I liked this from Robert Reich this morning:
Words matter. When the media points out Trump's “potential conflicts of interest,” as it has in recent days when describing Trump's growing crypto enterprise, it doesn't come close to telling the public what's really going on — unprecedented paybacks and self-dealing by the president of the United States, using his office to make billions.
The correct word is corruption.
Reich shares my enthusiasm for the right word, and for stating what is very obviously going on, even if it upsets people to say it. We are at a moment in history where that is necessary, even if there might be a price to pay for doing so at some time to come.
I think Robert Reich, like me, thinks we cannot take the risk of turning a blind eye as so many did in the 1930s, as tyranny developed.
I recommend his Substack.
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This is attributed to various tyrants, but true: “He who controls the language rules the world.”
This is why so many people have turned away from the BBC (previously most of the mainstream media), for their poor choice (ie. biased use) of words. See:
“Is social media biased or balanced?” https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/znt7p9q
“Can we trust the BBC on Israel-Gaza? These media experts don’t think so” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-israel-gaza-media-experts/
“BBC Bias” https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/bbc-bias/
There is a right wing policy -see Trump but also to lesser extent the Toxic Tory Tabloids ( now including the Telegraph) to accuse opponents of bias -rather than debate the issues.
But we have seen the appointment of Establishment Friendly governors at the BBC. They failed over Brexit, and the Corporation started the Gaza War being Israeli biased. My impression, and you may not agree, is that the journalists are now showing more of the effect of the war in Gaza without making judgements but trying to leave us in no doubt about the responsibility. Subverting the directives, perhps? The BBC have showed ‘No Other Land’ which they might not have done a year or so ago.
When Gary Linaker made reasonable comments over asylum seekers and was suspended, the other journalists rallied round and the BBC had to back down. My American friends were impressed.
I got the impression Andrew Verity would be happy to comment on an MMT version but I don’t know if his colleagues agree or reject it. But that is another area.
However, I do applaud Channel 4 interviewers for the way they are more willing to challenge some of the people they have on.
Those who try to deal with the nakedly corrupt regime rather than call it out are appeasers.
Musk and others are changing people’s sense of truth. Trump’s lies about gas prices and so on demand that people reject the evidence of their own eyes.
Truth is at stake, and whether we live in a world where decisions have an even somewhat factual basis.
Agreed but all I would say is this:
Trump did not get where he is on his own.
His outrageous ideas have to come to be because he has had a lot of help within corrupted politics (and possibly external politics) and also his immediate base – the very rich around him.
Yes, we’ll have to deal with Trump, but the U.S. has to start dealing with the like-minded people around him as well.
Otherwise, why bother?
Richard,
I totally agree. I also enjoy Robert’s Saturday morning Coffee Klatch with Heather Lofthouse. It gives a different and incisive perspective on what is happening in the US than the MSM provides.
I think that worth paying for.
What do voters think? The ordinary joes in the street? Is it possible that they have factored in that he is a crook/liar/fantasist? (Farage? – fantasist and incompetant?) – do these elements matter to the ordinary joe? – rather than the message offered by Trump/Farage – I’m gonna tear things up – cue those in the middle getting unhappy – but powerless to do anything (by design – that is the way politics is designed – to make most people powerless).
I do not think any of this will have a “happy ending”
There is no happy ending to this
I heard one voter on BBC Radio Scotland this very morning state very clearly that as he’d always voted Conservative and was disenchanted with them he was now going to “take a chance” and vote Garbage ……. I turned the radio off !!!
Thank you for recommending Robert Reich’s blog, I read it most days. I have various friends who live in the States, and one at Harvard. I too do not think this will end well, and think violence could well break out. However, when I said this to a friend in California, on the basis of so many people owning guns, his reply pointed out that most of the weaponry is owned by the right wing etc, not the progressive types, so he reckons violence would be short lived ! Interesting observation.
Not encouraging though.
@ Deborah Booth
So does your American friend think the armed Rught Wing will kill all the unarmed Progrssives, or at least quickly defeat them?
Not a happy prospect to have the MAGA lunatics with their finger on the nuclear button, via their creator, the Mango Mussolini, who would only be emboldened by such an outcome produced by his cult-followers.
I’m reminded of “The Socerer’s Apprentice” in Walt Disneys “Fantasia”.
I’ve known the guy for thirty years – I think he is a total pessimist so yes he thinks the right wing will win however it is enacted .
Personally I am an optimist and eventually good will win . Watching the sudden kick backs is uplifting.
Deception has always been part of politics, but until recently, you had to avoid getting caught.
Stage 1 – truth mattered, most politicians thought so too (they really were honourable men, and women weren’t allowed), which sometimes made them sound a bit dull and required a degree of circumlocution. I’m not sure when this was. George Washington claimed to be one of these but maybe that’s a lie?
Stage 2 – truth still mattered, but politicians learned how to lie and deceive to get round that. But it was important not to get caught. (Profumo vs Parliament, Jonathan Aitken & Jeffrey Archer vs the Courts, Johnson v. his bosses, Michael Howard/Charles Moore)
Stage 3 – truth doesn’t matter any more, liars can rise to the top, people knew they were being lied to and discounted it. (Trump of course, & Johnson again, known to lie as London Mayor, known to lie about the NHS message on the side of the big red Brexit bus, known to be unreliable as a For.Sec who slipped off to party with the KGB in Italian villas without his security, but he still becomes UK Prime Minister, elected by colleagues and party members who knew exactly what a shopping trolley of a liar he was. Public think he’s a lad, bit of a liar, but we like him, and he”ll “get Brexit done”. Fa***e, Gove, and other bad boys of Brexit, likewise, some of whom had already moved to stage 4, but used SLAPP to pretend they were Stage 2 (Carol Cadwallader can tell you more).
Stage 4 – as for stage 3, but with added hypocrisy. The present day. Lying (but claiming to be truthful) as a deliberate well thought out strategy. Best example of this in UK would be Starmer, who lied his way into politics in 2015 as a left wing radical, lied his way into Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, lied about the “2nd vote”, lied successfully all through the 2020 Labour leadership campaign, lied with his 10 pledges, lied successfully to the UK electorate about “change”, and is lying now about almost everything (except his “Zionism, 100%, unqualified” and his hatred of the left).
The challenge is not in exposing Johnson or Trump. It’s finding enough people, on left OR right who think that lying matters.
Everyone who voted Tory in 2019 or Labour in 2024, was, voting for a proven liar and deceiver to lead our country at a time of crisis, and presumably making some sort of moral bargain, either with the devil, or their conscience or Fate, that it would work out okay in the end and that they were preventing something worse happening.
It was a bad bargain.
Something worse DID happen, and they had voted for it.
A bit harsh?
Maybe, but not as harsh as what actually has happened, domestically and internationally to some very vulnerable people around the world.
So yes, let’s call a liar, a liar, and corruption, corruption.
By the way, those who amass fortunes in cryptocurrency, need to think very carefully about the personal security of their loved ones (and themselves), as crooks are exploring increasingly ruthless and gruesome ways of acquiring access to their digital wallets.
Thanks
We entered this final stage when Blair showed that a politician could be caught blatantly lying (as he did about WMDs), and still get re-elected. That gave the green light to any politician who wanted to lie their way to power.
Trump did not create Post -modernism but he had been its perfect monster.
Re cryptocurrency, is Stablecoin a euphemism for horsesh*t?
Yes
Far more recent than the 1930’s, Richard. Trump had a large number of conflicts of interest – as did his daughter and her husband (they both had formal positions in his government, remember), and the two sons – that were, or were very near to, corruption. But apart from the “usual suspects” on MSNBC (Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnell and Ari Melber) – who covered them quite extensively – they were hardly, if ever, covered, and certainly not to the extent that any action was taken. In short, the supposed “guard rails” contained in various federal laws and acts failed, precisely because they were drafted to cover the assumed extent of bad behaviour of a “normal” President or politicians and Trump simply blew those assumptions out of the water.
So Trump and his cronies had a practice run at this, and now it’s full on corruption, because let’s be honest, whose going to stop him? Already his pick for AG – Pam Bondi – is making Trump’s first and second AG’s – Sessions and Barr – look like paragons of virtue, which they were compared to her. And all the district offices for the DoJ have been placed under the control of similarly Trump worshiping lackeys. So, there’s no threat or actual law enforcement at all.
Of course, in normal times – even with Trump Mark 1 – these people could worry that when Trump was out of office the law might come looking for them. And that happened, to an extent, though not fast enough – a mistake that falls fully at the feet of Merrick Garland and one that he should never be forgiven for as it effectively delivered Trump Mark 2.
But now? If I honestly believed the mid terms were going to happen I’d be happily sitting here waiting for the impeachments, starting with Trump, then Bondi, Hegseth, Homan, etc. But I just don’t see any mid terms taking place, mainly because Trump said more than once that there’d be no more elections if he became President again. So, somewhere there are plans afoot to ensure there are no more elections. And that means no impeachments. And that means no accountability – ever.
I hope I’m proved wrong, but I doubt it. What I see instead is a US that’s headed full steam in the direction Russia has taken under Putin: an utterly corrupt oligarchy ruled over by a “King” in all but name, who will, in time, chose his successor, just as Putin has begun to indicate he’s doing in Russia.
Much to agree with, I am afraid.
USA mythology makes crooks heroes. Good guys obey the law because they lack ambition. If Trump makes $millions by corrupting the office of the President, this makes him some kind of super-hero to the ordinary Americans who have been trampled underfoot by corporate greed. Robert Reich and friends may be right, but they are voices crying in the wilderness, because money – and lots of it – is the only thing that matters now.
One possibility not discussed is that the radical right, fingers twitching on their triggers, might severely damage itself in a cathartic fit of fratricidal rage. If nothing else, this would add to the mythology of American violence.