Gas Lighting Becomes the Nation’s Sport

Portrait of Donald Trump from Wikimedia Commons by DonkeyHotey: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Trump_-_Portrait_(19209678533).jpg

I have seen way too many comments from Republicans claiming the transcript of President Trump’s disastrous phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “nothing burger.”

How depressing. An incompetent U.S. president unleashes a confusing word salad in which two things still manage to be abundantly clear: 1) Donald Trump is delusional about kooky right-wing conspiracies—he displays an increasingly erratic and dangerous lack of grip on reality, and 2) Brazenly and openly, he abused the powers of his office to try to get a foreign power to influence the next U.S. presidential election.

Russian collusion in 2016—not proven, but likely. That Russia interfered in 2016, proven beyond doubt. And here comes Donald Trump in 2019, calling a fellow TV star who become president in this crazy era, acting treasonous.

There, I said it: The T word. Trump the traitor. And you know how we used to treat traitors when we were smarter, right?

No, I don’t want an act of violence against the president, so don’t refer me to the Secret Service. I’m echoing his own inappropriate words, which he used on the whistle blower who blew the lid off this latest Trump scandal.

And, let’s consider this. Regardless of what you think of the whistle blower and their potential political motives, they filed a report in the system and let the U.S. government investigate. It was not the whistle blower who attempted to go outside of the law to draw in a foreign nation to further personal political gain.

The traitor in this tale is the addle-brained old man who has such a hypnotic hold on the Republican party that even now the senior senator from my state has attacked Democrats for looking into this scandal.

I read the transcript, too. Instead of a nothing burger, it’s 100 percent pure Angus bullshit. True, I’m not a lawyer and may need some help understating the legal ramifications, but besides appearing, as he usually does, incapable of normal human speech, let’s just review how much wrong burger there was from Trump and his criminal gang in the White House before and after this call:

• Trump puts a hold on military aid to Ukraine, a democracy threatened by an anti-democratic Russia. He then calls the president of said country and, when asked about the aid, immediately launches into his personal political agenda. None of the moves our president has made here make any policy sense in terms of his doing the job the minority of voters elected him to do. There is no hint in the call that Trump was trying to advance a government interest on behalf of the U.S. In this whole scheme, it was clearly Trump pushing Trump, the country be damned.

• Trump desperately seeks any dirt he can on Joe Biden through Joe Biden’s son’s connections to Ukraine. This is not a new story, and the true “nothing burger” is that there is, at this point, no apparent reason to investigate Hunter Biden. One odd attribute of Trump is that he projects his flaws onto his opponents—corrupt politician who makes shady deals on behalf of a sleazy family? His name isn’t “Biden,” it’s “Trump.” When Trump howls at the moon and invents crazy nicknames, so often it’s such a weird mirror of his own flaws.

• Trump’s minions spring into Keystone Cops action after the call. It’s hot, let’s classify with the deepest secrets! A complaint is filed that by law triggers a report to Congress, let’s ignore the law! When the heat gets too hot, an edited transcript will show what a great call it was! When the transcript lands like a javelin missile and suddenly impeachment is in the air, lets get our talking points in order—and email them to Nancy Pelosi!

And then there are Trump’s Tweets this week. President Trump has been singing like a canary, and it’s not pretty. Besides inappropriately attacking a 16-year-old girl who is a climate activist, he is suddenly ranting in all caps in a fire hose of nonsense. He’s injured, he’s hurt, he’s screaming—and he appears to be unhinged. This crazy Twitter twit is the President of the United States, who claimed in 2016 that it was so easy to act presidential. Still waiting.

Yikes. Nothing burger? More like tons of crazy burger.

Dear Chuck and Joni: I know politics is hard, but how far will you go for political advantage? Are you really willing to put all of our political norms at risk—to burn down the house rather than have new tenants move in? And how in the name of any sane universe can the problem that you see in this mess be that Democrats don’t like Trump?

Where is your duty to the republic, to law, to the Constitution?

If you want to be a true patriot now, then it is time to clearly articulate that what Trump has done this fortnight is out of bounds, so far beyond a Sharpie tumor on a weather map that it’s time for you to face the facts and to tell the truth.

You’re not just the Republican senators from Iowa. You are United States senators from Iowa, sworn to uphold the Constitution. For all our sakes, stop the nonsense and do some upholding.

This is clearly beyond a nothing burger. I did read the Mueller Report, and it wasn’t as empty as some seem to think and portray—there were impeachable offenses there, too. Be that as it may, maybe people of good heart can disagree on that report.

But the call to Ukraine? To say there’s nothing there is to gaslight us. We can read it and see it. Don’t try to say it’s OK. It’s clearly not in the neighborhood of OK. Don’t turn away from it. This is our president trying to get a foreign leader to dig up political dirt for him on a candidate for his office. You must, if you care about the country, call Trump out.

Ingrid Bergman from "Gaslight."
Public domain publicity image.

Trump is making it clearer day by scandalous day that he needs to be ousted from the oval office—either by voters or by the Senate acting as a jury.

And at this point, it’s beyond a doubt that there is a case to be made to impeach Donald Trump.

Maybe in the end, you would conclude, based on the testimony presented, that it’s not a case worth convicting Donald Trump on, but the recent events have opened a required path. An investigation here is necessary, and you must support that point if you are truly going to be a patriot. Let the committees meet and call witnesses and stop hassling about whether the House needs to consider impeachment.

It must. Not for partisan points, but because the Constitution and its norms and our continued republic requires it.

So, Sen. Grassley: Near the end of your long public service, will you be remembered as a clear thinker with a backbone who spoke the truth, or as another of the sycophants who has climbed aboard the gaslight express? Are you willing to stand up for what you know to be true?

And Sen. Ernst—where is that spunky Iowa girl who was going to make corrupt politicians squeal? You wore our nation’s uniform to defend it. More than when you were serving in that uniform, your nation needs you now. It’s time for you to stand up for the truth, which means confronting your party and an errant President. It’s your duty. No gaslighting. You know it.

God save the republic. Because Iowa Republicans don’t seem to be interested in that job.

Well, Why Didn’t Tom Just Call the Cops?

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“Downton Abbey” probably isn’t a great movie. There are some plot holes. I can’t help but wonder why Tom ended up rescuing the king when he could have just gone to the cops earlier? The running-parade scene seemed strange and turned ridiculous.

Whatever. The dowager was in rare form, Mary was the ice queen as usual, and the servants were at war with other servants. There was pointless intrigue and plots.

And a gay dance in Yorkshire.

While it may not have been a great film, I was totally engrossed. It was lush and silly and satisfying. It started with train wheels, and moved on to gorgeous old cars. For a while, it was the late 1920s, a king had not abdicated after running off with an American, a fascist had not risen yet in Germany and the stock market has not yet crashed.

It might have been interesting to move the characters ahead say a dozen years and have them cope with the onset of another great war, but then again, the children would be teens then, and a whole new cast of characters would have to be introduced.

Well, if you were fan of the TV show, you’ve been summoned. Seeing the grand house on the big screen is totally worth it. Although you may wonder a bit about Tom, who always seems to get stuck in the oddest of the plot twists. They had to manufacture another relative out of nothing, just for him.

Still, my wife and I enjoyed two hours of total escape this Saturday and that's something. Silly British posh soap opera, I have missed you.

How to keep the republic strong in a social media era

Painting n the U.S. Capitol, by Howard Chandler Christy, in 1940, depicting signing of the Constitution.

As he was leaving a meeting of the constitutional convention in 1787, which was debating in secret over a new government blueprint for the infant United States of America, the elderly Benjamin Franklin, so the story goes, was accosted by a Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia.

“Well doctor,” she asked. “Are we to have a monarchy or a republic?”

Benjamin Franklin by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis.

The ever-quotable Franklin immediately replied:

“A republic. If you can keep it.”

At the time, the convention was riven by partisanship. Two political factions battled for power—the federalists, commercial and urban groups who thought a strong central government was the key to economic prosperity; and the anti-federalists, rural landowners who worried that a strong central government might threaten individual liberty.

To get the Constitution ratified, the federalists struck a bipartisan deal. One of the first orders of business for the new Congress of the United States would be to propose a list of constitutional amendments to spell out guarantees of individual liberty, a so-called Bill of Rights.

Today we recognize the first of those 10 amendments as having been crucial in our history to our republic’s public life. And the language of that First Amendment has never been more relevant:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Bill of Rights original text. There were 12 amendments proposed, the first two were not ratified. What we call the First Amendment today was the Third Amendment in the proposal.

Why freedom of the speech and of the press? Well, in the 1700s, the founders were familiar with a radical British political theory that included the ideal of a “marketplace of ideas,” that an educated public with open access to information unfiltered by government authority should be able to discern truth from falsehood and make rational political choices.

And the Constitution that the founders wrote, a flawed document built on political compromises, still lurches along. It spawned a vibrant republic.

Well done, Ben and company. Except …

It’s no secret that the news media in this country is in upheaval. Fewer staff members toil in local newsrooms. At the same time, disinformation spreads quickly via the internet.

The founders who imagined a marketplace of ideas didn’t contemplate algorithms on social media sites that would measure our clicks and preferences and serve us each an echo chamber of our own prejudices. Nor did they contemplate a president governing via Twitter, calling journalists “enemies of the people.”

In Iowa, we get a front-row seat early in each presidential season. For us, the campaign of 2020 has been underway for months.

More than 200 years ago, the founders of this republic recognized that a free press was a necessary condition to have a self-governing, democratic republic. Today, with staffs of newsrooms shrinking, trolls stalking our twitter world, and crazy theories finding an equal footing with truth in the cyber universe, it’s becoming more of a challenge to have faith in the marketplace of ideas.

 What is the role of news media in the election of 2020? How are the ideals of freedom speech and of the press still relevant to our ongoing effort to maintain our republic? In an era when media are called “enemies” and “fake news,” whose information can you trust?

On Constitution Day 2019, Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 7 p.m. in Betty Cherry Heritage Hall, Mount Mercy University will host a panel discussion on how our First Amendment freedoms interact with the 2020 election campaign.

I and another MMU faculty member, Dr. Richard Barrett, assistant professor of political science, will be joined by several media figures—including Zack Kucharski, executive editor of The Gazette; and Lyle Muller, retired editor of Iowa Watch—to discuss these issues.

I hope you can join us and help us talk about these big issues as jointly we strive to keep our republic.

Note: The preceding was published by "The Gazette" in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Sept. 15, 2019, as a guest column on page 4D. The only editing I could find that they did to my text was to add "strong" to the headline and to insert a paragraph mark at the end--the sentence "I hope you can join us" was part of the previous paragraph in my draft. I present the text here as it was published in "The Gazette." Most images in this post are from Wikimedia Commons, except my image of the column and an image of a poster created by the Marketing and Communication office at Mount Mercy University.

Poster on campus. More information on the MMU web site.