By CHARLES M. BLOW
The New York Times, August 1st, 2018
It is simply not healthy for the country to have a president stuck perpetually in attack mode, fighting enemies real and imagined, pushing a toxic agenda that mixes the exaltation of grievance and the grinding of axes.
The New York Times, August 1st, 2018
It is simply not healthy for the country to have a president stuck perpetually in attack mode, fighting enemies real and imagined, pushing a toxic agenda that mixes the exaltation of grievance and the grinding of axes.
The president’s recent rallies have come to
resemble orgies for Donald Trump’s ego, spaces in which he can receive endless,
unmeasured adulation and in which the crowds can gather for a revival of an
anger that registers as near-religious. They can experience a communal
affirmation that they are not alone in their intolerance, outrage and
regression.
At these moments, the preacher and the pious
share a spiritual moment of darkness.
Such was the case again this week at a Trump rally in Florida, at which his supporters
aggressively heckled and harassed the free press that Trump incessantly brands
with the false descriptor of “fake news.”
In fact, there is no such thing as fake news.
If something isn’t true, it isn’t news. Opinions, like mine here, are also not
news, even if printed in a newspaper or broadcast by a news station. There may
be news in such opinions, but the vehicle is by definition subjective and a
reflection of the writer’s or speaker’s worldview.
This “fake news” nonsense isn’t really about
the dissemination of false information. If it were, the administration could
demand a correction and would receive one from any reputable news outlet.
No, Trump has made a perversion of the word “fake,”
particularly among his most ardent supporters, so that it has come to mean news
stories he doesn’t like, commentary that is unflattering to him and inadequate
coverage of what he views as positive news about him and his administration.
Trump doesn’t want a free press; he wants free
propaganda.
He gets it from his friends at Fox News, but
that isn’t enough. This wannabe authoritarian needs two scoops. So
he uses the power of the presidency to produce his own propaganda, to invent
facts and twist news.
This seems to work mostly among his own
Republican base, but for him that’s the point. The entire Trump presidency is
about repayment to the most devout: the white nationalists, the Christian nationalists,
the ethnonationalists.
They believe that America was founded as a
white, Christian nation and should be governed as one. They pine over lost
culture and lost heritage. They rage against blossoming minority groups and
immigrants.
This is a Republican base governed by fear,
and it has found its perfect apostle in Trump — a man who sells fear, gorges on
it, bathes in it.
Trump and his base are like two mirrors facing
each other.
Trump has killed the traditional Republican
Party and raised and animated in its corpse a soulless, mindless monstrosity,
loyal only to him. The moderating forces in the party have either been
sidelined or subdued.
Trump, feeling both unassailable among the
poltroons who are Republican lawmakers and buoyed by his spellbound base, has
moved further and further into his own alternate universe and away from
acceptable norms and conventions.
He is attacking the Robert Mueller
investigation as a “witch hunt.”
He is attacking the FBI as a whole.
He is attacking our international allies.
He is attacking celebrities and athletes.
He is attacking immigrants.
He is attacking the press.
He is attacking the truth.
He does none of this because he is brave and
strong, but rather precisely because he isn’t. His attacks are a compensatory disguise
for his own fear and insecurity.
Trump is weak. Very weak. Unbelievably weak.
But he knows now that his weakness is bolstered by the incredible power of the
presidency and the overwhelming economic and military power of the country.
