Columnist
Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-cant-even-get-american-nationalism-right/2019/09/30/be903b0e-e3a2-11e9-b403-f738899982d2_story.html
Michael Gerson writes in the WashPost:
One of the puzzling aspects of President Trump’s hyper-nationalism is its consistent denigration of the nation itself.
In a 2017 Oval Office conversation among Trump, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the president did more than boast that the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey had relieved “great pressure” on him. Trump also, according to a recent report in The Post, appeared to White House officials to be “forgiving Russia for an attack that had been designed to help elect him,” while noting that the United States engaged in such election manipulation itself.
Citing one former administration official, the Post article added: “The president and his top aides seemed not to understand the difference between Voice of America, a U.S.-supported news organization that airs in foreign countries, with Russian efforts to persuade American voters by surreptitiously planting ads in social media.”
This is not the first time Trump has asserted a moral equivalence between American and Russian roles in the world. In his 2017 Super Bowl day interview with Fox News, he dismissed criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “killer” by musing: “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think, our country’s so innocent?”
If such a statement were made by an Ivy League college professor, conservatives would have had all their suspicions about the anti-American tendencies of tenured radicals confirmed. Yet Republicans seem to have no problem rallying around a politician who looks at the Russian-American relationship and sees equal and opposite amorality.
The assertion of moral equivalence between the Voice of America and Russian troll farms is particularly ignorant and galling. The VOA does actual newsgathering and journalism in countries without a free press. The Russians deliver lies on social media to encourage division and hatred among Americans. Trump seems incapable of understanding the difference.
For all his flag waving, Trump seems to lack the instinct for patriotism. It is one thing — as the president does with regularity — to throw people who work for him under the bus. This displays the absence of downward loyalty. But in his 2017 meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, Trump effectively threw his country under the bus — endorsing the Russian perception of American hypocrisy on election tampering. This indicates a lack of upward loyalty. It doesn’t seem to matter to Trump that American “meddling” in foreign elections generally consists of promoting regular and fair elections, encouraging the protection of minority rights and speaking up for press freedom.
None of these objectives holds much appeal or urgency for Trump. He calls for the renewal of nationalism, but in a manner that has little to do with our national values. He wants us to take pride in blood and soil rather than in a set of universal ideals. His calls for loyalty are based on geography not morality. He urges us to love America because it is powerful, and because it is ours, not because it is good.
In this sense, Trump seeks to normalize American nationalism — to make it more like the Russian or Chinese varieties. He invariably defines national goals in terms of exercising military dominance, or controlling access to resources, or maintaining national sovereignty, or achieving trade surpluses. And he seems to view this as an expression of realism about the nature of power. America may claim to be a new order for the ages, but we kill people too. We interfere with elections too.Trump appears to find this kind of moral relativism liberating. A world without rules and ideals is a world without limits on his instincts and whims. This may be why he has offered praise for the leadership styles of Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping, while generally ignoring democratic activists in Moscow or Hong Kong. Trump would rather view himself as the embodiment of the national will, instead of as the steward of American ideals. His sympathies lie with the powerful because he imagines himself in their company.
Despite this pretense, Trump manages to look small and silly on the global stage. He has been tricked and exploited again and again by North Korea’s murderous man-child. At the Helsinki summit last year, standing next to Putin, Trump was cringing and pathetic. When it comes to foreign policy, he is not sitting at the adult table.
But the most alarming spectacle is this: an American president who doesn’t understand the meaning of America.
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Couldn’t have said it better myself, Michael. My only question: What happened to the rest of your GOP buddies who have joined with the forces of racism, xenophobia, and cowardice to destroy our nation from the inside? Seems like something pernicious in both your GOP and your conservative movement that have betrayed America by supporting the neo-Nazi authoritarian Trump.
Trump’s GOP is nothing new. It’s an extension of a party and a conservative movement that has always relied on a racially motivated, morally questionable “base.” Rather than having the guts to reject racism and false patriotism, the GOP has let their lust for rule against the best interests of the nation take over.
When you finally acknowledge your own role in creating Trump and his atrocities against America, you will have more credibility!
But, until then, I agree completely that we have an un-American President who gives patriotism a bad name and degrades our nation with every day he remains in the high office for which he is so supremely unqualified and undeserving. The GOP actually has the power to join with the Democrats in removing Trump — this clear menace to America — from office now! Instead, they defend the indefensible with more lies and smears of the REAL patriots and those who do understand the “meaning of America!”
PWS
10-02-19