Commodity prices wobble, and disaster looms, perhaps. We have been here before, if we could but remember. We are not the first – or the last – to feel that markets beyond our ken and beyond our control shape the realities of our lives, draw in the horizons of our aspirations. We live in an impoverished age. Not a poverty of money, but a poverty of ideas, a poverty of possibilities. A century ago, anything was possible, but today we have convinced ourselves that nothing can be done.
The historian C. Vann Woodward wrote in the 1950s about the origins of the Jim Crow system in the South. “The twilight zone that lies between living memory and written history,” Woodward observed, “is one of the favorite breeding places of mythology.” We are at a similar point when we contemplate the economic problems and injustices around us. A generation has come of age, and come to power, which can hardly remember when government was not the problem. We need new policies, based on new values if we hope to exert democratic control over the complex economic activity that governs our lives. But they are not all that new, and to find these policies and values, we need new histories. Here are four things people believed a century ago, before our impoverished era:
1) People in a democracy have a right to control the parameters of economic activity that shapes their lives. Debate about this could be framed as a debate about where to draw lines in the economy between things that are tightly governed and things that are not: should the government involve itself in where I spend my money to buy a cup of coffee? What about a house, or health insurance? However, if we get too caught up in moving that line, a little to the left or a little to the right, it is easy to be bullied into giving up the principle of that line altogether. But the structure and actions of businesses, especially those the people have granted a corporate charter conferring certain privileges, must be answerable to the people. Consent of the governed is a bedrock value of democracy.
2) People in a democracy have a right to gather information about businesses and use that information in the regulation of business. Intellectual property law protects innovation, perhaps too vigorously, and no one argues, for instance, that the formula for Coca-Cola should be made public knowledge. But the aspects of business that touch upon the public lives of the people they come into contact with must not be hidden if we are to govern business fairly. Even such simple things as who owns a company, how much money it earns, how much (and how) it pays its employees and investors, how much (or whether) it pays in taxes are routinely hidden, guarded by lawyers and phrases such as “commercial sensitivity.” If a company breaks the law, and it is caught, the details should be made public so as to inform the public in the governance of that company and the business as a whole.
3) There is no such thing as an abstract “market” separate from government. Ever since kings issued royal charters, markets have operated in public spaces under the control of government. Business relies on infrastructure provided by government. Public roads move goods to market, where money (also brought to us by government) facilitates the trade of those goods. Communication takes place over frequencies that belong to all of us, till government allocates them on our behalf. If disputes arise in business, they are settled in courts (government) and the judgments enforced by more government. The market is not the opposite of government. The market is an expression of government.
4) Not all business is bad. In almost any sector, in almost any time, there are examples of good practice, of business operating fairly, openly, legally, to the benefit of its employees, its investors, and the public at large. All too often, such companies are at a disadvantage compared to those less scrupulous. Without good governance, it is a race to the bottom. But those within an industry are often just the ones with detailed knowledge of how business operates, and how it should operate. The honest parts of any sector should provide the model for regulating it, driving dishonest business out.
These are not new ideas. They were articulated, argued over, and implemented long ago, in the Progressive Era. They were the basis of decades of prosperity and the greatest advances in democracy and equality the United States has seen. We need to reread our own history.
Who knew that professional wrestlers could be so sensitive? And that their antics could have potentially grave First Amendment implications?
Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media over the publication of the former professional wrestler’s sex tape is the latest case that pits a celebrity’s privacy rights against the Bill of Rights.
A ruling against Gawker could not only destroy the media empire built on trafficking in gossip but could mean the First Amendment will be less likely to protect journalists, even in situations in which the subject matter is more clearly a matter of legitimate public interest.
Before we get to the guts of the Hogan case, whose trial had been set to begin this week but has been postponed, let’s consider a similar one – also involving a colorful wrestler – that could hint at where the jury might be headed.
Body v SEAL
In July 2014, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, wrestling Hall of Fame inductee, former governor of Minnesota and professional conspiracy theorist, spent three weeks convincing eight jurors in federal court in Minneapolis that his reputation was damaged by former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s account of a bar fight in his book, American Sniper.
Kyle described how he punched a man identified as “Scruff Face” after he said he “hated America,” that Navy SEALS “were killing men and women and children and murdering” and that they “deserved to lose a few” in the war in Iraq.
Ventura said the encounter never happened and that Kyle’s book had destroyed his reputation in the SEAL community and his career as a television personality. He told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that if he lost his libel case, he would be so distraught that he would move to Mexico.
Ventura sought millions of dollars in damages, not only for defamation, but also for Kyle’s use of his name and image to promote the book. Although Kyle never identified “Scruff Face” in the book itself, he did tell interviewers that he was referring to Ventura.
Because Kyle was killed in a shooting in Texas about a year after Ventura filed his suit in 2012, the evidence about what really happened in the bar came from contradictory testimony by Ventura himself and a parade of witnesses produced by the attorneys for both sides.
The jury deliberated for six days and appeared to be deadlocked. The lawyers agreed to accept an 8–2 verdict. And then the jury awarded Ventura US$500,000 in damages for the defamation claim and $1.3 million for the unjust enrichment claim. The case is currently on appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. (Full disclosure: I am one of the signatories to a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Kyle estate in its appeal.)
Hulk Hogan’s sex tape
Fast-forward to a year later and another wounded wrestler is poised to try to vindicate his honor in a court of law. But this time, the issue is privacy, not reputation.
Hulk Hogan, who once wrestled Ventura, is scheduled to go to trial on July 6 in St Petersburg, Florida, seeking damages of $100 million from Gawker, operator of the online blog and celebrity gossip network. Gawker posted a videotape of Hogan having sex with Heather Cole Clem, then-wife of a satellite radio personality who uses the moniker Bubba the Love Sponge.
Hogan says the tape was made without his knowledge or consent. He originally sued Gawker in federal court, but, after a variety of procedural maneuvers, the case against the media company ended up in state Circuit Court, where Hogan’s related suits against Heather Cole and Bubba Clem eventually settled.
Hogan claims that Gawker invaded his privacy by posting the videotape, revealing offensive private facts about him, causing him emotional distress and violating his right to control the use of his name and image. Earlier this year, a state appeals court rejected his attempt to force Gawker to remove the video from its website, finding that it would be an unconstitutional prior restraint.
However, the trial judge announced on July 1 that only the jurors – not the media or the public – will be able to watch the video when it is shown in the courtroom at trial. Gawker’s lawyers have argued that this action could prejudice the jury as it considers whether or not the public has a legitimate interest in seeing the tape.
Legitimate public interest?
Gawker generally revels in controversy and seems to especially relish acquiring contraband videotapes of celebrities misbehaving.
For example, Gawker reporters made several attempts in 2013 and 2014 to purchase recordings allegedly showing Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine.
But in these instances, as with the Hogan tape, no one has accused Gawker of making or inducing someone else to make the illicit recordings. Under US Supreme Court precedent, if they did nothing illegal to obtain the tapes, publication would be protected by the First Amendment, provided the contents are a matter of public interest and concern.
But what does that mean? It seems that the Hogan tape certainly interests the public. The New York Times reported that it has generated more than five million clicks for Gawker’s site. But are the contents really a matter of legitimate public interest?
Hogan says they are not, even though, as the appeals court in Florida observed, he voluntarily chose to discuss the tape at length with TMZ and on The Howard Stern Show.
A celebrity’s right to privacy
Hogan’s case isn’t the first to involve publication of stolen or surreptitious recordings of celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez, having sex with their spouses or significant others. But most of their privacy lawsuits were either settled, like Hogan’s suits against everyone but Gawker, or were dismissed by a judge.
In 1997, former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and her husband lost their bid to sue Penthouse magazine for publishing sexually explicit photos. A federal court in California concluded that the couple had already voluntarily disclosed intimate information about themselves to the media, and that the photos were “newsworthy” and therefore protected by the First Amendment.
But courts have also recognized that celebrities do not necessarily give up all their rights to privacy simply because they have chosen to reveal some aspects of their lives to the public. As a federal judge court wrote in a case involving yet another sex tape of Pamela Anderson (this time with singer Bret Michaels), “even people who voluntarily enter the public sphere retain a privacy interest in the most intimate details of their lives.”
Will Hogan – who operates businesses in the nearby Tampa Bay area – be able to convince a St Petersburg jury that Gawker has exploited his sex life for crass financial gain? Or will the jurors conclude that Hogan couldn’t have any legitimate right to hide the amorous adventures he bragged about elsewhere and that are intensely interesting to at least some of the public?
Will they agree with Gawker founder and defendant Nick Denton, who told the Daily Beast, “In the Internet Age, you might once in a while have something come out if you’re going to be that indiscriminate in your pursuit of celebrity perks”?
It will be interesting to find out. And given the colorful personalities involved in this case, we can count on lots of media coverage, even though trial judge Pamela Campbell has declared that the trial “is not going to be a carnival.”
Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Even though Judge Campbell has promised the parties “judicial serenity and calm” in the courtroom, she can’t really control how the media reports the case outside it.
Moreover, a flamboyant and charismatic celebrity can have a powerful effect on jurors. They may rally to protect a local hero from what they regard as the actions of an irresponsible press. They can do that by awarding him millions of dollars in damages.
What does it mean for Gawker?
Although in the Daily Beast interview, Denton seemed confident about Gawker’s prospects for victory, predicting that “there’s a one in 10 chance of disaster,” the reality is that juries in state courts are notorious for handing down big libel judgments. This could threaten the company’s very survival.
Gawker Media is reportedly worth about $200 million. Hogan is seeking an award for half that. Even though statistically, massive jury awards are often reduced or set aside by an appeals court, Florida law will require Gawker to post a bond for the full amount of damages, plus interest, pending appellate review, which could take years.
In the meantime, Gawker would have to find some financial resources to keep afloat.
What it means for the rest of news
This wouldn’t be the first time a news organization was driven to the brink of destruction by a huge damages award.
In 1982, the Alton (Illinois) Telegraph
declared bankruptcy after it lost its appeal of a $9.2 million judgment. That ruling had been based on a memorandum its reporters sent to prosecutors about a local contractor’s alleged ties with organized crime – a story that never even appeared in the newspaper.
In this case, of course, Hogan isn’t suing for libel. He couldn’t, because there is no dispute that the tape is genuine. Truthful speech, no matter how offensive, cannot be the basis for a defamation suit.
Here Hogan is arguing that intimate facts about his private life were made public in a way that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.
Jurors are likely to identify with the plaintiff, on a very visceral level. They wouldn’t want a tape of themselves to be posted online, and they could agree that Hogan shouldn’t have to put up with it, either.
A ruling for Hogan could send a strong message that online sites should be very wary of posting videos of celebrities misbehaving, even if they think the content is newsworthy.
So, although he will appear in court using his real name (Terry Bollea), when the guy some call the greatest wrestler of all time strides into court wearing his signature bandanna, there is a chance he might take down Gawker – and maybe part of the First Amendment as well.
Stranger things have happened. Just ask Jesse Ventura.
“The Evangelical “brand” has gone from being an asset to a liability, and it is helpful to understand the transition in precisely those terms.”
Back before 9/11 indelibly linked Islam with terrorism, back before the top association to “Catholic priest” was “pedophile,” most Americans—even nonreligious Americans—thought of religion as benign. I’m not religious myself, people would say, but what’s the harm if it gives someone else a little comfort or pleasure.
Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity.
Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings, and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the Republican Party in exchange for political power, Evangelical Christianity is now distinctive—and widely despised.
Another way to put this is that the Evangelical “brand” has gone from being an asset to a liability, and it is helpful to understand the transition in precisely those terms.
How Brand Assets Get Depleted
In the business world, a corporation sometimes buys or licenses a premium brand in order to either upgrade their own brand desirability or to sell a lower quality product. Coca-Cola acquired Odwalla for example. Dean Foods acquired Silk soy milk. Target and Walmart license various designer labels for their made-in-China housewares and clothes. Donald Trump sells his name to real estate developers who use it to set an expectation of quality.
Once a premium brand or label is acquired, the parent company often uses the premium label to sell an inferior product. Alternately, if they acquired the whole company rather than just the name, they may gradually change the product, ratcheting down input costs (and quality) to the point that the premium brand becomes just another commodity. The profit advantage comes from the fact that it takes people a while to notice and change their brand perceptions. Also, being creatures of habit, a person may stick with a familiar brand even though the quality of the product itself has changed. In this way, a corporation can draw down the value of a brand the way that a person might draw down a bank account.
Republican Acquisition of the Evangelical “Brand”
A generation ago, the Republican Party realized that Evangelical Christianity could be a valuable acquisition. “Evangelical” had righteous, “family values” brand associations, the unassailable name of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and the organizing infrastructure and social capital of Evangelical churches. Republican operatives courted Evangelical leaders and promised them power and money—the power to turn back the clock on equal rights for women and queers, and the glitter of government subsidies for church enterprises including religious education, real estate speculation, and marketing campaigns that pair social services with evangelism.
As in any story about selling your soul, Evangelical leaders largely got what they bargained for, but at a price that only the devil fully understood in advance. Internally, Evangelical communities can be wonderfully kind, generous and mutually supportive. But today, few people other than Evangelical Christians themselves associate the term “Evangelical” with words like generous and kind. In fact, a secular person is likely to see a kind, generous Evangelical neighbor as a decent person in spite of their Christian beliefs, not because of them.
The Evangelical brand is so depleted and tainted at this point that Russell Moore, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention recently said that he will no longer call himself an “Evangelical Christian,” thanks—he implied—to association between Evangelicals and Trump. Instead he is using the term “Gospel Christian”—at least till the 2016 election is over. While Trump has received endorsements from Evangelical icons including Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Pat Robertson, other Evangelical leaders (e.g. here, here) have joined Moore in lamenting the deep and wide Evangelical attraction to Trump, which they say is antithetical to their values.
But how much, really, is the Trump brand antithetical to the Evangelical brand? Humanist commentator James Croft argues that Trump is what Evangelicalism, in the hands of the Religious Right, has become:
“The religious right in America has always been a political philosophy based on bullying, pandering, projecting strength to hide fear and weakness, and proud, aggressive ignorance. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Trump has merely distilled those elements into a decoction so deadly that even some evangelicals are starting to recognize the venom they have injected into American culture.”
Croft says that Pastors like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren use Jesus as a fig leaf “to drape over social views that would otherwise be revealed as nakedly evil.”
As a former Evangelical, I have to side with Croft: the Evangelical brand problem is much bigger than Trump and his candidacy or the morally-bankrupt priorities and theocratic aspirations of fellow Republican candidates Cruz and Rubio. Evangelicals may use the name of Jesus for cover, but even Jesus is too small a fig leaf to hide the fact outsiders looking at Evangelical Christianity see more prick than heart.
Here is what the Evangelical brand looks like from the outside:
Evangelical means obsessed with sex. Evangelicals are so desperate to fend off their own complicated sexual desires and self-loathing that they would rather watch queer teens commit suicide than deal with their homophobia. They abhor youth sexuality and female sexual pleasure to the point that they have driven an epidemic of teen pregnancy, unintended pregnancy and abortion—all because accurate information and contraceptive access might let the wrong kind of people (young unmarried and female people) have sex for the wrong reasons (pleasure and intimacy) without suffering for it.
Evangelical means arrogant. Wheaton College put Evangelical arrogance on national display when administrators decided to suspend and then fire a professor who dared to suggest that Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the same God.
Evangelical means fearful and bigoted. While more secular Europeans and Canadians offer aid to Syrian refugees, Evangelical Christians have instead sought to exclude Muslims. They have used their vast empire of telecommunications channels to inspire not charity but fear of imminent Sharia in the U.S. and of refugees more broadly. They have urged that Latin American refugees be sent home so that we can build a wall across the southern border before they come back.
Evangelical means indifferent to truth. Evangelicals refuse to acknowledge what isobvious to everyone else, including most other Christians—that the Bible is a human document woven through with moral and factual imperfections. Treating the Bible like the literally perfect word of God has forced Bible believers to make a high art out of self-deception, which they then apply to other inconvenient truths. They rewrite American History, embrace faux news, defend in court the right of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” to lie, and force doctors to do the same. The end justifies the means.
Evangelical means gullible and greedy. From televangelists and Prosperity Gospel to adulation of Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand, Evangelicalism faces the world as a religion ofexploiters and exploited—both of which are hoping to make a quick buck.
Evangelical means ignorant. The only way to protect creationism is to keep people from understanding how science works and what scientists have discovered. As evidence accumulates related to evolutionary biology, insulating children requires a constant battleto keep accurate information out of textbooks. Insulating adults requires cultivating a deep suspicion of science and scholarship, an anti-intellectualism that diffuses out from this center and defines Evangelical culture at large.
Evangelical means predatory. Evangelical missionaries prey on the young and ignorant. They have fought all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure they can proselytize children in public grade schools. Having failed to block marriage equality in the States, they export Bible based gay-hate to Central Africa, where gays are more vulnerable. Since Americans lost interest in tent revivals, evangelists now cast out demons, heal the sick and raise the dead among uneducated low-information people in developing countries.
Evangelical means mean. Opposing anti-poverty programs, shaming and stigmatizing queers, making it harder for poor women to prevent pregnancy, blaming rape victims,diverting aid dollars into church coffers, threatening little kids with eternal torture, supporting war, denying the rights of other species, . . . need I go on?
Laid out like this—sex-obsessed, arrogant, bigoted, lying, greedy, ignorant, predatory and mean—one understands why a commentator like Croft might say that Trump isEvangelicalism. But reading closer, it becomes clear that Trump and Cruz and Rubio are not the problem.
Despite the best efforts of reformers like Rachel Held Evans, the Evangelical brand is toxic because of the stagnant priorities and behaviors of Evangelicals themselves. Desperate to safeguard an archaic set of social and theological agreements, Evangelical leaders bet that if they could secure political power they could force a halt to moral and spiritual evolution. They themselves wouldn’t have to grow and change.
They also believed that they could get something for nothing, that they could sell their brand and keep it too. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
How many women are going to get fired from their jobs simply for having sexualized body parts that have been documented in photos? That's the question I asked myself after coming across the story of a South Carolina engineering teacher who was just forced to resign because one of her students violated her privacy and sent her semi-nude photos to his classmates.
It all started after Union County High School teacher Leigh Anne Arthur briefly left her classroom to monitor the halls. While she was away, one of her 16-year-old students went through her unlocked phone and found partially undressed images of the educator, which were meant for her husband. He then proceeded to let the class know that he would send the pictures to anyone who wanted them.
"He told the whole class that he would send them to whoever wanted them,” Arthur told TV station WSPA. The student "told me 'your day of reckoning is coming,'" she added.
You would think the administrators would be fair and smart enough to stand behind their colleague who just had her privacy grossly violated. But if you're a naive individual like me who still believes in fairness, you'd be wrong.
Interim Superintendent David Eubanks held Arthur responsible because her phone was unlocked, and even mentioned that the teacher may have contributed to the "delinquency of a minor." In the end, Arthur was asked to resign or eventually get fired. She chose to step down.
It's unclear whether the unidentified student will get any punishment, which sends a horrible message. In fact this could have been a great teachable moment for the students, but the adults missed out on the opportunity because they're too wrapped up in shaming adults who happen to do adult things during their free time.
Teaching kids to value privacy is incredibly important, but the US as a whole has been undervaluing privacy for a while now. It starts from the top down with the government indiscriminately spying on every American in the name of national security. Now we can rely on kids spying in on adults and getting rewarded for it.
We also need to get to a point where something as normal and natural as the human body doesn't shock everyone and provoke unnecessary punishment. Every single one of the administrators and teachers at Union County High has genitals, and each one of them has probably used their bodies in a sexual manner. The fact that they refused to empathize their peer and opted to punish her for being a human is pathetic.
There are online petitions to get Arthur her job back, but she's unsure whether or not she wants to teach at a school that's run by children. I can't say I blame her.
It has long been presumed that America is more Christian than Europe. But it’s a myth. Of course, way more people go to church in America. And you can’t become president without holding up your floppy Bible and attending prayer breakfasts. But what the Donald Trump phenomenon reveals is what several intelligent Christian observers have been saying for some time: that a great many Americans don’t really believe in God. They just believe in America – which they often take to be the same thing. God was hacked by the American dream some time ago. “The evangelical church in America has, to a large extent, been co-opted by an American, religious version of the kingdom of the world. We have come to trust the power of the sword more than the power of the cross,” writes Gregory Boyd in The Myth of a Christian Nation.
On the whole, I defer to people’s self-description when it comes to religious belief. If people say they are Christian then that’s good enough for me – unless we are talking about school places or running for office. Then it’s worth a little more scepticism. So with Trump, who has done so much to peddle the ridiculous birther conspiracy about Obama’s nationality, there is a considerably less ridiculous re-birther question. “Anyone, whoever he is, who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian,” said the pope of Trump’s faith, “… if he says these things, this man is not a Christian.” Likewise, the head of the US Presbyterian church into which Trump was baptised said: “Donald Trump’s views are not in keeping with the policies adopted by our church.”
Not in keeping is putting it mildly. It’s not even that he tries and fails. “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes?” he says. No, Trump doesn’t even begin to model Christ in his life. On the poor, on appealing to fear, on telling the truth, on sexual ethics, on (not) loving his enemies, on making greed his God, Trump models the anti-Christ.
But none of this makes much of a difference to Republican voters who have long been linked with evangelical Christianity. Trump waves his Bible around – though he is unable to name a single verse from it when asked – and talks a lot about making America great again and the threat from Islam. And that speaks volumes about what sort of faith it is that Republican believers actually believe in. Little wonder, as Professor Stanley Hauerwas says, that America doesn’t produce interesting atheists: they don’t have a God interesting enough to deny.
America itself has long been its own civil religion. Church and state may be separated, in theory. But if the state itself is deified, then the church has already capitulated. The 1833 amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution did away with church establishment. But it also insisted that “the public worship of God, and the instructions in piety, religion, and morality, promote the happiness and prosperity of a people, and the security of republican government.”
When the Pilgrim Fathers got in their little boats and sailed to the new world, they took with them a narrative that had begun to build in England, that the protestant English were actually the chosen people. America, then, was to be the new Israel. The pilgrims had landed safe on Cannan’s side, the promised land. The original 13 colonies in North America “were nothing other than a regeneration of the twelve tribes of Israel” as one American newspaper put it in 1864.
In other words, America became its own church and eventually its own god. Which is why the only real atheism in America is to call into question the American dream – a dream often indistinguishable from capitalism and the celebration of winners. This is the god Trump worships. He is its great high priest. And this is why evangelicals vote for him. But the God of Jesus Christ it is not. The death of God comes in many diverse and peculiar forms. In America, it is the flag and not the cross that takes pride of place in the sanctuary.
The media and the political class have called it -- Bernie Sanders has lost the Democratic Presidential nomination. They are flat wrong, and not for the first time.
Here's the real story: the Sanders campaign is changing the laws of political physics -- just like Trump did, only far more profoundly. The Bernie crowd is building the most extraordinary grassroots momentum I have ever seen. The movement is gathering strength by the day, and its chances to win are growing fast.
I write from first-hand experience: I am reporting from inside the Bernie campaign. Having observed dozens of campaigns around the world before, I have never seen anything quite like this. The media are telling their own stale and circular story of stalled momentum, defeat and superdelegate-powered inevitability. Meanwhile the Bernie movement is growing faster than Facebook did -- and in much the same way.
Everyone knows the campaign is supported by a flood of small donations: this week it will hit the five-million mark. Bernie is raising more money than Hillary Clinton and still accelerating, while her campaign has already maxed-out much of its big donor base. Sanders has already raised more money -- from many more small donors -- than even Obama had at this point. The numbers are unprecedented.
But another momentum story has yet to be told. As Bernie says, the only thing more powerful than money is people. And people are flooding into this campaign in their multitudes.
The Bernie campaign's decentralised model is empowering supporters to self-organise like never before. In the run-up to 2008, Obama built a new machine based on data and community organising techniques to win an election. By contrast, the Bernie crowd are building a new kind of movement -- one which could just lead to nothing less than the re-founding of American democracy.
The volunteer data and activity I'm seeing tells an extraordinary story: the Bernie Sanders campaign could be entering a Silicon Valley-like phase of exponential growth.
Volunteers are coordinating in realtime through web tools, social media and Slack chatrooms, contributing their unique skills to the campaign as well as making calls and converting neighbours and friends. They are making millions of calls, sending hundreds of thousands of text messages and knocking on tens of thousands of doors every day. They are organising barnstorming meetings to get others involved, holding benefit concerts and having a whole lot of fun. They are designing their own empowerment, revising their own scripts.
And they're just getting started. Most of this infrastructure didn't even exist a month ago. The campaign is setting what seem like wildly ambitious goals for engagement, then blowing right past them. This is a category-killing political startup with a massive, passionate and fast-growing base, and they're talking unabashedly about revolution.
I saw in my native Britain last year how a similarly passionate movement crashed the Labour Party and elected left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership. He was a 100-1 outside shot without much charisma, and the media wrote him off too. But the Corbyn crowd won by a landslide -- and they didn't have one-tenth of the strength or sophistication of the Bernie crowd.
I'm talking about the Bernie crowd because that's what this campaign is - crowd-sourced, crowd-funded, teeming with leadership and initiative. Bernie is their vehicle, bringing them together and opening the doors. While Trump is a media warlord running his own dark ISIS-like insurgency, Bernie is tribune, inspirer, educator, organiser.
"We, not I," Bernie says. The media and the political class can't compute. They cling to their talking heads and their fuzzy math. The Clinton campaign feeds them memos about the "mathematical impossibility" of Sanders winning the nomination after Super Tuesday, and they just lap it up.
But this is politics, not some Wall Street statistical model (and we all know how those end up...). What's more, this is starting to look like a Black Swan year in politics, just as 2008 was a Black Swan year in the financial markets. The impossible becomes possible, likely, inevitable... all in a blink of an eye. Don't believe me? Trump.
What is the Bernie crowd's actual path to the Democratic nomination? Strategist Tad Devine was crystal clear on a briefing call earlier this week. They organise. They keep growing at exponential speed. They flood into low-turnout primaries and win increasingly-significant victories in key states.
They win in the industrial Midwest - perhaps even in Michigan next Tuesday. I was there last night with Bernie in a roaring stadium in Lansing. 10,000 people showed up, and almost 3000 of them signed up to knock on doors. Bernie just released a searing ad on jobs and trade agreements which speaks directly to the pains and dispossessions of the 33% of manufacturing workers in Michigan who have lost their jobs in the last fifteen years.
Commentators ask, "What makes Bernie Sanders think he can win Michigan?" The answers aren't hard to find. While it's true that Hillary Clinton has led the polls thus far, the same was true in every state that has voted for Sanders -- until it wasn't.
They win again and again, bigger and bigger, as the Bernie crowd keeps growing. And eventually the media goldfish will realise that while they're swimming around and around in their little media cycle, there's a whole ocean of humanity out there, joyfully connecting and awakening.
The big states late in the calendar start falling like dominos: New York, Pennsylvania, California... And I haven't even mentioned Hillary Clinton's unfavorability ratings, or the unique majority of the general public who view Bernie positively. And the super-delegates will follow the popular vote. This is 2016, not Tammany Hall.
This is a popular wave, a democratic crowd, the polar opposite of a mob. The Bernie supporters I've met are overwhelmingly thoughtful, passionate, serious people who have finally found a politics they can believe in. Finally, they are discovering their strength in numbers. And they are becoming a tidal wave.
I've asked dozens of Bernie supporters what they mean by political revolution, and the answer is modest and extraordinarily consistent: it's about ending corruption, taking back American democracy for the many, and enabling everyone to live a normal, happy, fulfilling life. Their critique is acute and resonates far beyond the liberal left into conservative and rural strongholds. Their prescriptions are gathering force.
The Bernie crowd are organising. They are campaigning. They are learning, they are growing, they are committing to take back their politics and their country. Most importantly, they are beginning to run for office. Because they know that whether Bernie wins or loses, it doesn't stop there. From local races to Congress, the Bernie crowd are coming.
Is Bernie perfect? Not by a long way. He needs to find a better way to connect with African-American voters, who thus far are going overwhelmingly for Clinton. But his politics of passion, truth-telling and pragmatic coalition-building are built for the twenty-first century.
To rise to this moment, Bernie Sanders now needs to become a context-transcending leader (as the Brazilian philosopher and government minister Roberto Unger would say). He cannot allow himself to be trapped and beaten by the system. If he can start to tell a new story about the future, he could surprise and connect with he broadest swathe of Americans across political lines.
But it's not all about one old Jewish guy from New York.
Can Bernie win? Hell, yes. Is it inevitable? Not by a long shot. But citizens getting involved is what will decide the outcome, not media talking heads, Washington suits or billionaires' cash.
And what if, having overcome extraordinary odds to become a real contender, Bernie falls just short of the nomination? What if his campaign doesn't grow fast enough to beat the machine the Clintons built for decades?
In the most important sense, he has already won. The Bernie crowd is here to stay.
Spread the word: now it gets interesting.
Paul Hilder is a British writer and organiser. He has worked with Change.org, Avaaz.org, 38 Degrees, the Labour Party and other movements
Cash will probably be a novelty in the future, so imagine, then, that in the rare instance you handle some $20s, the combover etched on every crisp bill is that of former president Donald J Trump.
Absurd? Had you asked pundits during the 1824 presidential campaign whether General Andrew Jackson’s mug would ever grace America’s third-most popular greenback, they would have called you insane. The Washington political establishment believed that Jackson’s short temper, reckless disregard for political niceties and desire to insult (or shoot) his enemies meant he simply wasn’t presidential material. Yet in 1828 – four years after winning the popular vote but, through quirks of the system , losing the election, the American people — fed-up with back-room “politics as usual” — propelled Jackson to the White House for the first of two terms.
The Jackson era gives us some clues as to what might happen if Trump actually wins the White House.
Like Trump, Jackson was a mean-spirited “outsider”. As president, he destroyed America’s central banking system , and he forcibly repatriated Native Americans from Georgia to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears , an action just short of genocide. He distrusted most politicians (he regretted not being able to murder his own vice president ), and disliked the “rich and powerful” — despite being a rich and powerful slave-owner himself — who “too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes”.
Jackson rose to prominence following the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 and the First Seminole War in Florida. He may have been a war hero, but his public notoriety also included killing a man in duel in 1806 for insulting his wife, and he wasn’t taken seriously by his presidential competitors. Former president Thomas Jefferson told Daniel Webster :
I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions… [and] his passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he was Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. He is a dangerous man.
But where Jefferson saw Jackson’s passions as terrible, the electorate viewed them as a virtue — much like Trump supporters are embracing his “ tell it like it is ” style. Similarly, just as our modern congress is beloved by no one , in the 1820s popular feelings toward Washington’s elite were much the same. As Jackson would later say , the point of government is that it is “administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will.” He railed against professional politicians, whom he considered “ demagogues ”. He would later go on to write a book titled The World is Governed Too Much, which might as well be the tagline of 2016 Republican Party.
What will the Republican establishment do this year if Trump continues to march toward the nomination? The more he’s criticized, the stronger he appears to become, and the closer we come to returning to the worst excesses of Jacksonian democracy – where populism is valued over all else and professional lawmakers are seen as enemies to be vanquished.
If Trump is our new Andrew Jackson — and if he loses this year — what does that mean for 2020? A lot can happen between now and then, but if Trump’s base feels disenfranchised by a Democrat in the Oval Office and by a Republican Party they feel has subverted the will of the people, there’s no reason not to expect a galvanized Trump campaign the next time around.
The 1824 election killed the Democratic-Republicans as a political party[LINK]; 2016 may well kill the Republican Party as we know it . Where Jackson had his Trail of Tears, Trump will have his Mexican wall ; where Jackson dismantled the Second Bank of the United States, Trump might take on the Federal Reserve . Jackson — even when he was right — bullied members of congress, and Trump will undoubtedly do the same. Some of Jackson’s racism can be explained away by the times in which he lived. But what about Trump’s?
There are plenty of reasons to be scared of a Trump presidency, and it is worth remembering that if history does indeed repeat itself first as tragedy and then as farce, someday Donald Trump will get his face on the money, too.
Trump follows a long tradition of American politicians saying xenophobic things. Can you guess who said the following lines?
Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances are intricately bound up with the political status of middle-aged women. As she scraped the narrowest of victories in Iowa and lost heavily in New Hampshire, commentators began focusing on age-based divisions among female voters. Clinton, it seemed, had shown signs of losing badly among younger white women.
Since then, Clinton’s decisive victory in Nevada, her barnstorming win in South Carolina and her performance on Super Tuesday demonstrate that the earlier caucuses in overwhelmingly rural and white states might not be indicative of the overall American electorate.
But the supposed age-based gender gap still warrants attention. If younger women appear overwhelmingly opposed to an older woman’s candidacy, it pays to figure out why – and what implications that would have for Clinton’s chances of reaching the White House.
Many young Democratic voters feel disadvantaged and excluded for reasons that have little to do with gender. Higher education leaves them with huge debts, while the middle class (a very elastic term in the US) faces unstable employment prospects and crushing medical costs. Given the number of issues they face that have nothing to do with being female, some younger women have chafed at older feminists’ apparent insistence that they should vote for Clinton simply because she’s a woman.
When Madeleine Albright, a Clinton supporter and the first female Secretary of State, said recently at a Clinton rally that there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women, a phrase she’s used frequently over the years, many younger women supporting Bernie Sanders felt insulted, forcing Albright to clarify what she meant. Second-wave feminist icon Gloria Steinem caused an even bigger stir by suggesting young women supported Sanders, himself a much older man, because “the boys are with Bernie”.
Beyond the obvious sense of umbrage at being told how to vote, there are lots of reasons these women might not listen to second wavers such as Steinem and Albright. Are these young women really less aware of the battles their mothers fought for women’s rights? Or do they want a woman in the White House – just not this woman?
Today’s young women construct their identity across a number of categories, and they don’t necessarily prioritise gender over race, class or sexuality. So whereas Clinton is generally seen as something of a pragmatic moderate on a range of issues, they are attracted by Sanders’ self-proclaimed radicalism, and his proposals for a much higher minimum wage and free college tuition paid for by a tax on Wall Street.
The “radicalism” of electing a female president, especially a politically moderate one, just doesn’t seem to set their hearts ablaze.
In her own right
If young women were to cost her the nomination or the presidency, that would set a strange cap on Clinton’s career, which has almost perfectly mirrored women’s shifting place in the American polity. She has moved from limited influence to activism to wielding political power in her own right: From student activist to governor’s and president’s wife, she went on to be elected to the Senate and appointed secretary of state, one of the government’s most powerful and visible offices. Yet her electability as president is in doubt because the nation still marginalises older women.
American women’s political activism is not new, nor does it date solely to the women’s movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. As the franchise broadened to include all white men in the early 19th century, women, even the affluent, acutely felt their marginalised position. Their efforts to reform society through campaigns for temperance, abolitionism, and social activism carried less weight because they could not make their displeasure felt at the ballot box.
Even after the 19th Amendment enfranchised women in 1920, those from racial minorities encountered insurmountable obstacles when they tried to vote, especially in the South and Southwest. And suffrage alone did not mean women’s voices were heard. While a few older women mounted successful campaigns for public office, they succeeded primarily at the local level, winning places on school boards and city councils and in state legislatures. Only a handful broke into national politics.
One such pioneer was Frances Perkins, who had a long history as a reformer. Franklin D. Roosevelt (at the behest of his wife, Eleanor) appointed her as the first female cabinet member in 1933. A few women managed to enter the House of Representatives in their own right during the first half of the 20th century, yet not until Nancy Kassebaum was elected as senator from Kansas in 1978 did a woman enter the Senate without having first filled her husband’s seat when he died.
As women fight their way from the political margins to the centre, Clinton’s appeal to middle-aged and older voters should be seen as a strength, not the liability that journalists and television commentators seem to think it is. After all, older people, especially women, vote in greater numbers than younger people do. And as the Super Tuesday results show, the multi-racial electorate – especially in the South and Southwest – warmly supports Hillary Rodham Clinton. And that bodes well for her chances in November.
It looks increasingly as though Donald Trump will become the Republican candidate. And some reputable analysts thenfavor him to become president.
It’s enough to keep anyone awake at night.
So what would a Trump presidency look like from the standpoint of drug policy?
This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.
First, let’s consider what we know about Trump’s attitudes towards substance use and drug policy:
**Donald Trump has never consumed alcohol or taken drugs in his life. “Just like the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, Donald Trump does not drink alcohol. But, unlike President Bush, Trump never drank alcohol.” This may be due to his older brother’s early death due to alcoholism.
**Trump furthermore says that his three adult children have never drunk alcohol or taken drugs—he wouldn’t let them.“Trump claims he has never had an alcoholic drink or a cigarette in his life, and encourages his kids to avoid alcohol and cigarettes. When people ask Ivanka why she never went to wild parties there’s a simple explanation: ‘I think the difference is we wouldn’t be allowed to. [It’s] really as simple as that.’ ‘It’s not an option for us,’ agreed Donald Jr.”
**Trump says that building a big wall along the Mexican border will prevent drugs “flooding into” the US. He’s wrong about this, of course. He also plans to rely on a militaristic, police model to round up undocumented Latinos, going door to door to extricate them from their homes.
**Trump was at one time for drug legalization; he now opposes it. As with abortion et al., Trump seems eager to backtrack on liberal positions he once took. What is unique about Trump is how he backdates his current positions. Remember, he calls Ted Cruz a liar and threatened to sue him for saying that Trump has ever backed abortion rights—a position he earlier took in videotaped interviews. Here is how Trump deals currently with drug legalization, demonstrating that he has moved in precisely the opposite direction to many politicians:
Q: A lot of talk about addiction on the campaign trail lately, especially up in New Hampshire. You used to think that legalization, taking the profit out, would solve that problem. What changed your mind?
TRUMP: Well, I did not think about it, I said it’s something that should be studied and maybe should continue to be studied. But it’s not something I’d be willing to do right now. I think it’s something that I’ve always said maybe it has to be looked at because we do such a poor job of policing. We don’t want to build walls. We don’t want to do anything. And if you’re not going to want to do the policing, you’re going to have to start thinking about other alternatives. But it’s not something that I would want to do. [My italics. Source: ABC This Week, Nov. 8 interview by Martha Raddatz.]
Second, let’s think about how Trump deals with people who oppose him:
**It isn’t difficult for Trump to completely vitiate any organization or policy because it violates his current political ideology. Although pundits have noted Trump says positive things about Planned Parenthood (“they do good work for cervical and breast cancer”), he now ends his discussions of PP by saying that, since they back abortion, he would defund the organization entirely.
**Trump isn’t bashful about power-grabs. In his current stump speech, in addition to bashing Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, Trump says he will modify libel protections so that he can sue the media for lying about him. He regularly attacks the judge supervising the class action lawsuit against Trump University and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who declared the university a scam. Trump claims they are politically motivated, biased against him, and suggests the possibility that he will punish them if he becomes president.
Finally, given his attitudes and personal disposition, consider the following possible nightmarish scenarios after Trump becomes POTUS in January 2017:
**President Trump declares, “Expand the War on Drugs!” Since he believes drug use is antithetical to the American dream, as well as its being personally repugnant to him, Trump has illegal drug users rounded up—with the use of torture as needed to encourage informants—for mass incarceration. “What do you think the Chinese do to people who use drugs? And they’re eating our lunch, taking all our jobs and killing us in trade.”
**President Trump revokes state marijuana legalization—“What kind of losers sit around smoking pot?” Reversing liberalization of America’s attitudes towards weed, Trump orders enforcement of federal anti-marijuana statutes in states like Colorado, Washington and (by then) California. Law enforcement agencies under Trump crack down in coordinated raids on marijuana dispensaries and users around the country.
**President Trump mandates that addiction treatment insist on total abstinence in all cases. “If my children and I can do it, why can’t everyone?” And for those who fail at enforced abstinence, well, there’s plenty more room in those expanded prisons. “I’d fire anyone who worked for me who used drugs, even on weekends. We can’t make America great again if people are using drugs.”
**President Trump has the US Attorney General bring charges of endangering public health, conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, and treason against drug policy reformers. Claiming that the Drug Policy Alliance and similar organizations are encouraging illicit drug use, and that, “Without question, illegal drug use funds overseas terrorism,” President Trump orders the US Attorney General to prosecute reform groups under a variety of federal laws.
**President Trump also tells his greatly expanded and empowered DEA to raid and threaten anyone who endorses drug legalization. Following a series of Tweets, beginning with, “Anyone who thinks drugs are okay isn’t a true American,” President Trump sics his large, militarized army of agents on people who express drug policy reform views, resulting in Drug War opponents being silenced.
**President Trump uses the specter of drug smuggling to aid his efforts to deport millions of Latinos. In line with this new militant opposition to drug use and scapegoating of drugs, and consistent with his accusations that immigrants bring drugs with them, Trump shows that his Mexican Wall readily swings open the other way so that masses of people can be thrown out of the country.
What’s that? You think there’s some limit to what a President Trump might do in response to those who displease or oppose him?
Now what exactly about Trump or his presidential campaign would give you that idea?
This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.
In a column for the Washington Post, conservative Christian leader Russell Moore is denouncing evangelical leaders for cynically embracing Donald Trump to leverage his popularity, though Trump doesn't practice Christian values.
Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote on Monday that he has stopped calling himself an "evangelical" and instead refers to himself as a "gospel Christian" because he feels the word "evangelical" has been contaminated with contemporary politics.
While Moore doesn't mention the real estate mogul and GOP front runner by name, he alludes to Trump as someone who this election cycle has been "spewing of profanities in campaign speeches, race-baiting and courting white supremacists, boasting of adulterous affairs, debauching public morality and justice through the casino and pornography industries."
Moore has long been a critic of both Trump and the Christian right's courting of him even though Trump doesn't seem to know anything about the Bible. Recently Trump has been widely condemned for refusing to disavow support from white supremacists. Moore has in the past advocated for racial integration of Christian churches.
"Why are many evangelical leaders, including some who pontificate on nearly everything else, scared silent as evangelicalism is associated with everything from authoritarianism and bigotry to violations of religious freedom?" Moore asked. "How can they look the other way in silence when politicians praise Planned Parenthood and demur about white supremacists and neo-Nazis?"
Moore then admitted that "secular progressives" had been right in one criticism of contemporary evangelicals, who fuse religion and politics to gain power.
"For years, secular progressives have said that evangelical social action in America is not about religious conviction but all about power," Moore wrote. "They have implied that the goal of the Religious Right is to cynically use the 'moral' to get to the 'majority,' not the other way around. This year, a group of high-profile old-guard evangelicals has proven these critics right."
He criticized a willingness to look the other way when the word "evangelical" is "co-opted by heretics and lunatics."
Moore had been critical of Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s endorsement of Trump, tweeting, "Politics driving the gospel rather than the other way around is the third temptation of Christ. He overcame it. Will we?”
Proving that politics does indeed make strange bedfellows, the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan joined with the Ku Klux Klan in expressing his admiration for 2016 GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump.
In remarks during the Nation's annual Saviours’ Day sermon in Chicago, the leader of the black separatist group praised Trump for not accepting money from the "Jewish community," reports The Hill.
“[Trump] is the only member who has stood in front of [the] Jewish community and said, ‘I don’t want your money,’” Farrakhan told his followers.
“Anytime a man can say to those who control the politics of America, ‘I don’t want your money,’ that means you can’t control me. And they cannot afford to give up control of the presidents of the United States.” Farrakhan explained before hastening to add, "“Not that I’m for Mr. Trump, but I like what I’m looking at."
Trump has been battered for failing to immediately disavow the support of the Klan and other white supremacist organization, with former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney calling his delayed response "disgusting and disqualifying."
Like Trump, Farrakhan is not a fan of the Bush family, blaming them for the 9/11 terrorist attack.
“They needed another Pearl Harbor,” Farrakhan stated. "They needed some event that was cataclysmic, that would make the American people rise up, ready for war. "They plotted a false flag operation and when a government is so rotten that they will kill innocent people to accomplish a political objective, you are not dealing with a human."
“Now, they got into the [second] Bush administration and on 9/11 the Twin Towers went down. [Former President] George [W.] Bush and those devils, those Satans around him. They plotted 9/11. Ain’t no Muslim took control of that plane.”
A worrying trend of young folk increasingly drawn to the Trump campaign--is not so unexpected. Essentially, what is going on is a psychological parallel to so-called prosperity Christianity: The superstitious idea that a magical mediator will somehow transmit money to you, and will protect you from harm. And there are deeper drives taking over, here, too...
How is it that Trump’s followers keep excusing him? Even as he’s made, on camera, salacious remarks about his own daughter; even though he’s boasted in a book, of seducing “happily married women”; though he’s smeared Mexicans and Muslims and tacitly accepted white supremacists; though he’s threatened to kill women and children: suggested twice we should “take out the families” of Isis fighters; though his “university” is fighting prosecution for fraud; even though he’s been accused of having mob ties...Despite all this, all his contradictions and his highly questionable military deferment...His voting base--increasingly including young people--dismisses all this with a shrug. Why?
Their decision-making is being made by their subconscious minds.
Some political candidates will appeal to reason, as well as emotion; but some, especially Trump, have the instinctive ability to appeal to the unconscious mind. For awhile, Romney had a similar appeal -- for some. Trump chants, over and over: "Me--billions!" Both Trump and Romney symbolize gold, money, wealth, which is, in the minds of the entranced, the magic key to being liked, to being gainfully employed or simply free from financial worry. And it equates with power, which provides safety. I do not use the word magic lightly. Magical thinking (it's an expression--no real thinking is involved) leads worried young people, anxious about their future in a highly competitive world, to fixate on a Trump or a Romney. Trump has more appeal to youth than Romney--he's not a cold snob, like Romney; Trump is ejaculating energy, and adolescent brashness.
Romney doesn't know the full magical chant. Magic only works in the psychological sense--but the subconscious mind is where real political power is. Decrypted, Trump's magic words are always the same:
"Danger is here but I am strength, winning strength! Enemies, outsiders, defeat them! We allies, insiders! Me--billions! I am Money! I am Gold! I am Power! Taking more power! More money! Gold! Sex! Gold! Sex! Rise, rise! Us! Them! Us! Them! Money protects! Gold! Freedom! Power! Money! Danger--stop danger! Strength, the strength to take! Gold! Trust! Trust Gold! Trust power! I have power! Gold! Me, billions! Behold...GOLD!" This is not satire--I mean this literally. This really truly is what he's doing--without consciously thinking it through. He learned the chant long ago...
Us, them -- yes, that's an appeal to unconscious racism. Threatened people, worried about their future, look for scapegoats; xenophobic instinct arises. They are afraid of the future--of poverty, of competition for money. "Us! Them! Me, Gold, Me, Behold, billions--behold, Gold!" These magic words protect against threats...the threats of not finding a job, even the threat of terrorism--which are real threats, real problems. But he doesn't need real solutions. All he needs is to repeat the chant, over and over, convincingly. And the subconscious responds. The words shift a little but the import, the meaning, is always the same; the same litany couched in other terms:
"I am Money! I am Gold! I am Power! Taking more power! More money! Gold! Sex! Gold! Sex! Rise, rise! Us! I have power, I have gold! Gold protects! Me, billions! Behold...GOLD!"
Many people, those who have no real self-knowledge, never question, when certain parts of their back-brains are stimulated. They simply follow the loudly bleating golden calf.
Follow the bleater.
John Shirley is the author of numerous novels, story collections, screenplays (“THE CROW”), teleplays and articles. A futurologist and social critic, John was a featured speaker at TED-x in Brussels in 2011.
Donald Trump is set to have a very good night. Coming into Super Tuesday, he leads in eight of the 11 states that have been polled recently. Unless the polls are off – which is a possibility – Trump will have a significant lead in the delegate count after today, and unless the field narrows to a two-person race before March 15, when the GOP primaries become winner-take-all contests, he'll likely be unstoppable.
This is a good time for Donald Trump. And he should enjoy it, because if wins the nomination, he has no idea what he's in for.
Until last Thursday's GOP debate, his hapless opponents have been content to trade pot-shots with Trump over his ideological apostasies – he used to be pro-choice and once called for single-payer health care. Sure, Trump's budget-busting tax cuts, belligerent foreign policy rhetoric and hostility towards immigrants and Muslims are GOP mainstays, but he's opposed to trade deals, doesn't want to cut Social Security and argues that George W. Bush was president on 9/11/01, so he's a heretic.
But they only just began to go after the central rationale of his candidacy. The Donald has no coherent policies to offer, and no relevant experience to highlight. His pitch to the electorate is based entirely on his image as a successful businessman who makes great deals, knows how to manage people and gets things done. And that singular strength is going to become a massive weakness in the blinding glare of a presidential campaign.
Since he arrived on New York's social scene in the 1970s, Trump's immense self-promotion skills haven't been enough to overcome his reputation as a crass, utterly classless buffoon. We'll be hearing plenty of clips from his two-dozen appearances on the Howard Stern show, where, according to Buzzfeed, he “frequently discussed women he had sex with, wanted to have sex with, or wouldn’t have sex with if given the opportunity.”
In a general election, Trump will be exposed for the slick con artist he's always been. When the Democrats' opposition researchers get through with The Donald, he's going to make Mitt Romney look like George Bailey.
And Trump isn't going to take it well. Right now, he's the picture of a happy narcissist. According to the Mayo Clinic, “If you have narcissistic personality disorder, you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious. You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior.... You may insist on having 'the best' of everything — for instance, the best car, athletic club or medical care.” That's Trump in a nutshell.
But the Mayo Clinic adds: “when you don't receive special treatment, you may become impatient or angry.”
At the same time, you have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation. To feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make yourself appear superior. Or you may feel depressed and moody because you fall short of perfection.
Trump's angry-guy persona is playing well in the Republican primary contest, but when he comes under serious attacks for the first time – attacks that call into question his competence and business success -- he's likely to lash out like... like a narcissist whose endless boasts are suddenly being challenged for the first time. It's not going to be pretty, and in the end a lot of voters are going to be terrified at the prospect of having someone like Trump anywhere near the nuclear launch codes.
Unless the polls are very wrong, Trump will have a very good Super Tuesday. He'll give a victory speech, and go to bed with his beleaguered trophy wife holding a commanding delegate lead. But there's a freight train hurtling down the tracks towards Trump if he becomes the GOP's nominee, and he can't even see it coming.
