Sunday, November 18, 2018

HENRY GIROUX: TRUMP'S FANTASY CRUELTY MACHINE MERGES IGNORANCE, POWER, AND POLITICS TO PRODUCE A FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER


TRUMP'S FANTASY CRUELTY MACHINE MERGES 
IGNORANCE, POWER, AND POLITICS TO PRODUCE 
A FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER
Authoritarian regimes wage a war against societies with strong social bonds and in doing so turn people against all notions of the public good, compassion, the government, working people, and the mesh of democratically inspired social relations. Instead of dignity, collective rights, social provisions, and a celebration of the public imagination, we get cruelty, the breaking of social obligations, and the breakdown of the social fabric. 
This is the backdrop to Trump responding to the murderous assault on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in which he responded by chiding them for not having tighter security. Previously, he had expressed his chagrin over the bombing assassination attempts because they had slowed down what he called the Republican momentum just prior to the mid-term elections. Human needs, compassion, and empathy in the face of hardships become an obstacle in Trump's world of hyper-political expediency, a world devoid of any sense of moral and social responsibility. 
And now in the face of the ravaging and deadly fires waging in California, he responds with a heartlessness and cruelty typical of ruthless and power hoarding barbarians. In this case, he responded by saying he would withhold federal funds from the state. Homes are burning, the land is being destroyed, people are dying, lives are shattered and this is his response on Twitter: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
Trump's ignorance seems to rival his penchant for cruelty. 
As many firefighters pointed out, the fires have nothing to do with forest mismanagement, "The fires in So. Cal are urban interface fires and have NOTHING to do with forest management." As others have pointed out, "Malibu is not a logged area, it’s rolling hills and chaparral." What's more most of the state's forests are managed by the federal government." 
I guess this type of stupidity is acceptable by an administration that believes that there are no such thing as facts just an alternative universe of lies and magical thinking.


Please also go here for more from Henry Giroux:
 

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