Simon Schama's racy, said to be immensely readable The American Future ( published in 2008) stops at the beginning of President Obama's presidency. Whilst we await Schama's update, there are the many various and vicious critics of President Trump who continue to believe that "the buck " ( i.e. USA 's future) stops with President Obama - the saintly President Obama who is being quoted here
I'm in a hurry writing this , off to Dr. Oxenburgh's birthday party so I don't have the time to check this, but I sincerely hope , the Richard Cohen of this dastardly piece is not and cannot be the same person of as Rich Cohen of "Israel is Real"fame. The very disagreeable and treasonous final judgement passed on President Trump in the second year of his presidency is very distressing, coming at the heels of the anniversary of what happened last year at Charlottesville ,Virginia.
Of course there are cynics and a large number of the besserwisser who say, " but you don't live in the States, so you don't know what we are talking about" as if , despite the media blitz those who don't live in the mighty states are bound to not know; as if we have to be in the midst of the California wild fires to feel the heat, in order to know and as if to know is to feel – as in " He who feels it knows". After all, we do have access toReal Clear Politics and the CNN ( dubbed by Trumpians as the "Clinton National Network) were at it again with their latest volley against Trump : Anderson Cooper 30 degrees : President Launches Broadside Against Protesting NFL Players featuring Van Jones and guest Rev. Michael Faulkner and just before that ( the jury is still out on the verdict for the upcoming November midterm elections as we were told onBBC HARDtalk on 09/08/2018 with Jaime Harrison . He (Jamie Harrison) was asked to account for Trump's success with the economy ( it's the usual "it's the economy stupid") and that's why at the end of the day, it's less of foreign policy ( Iran, North Korea, Europe, trade war with China) and more of what's in the pocket that is one of the things that matters very much to Black, White, Yellow and maybe even Native Americans.
In my very humble opinion we are being unfair and to some extent misrepresenting Mr. President even as he holds centre stage – bestriding the world stage – like a colossus - through his twittering which we ( the world) follow on a daily basis, with such avid interest. It is both inopportune and impetus, this kind of tarring and feathering of the President of The United States as a " racist". Benjamin Netanyahu will not agree to that , nor should the NATO nationalist President Erdogan who says, that Turkey's national currency will fight the dollar and adds. "If they have their dollar, we have the people, we have Allah !"
The complementary voices of two African-Americans who are there ( in the mighty states) : On the one hand Rev. Michael Faulkner who protested ( in Anderson Cooper 360 degrees) that we pay too much mind to each and every little theatrical thing that President Trump twitters, and on the other hand as to be expected Van Jones of course believes that Mr. President should be held accountable for everything he says....
On Friday, 10 August 2018 05:02:37 UTC+2, Bolaji Aluko wrote:
Washington PostOpinionsTrump is the president the Founding Fathers fearedBy Richard CohenAugust 6, 2018Has there ever been a president as obscene as Donald Trump — a president as obtuse, as ignorant, as base, as dishonest, as indifferent to precedent, as contemptuous of civil liberties, as critical of his own government and officials, as brutish, as cold to consequences, as hostile to the media, as casually racist and as self-centered? The answer is no. For comparisons, you have to look abroad.Ah, but no. We are admonished from doing that. This is America, and it is special, and it does not swoon for demagogues. It has gone through hard times, sure — the Civil War and the Great Depression and the Red Scare following World War I and the Russian Revolution, and the McCarthy period following the onset of the Cold War. It has done terrible things to the Indians, enslaved blacks and thereafter remained exuberantly racist both in custom and law. It incarcerated U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent and, for a time, was so deeply anti-Semitic that it turned its back on frantic Jews fleeing extermination. But overall — and especially when compared with lots of other countries — we have been downright marvelous. And so we insist.But did you see Trump at his rallies in Tampa and in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.? The usual litany of lies and invective and the standard slander of the press were upped a notch. This time it was more personal. "Horrible, horrendous people," he said of reporters in Pennsylvania. "Fake, fake, disgusting news," he said of their product. CNN's Jim Acosta was menaced by the crowd in Tampa. It stood behind him chanting "CNN sucks" and the president not only did not call for order — did not, in other words, act presidential — but also later when his son Eric tweeted a video of it all, Trump retweeted his approval.There has never been anything like this in America. We have suffered the occasional regional or third-party fool running for president — the racists Strom Thurmond and George C. Wallace come to mind. But American presidents were there to thwart them, to bottle them up. No president has ever held the rallies Trump has. The outpouring of venom, the toying with violence gives them an old newsreel cast. We have seen such faces here, contorted in the ecstasy of hate. Yes, in 1957 when nine black kids enrolled in Little Rock's Central High School. Yes, nine years later when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. took his movement to Chicago. It has taken Trump to revive the face of American hate.The president's party has fallen into line. His press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to say if she agrees that the media is "the enemy of the people" — Trump's term of deep totalitarian provenance. But from much of the GOP came cowed silence. Trump has transformed the GOP into an updated Know-Nothing Party — anti-immigrant, for sure, but anti-science as well. Few dare criticize him. Those who do face defeat in primaries, and those who don't vie for his endorsement. Northern liberals once trafficked with Southern segregationists, but this is different. This is now.Look at Trump's comments on the prosecution of Paul Manafort. He has tweeted that "Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now." It is the Trumpian version of Henry II's "who will rid me of this troublesome priest," which led to the murder of Thomas Becket. Who will be surprised if Trump pardons Manafort? No one can stop him. Paul D. Ryan would make a face, and Mitch McConnell would mildly denounce it, but the rest of the GOP would roll over, puppy-like, so Trump could scratch its stomach.Trump has debased the presidency. He has removed America from its moral and practical leadership role in world affairs. Like a bratty kid, he has spitballed foreign leaders — Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron — mocking them for their principles. Yet, he has nothing bad to say about Vladimir Putin, the neo-Romanov ruler of Russia and soon, maybe, of the "Little Russians" as well. Ukraine, beware.He has resumed the exploitation of the wilderness and the pollution of the environment. Above all, he has polluted our politics. The swamp he vowed to drain is now fetid with even more lobbyists and rancid with his lies. He said he would make America great again, but he has reduced it in influence and conducted his presidency in a manner we have never seen before.Donald Trump is a new kind of American president, the sort the Founding Fathers feared. America once again has a mad king.------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
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