Sunday, June 04, 2017

Donald Trump and the Man Who Would Poison the World



I could barely watch the coverage of this latest terrorist attack. 

It was all so insane and so cowardly, and I felt I'd seen it all before. 

And what made it even more disgusting was to see Donald Trump try to turn that tragedy into bigotry, for crass political purposes.

President Donald Trump on Saturday evening said the United States needs "the travel ban as an extra level of safety" following multiple fatal incidents in London. "We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety," the president tweeted at 7:17 p.m.

When in fact he's the one we need to be protected from.

The greatest would be terrorist on earth.



The man, who would torch the planet, and as David Brooks writes, poison the world. 

This week, two of Donald Trump’s top advisers, H. R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, wrote the following passage in The Wall Street Journal: “The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”

That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project. It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs.


And what makes that Trump Talk so disturbing...




The essay explains why the Trump people are suspicious of any cooperative global arrangement, like NATO and the various trade agreements. It helps explain why Trump pulled out of the Paris global-warming accord. This essay explains why Trump gravitates toward leaders like Vladimir Putin, the Saudi princes and various global strongmen: They share his core worldview that life is nakedly a selfish struggle for money and dominance.

Is that a world view like that one can only lead to massive instability, fascism, and war. 

By treating the world simply as an arena for competitive advantage, Trump, McMaster and Cohn sever relationships, destroy reciprocity, erode trust and eviscerate the sense of sympathy, friendship and loyalty that all nations need when times get tough. 

By looking at nothing but immediate material interest, Trump, McMaster and Cohn turn America into a nation that affronts everybody else’s moral emotions. They make our country seem disgusting in the eyes of the world.

Where the scariest part is that even friendly countries like Canada are now considered The Enemy.



Trump said that he made the decision in order to fulfill his “solemn duty to protect America and its citizens.” The Paris agreement was described as if it was a kind of mortal threat to the United States, and he stressed that it was supported by “the same nations” whose “trade practices” and “lax contributions” in the military sphere were also undermining and endangering the United States.

The inference was clear: Countries that previously were described as allies of the United States are now seen as a dark threat. The Paris climate agreement was described as just one part of this wider conspiracy against the United States, pursued primarily by countries traditionally seen as allies.

But the good news is we're not alone. More people than ever now feel that Trump is unfit to be president. He's making too many enemies.

And in these disturbing times when it sometimes seems that the world has lost its bearings, or that we're all going crazy.

It's important to remember that Trump is the one who has a strait jacket waiting for him...



And that the future belongs to us.

Because you can't threaten the planet and the survival of humanity, and hope to get away with it.

The generation who Trump would have inherit a scorched world won't stand for that.

So if he tries to wipe his ass with the planet...



They'll wipe their asses with HIM...



18 comments:

Anonymous said...

"When in fact he's the one we need to be protected from.

The greatest would be terrorist on earth."

Are you kidding me? The bodies aren't even cold yet but Trump is the terrorist? Go light some candles and say a couple prayers til the next weekly radical Islamic terrorist attack (Oooh there I said it). Sunni ways Simon.

-MC

jrkrideau said...

I am very impressed by Theresa May's comments on Facebook. She could give Steven Harper lessons.

"We need to work with allied, democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremism and terrorist planning."

". While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country."

Oh goody, let's have a lot more censorship and a bit more harassment of British citizens who are not white and nominally Anglican. Oh and for good measure, anyone with a Scottish accent.

"And if we need to increase the length of custodial sentences for terrorism-related offences, even apparently less serious offences, that is what we will do."

Oh that's scary! Some one who is willing to run around stabbing people and be killed by the police is really going to be scared by the thought of a longer prison sentence? Right.

"we need to review Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy to make sure the police and security services have all the powers they need."

Nothing like a police state to make one feel more secure though come to think of it, as long as you keep your head down and mouth shut live in pre-Gulf War I was not too bad.

And then there's the standard trope "It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam. It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth."

Actually I agree that ISIS, etc., seem to have a very perverted vision of Islam, as perverted as Mike Pence or Betsy DeVos' version of Christianity.

However May's statement does not show any desire to analyze the root causes of this vile attack. The classic "They hate our freedoms" which is what that above statement is saying is total crap. I suspect much of the problem is that the people now in ISIS hate having Western countries exploit their countries, prop up vicious corrupt dictatorships like Saddam Hussein or Mubarak and now El Sisi or rabid religious nut-jobs like the Al Saud dynasty.

Perhaps if the US & Britain and other hangers-on, including Canada at times, not been following criminally insane policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan for the last 30 or 40 years compounded by lack of foresight and callus abandoning of the states that they wreaked, Afghanistan after the Soviet withdraw and Libya come to mind, not to mention the totally incompetent debacle of Iraq where the US created ISIS things might be less horrible.

I am not condoning or excusing this horrible attack; I am just saying that Western leaders need to understand the underlying causes and take action not just mindlessly react as Trump seems to have done.

'snark' I have long had the theory that George W. Bush was an Al Quaeda agent. Almost every action he took seemed designed to increase support for Osama bin Ladin and his people. At this rate, I may have to start wondering if Trump is in the pay of dissident members of the Saudi royal family who almost certainly are supporting various terrorist groups.

However, at the moment, given the various budget cuts and policy missteps that Trump has pulled off, I think it is more likely that he is a Chinese agent. I'm not sure about May, she may just be the normal deranged Con politician we have come to know and hate.

rumleyfips said...

There's an old song that describes Trump.
He's a clown that Charlie Brown; he;s gona get caught just you wait and see... why is everybody always picken on me ?

Steve said...

The best way to stop religious terrorism is to start teaching mandatory sky god prevention in school.

Anonymous said...

donald trump is the number one recruiter for ISIS and all terrorist organizations. Anyone who continues to support him wears their hatred of the Western world on their sleeve.

Anonymous said...

Simon's dancing on those bodies to further his attacks on Trump. It is his character after all.

jrkrideau said...

Yes, something to do in any case but it might not have a large effect on terrorism..

I would suggest that the 'religious' part of the terrorism would be replaced by something else. The Bader-Meinhof and Red Brigades were not religious nor, as far as I am aware, was the young Tamil woman who took out Rajiv Gandhi and so on.

Any handy religion or ideology would do. The real thing would be to innoculate against fanaticism.

jrkrideau said...

Hey, he's simply carrying on George W. Bush's policies. Republicans stick together.

Anonymous said...

No wall, no fantastic health care, no travel ban, no jobs flocking back except arms to the Saudis (remember 911 ) , no golden fortress just scandal and rants of the day only to be something different tomorrow. A president in desperate need of a "success" story for his base so he announces exiting the Paris Accord as a bad deal for America and promises tough negotiations for a better deal. The reality is the agreement is binding for 5 years so formal exit is not possible until 2020, emission targets are non binding and nations that leave no longer have any negotiating power so there really was no rush to leave other than show. The irony is that work will continue at the state, municipal levels and combined with new technology and economic need the US targets will likely be met except that they will not be in control of the new technology and be will stuck with outdated/stranded assets. The man is dumber than a sack of hammers but he desperately needed a "win" for the team.
RT

John B. said...

I think Simon is over the top with that one but what's this "Sunni ways" horseshit?

John B. said...

Trump is just being the good salesman that he is by using the latest attack to promote his travel ban. And it's about time that somebody had the courage to risk ridicule by taking a comment out of its context in order to expose political correctness that public officials aren't willing to reveal openly. We should look at the rest of this guy's speeches and twitter remarks and see what we can find. Just because someone hasn't actually made specific connections in statements that he's made, we're not precluded from making them on his behalf. Otherwise we might never be able to assume and expose any of the terrible instances of political correctness that are poisoning our discourse. And then where would we be?

Simon said...

hi MC...terrorists may cause a lot of pain and damage, but destroying the planet is the greatest crime of all. And Trump is going to pay for that more than he can ever imagine...

Simon said...

hi anon 4:03 pm...I'm dancing on those bodies? I don't think so. The one who is dancing on them is your beloved Fuhrer. Who is trying to use those deaths for crass political purposes...

Simon said...

hi jrkrideau...May is a very heartless woman, and calling her the new Thatcher is not a very big stretch. Her polls have been sagging so now she is trying to use terrorism/Islamophobia to win votes. Her campaign manager is Lynton Crosby, so what do you expect? We have heard it all before....

Simon said...

hi rumleyfips....yes. his self pity is unbelievable, and if he ever does get impeached I expect to hear his whining all the way to where I live. He is both disgusting and pathetic....

Simon said...

hi Steve....I don't know what can be done to break the hold religion has on so many humans. But it really is scary, and something has got to be done....

Simon said...

hi anon 11:04 am... I agree he is continuing Bush's legacy, but kicking it up a notch. And it will only end badly. He wants ISIS to attack us, so he can turn America into a police state...

Simon said...

hi RT...I think you summed up the situation perfectly. Trump doesn't know what he's doing, he's good at destroying things, but has no plans of his own. And the problem is that if he comes under more pressure from Comey and others, he's probably going to try to distract us with some kind of war. With some of the advisers we were counting on to restrain him now seeming to give up, we are now in real trouble....