What if a Democrat in the White House acted like Trump?

What would it sound like if Democrats talked like Donald Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party? What if they defended themselves and their positions the way Trump does?

Maybe it would sound something like this imaginary and satirical press conference with this imaginary Democrat in the White House:

Reporter 1: Mr. President, you’ve proposed raising taxes on Americans who raise more than $400,000? How do you justify this?

President: That’s a very mean question.

Reporter 1: But sir, don’t you feel you owe it to the American people to explain such a major policy decision?

President ignores question and points to a second reporter.

President: Yes, you. From the Wall Street Urinal, right?

Reporter 2: Uh, Journal. Yes, sir. Joe Todd, chief economic correspondent. In light of your proposed tax cut, Mr. President, do you have any stimulus plan to offset any potential economic downturn?

President: That’s a very stupid question. We wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for the Republi-CONS and their giveaways to the rich. What a disaster! There won’t be any economic downturn when my taxes are approved, because they’re tremendous.

Reporter 2: But sir, don’t you think you should have a contingency plan in place, just in case it doesn’t work the way you think it will?

President (glaring): Listen, I don’t know where you studied economics, but I know more about this economy than you do. I know more about it than anyone else in this room, and a hell of a lot more than those fake right-wing economists with degrees from Stanford or Post Toasties.

Reporter 2: Post Toasties? Oh, you mean Kellogg School of Business...?

President: Whatever. Who’s next. You over there.

Points to next reporter.

Reporter 3: Thank you, Mr. President. Gerald Wayne from NBC News here. If I may turn to a different topic, I’d like to ask you about your golf game with Tiger Woods. Sir, there’s a report here that you were informed of the terrorist attack on Los Angeles that killed more than 900 people, but that you insisted on completing your round before returning to the White House. Is this true?

President: That’s fake news. Besides, I need my exercise.

Reporter 3: How is it fake news? There are death certificates for those 900 people...

President: What a nasty thing to say! You’re a nasty man with a face like a horse. You probably can’t even get it up, can you? You, there in the back.

Points to another reporter.

Reporter 4: Yes, Mr. President. Jessica Crow from CNN. Don’t you feel that this slow response gives your political opponents an opening to criticize you as just another Democrat who’s soft on terrorism.

President: No one has been tougher on terrorism than I have. No one. By the way, since no one asked me about my golf game with Tiger, I thought you might find it interesting that I beat him by seven strokes. Next question.

Reporter 5: Akili Brewer from Fox News. Sir...

President (interrupting): Who let someone from Fox in here? Didn’t I order their press passes revoked?

Reporter 5: May I remind you of the court decision reinstating our press privileges...?

President: No. Next question.

Reporter 5: Mr. President, I haven’t asked my question.

President (ignoring the Fox News reporter): I said, next question. You.

Crosses arms in front of him and nods head to one side.

Reporter 6: Jen Carlton with National Review, sir. Thank you, sir. There’s evidence that COVID-19 is reacting favorably to the new vaccine, and new cases are down to a few hundred per day, compared with 70,000 at its peak. In light of this news, why are you continuing a national mask mandate?

President: Because it’s the right thing to do.

Reporter 6: Mr. President, if I may follow up: Scientists say that it is now safe for the vast majority of Americans to resume their normal activities without face masks or social distancing.

President: I trust my gut, not you scientists. Besides, I have scientists too, very good scientists, who say it’s not safe yet.

Reporter 6: Who are these scientists? Can you tell us who they are and what data they’re citing in making these recommendations?

President: They’re very good scientists. Very well respected. Everyone knows this.

Reporter 6: If I may follow up again, sir, when do you expect to lift the national mask mandate?

President: We’ll see.

Reporter 6: Do you have a date?

President: You’ll find out. We’ll have a very big announcement soon. I’ll take a few more questions. You in the blue dress.

Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist and the author of two political commentaries on Donald Trump: Political Psychosis and Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump.

Reporter 7: Elaine Cortez-Dow from Univision. Mr. President, you’ve been criticized by the right for your hard line against Russia. How do you respond to those who say you’re risking a new cold war?

President: There are very bad people in Russia. Very bad people. Do you know how bad Vladimir Poo-tin is? He’s very bad. Remember, the Russiavirus came from Moscow, not China. The Russians made it in a lab and shipped it over here via Facebook.

Reporter 7: Mr. President, there’s no evidence of that. It’s not the kind of virus that can spread on Facebook. With respect, sir, you haven’t answered my question.

President: Then try asking one that isn’t so stupid. Next.

Points to another reporter.

Reporter 8: Good afternoon, Mr. President. I’m Lillian Chao of Next News Daily.

President: Excuse me, why are you speaking?

Reporter 8: You said “Next” and pointed in my direction, Mr. President. I’m from Next News.

President: I meant the woman behind you. But go ahead.

Reporter 8: Thank you, Mr. President. I’d like to return to the terrorist attack on Los Angeles that killed 900 people. It’s been known for days that ISIL has claimed responsibility for this attack. There are those who say you’ve been too slow to acknowledge that Islamic extremists is responsible for many of these attacks. Why have you been so hesitant to condemn militant Islamists? I’m not talking about Islam in general, but Islamic extremists.

President (gesticulating wildly with both hands): ISIL is defeated. 100 percent. Besides, we have freedom of religion in this country. Most of this terrorist stuff is the work of white nutjobs who come from right here at home.

Reporter 8: I’m aware of the statistics, Mr. President. Does the fact that domestic terrorism is more common mean that we should ignore the source of terror attacks launched by Islamic radicals?

President: There are very fine people on both sides.

Reporter 8: Both sides of these terror attacks?

President: You heard me. Next question, please.

Points to reporter in the front row.

Reporter 9: James R. Wilbon with Huffington Post. Sir, the House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed your tax returns. You said previously, during the campaign, you would provide these returns. Will you commit to doing so now?

President: Nobody cares about that. They wouldn’t have elected me if they did.

Reporter 9: Respectfully, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs cared enough to issue a subpoena, and they’ve subpoenaed people from your administration to speak on this subject. But you’ve said you won’t allow them to testify, citing executive privilege. Can you share the grounds on which you’re claiming that privilege?

President: I’m the executive and it’s my privilege.

Reporter 9: Can you just ignore a lawful subpoena?

President: Of course I can. I’ll just tie it up in the courts so they can’t touch me. It’s a Republi-CON hoax. They’re out to get me. It’s not paranoia if it’s true, and it’s not a conspiracy theory if there’s a real conspiracy. Everyone knows that turtle-headed kumquat, Mitch McConman has it in for me.

Reporter 9: What ever happened to “If they go low, we go high”?

President: I never said that. That was someone else. Someone from the old Democratic Party who didn’t endorse me because they’re not a real Democrat. That’s not my style: If they go low, I go low, too. I’m a fighter. If they hit me, I kick them back twenty times in the balls. If you don’t believe me, come at me, bro.

Reporter 10: Julia Hidalgo of ABC News. It recently came to light that your attorney general may have illegally contributed more than $2 million in funds to your election fund — money he allegedly obtained by blackmailing a known child sex trafficker.

President: There’s no proof of that. In this country, people are innocent until proven guilty. It’s in the 19th Amendment.

Reporter 10: Sir, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. It has nothing to do with the presumption of innocence.

President: Whatever.

Reporter 10: Aren’t you concerned how this might reflect on you if your attorney general is found guilty of these crimes?

President: Maybe you don’t understand the way the system works. The attorney general prosecutes crimes. He can’t prosecute himself. That would be a conflict of interest.

Reporter 10: Which is why he should recuse himself...

President: Recuse himself? Then he wouldn’t be doing his job!

Reporter 10: Mr. President, you just pointed out that he couldn’t ethically prosecute himself. But if he “wouldn’t be doing his job” by recusing himself, how do you propose he proceed?

President: That’s up to him. He’s a very fine attorney general. I’m not involved in those decisions.

Reporter 10: Mr. President, it’s been reported that you’ve had significant contact with the alleged child sex trafficker involved in this case. There are pictures of you with him.

President: I don’t know the man. I take pictures with a lot of people.

Reporter 10: But Mr. President, the man has been identified as your nephew. Would you consider a pardon if he’s found guilty?

President: Who are you talking about? My nephew or the attorney general?

Reporter 10: Either one.

President: We’ll see.

President turns and hastily exits.

Founders' foresight: The two-party system is destroying us

“The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful manoeuvres, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves.” – Thomas Jefferson

The two-party system is broken. Perhaps it was inevitable.

What’s amazing is that it’s taken us almost 250 years to reach this point. Actually, though, we’ve been here before. It pushed us to the brink during Vietnam and Watergate, and over the edge during the Civil War.

And now, here we stand once again, staring into the abyss of the chasm between us.

Because we’re divided. In two. And we hesitate to lay the blame where it belongs: squarely at the feet of an inherently toxic two-party system. We hesitate because this system has become so deeply ingrained in our political reality that we view it as an essential part of our culture. But it’s not essential. In fact, quite the opposite. It’s nowhere in the Constitution, and John Adams even warned that it was the Constitution’s worst enemy.

Said Adams: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

Thomas Jefferson, who was Adams’ rival in this emerging two-party system, agreed: “The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions, and make them one people.”

These two brilliant, gifted and esteemed rivals agreed, yet they couldn’t stop it. So now, it’s up to us.

Yes, it’s gotten worse

Why is the two-party system, in Adams’ view, “evil”? Because it encourages binary choices. Such choices leave no room for nuance or subtlety, and they create an atmosphere where extremism can thrive. Where we vote a party line, either because we’re too lazy to think for ourselves, or because the choices are so extreme – and we find one of them so unpalatable – there seems to be only one viable option.

Why does it seem worse now?

Because we’ve added unlimited money and endless propaganda, disguised as free speech, to the equation. And that’s a recipe for disaster.

Unlimited money is available via unrestrained campaign contributions. Propaganda is spread more quickly and effectively than ever – through conventional media saturation, social media pressures and election cycles that never end.

We’ve come to this place by accepting the lie that free speech is somehow absolute. Of course, it’s not. You’re not supposed to be able to slander someone, to perjure yourself in court, to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, to willfully incite others to violence ... No right is absolute. But a binary system encourages the belief in absolutes, even in the face of common sense, so is it any surprise that we’ve started interpreting free speech in those terms.

What’s worse is we’ve created a vicious circle. Not only does our binary system strengthen a false belief in absolutes. This belief, in turn, encourages us to think in binary terms. “I’m right, you’re wrong” – regardless of the facts behind the argument. Ad hominem fallacies become the rule of the day: The identity of the person doing the arguing becomes more important than the merits of the argument itself. This is why political parties in a two-party system, and their leaders, cast aside “bedrock principles” at the drop of a hat for the sake of winning.

The party that once believed in free trade becomes protectionist. The party that once encouraged slavery wants to consider reparations for slavery. The party that once railed against incurring debt runs up the biggest debt in history. The party that organized provocative protests on college campuses wants “safe spaces” on those same campuses to insulate people from provocation. These aren’t subtle shifts in ideology. They’re 180-degree turnabouts, and they often take place abruptly – over a few short years, not decades.

This isn’t how thinking people act to new information presented in a marketplace of ideas. It’s how people react to peer pressure in a binary system where the “marketplace” consists of just two vendors. These two share a mutually parasitic monopoly on ideas, each of them selling only absolutes that condemn the other, but each needing the other to serve as a scapegoat.

We’ve forgotten we agree

In a world of absolutes, there’s no room for agreement. There’s only us and them. Winning and losing. But this world of absolutes is not the world we live in.

Yes, we have our differences. Thomas Jefferson said, “Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth.” But, alas, this concept is being lost, due to the false binary choices being foisted on us in the current environment. Difference of opinion is no longer an opportunity to learn, but an excuse to attack and defend. It’s no longer a reason to discuss, but a reason to condemn.

Binary systems emphasize what we don’t like about each other – and encourage us to like it even less. And all this angst and fury does something else, as well: It obscures the fact that we actually agree on most of the important stuff. This is, I believe, the greatest tragedy that’s been foisted on us by our binary political system. Because the truth of the matter is, we actually agree on most things.

• We believe in the Golden Rule, or some variation of it.

• We believe in equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law.

• We don’t want our environment poisoned.

• We don’t want to die because we can’t afford medicine or a hospital stay.

• We preferred the late 20th century employment model to the “shareholder is god, employee is dirt” construct.

• We believe in education.

• We believe in “live and let live” within the law.

• We believe success should be based on merit, not on gaming the system.

• We believe in taking care of our own.

• We believe hard work should be rewarded, and those who can’t work should have help – but that those who lie about being unable to work shouldn’t get it.

• We believe in science, and we believe there’s something more out there that we don’t and maybe can’t understand.

In all these things, we are united. E pluribus unum: Out of many, one. Many people. Many ideas. Many approaches.

We still are the UNITED States of America. Those who feed (and get rich) off our toxic binary system want us to forget this. They don’t want us to focus on the many things that unite us, but on the few that divide us.

Expletive for emphasis: Fuck that.

It’s time for us to remind them who’s in charge in a democratic republic. It’s time for us not only to take back our country, but to recover our soul.

Trump doesn't want us to think for ourselves

Note: This is a free bonus chapter you won't find in my new book. Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump chronicles the decline of the mainstream media, the rise of Donald Trump and how the two developments have created a new and dangerous reality in the 21st century. It's now available on Amazon.

Donald J. Trump doesn’t want you to read this.

He doesn’t want you to think about it. He doesn’t want you to think, period.

He wants doesn’t want you to consider the evidence and decide for yourself, because if you do, he knows he’s in trouble. There’s a boatload of circumstantial evidence against him, and if we start piecing it all together, he knows he’ll look pretty damned guilty. He knows Robert Mueller is doing just that, but he also knows that the ultimate decisions will be made in the court of public opinion, because our system subjects presidents to political, rather than judicial remedies for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

So, he’s attacking Mueller personally before the special counsel even presents any evidence. He’s seeking to discredit the messenger, just as he does with the press, because he’s afraid of the message.

Trump admitted doing this to the press, CBS journalist Lesley Stahl said, when he told her, “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

He’s doing the same thing with Mueller, accusing him of partisan bias and of drawing things out, knowing that the public doesn’t have the same patience as a court does for sifting through mounds of evidence and arriving at a conclusion based on thoughtful analysis. Fatigue sets in and process itself becomes unpopular, so Mueller – as the driving force behind that process – becomes unpopular, as well.

Poisoning the well

A bias against the process can be used as a wedge to open the way for bias against the person, which Trump can use to taint the entire process and to discredit the evidence based on who’s presenting it rather than how strong it is. In logical terms, he’s resorting to an ad hominem fallacy, a baseless form of argument that’s used to distract from the facts at hand.

Why should Trump want to discredit Mueller, who at the outset of this process was lauded by Republicans as well as Democrats as a straight arrow who would act impartially to unearth the facts? Why doesn’t he simply follow the advice of political handlers to let the process play out?

Because Trump is scared the evidence will lead to him. He believes he should be above the law, and he’s exploiting the weaknesses of our system to make that belief reality. If he can get public opinion on his side and retain a majority of his own party in Congress, he knows guilt or innocence won’t matter. Political expediency will. And he’s determined to use that to his advantage.

Think about it

Courts use circumstantial evidence to establish guilt or innocence through reasoning. They lay out a series of facts, connect the dots and ask that juries reach a conclusion based on those facts, whether or not there’s any direct evidence.

Verdicts based on circumstantial evidence are every bit as valid as those where there’s DNA, video, fingerprints or some other form of “smoking gun” to connect the accused to the scene. Frequently, such evidence simply isn’t available. Eyewitness testimony? It’s often unreliable, and can be less worthy of consideration than a healthy dose of circumstantial evidence, because it’s notoriously unreliable.

Despite this, there’s a public perception that circumstantial evidence is less credible than direct evidence. We want to “see for ourselves,” and it’s only when we do that we’re satisfied. We were both satisfied and outraged when we learn that Richard Nixon had erased 18 minutes of White House tapes, even though he retained broad support until close to the time he resigned. We reacted the same way when we saw Ray Rice on video decking his fiancée in a casino elevator. But not before. Such conclusions don’t require thinking or reasoning. They’re based a simple, visceral reactions to sensory input.

Trump wants us to rely on those visceral reactions. He doesn’t want us to think. He wants us to devalue reason as a means of arriving at decisions – specifically, his guilt or innocence. He can't control people’s reasoning, but he can control their reactions to some extent, and he does so by feeding our bias against circumstantial evidence (and the thought process we use to evaluate it) at every opportunity.

Two-pronged attack

Because he’s the president, Trump can take advantage of a powerful bully pulpit to pound home his message continually. He does so through social media, his cronies and his PR machine, who love to repeat it, and through mainstream media outlets, which have to do so because it’s news. In doing so, he makes the very people he wants to discredit (the press) complicit in his efforts.

These efforts amount to a two-pronged attack on our ability to reason and our right of self-determination.

First, Trump encourages us to rely on our emotions in making up our minds. He nurtures and feeds hidden biases against black Americans, immigrants, Muslims, women, Democrats and the press for precisely this purpose. He calls them names to discredit them or make them appear “weak.” It’s not that he hates these people. His personal sentiments toward them are irrelevant. What’s important is that he can condition us to rely on our emotional biases, rather than our brains, to make decisions.

Second, he attacks the evidence itself – and its sources. We should discount that evidence because (he says) it’s “fake news.” Then, he replaces it with his own propaganda – which is itself fake. Because we’re relying on our biases instead of our brains, we’re no longer using the only tool at our disposal to tell the difference. This is why the press is a particular target; if he can cut off the flow of information, the biggest source of temptation to think for ourselves will have been cut off.

He’ll have us right where he wants us. The process is taking too long, which proves Mueller is on a fishing expedition and out to get him. This means any evidence Mueller might find is suspect and, probably, tainted by his own self-interest. It should therefore be discarded in favor of our own biases in favor of the Republican Party, conservatism, nationalism and, most importantly, Trump himself.

That’s reasoning based on assumption, not fact, which is exactly what bias is. We rely on it based on our need for instant gratification in a busy society where we have little time for the kind of analysis that’s necessary to call him on his B.S.

Divide and conquer

This tactic isn’t new to Trump. Hillary Clinton did the same thing when she blamed Republicans for engaging in a vast right-wing conspiracy to bring down her husband – who, like Trump, was accused of womanizing and lying. Clinton denied lying under oath, even as he admitted misleading the American people about the Lewinsky affair. He was impeached in the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate, not based on evidence, but on political considerations.

The Democrats controlled the Senate then, just as the Republicans control both houses of Congress now.

Trump is exploiting that advantage, but he’s going much further. Instead of simply relying on politics to save him from one or two serious accusations, he’s striking at the core of our ability to access information, to process it: to reason. Because even if he escapes the Russia probe, he’ll have to deal with other accusations. Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen. Obstruction. Taxes and political donations. His financial interests and his family’s role in all of the above.

He needs us to stop thinking for ourselves, so he’s fueling our own hatreds, fears and biases to divide us as he feeds us his own distorted version of the truth. He’s keeping us at each other’s throats so we don’t realize we have a common enemy: him.

The problem, however, goes beyond Trump. In conditioning us not to think – to accept that Barack Obama was born in Kenya; that Mexicans are drug dealers and rapists; that climate change isn’t real; that his inauguration crowd was the biggest in history – he’s creating a “new normal” that could be exploited by others long after he’s gone.

There’s only one way to stop a steamroller that threatens our right and even our ability to think rationally by dumbing us down and cutting off the flow of information.

Don’t ignore circumstantial evidence. Don’t give in to your biases. When Trump or anyone else asks you to believe something based merely on what he says or your own biases, refuse to simply accept it.

Question. Analyze. Insist on thinking for yourself.

Welcome to Political Babylon

We, the people of Political Babylon ...

I’m taking a timeout from talking about presidential candidates online. That’s not to say I’ll never do so, but I’m going to try to refrain – and here’s why.

It’s not that I don’t care about the election or have a preference. I have a strong preference and, yes, I do care. What I don’t care for is how this election has started to look like everything that’s wrong with organized religion.

It’s not the candidates but their supporters who have led me to this conclusion, just as it isn’t any deity that makes me wary of religious fervor. It’s the us-vs.-them fanaticism that drives people to turn against one another and feel as though it’s acceptable – even noble – to become backbiters, kitchen sink dumpers and even suicide bombers.

All for the sake of some cult of personality; for the privilege of following some Pied Piper.

The way people hurl abuse at one another in the name of one candidate or another is nauseating. It’s gotten to the point where one can’t make a reasoned observation about any candidate without one of his/her supporters shouting the political equivalent of “Blasphemy!” or “Heresy!” Facebook and Twitter have become venues for verbally re-enacting the Spanish Inquisition using less physical implements of torture: bullying, accusation, name-calling and the full gamut of fallacious arguments.

People defend “their” candidates like they’re Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King all rolled into one.

They’re not.

Partisans and true believers go around throwing money into campaign war chests as though they're making offerings at some sacred temple. They refuse to risk upsetting any of the money-changers’ tables for fear one might topple over on their candidate and he/she will lose the advantage. The end justifies the means. Sure it does. Keep telling yourself that as your credibility disappears down the toilet. Do you even care?

Nearly everyone decries the tenor of the candidates’ rhetoric as unbecoming of a president. Well, look in the mirror. How's your rhetoric sounded lately? These politicians are putting on a show you’re paying to see, so kindly stop paying for it or stop complaining.

We the voters have personalized these candidates to such an extent we've adopted them as symbols of our own psychosis. In psychological terms, there's more projection going on here than you'll find at a 20-screen multiplex, and the image on the screen is just as two-dimensional.

No, I’m not joining the chorus of “let’s get along for the sake of party unity.” Party unity be damned. It’s just an excuse for people to act like one party or the other (or the two-party system) is “the one true church” and everyone else needs to be excommunicated. Whatever happened to voting your conscience? Whatever happened to staying civil for civility's sake? That concept seems to have disappeared down the toilet as well.

In the meantime, we’ve stopped talking about the issues. We’re so busy defending “our son of a bitch” because he’s our son of a bitch, it's as if we’ve forgotten why we started supporting him (or her) in the first place. This is what happens with personality cults: They become all about the person, while the issues are neglected and forgotten. The result is paralysis at best, demagoguery and despotism at worst. We get what we pay for with our 30-second attention spans.

Wonder why we tolerate people who flip-flop on the issues - who obfuscate, lie and spin everything under the sun? Then read that last paragraph again. We care more about party affiliation, name recognition and our own projections in this theater of the absurd than we do about the plot lines, the substance, the issues.

It’s what we want. It’s what we allow. If we don't have a Pied Piper, but we'll create one to follow. If we believe hard enough, these candidates will be everything we want them to be, right?

Be careful what you wish for, because the reflection in that mirror ain’t pretty. If we really want a candidate who looks just like our own psychoses, it won’t be long before we come to regret it. Then we’ll blame our savior: We’ll sacrifice him or her on the altar of our own denial, and we’ll start the ugly cycle all over again.

Welcome to Political Babylon.