James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time - Book Review

This is a classic short book written by famous author James Baldwin published in the early 60's on what it's like being black in this country.  Sadly, most of what he says is probably still true.  We who cannot experience what it's like first-hand will never truly understand.

Baldwin talks about meeting the then famous Elijah Muhammad in the 60's.  The head of the League of Islam preached racist hate-white people doctrine.  Baldwin rejected his view of white people as devils.

There is underlining in this book.  I bought this little paperback in 1970.  I can't tell for sure if it's my underlining or somebody else's.  Most likely it's mine.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!

The Nationals

I didn't know until this morning that the Nationals had won the Series over Houston.  Good for them! At least that's something to cheer about in the nation's capital.

Tired of the Rain

It's a dismal start to Halloween in Pelham.

I am tired of this rain. I am tired of trampling thru the mud. Tired of dashing here and there. Rain, rain, go away. Enough is enough. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. I get it. Point made.

Game 7

When it comes to pitching strategy, Game 7 brings chaos theory to life

Just about every pitcher for the Nationals and Astros will be on high alert, knowing they could be called upon to pitch in the deciding game tonight.

• By Dave Sheinin

Where to Put It

Where to put things so you’ll know where they are when you need them! It sounds so simple but gets more challenging as you get older. You don’t need something until you can’t find it. Out of sight, out of mind, to put it another way.

Horror Show

‘Like a horror movie’: Republicans anxious and adrift defending Trump

GOP senators are frustrated with the absence of a credible defense of the president and nervous about the reckoning that lies ahead.

• By Robert Costa and Philip Rucker

Republican Madness

by Heather Digby Parton

Students of the modern conservative movement often date the recent supercharged radicalization of the Republican Party to the rise of Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution in the early 1990s. It's true that the GOP went seriously off the rails during that period and the craziness has been picking up speed ever since. But in reality, the conservative movement has been radical from its beginnings, starting with the anti-communist crusade after World War II all the way through Goldwater to Reagan, Gingrich and now Trump. Now it has finally shed all trappings of a sophisticated political ideology, culminating in this surreal parody of a presidency in 2019. The conservative "three legged stool" of small government, traditional values and global military leadership has completely disintegrated.

But one aspect of that earlier conservative movement has continued to chug along with its long-term project to transform the U.S. into an undemocratic, quasi-authoritarian plutocracy. That would be the group of far-right lawyers who started the Federalist Society, with the goal of packing the judiciary with true believers, along with a certain group of Reagan-era legal wunderkinds who came to believe that the GOP could dominate the presidency for decades to come. They developed the theory of the "unitary executive," originally advanced by Reagan's odious attorney general Ed Meese ( recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom) which holds that massive, unaccountable power is vested in the president of the United States.

Attorney General William Barr was one of those lawyers, along with White House counsel Pat Cipollone, former appeals court judge Michael Luttig and others who encouraged Barr to take the job, particularly after his famous memo declaring that what any normal person would see as obstruction of justice doesn't apply to the president. (In a nutshell, Barr agrees with former President Richard Nixon, who said, "If the president does it, it's not illegal.")

Barr is described as supremely confident in his beliefs, which is to say that his overweening arrogance is not an act put on someone who is overcompensating to hide insecurity. He believes in this theory and when it became obvious that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was not long for the  job, Barr and his legal cabal appear to have seen the clueless and corrupt Donald Trump as a perfect instrument to test their theory, and perhaps set legal precedents that would enable future right-wing presidents to use the full power of the presidency to dominate American politics without regard to democratic norms or congressional checks and balances. Indeed, they had been setting the stage for such a man for decades.

It's also obviously the case that Barr, and perhaps his Reaganite cronies as well, are suffering from the malady known as Fox News Brain Rot, the symptoms of which are an extreme susceptibility to absurd right-wing conspiracy theories and an inability to believe anything that contradicts them. (Barr once said that there was more evidence for the bogus Uranium One charges than the Russian interference in the 2016 election, which confirms the diagnosis.)

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That is the toxic combination of views has the Attorney General of the United States running all over the world seeking evidence to back up a ridiculous conspiracy theory in which Ukraine, the "deep state," the Intelligence agencies of Italy, the U.K. and Australia, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee all conspired to frame Russia and Donald Trump in the 2016 election. They call this an investigation into the "origins" of the Russia investigation, which is also being handled by the Department of Justice's inspector general and special counsel John Durham, appointed by Barr.

Barr's personal intervention is outside the boundaries of the normal procedures, but that is yet another example of his "unitary executive" theory: He works for the president and the president has the power to assign him to any task, including being an international man of mystery. So far, Barr appears to be coming up goose eggs with the foreign intelligence services. The Wall Street Journal reported that he is "sparking discord in several foreign capitals, going outside usual channels to seek help from allies in reviewing the origins of a U.S. counterintelligence investigation begun during the 2016 presidential campaign."

On Thursday night the Times set the political world aflame with a report that Durham has officially opened a criminal investigation into the matter. No one is sure what basis there is for this, but reports over the past week or so suggest Durham's team is focusing intently on the people Donald Trump often rails against in his public statements, including former FBI agent Peter Strzok and possibly high-level intelligence community personnel such as former CIA chief John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper.

The timing of the story is obviously designed to counter the very bad news coming out of the House impeachment investigation in the House on a daily basis. This isn't surprising. We've been expecting that Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., would hold parallel hearings into the origins of the Russia investigation, as promised. Graham is now balking because the Senate rules would require that he allow Democratic participation. (The fact that the Senate Intelligence Committee has released two substantial reports on the 2016 election, making clear that they came to the same conclusions as the FBI and the intelligence community regarding Russian interference on Trump's behalf, also complicates matters for him.)

So Graham has been reduced to introducing a meaningless resolution saying that the House is being unfair, obviously hoping to appease Trump and keep his homegrown followers happy.  According to the Daily Beast, it's not working. In fact, TrumpWorld wants Graham to call House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff to testify before Graham's Senate committee, which would be a serious violation of congressional norms. He seems reluctant for the moment, but who knows what he'll be willing to do as time goes on?

So for the moment the task of bringing the Fox News alternate-universe conspiracy theory to the mainstream falls to Barr and Durham. They have both reportedly been to Ukraine in recent weeks, presumably searching for that elusive "DNC server" that Trump constantly babbles about.  Maybe they will manage to delight the Trump base by trying to prosecute some FBI and CIA personnel. Barr seems willing to push the boundaries beyond anything we could have imagined, so that's not as outrageous as it sounds.

The only remedy for this is for Congress to reassert its own prerogatives and impeach the president and, if necessary, his henchmen. If they fail to hold him accountable for the vast abuse of power and corruption of his office, the precedents will be set and the "unitary executive" will become the working model for all Republican presidents, just as Barr intends. The next one will no doubt be more efficient at using it than Donald Trump.

Can Trumpists be Deprogrammed by Chauncey Devega

A new Gallup poll finds that at least 50 percent of the American people want Donald Trump to be impeached and removed from office. That's three times higher than the percentage of Americans who supported impeaching Richard Nixon during the early stages of the impeachment process. Trump could become the first American president to run for re-election after being impeached in the House of Representatives.

On the surface, at least, it would seem that Donald Trump’s continual torrent of lawbreaking, his disrespect for the Constitution and democracy, his corruption, racism, nativism, misogyny and overall debasement of human morality and human decency have finally reached a point where he will be held accountable by the Democrats in Congress and then at the polls in 2020.

But what of the 39 percent (or so) of Americans who continue to support Donald Trump? His popularity among Republican voters continues to be remarkably high and stable (87 percent per Gallup’s most recent poll) given his many failures of policy, including policy decisions that directly hurt his most enthusiastic “white working class” supporters. Indeed, Trump’s base of stable support remains the highest among American presidents in the history of modern polling.

Despite — or because of — Trump’s apparent criminal behavior and obvious inclinations toward fascism he has a cement-like hold on his supporters. Trumpism can be understood as right-wing political extremism transformed into a cult. This is not just a metaphor. Trump’s lies, his assault on reality, his threats of violence, his cruelty, his demand of absolute loyalty, his manipulation of willing subjects who choose to escape empirical reality, and his shared state of collective narcissism with his followers all fit the definition of a cult. From that realization follows another: Trump’s removal from the White House, by electoral defeat or any other means, remains unlikely — unless his opponents can fully mobilize to overwhelm and defeat Trump’s zealots.

Is it possible to deprogram Trump’s political cult members and return them to normal society? Should good Americans isolate Trump supporters and refuse to interact with them? In what ways does Trump fit the profile of a cult leader? How is his apparent and lengthy history of sexually predatory behavior typical of a cult leader? If Trump is removed from office, will his supporters respond with violence?

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In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Steven Hassan, one of the world's foremost experts on mind control and cults. Hassan is the author of several bestselling books, including "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs." His new book is “The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control.”

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. You can also listen to my full conversation with Steven Hassan through the player embedded below.

Donald Trump has been public and obvious in his threats to democracy and the rule of law. He also has not hidden his racism, bigotry, sexism, overall belligerence, and lack of good character, morals, or principles. You and others were warning people years ago that if Trump became president it would be a national and global disaster. Why didn’t more Americans listen to the warnings? The level of surprise at Trump’s behavior is almost humorous.

People do not want to hear the truth because many of them are tuned into media sources which are essentially disinformation channels. They are trusting victims of deception and manipulation.

As I've traveled around the country helping to deprogram people who have been in cults and similar groups, it appears that many Americans feel helpless and overwhelmed by Trump’s presidency and all that it has wrought. They have tuned out and simply do not know who to trust or what to believe is true or not.

How do you explain the deep and unflappable devotion of Trump's supporters? Trump’s policies are literally hurting most of his own supporters. Yet, instead of turning on him, they double down and appear to love him even more.

There are multiple overlapping constituencies of people who are following Trump. But the most devoted Trump supporters are people involved with religious cult groups or following leaders who they believe are apostles or prophets. These people are so programmed to fear Satan and evil spirits that they are disconnected from their own critical thinking and from their own consciences. This involves not just New Apostolic Reformation groups and Christian megachurches, but also Opus Dei and members of the Family. The latter was profiled in a recent Netflix series.

These Trump supporters practice apocalyptic thinking. They see the world in all-or-nothing terms, good versus evil. They think Trump is a sinner — but so are we all. And like God used King Cyrus in the Bible, these people believe that God is using Trump. So while they may not like or respect Trump personally, these Trump supporters are part of a belief system which tells them that Donald Trump is doing God's will. Therefore, they are going to do whatever Trump says to do.

Are Trump’s supporters damaged people? The social psychology literature suggests that authoritarianism is tied to some type of emotional harm that occurs during childhood. These authoritarians then seek out a father figure for protection, or as a substitute for how their caregivers hurt or abused them when they were children. 

I'm very familiar with that theory. I don't think it holds up universally. It's a version of blaming the victim. That theory suggests that people are defective and therefore they can be manipulated, as opposed to understanding that our minds are a type of learning machine and therefore we as human beings can learn the wrong things. Our reality-testing strategies can be subverted, especially with sleep deprivation and information control.

One of the most universal techniques of subverting our ability to correctly assess reality is through phobia indoctrination. This is the implantation of irrational fears against questioning the leader, the doctrine, or the organization or cult’s policies.

People who were raised in strict fundamentalist-type religious groups, where they're not encouraged to make mistakes, think for themselves or use their conscience but rather to obediently follow doctrine and the authority figure, are going to be more susceptible to following someone like Donald Trump. There is also the aspect of physical corporal punishment if they disobey the authority figure or other leader, which plays into their behavior and following a Trump-like leader as well.

How does Trump’s movement meet the definition and criteria for a cult?

Destructive cults are authoritarian, pyramid-structured groups where there is often a charismatic or authoritarian leader at the top who commands total power and loyalty. Destructive cults also use deceptive recruitment and specific control of techniques. These techniques include behavior control, information control, thought control and emotional control to keep people dependent and obedient within that group’s structure.

The group really demands a pseudo-identity. It is not your real conscience or your real self. You become someone who is a tool of the leader, an instrument to be used or to be thrown away. Much of the manipulation, aside from telling the members, "You're the chosen ones," is about guilt and fear. It is actually a very unpleasant experience to be in one of these cult groups long-term.

In what specific ways does Trumpism fit that model?

Trump tells his followers not to listen to his critics or former members of the group — meaning people who have left his administration or otherwise no longer support this presidency and movement. Trump also tells his followers not to listen to other information if it is critical of him. Outside information is essential for reality-testing and how we as human beings make our own decisions and practice free will. Donald Trump also tells his followers that if you don't follow him, terrible things are going to happen to you, the country and the world.

Trump tells his followers that the world will be overrun by evil people if they don’t support him. Donald Trump is a stereotypical cult leader like Lyndon LaRouche, who's a political cult leader, or Sun Myung-moon, my former cult leader. Donald Trump is also like Jim Jones or David Koresh. It is clear when you consider Trump’s malignant narcissism and examine his speeches and writing.

If Trumpism is a type of cult, how does one go about deprogramming millions of people?

That is the main reason why I wrote my new book "The Cult of Trump." I knew that the people who need the book the most are not going to read it. People in cults don't think they're in a cult. I felt like I needed to first start with those people who will listen and then learn that mind control is real. Brainwashing can take place. People are witnessing that very directly in America right now. Unfortunately, what is happening in America right now is that people who have family members or friends who have become Trumpists are now calling them names and cutting off contact from them.

This happens when someone's loved one gets into Scientology or the Moonies or any number of other such groups. The family tries to convince them to leave the cult and when that doesn’t work, they cut off contact from their loved one.

To get your loved ones or friends out of Trump’s cult, you need to reach out to them strategically. Don’t start with saying how stupid you think the Trump cultists are. And I would also appeal to people who are Trumpists to stop being so hostile to people who do not support Donald Trump. To try to get people out of Trump’s cult we should first try to engage them in an intelligent conversation about the psychology of influence. We should also talk to Trumpists about how to better discern facts from opinions and beliefs.

One of the universal techniques that I teach my clients is that you want to focus on another group initially, and not the group in which the person you are trying to help is a member. Focus on China, for example, or some other country that is engaging in brainwashing of its population.

To extricate someone from a cult such as Trump’s, you should also ask the person to think about people who have lied to them or people who took advantage of them. Ask them to reflect on an experience where someone hired them and then refused to pay them. Would they want to work for someone like that again? Would they trust someone like that again?

In this moment with Donald Trump and his movement, we also need to have conversations based on love and respect to take control of the fact that we are on one planet together and our mutual survival or destruction depends on us ending this massive social and political polarization.

As a cult leader, how sophisticated is Donald Trump? How would you evaluate him? 

Donald Trump has learned a great deal from “pickup artists” — the so-called PUAs — who understand how to hypnotically manipulate women in order to take advantage of them. Trump’s comments about grabbing a woman's crotch regard what is known in hypnosis as a “pattern interruption.” Most women would be so shocked that anyone would dare to do such a thing that they then go into instant freeze mode. This then allows Trump or another pickup artist to hypnotically say, "I think you're beautiful and you love me," or something like that. This then allows the pickup artist to take sexual advantage of the woman they have targeted.

I do not believe that Donald Trump is very smart. I do not think that Donald Trump has an ability to focus on things in a very sustained way.  Trump does not read. He is not committed to learning. What Trump is centered on is pleasure and personal enjoyment. He has a narcissistic need to have people around him telling him how great he is. I am also a firm believer that for many years Vladimir Putin, a former senior KGB officer, has been running a program to use and influence Donald Trump.

Trump is also being heavily influenced by billionaires in the fossil fuel industry and others who have a vested interest in establishing a right-wing Christian theocracy and/or a right-wing libertarian government, for example, who know that to get what they want from Donald Trump all they have to do is stroke his ego.

What is the role of sexual predation in terms of a cult leader like Donald Trump?

When people ask me to tell them about cult leaders, I say "Power, money and sex." Not necessarily in that order. But power, money and sex are almost always all involved. I doubt someone like Donald Trump actually enjoys sex. For Trump, sex is more of an extension of power. It is all a game and another conquest for someone like him.

Cult leaders like Donald Trump do not have a clue about empathy, which is the basis for genuine love. Trump is not able to imagine himself as another person and to think about their feelings. This allows Trump to validate the worst parts of human nature among his supporters.

They see Trump and his behavior and then say to themselves, "Oh, I wish I could have said something like that.” Donald Trump is validating a very dark side of selfishness and greed. This is very unhealthy for human beings. It most certainly is unhealthy for a society to encourage such values.

Trump continues to threaten violence. He has publicly said that leading Democrats such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff and others are “traitors” or have committed treason. The punishment for treason is death. Trump keeps talking about a “civil war” and saying that he is a victim of a “coup”. He encourages violence by his followers — and they have followed through on his commands. This seems like so much projection. Trump is blaming other people for those things he knows he is guilty of. 

I agree. It is a form of psychological projection. Who knows if Trump will ever be put on trial and found guilty for treason? The facts overwhelmingly show that Donald Trump is not honoring his oath to the Constitution and to the American people.

Trump’s violent threats are an example of fear indoctrination and phobia indoctrination for his supporters.

So the question then becomes, when Donald Trump is making these violent threats, what is going on in the minds of the people who are around him? Are Trump’s inner circle, his followers and other supporters really willing to commit murder for Donald Trump? Will his followers go that far for him?

I was once in an impromptu meeting with Sun Myung-moon when he said the following, "When we take power in America, we will amend the Constitution and make it a capital offense for people to have sex with people other than those assigned to them by the church. We'll be doing them a favor by taking their physical bodies away from them, sending them to the spiritual world where they can be restored later." And my immediate reaction was, "Yes, father. Makes sense, father."

That moment plagued me for years after getting out of the group. I had been indoctrinated that far against my own values. I was a pacifist. I protested against the Vietnam War and against the military-industrial complex. And yet there I was saying, "Yep, mass genocide so we can take over the world for God. Great idea." All I can say is that people who are indoctrinated that far can in fact be brought back to reality. They can become citizens who are ethical. I'm a model of that.

Let's assume that Trump either resigns or is somehow forced out of office. What will that do to his supporters? Will they lash out? Or will Trump’s supporters turn that rage inward against themselves?

Unfortunately, my experience is that people often stay on automatic pilot for years after being in a cult. Trump’s supporters are an easy target for another country, whether it's Russia or Iran or China or some other hostile country that wants to sow division in the United States. Unfortunately, I think that Trump’s supporters are going to be a great danger to the rest of us in this country for some time.

CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

Republican Losing Game

The electoral college artificially inflates the value of those red, rural states, but you cannot win the presidency based purely on the Deep South and Great Plains. With each election, the Republicans’ situation becomes more precarious. No wonder they are so enamored of voting barriers that artificially depress turnout among nonwhite voters.
-Jennifer Rubin 

Breaching Trump's Walls

“It is safe to predict more Trumpian temper tantrums,” Susan B. Glasser writes. “But the White House’s walls have been breached, and there is serious trouble in Trumpworld."

AG Barr's Dangerous Speech by Jeffrey Tobin

William P. Barr just gave the worst speech by an Attorney General of the United States in modern history. Speaking at the University of Notre Dame last Friday, Barr took “religious liberty” as his subject, and he portrayed his fellow-believers as a beleaguered and oppressed minority. He was addressing, he said, “the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; this is organized destruction.”

Historically illiterate, morally obtuse, and willfully misleading, the speech portrays religious people in the United States as beset by a hostile band of “secularists.” Actually, religion is thriving here (as it should be in a free society), but Barr claims the mantle of victimhood in order to press for a right-wing political agenda. In a potted history of the founding of the Republic, Barr said, “In the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people—a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order.” Not so. The Framers believed that free government was suitable for believers and nonbelievers alike. As Justice Hugo Black put it in 1961, “Neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against nonbelievers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.” But the real harm of Barr’s speech is not what it means for historical debates but what it portends for contemporary government policy.

The real giveaway of Barr’s agenda came near the end of his speech when he said, with curious vagueness, “Militant secularists today do not have a live-and-let-live spirit—they are not content to leave religious people alone to practice their faith. Instead, they seem to take a delight in compelling people to violate their conscience.” What’s he really talking about here? Barr and the Trump Administration want religious people who operate businesses to be allowed to discriminate against L.G.B.T.Q. people. The Trump Justice Department supported the Colorado bakers who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple (in a case that the Supreme Court basically ducked last year), but more such lawsuits are in the pipeline. Innkeepers, restaurant owners, and photographers are all using the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment to justify their refusal to serve gay customers. This is Barr’s idea of leaving “religious people alone to practice their faith.” The real beleaguered minorities here are gay people who are simply trying to be treated like everyone else, but Barr twists this story into one about oppression of believers.

The heart of Barr’s speech is devoted to a supposed war on religion in education. “Ground zero for these attacks on religion are the schools. To me, this is the most serious challenge to religious liberty,” he said. He asserted that the problem is “state policies designed to starve religious schools of generally available funds and encouraging students to choose secular options.” Again, Barr engages in a measure of vagueness to obscure his real subject. Historically, parochial schools have flourished largely outside of government supervision and, just as important, without government funding. This reflects the core meaning of the establishment clause, which enshrines the separation of church and state.

But, in recent years, a key tenet of the evangelical movement (and its supporters, like Barr) is an effort to get access to taxpayer dollars. In a major case before the Supreme Court this year, the Trump Administration is supporting religious parents who want to use a Montana state-tax-credit program to pay for their children’s religious schools. This effort is also a major priority of Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, who is pushing for the increased availability of taxpayer vouchers to pay for religious schools. Barr portrays these efforts as the free exercise of religion when, in fact, they are the establishment of religion; partisanship in the war between the religion clauses is one of the signatures of Trump’s tenure in office. Of course, the necessary corollary to providing government subsidies to religious schools is starving the public schools, which are open to all children, of funds.

Perhaps the most galling part of Barr’s speech, under current circumstances, is its hymn to the pious life. He denounces “moral chaos” and “irresponsible personal conduct” as well as “licentiousness—the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good.” By contrast, “religion helps teach, train, and habituate people to want what is good.” Throughout this lecture, one can only wonder if William Barr has ever actually met Donald Trump.

• Jeffrey Toobin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and the senior legal analyst for CNN since 2002. He is the author of, most recently, “American Heiress” and is at work on a book about Robert Mueller’s investigation.
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