A Mountain and an Iceberg
Trump’s tweetstorms and lies are disorienting, as intended. Fortunately, three publications are cataloging his authoritarian tendencies, allowing us to more clearly visualize the danger.
A couple tried-and-true metaphors could be applied to the Trump administration so far. His supporters might argue that the main stream media is “making a mountain out of a molehill” when it comes to the Russia collusion story. His detractors could argue that his words and actions are just the “tip of the iceberg” of an underlying authoritarian scheme. To me, the first six months of the Trump regime have defied any of these existing metaphors. Trump’s intentions are laid out there for the world to see: They’re the mountain and the iceberg. There is no molehill, there is no “tip.”
Day after day, from one newscast or front page to the next, we get the sense that something is terribly wrong. We hear about a policy reversal, see another tweet bashing the media, learn of yet another lie. But Trump is a master of distracting through sleight-of-hand, so his master plans creep up. In the dense fog of Trump’s falsehoods and secrecy, there is no 1,000-foot view of the minefield he’s laying; no vantage point from which to see the coming onslaught.
Fortunately, there are three publications that have taken on the task of compiling and cataloging Trump’s deceptions and un-democratic tendencies. They help me articulate the three prongs of Trump’s kleptocratic/white-nationalist strategy.
The Mountain: What Trump is saying and doing out in the open.
The Iceberg: What the Trump administration is doing in the darkness.
The Forest: What Trump is not talking about, and ignoring.
The Mountain of Lies
After six months in office, Trump has now proven that he is a Liar President, and probably worse still than that. Trump’s supporters will argue that all politicians lie, and this is true enough, but no politician—let alone president —has every lied like this. Practically every word that comes out of his mouth or Twitter account is a lie, and if it is not a lie it is some kind of attack, many times on a democratic institution. The New York Times has compiled an already staggeringly-long list of Trump’s documented lies only since his inauguration (if they would have gone back to the very beginning of the 18-month presidential campaign and post-election period, the list would have likely been three or four times as long). The NYT writers correctly state about the deluge of lies in their intro: “…the country should not allow itself to become numb to them.”
So when trying to prove the danger of Trump, let’s not enter each tweet and lie into evidence one at a time … let’s see the entire mountain:
The Iceberg of Authoritarianism
As “impressive” as Trump’s Great Wall of Lies is to behold, it pales in comparison to Amy Siskind’s weekly Medium series that she labels each week, “Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember” … then proceeds to chillingly document often dozens of “signs” of authoritarian tendencies that happened that week. Often out of sight of the front-page news, usually without fanfare — but sometimes in a Rose Garden ceremony. And that dozens each week, most if not all with citations to reputable news sources.
I admit that some of the entries are a bit of stretch as being ‘signs.’ Trump supporters will also argue that Siskind’s Medium bio pegs her as far left as leftists get. Spare me. You could single out a handful of right-leaning policies that Siskind frets about as being overly fascist, and simply call those the “tip.” There would still be a Titanic-sized iceberg of evidence that the administration’s goal is a Trump-branded brand of autocracy. The “things changing around you” … So let’s remember.
Here is Siskind’s Medium profile page that keeps the List. Read it and weep:
Not seeing the Forest for the trees
So there’s what Trump is saying out in the open and what other things he’s doing more in secrecy … and then what is simply not being seen or heard at all. For as much as we all talk about what Trump says and tweets, he actually communicates very little. He has only held one extended press conference in six months (Obama’s first six months featured seven; Bush 41’s a workmanlike 15). A striking recent example was Trump’s state meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where the leaders of the world’s two largest democracies took not one single question from the press.
Another “unspoken” aspect of Trump’s presidency is his approach to technology and innovation. He defers to bringing the coal industry back to life rather than re-tool segments of the fossil-fuel industry for green-energy jobs. He defers to using heavy-handed persuasion to keep a few hundred manufacturing jobs at Carrier’s Indiana plant while ignoring the factory automation that may very well soon replace those jobs that were briefly saved. He beginning to talk about U.S. infrastructure (albeit in incoherently broad strokes so far) and re-building “roads and bridges and schools” without mentioning the massive works needed to build an autonomous vehicle network and high-speed rail. In all of these examples he seems to want to keep the United States right where it is, running in place, treading water. At best, this is a nationalist, isolationist stance that is heavily influenced by Trump’s worldview with respect to energy, trade and immigration.
At worst, this resembles … Russia. As President Obama stated in his December 2016 press conference, Russia’s economy “doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy,” except oil, gas and arms. Likewise, looking at those Trumpworld policies again: leave green energy and buildings, electric vehicles, robotics, and artificial intelligence to the rest of the globe. Kleptocracy, oligarchy, nepotism, isolationism, nationalism, militarism … they only thing missing from Trump’s vision paralleling Putin’s is a way to squeeze in Pence and DeVos’ theocratic ideology. I’m sure they’ll think of something.
Forest, Mountain, and Iceberg in one sweeping vista
The NYT and Siskind pieces help connect the dots of an otherwise disorienting storm of lies and misdirections and tweets and denials. Under constant barrage of being labeled as “fake news,” the main stream media does its best but cannot spend every column inch trying to pull every piece of evidence together. Especially with their counterparts at Fox News acting as the White House’s own TASS and RT (yet another Russian similarity).
A third effort to compile a big picture of the burgeoning Trump regime is the L.A. Times’ “Our Dishonest President” series. Nothing is unbelievable anymore, so the fact that after just six months in power, the Times has enough of this kind of material to publish it into a book (released today, July 4) is, sadly, par for the course.
While Trump rails against the free press and labels them as fake news, the press can sometimes get indirectly knocked off their game. They don’t get things right 100% of the time and can overreach or overreact, but for the most part they have been honoring their huge upswing in readership and subscribers with vital reporting on this very different president. These three efforts to “make a list” are perhaps the most vital of all, helping us citizens remain clear-eyed and far-sighted when observing what this president and his enablers are trying to do to our country.
A footnote: I linked to a couple additional, related Washington Post pieces inline above that provide some additional insights, but wanted to highlight them again below. To use another metaphor, if we’re frogs in the pot, let’s start feeling water getting warmer right away.
