Media coverage of Trump is heavily biased ... in his favor

Thinking out loud ... or at my keyboard.

Postulated: Modern mainstream journalism is heavily biased in favor of Donald Trump, at least when it comes to the Mueller investigation. You read that right. The same journalists Trump accuses of being out to get him, the ones he calls purveyors of “fake news” and “the enemy of the people,” are biased in his favor.

Balance beam

Journalists are funny creatures. I know. I used to be one. They obsess about being “fair and balanced” (a phrase that long predates its appropriation by Fox News as an Orwellian battle cry). They’ve been known to give equal time, or at least a mention, to such folks as anti-Obama “birthers” and climate change deniers.

These claims may be no more factual than those of flat-earthers and Holocaust deniers, but they’re given a voice because enough of them are shouting loudly enough to demand it. Not for the sake of facts, but for the sake of “balance.”

If enough people believe something false, does that alone make it worthy of coverage? Some in the media seem to think so. But it’s hard to cover a belief without lending it a degree of legitimacy, and that’s what journalists do when they repeat false claims. They’re worried that if they don’t, they might be accused of favoritism – especially when it comes to politics – so, they let virtually anyone with a loud enough voice have a platform.

That generally means people with R’s and D’s after their names. Independent voters are too, well, independent to offer any unified message, and third parties are too small.

Truth or consequences

All other things being equal (or close to it), the level of interest in a story should be a factor in whether it sees the light of day. When it becomes the overriding factor, however, there’s a problem. The Founding Fathers understood this when they devised a system founded on a statement of fundamental principles: the U.S. Constitution. Under this system, any movement that opposed those principles was deemed unlawful – regardless of how popular it was.

Similarly, the journalist’s unwritten constitution should put the truth ahead of popularity. Period. No matter how great the sacrifice in terms of ratings or subscriptions or advertising dollars.

When journalists decide popularity is more important than truth in deciding whether to report a story, they abandon their traditional role as gatekeeper. They throw open those invisible gates they’re supposed to be guarding to anyone and everyone, including marauders who want to destroy or plunder or conquer.

The result is chaos, and it’s hard to put the genie back into the bottle.

Journalists are gatekeepers whether they like it or not. They have limited resources - space on their news pages, time on their newscasts, staff to report the news - so they must pick and choose what they cover. Some things will get covered and others won't. Journalists are the ones who decide; they're responsible.

When they abdicate this responsibility, giving con artists and conspiracy theorists a platform, they may try to debunk them – thereby compromising their own integrity. Suddenly, they’re not just reporting a story, they’re commenting on it. Are Anderson Cooper or Sean Hannity reporters or advocates ... or entertainers? Even Hannity doesn’t seem to know: He’s argued at various times that he is and is not a journalist. If he doesn’t know the difference, how are viewers supposed to?

And how are journalists supposed to retain credibility when they seem more like attack dogs than reporters? In the eyes of viewers, they’ve sacrificed the very “balance” they sought to achieve in the first place.

More important, though, is that it’s a lot harder to confront marauding hordes inside the city gates than beyond them. The only negotiations likely to take place at that point will involve the terms of your surrender.

Actions, not words

Before I go further, I should point out a key distinction: Sometimes, the actions of people purveying falsehoods are worthy of coverage, even though their ideas aren’t. When 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed mass suicide in an attempt to somehow rendezvous with an imaginary spaceship, the tragedy was newsworthy. The spaceship wasn’t. These people believed so strongly in its existence that they were willing to die for it, but no one suggested that this viewpoint deserved to be considered as a rational possibility for the sake of “balanced coverage.”

Yet somehow, when politics become involved, all that changes. Modern politics transforms many in the media from champions of truth into scared puppies cowering under the table.

They tend to believe they must give the ideas of both sides relatively equal weight, even when one side is arguing for beliefs that have been disproved by science, rewrite history or fly in the face of the most basic common sense.

One-sided story

It’s bad enough if one side is telling the truth on a given issue, while the other side is lying. (In politics, neither side tells the truth all or even most of the time). But what if one side is making a series of false statements, and the other side isn’t saying anything at all?

This is exactly what’s happening in the Mueller investigation. Donald Trump and his legal team/PR machine are spewing out daily tweets, legal claims and proclamations, many of which are at odds with established facts and with one another. Sometimes, both.

Mainstream news outlets aren’t just covering them, they’re falling all over themselves to do so. They trot out a parade of “breaking news” items, significant and otherwise. Then, when there’s a lull, they call in any number of talking heads who proceed to analyze this stuff to death, exhume its remains and dissect it until there’s nothing left but dust and bones.

All the while, they’re referring back to the Trump team’s version of events, time and again. No matter how fanciful or self-contradictory that version may be, it will start to take hold if it’s repeated often enough. And it appears to have done just that: In July, 45 percent of those surveyed in a Washington Post poll disapproved of the way Mueller was handling the investigation, up from 31 percent at the start of the year.

This, in spite of the fact that, apart from several indictments, no one really knows what Mueller is doing. They only know what the Trump team tells them: that the inquiry is a “witch hunt” being conducted by a bunch of “angry Democrats” and that it’s “bad for the country.” All of this is either badly exaggerated or patently false. Even so, it’s dutifully reported in painstaking detail by Trump’s mouthpiece: the mainstream media he professes to hate.

Mueller, meanwhile, remains silent because that’s what a good prosecutor does.

Unhinged and unbalanced

The result is far worse even than what happens when media outlets give equal coverage to two sides – one factual and the other not. In this case, not only are journalists reporting falsehoods and dubious statements from a biased source, those statements are the only things they’re reporting. Because that source is the only one they’ve got. Trump’s team is the only side with direct involvement that’s providing any information, so their message, naturally, carries the day.

The media “solution” to this only makes matters worse. Cable news networks trot out talking heads to act as surrogates for what Mueller might be doing or considering. But it’s all just speculation, and speculation is no substitute for facts. Viewers know this and treat it as such.

When commentators try to balance the scales by casting themselves in adversarial roles, it’s even worse. It only fuels Trump’s narrative that the media are biased against him, even though almost all the news of substance they’re reporting originates in his own camp! He’s having his cake and eating it, too, all the while giving journalists heartburn.

How to restore balance

This leads me to the blunt conclusion journalists don’t want to face, and the thesis of this column: In order to achieve actual balance in this case, the media would have to stop reporting the Trump team’s side.

Should they, really? The news media are supposed to report the news, not withhold it. But if they’re so dedicated to achieving “balance” that they repeat phony claims such as birtherism and climate change denial, shouldn’t they refrain from covering one side when the other side doesn’t have a voice?

Especially when the side that’s talking has a history of contradictory, false and self-serving statements. And especially when national security is at stake. Let’s not forget the gravity of the accusations being made: that people close to or involved in the Trump campaign were complicit with wealthy, politically motivated Russians in helping to influence the outcome of a national election.

Our election, not theirs. Not an election to be decided at the pleasure of Vladimir Putin, who has openly admitted he wanted Trump to win. If he’d wanted Hillary Clinton to win, the episode would have been just as repugnant. No more, no less. Putin’s actions are an insult and an act of violence against the heart of a democratic republic, against the Constitution, against the nation and against each of us as U.S. citizens.

Journalists’ responsibility

Journalists must take their role as gatekeeper seriously if they are to avoid being suckered into becoming a propaganda mouthpiece for Donald J. Trump. That’s where they’re headed, if they aren’t already there.

But as much as many in the media may loathe Trump personally, there’s a reason they won’t pull themselves back from the brink. They might tell you it has to do with journalistic ethics or integrity, but there’s something else in play here: ratings, subscriptions and revenues.

Bottom line: Trump’s story sells newspapers and lifts ratings, which, in turn, woos advertisers. This is ultimately why mainstream media outlets will go right on telling it. Right on serving as his mouthpiece. Because to them, popularity really is more important than truth.

Popularity equals ratings equals profit. Trump and the media both know this. They’re on the same page, so is it really any surprise that media companies do Trump’s bidding? When it comes right down to it, it’s all about the Benjamins.

Stephen H. Provost is an author, former journalist, historian and media critic. His book Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump examines the toxic relationship between journalism and Donald Trump, focusing on the media’s transformation from impartial observer to ringside commentator and sometimes-combatant in the 21st century culture wars.

Trump's coup: How loyalty replaced morality as the GOP's core message

Donald Trump doesn’t like the Koch Brothers. This should come as no surprise. Trump always operates based on three generalized assumptions:

1. The establishment is bad.

2. The status quo is bad.

3. He’s the victim.

The Koch Brothers are about as “establishment” as you can get.

Trump’s pedigree as an outsider railing against the corrupt proletariat (to use the old-line communist term for it) goes back a long way. Let’s look at some of the evidence:

His antipathy toward former President Barack Obama is well-documented. Whether it’s because of his racial heritage or the fact that he remains a beloved figure by millions of Americans, Trump clearly can’t stand the guy. He not only spread lies about his birthplace, he also called him “one of the worst presidents, maybe in the history of our country” and made the outlandish claim that “he founded ISIS” (the terrorist group, not the Egyptian goddess).

One might expect Trump to attack the leader of the opposition. But what’s striking is how readily and how often he disparages members of his own party. Not only is this counterintuitive, but it breaks what’s known in Republican circles as the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” Those words were uttered by none other than the most venerated Republican of the 20th century – at least within GOP circles: Ronald Reagan, the man nearly every GOP candidate sought to emulate for nearly four decades.

Trump’s bad blood with the Bush family (which is about as “establishment” as you can get: two presidents and a governor) runs so deep that neither former president voted for him in 2016 – even though they belong to the same party. Trump called the younger Bush’s decision to invade Iraq “the single worst decision ever made.”

Trump also attacked the Republican Party’s most well-known and, arguably, most revered senator, John McCain, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

And in 2016, he called Mitt Romney “one of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics.” In short, he’s disparaged his own party’s last three presidential nominees in the kind of vicious terms usually reserved for enemies of the state.

But he didn’t stop with those in government. The NFL, the pinnacle of corporate success in the sports world, and the Koch Brothers, perhaps the party’s most reliable and generous donors in recent years, were next.

Perpetual outsider

Trump’s distaste for the establishment is deep-seated. He’s been on the outside looking in much of his life. He was a developer in Queens who wanted to succeed in Manhattan. He was the owner of a spring football league team who wanted to play with the big boys in the NFL. (The owners kept him out; is it any wonder he’s trying to make life miserable for them now?)

It would be easy – and probably accurate, on some level – to view Trump’s heavy-handed approach to the presidency as the work of a control freak with authoritarian tendencies. But there’s more to it than that. Trump has spent so much time on the outside, he doesn’t know how to be an insider. More than that, he doesn’t want to be. He wants to refashion the presidency in his own image, not just because he’s a know-it-all with a massive ego (he is), but also because he doesn’t trust the establishment.

If it appears that Trump is a threat to the nation’s institutions, it’s because he doesn’t value them. He looks at them with suspicion as the instruments those in power used for so long to suppress his “superior” way of doing things. He might pay lip service to the Constitution, but he has no interest in maintaining the prestige of the presidency. He doesn’t care about old money or old ideas; he has his own way of doing things, and it’s “modern-day presidential.”

He tweeted that.  

So, what is Trump’s way of doing things? About the only thing consistent about his philosophy, other than the economic protectionism that inspired the current trade war with China, is its volatility.

The fact that the establishment wants to “keep things the way they are” helps explain why Trump is so hostile to the status quo. But his impulse to cause chaos goes beyond that. Trump needs chaos in order to feel comfortable, so if there isn’t an enemy to fight, he creates one ... either by goading someone into getting down in the gutter with him or manufacturing a conflict where none existed before. The endgame: to depict himself as the victor, whether or not he truly accomplished anything.

The national anthem controversy with the NFL, the “Merry Christmas” crusade and the summits with foreign leaders all pit Trump against an adversary he can claim to have bested, whether not he’s actually done so. In the end, it doesn’t matter. He’s amassed a loyal enough following that those who believe in him will continue to do so, no matter how outlandish the claim. (This is, by the way, undoubtedly why loyalty is so important to Trump: It’s a necessary bulwark against those pesky things called facts and data. Climate change. Obama’s birth certificate. The size of his inaugural crowd. The list goes on and on.)

Trump’s insistence on upending the status quo, for good or ill, perpetuates his victimhood. He gets to depict himself as the much-maligned underdog who somehow comes out on top. That’s an archetype that resonates with a lot of Americans. Whether or not it truly applies to a billionaire real estate developer and reality show host, he’s convinced them that it does, and that’s all that matters.

He gets to be the victim and be “winning” at the same time. Talk about chaotic.

Whither conservatism?

The irony about Trump’s approach is that it isn’t conservatism. Not only has Trump badmouthed, at one time or another, most of the senior figures in the Republican Party, he’s turned the GOP on its head. Conservatism generally defends the status quo, but Trump has challenged it at every turn, defying party orthodoxy on everything from tariffs to Russia; depicting enemies as friends and vice versa. There’s a good reason many see Trump’s tactics as something out of George Orwell’s 1984: He hasn’t just changed the equation, he’s inverted it.

He’s succeeded because he’s tapped into a large segment of the population that identifies with his victimization: aging white America. They don’t see the status quo as conservative anymore; they see it as an artificial construct foisted upon them by Democrats who have unleashed “diversity” as a Trojan horse inside the gates of Fortress America. (Hence the quest for a border wall.) Trump has also forged common ground with Republicans – and some independents – who believe that the Democratic Party is a tool of big-money liberals and corrupt Clinton cronies.

And the Koch Brothers? Charles Koch recently indicated his organization would consider supporting Democrats who shared the group’s values. There may not be many of those, but regardless, those words were likely music to Trump’s ears. He doesn’t want any part of the Koch Brothers and their establishment Republican politics. Tying them to Democrats enables him to do two things: discredit them as traitors among rank-and-file party members and reinforce his narrative that the Democrats are puppets of the monied establishment.

Trump can then refashion the Republican Party as a party of the working class, at least on the surface, depriving Democrats of a foundation that dates back to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. He’s seeking to force political a realignment the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Southern Democrats abandoned the party for the GOP during the Reagan years, when Christian conservatism was flexing its political muscles under the likes of Jerry Falwell and James Dobson.

Purging the Establishment

Trump has retained this social conservatism as an element of his movement (although, as a New Yorker with little religious pedigree, he has no personal stake in it). Now he’s adding economic populism to the mix; it’s a natural fit, and one that’s at odds with the Koch Brothers’ vision of corporate dominance. This realignment makes sense strategically, and also, not coincidentally, fits perfectly into Trump’s anti-establishment crusade.

It’s appealing to many in the economic lower classes because they’re often rural-based social conservatives who feel uncomfortable relying on urban secular Democrats to protect their economic interests. They don’t trust them. They had a natural distrust of Hillary Clinton (who, it should be remembered, abandoned Arkansas for New York), and Trump stoked this distrust to his own benefit by relentlessly portraying Clinton as “Crooked Hillary.”

One reason Trump’s base is so solid is because Bible Belt conservatism and blue-collar populism are such a natural fit. Instead of relying on an uneasy coalition of corporate heavies and “values voters,” he’s creating a more natural alignment between social conservatives and the working class – specifically, the white working class. In doing so, he’s narrowed overall party support, which is to be expected because homogenous groups are less broad-based than coalitions. But he’s also solidified it, because “purity” breeds loyalty – to other members of the movement and to Trump in particular.

Loyalty is exactly what Trump wants. He eats up the resulting pseudo-messianic adoration at pep rallies designed to attract true believers. It feeds on itself and strengthens the foundation of the movement, even as it alienates those on the outside.

Folding the big tent

Trump’s approach flies in the face of Republican attempts, largely unsuccessful, to expand the party by pursuing a “big tent” approach advocated by the Bushes and others. By contrast, Trump’s motto is, “If you’re not for me, you’re against me.” His message: People shouldn’t have to apologize for what they believe and who they are. This, of course, is why such fringe groups as white supremacists are so strongly attracted to Trumpism: Membership isn’t predicated on philosophy, but on loyalty. He doesn’t have to come right out and embrace them. His willingness to overlook their most repugnant ideas is enough.

Establishment Republicans, for the most part, have seen little choice but to go along with the program, and they’ve no one to blame but themselves. In creating “safe” districts via gerrymandering, they’ve unwittingly engineered the perfect platform for Trump: pockets of true believers who fit Trump’s sweet spot – working-class social conservative – like a glove. Traditional GOP members can’t go against Trumpism without all but guaranteeing they’ll lose in the primary.

The result is that the Republican Party doesn’t stand for much of anything anymore. It exists at Trump’s pleasure and can be remade, at a moment’s notice, at his whim. Tariffs? BFF photo ops with Vladimir Putin? Personal behavior that’s about as far from “Christian” as you can get? None of it matters. What matters is loyalty. Welcome to Cosa Nostra Americana.

Ronald Reagan? Who’s that?

Stephen H. Provost is an author, former journalist, historian and media critic. His book Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump examines the toxic relationship between journalism and Donald Trump, focusing on the media’s transformation from impartial observer to ringside commentator and sometimes-combatant in the 21st century culture wars.

Trump's arrogance will be his downfall, and it could be ours

“If you try to tell me what to do, I’ll do the opposite.” You’ve probably heard a friend or acquaintance say that, or something like it. It’s sounds defiant. It’s feels gutsy. And it’s ultimately self-destructive.

Yes, it’s rude for someone to try to order you around, and it’s healthy to stand up for yourself. But automatically doing the opposite as a knee-jerk reaction is pretty damned stupid.

You won’t always know the right answer; sometimes, another person will. If you tune that person out because you think you’re the ultimate expert on everything – and no one else has anything of value to offer – eventually, you’ll fall flat on your face. And when you do, who’ll be there to pick you up? Certainly not the people whose advice you shunned.

This tendency is more likely than anything else to be Donald Trump’s downfall. He has a penchant for ignoring advice and doing things his own way because he believes he, and he alone, knows best. The stronger the pushback against his ideas, the more likely he is to try to implement them.

Don’t antagonize your allies, they say? He’ll do it. Don’t cozy up to dictators with a history of bad behavior? He’ll do that, too – and praise them as great leaders.

Stop tweeting? He’ll tweet more. Don’t separate kids from their parents? Let’s do that! Tariffs will drag down a strong economy? He’ll impose them anyway. He’ll hire people who are unqualified or potentially corrupt because he feels like it, without checking their references (or ignoring them if they run counter to his “instincts”).

It's still the economy, stupid

At some point, those instincts will fail him, and one of his ideas will go so far wrong that a lot of people will get hurt. Those people will turn on him, and he’ll be left politically isolated. That hasn’t happened yet, but the economy – the number one concern of Republicans, not to mention voters in general – has been strong. If it tanks, do you really think they’ll stand by him? Ask the previous Republican darling, George W. Bush, how that worked out.

That’s why Trump’s beloved tariffs are a bigger threat to his presidency than any of the other bonehead go-it-alone moves mentioned above. People will look the other way when it comes to foreign affairs (“too far away”), government corruption (“they all do it”) or even the welfare of children (“they ain’t my kids”). But hit them in the pocketbook, threaten their livelihoods – or, for corporate shareholders, their profits – and it will be another story.

Trump’s supporters will hold their collective noses and go along with the tariffs unless and until the economy starts to head south. Then, they’ll desert him. But by that point, it will be too late. Again, ask George W how this works, and ask Republicans who have distanced themselves from that administration because they lost the White House for the next eight years.

The problem with Trump’s go-it-along contrarianism is that he’s not really going it alone: He’s dragging the rest of the country along with him. No one roots for a president to fail, but if he’s going to fail – as Trump seems prone to doing (six bankruptcies, a failed “university”, a gutted spring football league) – isn’t it best that he do so before the damage is so great that the rest of the nation fails along with him?

Unfortunately, that may not be possible. Trump has convinced Republican lawmakers that it’s in their political interest to go along with him, even against their long-held principles. It’s no longer a conservative party. It’s Trump’s party, conservative or otherwise. Because Republicans control Congress, they control the nation, and so, like dominoes, Trump’s arrogance could well be the first domino to fall in a line of devastation that trickles down – or flash-floods its way – through the GOP and on to the nation as a whole.

Trump has failed before. Repeatedly. But his selective memory only sees his successes and glosses over, hides (tax returns, anyone?) or lies about his failures. He’s convinced his supporters to do the same, rewriting history in a way that would owes more to Stalin’s Soviet propaganda machine than it does to any American tradition

But if the economy starts to fail, even that won’t protect him.

The housing bubble that led to the Great Recession might turn out to be nothing next to Trump’s overinflated ego. I hope I’m wrong about that. No one wants a president to fail. But no one wants to stay aboard a train that’s rushing toward a washed-out bridge over the Grand Canyon at 100 mph, either. Someone needs to apply the brakes now. Republicans in Congress. Voters in November. Anyone. Before it’s too damned late.

For more commentary on the Trump presidency and the media’s coverage of it, check out my book Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump, available on Amazon in paperback or ebook.

Why I support Michael Erin Woody for Congress

For the first time in 12 years, I’m voting for a Republican.

A lot is at stake in this midterm election, but something bigger is at stake in the history of our country: the right to choose. As both parties become more polarized, independents like me are left with no choice at all. We vote for the candidate who most closely reflects our views, even though that candidate is often more extreme than we are.

We become party-line voters, not by choice, but of necessity, because there are no other real options. This creates a false sense that we’ve endorsed extreme viewpoints and reinforces those viewpoints in the future. We are, in effect, encouraging candidates to continue running far-right or far-left campaigns, because we keep on voting for them.

This inherent weakness in the two-party system was kept in check during an era when civility was still the norm, both in the halls of Congress and in society. But increasingly, that’s not the case. Decidedly uncivil, even rude behavior has been on the rise, and as we condone it in our candidates, they feel free to keep upping the ante.

Because. It. Works.

I’m voting for the Republican candidate in California’s 24th Congressional District because he doesn’t look like a typical Republican (at least not in 2018). I don’t agree with Michael Erin Woody on everything. In fact, his opposition to single-payer health care is problematic for me, because I believe strongly that health care should be recognized as a right, not an opportunity for big corporations to make money.

But here’s the thing: We don’t have to agree with our chosen candidates on everything. Back before “compromise” became a dirty word, it was how we got things done. If a candidate is rejected because he or she scores “only” 90 percent on some interest group’s checklist, rather than 100, that’s a recipe for gridlock – which is where we’ll be stuck as long as we keep insisting that our way is the only way. We have to be willing to at least consider other options.

That’s what Woody does. He’s a civil engineer from Morro Bay who I know from my hometown, Fresno, where he served on the City Council. I consider him a friend. But I’m not voting for him because of that. On the contrary, we became friends in large measure because we share a key value: the importance of thinking for yourself, regardless of party platforms.

Woody told The Santa Barbara Independent that “the Republican Party has lost its way.”

I agree. With many moderates and mavericks on the GOP side leaving Congress, the party needs all the help it can get.

Woody supports same-sex marriage, a position that’s at odds with Republicans who fought tenaciously against it in passing Proposition 8. Woody not only isn’t apologizing for his stand, he announced it at the very outset of his campaign. He also supports continuing to allow transgender individuals to serve in the nation’s military, bucking the Trump administration’s position on that issue. And he opposes offshore oil drilling, another position at odds with President Trump – but one shared by a lot of voters in the 24th District. Woody’s not only willing to challenge the leader of his own party on this issue, he’s taking a position that puts his potential constituents ahead of party politics. That’s important, because politicians are elected to represent their districts, not other politicians.

Woody has named infrastructure as one of his priorities, focusing attention on a problem that Trump pledged to address, then abandoned. It’s a key issue in a state where many roads and bridges are in need of repair and replacement.

As many of my readers know, I’m no fan of Trump, but this isn’t about who’s president. I want to see Democrats stand up to their party leaders, too, and vote based on their principles and their constituents’ interests rather than partisan precepts. Dialogue is preferable to dogma, and it’s the only way to solve problems. I’m confident that Woody would encourage that kind of dialogue in Washington.

Politicians often talk about running the government like a business, then proceed to spend millions of dollars on their campaigns on the assumption that money equals votes. Woody hasn’t focused on raising money, but on spending it wisely and getting the most bang for his buck during the current campaign. That’s the kind of attitude we need in Washington, where Republicans who preach fiscal restraint bust budgets more egregiously than the Democrats they criticize. (Contrast Woody, who runs his own small business, with a president whose companies have declared bankruptcy six times.)

And Woody’s running an issues-based campaign, focusing on his own ideas rather than attacking his opponents. By contrast, Justin Fareed spent much of his time in televised debates criticizing Democrat Salud Carbajal. At one point, Fareed’s campaign even sent out a mailer accusing Carbajal of being a “Nazi collaborator and self-proclaimed socialist.” (Fareed, the other Republican in the race, later issued a retraction.)

That’s a big deal to me because, as a political independent, I’m tired of voting against people. I’m tired of holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two evils – and in this case, I won’t be. I would have no problem seeing Carbajal, for whom I voted in 2014, re-elected. I agree with him on a number of issues. But I want a choice in the matter, and I want a thoughtful approach to governing that puts constituents before political litmus tests. I believe Michael Erin Woody will provide such an approach.

You can find out more about Woody and his positions by reading his 44-page booklet, Priorities We Deserve, and about all the candidates by watching debates on KEYT and KSBY. Then decide for yourself.

Michael Erin Woody will give voters a real, rational choice in November and, if elected, will give constituents thoughtful, creative solutions to the challenges we face. That’s why I’m supporting him for Congress in California’s 24th District.

How Citizens United paved the way for Donald Trump

We went to sleep in Bedford Falls, and we’re waking up in Pottersville. A lot of us would rather go back to sleep.

For years, many of us have yearned for a leader who would “run the country like a business.” Well, we got what we wished for, but despite the shock of waking up more than a year ago with a six-times-bankrupt real estate mogul for a president, none of this happened overnight.

There are two kinds of businessmen. There are the old-school merchants who put the customer first, because the customer could always take his business elsewhere. Then there’s the new corporate model, which puts the shareholders first, because that’s where the real money is. Customers can’t nickel-and-dime you to death if you’ve got investors slipping millions into your back pocket at regular intervals.

There are, similarly, two approaches to government. The traditional approach — which made America great in the first place — puts the voter first. Officials are elected to represent their constituents, and if they don’t, those constituents can take their votes elsewhere. But under the new model, big-money donors come first, because they can control the conversation. Voters can’t elect you if they don't know who you are, and they can't kick you out of office if they don’t know you're robbing them blind.

Transformation

We’ve been morphing from the traditional form of government into a corporate model for some time: Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economics and the Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy were among the early signs of this progression. But the tipping point came in 2010, when the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for corporate donors and blew the last vestiges of a fair playing field to smithereens.  

Once this model was firmly in place, its proponents thought they’d use it, along with the tool of Gerrymandering, to corner the market on public policy for the benefit of their corporate sponsors. One thing they hadn’t counted on, though, is an inconvenient aspect of corporate life: the hostile takeover.

That’s where Donald Trump came in. He knew the voters didn’t like the idea of corporate big wigs telling them what to do, so he tapped into that, presenting himself as an “outsider” who was ready to “drain the swamp” and take on the Washington elites: notably, the Clinton Democratic machine, but also Republican lawmakers like “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz and “Little” Marco Rubio.

“George, I am an old man, and most people hate me. But I don’t like them either so that makes it all even. ”

— Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter in "It’s a Wonderful Life"

Whatever you think of Trump, his takeover of the Republican Party was a masterstroke worthy of “corporate raider” Carl Icahn (who later served briefly in Trump’s administration as a special economic adviser). The Republican establishment, which had banked on corporate support from the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and their ilk, was nonplussed at the idea that someone outside their ranks turning the tables on them.

Cruz called him a “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral” and “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.” Fellow candidate Lindsay Graham said Republicans should “tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” But that was during the primaries. Cruz eventually endorsed Trump (conveniently forgetting insults toward Cruz's wife and father), and Graham now plays golf with him on a fairly regular basis.

Why the change?

Two reasons: Trump runs the show, but it’s still their show.

Since assuming office, Trump has been anything but an outsider. In fact, he’s become the very thing he ran against in the primaries, morphing into the quintessential NeoCon Republican. During his first year in office, he has, almost without fail, championed the same causes establishment Republicans have supported for years: increased military spending, anti-gay policies, regulation rollbacks and overt “patriotism.” But he’s done so while playing to the crowd as though he were still an outsider.

This is likely one reason Trump has clung to his tweeting habit so tenaciously. His rash and often offensive outbursts, and the conspiracy theories that go along with them, are all that separate him from the people he ran against in the primaries. He’s basically keeping up appearances.

Whether he’s a maverick or a traditional Republican at heart doesn’t matter to Trump, just as ideology doesn’t matter to most CEOs. It’s the bottom line that counts, and for Trump, the bottom line is his own ego. The Republicans who railed against him in the primaries have figured this out, and they know he’ll execute their agenda as long as they play along with his little charade. So, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Imperfect storm

No wonder people on the other side of the political fence are so enraged. To them, the current situation is the worst of both worlds: a Republican majority that’s still indebted to corporate interests, working hand in glove with a president who lacks a moral compass and who insults friend and foe alike.

Trump’s Mad Hatter act is, in part, a function of who he is — a self-serving narcissist who uses chaos to further his own ends. But it’s also a function of the new corporate government system we’ve created. Under the corporate model, a board of directors makes policy to benefit shareholders (not customers), and the CEO both executes and sells that policy as the face of the company. Think Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or Carly Fiorina. Or, in Britain, the royal family.

Trump likes to think he's royalty, with Mar-a-Lago as his palace and a bunch of toadies groveling at his feet.

Whatever else he is, he's the face of our nation, and it’s an ugly one, rather like Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. Maybe we’re not threatening to jump of a bridge, as George Bailey did in that iconic film, but some people are threatening to move overseas and a whole lot of others are distraught, disconsolate and downright embarrassed.

Trump didn’t create this mess on his own. He merely stepped into the role we created for him when, fed up with gridlock and do-nothing lawmakers, we clamored for a "businesslike" approach to government. We asked for it; now we’ve got it. But is this really what we had in mind?

The sad irony is that we hired a third-rate businessman with a first-rate ego to work for 1 percent of Americans.

Welcome to Pottersville, otherwise known as Trumpsylvania. But don’t make yourself at home. In this little slice of faux-Rockwell Americana, foreclosure’s always just around the corner.

Ice cream, logic and the Second Amendment

You’re hungry. You want to go out and buy a gallon of ice cream, despite the fact that you’re diabetic and doing so could kill you. But hey, we’ve all got to eat, right? Never mind the fact that you’re already at a healthy weight and in no danger of starving without that ice cream.

You’re thirsty. You decide to go to the bar and have a shot of tequila. Then a gin and tonic. And while you’re at it, you’d like a pitcher of beer to wash it all down. After a while, alcohol poisoning becomes a real possibility, but before you even get that far, the juice will begin to impair your judgment and lower your inhibitions. A one-night stand with the wrong person, a barroom brawl or, worse still, a fatal accident on the interstate could be just around the corner. But it’s all good because people have to drink, don’t they?

But do you have to drink alcohol? Sure, it’s liquid, but drinking too much of the stuff can actually leave you dehydrated.

Countless bad decisions have been justified by the phrase “I need that” —when the person doesn’t really need the thing at all. He or she may want it, to be sure, but as Mick said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

Unless, that is, you can convince other people you need it.

Ice cream and guns

Enter the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

To paraphrase: “We need a militia to keep us safe, therefore …”

I’ll put aside the difficulties of defining “the people” and “arms” for now, because I want to focus on the premise. The writers were clearly saying, “We need this, so we’re going to guarantee that.”

But here’s the rub: In an age of standing armies, we no longer need a militia.

When a premise is obsolete, any conclusion drawn from it must be questioned. You don’t need a gallon of ice cream if you’re in no imminent danger of starving —and even if you were, another food source would work just as well.

In the same way, you don’t need a militia in an age when you're protected by the world’s most sophisticated, heavily funded standing force. The premise no longer holds, so the conclusion collapses.

The demands of logic

The Supreme Court majority disagrees with me. Its argument, stated in District of Columbia, et. al. v. Dick Anthony Heller, is that “apart from that clarifying function, a prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause.”

In other words, the premise doesn’t matter, because what follows could stand on its own.

To illustrate this, the court replaces the actual introduction with an unrelated premise — a non sequitur. The Second Amendment, it argues, would be nonsensical if it read, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be infringed.”

The first part obviously has nothing to do with the second.

But this straw man argument utterly fails to address the question that remains: If the conclusion could stand alone, without the premise, why did the framers include that premise in the first place?

The court answers its own question in the Washington, D.C. opinion by stating that “logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command.”

Logic demands.

With these two words, the court has given the correct answer to the question of why the framers included the introductory clause: It is, in fact, the premise in a logical argument.

Having it both ways

As we’ve already seen, though, a conclusion is worthless if the premise invalid: Without the premise it becomes merely an assertion. As a conclusion, it collapses under its own weight.

We’ve also seen that, in an era of standing armies, the premise that a “well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State” simply isn't accurate. It becomes just as nonsensical as the hypothetical non sequitur the court introduced concerning the petition of grievances.

The court simply cannot have it both ways. It cannot, on the one hand, assert that the conclusion stands on its own regardless of the premise while, at the same time, maintaining that both are components of a logical argument — thus making the premise necessary to support the conclusion.

The premise was valid when it was written. The disparate collection of rebels who formed our fledgling nation did, in fact, need militias to guarantee their security back in the 18th century. But that doesn’t mean we need them today. The premise is no longer valid and, therefore, neither is the conclusion.

To argue otherwise would be to state that the framers might as well have included that hypothetical premise about the redress of grievances. Or, for that matter, a belief in astrology. Or the quest to land on the moon. Or anything else you’d care to mention. The majority justices in this opinion are basically suggesting that the framers could have used anything to fill in the blank, as though they were playing a game of Mad Libs.

But they weren’t. They were making a logical argument — as the court itself affirms. The premise they included in the Second Amendmentwasn't some random statement without any bearing on the conclusion. It was, in fact something that the framers saw as a necessary component of a logical argument.

The fact that the reasoning is obsolete doesn't change that, no matter how much the court majority might wish it would.

Mental gymnastics

The majority is, in fact, is trying to perform an impossible task. On the one hand, it seeks to maintain the Constitution, and specifically the Second Amendment, as an essential component of the nation’s social contract — a necessary premise upon which our system of government rests. At the same time, however, it must deal with the fact that a premise within the amendment itself is no longer valid.

That’s quite a conundrum, and it helps explain why courts and the nation as a whole is so closely divided, philosophically speaking, on this issue. (They’re divided on a practical level as well, by competing agendas, but that’s another issue.)

We don’t like the idea of admitting that something in our founding documents is no longer relevant, because we’re afraid that in doing so, we might cast doubt on the rest of their contents. We therefore fall into the trap of defending the authority of the documents themselves, rather than affirming the principles upon which they rest: violating the spirit of the law in a vain attempt to preserve the sanctity of the letter; creating fallacious arguments to prop up outdated logic.

Where does that logic lead us?

Toward that tub of ice cream or that bottle of whiskey. To something we no longer need but still want. One could argue that we, as a nation, have the same attitude toward guns that the gluttonous man has toward his ice cream or the alcoholic has toward his Jack Daniels. In all three cases, we invoke a perceived need as an excuse to continue feeding an insatiable appetite that isn’t good for us.

We continue to defend outdated logic that we need guns for one purpose in order to preserve our right to wield them for other reasons entirely.

Burden of proof

I’ve been told that, in order to find a flaw in the Second Amendment, I’ll need to change the Constitution. But I disagree. The logical flaw is there, right in front of our noses, and our failure to acknowledge it won’t make it disappear.

There are other reasons to bear arms, but we can’t infer from the document as written that these are sufficient to secure a right to do so. And we can’t simply cast aside the premise of a logical argument that was an essential part of the document as written … unless, that is, we amend the amendment. The burden of doing so must be placed squarely on the shoulders of those who believe in the right they want to uphold: either by removing the archaic premise about militias entirely, or by replacing it with another premise altogether — such as a right to individual self-defense.

But it’s impossible, in my view, to deny that the amendment as written, is an invalid argument. And once we admit that, we must also acknowledge that such an argument is not fit to serve as a guiding principle for a great nation.

Guns are, most certainly dangerous. But it’s far more dangerous to engage in mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that something’s logical when it isn’t. Guns may kill the body, but logical fallacies destroy the mind.

This is what we’ve come to. The Supreme Court majority is flat wrong. Its reasoning simply backfired.