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THE JACKSON HERALD
WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 2017
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
- Henry Ward Beecher ~
Mike Buffington, editor • Email: Mike@mainstreetnews.com
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Why I reject Trumpism
Regular readers of this column know that I’m not
a fan of President Donald Trump. That may sound
strange to some since I live in an area which heav
ily supported Trump
during last year’s
election.
I guess I’ve never
marched the same
direction as the rest
of the band.
While I have writ
ten against Trump
both during the elec
tion and since he’s
taken office, I’ve
never broadly artic
ulated in a column
why I’m opposed to
him and Trumpism
as a political move
ment.
For those who are curious, here’s is why I march
to a different drummer and reject Trumpism:
• Trumpism is a political outlook made of
fog and vapor. It is neither liberal nor conservative.
It has strains of populism, but is void of populism’s
roots of the “common man.” Trumpism is only a
combination of sound bites designed to appeal to
people’s emotions. It is whatever its followers want
it to be — a blank slate onto which they can project
anything. And it is whatever policy or thought Trump
himself decides to tweet at the moment. Trumpism
has no substance and changes on a whim. It is
impulsive, even schizophrenic in the extreme.
• Trumpism is rooted in fear. Both during
the election and since, Trumpism has sought to
stoke fear among its followers — fear of “millions of
illegal votes,” fear of immigrants, fear of the courts,
fear of the media, fear of other nations. Fear is a very
powerful emotion. If you make people fearful, they
will agree to anything, even to limiting their own
individual liberties for a veneer of security. But mak
ing people afraid is no way to run a free, democratic
nation. Any political movement that depends on
fear as its fuel is a political outlook that should be
rejected.
• Trumpism rests on a cult of personal
ity. Without Trump, there would be no Trumpism.
The entire fagade depends on cultivating an aura
around a single man, a cult that worships him as an
“outsider” political savior. But political movements
built on personality cults are always bad and always
crash into failure. Hitler built his Third Reich around
a cult of personality. Lenin and Stalin created the
USSR around their personal cults of personality far
more than on the mechanics of communism. More
recently, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela was a cult leader
who, before he died, led his once wealthy nation
into what has become starvation economics. For a
political movement or philosophy to be legitimate, it
has to be larger than any single individual. Trumpism
isn’t.
• Trumpism has the trappings of a mon
archy. Gold curtains now adorn the White House
and Trump’s daughter and son-in-law are official
advisors, like a princess and prince in waiting.
Americans have long derided kings — we fought the
British to get rid of one. But Trumpism embraces
the aura of kings and queens where good looks
(“isn’t his family beautiful!”) and nepotism are more
important than experience or expertise. Trumpism
is style over substance both in appearance and in
policy-making.
• Trumpism is isolationist in tone. It pro
motes the idea that America can stand alone and
doesn’t need or want alliances with the rest of the
world. But no nation is an island. The American
economy depends on international trade, both to
sell our goods and to import needed raw resourc
es. Isolationism is a failed political and economic
model, yet Trumpism plays heavily on the idea of
America vs. the world. America can’t and shouldn’t
withdraw from the world.
• Trumpism is tainted with the stench
of white nationalism. Trump has surrounded
himself with people (Bannon, Miller) who flirt with
the fringes of these nativists movements. Much
of Trump’s anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric
was to play to the anxieties of whites in a nation
where minorities are growing faster than natives of
Western European backgrounds. White nationalists
cheered Trump’s election as their chance to stop
the diversification of America and to marginalize
minority influence. More than economic insecurity,
Trumpism grew from a sense of ethnic-cultural inse
curity among white voters who see the world around
them changing in ways they are afraid of. America is
better than this Trumpist tribal mentality.
• Trumpism depends on lies and gross
exaggerations to sustain itself. Trump didn’t
have the largest inaugural crowd ever. Millions of
illegals didn’t vote in the election. Trump at first lied
about why FBI director Comey was fired, until he
later admitted it was because of the Russian probe.
Any government that depends on the massive repeti
tion of lies to survive is a government without a moral
foundation. Trumpism is illegitimate because it deval
ues truth and disdains any institution (the courts, the
media) that dares to question it. The level of lying
and exaggerations under Trumpism is extraordinary
and a sign of gross immaturity and insecurity on the
part of its leadership. It is immoral.
• Trumpism is not about governing, it’s
about winning and losing. But government isn’t
a football game. Providing services and protecting
the nation from enemies is a mix of money diploma
cy and power. To dumb-down governing into black-
and-white terms of winners and losers is to totally
lose sight of why governments exist in the first place.
• Trumpism is a political river flowing the
wrong direction. It’s not about leadership where
a president outlines a vision, then works to rally
legislative and popular support toward those goals.
Trumpism works the other way around — it seeks to
rally legislative and popular support to feed the frag
ile ego of the president himself. His campaign rallies
are more about Trump needing to absorb adoration
from the crowd than about his articulating a vision.
His intense fixation on his personal media coverage
and his public image is emotionally debilitating. The
White House is in disarray because the decision
making is more about stroking the king’s inflated ego
than about governing. Trumpism is always about the
“me” and not the national “we.”
Whatever happens with the ongoing probe into
Trump’s ties with Russia, Trumpism as a political
movement will have a short lifespan.
Trumpism depends on a false narrative of America:
That everything is getting worse; that liberals and
“others” (blacks, Muslims, immigrants) are bring
ing the nation down; and that the existing political
“establishment” and media elite are part of a vast
conspiracy to undermine “real Americans.”
I reject that false view of our nation. We are
not a nation of victims, as Trumpism propaganda
preaches.
America has problems, but this ugly embrace of
victimhood as preached by Trumpism is false.
Trumpism will fail because it depends on lies,
exaggerations and a cult worship of a false god as its
moral foundation.
Eventually, the bright light of truth, the harshness
of reality and America’s long culture of political
moderation will strip away the facade of Trumpism
and unmask it for what it really is: A shallow cult
designed to service one man’s giant ego.
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet
Newspapers. He can be reached at mike@main-
streetnews.com.
state report
Gov. Deal becomes
part of the ‘resistance’
BY TOM CRAWFORD
Ever since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, he has been
confronted with a counter-movement called “the resistance.”
This resistance is comprised of Democrats who oppose Trump’s
actions as president. They have conducted mass marches to protest
the president’s policies, town halls to push back against attempts to kill
Obamacare, and energetic campaigns in special elections like Georgia’s
6th Congressional District.
There is one area where the resistance has included not only dissident
Democrats but the highest-ranking Republican in state government: Gov.
Nathan Deal.
This is indeed ironic when you remember that Deal supported Tmmp
in last fall’s election.
But on the issue of criminal justice reform, Deal has refused to go along
with Tmmp and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions of Alabama.
Sessions has instructed all federal prosecutors to reverse the efforts
of the Obama administration to reduce the number of low-level drug
offenders in federal prisons. The feds will now go for the maximum
charge possible on every criminal defendant, with the goal being to pack
as many people as possible into prison cells.
The Sessions approach is a revival of the war on dmgs of the 1980s and
other lock-them-up programs that bloated prison rolls everywhere and
caused correctional budgets to skyrocket.
Why are Tmmp and Sessions doing this? To find the answer, you must
follow the money.
Two of the largest private prison operators in the country, GEO Group
and CoreCivic, each donated $250,000 to Tmmp’s inaugural fund. GEO
Group also contributed $225,000 to a super PAC Tmmp operates and
hired two of Sessions’ former aides as federal lobbyists.
Sessions has financial investments in those private prison companies
as well. The more people that federal prosecutors send to prison, the
more money these private prison companies can potentially make - and
the more value Sessions’ investments have.
From the very beginning of his administration, Deal has taken a differ
ent approach. In his first inaugural address in 2011, Deal said the state
just could not afford to keep locking up so many dmg addicts in prison.
“It is draining our state treasury and depleting our work force,” Deal
said.
He appointed a top-level criminal justice reform commission that
recommended several changes in the state’s sentencing laws to divert
non-violent offenders to programs that provided an alternative to prison.
These recommendations became legislation that was approved by
Republicans and Democrats alike and signed into law by the governor.
Thanks to these revisions, the corrections department says that 67
percent of the state’s prison beds are now occupied by the most serious
offenders, up from 58 percent in 2009.
Georgia now has 139 accountability courts, which are an alternative to
imprisonment, and the number of new participants entering these courts
statewide increased by 147 percent in 2016 alone.
Felony dmg courts had 2,381 active participants, many of whom are
struggling with substance abuse and would probably be in a state prison
if not for the option of this alternative court.
It was once projected that Georgia would have 60,000 people behind
bars by now; the number instead is about 52,000.
Even as Sessions was drafting his order for federal prosecutors
to resume packing the prisons, Deal was signing the latest round of
criminal justice bills passed during this year’s legislative session. These
included some additional revisions in the state’s probation system.
“This most recent legislative package is another meaningful step for
ward in making Georgia a safer, more prosperous place to call home,”
Deal said upon signing the bills.
“The unprecedented criminal justice reforms we’ve implemented
since 2009 have already had a remarkable and positive impact, with
overall prison commitments down 15.4 percent through the end of 2016,”
he added.
Deal is not the only high-ranking official with this point of view. There
are more than 30 states, including such red states as Texas and South
Carolina, that are also trying to reduce incarceration rates by giving
judges more alternatives to mandatory minimums and enacting more
alternatives to prison sentences.
Deal would no doubt disagree sharply with any attempt to categorize
him as part of the “resistance” to a president whose election he backed.
But on this one, he and officials in dozens of other states have made it
clear that they are resisting the Tmmp administration.
Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia Report, an internet news ser
vice at gareport.com that reports on state government and politics. He
can be reached at tcrawford@gareport.com.
The Jackson Herald
Founded 1875
Merged with The Commerce News 2017
The Official Legal Organ of Jackson County, Ga.
Herman Buffington, Publisher 1965-2005
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher & Editor
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher & Advertising Manager
Angela Gary Associate Editor Features
Alex Pace Braselton News Editor
Ron Bridgeman Reporter
Ben Munro Sports Editor
Charles Phelps Sports Reporter
Wesleigh Sagon Photographer/Features
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