COMMENTARY: Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, and Trump
Have statistics become obsolete? Apparently, as Trump has no interest in hearing what valid data has to say.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
In ancient times, the dictators killed the messengers that brought bad news.
President Donald Trump has not reached that point yet, but such action might not be far away.
Now Trump merely fires those who provide bad news, and bad news is any news that does not show the president in a favorable light.
Such was the case last week when our fearless leader fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, because he didn’t like the jobs report released from her office.
Without any reported evidence, Trump accused this woman of lying to the American public just to make him look bad and took away her livelihood with one whisk of his pen. No investigation. No nothing. You don’t send out a report unfavorable to this administration or you’re gone.
Apparently, the truth has no meaning to Trump and his MAGA cult, and the only statistics that matter are the ones he pulls out of his head on the spur of the moment, numbers he just makes up out of thin air.
Once again, intimidation, the modus operandi of a man obsessed with power. Innocent until proven guilty? An antiquated concept under Trump rule. That idea went out with the Constitution.
As usual, Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for the bad report because it was Biden who had appointed McEntarfer to her post. Like a third-grader who constantly gets into trouble, it is always somebody else’s fault.
Those few of us who still retain the ability to think and reason keep wondering where all this will eventually lead. In six months’ time we have turned from a republic to a one-party state with an absolute ruler at the helm.
As Nikita Khrushchev predicted almost 70 years ago, the United States is destroying itself from within. We have allowed one man to set himself above the law and rule with an iron fist. And the worst part is that we — at least many Americans — are getting used to the idea.
If Trump law doesn’t affect us, then we just ignore it. The government can come for the other guys just as long as they leave me and mine alone. The trouble is that one day when they come for you, your friends and neighbors — out of fear and intimidation — may take the same attitude. Then you are really alone.
As I have pointed out several times in the last six months, all this Trump law may well come back to haunt the MAGA cult, and that’s exactly what it is. If Trump can sign an executive order and do away with one part of the Constitution, a precedent has been established for the next president to do the same thing.
What if the next president is an atheist and signs an executive order outlawing the freedom of worship? What if the next president signs an executive order banning firearms? What if the next president decides to abandon Social Security or go back to segregated schools?
Couldn’t happen? Don’t bet on it. Read your history. What goes around comes around. Societies can go from one extreme to another in a heartbeat, as we are now experiencing. You forsake one part of the Constitution and other parts are likely to go as well. Suddenly, the law of the land is no more and what was “for and by the people” is reduced to the executive order of a dictator.
One of the basic laws of our land is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. You don’t just declare that the author is lying because the jobs report doesn’t make you look good. That is not the American way.
But then, Donald Trump is changing the American way.
And if the MAGA cult has its way, we may soon be singing “Trump Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch at baseball games. The tune will be the same, but the words will change.
And those who don’t sing “Trump” may be investigated, have their citizenship revoked and shipped off to some third-world country, never to be seen or heard from again.
This president demands loyalty — not to the country, but to him.
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Amazing how something can be so true yet so false.
Yes what Trump is doing is reprehensible. And yes, it makes it so another can do worse, if that were possible. But that's not really the problem, is it?
Libertarians have long had a meme that they play as they look at contempt on the American system where they enlighten us and justify their apathy and disdain by explaining that both the left and the right wing are all part of the same bird.
The implication being that what has been happening to this country for the last 40 years under Republicanism, and especially the last decade as that party has transformed into a personality cult beholden to its undergirding of funding and fanaticism from both oligarchs and religious zealots really doesn't matter because they all do it.
It is echoed by those who oppose the policies of this totalitarian cult, yet refuse to recognize it for what it is - a major portion of the country, ironically the ones who hold themselves out as the most patriotic and loyal of the country, destroying that very means of government from within.
It's not only a WSJ that focuses only on the money, a WaPo brought to heel to do the same in the hopes that its owner won't be called to account for his Amazonian tactics, data center power grabs, or hopes to chisel into the space market pie.
But also local, "independent" editors certain that as long as they keep their head down at the local level, assuring us that the local Republicans are really good people and therefore should not be held accountable for what their party does elsewhere, or even their columnists, who obviously are as disgusted with these horrible policies as so many of the rest of us, yet merely a week or two ago were assuring us that the laws passed by this cult of obedience were no big deal and life goes on.
It's not working. The left wing and the right wing are no longer part of the same bird. The right wing is actively trying to destroy the bird and replace it with something wrought in its own image.
If science doesn't agree with them, they throw out the science - whether it be climate data, weather, economic, electoral. Like wise for crime, civil liberties, or any of the other myriad underpinnings of a successful society.
And it was successful, despite the acceptance of otherwise by so many. America performed better under Biden than just about every other country in the world coming out of the pandemic. Now we're not. And a new generation is about to see stagflation on steroids. Coupled with a tax rate that changes daily dependent upon the whims of a megalomaniac with sensitivity issues but always is 10% or more, whereas 6 months ago it averaged 2.5%.
Who voted for that? Especially when that tax is imposed more harshly upon the poor as billionaires and the UMC see their costs cushioned?
But the fact remains that none of this happens without the obedience of LOCAL Republicans. They are as culpable as the ones doing it in their name. Though both they, and their enablers would have it so, you shouldn't be able to have it both ways.
When your neighbors are afraid to speak their minds because your party will attack them for telling the truth, you're the problem. When their healthcare is taken, their children locked up without rights, they are unjustly taxed, cannot learn at a school whose curriculum offends you, or access a vaccine that may save their lives because of your party - then you're the problem.
Our media needs to hold them to account for these outrages, our voters and citizens need to hold them to account - at every level of government.
If someone hires a killer to kill you, the law says they should be held accountable for their actions. Why are we not doing the same when they are killing our government?
It's not merely one miserable, amorally ignorant huckster in Washington doing this. It is the people who both chose to put him and all of his followers there, and continue to obey him without question.
That's who did the hiring. At the very least, demand to know why.
This is what plain spoken truth looks like..