful “birther” campaign against President Obama’s legitimacy as a wedge for his candidacy. But then he opportunistically denied his own record, trolling for undecided voters by conceding that Mr. Obama was a born American. In the process he tried to smear Mrs. Clinton as the instigator of the birther canard and then fled reporters’ questions.
Since his campaign began, NBC News has tabulated that Mr. Trump has made 117 distinct policy shifts on 20 major issues, including three contradictory views on abortion in one eight-hour stretch. As reporters try to pin down his contradictions, Mr. Trump has mocked them at his rallies. He said he would “loosen” libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations that displease him.
An expert negotiator who can fix government and overpower other world leaders?
His plan for cutting the national debt was far from a confidence builder: He said he might try to persuadecreditors to accept less than the government owed. This fanciful notion, imported from Mr. Trump’s debt-steeped real estate world, would undermine faith in the government and the stability of global financial markets. His tax-cut plan has been no less alarming. It was initially estimated to cost $10 trillion in tax revenue, then, after revisions, maybe $3 trillion, by one adviser’s estimate. There is no credible indication of how this would be paid for — only assurances that those in the upper brackets will be favored.
If Mr. Trump were to become president, his open doubts about the value of NATO would present a major diplomatic and security challenge, as would his repeated denunciations of trade deals and relations with China. Mr. Trump promises to renegotiate the Iran nuclear control agreement, as if it were an air-rights deal on Broadway. Numerous experts on national defense and international affairs have recoiled at the thought of his commanding the nuclear arsenal. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell privately called Mr. Trump “an international pariah.” Mr. Trump has repeatedly denounced global warming as a “hoax,” although a golf course he owns in Ireland is citing global warming in seeking to build a protective wall against a rising sea.
In expressing admiration for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Mr. Trump implies acceptance of Mr. Putin’s dictatorial abuse of critics and dissenters, some of whom have turned up murdered, and Mr. Putin’s vicious crackdown on the press. Even worse was Mr. Trump’s urging Russia to meddle in the presidential campaign by hacking the email of former Secretary of State Clinton. Voters should consider what sort of deals Mr. Putin might obtain if Mr. Trump, his admirer, wins the White House.
A change agent for the nation and the world?
There can be little doubt of that. But voters should be asking themselves if Mr. Trump will deliver the kind of change they want. Starting a series of trade wars is a recipe for recession, not for new American jobs. Blowing a hole in the deficit by cutting taxes for the wealthy will not secure Americans’ financial future, and alienating our allies won’t protect our security. Mr. Trump has also said he will get rid of the new national health insurance system that millions now depend on, without saying how he would replace it.
The list goes on: He would scuttle the financial reforms and consumer protections born of the Great Recession. He would upend the Obama administration’s progress on the environment, vowing to “cancel the Paris climate agreement” on global warming. He would return to the use of waterboarding, a torture method, in violation of international treaty law. He has blithely called for reconsideration of Japan’s commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. He favors a national campaign of “stop and frisk” policing, which has been ruled unconstitutional. He has blessed the National Rifle Association’s ambition to arm citizens to engage in what he imagines would be defensive “shootouts” with gunmen. He has so coarsened our politics that he remains a contender for the presidency despite musing about his opponent as a gunshot target.
Voters should also consider Mr. Trump’s silence about areas of national life that are crying out for constructive change: How would he change our schools for the better? How would he lift more Americans out of poverty? How would his condescending appeal to black voters — a cynical signal to white moderates concerned about his racist supporters — translate into credible White House initiatives to promote racial progress? How would his call to monitor and even close some mosques affect the nation’s life and global reputation? Would his Supreme Court nominees be zealous, self-certain extensions of himself? In all these areas, Mrs. Clinton has offered constructive proposals. He has offered bluster, or nothing. The most specific domestic policy he has put forward, on tax breaks for child care, would tilt toward the wealthy.
Voters attracted by the force of the Trump personality should pause and take note of the precise qualities he exudes as an audaciously different politician: bluster, savage mockery of those who challenge him, degrading comments about women, mendacity, crude generalizations about nations and religions. Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want for them?
Did You Hear the Latest About Hillary? by Zeynep Tufekci ( republiedhed with permission of the author and NYTimes )
CreditEric Thayer for The New York Times
Hillary Clinton has pneumonia. Did you know she has a body double? She was that blond woman waving at reporters in front of Chelsea Clinton’s apartment a few hours after Mrs. Clinton felt unwell and left the Sept. 11 commemoration at ground zero.
Did you also hear that Mrs. Clinton has Parkinson’s disease? Her coughing fits prove it, as does her latest bout of illness. She has epilepsy, as well as advancing dementia. She has managed to hide all these illnesses through almost a year and a half of a grueling campaign because the man the world thinks is the head of her Secret Service detail is actually her hypnotist. He’s also a medical doctor.
No, I haven’t lost my mind. I’ve just lost many hours on social media, where these conspiracy theories run rampant.
Well before Mrs. Clinton fell ill and had to be assisted into a van on Sunday, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, a supporter of Donald J. Trump, said on Fox News that the news media had failed to cover her health and that viewers should “go online and put down ‘Hillary Clinton illness,’ take a look at the videos for yourself.”
The events of last weekend will not help Mrs. Clinton, who spent Monday at home and canceled a trip to California. Nor will they help the rest of us, stuck in this conspiracy election.
Yes, the Clinton campaign should have disclosed her pneumonia diagnosis on Friday, curtailed her schedule and allowed her to recover. Lack of disclosure only increases the number of people who suspect she’s hiding something.
But there’s also no amount of disclosure that would change the minds of people who think she’s been hiding epilepsy, Parkinson’s and dementia, thanks to her secret hypnotist and persuasive body double.
The problem is much bigger than a single moment, or this particular campaign. Conspiracy theories are like mosquitoes that thrive in swamps of low-trust societies, weak institutions, secretive elites and technology that allows theories unanchored from truth to spread rapidly. Swatting them one at a time is mostly futile: The real answer is draining the swamps.
I’m originally from Turkey, so I’m used to my Western friends snickering at the prevalence of conspiracy theories in the Middle East. It is frustrating, but the reason for these theories is not a mystery. Elites do practice excessive secrecy. Foreign powers have meddled in the region for decades. Institutions that are supposed to be trusted intermediaries, separating facts from fiction while also challenging the powerful, are few and weak. It makes sense to gravitate toward explanations that attribute everything to secret cabals.
And now, with social media, what remained of controls on keeping the worst stuff out of the public sphere has been demolished.
Wait, what part of the world was I writing about again?
My coughing fit brought about by my own advanced dementia must have confused me again.
Conspiracy theories have been around a long time, but thanks to new technologies and decline of trust in institutions, it’s getting worse.
First of all: There are actual conspiracies in the world. The powerful do routinely collude to hide information. To add to this, people like stories, and conspiracy theories are a form of storytelling. The trouble here isn’t a healthy suspicion of power, but the transformation of a culture of political distrust into a swirl of bizarre tales divorced from facts.
We expect traditional news outlets to act as gatekeepers for information, helping us distinguish truth from rumor. They’ve never been perfect at this job, but the precarious economics of the industry is making the situation even worse. The new, internet-driven financing model for news outlets is great for spreading conspiracy theories. Each story lives or dies by how much attention it attracts. This rewards the outrageous, which can get clicks more easily.
However, conspiracy theories can live only to the degree they can find communities to flourish in. That’s where social media comes in. Finding a community online has been great for many people — the dissident in Egypt, the gay teenager in a conservative town — but the internet is not Thor’s hammer, which only the purest of heart can pick up. Connecting online also works for an anti-vaccination parent or a Sept. 11 truther. Conspiracists can organize online and can push their version of the world into the mainstream.
To fight conspiracy theories, we also don’t just need more fact-checkers. We need to fix the underlying dynamics.
People think that their governments are working against them, or at least not for them, and in some cases this is true. Ruling elites around the world are circling their wagons, and fueling more suspicion and mistrust. Reversing that would be the best defense against baseless paranoia that masquerades as political action.
The predominant internet business model isn’t always great for democracy, but it’s not the only option. We should support subscription, donation and philanthropy funded sources of information. Once “go viral or die” isn’t the only game in town, and with a more transparent and responsive government, our conspiracy fever might break.
Zeynep Tufekci is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science and a contributing opinion writer.
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A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 13, 2016, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: You Hear the Latest on Hillary?. Today's Paper|Subscribe
