Trâm

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Herd... Mentality, Seriously!

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Chắc mắc bịnh "demensia" ở tuổi già.

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bác sĩ thần kinh cố vấn tổng thống cũng bị demen"sia" nè:

White House coronavirus adviser Atlas apologizes for Russian TV interview

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas apologized on Sunday for giving an interview to Russia’s Kremlin-backed television station RT, saying he was unaware the outlet was a registered foreign agent in the United States.

(more)

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#Republiconfused

Shitbirds of a feather flock together.

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...
Shitbirds of a feather flock together.

Bầu Cử Hoa Kỳ: Tác giả âm thầm tham dự các cuộc mít tinh ủng hộ Donald Trump trong ba tháng nói rằng những người ủng hộ này đang sống trong một thế giới “lộn ngược đầu”(*)

Mark Quinlivan



Một phóng viên đã âm thầm tham dự các cuộc mít tinh ủng hộ Donald Trump trong ba tháng nói rằng những người ủng hộ Tổng Thống đương nhiệm đang sống trong một thế giới “lộn ngược đầu”.

Carl Hoffman, tác giả quyển sách tài liệu Gánh Xiếc của Kẻ Dối Trá(1) kể lại kinh nghiệm này, nói rằng ba tháng đó là thời gian điên đảo tinh thần và ông ta cảm thấy thật hãi hùng khi nghe những gì ăn sâu vào niềm tin của những kẻ tôn sùng Trump.

Hoffman nói rằng các cuộc mít tinh “Làm Cho Nước Mỹ Vĩ Đại Trở Lại” của Trump đã trở thành thánh địa phải đến của những người này.

“Đến cuộc mít tinh thứ ba của tôi tại Tupelo, Mississippi, tôi là người xếp hàng thứ 6 và tôi đã có mặt ở đó 54 giờ trước giờ tổ chức mít tinh – từ đó trở đi tôi chỉ lân la làm quen với những kẻ tôn sùng [Trump] cực độ - và nghe những câu truyện điên rồ hoang đường từ miền đất Trump.

“Hầu như mỗi người ủng hộ Trump tôi gặp tại các cuộc mít tinh đều tin vào các thuyết âm mưu nào đó."

Nhưng Hoffman nói rằng nhiều người ủng hộ này không bao giờ theo dõi tin tức thời sự - mà cũng không xem ngay cả đài Hồ Ly Tin (Fox News) bảo thủ tại Mỹ.

Tác giả đã nói với Chương Trình Buổi Sáng(2) là: “Họ đọc cái gọi là ‘tin tức’ của họ từ các phương tiện xã hội; từ Facebook và từ Twitter, và họ sống trong thế giới cô lập riêng biệt đó của họ.”

“Chúng ta không thể lý luận được – chúng ta không thể thảo luận với ai cả – cũng tựa như cố thảo luận về chiếc máy bay với những người không tin là có cái thứ nào gọi là máy bay như vậy cả.”

Hoffman cũng biết được mức độ theo Trump của cộng đồng công giáo tại Hoa Kỳ – một mức mà ông ta nói là quá độ.

Số lần nói dối của Trump tại các cuộc mít tinh cũng trở nên hiển nhiên, và Hoffman nói rằng những người ủng hộ y đều tin và thích những lời dối trá đó.

“Những người này nghĩ rằng y có thể đưa họ ngược dòng thời gian để trở về thời mà những người này có quyền lực nhưng nay đang tàn lụi.

“Đất nước này đang nằm chênh vênh bên bờ vực - Trump tổ chức năm cuộc mít tinh trong hôm nay (giờ địa phương hôm Chủ Nhật) và năm cuộc mít tinh vào ngày mai trong một nỗ lực tuyệt vọng – y vẫn liên tục thua điểm trong các cuộc thăm dò dân ý trong tám tháng qua. Tôi muốn nói đến hiểm họa không ai muốn nhắc tới là coronavirus – mỗi ngày có 100,000 người mới bị bệnh – do đó vấn đề căn bản khác với thực trạng một trời một vực là không ai nhận biết được những gì Trump nói và muốn người ta tin.”(3)

Trump đang tranh cử thêm một nhiệm kỳ nữa với đối thủ là Joe Biden của đảng Dân Chủ.

Source: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world...own-world.html
__________
(*) Là một thế giới, một vũ trụ khác, song song với thế giới con người
(1) Tên quyển sách là: Liar's Circus: A Strange and Terrifying Journey Into the Upside-Down World of Trump's MAGA Rallies (Gánh Xiếc của Kẻ Dối Trá: Một Chuyến Hành Trình Lạ Lùng và Hãi Hùng Vào Thế Giới Mít Tinh MAGA của Trump)


(2) Là The AM Show, một chương trình thảo luận tin tức buổi sáng của Tây Tân Lan

(3)

Một cuộc nghiên cứu của Viện Đại Học Stanford ước tính là 18 cuộc mít tinh của Trump đã khiến cho 30,000 người nhiễm COVID và 700 người thiệt mạng.




John W. Dean, cựu luật sư Tòa Bạch Ốc dưới trào Tổng Thống Nixon, vò đầu bứt tai:



Người phàm cố giúp giải thích nguyên nhân cho ông Dean:

A.


B.


C.


D.


E. All of the above

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A Legacy of Hatred, Culture Wars and Discord
The Mess Created By Trump Will Be with Us for Years

The U.S. president has damaged the political system so badly that it will be difficult to repair, even if Donald Trump gets voted out of office on Tuesday. The hatred and political discord he has stirred up will paralyze the country for years.



Foto: Illustration: Miriam Migliazzi / Mart Klein / DER SPIEGEL

By Valerie Höhne, Ralf Neukirch, René Pfister, Alexandra Rojkov and Alexander Sarovic


Donald Trump Jr. doesn't want anything to ruin his good mood. Not the dark clouds gathering overhead on this afternoon and certainly not the terrible survey results that are sticking to his father, the president, like a piece of old chewing gum from the sidewalk.


Junior is standing on a podium on the outskirts of State College, Pennsylvania, and talking about the excitement that he is allegedly encountering wherever he goes. "This is 2016 on steroids," he says, as he looks out across a half-empty parking lot and the cleared cornfields of Pennsylvania. He says there are hundreds of people waiting outside and that he hopes they can get them in. Yet all he has to do is look a bit to the left to see that there are only a couple of stragglers waiting at the security checkpoint.

It's hard to imagine that even the president's 42-year-old son himself believes what he'll say in the next half hour. That his father will win a landslide victory on Nov. 3 and that his Democratic challenger Joe Biden shouldn't even be allowed to be president because he is on the payroll of Chinese businessmen. If there was anything to such stories, the FBI would long since have opened an investigation.

He claims that Joe Biden's son Hunter received $3.5 million from a Russian oligarch, money that allegedly comes from human trafficking and prostitution. "If I did what Hunter did, I'd be in Rikers Island doing my best not to drop the soap," he would later say at a rally in Florida, referring to the famous New York prison.

Nothing that he says is true, of course. There isn't even the slightest bit of evidence that Joe Biden has accepted any money from China. There is also no indication that his son was bribed by a Russian billionaire. And when it comes to the polls, they are currently showing that Biden will emerge victorious in next Tuesday's election. In an average of national public opinion polls, the Democrat has an almost two-digit lead over Trump, and his advantage in important swing states is also looking relatively stable, even if he loses a bit of ground in Pennsylvania in the final days before Election Day.

But Don Jr. isn't particularly concerned about all of that. His eyes are on the future, on a time when his father is perhaps no longer president but Trumpism remains alive and well. Significantly more than 30 percent of American voters will again cast their ballots for Donald Trump in this election, that much can be said with a fair degree of certainty. They will do so despite that the president's catastrophic pandemic mismanagement which is partially responsible for the over 220,000 coronavirus deaths in the country; despite his calls, like a wannabe dictator, for his attorney general to open an investigation into Joe Biden; and despite the fact that U.S. citizens now know that Trump, who has always bragged about his wealth, only paid $750 in taxes in the first year of his presidency.

Trump has managed to create a kind of parallel universe in which his words are all that matter. In the vast majority of cases, those words have very little to do with reality, but his most loyal followers don't seem to care. If Trump has ever uttered a true sentence, then it was his claim that his followers would continue to love him even if he was to shoot somebody dead on Fifth Avenue.

But what will Trump's fanatic base do if they see their hero fall in the election?

Joe Biden's most significant promise is his pledge to reunite America if he is elected president. In his portrayal, Trump is an "historical aberration" that can be corrected with a bit of effort and goodwill. But if you travel through the United States, if you flip through TV channels in the evening, if you speak with Trump supporters, a vastly different picture begins to emerge. It becomes clear that Trump alone isn't responsible for the deep divisions in American society, but is just a symptom of a much deeper crisis. And it is a crisis that won't disappear if he is voted out of office.

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Trumpism is here to stay, even if the president goes, writes Republican political adviser Peter Rough, who has intimate knowledge of the conservative scene in Washington, in a position paper about the future of his party.


Police in San Francisco Foto: Chris Tuite / imago images

Trump, if you will, has essentially magnified a development that began over 30 years ago. He is the product of a party that once professed the holy trinity of family values, military and "small government," only to then completely subordinate itself to the resentments and desires of wealthy donors. This lack of principles allowed Trump to rise to power against the resistance of the old party establishment. Now, the Republicans are led by a man who allegedly cheated on his wife with a porn star, who is said to have called fallen U.S. soldiers "losers" and "suckers," and who has presided over a $4.4 trillion rise in the national deficit during his term.

The wheels of Trump's rise were greased by media outlets whose business model depends on sowing the seeds of anger and discord. Without the hate machine of Facebook, the Kremlin would not have been so effective in manipulating the 2016 election in Trump's favor, while Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has outstripped all others in the history of television in transforming lies and propaganda into billions of dollars in profit and massive political influence.

None of that will disappear if Donald Trump is voted out of office on Nov. 3. On the contrary, in the last four years the president has systematically deepened the trenches dividing Americans. After him, there will still be plenty others seeking to take advantage of those differences. Over the course of several decades, for example, the Supreme Court was an impartial authority respected by Republicans and Democrats alike. Twenty years ago, two-thirds of Americans still had faith in the work of the country's highest court. Today, it is just half.


Trump has pulled the Supreme Court into the partisan trench warfare in which he thrives and appointed justices that will continue pushing through conservative positions even if Democrats manage to win control of the White House and both houses of Congress. On Monday, the Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett, a jurist who has never been shy about her desire to reverse the right to abortion, even though almost two-thirds of all Americans are opposed to such a reversal.

It will take years to repair the damage that Trump has done to American governmental institutions. The president has fired five independent auditors responsible for investigating corruption and cronyism in government ministries and agencies. He has inflicted significant harm on the State Department, once the pride of the U.S. government. Important posts have been left unoccupied for years and those concerned about their reputations preferred to avoid working for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a loyal Trump vassal. Most recently, Trump fired the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and replaced him with a researcher who has primarily attracted attention for his efforts to play down climate change.


Trump's son Donald Jr. Foto: Preston Ehrler / imago images

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Never before in U.S. history has a president done such lasting damage to the fabric of American democracy in such a short amount of time. Trump has repeatedly insisted to his followers that a majority of American media outlets, from CBS to the Boston Globe, are nothing but fake news factories working on behalf of the Democrats. And it seems to have worked: Whereas 69 percent of Democrats say they continue to trust mass media outlets, only 15 percent of Republicans say the same. From Trump's perspective, that is perhaps his greatest accomplishment while in office.

When he was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2017, the White House claimed that never before had so many people gathered to pay their respects to a new president. Just a quick look at the aerial views from his predecessor Barack Obama's inauguration was enough to reveal the lie. Trump's then adviser Kellyanne Conway said in response to the criticism that the president's press spokesman had merely been presenting "alternative facts."

It was an early shot fired in Trump's war against the customs and conventions that American democracy had held dear to that point. And it was one that many observers felt was a response to the fact that he actually received 3 million votes fewer than his opponent Hillary Clinton and only won because of the antiquated Electoral College system.

Now, Trump is far behind in the polls, but he nevertheless continues to act as though the Democrats are trying to steal the election from him. "The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged," he said recently. It is a claim that could have a toxic effect. After all, if the Democrats were in the process of planning a coup, wouldn't all efforts to stop it be legitimate? Even violent resistance?


A gun shop in Pennsylvania: Weapons purchases have increased rapidly this year, partly due to violent unrest and protests in the country that have been fuelled by Donald Trump. Foto: Sara Lewkowicz / DER SPIEGEL

It is difficult to picture Nathan Houck with a weapon in his hands. The 34-year-old has the look of a teenager and as he speaks, his four-year-old daughter squirms on his lap. Houck is a family man and a reliable employee, not the kind of guy you could imagine manning a barricade. Still, he believes it is possible that he might have to take part in an armed conflict. "If the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidential election, I am almost positive that there will be no fair elections anymore," Houck says.

His family's home is in a cul-de-sac at the end of a road that snakes through rural Pennsylvania. Signs on the side of the road leave no doubt as to who people in the area are going to vote for: "Keep America Great" signs can be seen in front of almost every home, with TRUMP in capital letters above them.

Stepping into Houck's home is like going back to the 1950s, with ceramic plates on the wall and a Bible on the shelf along with books full of stories of salvation. Houck's wife is raising their two girls and they are not planning to send their older daughter to a public school. Houck says he is concerned she would be "indoctrinated."

He wasn't always an enthusiastic follower of Trump. He says he was initially repelled by his boorish mannerisms and vulgar jargon. "He uses words that I wouldn't allow in our family," he says, looking at his daughter. But today, four years later, his view of Trump has changed. "He is fighting for our values," values that Houck believes would be under threat should Biden win. He says that Biden would transform the U.S. into a socialist police state. "I think in 40, 50 years, there will be persecution for being Christian."

He says he will spend the days after the election praying for America's future and will be keeping a close eye on how things develop. Will abortion continue to be legal? Will there be a ban on preaching against homosexuality? If that happens, he says, he'll have no other choice than to defend himself. "If it boiled down to me being able to worship my God versus me overthrowing the government, then I would be on God's side."

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Protesters in Lafayette Foto: Go Nakamura / REUTERS

Frightened Republicans like Houck have been arming themselves in recent months. "We can't stock as many weapons as we can sell," says Paul, the owner of a hunting and gun shop called The Outdoorsman in Winthrop Harbor, a town in northern Illinois. On this recent Saturday, the store is busy as well. A married couple are examining a revolver while a young man wearing camouflage is checking out the sight on a rifle.

People want to protect themselves, says Paul, who is nervous about providing his full name in these uneasy times. But against what? "Everyone here knows what has happened," Paul says. "Nobody wants to stand by and watch as people attack their house and burn it down."

The events he is referring to took place two months previously in Kenosha, a town just a few miles away. A policeman there shot the young black man Jacob Blake in the back seven times. Violent protests erupted in response and houses and shops were set on fire.

With just days to go before the election, the mood is tense in several big cities across the country. Many in the U.S. are concerned about a flare up of political violence, or worse. According to surveys, fully a third of Americans believe that a civil war is possible within the next five years.


Protests in Kenosha: About one-third of Americans consider a civil war likely in the next five years. Foto: Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images

The idea isn't totally absurd. Armed groups across the country are arming themselves in preparation. If Biden wins, "we'll take the fight to him," says Chris Hill, the leader of an armed militia in Georgia. "I will attack a tyrant no matter where he is."

Many radicals share his view. "We have observed that militias and other right-wing extremist groups are actively talking about interfering with the election process, either on Election Day or after votes have been submitted," says Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. In early October, the FBI arrested 13 men who were planning on kidnapping Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The plan called for to be subjected to a kind of trial in a secret location because she had imposed a curfew in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

America is no stranger to political violence. Never before, though, has the country had a president who seeks to foment such unrest. Trump has said on several occasions that the country is facing massive voter fraud on behalf of the Democrats. During the first TV debate against Biden, the president declined to distance himself from militant groups, and in reference to the right-wing militia Proud Boys, he said: "Stand back and stand by." It was a bit like Trump was playing with matches at a gas station.

Police across the country have spent weeks preparing for the violence that Trump appears to be provoking. "I don't think we have seen anything similar in modern times," says Andrew Walsh, deputy police chief of Las Vegas. He says the time between the polls closing and the announcement of the final results will be particularly dangerous. Because of the numerous votes being cast through the mail, it could take days for all the ballots to be counted. What might happen if Trump declares himself the victor in the interim? And if Biden doesn't accept that declaration? Chaos would most likely be the result.

On 60th Street in Kenosha, many shops remain boarded up even though the riots ended quite some time ago. "The boards are going to stay there for the time being," says Kyle, a mechanic at Ed's Used Tires. "Violence can erupt again at any time."


Security forces in Philadelphia Foto: Yuki Iwamura / REUTERS

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Trump has transformed the United States into a dangerous place. The president, whose job it is to unite the country, has incited Americans against each other. What makes his presidency so unique is that he lacks any understanding for the gravity of the job he holds. He doesn't understand something that all of his predecessors did: That the job itself is greater than the person who holds it. Almost worse than Trump's political aberrations - his contempt for America's European partners, his weakness for dictators, his denial of climate change – is the fact that he has desecrated the highest office in the country. The presidency was created to bring together a country whose only link is the belief in freedom and in personal responsibility.

Trump has introduced a degree of nepotism the country has never seen before, appointing his daughter and son-in-law as special advisers. He sent his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, around the world to ingratiate himself with foreign politicians and diplomats. He acted as though he was standing up to China, yet he secretly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for campaign support. He has transformed the state into a wing of the Trump empire.

Can he claim any accomplishments? Trump doubtlessly played a role in the strong economic growth the country experienced in the three years before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Wages in the U.S. climbed during that time, including for those men and women without higher education who had been excluded from economic growth for decades. He also oversaw the convergence of Israel with some Arab countries despite decades of animosity. It is an achievement that could ultimately find a mention in the history books.

But what value do such achievements have when the president is simultaneously taking an ax to the roots of democracy at home? One certainly cannot accuse Trump of not having tried to establish a close link with the electorate. Whatever goes through his head can be found a minute later on Twitter. Barack Obama may have dabbled in using social media as a political tool, but Trump has taken the strategy to insidious lengths.

Trump passes along slogans from conspiracy theorists and racists, insulted Democrats and Republicans alike and, ever since his poll numbers have begun falling, he has used Twitter to foment doubts about the legitimacy of the election. Trump has gone so far that internet companies are now considering muzzling Trump on election night to prevent him from triggering violence via tweet.

But Trump hasn't been alone in worsening the political climate in the country. No other television station in the country's history has sown so much hate and division as Fox News, the profit machine in Rupert Murdoch's media empire. How it works was on full display on Thursday of last week, when Trump and Biden met for their second debate.

When the two men separated after an hour and a half of sparring, most commentators were united in the view that nobody had really emerged as the winner. The president had pulled himself together and had been able to land a few punches, while Biden valiantly defended himself, even as he tripped over his tongue on several occasions as expected.

But then, Sean Hannity went on the air, the star of Fox News. Biden, he said during his introduction, had finally dared to emerge from his basement after several weeks in hiding. "He may come to regret it," Hannity intoned. The Americans, the Fox News anchor said, should not allow themselves to be misled into believing that Biden did well in the debate. He was "caught in lie after lie after lie. The mob of the media won't tell you."


Murdoch, Trump and Murdoch's wife Jerry Hall in 2016 Foto: Carlo Allegri / REUTERS

Day after day, Hannity pounds home to his viewers that Trump is a brave outsider who is only attacked so viciously because he dares to drain the corrupt Washington swamp. In his version of events, every official in Washington is a representative of the "deep state,” and media outlets like the New York Times or CNN are pure leftist propaganda machines.

If you watch Fox News through European eyes, the hysteria of the nightly news has something unintentionally funny about it. Hannity consistently calls Trump's challenger "sleepy, creepy, crazy Uncle Joe.” According to Hannity, Biden is a senile puppet in the hands of radical socialists. The warmongering title of Hannity’s book on the election is "Live Free or Die." But Hannity isn’t some whacked-out conspiracy theorist broadcasting from a garage in West Virginia. He attracts an average of 5 million viewers each night, an audience few other political talk show stars in the U.S. could dream of.

Reed Hundt can still remember exactly how everything began. During Bill Clinton's presidency, the lawyer was head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which grants licenses for television stations. In 1994, he visited Rupert Murdoch, who had invited him to dinner at his home in Los Angeles. Murdoch was still making a lot of money on the British newspaper market at that time. But he had a plan to revolutionize the American television business.

He recalls how Murdoch told him that when he would go to newsstands in London, he would find the Times for the educated middle classes, the Guardian for the left and tabloids like the Sun and the Mirror for the rest. And how he told him that TV stations in America are jostling for the moderate audience in the middle. Murdoch’s ingenious plan was to create a television station that occupied a niche that no one had seen before: white men without higher education. Murdoch didn't say so at the time, Hundt says, but he knew that his viewers would mainly skew to the right.

In a way, says Hundt, the Trump presidency is linked to the success of Fox News. The cable channel has created its own audience, and at some point, a politician was needed to entertain those viewers. If Trump didn’t exist, it would have been someone else, he says. That’s why he doesn’t believe a Trump defeat will bring the people at Fox to their senses. The station will simply look for a new populist who can help deliver good ratings and political influence for the station. Fox News will create a new beast, says Hundt. This is the inevitable consequence of all the money that goes into politics like dirty water into a sink, he says.