Journalist explains how Trump behaves like a ‘cult leader’ for the Christian right: They ‘end up destroying themselves’

AlterNet logoThe United States is sick with income and other forms of social inequality. It suffers from cruelty, loneliness, greed, gangster capitalism, white supremacy, violence, sexism and a culture of ignorance and distraction. Our broken political system does not encourage critical thinking or nurture a capacity for responsible, engaged citizenship.President Donald Trump is the human embodiment of almost everything wrong with American society. He is both the symptom and the disease.

Trump and the Republican Party’s fascist movement and its news media and supporters are America’s problems given life as social and political chaos and destruction on a massive scale. Even reality and the truth have not been spared this assault.
In this conversation, philosopher, journalist and cultural critic Chris Hedges warns that impeaching Donald Trump will not save American democracy from these problems.

Hedges is the author of numerous award-winning and bestselling books including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” “Death of a Liberal Class,” “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” and “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.” His new book is “America: The Farewell Tour.”

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Republicans convene the cult of Trump

Washington Post logoThat Rep. Devin Nunes serves as the ranking member on something called the Intelligence Committee has always been a contradiction in terms. The California Republican displayed his intellectual heft earlier this year by suing a fictitious dairy cow that was mean to him on Twitter.

Even so, what he said on the House floor during Thursday’s debate to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry was jaw-dropping. He railed about the sort of person who believes in “conspiracy theories” and relies on “defamation and slander,” who spins a “preposterous narrative” with “no evidence” and only “bizarre obsession.”

Surely he was describing one Donald J. Trump to a T?

On the contrary, Nunes applied these Trumpian signatures to Democrats.What we’re seeing among Democrats on the Intelligence Committee,” he said, “is like a cult. These are a group of people loyally following their leader as he bounces from one outlandish conspiracy to another.”

View the complete October 31 commentary by Dana Milback on The Washington Post website here.

Conservative columnist urges the GOP to abandon the rule of law

AlterNet logoI have been hesitant to engage in the discussion about what will happen if Donald Trump loses the 2020 election and refuses to concede. That is because merely talking about the possibility gives it some credibility that is explosively dangerous. In my mind, I’ve weighed that against the problem of ignoring the mounting evidence that it is actually a possibility. So I’ve never been completely comfortable with either option.

Writing at the Federalist, Mollie Hemingway has finally convinced me that it is time to break the silence. We’ve now gone beyond Trump joking (?) about serving more than two terms, while some of his more rabid supporters talk about a new civil war. But before getting to what Hemingway wrote, it is helpful to note that in 2013, Ben Domenech announced the launch of the Federalist by comparing it to the original Time magazine.

Henry Luce’s magazine aimed to cover and distill the news of politics, economics, world affairs and culture for the nation’s rising middle class. It leaned to the political right, with a small-c conservatism equipped with a populist respect for the middle class reader outside of New York and Washington, and an abiding love for America at a time when snark and cynicism were not considered substitutes for smart analysis.

View the complete October 30 article by Nancy LeTourneau from Washington Monthly on the AlterNet website here.