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Home | The mainstream media is full of incompetent idiots

The mainstream media is full of incompetent idiots

D. Earl Stephens

andRaw Story

January 13, 2024}:

Let’s get right to it …

Too many journalists who occupy, or spend their professional lives orbiting the newsrooms of our mainstream media are incompetent, and most likely working in their important jobs for all the wrong reasons.

Worse yet, most of the leaders of these newsrooms are either bought-off corporate tools or dangerous innocents, who have absolutely no idea what they are doing in their crucial jobs, while the end of life as we know it hinges in large part on their ability to sound the alarms and let the world know what is at stake this year.

READ: Behold: Donald Trump the chosen son — and religious con

I am sadly not wrong about this.

At a time when we’ve never needed fair, hard-hitting coverage of the fascist Republican Party’s attack on our Democracy more, our journalists are catastrophically failing us, and the Fourth Estate as a whole is facing a crisis in confidence from the American public that might ultimately lead to its extinction.

The decline of the press and their inability to do the most basic thing in the news business — identify and cover the biggest stories of the day — has hit extreme levels.

How else do you explain the dangerous and shoddy coverage of the most ominous internal threat to the United States of America since the Civil War: the end of our Democracy.

How is it after watching and listening to the anti-American deviant, Donald Trump, and his pathetic minions in the Republican Party recklessly comport themselves can our media forget that one of the first things to go under fascist, authoritarian regimes is their right to conduct their business freely?

These people are inches from losing their professional freedoms because in large part of their blinding incompetence, and we are THIS close to losing our Democracy forever because they seemingly haven’t even gotten as far as identifying this very real threat to us, and their livelihood.

It boggles the mind, and as a veteran of nearly 30 years in newsrooms, 16 of those years in leadership, I am absolutely disgusted.

How DARE they.

Ever since the fatal election of the racist, soulless Trump in 2016, the press has come under fire for how they helped enable one of the darkest days in American history.

This is not breaking news.

Many members of the working press have since acknowledged their mistakes in the run-up to that election. Their failure to call a lie a lie and a racist a racist, for instance, helped normalize the savage, Trump.

Their nonstop coverage of his unhinged, heinous rallies where he insulted the disabled, and our war veterans, and failure to easily draw the stark distinctions between him and the accomplished, decent woman he was running against was journalistic malpractice.

Many of them told us they learned their lesson, and if Trump, or something like him, ever ran again they would be ready.

If only.

They have actually gotten worse.

The examples are many but let’s take a look this past weekend for just one sample of their massive incompetence these days.

Consider what happened on Meet the Press Sunday. This news program used to be the shining example of nonpartisan, hard-hitting journalism. Power was called into account on a weekly basis.

Now it is a complete mess that has no sense of itself. It’s where politicians eagerly go to recite their party’s talking points, and slap back hard at any host who dares to interrupt them.

On Sunday’s episode of ineptitude, Meet the Press host Kristen Walker was interviewing Elise Stefanik, the House Republican chairwoman.

Stefanik is currently steeped in warped, dark MAGA propaganda. Like many woman in her party, she is strutting down every runway she can find, to see if maybe, just maybe she can catch the vulgar Trump’s bloodshot eye, and have the honor of being his ceremonial whipping-girl on his fascist ticket.

It’s disgusting.

Sure as hell, it took Stefanik no time at all to do her Radical Right routine of telling one known lie after another. The doe-eyed Welker tried to politely nudge her back in her lane, before Stefanik knocked her off the road altogether, and took control of the wheel.

Stefanik: “We will see if this (2024 election) is a legal and valid election.”

Welker: “Will you only commit to certifying the results (of the election) if former President Trump wins? Does that mean only if former President Trump wins?”

Stefanik: “No, it means if they’re constitutional. What we saw in 2020 was unconstitutional circumventing of the Constitution, not going through state legislators when it comes to changing election law.”

I mean, holy shit. In other words, if the election doesn’t work out for us democratically, we’ll just once again move onto some hard-core lawbreaking to change minds.

Short of hitting back with facts, Welker should have just ended the interview about nine times, but didn’t.

Instead, Stefanik just kept backing up and running over her, and was going completely unchallenged when she vomited that the convicted attackers of our Democracy were actually “January 6 hostages" and should be pardoned.

Excuse me?

What in the hell is going on here?

Welker and Meet the Press aren’t the lone offenders of course. The New York Times and The Washington Post can spend three days reporting on completely unreliable polls they paid to conduct, while Trump spends his time literally telling all us “vermin” the new and creative ideas he has come up with for burning everything to the ground around him.

Those newspapers barely even take a sniff at the madman’s unhinged plan of attack, and instead spend their editorial resources wondering how he is polling in some diner in Pennsylvania.

Last month, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on Capitol Hill literally begging for help while his country fights against our shared enemy, Vladimir Putin, the radical right-wing Heritage Foundation decided it was a good time to fly in one of Putin’s greatest allies, Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, for talks with unspecified Republican members of Congress.

You couldn’t ask for a more stark juxtaposition of what the two parties stand for than that. You also couldn’t ask for a better example of how little the press cares for the subject of our Democracy.

Orbán’s visit barely got a sniff in the mainstream media.

Ironically, we only know of this meeting thanks to some tremendous reporting from outside the mainstream media’s toxic bubble by the The Guardian.

In their story about this fascist confab, The Guardian illuminated that:

Hungary has been portrayed by conservative media as an anti-“woke” paradise and model for the United States. Some far-right Republicans, such as Kari Lake and Paul Gosar, said they would like to see the “Hungarian model” transplanted to the US, especially when it comes to immigration and family policies. CPAC went to Hungary for the second time this year, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson shot multiple episodes in Hungary touting Orbán policies.

Orbán has returned the favour by lavishing praising Trump … The Hungarian prime minister has criticized the multiple federal indictments against the former US president and called the judicial procedure a “very communist methodology” in a recent interview with Carlson.

So on December 11, while Democrats were trying to rally support for Ukraine, Republicans in Congress were meeting behind closed doors with a Hungarian dictator, Tucker Carlson bestie, and close Putin ally.

So, I say again: What in the hell is going on here?

I am sympathetic to a point to the argument that the corporate overlords who own too large a percentage of our major media companies are squeezing budgets, and worse, trying to dictate editorial policy in their newsrooms.

I know this is a popular theory, but it doesn’t explain why the alleged journalists who populate these places put up with that. Have they no shame?

I know scores of damn good journalists who were forced out of the business because of the death of newspapers over the past couple of decades, and the ever-shrinking opportunities to apply their journalistic expertise elsewhere.

There’s not one of them I talk to, however, who can believe what they are seeing with the pathetic coverage a majority of the press is giving to our threat to Democracy. There’s not one of them who wouldn’t have walked out the door and sounded the alarm if they had been ordered by management to ignore this threat.

So I’m back to where I started.

I now believe the media’s appalling treatment of the attack on our Democracy is a simple matter of incompetence, and/or lack of guts on the part of too many in the journalism field. Welker’s display on Sunday was the best example you’ll ever see of both.

What are these so-called journalists doing in their editorial meetings each day when they are discussing the news?

Why haven’t they setup Democracy Desks that do nothing but cover the greatest threat to America in 160 years? Why aren’t they breaking down and detailing what is at stake if, God forbid, our Democracy is overrun by a fascist leader who will never leave office and starts jailing them if they don’t toe the party line?

You’ll find some phenomenal reporting on this subject in places like The Atlantic, but we need more than monthly deep dives into this attack if we hope to survive it.

I never thought I’d type this, but the only place I feel I can get accurate reporting these days is when a natural disaster is threatening America. If a hurricane is bearing down on the United States, you can count on mass pandemonium, and all-hands-on-deck treatment in all these newsrooms.

It’s a bit much, but at least there is some real urgency in the way they approach these looming disasters.

They can’t wait to report on all the gory possibilities if we take a direct hit by one of these storms. They remind us what we need to do to be prepared, and where we can go to get help if necessary.

They make sure we understand the stakes.

They do this because they want to protect their readers and viewers. They do this because people are vulnerable. They do this because they never want to be accused of ignoring such an ominous threat. They do this because they know people are watching, and there is some real money to be made ...

If only they were smart enough to approach the catastrophic threat to our Democracy with the same sense of responsibility and vigor.

NOW READ: A 38-year-long Republican scam may soon be over — thanks to women

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.

punked?

no lnx

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/19/big-oil-climate-crisis-lobby-group-api

How a powerful US lobby group helps big oil to block climate action

This article is more than 6 months old

An ad paid for by API as part of its Energy For Progress campaign to cast natural gas as climate-friendly. API’s chief executive has pledged to resist a raft of Biden’s environmental measures.

The American Petroleum Institute receives millions from oil companies – and works behinds the scenes to stall or weaken legislation

Chris McGreal

Mon 19 Jul 2021

When Royal Dutch Shell published its annual environmental report in April, it boasted that it was investing heavily in renewable energy. The oil giant committed to installing hundreds of thousands of charging stations for electric vehicles around the world to help offset the harm caused by burning fossil fuels.

On the same day, Shell issued a separate report revealing that its single largest donation to political lobby groups last year was made to the American Petroleum Institute, one of the US’s most powerful trade organizations, which drives the oil industry’s relationship with Congress.

Contrary to Shell’s public statements in support of electric vehicles, API’s chief executive, Mike Sommers, has pledged to resist a raft of Joe Biden’s environmental measures, including proposals to fund new charging points in the US. He claims a “rushed transition” to electric vehicles is part of “government action to limit Americans’ transportation choice”.

Shell donated more than $10m to API last year alone.

And it’s not just Shell. Most other oil conglomerates are also major funders, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, although they have not made their contributions public.

The deep financial ties underscore API’s power and influence across the oil and gas industry, and what politicians describe as the trade group’s defining role in setting major obstacles to new climate policies and legislation.

Critics accuse Shell and other major oil firms of using API as cover for the industry. While companies run publicity campaigns claiming to take the climate emergency seriously, the trade group works behind the scenes in Congress to stall or weaken environmental legislation.

Earlier this year, an Exxon lobbyist in Washington was secretly recorded by Greenpeace describing API as the industry’s “whipping boy” to direct public and political criticism away from individual companies.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and strident critic of big oil’s public relations tactics, accused API of “lying on a massive industrial scale” about the climate crisis in order to stall legislation to combat global heating.

“The major oil companies and API move very much together,” he said.

Whitehouse said the oil and gas industry now recognizes it is no longer “socially acceptable” to outright deny climate change, and that companies are under pressure to claim they support new energy solutions that are less harmful to the environment. But that does not mean their claims should be taken at face value.

“The question as to whether they’re even sincere about that, or whether this is just ‘Climate is a hoax 2.0’, is an unknown at this point,” he added.

Shell has defended its funding by saying that while it is “misaligned” with some of API’s policies, the company continues to sit on the group’s board and executive committee in order to have “a greater positive impact” from within. The petroleum firm claims that its influence helped manoeuvre API, which represents about 600 drilling companies, refiners and other interests such as plastics makers, toward finally supporting a tax on carbon earlier this year.

With Biden in the White House and growing public awareness of global heating, there are signs API’s influence may be weakening as its own members become divided on how to respond.

The major oil companies and API move very much together

Sheldon Whitehouse

The French oil company Total quit the group earlier this year over its climate policies. Shareholder rebellions are pressing Exxon and Chevron to move away from dependence on oil. Top clean energy executives at Shell quit in December over the pace of change by the company.

API is also fighting a growing number of lawsuits, led by the state of Minnesota, alleging that the trade group was at the heart of a decades-long “disinformation campaign” on behalf of big oil to deny the threat from fossil fuels.

But despite threats to API’s lasting influence, Whitehouse argues the trade organization represents the true face of the industry. Instead of using its considerable power to push for environmentally friendly energy laws, API is still lobbying to stall progress with the oil industry’s blessing.

“Their political effort at this point is purely negative, purely against serious climate legislation. And many of them continue to fund the fraudulent climate denialists that have been their mouthpieces for a decade or more,” Whitehouse said.

Since API was founded in 1919 out of an oil industry cooperation with the government during the first world war, it has evolved into a major political force with nearly $240m in annual revenue.

Its board has been dominated by heavyweights from big oil, such as Rex Tillerson, the Exxon chief who went on to become Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and Tofiq Al Gabsani, the chief of Saudi Refining, a subsidiary of the giant state-owned Aramco oil giant. Al Gabsani was also registered as a lobbyist for the Saudi government.

API also hired professional lobbyists, including Philip Cooney, who went on to serve under George W Bush as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality until he was forced to resign in 2005 after tampering with government climate assessments to downplay scientific evidence of global heating and to emphasise doubts. Shortly afterward, Cooney was hired by Exxon.

API came into its own as the realities of the climate crisis crept into public and political discourse, and the industry found itself on the defensive. The trade group, which claimed to represent companies supporting 10m jobs and nearly 8% of the US economy, played a central role in efforts to combat new environmental regulations.

In many cases, API was prepared to carry out the dirty work that individual companies did not want to be held responsible for. In 1998, after countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to help curb carbon emissions, API drew up a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign to ensure that “climate change becomes a non-issue”. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”.

Much of this is the basis of several lawsuits against API. The first was filed last year by the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, who accuses the group of working alongside ExxonMobil and Koch Industries to lie about the scale of the climate crisis. The suit alleges that “previously unknown internal documents” show that API and the others well understood the dangers for decades but “engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective” to undermine climate science.

The city of Hoboken in New Jersey is also suing API, claiming that it engaged in a conspiracy by joining and funding “front groups” that ran “deceptive advertising and communications campaigns that promote climate disinformation and denialism”.

A protest against Shell in Zurich in 2015.

A protest against Shell in Zurich in 2015. Photograph: Reuters/Alamy

The lawsuits allege that API funded scientists known to deny or underplay climate changes, and gave millions of dollars to ostensibly independent organisations, such as the Cato Institute and the George C Marshall Institute, which denied or downplayed the growing environmental crisis.

“API has been a member of at least five organizations that have promoted disinformation about fossil-fuel products to consumers,” Ellison alleges in Minnesota’s lawsuit. “These front groups were formed to provide climate disinformation and advocacy from a seemingly objective source, when, in fact, they were financed and controlled by ExxonMobil and other sellers of fossil-fuel products.”

It wasn’t always this way.

When Terry Yosie joined API in 1988 as vice-president for health and environment, the trade group had spent years funding scientists to research climate issues after hearing repeated warnings. In 1979, API and its members formed the Climate and Energy Task Force of oil and gas company scientists to share research.

Yosie, who moved to API from the Environmental Protection Agency, controlled a $15m budget, part of which he used to give workshops on climate change by EPA officials and other specialists.

“I brought them together in front of oil industry senior level executives for the sole purpose of making sure this industry had some understanding as to what other significant stakeholders thought about climate change, where they saw the issue evolving, what information they were relying on,” he said.

When Yosie left API in 1992, he believed oil the lobby group was still serious about addressing the growing evidence of climate change. But a year later, it disbanded the task force at the same time that Exxon abandoned one of the industry’s biggest research programmes to measure climate change.

Yosie believes that confronted with the true extent of the looming disaster, API and the oil companies ran scared, choosing instead to pursue an agenda informed by climate denialism.

“As the climate issue began to move from the periphery to the centre stage, I think there was a collective loss of confidence in the entire industry, a fear that this was not a debate that was winnable,” he said.

API and its financial backers founded a front organisation, the deceptively named Global Climate Coalition, to drum up purported evidence that the climate crisis was a hoax. In the late 1990s, the GCC’s chairman, William O’Keefe, was also API’s executive vice-president, a man who falsely claimed that “climate scientists don’t say that burning oil, gas and coal is steadily warming the earth”.

API and the GCC led attacks on Bill Clinton’s support for the Kyoto protocol with a “global climate science communications plan” that misrepresented the facts about global heating.

The relationship between API and big oil remained exceptionally close throughout. Exxon’s chief executive served on the lobby group’s executive committee for most of the past three decades, and the two worked together in promoting denialism over the climate crisis.

The focus of API’s efforts were on Congress, where it led the industry’s opposition to policies, such as the 2009 cap-and-trade legislation to control carbon emissions.

“Most of the funding for the Republican party, and probably a very considerable amount of the big dark money funding behind the Republican party, comes out of the fossil fuel industry,” said Whitehouse. Last year, API indirectly gave $5m to the conservative Senate Leadership Fund to back Republican election candidates (many of whom question climate science), and to the campaigns of members of the energy committees in both houses of Congress.

Marty Hoffert, Professor Emeritus of Physics at New York University, poses for a portrait in his garage, surrounded by his RC planes, in Ocala, Florida on Sunday afternoon, June 27, 2021.

(Zack Wittman for The Guardian)

The scientists hired by big oil who predicted the climate crisis long ago

Growing public disquiet, and the departure of oil-friendly Donald Trump from the White House, shifted the ground for API. In March it launched a Climate Action Framework, which for the first time endorsed policies such as carbon pricing. It also stated its support for the Paris climate agreement.

API called the plan “robust” but others noted the lack of specifics and its sincerity was called into question when an Exxon lobbyist was caught on camera earlier this year saying that a carbon tax will never happen and that support for the measure was a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures.

And between API’s lost support from Total, and the Shell executives who resigned in December over what they regarded as the company’s foot-dragging on greener fuels, there are signs of shifting attitudes within the industry itself.

Shell and BP have said they will continue to review their support for API. Shell said that where it disagrees with API’s position, the company “will pursue advocacy separately”.

However, Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is sceptical that there has been any significant change in direction.

“I think it’s fair to say that API and its prominent member companies have have a broadly shared goal, which is to keep the social licence of the oil and gas industry operating, and therefore enabling them to continue to extract oil and gas for as long as possible, as profitably as possible,” he said.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/putin--trump-kremlin-documents/

Joe Biden may be president, but in too many ways the Age of Trump marches on. American political and civic life continues to resemble a spy thriller, a horror movie or a science fiction dystopia that keeps spawning sequels. Most Americans want to escape the theater, but the doors are locked. Those who remain in their seats love these movies and can't get enough of their charismatic star.

The ending of this saga has been obvious since the beginning: Donald Trump is a malevolent force, with no loyalty to the United States and its people; yet his followers worship him as a god and nothing can tear them away from the cult.

Almost every day there are new plot twists. As reported last week, the highest-ranking officers and civilian leaders of the U.S. military were concerned that Trump might try to stage a military coup after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, considered a plan to resist such a move through mass resignations, a last-ditch effort to save democracy.

As detailed in Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker's new book "I Alone Can Fix It," Trump became so enraged after losing to Joe Biden that some feared he would stage a "Reichstag fire" incident, in the mode of Adolf Hitler, that might allow him to seize absolute power. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even asked Milley to ensure that Trump would not launch a nuclear attack and use the ensuing crisis as an excuse to suspend the Constitution and remain in power.

More "revelations" have followed: Last Thursday the Guardian reported that it had obtained classified documents from a 2016 meeting where the Russian government launched its secret campaign in support of Trump:

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a "mentally unstable" Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia's national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.

The key meeting took place on22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.

They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow's strategic objectives, among them "social turmoil" in the US and a weakening of the American president's negotiating position.

Russia's three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin's signature.

Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them. The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin.

The Guardian has shown the documents to independent experts who say they appear to be genuine. Incidental details come across as accurate. The overall tone and thrust is said to be consistent with Kremlin security thinking.

At this purported Kremlin meeting, Putin and the Russian intelligence services concluded that Trump could be easily manipulated to serve Russia's strategic goals because he is an "impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex." This document concludes, "It is acutely necessary to use all possible force to facilitate [Trump's] election to the post of US president."

The Guardian further concludes that the Kremlin's internal report was likely the work of Vladimir Symonenko, a senior Kremlin official who "provides Putin with analytical material and reports, some of them based on foreign intelligence." He discussed various "American weaknesses" Russian agents could exploit, including "a 'deepening political gulf between left and right," the U.S. 'media-information' space, and an anti-establishment mood under President Barack Obama."

The Guardian report has been met with considerable skepticism, some of it from the usual suspects who continue to claim — despite an abundance of known and proven facts — that the scandal sometimes dubbed "Russiagate" was all a hoax, or at least grossly exaggerated. But it's also fair to say that some respected national security experts are suspicious about the timing of the Guardian story, and the authenticity and provenance of the documents in question.

But other national security and intelligence experts believe the Guardian story is true and the Kremlin documents are authentic. Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer and author of several bestselling books who serves as an intelligence and security analyst for CNN, believes the Kremlin document is legitimate and was likely leaked to the Guardian by British intelligence.

In a recent conversation with journalist Ian Masters, Baer said that Donald Trump may indeed have served as a "useful idiot" on behalf of Russian interests, sent into the heart of American democracy as a "Trojan horse to cause problems." He suggests that Russian intelligence used the technique of "framing a guilty man" to muddy the waters around Trump and make him a more effective chaos agent.

Writing at Esquire, Charles Pierce explains how he reconciles concerns about the veracity of the Kremlin papers:

Are experts within the Western intelligence agencies divided about the authenticity of the documents, and did someone who believes them to be the smoking gun leak them in order to force the action? I'd certainly want to know more about their provenance than I do now.

Frankly, my impulse is to believe what The Guardian reported. The revelations certainly seem believable given some of the otherwise inexplicable actions of the previous president* and his administration*, and they also conform to the methods of ratfcking Russia has used in other democracies in Europe. (What up, Estonia?) And they also track with what we've learned recently about the former president*'s rabid-badger attempts to stay in power after he'd clearly lost the election — and, for that matter, his continued attempts to undermine confidence in this country's electoral system.

But my innate caution against leaping to conclusions based on leaks from intelligence services of any kind makes me cautious about this being a conclusive Eureka moment. Too many shadowy people have too many shadowy agendas for me to accept anything emerging from those shadows too readily. But there is one conclusion I will stand by, based on the Guardian story and its conformity to what a lot of us suspected was true about the previous president*: We simply have got to get rid of the Electoral College. Now.

Whatever one concludes about the authenticity of these Kremlin papers, one conclusion is obvious: Their observations about Donald Trump, and about the vulnerability of American society to disinformation and subversion, are correct.

Both Robert Mueller's report and the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the 2016 election (the latter completed under Republican leadership) have conclusively shown that Russia interfered to help Donald Trump win as a way of advancing its strategic goals. Moreover, it is a matter of public record that Trump's inner circle included at least one Russian agent.

At almost every key juncture in his presidency, Trump made decisions that advanced Russia's interests to the disadvantage of the United States. In both public and private, he was strikingly submissive and deferential to Putin. Whether that reflects blackmail and control, or simply hero worship and admiration, is an unsettled question.

Even members of Trump's administration and Republican elected officials questioned his loyalty to the country, especially after the astonishing Helsinki summit of 2018.

In the end, Russia's strategy would prove to be brilliant:Trump left the White House with the U.S. a weakened world power, gripped by a plague that has killed at least 600,000 people, along with a neofascist insurgency that shows no signs of dying out. Right-wing terrorism and other violence is escalating, and the nation has become irreparably polarizedby the increasing radicalism of Republicans and the right.

In recent weeks I have reflected a great deal on my 2019 conversation with the late Dr. Jerrold Post, the founding director of the CIA's Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. In Post's long and distinguished career, he served as the CIA's head psychological profiler under five presidents of both political parties. He described Donald Trump this way:

If one were to subtract from the ranks of political leaders all those with significant narcissistic personality features, the ranks would be perilously impoverished. I see Donald Trump as representing the quintessential narcissist. Using that phrase, though, is not to make a diagnosis, but to say he has a preponderance of these traits. Someone such as Donald Trump with that trait has no capacity to empathize with others, no constraints of conscience. Donald Trump also demonstrates a paranoid orientation. Whenever anything goes wrong, there is someone to blame.

There is also unconstrained aggression. This is very important. Never apologize, never admit you're wrong. That is part of Donald Trump's political style. But negotiating foreign policy is different from negotiating how to buy a skyscraper. Donald Trump also shows through his behavior a deep underlying insecurity. His grandiosity aside, Donald Trump is extremely fragile, and that trait is associated with extreme sensitivity.

Post also warned, nearly two years before it happened, that Donald Trump was unlikely to leave office peacefully:

In the last chapter of my new book I quote one of my favorite poems, which is, "Do not go gentle into that good night, but rage, rage at the dying of the light." I do not believe that Donald Trump will go gentle into that good night. In a close election, there is a very real hazard in terms of both potential outcomes. Should Trump win, as he did in 2016, he will make it a much bigger win and talking about the fraudulent election support on the Democratic side. But should Trump lose narrowly, I think we can be assured that he will not concede early. Trump may not even recognize the legitimacy of the election.

How will the American people deal with these continuous "revelations" about Trump and his regime? To this point, the response seems to be impotent rage. Because Trump and his inner circle are almost entirely rich white men, they will face no serious punishment for their crimes and other wrongdoing. Many Americans feel justifiable rage about a system which has one set of rules and laws for the rich and powerful (who are white) and another set for everyone else.

America is not just experiencing a democracy crisis caused by the Trump movement and the Jim Crow Republicans. The problem goes much deeper: America's political and social institutions are experiencing a legitimacy crisis, in which Trumpism is one symptom of a much larger disease.

The American people must decide whether their rage can be turned to productive or regenerative possibilities, or whether they continue to live in a state of learned helplessness, shrugging their shoulders as even more of the Trump regime's crimes are revealed. On that decision rests the future of democracy.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Guardian Bans Ads From the Fossil Fuel Industry

CLIMATE CRISIS

1/20

https://yyy.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/11/dear-michael-mccormack-the-only-raving-lunatics-are-those-not-worrying-about-climate-change

9/16/19

DN hertsgaard GUK gold st'd, criticed for using "activist" langauge eg emergency

DN guk will no longer use term global warming vs crisis catastrophe? heating

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/handmaidens-to-authoritarianism-watch-this-heroic-guardian-report-call-out-the-gods-of-silicon-valley-for-destroying-democracy/

no lnx guk https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla

Guardian and Observer reporter Carole Cadwalladr captivated the crowd yesterday at the TED talks. Speaking directly to the ‘Gods Of Silicon Valley’, she accused them of being responsible for the destruction of democracy.

https://www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_in_brexit_and_the_threat_to_democracy

“My question to you is, is this what you want? Is this how you want history to remember you? As the handmaidens to authoritarianism?”

Watch as @carolecadwalla calls out the “gods of Silicon Valley” for being on the wrong side of history: https://t.co/SrTKzCbPSV #TED2019 pic.twitter.com/ETaXSdgWUq

— TED Talks (@TEDTalks) April 16, 2019

Cadwalladr is the journalist responsible for the amazing Cambridge Analytica whistleblower exposé: ‘I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower. What she learned in her year long research into Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and the ‘dark forces’ undermining our democratic system of government will leave you breathless.

Our democracy is broken, our laws don’t work anymore, and it’s not me saying this, it’s our parliament published a report saying this. This technology that you have invented has been amazing. But now, it’s a crime scene. And you have the evidence. And it is not enough to say that you will do better in the future. Because to have any hope of stopping this from happening again, we have to know the truth.

…

And what you don’t seem to understand is that this is bigger than you. And it’s bigger than any of us. And it is not about left or right or “Leave” or “Remain” or Trump or not. It’s about whether it’s actually possible to have a free and fair election ever again. Because as it stands, I don’t think it is.

…

And so my question to you is, is this what you want? Is this how you want history to remember you: as the handmaidens to authoritarianism that is on the rise all across the world? Because you set out to connect people. And you are refusing to acknowledge that the same technology is now driving us apart.

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And my question to everybody else is, is this what we want: to let them get away with it, and to sit back and play with our phones, as this darkness falls?

Watch her entire extraordinary fifteen minute presentation here: Facebook’s role in Brexit and the treat to democracy