HEY DONALD, WHAT’S REALLY “FAKE”?
I never liked Donald “FAKE NEWS” Tweeter Trump. I thought he was one of the most thoroughly disgusting and disreputable blowhards in public life long before he ever had a TV show. I am not saying that he was or is either disgusting or disreputable, but that those were and are my own personal reactions to him.
I suggest this: Don’t believe me. And don’t believe him. With every twitter posting, every speech, every statement, ask yourself, “Who’s lying here?” “What is this an attempt to distract us from thinking about?” ‘“What’s getting covered up?” Be your own honest judge of all that. Just don’t lie to yourself, or tell yourself that you’re not lying to yourself when you are. It’s not too late to save your soul. If you voted radically wrong, thinking president #45 would look out for regular folks when its obvious that he’s serving the interests of the ultra-rich (including himself), it’s okay to admit it. You can be truthful with yourself IN THIS MOMENT.
So. . . don’t believe anything #45 says unless you’ve verified it with truly unbiased sources. Why? Because he’s one of premier con men in the world today. He lies about almost everything. Can he actually recognize truth when he sees or hears it? It’s an open question But apparently he figures he can cover up that particular personality defect by insulting anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.
Nonetheless, #45 has done us a tremendous service. He has taught us ever so much about the word “fake.” Of course he exaggerated when he egotistically claimed that he invented the word, as any dictionary printed before he was born will show. Still, he clued us all in about how useful it is.
“Fake news” is one of his favorite tweets. He apparently dislikes CNN most, and worships Fox. But he’s all mixed up there. No other mainstream media source broadcasts biased opinions and pretends that they’re genuine news as consistently as Fox. I don’t mean the local news anchors—I like those in my own area. I mean the network’s national programs. In fact, much of what we get from all the mainstream media is fake news, in which I include s real events that matter little and are meant to distract us from paying attention to events that matter much. But that’s just the start.
Fake importance is #45’s personal specialty. That’s something that may or may not be so, but it has nothing to do with our main concern and is meant to make us think about something else entirely. Logicians this is called a “red herring.“ It means dragging a fish across the trail of a scent to confuse a dog that’s tracking someone or something. #45 typically does this again and again in any given week, so that you and I and his fervent supporters won’t think about whatever he wants us to forget.
Fake labels, usually personal insults of one kind or another, are hurled out onto the net by the Great Faker himself with careless abandon. Many of these are projections. Typically #45 refuses to acknowledge anything even slightly negative about himself or his own behavior, refuses to take responsibility for almost anything, and accuses or blames someone instead. The best known example is his incessantly mantra “that crooked Hillary Clinton.’ Crooked, he claims, for using personal email servers for business just as Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice before her did. But not a word about his own truly crooked actions in bilking hundreds of contractors working for him out of two thirds of what he owed them, or setting up an illegally named “university” that resulted in his having to pay $25 million to hundreds of students who say he cheated them out of their tuition money.
Fake patriotism also can’t be overlooked. When one football player, quarterback Colin Kaepernick, knelt instead of standing as the national anthem was played, to protest treatment and especially police treatment of minorities, throughout the nation, instead of saying “The Constitution guarantees freedom of expression. Now let’s fix what’s broken in the system,” #45 tweeted that all football players who kneel during the anthem should be fired. Meanwhile he himself stashed billions of dollars of profits in overseas and offshore banks and shell corporations to avoid paying U.S. taxes on them. That’s fake patriotism if I’ve ever seen it. And if it’s not, then selling U.S. democracy down the river to the Russians to help himself get elected surely is. Some are calling it treason.
Fake government is even more important. #45 has appointed heads for most of the main government agencies whose entire careers have been devoted to opposing the objectives those agencies were set up to realize. Like militantly anti-environmentalist Scott Pruitt, who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency and spearheaded letting coal companies dump their waste in the nation’s rivers and people’s drinking water and trying to kill alternative energy so Big Oil and Big Coal can make Bigger Bucks. (Thanks for nothing, Mr Pruitt. And no thanks, #45, for appointing him and the rest of your cabinet members who have no business whatever being put in charge of their agencies.) Go down the list. #45 is using a sledge hammer to turn almost every agency in the executive branch into a Creature from the Black Lagoon who is dedicated to sabotaging the agency’s mission and screwing he American people and nation
Fake democracy goes hand in hand with fake government. Alexander Hamilton would probably have loved #45. Hamilton was responsible for putting the electoral college into the U. S. constitution. He was afraid we would elect Presidents who would truly serve the people’s interests instead of the moneyed aristocrats. And so a Republican-dominated Supreme Court stopped the 2000 election in which Al Gore won the popular vote and appointed George W. Bush as President, and our fake election overruled a popular vote in which Hillary got two million more votes than #45, but #45 became President anyway due to the electoral college system. And then instead of bringing a divided country together by assembling a government that reflected the diverse interests of the country, #45 went “winner take all” with a billionaires-first agenda that is tearing the country apart more deeply than has been seen in more than a century.
Fake brains ought to be self explanatory. #45 plans to build a phenomenally expensive wall between the U.S. and Mexico when he knows that the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea is riddled with literally hundreds of tunnels, some at incredible depths and some twenty miles long. And the U.S. Air Force and Army have deep undermountain bases composed of vast networks of tunnels that are said to be able to withstand nuclear bomb hits. Check out Google Images on your computer, search for “tunnel drilling machines” and you’ll be amazed at what you find. Former Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano summed it up: “If you build a 50-foot wall, it won’t be long until someone perfects a 51-foot ladder.” Except that in this case the ladder is likely to be a tunnel.
And you sure can’t get much stupider than firing most of the government’s climate scientists because you don’t want to know the facts they might find out and bring to your attention. But wait—it is possible to do something else at least as stupid. That’s to put enormous efforts into reducing immigration, while at the same time cutting off all funds for family planning and birth control, especially in high-birthrate countries that send many immigrants in our direction because they can’t find work or food at home—and going even farther, exerting heavy pressures on other countries all around the world to stop funding family planning and birth control. The two goals totally contradict each other. And the “libertarian” ideal of letting each woman be in control of her own body? Oh, I guess we just won’t think or talk about that. (For the record, “Mr. Conservative” Barry Goldwater was strongly pro contraception and abortion.)
There is also fake conservatism. Our country has seen some real conservatives who had a measure of honesty and integrity—like Goldwater. They’ve almost all gone down the River of No Return at this point. We’re left with a motley crew of fake conservatives, who make up most of the present Republican Party’s senators and congresspersons. When a big corporation wants to build a pipeline across your land (such as the Keystone XL) and you say “No thanks, I’d rather conserve my farm and environment as it is, you are the conservative, and the company is a wild, screaming radical, and so are any legislators who support it. Real conservativism has nothing to do with most of what gets that label today. Much of it is just plain greedy or even actively vicious.
The Emperor has no clothes. With every new tweet, it becomes more obvious that we have a fake president. Two million more Americans voted for his opponent than for him. He’s tearing apart the government by destroying its agencies’ abilities to carry out their missions. His invective, insults, and unending stream of just plain lies are setting the worst possible example for our young people who need a role model who is honest and responsible. Captain Conman campaigned on a platform of helping working people and instead is helping the country’s billionaires get even richer.
So thanks, #45, for dredging up the old word fake and making it more useful. You’ve helped to make it easier for us to see and hear its meanings—which are mostly just the opposite of what you try to tell us they are. Except for the one that’s truly obvious: “FAKE PRESIDENT”
But just getting rid of #45 via impeachment creates a whole new set of problems, since today’s Republicans who hold power and would succeed him are committed to fake democracy as a fig leave to cover plutocracy. It’s a real dilemma. We can make a start toward solving it by doing our best to become aware of what’s real and what’s fake in contemporary politics and politicians.
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