Completely unsolicited, a recent breakfast companion announced she would never live in close proximity to a Trump supporter. A little unnerved, I told her I wasn’t a big fan of Obama, either.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump is not my favorite President. He’s a thug, a bigot, and a self-serving criminal (which the link describes in some detail). But the previous Clinton and Obama administrations made Trump possible, if not necessary, and they are all vying for the coveted “Most Corrupt Presidency” award.
Why do I say that? Consider the Trump bigotry. It’s a convenient way to divide and conquer the population, distracting them from the genuine malefactors on Wall Street, and directing the attention of the disaffected to the “other” (Hispanics, LBGT, etc.) rather than the people whose frauds crashed the economy. Trump is particularly hard on those “Bad Hombres” coming from our Hispanic neighbors to the south.
But Obama tripled the rate of deportations of his predecessor.
So who is the real oppressor of the Hispanics here? The harsh talker or the big deporter?
Or...consider the bank scandal Obama greeted on his first day in office. It would have been impossible, or at least much smaller if Clinton hadn’t deregulated Wall Street. To fully appreciate the awfulness of Obama’s response, one has to compare it to the previous biggest-ever bank scandal, the Savings and Loans.
Yes, Reagan made the S&L scandal worse by deregulating them so they could “grow” their way out of trouble by taking even bigger risks. But the regulators--many of them Republican-appointed--actually did their job. They filed 30,000+ referrals for criminal prosecution, and the Justice Dept. prosecuted 1200+ cases with a 90% conviction rate. They got really big fish, too--Charles Keating was one.
So how does the Obama administration’s response compare to Reagan / Bush 41 regulators in the era of the S&L scandal? The scandal itself is 70 times larger than the S&Ls, in fact bailing out a single bank (IndyMAC) cost as much as the entire S&L bailout.
So...how many referrals for criminal prosecution from the Obama regulators? Answer: zero. Even party loyalist, former State Treasurer Phil Angiledes who led an inquiry about the subprime mortgage debacle expressed surprise. The Obama Justice Dept. prosecuted about a dozen cases, all small fish.
The template for treating the big criminals was that Attorney General, and former Wall St. lawyer, Eric Holder threatened prosecution, then settled for dimes-on-the-dollar fines, with no admission of guilt. That latter omission makes it harder for the victims to prosecute civil cases.
So...Obama legitimized criminality. We can’t be surprised when someone who is transparently criminal succeeds such an administration, nor can we be surprised when Trump is called “authentic” when he’s transparently criminal, while Obama obscured this criminality.
The current kerfuffle about Facebook data is just the latest occurrence of Obama getting a pass when Trump is condemned.
And why is Trump "authentic"? Answer: (from Legacy of the Iraq War Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone):
“Trump is just too stupid to use the antiseptic terminology we once thought we had to cook up to cloak our barbarism. He says “torture” instead of “enhanced interrogation” because he can’t remember what the difference is supposed to be. Which is understandable. Fifteen years is a long time for a rotting brain to keep up a pretense.
"We flatter ourselves that Trump is an aberration. He isn’t. He’s a depraved, cowardly, above-the-law bully, just like the country we’ve allowed ourselves to become in the last fifteen years.
“That we now deserve him as president is a consequence of the final lesson of the Iraq debacle: We lost that war. Not militarily maybe, but in the sense that we so completely dismantled what was left of our civil society in prosecution of it that, looking back, a battlefield loss would surely have been preferable.
“Wherever he is now, as eels perhaps slither through his eye-holes, Osama bin Laden has to be laughing. He had to know all along that only Americans were capable of destroying America. But he couldn’t have dreamed we’d do it so fast.”
So...I don't think adopting the kind of tribalism Trump is promoting is much of a solution to what he's promoting. And letting the Trump supporters know they are "deplorable" by looking down our noses at them isn't likely to promote an end to intolerance.
I wish this was easier...
Don’t get me wrong, Trump is not my favorite President. He’s a thug, a bigot, and a self-serving criminal (which the link describes in some detail). But the previous Clinton and Obama administrations made Trump possible, if not necessary, and they are all vying for the coveted “Most Corrupt Presidency” award.
Why do I say that? Consider the Trump bigotry. It’s a convenient way to divide and conquer the population, distracting them from the genuine malefactors on Wall Street, and directing the attention of the disaffected to the “other” (Hispanics, LBGT, etc.) rather than the people whose frauds crashed the economy. Trump is particularly hard on those “Bad Hombres” coming from our Hispanic neighbors to the south.
But Obama tripled the rate of deportations of his predecessor.
So who is the real oppressor of the Hispanics here? The harsh talker or the big deporter?
Or...consider the bank scandal Obama greeted on his first day in office. It would have been impossible, or at least much smaller if Clinton hadn’t deregulated Wall Street. To fully appreciate the awfulness of Obama’s response, one has to compare it to the previous biggest-ever bank scandal, the Savings and Loans.
Yes, Reagan made the S&L scandal worse by deregulating them so they could “grow” their way out of trouble by taking even bigger risks. But the regulators--many of them Republican-appointed--actually did their job. They filed 30,000+ referrals for criminal prosecution, and the Justice Dept. prosecuted 1200+ cases with a 90% conviction rate. They got really big fish, too--Charles Keating was one.
So how does the Obama administration’s response compare to Reagan / Bush 41 regulators in the era of the S&L scandal? The scandal itself is 70 times larger than the S&Ls, in fact bailing out a single bank (IndyMAC) cost as much as the entire S&L bailout.
So...how many referrals for criminal prosecution from the Obama regulators? Answer: zero. Even party loyalist, former State Treasurer Phil Angiledes who led an inquiry about the subprime mortgage debacle expressed surprise. The Obama Justice Dept. prosecuted about a dozen cases, all small fish.
The template for treating the big criminals was that Attorney General, and former Wall St. lawyer, Eric Holder threatened prosecution, then settled for dimes-on-the-dollar fines, with no admission of guilt. That latter omission makes it harder for the victims to prosecute civil cases.
So...Obama legitimized criminality. We can’t be surprised when someone who is transparently criminal succeeds such an administration, nor can we be surprised when Trump is called “authentic” when he’s transparently criminal, while Obama obscured this criminality.
The current kerfuffle about Facebook data is just the latest occurrence of Obama getting a pass when Trump is condemned.
And why is Trump "authentic"? Answer: (from Legacy of the Iraq War Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone):
“Trump is just too stupid to use the antiseptic terminology we once thought we had to cook up to cloak our barbarism. He says “torture” instead of “enhanced interrogation” because he can’t remember what the difference is supposed to be. Which is understandable. Fifteen years is a long time for a rotting brain to keep up a pretense.
"We flatter ourselves that Trump is an aberration. He isn’t. He’s a depraved, cowardly, above-the-law bully, just like the country we’ve allowed ourselves to become in the last fifteen years.
“That we now deserve him as president is a consequence of the final lesson of the Iraq debacle: We lost that war. Not militarily maybe, but in the sense that we so completely dismantled what was left of our civil society in prosecution of it that, looking back, a battlefield loss would surely have been preferable.
“Wherever he is now, as eels perhaps slither through his eye-holes, Osama bin Laden has to be laughing. He had to know all along that only Americans were capable of destroying America. But he couldn’t have dreamed we’d do it so fast.”
So...I don't think adopting the kind of tribalism Trump is promoting is much of a solution to what he's promoting. And letting the Trump supporters know they are "deplorable" by looking down our noses at them isn't likely to promote an end to intolerance.
I wish this was easier...
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