Supreme Court Upholds Travel Ban, Ruptures American Dream.
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Donald Trump acted lawfully when he called for the US to begin a policy of banning anyone, most notably persons of Islamic faith, who live in a certain seven countries last year and has upheld his right to continue doing so.
It’s a dark day for democracy worldwide. So the Republicans are actively celebrating.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) marked the Supreme Court ruling upholding President Trump’s travel ban by sharing a photo of himself with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
McConnell’s campaign shared the image just minutes after the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 ruling finding that the ban was constitutional. Gorsuch sided with the majority of justices upholding the ban.
Gorsuch is the guy Trump picked out to replace former Chief Justice Antonin Scalia after he died. He was brought in to rubber-stamp Trump’s decisions, and the whole Supreme Court has been corrupted because of it.
Scalia was a miserable excuse for a man who was against everything except the death penalty. Little kids in cages? Banning entire populations of countries from so much as visiting here? He’d have loved this.
This is why the Republicans were so desperate to block President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has been wrong. The Dred Scott case comes to mind. That very same court once ruled that it was acceptable to treat humans as cattle and that Africans were only 3/5 human.
The first Muslim elected to Congress, Keith Ellison, predicted on Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Donald Trump’s travel ban will end up in “the dustbin of history”, and this is almost certainly true.
During the interim, however, this is undoubtedly a tremendous win for both Trump and future holders of the executive branch of our government, and such a win could not have come at a worse time. It is certain to embolden both a man and a party who already have no respect whatsoever for the spirit of the law.
Fox anchor Abby Huntsman recently referred to Trump as a dictator, live and on the air, as he strolled around with his good buddy Kim Jong Un of North Korea, another guy who has no respect for human rights.
“I called both President Trump and Kim Jon Un a dictator”, Huntsman explained.
It’s Jong Un, ma’am, but we’re not going to quibble.
The incompetence of the enemy is no longer funny, and in our opinion, it’s probably being done on purpose. The lady tried walking the statement back with an apology but the seed has been planted just the same. They’re sending subtle, almost subliminal cues, and if we listen carefully, we too can catch their meaning.
If Trump is a dictator, and Fox reports on it as being normal, then all of their viewers necessarily believe that they are now subjects and that democracy has fallen and they’re fine with it.
Several weeks ago, the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, was asked by news host Rachel Maddow if she thinks America is still a country who respects the rule of law. Her response?
These words ring true with even greater solidity now that Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban, which violates everything about the spirit of American law, has been confirmed by the Supreme Court.
Going forward, our focus will be the raising of awareness that Trump really is walking down an autocratic road, and that Trump and the Republicans have decided to make themselves into active enemies of the American dream.
In order to get people to realize it, we’ve got to make the case. We’ve got to gather and arrange the evidence and lay it on the American people’s doorstep. Republicans have dropped the ball by every conceivable metric. They have failed us at every turn. Let’s make sure they are properly credited.
A strange rumor caught the attention of one of our contributors recently.
An idea has been making the rounds that the apocalyptic wildfires in Northern California were started by the Mexican Mafia, in an iron-fisted attempt to eliminate competition from the marijuana industry.
He thought little of it at first. But it just kept coming up, and now it’s turning into an accepted part of the narrative in the area.
Rumors are common, of course. But in this day and age, when even the most innocuous aspects of American culture, e.g. Pokemon Go and the #DontShootUs hashtag have been poisoned and used against us by the Russians, nothing can be taken for granted.
So when you hear a widespread rumor, especially regarding anything that might be employed to raise racial tensions and turn neighbor against neighbor, it’s a good idea to look at where it came from.
The problem started when right-wing blog Got News claimed an exclusive bombshell in the ongoing wildfire story. They did not cite any of their alleged law enforcement sources. No quotes of any kind appear in the story. It fails to present any evidence beyond the fact that the fires damaged marijuana crops.
Breitbart News got ahold of it shortly thereafter.
Now, here’s where things get interesting. GotNews is run by a guy named Charles C. Johnson, the white nationalist infamously known as “Trump’s Troll”. He reportedly acted as an adviser to the Trump administration’s transition team. Johnson has recently been implicated in the Russia investigation, according to a recent piece by Ben Schreckinger in Politico.
Johnson also arranged and attended a meeting between Assange and Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican who has consistently argued for closer ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.
In other words, Charles C. Johnson is probably on Putin’s payroll. And he’s definitely on his side.
Although the likes of the slovenly Charles C. Johnson seem like random wingnuts, these stories are not random at all. They are part of a carefully coordinated and worldwide disinformation campaign, financed by Russia and inspired by fascist ideology.
The utmost attention must be brought to the way that this is done. Believe it or not, propaganda specialists are telling the truth 9 of 10 times. That’s the whole point. If all of it was nonsense, it would be written off right away. So most of it isn’t. Lying blatantly isn’t what they do. What they do do, is actually very clever. They will take that one lie, break it up into chunks, and then feed it back to people in a way they often don’t notice.
The method employed in this article was an associative trick. They take two things that could plausibly be related and simply discuss them, side by side. The lie comes in so smooth, you barely notice it. Watch carefully the Breitbart article’s opening paragraphs for a good working example. It’s down there in italics and it includes the link.
Three claims are being made here. First, that a man has been arrested by ICE. Second, that the man is an illegal alien from Mexico. Third, that his arrest was made IN CONNECTION with setting fires. The first two are true; the third is patently false. It is a complete and total lie.
Many Americans, however, will swear on the lives of their families that the opposite is true. This is because they have been brainwashed so totally by conservative media that they truly believe what Breitbart writes is the gospel truth. Studies on the subject indicate this type of person will defend a story like this to the end.
In direct contravention of this statement, Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano directly addressed the false claim at a press conference held at the time.
The simple fact is, it’s wildfire season.
Long fire seasons are normal for California. Rain is usually absent for half the year. Thirteen of the 20 most devastating fires in California history, as measured by the number of buildings destroyed, have started on Oct. 1 or later, according to Cal Fire records.
The wildfires this year were the worst in state history, an unparalleled tragedy. The callousness needed to use an event like this for political purposes can only belong to Putin.
This is the face of fascism. Manufactured incidents, news used as a tool to mislead and obfuscate. Propaganda, dishonesty, and confusion become the new and accepted norm. This is the face of their new authoritarian ideology. That ideology will be gradually dripped into the heads of the people by the likes of Sebastian Gorka, who was recently hired by Fox News.
This concept is not abstract, or something that only happens elsewhere. Companies like the Sinclair Broadcasting Company, which is said to be in talks with conservative TV show host Bill O’Reilly, will soon be threading pro- Trump messaging into every aspect of television. Their virulent brand of right-wing commentary and so-called “classic propaganda” may soon reach three-quarters of US households.
Going forward, the Mexican Mafia wildfire slander serves as an excellent case study for the examining and reverse-engineering of Republican propaganda. There will be more of this to come than we can imagine; Russian ads alone reached over 120 million on Facebook this year.
By thinking critically and staying alert, however, we can spot the fake news virus as it spreads. We can dismantle them, dissect them, and lay bare their innards to the light. In this manner, we will come to see how they work.
Our job is to expose lies and bear witness. So please, when you see a story that looks like it could be suspect, let us know. Send it in so we can get to the bottom of it, and send it packing once and for all. Those who seek to educate will always stand as defenders of the truth. And that is the purpose of the Millennial Democrats DissectFake project.
Beneath, we are gratefully borrowing a crucial production of the International Federation of Library Associations(IFLA), which describes itself as the global voice of the library and information profession.