Merry Christmas from Trump’s America

Democratic U.S. Representative John Yarmuth, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee, condemned his fellow Kentuckian’s post. “I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive asshole,” he added.

348 days ago terrorists ransacked the US Capitol and *hours later* 138-of-202 (68%) House republicans voted to make trump a dictator. They tried to finish the rioters’ job and end democracy. Never forget it.

— Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@BillPascrell) December 22, 2021

Donald Trump, Democracy and Media

Brilliantly clairvoyant editorial illustration by Christian Bloom in Norwegian newspaper VG December 3. 2016.

B; May 19. 2017
In 2016 the political world as we know it was altered;  Brexit and the millions only days after regretting their democratic vote, the failed coup in Turkey leaving Erdogan, even more, sovereign in power, and finally fake news helped Trump’s campaign win the White House.

In the era of Donald Trump and Brexit, Oxford Dictionaries has declared “post-truth” to be its international word of the year.
Defined by the dictionary as an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”, editors said that the use of the term “post-truth” had increased by around 2,000% in 2016 compared to last year. The spike in usage, it said, is “in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States”.

The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust is in crisis around the world. The general population’s trust in all four key institutions — business, government, NGOs, and media — has declined broadly, a phenomenon not reported since Edelman began tracking trust among this segment in 2012.

With the fall of trust, the majority of respondents now lack full belief that the overall system is working for them. In this climate, people’s societal and economic concerns, including globalization, the pace of innovation, and eroding social values, turn into fears, spurring the rise of populist actions now playing out in several Western-style democracies.

To rebuild trust and restore faith in the system, institutions must step outside of their traditional roles and work toward a new, more integrated operating model that puts people — and the addressing of their fears — at the center of everything they do.

What If Trump Has Been a Russian Asset Since 1987?

Important long read by Jonathan Chait from NY Times Magazine