The Gold Standard of Witch Hunts

The whiner-in-chief, having presided over an operation with the Russian government to undermine the U.S. electoral process – no, this hasn’t been proven, but it will be – says he is an innocent victim of “the media” and is being treated in a historically unfair way. He is, he contends, the object of a “witch hunt.” Well, why don't we take a look at an actual witch hunt, by which we mean a phony search for a non-existent villain upon whom to blame one’s problems for political gain. In witch-hunt world, this one is the gold standard.

On September 11, 2012, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of State, the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked and burned.  Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. At first, it was thought the attack was the spontaneous reaction of an angry mob to a video mocking Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. Later, it was determined to have been a “terrorist” attack, meaning a planned action by unidentified Islamic radicals. The government changed its assessment regarding who was responsible after additional facts came to light – a change which Clinton opponents characterized as somehow sinister. “What difference does it make?” Clinton rightly asked when Republicans went into a tizzy over whether it was angry mob or a planned attack by militants – a question those opponents have never answered.

Investigations of the matter over the succeeding months and years were conducted by the following: U.S. State Department Accountability Review Board. the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the House Judiciary Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, the House Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

That last one, the investigation by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, headed by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), lasted longer than the 9/11 Commission, and congressional investigations into the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, the 1983 bombing that killed 241 American service members in Beirut, and the response to Hurricane Katrina. The committee hauled in more than 100 witnesses, subjected Clinton to an 11-hour grilling, and spent some $7 million on the undertaking. This inquiry was after all the ones listed above – none of which uncovered any evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton or issued any conclusions to that effect. Same result for the House Committee. Its astounding conclusion after the expenditure of all that time and treasure: Security at the mission was not as good as it might have been.

But, of course, it was never about getting to the bottom of what happened that night and who, if anyone, in the U.S. government was at fault. It was always about creating a cloud of suspicion over candidate Clinton among folks who the Republicans knew would not pay very close attention to the actual goings-on in the committee or to its conclusions. Where there was smoke, they knew many voters would believe, there was fire. This investigation was 100-percent smoke. Two years and $7 million worth of smoke.

And it worked, exactly the way they believed it would. “Benghazi” became, among the anti-Hillary people, a buzz word which they would invoke as though its meaning were self-evident; no need to explain how, or even if, the events of that night reflected negatively on Clinton. It was enough to simply speak the word and heads would nod in agreement.

In September of 2015, in a moment of candor that many believe cost him a shot at the House speakership, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA, later referred to by Donald Trump is “my Kevin”) owned up to his party’s cynical motive for the committee’s “investigation.” He said this:

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) characterized McCarthy’s words as a “stunning concession" which, he said, “reveals the truth that Republicans never dared admit in public. The core Republican goal in establishing the Benghazi committee was always to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and never to conduct an evenhanded search for the facts.”

Now that's a witch hunt. Despite what Trump people would prefer to believe, the investigations now under way by a special counsel and two congressional committees are not the result of non-evidence manufactured by political opponents or the media. They are the result of things he himself has said and done, and for which he is going to have to answer. 

That’s not a witch hunt. 

The Russians did it. The only question now is whether Americans did, too.

To be clear -- because Donald Trump continues to do what he can to muddy these waters: The Russian government, using computer technology, interfered with and tried to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election. And we know that the purpose of that interference was to impede Hillary Clinton’s chance of winning. These things are not in dispute, having been uncovered and attested to by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and more than a dozen other agencies of the government of the United States whose job it is to know about such matters and combat them. It has been fully acknowledged by members of both parties in congress and by the Trump-appointed Secretary of Defense. And by Trump himself, notwithstanding his ongoing efforts to obfuscate the issue and blame it all on Democrat sour grapes. The debate with regard to whether this happened is over. That train has left the station.

So: Since we know with certainty what happened, the only remaining question is what role, if any, did people around Donald Trump, and/or Trump himself, play in it. Did these people, these Americans, help the Russians do what we know with certainty that they did – attack the United States? That’s what’s on the table now – not what happened, but whether Trump and company had a hand in what happened. And that’s what’s being investigated by the FBI and by committees in the House and Senate.  That's what James Comey was investigating when he was fired.

Donald Trump, instead of being outraged by all if this and vowing to get to the bottom of any sins the Russians may have committed, has done everything he can to thwart the inquiry. That Trump has something to hide that involves Russia is a conclusion that has become all but impossible to avoid.

That makes it a good time to review what is known about Trump and Russia. The New York Times recently provided this recap:

THE TRUMP FAMILY BUSINESS There may be no Trump Tower in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but it is not for lack of trying. Mr. Trump and his family have sought to do business in Russia since at least the 1980s. They have also developed extensive commercial and personal relationships with politically connected Russian businessmen. In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. told a real estate conference, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York,” according to eTurboNews, a travel industry news site. The author James Dodson said that another son, Eric Trump, told him in 2013 that Russians have bankrolled Trump golf courses: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” Eric Trump denies saying that.

In addition, Donald Trump worked with the Agalarov family, a prominent Russian business group, to host the 2013 edition of his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Mr. Trump met more than a dozen of the country’s most prominent oligarchs while he was there, Bloomberg News reported. Jared Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump and is a senior adviser to the president, has also been caught up in the Russia story. During the transition, Mr. Kushner met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, as well as with the top executive of a Russian government-owned bank.

MICHAEL FLYNN Mr. Flynn, the former national security adviser, had several conversations with Mr. Kislyak during the transition in which they discussed American sanctions against Russia. Mr. Trump fired Mr. Flynn after public disclosure that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of those talks. In addition, RT, a Russian government-backed news outlet, paid Mr. Flynn $45,000 for giving a speech in December 2015 in Moscow. On the same trip, he sat next to President Vladimir Putin at an RT gala. The Pentagon is investigating whether Mr. Flynn, a retired military intelligence officer, failed to disclose and obtain approval from the State and Defense Departments before taking money from a foreign government.

JEFF SESSIONS Mr. Sessions, the attorney general, said during his Senate confirmation hearing that he did not have any contacts with Russian officials while he was actively campaigning for Mr. Trump. In fact, he met with Mr. Kislyak twice, once in his Senate office and once at the Republican National Convention.

PAUL MANAFORT Mr. Manafort, a former chairman of the Trump campaign, worked as a consultant for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine and for Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by the Kremlin. Mr. Manafort has been accused of receiving secret payments from the pro-Russia party. About a decade earlier, Mr. Manafort also worked for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Mr. Putin. The Associated Press obtained a memo he wrote to Mr. Deripaska offering a plan that he said would “greatly benefit the Putin Government.”

CARTER PAGE American officials believe that Mr. Page, a foreign policy adviser, had contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the campaign. He also gave a pro-Russia speech in Moscow in July 2016. Mr. Page was once employed by Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office, where he worked with Gazprom, a government-owned energy giant.

ROGER STONE Mr. Stone, an informal but close Trump adviser, exchanged messages last summer with Guccifer 2.0, a Twitter account widely believed to be a front for Russian intelligence operatives who were involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. During the campaign, Mr. Stone seemed to know in advance that WikiLeaks would release emails from the account of John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman.

So what?

Many Republicans and other Trump worshippers, once the fact of Russian interference in the election became unavoidable, shifted to questioning its importance. What’s the big deal if the Russians got involved in some election mischief here. Who cares if Trump and his people have financial ties to the Russian government? Is Russia so bad? Isn't this just a distraction from all the important things Trump is trying to do?

Well, again, to be clear: This event was an attack on the sovereignty of the United States of America, just as surely as if it had been done with bombs and bullets. It took aim at the very heartbeat of America, the thing that makes it what it is and the thing we have depended on for 200-plus years to provide us with the kind of life we want: the free election of the people who represent us in government. It was an attack on our country by a foreign and hostile country. If American citizens helped them do that, it’s a very big problem. (Trump enthusiasts who shrug their shoulders at all of this need to ask themselves a simple question: What if all of the above were true of Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton?)

For an interesting take on what Russia is all about -- the Russia that Trump’s hard core would have us believe is essentially harmless – check out Joe Scarborough on the subject.

How to Fire an FBI Chief

As luck would have it, Flyoverland was in the room when it all went down...

Trump: I want that sonofabitch fired. I’ve had it with his Russia thing. If he gets any closer on Russia, which it looks like he’s about to do, it’s really gonna hit the fan. You can stick a fork in us. Plus the insubordinate bastard refuses to back me up on the Obama wire-tapping.

Aide: Well, sir, there’s really no way he could back you up on the wiretapping. After all, we all know what a crock it actually is.

Trump: Who is this man?

Other aide: Jenkins, sir.

Trump: Take him out and shoot him.

Other aide: Yes, sir.

Trump: Now, Sessions, I need you to cook up a reason for the firing. We don’t want people thinking it has anything to do with Russia.

Sessions: Absolutely, sir. And here’s what I think is a great idea. Just delicious, really. What we do is, we say it was because of what he did to Hillary. I mean, think about it. The irony. It’s perfect. The Dems won’t be able to say a word.

Trump: Ooh. Sa-weet! You little devil you!

Aide: I don’t think anybody’s going to believe that. Even our hard-core people aren’t that dumb.

Trump: Oh, they’re that dumb. Believe me. Remember when I said I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes? No, I think it’s genius. Absolutely beautiful. Not only will our base believe it, everyone will believe it. After all, it’s perfectly plausible.

Other Aide: Damn right, Mr. President.

Trump: Beautiful. Now, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll have the new guy, Frankentein or whatever his name is, say it was his idea, and that I’m just following his recommendation. Everyone will believe that, right?

Another Aide: Damn right, Mr. President. After all, they are incredibly dumb and believe all the ridiculous things you say. But, still, maybe we should have a fallback position on that one.

Trump: Okay, if they question that, I’ll say I started thinking about firing him back when I was elected. By the greatest margin in history, by the way. Because of his handling of the Clinton thing.

Another Aide: But, sir, you praised him to the skies for that.

Trump: Who cares? (sarcastically) Remember? 5th Avenue? Shooting people? Folks have forgotten all about that praising Comey thing. After all, it was months ago. I’ll just say I never said any of that. I do it all the time. And people always believe me. Believe me.

Sessions: Alrighty, then. We’re agreed. So, let’s give it a whirl. We did this because of Comey’s outrageous mistreatment of Clinton. It was Rosenstein’s idea. It had absolutely nothing to do with Russia. And, for good measure, we can throw in that the FBI rank-and-file is completely on board – in fact, had been calling for Comey’s head. All one-hundred percent believable.

Trump: I love it. There’s no way anyone would have any reason to doubt any of that. In fact, everyone will think it’s a beautiful explanation. They will say that I courageously did the right thing, and they’ll thank me! After all, the people are incredibly stupid and believe the things that I say.

Another aide: Sir, while I know you have unbounded faith in the stupidity of the American people, and I admire you for it, you can’t really think anyone’s going to believe this one. I mean, it’s too much. It’s such an obvious whopper!

Trump: Who is this man?

Yet Another Aide: Jones, sir.

Trump: Take him out and shoot him.

Chipping In

From an article in the New York Times magazine, we learn of a woman – uninsured, due to a complicated set of circumstances – who suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage (brain bleed) and spent time in the hospital, and later starting getting bills: $16,000 from the hospital, $50,000 for the air ambulance, $24,000 from a physicians’ group, $54,000 from the same group for additional charges and late fees, and then, another from the hospital for $356,884.42.

The article, which is about “the arcane, sprawling classification system that doctors and hospitals have learned to game” as one big reason for the high cost of health care, is definitely recommended reading. But even if we did nothing about this system or about the other major contributors to the problem – drug prices, too much  testing, high price tags on basic procedures – even if the woman’s bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars were totally legitimate – there is something we could do: Chip in and help her pay the bills. If we did that, it would cost each of us a couple of bucks and save her a fortune – indeed, save her from total financial ruin. And if we chipped in to buy her insurance against those medical bills, as opposed to paying the bills themselves, it would cost not bucks but pennies.

This is something we already do with national defense, roads and bridges, schools, police protection, parks and libraries, sewers and sanitation, water treatment, air traffic control, and on and on -- things too numerous to mention. We chip in. We pay for them collectively. We pool our money to buy things we want and need but which it makes no sense to buy as individuals.

It’s called taxation.

(Also included in that list, by the way, is keeping old people out of penury by giving them money -- Social Security -- and by helping them pay for health care -- Medicare. The idea that people “pay into” these systems and are therefore merely retrieving the money they contributed and to which they are therefore entitled when they get old is a myth. In fact, people pay taxes to the federal treasury – it doesn’t matter what names those taxes are given – and part of that money is then paid out, from the federal budget, for social security and Medicare benefits, in exactly the same way that money comes out of the budget to pay for an aircraft carrier.)

But, I digress. The point here is this: People may kvetch about paying taxes and about government spending – something everyone is against in the abstract -- but they want the things that tax dollars buy. It’s that simple. The idea that one group of people is more “fiscally conservative” than another is fiction. The argument is never whether tax dollars are going to be collected and spent. The argument is always about how -- which of the things those dollars buy is more important to me as opposed to the ones that are more important to you.

The obvious question: What’s more important than health care? Needless to say, it is essential to our well-being. But more than that, its high cost is a terrible problem, and the two previous administrations were right in giving it high priority. It puts millions of Americans on the brink of financial catastrophe and/or deprives them of medical care altogether, it exercises undue influence over where and how we live and work and what we do for a living, and it sucks billions of dollars to itself at the expense of all other sectors of the economy. Given the demonstrated inability of the health industry or any outside actors to stabilize costs let alone bring them back to earth, the contention here is that including health insurance on the list of things we spend tax dollars on is therefore a not unreasonable idea. Why not “chip in” for health care?

Would that mean a tax increase? Sure, assuming we can’t find offsetting savings in other areas. (The betting here is we can’t, as those “other areas” tend to have powerful constituencies). But it’s important to understand this: We are already paying that “tax.” We may not call it a tax, but whether it’s in the form of health insurance we buy on our own or higher prices charged by employers that buy it for us, it’s money leaving our wallets. Just like the money we pay to the tax collector, it’s money we have no choice but to part with. Either way, we’re gonna pay. But there is considerable likelihood that we would pay less because of the preventive care that such a system would pick up the tab for and because of the elimination of insurance company overhead and hospital billing costs. So from a financial outlay standpoint, it appears it would be, at worst, a wash.

As for reducing medical costs within the existing system to any meaningful extent as a way to get this problem under control, it appears that for the time being at least, we will have to play it as it lays, so to speak – get people insured against costs as they now stand, and then take up the challenge of reducing costs. And a challenge it is, because the business of health care, for a variety of seemingly intractable reasons, has shown itself to be unresponsive to the normal pressures of a free market. Under the current system, in which there is zero price competition, costs are not going to go down and therefore the price of insurance isn’t going to go down, either. (Free market enthusiasts cite the example of Lasik surgery, the cost of which, due to competition, has come down considerably over the years. But Lasik is elective and people can shop around at their leisure for the low-cost provider. With things like cancer care, cardiac surgery, and organ transplants – well, not so much.)

What’s being suggested here is not socialized medicine or a government takeover of health care, an accusation that critics draw like a gun whenever this subject comes up. The government would own no facilities or employ any medical personnel. It would simply pick up the tab for insurance – as it already does, efficiently and effectively, with Medicare. For people who object to Medicare on principle, the question is this: Would you like to be paying the medical bills of your elderly parents and having them live in your basement because they can’t afford their own housing? Medicare is a system that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in and view with gratitude and relief. Thank God for Medicare, is what just about everyone says as they approach old age.

We all chip in for insurance for seniors. Why not chip in for insurance for everyone?

(Note: For an in-depth discussion of why the American health care system is unresponsive to normal free market forces, Flyover can recommend the book “An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back” by Elisabeth Rosenthal. Here is a review in the New York Times Book Review.)

Kristallnacht

Anti-Semitism rears its ugly head with depressing regularity in this country and elsewhere, and we’re seeing a still relatively small but nevertheless ominous resurgence in 2017. Here’s a bit of history that shows how relatively isolated incidents can coalesce and lead to calamity in an atmosphere of tacit acceptance.

On November 9 and 10, 1938 a wave of violence aimed at Jewish people, institutions, and businesses took place in Germany, Austria, and parts of Czechoslovakia. The events of those days and nights became known as Kristallnacht, a German word loosely translated as the night of broken glass because of the shards of glass in the streets from the broken windows of homes, hospitals, schools, Jewish-owned businesses, and synagogues destroyed by paramilitary forces and German civilians as German authorities looked on without intervening. Estimates vary, but it’s believed that hundreds of people were murdered and thousands arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Over 1,000 synagogues and 7,000 businesses were destroyed or damaged.

Kristallnacht is widely understood to be the event that signaled the beginning of overt anti-Semitism in pre-WWII Germany which evolved to the “final solution” and ended in the murder of 6-million people in what became known as the Holocaust. Full accounts of Kristallnacht and the events leading up to it and flowing out if it are here and here.

The Southern Poverty Law Center counts 917 hate groups currently operating in the United States. It defines them as groups having beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. Not all of them are specifically anti-Semitic but all have that potential. Of the 917, ten are specifically holocaust deniers, 99 are neo-Nazi, 79 are racist skinheads, and 100 are white nationalists. The SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League, and others report hundreds of anti-semitic incidents in the past few months and thousands in the past year or so, including vandalism in Jewish cemeteries, spray-painted swastikas in public spaces, slurs on social media, and so on. The AMCHA Initiative, an organization that tracks anti-Semitic incidents at American colleges and universities, reports 185 such incidents so far in 2017 and 430 in 2016. Are these incidents a collection of small Kristallnachts – precursors of a larger uprising of people and groups who are encouraged and emboldened by the current political climate?

We know this much: History tells us that anti-Semitism is always bubbling just below the surface and has been for centuries, and that it erupts and becomes virulent and toxic particularly when demagoguery and despotism give people license to blame a hated “other” for their own problems, failings, and disappointments or for a lack of general prosperity. We see a lot of that now, including the resurrection of ageless tropes having to do with Jews controlling the banks or the international financial system or the media.

During the debates, Donald Trump said this: “[Hillary Clinton] meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty, in order to enrich these global financial powers…” In addition to being another entry in the lengthy and ever-growing catalog of ludicrous Trumpian pronouncements, this statement, while not overtly anti-Semitic, has been very much a part of the anti-Semitism vocabulary over the decades.

Everyone knows about the Holocaust. But Kristallnacht, the event that foretold it, is not as well known. It seems important now, as anti-Semitic activity seems to be ramping up once again, that younger generations be made aware of it and of the ominous warning it carried. 

If only people had listened.

Chest Deep in the Big Muddy

There was a time when America was only hip deep in lies and misinformation about Obamacare and what it does and does not do. Now, because of the surreal Republican comedy act that masquerades as a search for something to replace it (or amend it or whatever) we’re chest deep and sinking fast. What Republicans should do, of course, is stick to their religion and advocate for not only the repeal of Obamacare but for a complete and total absence of government involvement in health care. That is GOP orthodoxy: Get medical insurance from your employer, buy it on the open market, get it from the man in the moon, don’t get it all; just keep the government out of it. You’re on your own.

Republicans should step up to that, own it, advocate openly and vigorously for it, and accept the electoral consequences. But they won’t because they know what those consequences would look like. That is most emphatically not what the American people want. What they want is help – help from the government, which is to say help from each other -- in dealing with the incredibly burdensome cost of health care in this country. (The U.S. health care sector is larger than all but five national economies in the world). So, for political survival, the GOP is left with cobbling together something that does what people want but which they can plausibly say is not Obamacare. But, of course, it will be Obamacare. Here is columnist George Will’s concise explanation of why that is:

“If you begin by accepting, as the country does, the Barack Obama premise that the chief metric of health care reform is universal access, and then if you add to that you’re going to have a system in which pre-existing health problems will not preclude you from purchasing insurance, and then you add to that you’re going to build this around a system in which 147-million Americans get their health insurance from their employer with special tax preferences for that…if you start like that you are bound to create a system of regulations and subsidies that’s very complicated; different regulations than Mr. Obama had and different subsidies, but the same basic kind of architecture.”

Noticeably absent from Republican deliberations on this matter, as they go about the business of assembling a program with the “same basic architecture” as Obamacare, are characterizations of it as “socialized medicine” and a government take-over of health care, both of which were flung around extravagantly during the original ACA debate. That debate, by the way, demonstrated that health care reform is not some pet cause of Democrats and lefties. Republicans and other conservatives were fully on board with the need for major changes in the way we provide and pay for health care. They – in the person of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and many, many others -- said so repeatedly during the legislative debate over the ACA and have said so many times since. Although those people enthusiastically endorsed the idea that something needed to be done, what they thought that might look like they didn’t say. They only said Obamacare wasn’t it. For eight years.

No matter how many hairs Obamacare opponents try to split, Mitt Romney’s program in Massachusetts was, and is, essentially the same thing. So, they were for Obamacare before they were against it. The individual mandate was part of the Massachusetts program and was an idea that was strongly backed by conservatives whose position was that people who didn’t buy in would essentially be freeloaders. People who think the mandate can be cherry-picked out because it’s the one provision of Obamacare that everyone hates, don’t understand how insurance works. Paul Waldman of the Wasgibngton Post explains it this way:

“The ACA’s individual mandate wasn’t popular, but it was necessary to solve a key problem, which is that if you want to guarantee coverage for those with preexisting conditions, you need to spread costs as widely as possible. Get everyone into the risk pool, and you can do it. So the law required people to carry insurance, fining them if they don’t. The GOP plan says that if you maintain ‘continuous coverage’ then you’ll still be insured despite your preexisting condition. If you go without insurance for two months, then you’ll have to pay a penalty once you start getting coverage again. But you’ll pay it to the insurance company, not to the federal treasury.

“Here’s the thing, though. If you’re healthy, and especially if you’re young and healthy, this system actually incentivizes you to wait until you get sick before getting insurance. You can say, why bother with insurance now? Sure, I’ll have to pay a 30 percent penalty on my premiums when I buy coverage again, but only for the first year. If I can get away with 10 years of having no insurance, and only get it when I’m faced with high expenses, I’ll still come out ahead. If young people make that calculation en masse, the risk pool winds up confined to people who are older and sicker, premiums skyrocket, insurers flee and the whole thing collapses.”

The high cost of health care is a terrible problem, and the Obama administration, and before that the Clinton administration, were right in giving it high priority. It puts millions of Americans on the brink of financial catastrophe and/or deprives them of medical care altogether, it exercises undo influence over where and how we live and work and what we do for a living, and it sucks billions of dollars to itself at the expense of all other sectors of the economy. The ACA doesn’t directly address all of that, but can be seen as a start. Whatever else happens, the creation, passage, and implementation of it guaranteed continued and intensifying focus on this huge national problem. Obsessing over Obamacare, and distorting what it is and isn’t, is politically driven and does nothing to solve a problem many millions of Americans share.

Whatever the Republicans cook up, it will be Obamacare -- just a less effective version of it – one that many believe will lead to large numbers of people losing their health coverage and to increases in premiums and out-of-pocket costs. (There is speculation that House Republican are afraid the Congressional Budget Office will “score” it exactly that way, which is why they’re hustling the bill along so quickly, hoping for passage before the CBO can give them and the American people the bad news, and why they’re making remarks aimed at de-legitimizing the CBO and its work.)

Trump supporters: This will be the “something terrific” with which your man said he would replace Obamacare. He said, you’ll recall: “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Hmm.

 


 

Another Shooting on 5th Avenue?

Donald Trump’s assertion of a year or so ago that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose voters was an eloquent articulation of the total contempt he has for the intelligence of his followers. So slavish are they in their adoration of him, he believes, that nothing he says or does, no matter how ludicrous or contemptible, will turn them away. And that has proven to be the case.

Another phenomenon at work here is that even the more reasonable people among the Trump coterie don’t know about those ludicrous and contemptible things because, in their paranoid distrust of the press, they don’t read about them. They hold their hands over their ears and hum loudly when Trump is spoken of critically, lest their comfort bubble be penetrated. Or, inexplicably, they are so convinced of the blessings he will cast upon the land that they’re willing to ignore daily displays of his wrong-headedness. What great changes they think he will bring to their lives -- changes worth embracing such a fool as their leader -- is anybody’s guess.

But there is a more ominous explanation – other than his contempt for his followers’ brainpower -- for two recent assertions by Trump: That Obama wiretapped Trump Tower and that long-ago public photo-ops of Schumer and Pelosi warrant investigations of ties they may have to Russia. That explanation: That he is becoming untethered from reality. 

These ideas are, to use the vernacular, crazy. And the fear is that he’s saying these things not because he thinks his followers will buy them, but because he actually believes them. This is dangerous territory -- ominous because of what it could mean should he have similar paranoid fantasies about, say, N. Korea or China.

For the record, let’s take a look at the idea that pictures of Schumer and Pelosi in the company of Russian officials could mean they have any ties to Russia, let alone ties that are comparable to Trump’s. In Trump’s view, if an investigation of him is warranted, and investigation of them is warranted. The evidence against them: public widely circulated and utterly inconsequential one-off publicity photographs. The evidence against him: For that, we turn to a recent column by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post…

Having trouble following the fast-moving developments about the Trump team’s ties to Russia? Here’s a primer to get you up to speed:

President Trump got to know Russian President Vladimir Putin "very well,"  but he doesn’t “know Putin.” Putin sent Trump “a present” and they spoke, but Trump has “no relationship with him.”

Trump has “nothing to do with Russia,” but his son has said “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets” and “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Russia definitely hacked the Democratic National Committee, unless it was a 400-pound man in his bedroom or a guy in a van down by the river.

U.S. intelligence agencies allege that Putin meddled in the election to try to get Trump elected, but this was all a “ruse”and a “fake news fabricated deal to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats.”

There was “no communication” between Trump’s team and Russia during the campaign and transition, except for communication with Russia by Trump’s future national security adviser, his future attorney general and his son-in-law and two others.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions “did not have communications with the Russians,” except for the two meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak he neglected to mention under oath. Sessions then said he never discussed the campaign with Russians, which is not what was alleged. Sessions had “no idea what this allegation is about” regarding his Russian contacts but had enough of an idea what it was about to declare “it is false.”

Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, but this decision is unrelated to the discovery that he spoke twice with the Russian ambassador despite his claims that he had no such meetings. Sessions cannot confirm the investigation he recused himself from exists or will exist in the future.

Sessions believes that perjury is one of the constitutional “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “goes to the heart of the judicial system,” except his false testimony under oath to Congress was not a false statement but a case of speaking too quickly.

Sessions met with the Russian ambassador during the time Sessions was serving as a surrogate for the Trump campaign, but not in his capacity as a surrogate for the Trump campaign.

Sessions remembers nothing of his meetings with the Russian ambassador, except that he remembers clarly talking about terrorism and religion and Ukraine and he’s sure they didn’t talk about the campaign. It was a total coincidence that around the same time Sessions was meeting with the Russian ambassador, Trump gave an interview that ended up on Russian state-owned TV saying he didn’t believe reports of Russian influence in the U.S. election.

Trump, Trump’s press secretary and a broad swath of Republican members of Congress said there is no reason for Sessions to recuse himself from the investigation from which Sessions recused himself.

The incendiary and salacious “dossier” by a former British intelligence official on Trump’s involvement with Russia was completely unverified, but U.S. authorities were prepared to pay the man who wrote it.

Carter Page, who has extensive ties to Moscow, had “no role” in the Trump campaign, except that Trump, meeting with The Post’s editorial board, listed Page as an adviser.

Reports of the Trump team’s ties to Russia are “fake news,” yet those who leaked the information for those articles need to be found and punished.

Trump ousted Michael Flynn, his national security adviser, who Trump says did nothing wrong. Flynn, who spoke several times with Kislyak on the day President Barack Obama announced sanctions against Russia, told Vice President Pence and the FBI that the discussion that intelligence officials heard them having about sanctions was not a discussion about sanctions. The sanctions that Flynn reportedly discussed with Kislyak, in the conversation he can’t entirely remember, were not really sanctions.

Former Trump campaign manager Paul manafort had “absolutely nothing to do and never has with Russia,” except for his extensive work for Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia forces in Ukraine. Manafort declared in the fall that “there’s no investigation going on by the FBI that I’m aware of” into his contacts with Russia, months after that investigation began.

Sessions previously asserted that “no one is above the law” and that failure to punish people for being untruthful under oath “will weaken the legal system,” and he proclaimed that “I’m very careful about how I conduct myself in these matters.” Except when he isn’t.

Manafort is a close Trump associate whose background is of particular interest when it comes to discussions of Trump and Russia, as explained in this article in Slate Magazine.

Again With the "Massive Voter Fraud" Thing

Now comes Steve Miller, the 31-year-old presidential advisor and a hot-eyed ideologue whose thinking on foreign policy is based not on what he knows but on what he believes – in charge of the handling of, and waving nukes at, North Korea. Horrifying. And this week he also jumped on the “massive voting fraud” bandwagon, citing -- just like Trump, Spicer, et.al. -- no evidence.

Imagine if Donald Trump had won the popular vote and “the media” then published stories – stories that included no evidence or sources or actual facts -- alleging that as many as 5-million fraudulent votes were cast in the election. No body copy to explain the story – just a headline: MILLIONS OF FRAUDULENT VOTES CAST, GIVING TRUMP POPULAR VOTE WIN.

“We have no evidence, no reporting, no examples,” said the editor of the Daily Planet. “It’s just something we believe.”

Of course, Trumpists and the Republicans would be strangling on their anger, raging about the corrupt and dishonest media, and demanding that multiple heads roll.

But that’s pretty much what Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary, cited as validation of the president’s contention that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for massive voter fraud. "The president does believe that,” Spicer said. “He has stated that before.”

That, then, would be their evidence -- that they believe it. If the inhabitants of Planet Trump believe something to be true, it is true. End of story.

Following that surreal declaration be Spicer -- and only after being challenged on the fact that they felt no compulsion to look further into the biggest electoral scandal in the country’s history -- the Trump team announced a “major investigation.” The betting out here in Flyoverland is that this is an investigation that will never happen.

But let’s save the White House the time, trouble, and expense. If it will simply point any one of a thousand news outlets, friendly or unfriendly, in the right direction on this, they will be more than happy to track this amazing story down and publish it; and, having uncovered the biggest voter fraud in history, collect their Pulitzer prize. Show us your evidence. Tell us where to look. Give us your sources. We will be all over this. And “we” absolutely includes GOP friendlies like the Wall Street Journal and (I may be going out on a limb here) Fox News. Both the honest and dishonest media want this story, Mr. President, and are eager to tell it. We have no interest in covering it up. Ready when you are.

More recently, Trump said he would have won in New Hampshire if not for voters bused in from out of state. Like so many other things he says, this is a lie. He simply made it up on the spot.

"There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of major voter fraud in New Hampshire's elections," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said in a statement. "President Trump continues to spread a dangerous lie and it's long past time for Republican leadership in New Hampshire to stand up and defend our state's electoral system."

Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission called on Trump to "immediately share his evidence with the public and with the appropriate law-enforcement authorities so that his allegations may be investigated promptly and thoroughly."

"The president has issued an extraordinarily serious and specific charge," the commissioner said in a statement. "Allegations of this magnitude cannot be ignored."

Same with the Trumpian contention that terrorist attacks have been under-reported or not reported at all. If there have been terrorist attacks that he knows about but which have not been reported to the public by the media, then he absolutely owes it to us tell us where, when, and how these incidents occurred, how many people were killed/injured, and the identities of the victims.

Meanwhile, Trump true believers will just have to sit themselves down and come to grips with a few things: (1) Reporting what Donald Trump says and does is not “negative coverage;” (2) newspapers don’t make stuff up or cover stuff up; (3) three-million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than for Trump; (4) regarding massive voter fraud in the election: It. Didn’t. Happen.

Eternal Vigilance

(Ed. note: In observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, and in light of the Trump administration's contention that the Third Reich's "final solution" was not overwhelmingly about the murder of Jewish people, Flyoverland is re-posting the following from December and adding a link to an article in the Washington Post that further examines anti-Semitism)

“There’s a sucker born every minute” is an observation widely attributed to the flamboyant 19th-century showman P.T. Barnum, and it says this: The folks of a given generation may catch on to a con, making it more difficult to pull off. But there’s always a new generation coming along whose members are unaware of it and therefore susceptible to it. The perennial scam favorites appear and fade with regularity, but they never stop coming back.

That’s how the anti-Semitism con works. Destructive characterizations of Jews as a people, some outlandish and totally demented and some with a certain surface plausibility,(for the simple-minded, at least) come back again and again, and are given wide-eyed acceptance and dissemination by the incoming wave of the uninitiated.

The current political climate appears ripe for just that phenomenon. Thus, Flyoverland confidently predicts the resurrection, for example, of something called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a pseudo-scholarly and completely bogus early 20th-century document that purports to be the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders laying out their plan for world domination through control of the press and the world’s economies, and through subversion of the morals of non-Jews. It was long ago shown to be fraudulent but it’s still around and still widely available, and repeatedly comes back into favor with a certain segment of the population when the climate is right. It’s coming soon to an alt-right Web site near you. If it’s not there already.

An article in Wikipedia lists other tropes and canards about Jewish people that have come into fashion repeatedly over centuries, all designed to justify vilification (and blame) of the hated “other.” Some of these, including the Protocols, were favorites in Germany before and during WWII. Among the things Jews as a people have been accused of:

• Control of the global financial system;
• Control of the media, Hollywood, and the music industry;
• Hatred of non-Jews and the intention to destroy Christianity;
• Ritual murder and bestialiuty;
• Host desecration;
• Poisoning wells to spread disease;
• Causing wars, revolutions, and calamities;
• Lack of patriotism and allegiance to “world jewry” instead of to their country;
• Usury and profiteering (This one, or forms of it, enjoys fairly widespread casual acceptance even among people who do not see themselves as anti-Semitic);
• Playing an important role in the slave trade;

Lest we forget: Millions of people – young and old, tall and short, fat and thin, smart and dumb, handsome and ugly, blonde and brunette, factory and office workers, doctors and lawyers, artists and writers, street sweepers, teachers, small business owners, grocery store clerks, soccer moms, gawky teenagers, little kids, and babies – were murdered by Germany’s Third Reich with bullet and rope and fire and gas, because they were Jewish.

That kind of savagery is the culmination of a process that begins with the demonization of a population through stereotyping -- often, to the casual observer, innocent -- then blaming. It can happen to any population that is identifiable – skin color, ethnicity, religion -- and has happened to Jews time after time over centuries.

Something like the Holocaust can‘t happen again? Maybe not. We certainly want to think so. But…

Such a thing could never happen is exactly what the German people thought, before it happened and while it was happening. And, as we speak, we are seeing a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic activity in the United States and in the world, particularly Western Europe, according to the Anti-Defmation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, both of which keep careful track of these matters. Historically, such activity has ebbed and flowed – it’s always there but occasionally bubbles to the surface and becomes more noticeable, and more frightening, before dying back again. Will the current “flow” coalesce into something bigger, more sinister, more dangerous?

Does this uptick have anything to do with Donald Trump? Is Donald Trump anti-Semitic? Not overtly. But he has enthusiastic supporters who could not be more overt about it, and he has said this: “[Hillary Clinton] meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty, in order to enrich these global financial powers…” Not an open reference to Jews but unquestionably part of the vocabulary of anti-Semitism over the years. And speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition a year ago, he said, "Look, I'm a negotiator like you folks; we're negotiators.” A perfect example of the casual acceptance of a stereotype. Trump didn’t know any of those people personally, so as far as he knew, not a single person in the room was a good negotiator. But they were all Jewish.

Flyoverland cannot recall a time when xenophobes, ultra-nationalists, racists, and haters of every stripe seemed to feel as empowered as they do now. Of all these hatreds, anti-Semitism, though it's intertwined with all the others, stands out as the most sinister, if only because we had a vivid demonstration just a few decades ago of the horror to which it can lead.

It's said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Just so.

Shooting on 5th Avenue

In his inaugural address to the nation, the newly-minted president of the United States said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters.” No, wait. He didn’t say that in his inaugural address. He said it a year ago in a campaign speech in Sioux City, Iowa.

But he might as well have. Nothing more accurately captures the contempt Trump has for his supporters – their gullibility, their unreasoning adoration of him, their willingness to accept words from his mouth that range from the inaccurate to the untrue to the utterly fantastical, than that sentence.

Except for possibly this one, which was in the inaugural address: Washington. he said, has “subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.” In fact, as the New York Times pointed out in an editorial entitled What Trump doesn’t get About America, the United States leads the world in military spending, allocating more than the next seven nations combined, including China and Russia. Current spending, in fact, is far higher than it was before the 9/11 attacks.” But the idea that the U.S. military is in disarray and needs to be rescued by him, though not true, plays better with his audience.

Or this, in which he used the quickly-becoming-immortalized phrase “American carnage” to perpetuate his characterization – always a crowd-pleaser at his rallies -- of U.S. cities as crime-ridden hellholes aching to be pulled back from the brink by him. In fact, crime is far lower than in past decades. That’s not an opinion. That’s a fact. But his followers believe otherwise because he tells them to and they want to. Of course crime is a problem. It’s always a problem. And now, more than ever, it’s related to the easy availability of guns which he and his folks are so fond of. But Trump’s depiction of U.S. cities as being on the verge of incineration and collapse because of crime is just theater.

Or this, always a reliable entry in the Republican hit parade: that government spending is all about taking money away from the decent and hard-working and handing it over to the lazy and stupid. And so, in his address, he pandered to this mythology by identifying as a top priority his intention to “get our people off welfare and back to work.” This is exactly what his people want to hear – that their hard-earned dollars are being taken away from them by “big government” and handed over to losers, and that’s why they’re not as prosperous as they would otherwise be. 

What they don’t want to hear, and what it’s therefore not in Trump’s interest to tell them, is that “welfare” is and always has been a miniscule part of government expenditures. “The number of people receiving federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits fell by more than 70 percent, to 1.2 million, between 1996 and 2016,” the Times editorial said. “As Mr. Trump spoke about the disappearance of jobs…the unemployment rate has fallen from 10 percent in 2009, the height of the recession, to less than 5 percent.” So getting people off welfare and back to work, though generally a laudable idea, is not a major priority because it’s not a major problem. But saying otherwise, in the certainty that his true believers will unquestioningly accept everything he says, is what works best for Mr. Trump.

Same with his “rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation,” another fan favorite because they believe what he has told them – that thieving foreigners have stolen away our manufacturing jobs and that he intends to put a stop to that right now. What he doesn’t tell them, because it wouldn’t help him to do so and because they don’t want to hear it, is that he can’t put a stop to the real culprit in the loss of manufacturing jobs, automation. Nor does he mention the millions of American jobs that are dependent on commercial interaction with all these villainous countries.

The big question with regard to this speech is…why. It was, as many people have observed, much more like a campaign speech than an inaugural address. Our 5th Avenue shooter was still firing away even though there was no longer any reason to do so. Why waste time and energy, and political capital, in another sermon to the converted when he could have used it to bring at least a few members of the unconverted into the fold? Flyover’s opinion: Donald Trump’s run for the presidency was never about serving the people, improving their lot, striving for a more perfect union, or persuading people to embrace a vision of how things ought to be. This was Donald’s Excellent Adventure – his fun and exciting new career. It was another source of food for his insatiable ego, and the feeding required an endless supply of narratives, invented if necessary, for him to be the hero of, an endless supply of dragons of which he will be the slayer. Those narratives, and the ego gratification that goes with getting people to believe them, are the fun of it for him, and that’s why he pounded away at them again. He doesn’t give a hoot about converting the unconverted. He just wants to hear, again and again, the roar of the crowd  And so he tells that crowd whatever will make the roaring happen. knowing they will believe whatever he says. 

If he thinks so little of his followers, imagine what he thinks about the rest of us.

From Russia Without Love

It was recently reported that Trump supporters, no longer able to logically deny that Russia launched a cyber attack against America, have switched their argument to this: Yeah, okay, Russia did it, but what’s the big deal? Russia’s okay, Putin’s okay, we just don’t see it as anything to get worked up about.

Well, anyone who thinks Russia’s meddling with our election -- and, by inference, our entire cyber infrastructure -- is not a big deal, simply doesn’t understand Russia – what its place in the world is and has been. So, a few facts of life regarding no-big-deal Russia: and its dictator Vladimir Putin:

The KGB

The KGB, in which Putin was a high-level player, was a Soviet secret police organization whose specialty was the suppression of internal dissent, in the service of which it imprisoned and/or exiled and/or murdered thousands and thousands of people within Russia itself and in the many “satellite” countries Russia had taken over by force after World War II. Internal dissent was defined by, among many other things, the practice of religion, which was forbidden in the Soviet Union and brutally suppressed, and by any criticism of communism or the government. The organization was the embodiment of Orwell’s “Big Brother,” with operatives and informants everywhere, in a closed-off, paranoid society in which the only “news” was government propaganda and in which it was necessary to be extremely careful about whom you were talking to and who might overhear, lest you be grabbed up in the night, held incommunicado, and sent to the Gulag for the rest of your life. The KGB was a merciless and brutal force, not unlike the reviled Gestapo and SS of Nazi Germany. No big deal if this former secret police operative directs a computer hack of U.S. elections?

The Cold War

After World War II, Russia joined the United States as a nuclear power, and the two countries developed and deployed enough nuclear firepower, targeted at each other, to destroy the world many times over. Over time, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the threat of a nuclear apocalypse under which people of my generation were brought up died back and much of the back-and-forth saber rattling ended. But Russia still has hundreds of missiles pointed at U.S. population centers, and the implicit threat of Armageddon remains. Russia may not be the enemy of the U.S. it once was, but it is no friend. The term “hostile power” pretty much captures it. No big deal if this nuclear-armed adversary attacks our cyber infrastructure?

No big deal to Europe?

U.S. allies in Europe, countries we have solemnly promised to defend and who have promised to defend us as members of NATO, are deathly afraid of Russia. And Russia gave a vivid and bloody demonstration of just how justified that fear is by its ruthless theft of Crimea from Ukraine, one of the former Soviet satellites ruled over by the Kremlin with an iron fist.

“…few stand to lose more than the pro-American leaders of countries in Central and Eastern Europe,” wrote Josh Rogin recently in the Washington Post. “Those leaders, fighting on the front line of the battle against Putin’s drive to upend the democratic world order, are asking Trump to think twice before choosing the wrong side.”

A letter, quoted by Rogin, from 17 current and former officials of these countries, , said this: “Putin does not seek American greatness. As your allies, we do.” They went on to caution against any weakening of sanctions against Russia for its Ukraine adventure. “The rules-based international order on which Western security has depended for decades would be weakened. The alliances that are the true source of American greatness would erode: countries that have expended blood, treasure and political capital in support of transatlantic security will wonder if America is now no longer a dependable friend.” In short, millions of people in the vicinity of Russia are terrified that Russia will (again) take over their countries by force and subjugate them to the rule of the Kremlin. No big deal if our leadership defends Russia and its leadership and questions the viability of NATO?

Putin’s Leadership

Under Putin, so admired in certain quarters in the U.S., the Russian economy as measured by GDP is about 1/12th the size of America’s. America’s is the largest in the world; Russia’s is 13th. It has a robust and predatory mafia, endemic and rampant corruption at every level of government, and an oligarchy/kleptocracy that puts vast wealth in the hands of a miniscule minority, the connected, and precious little in the hands of everybody else. It produces little else but oil, military hardware, government bureaucrats, and spies. Putin’s leadership consists of persuading his countrymen that life would be good if they could only return to their chest-thumping ways of old when they strutted on the world stage and enslaved most of Eastern Europe. No big deal that this second-rate operation is so admired by some Americans?

Are we clear?

America can live in the same world as Russia – interact with it, trade with it, have economic ties to it, and, hopefully, avoid ever going to war with it But that doesn’t mean that Russia is just some big, friendly bear on the other side of the world – a country whose leader is worthy of our admiration because of his decisiveness and whose intentions are nothing but benign. Russia is large and dangerous and not a friend of America, This is the country your leader apparently wishes to make nice with, and who either denies or sees nothing untoward in its vigorous attempts to attack the core of our democracy, the electoral process. He is wrong. Russia and its cyber attacks are a very big deal. Those who kiss them off as a minor distraction are flirting with the end of democracy in the United States.

Or worse. If Russia, or anyone else, should hack its way into our power grid and/or our financial system? Well, good night and good luck. And let’s be clear: This is not theoretical. It happened. Russia hacked its way into the computer network of the Democratic National Committee. So it has the intention and it has the means.

It’s a very big deal.  Trump, as president, needs to stand up like a man, and like a commander-in-chief, and defend his country against the depredations of this aggressor, instead of defending the aggressor.

Ordinary People

When I was a copy boy at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about a thousand years ago, the reporters and editors I worked around were definitely a mixed bag – old and young, grouchy and cheerful, industrious and lazy, zealous and jaded, introverted and loud – but they were for the most part ordinary folk. Newspaper pay was poor then, so they were firmly ensconced in the middle class, if that. They had spouses, they raised children and doted on grandchildren, they went to church, they kvetched about low pay and high taxes, they barbecued in the back yard, and some of them sometimes drank too much.

Editorially, the P-D had a liberal tilt, characterized in the main by the belief that government could be a force for good – could improve people’s lives and serve the common weal – and also by skepticism about the motives of the financially and politically powerful. Most of the staffers at the paper were probably on board with this in a general sort of way, but they were nothing like evangelists for it. I think many were not all that opinionated or political; they did their job of reporting on fires and crimes, of editing wire copy, of covering sports and city hall, of chasing commas, and didn’t worry too much about what the big bosses or the editorial page philosophers thought. If pressed, most of them, but by no means all, would probably come down very slightly to the left of center politically. There are idealogues in every group, but the idea that this motley collection of the good, bad, and ugly was ideologically hawkish or inclined to see themselves as intellectually superior to the working classes is laughable. They were the working classes.

My father, Dickson Terry, was a P-D features writer there for many years, and I knew him to be a liberal thinker in that he deplored racism and believed government could and should play a role in helping the downtrodden. But he was pretty conservative in his general deportment, the sort of person who believes a real man supports his family and his community, pays his taxes and his debts, wears a necktie to the office, and is loyal to the United States of America. I know that he – and I assume the great majority of his co-workers – took some pride in their craft, wished to do it right and well, and believed that accuracy – the facts, zealously pursued, carefully verified, and devoid of supposition or opinion – was a newspaperman’s highest calling. They liked the idea of a free press playing a role in making democracy work by holding politicians accountable, but didn’t take themselves too seriously

It is these people, in a thousand newsrooms in a thousand cities and towns across America, that Donald Trump, with the enthusiastic approval of his worshipers, characterizes as crooked, dishonest, and the lowest form of life. I offer the above actual description of them by way of reassuring the delusional – or the merely lazy who casually and without a moment’s reflection accept stereotyping -- that they were not, and are not, engaged in a grand conspiracy to conceal the truth and advance an agenda. The ordinary folk who populate the country’s newsrooms are not members of a secret cabal that has clandestine meetings to plot out how to slant the news and suppress stories about political murders, child sex slavery, or contacts with alien life forms, nor are they forced by their bosses to do these things. Try to imagine a scenario in which a reporter digs up evidence of massive voter fraud or the existence of a child sex ring in a pizza parlor, and having the story buried by the boss for political or ideological reasons, and all of his co-workers, hundreds of ordinary citizens – like my father, for example --, keeping quiet about it.

Bottom line: What these people do is find and report news as accurately and thoroughly as they are able. They don’t withhold or slant what they find in the service of a political position or ideology. They just don’t. It doesn’t work that way. Reporting facts that are contrary to someone’s beliefs or expectations is not slanting the news. Reporting what Donald Trump says – his actual words – is not negative coverage. That these parents and grandparents, these little league coaches and bake-sale organizers, these charity volunteers and football fans, these friends and neighbors are sitting on information that Sandy Hook was a government conspiracy, or that 9/11 was an inside job, or that plans are afoot to take away people’s guns and imprison them in closed Wal-Marts is beyond ludicrous

All of the above is really about daily newspapers, which, for purposes of this discussion, are not the same thing as that which has come to be known as “the media,” a term without any actual meaning. Media is the plural form of medium, a word which when paired with the word “news” refers to a way by which news is disseminated. So, daily newspapers are a news medium. Magazines are another. So are radio, television; and now, the Internet. Within each of these there are multiple distinctions having to do with political viewpoint, size and resources, talent/knowledge/experience, and commitment to thoroughness and accuracy. They are not interchangeable. There is no “the media,” notwithstanding the vilification heaped upon “it” by Trump and his hot-eyed devotees.

No question, though, there is a widespread willingness, among people in general, and among people in “the media” who should know better, to lump them all together. Broadcast news – television, in particular – has brought much of this on itself (and, unfortunately, on everyone else) by relentlessly intermixing news and entertainment and by making matinee idols of its news readers. By making a Kardashian divorce or a network sitcom plot development part of the news, they inevitably make all their news suspect, and no amount of news spending and staffing or solemn intonations about what serious and professional journalists they all are can fix that. And, sure, journalists in even the most sophisticated outlets come up short occasionally with regard to the accuracy and thoroughness of their reporting.

But to be absolutely clear: None of that is the same thing as fake news, which is “news” that is literally made up – invented out of thin air – for fun and profit. Fake news is not new; Enquirer-like publications running stories about Elvis sightings, UFO encounters, and women giving birth to bowling balls have been around for a long time. But because they were tinged with humor by their very ridiculousness, they were taken seriously by a tiny minority of mouth-breathers.

Now, because of the internet and cable television, there’s much more of it, it has largely lost its comedic edge even though the stories are no less silly than they’ve always been, and many more people take it seriously; which is to say, they take it as seriously as carefully sourced, fact-checked, and provable stories in real news outlets. The unfortunate and potentially calamitous result of this mélange of real news, fake news, opinion-based news, and plain gossip: In the eyes of a sizeable segment of the American public, news reporting is one big mish-mash of interchangeable parts, all saying whatever they need to say to make money and none saying anything true. Or, worse, real news consists only of content that confirms one’s pre-conceived ideas and prejudices. That’s not reality – there is a real and true distinction to be made between those organizations that take the work of news reporting seriously and those that do not, but it’s how many people see it.

This is dangerous territory. When people generally disregard what is true in favor of what they wish to be true, they are easy prey for cynical politicians, purveyors of rumor and innuendo, and conspiracy theorists. When that takes hold, democracy ends and chaos follows.