The Far Right’s Strategy: Reading Is Wrong, So Is College

Kinga Cichewicz@all_the_wander from Upsplash

“When you watch Trump, David, I’m not sure the man reads very well. I know he doesn’t write very well. I would argue that anybody who can’t read and can’t write can’t think. That’s what we have”. — Stephen King (NYT Magazine)

They won’t read, they don’t read, and they can’t read. That’s right — far right. And the Trump world is just fine with that. Sorry to deliver the blunt facts — but read below and weep. (Don’t worry. I’ll give you a tip or two by the end.)

Irecognize two inherent ironies this essay must face. First, and most obvious, is that the likelihood of people reading this is limited; however, on the off chance that one does, I want to gird you with some evidence to use in the war against ignorance. The second, and a far more disturbing irony, is that the reasons a large percentage of the population won’t believe what they just might read is that this essay paints a target on those for whom reading has been either very difficult or that the information that they read is “fake news.” People refrain from being a target.

Despite the obstacles, allow me to lay out the case that Stephen King opines with some broader facts. “The U.S. Department of Education…study seeks to determine how well adults are prepared to function in today’s society.” The most recent results show “52% of all Americans have basic or below-basic reading skills.” Of that group 18% are either illiterate or below basic in their reading skills. When one considers that roughly only 61% of Americans bother to vote, one begins to understand why people are not active citizens in a republic that demands that its citizens engage in the nation’s welfare.

More importantly, of those who vote, what information do they reach for to inform them? Here is the rub: according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Jan. 8 to Feb. 7, “Roughly a quarter of U.S. adults (27%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form. Who are these non-book readers?” Answer: 44% had only a high school education or less. That is the largest portion. Of that, men are 10% less likely to read than women. Blacks and Hispanics are also largely represented in the non-reader group. (Given the language issues for Hispanics, that is somewhat understandable. Toss in poverty and sub-par schools in poor neighborhoods, and one understands the heightened percentage.)

“The gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.”

Who does read? College educated folks made up the smallest number of non-readers at 8%. So connect the dots; the more you become educated, the more you read, and the more educated one becomes, the probability that one will read critically. That means one questions assumptions, looks at the qualified sources, and perhaps most importantly, takes time to sift through more than one viewpoint.

Thus, we come to the essay penned in November of 2018 in The Atlantic by Adam Harris entitled “America Is a Divided Nation”; its subtitle gets right to the theme — “The gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.” Here I must defer to Mr. Harris for the nuts and bolts of the battle to keep America away from college — the new (I emphasize) Republican strategy:

One of the most striking patterns in yesterday’s election was years in the making: a major partisan divide between white voters with a college degree and those without one.

According to exit polls, 61 percent of non-college-educated white voters cast their ballots for Republicans while just 45 percent of college-educated white voters did so. Meanwhile 53 percent of college-educated white voters cast their votes for Democrats compared with 37 percent of those without a degree. The diploma divide, as it’s often called, is not occurring across the electorate; it is primarily a phenomenon among white voters. It’s an unprecedented divide, and is in fact a complete departure from the diploma divide of the past.

Harris continues to explain that it was Democrats who appealed to those folks who had less education; whereas, the Republicans of Rockefeller lore appealed to more literate Americans. That is not the Trump mantra today.

Harris speaks of “the diploma divide” as the reason why Trump’s popularity at least reached barely enough people in just the right states with just the number of electors to make a difference in 2016. “Last night’s results confirm that the diploma divide is likely here to stay — especially if the GOP maintains its alignment with Trump and the nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiments he hangs his hat on. The gap is likely to be one of the most powerful forces shaping American politics for decades to come.”

Instead, the journalistic world view is equated to a simple devious warning that they are “the enemy of the people.”

Harris’s research was exhaustive and this became his conclusion: “When President Trump says ‘Make America great again,’ the again is instructive.” So for many non-college educated Americans, there is a longing for the good-old-days when a family could be prosperous with the husband working, the wife cooking, and the kids all learning that it is better to be seen but not heard. Naturally, that golden age did not include civil rights or women’s liberation. Minorities were openly discriminated, attacked, and lynched for daring to step up to the ballot box and demand the right to vote.

And who best to deliver this information to folks who don’t, won’t, and can’t read? You guessed it — Fox News. Two of the most zealous voices boast that they became rich and successful, not to mention influential due to Fox and the far right radio waves, are Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Neither of them spent more than a semester in college. No instead they became radio ‘shock DJ’s’ who transitioned into the perfect mouthpieces for the sales show that decries what Trump calls the ‘lamestream media.’

For that reason Mr. Trump claims that The New York Times is ‘failing’ — when its profitability is at its highest. What the Times, the Washington Post, the major television networks are all guilty of is simply not praising the President and the administration’s policy of rooting out and destroying the “deep state.” Instead, the journalistic world view is equated to a simple devious warning that they are “the enemy of the people.”

What can one do about this political strategy to degrade college education, reading of books and newspapers, and the personal attacks on reporters (“You are a terrible reporter” chastises our President at a recent Covid-19 presser)? First, read David Furm’s essay of April 7, 2020 entitled, “This Is Trump’s Fault: The president is failing, and Americans are paying for his failures.” He focuses on the lies and incompetence of this Administration. It is a clarion call to all Americans about the irresponsible actions of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Furm’s conclusion: “’I don’t take responsibility at all,’ said President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden on March 13. Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency, the single sentence that sums it all up.”

Encourage all you can via social media to read it. Be an advocate of reading. And when people ‘Say, oh well, that’s just some Democrat, left wing fake news, please inform them that Mr. David Furm is the conservative Republican who wrote the speeches for the president they likely admired and voted for — George W. Bush.

Maybe, just maybe, that will make them do what Stephen King hopes will occur: think.

Here is the link to the article. Be safe…and read a good book.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/?fbclid=IwAR38Yq4Czxwf1fg1S6401ZUpz6MS-mSSJATdJu6TDiYKzZcv4Uk4aRxS0eQ

Trump is Thinks Health Care is His ‘Biggest Decision’: Not True, Again.

Charles Deluvio from Upsplash

President Trump’s biggest decision has already been made. He choked. He ignored the facts. He chose to concern himself with his own self interest.

Let’s get to the facts: First, the Governors not the President decided what each state will do regarding ‘opening up the economy.’ Trump can say whatever his hunch/ guts/ mind thinks and he can influence the easily persuaded in the Fox News Universe, but he cannot legally change social distancing.

Second, Trump can take whatever ‘miracle drug’ he wants. He can say ‘What do you have to lose?’ In our case many reports have already surfaced that his organizations has something to gain financially. He likely didn’t know that, but hey, when you do not divest yourself or put your business in a blind trust as the Emoluments clause in The Constitution mandates then what are Americans to think? Of course, he has been allowed to get away with this by his Republican cronies in government.

Third, hydroxychloroquine is not the singular answer according to experts Jonathan Chait in the New York Magazine 4/12/2020 just indicated several pressing facts: “Trump’s former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote a Wall Street Journal column urging the rapid development of coronavirus treatments, citing several promising examples, but conspicuously omitting the president’s favorite example. On Twitter, Gottlieb cautioned that hydroxychloroquine is not the wonder treatment Trump believes it to be…”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most qualified voice in terms of diseases made it clear. “The data are really just at best suggestive,” he says. “There have been cases that show there may be an effect and there are others to show there’s no effect.”

Trump has become the leading actor in a Greek Tragedy of his own production.

The one thing that is true about Trump is that he has already mismanaged this crisis. Period. Easter Sunday’s edition of The New York Times made the case which a chorus of its top reporters in a headline on page 1, above the fold. “Despite Timely Alerts, Trump Was So to Act.” * It is a lengthy, biting news report that counters every possible excuse that Trump and his accomplices mutter, such as the pandemic warnings came early and often; China trade deals were a priority over understanding the health crisis there; the consequences of the crisis were not elevated, rather the focus was on Trump’s re-election. What it all adds up to is his legacy mattered more to him than being truthful, honest, and prepared.

One final fact: On 60 Minutes Easter Sunday, Trump’s Trade advisor, Peter Navarro had the gall to claim that no other president could have done a better job than Trump. Seriously? I imagine Navarro, who has never won an election to any office, has not kept tabs on the fact that “swine flu (H1N1), Ebola and Zika happened during Barack Obama’s presidency.” Let me pass along to Mr. Navarro this tidbit of news.

Rueters reported. In terms of the handling of Zika, “As part of his response to the Zika virus, President Obama “called on Congress to provide emergency funding to combat this disease, including to: speed the development of a vaccine; allow people — especially pregnant women — to more easily get tested and get a prompt result; and ensure that states and communities — particularly those in the South that have experienced local outbreaks of dengue and chikungunya in the past — have the resources they need to fight the mosquito that carries this virus.”

When the Swine Flu came calling, Rueters laid out this fact, “On May 2, 2009, President Obama in his weekly address to the nation reminded Americans of the CDC’s recommendation that “schools and childcare facilities with confirmed cases of the virus close for up to fourteen days.”

Finally, the response to Ebola was explained, “It is true that the 2014–2016 Ebola (EVD) outbreak in West Africa coincided with Obama’s presidency. But only 11 people were treated for Ebola in the U.S. during the 2014–2016 epidemic.” Why? Because that President Obama was truthful, honest, and prepared.

If Harry Truman could claim that the buck stops here — at the Resolute Desk, then Trump, who utters nonsense like “I take no responsibility at all.” has become the leading actor in a Greek Tragedy of his own production. And the hopefully Joe Biden will be the lead actor with a strong supporting cast four years hence. I am sure he will be reading the FEMA and Obama protocols for disaster preparedness that Trump so arrogantly ignored.

*The New York Times of April 12, 2020.

Has America Reached the Trump Tipping Point?

Malcolm Gladwell wrote about tipping points recently; his work focused on this thesis: “Epidemics don’t build gradually and steadily; they grow and reach a boiling point or critical mass, at which point they explode and turn into an epidemic. That threshold is called the tipping point.”

I am less interested in products and the success of business as Gladwell is; no, today’s pandemic is much bigger than an epidemic and my focus is this: When does this nation reach the point when an overwhelming majority of American citizens realize that the Trump Administration, and for that matter his Republican enablers, are in the words of Mark Twain — rapscallions.

Ifyou are unfamiliar with Huckleberry Finn’s adventures down the Mississippi, then you may not recognize the word rapscallions. Let me enlighten my readers. A rapscallion is a flim-flam man, a con artist, a selfish blowhard…in a word Trump.

If you are watching the news, reading the papers, checking out books or anything that does NOT involve Fox News, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or Brietbart and its ilk, then you are patently aware that Trump has been a failure at most every endeavor that his father’s money bought him. Casinos. Airlines. Universities. Various products including steaks, booze, and fat ties made in China. All failures. As former Republican strategist Rick Wilson puts it, “Everything Trump touches DIES.”

What people are less aware of is that it is Russian Oligarchs who have laundered money through the German Deutsche Bank as The New York Times ‘ David Enrich (2/4/2020) reported in his article “The Money Behind Trump’s Money: “The roughly $425 million …arrange(d) for Trump back in 1998 was the start of a very long, very complicated relationship between ­Deutsche Bank and the future president. Over the course of two decades, the bank lent him more than $2 billion.”

Enrich continues, “…the bank’s relationship with Trump extended well beyond making simple loans. ­Deutsche Bank managed tens of millions of dollars of Trump’s personal assets. The bank also furnished him with other services that have not previously been reported: providing sophisticated financial instruments that shielded him from risks and outside scrutiny, and making introductions to wealthy Russians who were interested in investing in Western real estate. If Trump cheated on his taxes, ­Deutsche Bank would probably know. If his net worth is measured in millions, not billions, ­Deutsche Bank would probably know. If he secretly got money from the Kremlin, ­Deutsche Bank would probably know.”

Jogen Hailand Courtsey of Upsplash

So for the first time in American history, a United States President is “owned” by a foreign company with assets controlled by a foreign adversary: Russia and most likely Putin. In the lexicon of the new century Trump is “compromised.” It is the word that best explains Trump’s actions as it relates to all foreign policy decisions. It is why he allies with our enemies and makes enemies of our allies. Anything pro-Russian is pro-Trumpian. It is why Rex Tillerson was the Secretary of State; because Exxon- Mobil was needed to get the oil out of the Russian arctic according to numerous sources compiled in Rachel Maddow’s Blowout.

Of course, that applies to the foreign owned (Rupert Murdock, Australian-born) Fox network. This so called news outlier operates as the president’s personal PR firm. It is the only news organization that gets full access to him because they will promote his product. Virus? Nope. It’s a hoax. Or it is the plot created by the Democrats to take him out of office. Or it will just go away by Easter. Yada Yada. Whatever you say, Mr. President.

Covid-19 is sadly the tipping point for this president.

The question remains: when will the vast majority see the light? The evidence is beginning to percolate upward as his popularity and trustworthiness trends ever so slowly downward despite non-stop Fox bloviating.

By now most people are aware that in a time of crisis American presidents ride a surge in “rally around the flag” support. Even the terribly unpopular George W. Bush when leaving office surged to 90% popular support after 9.11. FDR, LBJ, Even Ronald Reagan were immensely popular figures, even though two of the three ended their term on the decline. What they all had in common was that their trustworthiness, their work ethic, their willingness to step out front and take responsibility for the issue that plagued America made them heroic.

Trump, the rapscallion, dodges all responsibility. He claims to have always made the “perfect call”; bragging that things are going “beautiful.” He naturally hired only “the best people” and has fired them at levels no president has ever come close to matching. Why? Because most of these people, competent and diligent, faced a moral dilemma: state that the president is a rapscallion (the emperor wears no clothes) or acquiesce to his will. Hundreds of them tried to stay on the Trump’s ever self-indulgent message until they just could not look at themselves in the mirror and live with what Trump was doing. Some stayed on just to make sure America was protected from the president’s follies.

Covid-19 is sadly the tipping point for this president. Yes, his popularity for one week ticked up to somewhere around 53% in terms of whether he was handling the crisis well. After spending hours and hours, days and days, spouting off incorrect information (contradicted immediately by the real experts who surrounded him — diplomatically, naturally, or else they incur his wrath).

Nevertheless, after a merely a week he is back underwater with public opinion polls that measure his job approval in this crisis — back to 47%. Those numbers will sink gradually as things worsen and more untruths (now called alternative facts) come out. No, Easter is not happening. Neither is April miracle. The power of positive thinking may be a “secret’ — but tell that to the doctors and nurses who were positive the ventilators would come that the president now says are exaggerations.

Here is my hope: That Leadership matters. Competence matters. Voting matters. Let this be a lesson to us all.

No, the hospitals are not getting what they need. No, the States are getting screwed in trying to purchase equipment. No, Jared Kushner does not know what he is talking about regarding the Federal medical surplus — which he deems (on whose authority?) the States have no right to procure. Yes, it is utterly untrue that a drug that treats malaria is a “miracle cure” — even the doctor who claims this admits there is no clinical, quantitative evidence to support the latest presidential “miracle cure.”

Huck Finn’s experience with the rapscallions who pretend to be kings and dukes shows that only when people realize that they have personally be cheated: of life, of income; of jobs; of security; of freedom — that is when the people will rise up. That is when not even Fox News will resonate with the people. Why? Because the president did everything possible to remain arrogant and blissfully, ignorant of science, of medical experts, of global trends, of the necessity for allied governments and organizations to work together…just to name a few.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Britain’s Neville Chamberlin seriously underestimated Adolph Hitler and England faced its darkest hour. Richard Nixon believed the ‘Great Silent Majority” would continue to support the war in Vietnam until the National Guard killed four innocent college kids in Ohio at Kent State. Clinton and Bush paid too little attention to Osama bin Laden and then the Twin Towers came apart, and with it New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon bowed and prayed. Meanwhile, Donald Trump played golf on the critical weekend before this all began — par for his course.

Eventually, the truth catches up to the imposters, the rapscallions. In Huck Finn’s world, those rapscallions are tarred and feathered when the people find out they were cheated. They died a gruesome death. Tragically, this pandemic has become a tipping point, leading America to hundreds of thousands of equally gruesome deaths.

Gladwell’s ‘Tipping Point’ is defined as an ‘explosion’ of opinion. In which direction should America ‘tip’? Here is my hope: That Leadership matters. Competence matters. Voting matters. Let this be a lesson to us all. As Mark Twain often closed, ‘Nough said.”