Did George Orwell predict Donald Trump in 1984?

Donald Trump-George Orwell

I am an ardent fan of George Orwell's work including, Animal Farm and 1984. Animal Farm is political satire at its best, depicting the unrest of the animals at the Manor farm because they are treated poorly. Mr. Jones, the farmer, was a mean and drunken man who exploited them, leading to a rebellion by the animals that eventually gets out of hand. It's a short read that will illustrate the kind of uprising that is imminent when people, or animals, are unhappy with their situation. Or their government. It's an issue I'll cover later using the book to draw similarities with the U.S.

But 1984 offers a multitude of possibilities for comparison with the new Donald Trump admin., even as it completes just over a month of tenure. The timing only emphasizes the number of conspiracy theories Donald John has been able to concoct in such a short amount of time. They are numerous and at times so bizarre that they defy the reality that the man that has just been elected to the presidency of the United States is the one who spawned them. It is more likely that we would expect such disjointed discourse from Jack Nicholson in One flew Over the cuckoo's Nest. Examples...

1. Trump's phones in Trump Tower were tapped
2. Said there was Rampant voter fraud in 2016
3. Anti-Trump protesters are paid
4. Obama is coordinating the [Trump] protests
5. There were 1.5 million people who attended his inauguration

In none of these cases has Donald John come up with any corroboration for the statements he made, with the most blatant number five. This was where Trump cried to the heavens how much larger his inauguration crowd was than Barack Obama's in 2008, when independent photos proved him wrong. But the freakish behavior of Donald Trump isn't the basis for this post, rather just some background and sidebars to explain the aberrant nature of the man who has risen from mediocrity to the President of the most powerful nation n the world. And how Orwell's 1984 has its parallels.

This isn't the first post or article on this issue, there have been several, but, notably, believe mine is the first to use the Orwell Today site in drawing these comparisons and cross-referencing with Jackie Jura's excellent notes and correlations with the future. On March 5, CNN's headline blazed, "The President of the United States traffics in conspiracy theories," then goes on to document Donald Trump's ongoing perpetuation of lies and misinformation. Jackie Jura n Orwell Today has a section on "Conspiracy Goes Mainstream," which chronicles history's most unique conspiracies. 

But time now to look at George Orwell and then Donald trump through the eyes of "Orwell Today." And the only way to begin is to start with Orwell's most imposing creation, Big Brother. It was the Proles who marched through the streets with placards celebrating Big Brother’s ability to 'Make Oceania Great Again.' Fast forward to the 2016 campaign when Trump followers with red hats were marching everywhere with signs that said, 'Make America Great Again.' Now Donald Trump is not Orwell's Big Brother, but he is the epitome of his oligarchs. 

1984's Winston character tries to recall the past when everything had been better but today's world was the remnants of a society that was free and uncomplicated, unlike 1984, and the new world order where the world was broken into three super-states. Steve Bannon has three tenets on which he plans to build the new "Trumpism" and, although they aren't geographical like Orwell's three nations, they do represent the kind of one-nation ideology of a country that is at the current time highly divisive. They are Capitalism, nationalism, and “Judeo-Christian values.”

It was the plan of the 1984 autocrats to "Keep the Masses Down" in order to maintain a hierarchical society that could only be possible through the proletariat's poverty and ignorance. Although not directly related to Donald Trump, it is the policy of the Republican Party to amass the wealth in only a few (1% of the population) and keep the rest in the dark over what the Party is really doing, in order to maintain the blind votes of their followers. Like Orwell's world, Donald John and the GOP feel their complete survival depend on collectivism.

1984's "Ministry of Truth" must have been the prototype for Donald Trump's communications dept. with Sean Spicer playing the part of the book's character, Winston, whose job it was at the Ministry to take news items he received and turn them around to mean what the higher-ups in the Party wanted said. To be certain, the Ministry of Truth was only the front for a persisting procession of lies to the citizens of Oceania, tied in a neat bundle that, when exxhibited, was meant to be bona fide. Well, in 2017, as in 1984, there is nothing truthful about Donald John's Ministry of Truth.

Orwell's "Falsification of the Past" follows closely to the Ministry of Truth in the fabrication of any information that is granted to the public. If Trump doesn't like what has already been said, he will change it to fit what he wants. Like right after the inauguration when he removed the term "climate change" from the official White House website. In Oceania there was Oldspeak and "Newspeak," when translated corresponds to the civil tone coming from the White House during Barack Obama and earlier presidents, compared to Donald John's crude and sometimes lewd rhetoric.

PoliticoMagazine talks of the multitude of contradictions of Donald Trump: "Has anyone ever disagreed with Donald Trump more than Donald Trump?" The Inner Party in 1984 was governed by adherence to a common doctrine of "Doublethink," which means "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." Here are Politico's examples...

“I have no intention of running for president.” (Time, September 14, 1987)
“I am officially running for president.” (New York, June 16, 2015)

 “I don’t want it for myself. I don’t need it for myself.” (ABC News, November 20, 2015)
“I wanted to do this for myself. … I had to do it for myself.” (Time, August 18, 2015)

“Politicians are all talk and no action.” (Twitter, May 27, 2015)
“I’m not a politician.” (CNN, August 11, 2015)
“I’m no different than a politician running for office.” (New York Times, July 28, 2015)

Orwell's "Ministry of Love" is like other of his poetic symbols that mean the opposite of what they
say. This one is actually a torture chamber for people who have been picked up by the Thought Police for thinking bad things against Big Brother. Now Donald John has no thought police per se, except for his minions who try to unsuccessfully control the media, but he does have a lot of love he spews on a regular basis, like how much he loves women. How much he loves immigrants. How much he loves blacks. And then he degrades each with a vehemence not found when expressing the love.

I could go on for some time but it will be much more interesting for you to browse Jackie Jura's Orwell Today site and come up with your own conclusions of how George Orwell's book, 1984, corresponds with the idiocy of the Donald Trump administration. Check the 45 topics she has documented on the left-hand side of the site. and when you go to something like "Big Brother" be sure and take advantage of the notes and analogies she has referenced as they will often point directly to current events. Good Reading!

Stephen King's latest horror story: Donald Trump

Donald Trump is in deep doo doo the Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether or not his election campaign staff was involved, while at the same time he must defend the lowlife Jeff Sessions he nominated for Attorney and a gutless Republican approved. So, does he do what any self-respecting individual would do--especially the President of the United States--build a palatable defense for each with facts? And since the world knows there is no defense for what has been done, what's left. Simple, we go on the offense with more lies and misinformation. Trump's tweet 3/4...

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

First of all, the man is illiterate when it comes to spelling, and second, as has been the case with past accusations, he gives absolutely no proof. Here's what the master of handed-over misinformation, Sean Spicer, had to say 3/5...

“Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling.”

What the hell are these people talking about? Fact checker asked for evidence of this "dramatic claim" but received nothing. The Washington Post reports that possibly Spicer's "reports" refer to news stories and not concrete information. But, "The Washington Post for months has sought to confirm this report of a FISA warrant related to the Trump campaign but has been unable to do so." More so, WP assumes other major news media have done the same and also come up empty. The gist of the matter is that month of FISA for information on Russian hacking have been denied.

McClatchy reported in January...

"The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump, two people familiar with the matter said."

"The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence."

 FISA court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), has been approached from about every direction including the former White House, for the purpose of uncovering Donald John's connection to the Russians in the 2016 campaign, not for the purpose of wiretapping Trump Tower. There is more investigation into how money transferred from the Kremlin "may have been used to pay some email hackers in the United States or to supply money to intermediaries who would then pay the hackers. More from McClatchy...

"On Jan. 6, the director of national intelligence released a declassified report that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign to “undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process,” damage Hillary Clinton’s election prospects and bolster Trump’s. The campaign included the hacking of top Democrats’ emails and fake news distributed by Russian sources."

But the real story here is horror writer Stephen King's assessment of Donald John... 

“A Trump presidency scares me more than anything else. I’m terrified that he’ll become president.”

This, of course, was pre-election, and sounds like he may be comparing the then coming election of Donald Trump with books of his like Carrie, It, and Misery. If you lump all of King's chillers together, they wouldn't equal the repugnance of the Trump administration. Stephen King likens the Trump presidency with his 37-year-old book, Dead Zone, about a salesman who fights the establishment to run for president. He doesn't make it but King has some interesting tweets mocking Donald John's charges over Obama's wiretapping of Trump Tower...

"Not only did Obama tap Trump's phones, he stole the strawberry ice cream out of the mess locker."

"Populist demagogues like He Who Must Not Be Named aren't a new thing; see THE DEAD ZONE, published 37 years ago."

"Obama tapped Trump's phones IN PERSON! Went in wearing a Con Ed coverall. Michelle stood guard while O spliced the lines. SAD!"

It is pretty pathetic when one of the greatest writers of all time spends part of his valuable time to poke fun at the new president of the United states, not in a playful way, but to point out the absurdities and lunacies of this new administration. Avi Selk, in the Washington Post story once again reiterates...

An Obama spokesman and a former intelligence director said there was no wiretap. Some speculated that Trump was referring to claims on talk radio and the conservative website Breitbart that Obama used “police state” tactics against him. Others accused Trump of trying to distract from reports that his staff covered up conversations with Russian officials during the campaign.

On the legal side, FBI Director James Comey feels there is no credibility in Trump's claims that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower phones and told the Justice Department to refute the charges. Donald John fired back refusing to "acknowledge" Comey's judgment, probably leading to some kind of confrontation with the head of the nation's leading law enforcement agency. The New York Times is leery of the fact that Trump would fire Comey because that could very well backfire into a cover-up over his campaign connections with the Russians.

Although Sean Spicer has made several comments stating Donald Trump's conclusion that former President Barack Obama did in fact wiretap trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. He offered no evidence at the time, nor has Donald John since his accusations. Yet the two of them are adamant it happened. But not so sure are others in the White House, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders who pretty much hedges on most of Spicer's and Trump's allegations. This is why Spicer didn't really want to talk about this...

"During an at-times-painful interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz, Huckabee Sanders repeatedly suggested that Trump's allegation was worth looking into but declined to vouch for it. Raddatz pointed this out repeatedly, and Huckabee Sanders responded by saying 'if this happened,' 'if this took place,' 'if it did' and 'let's find out.'”

Martha Raddatz is one of those reporters that gives no quarter when it comes to getting the truth and

Martha Raddatz-Sarah Huckabee Sanders

didn't relent with Huckabee Sanders continued use of the preposition "if" when Raddatz finally exclaimed, “If,” “if,” “if,” “if.” Huckabee Sanders reply, ""I agree." Raddatz added...

"Let me just say one more time. The president said, “I bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October.” So the president believes it is true?"

HUCKABEE SANDERS: I would say that his tweet speaks for itself there.

In a nutshell, Donald Trump "trumped" up this conspiracy theory of Barack Obama wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, solely for the purpose of diverting attention away from the issues that he and his staff were in cahoots with Putin and the Russians in 2016 to aide his election chances and damage Hillary Clinton's, And the other issue, the skaggy lowlife he nominated for AG, Jeff Sessions lying about his contact with the Russians during the election. With a lack of support from his FBI Director, now some of his staff, where does the American public draw the line?

Is it possible Jeff Sessions is a bigger liar than Trump?

In the Senate hearings to confirm Jeff Sessions for Attorney general under the new Donald Trump administration, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn) asked him a simple question of had he had contacts with the Russians. Sessions reply...

“I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it."

Not only was he in contact with a Russian, he met with the Russian ambassador. And more than once. Nancy Pelosi, the House's minority leader, says that Sessions lied to Congress and must resign. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader also called for Sessions to resign. When Sessions did everything he could think of to change his story and rearrange the facts, all of which still didn't work, he recused himself...

"...from any and all investigations into the 2016 campaign by the Justice Department, a clear attempt to throw a bone to the howling pack in hopes that the controversy would die down."

It didn't, has only gotten worse, and Donald John was reportedly furious for his action, enough to start the maniac on another tirade accusing Barack Obama of ordering the wiretapping of the Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. Completely unsubstantiated...nada...zip to back it up. But then, that's Donald Trump, a part of his formula to spread misinformation about anyone who crosses him or disagrees with him. The other part of his formula is outright lies, a technique he has employed from the first day of his presidential campaign, perhaps all his business life.

One can understand why Trump would be frantic over Jeff Sessions recusing himself since it is no doubt his Attorney General would have overseen an investigation of the Russian impact on Donald Trump's winning the election. And we all know from experience that Sessions is simply another of Donald John's yes men, ready to do his bidding no matter what. So, what's next? According to CNN...

"Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that Sessions' acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente, should appoint a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation."

If they drag their feet...

"We will then urge (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) and (House Speaker Paul Ryan) to work with Democrats and create a new and improved version of the independent counsel law, which would give a three-judge panel the authority to appoint an independent counsel," Schumer said.

Yeah, lots of luck on that. Here's what PoliticusUSA had to say about a McConnell reaction...

"Given his support for Trump, expect Majority Leader McConnell to resist calls for an investigation, but when even he has to admit that there are unanswered questions, the President has big problems."

With trump's luck so far, his star will rise even higher because his numb nuts followers will scream their fried President is being persecuted. So, if Congress isn't going to do anything and his supporters will only glory in their man's "maltreatment," what's left? Well, it comes down to an anemic left that has been so disjointed in the past that they can't even help themselves, much less try to bring charges against the President. I want you to understand that I do not take pleasure in the fact that, the dozing Democrats under Debbie Wasserman Schultz were grossly outsmarted by the Republicans. Pathetic!

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi calls for Jeff Sessions to resign have fallen on deaf ears in the Republican Congress and in the White House. The Washington Post's take on this says that, even as the democrats mount their opposition against Sessions, his own Party is faltering with some trying to dump him altogether, and others avoiding him in the cloak room. In politics, everyone knows the laws of survival and when you lie, especially in front of a Senate committee, your supporters have a tendency to shun any relationship with you. WP comments...

"If Sessions's response on Thursday morning was the best that he can offer to defend himself, you can expect that the few people sticking up for him right now will dwindle to his immediate family sometime very soon. And when you lose your friends while under heavy fire from your opponents in political Washington, it's almost always curtains."

Jeff Sessions and his spokeswoman have repeatedly tried to explain the whole thing away as a routine act of the Senator as a member of the Armed Services Committee. Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman, said...

"Sessions last year had more than 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian and German ambassadors, in addition to Kislyak [the Russian ambassador]."

Neither the Russian ambassador, nor his spokesperson were available for comment but...

"The Washington Post contacted all 26 members of the 2016 Senate Armed Services Committee to see whether any lawmakers besides Sessions met with Kislyak in 2016. Of the 20 lawmakers who responded, every senator, including Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), said they did not meet with the Russian ambassador last year."

Chuck Schumer said in the Daily Beast...

"...Sessions had tried to 'dramatically mislead' Congress. He stopped an inch or two short of calling his former Senate colleague a liar, but made it clear he thought Sessions had concealed the full truth from the Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing. “If there was nothing wrong” with meeting Ambassador Kislyak, Schumer asked, why didn’t he just come clean and tell the truth?'”

Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak with Jeff Sessions

Schumer talks about a special counsel to investigate Jeff Sessions and the Beast thinks that idea willIn 1999 he was a key proponent of prosecuting then-President Bill Clinton for allegedly lying under oath when Clinton was accused of perjury over statements he made regarding his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Shoe on the other foot.
"avalanche" now, even with Senators that aren't in deep Red states. The downside of all this starts with Donald Trump who nominated this second-rate politician who is an avowed racist, and who has a past that should haunt him in this issue.

Lindsay Graham said in a tweet, "If Jeff Sessions spoke with Russian diplomat, then for sure you need a special prosecutor." Another republican Senator, Rob Portman, from Ohio joined in the call for a prosecutor. Here's a kick. Some thirty years ago, Sessions was too much of a racist to be a federal judge but now all of a sudden he has become Attorney General of the United States, which is on a higher level than the judgeship he wasn't qualified for. Just what happened in those thirty years to better  certify him for this job? I think nothing.

Have we been conditioned to accept T-rump's stupidity?

Without even having read Radley Balko's opinion in the Washington Post, I have hinted at the fact in my blog posts that the American public has become accustomed to the rantings of a psychopathic liar that has somehow taken over the White House. Here's what Balko had to say...

"...Tuesday night’s fit of demagoguery masquerading as a presidential address is a frightening demonstration of how his first month in office has left those of who are supposed to hold him accountable timid and shell-shocked."

Demagoguery, let's examine it historically along with the prevailing example. Salon was profiling Donald Trump as a modern-day demagogue back in June of 2016, five months before the election that made history and put America on a track to a sure eventual collapse. In an elaborate use of adjectives and adverbs, the website talked of the "virus infecting our politics," which had its contemporary kickoff during the George W. Bush/Karl Rove era. There are other bad actors and the whole conglomeration worked tediously together to give us what's known today as President Donald Trump.

Here's how Salon describes it...

"There have been stretches of history when this virus lay dormant. Sometimes it would flare up here and there, then fade away after a brief but fierce burst of fever. At other moments, it has spread with the speed of a firestorm, a pandemic consuming everything in its path, sucking away the oxygen of democracy and freedom."

 There were others early-on who developed a formula and format for those to use in later years. Men like ...

“'Pitchfork Ben' Tillman, the South Carolina governor and senator who led vigilante terror attacks with a gang called the Red Shirts and praised the efficiency of lynch mobs."

"Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who vilified ethnic minorities and deplored the 'mongrelization' of the white race."

"Louisiana’s corrupt and dictatorial Huey Long, who promised to make 'Every Man a King.'"

"George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and four-time presidential candidate who vowed, 'Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.'"

The demagogue that stands out in U.S. history is Joseph McCarthy, US senator from Wisconsin, that Salon describes, "...until now perhaps our most destructive demagogue." Until now. McCarthyism was another psychopathic lunatic's way of drawing attention to himself by terrorizing the country into believing there was a Communist under every rock. There weren't, and several lives were ruined in the process. I had a close friend in Los Angeles who was a movie screenwriter who knew a few fellow writers whose lives were affected. And tailgunner Joe didn't even have a bully pulpit.

Remember Roy Cohn, he was chief counsel to McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee and wouldn't you know it, the bad seed is back. As Salon put it, "Cohn was McCarthy’s henchman, a master of dark deeds and dirty tricks. "Cohn didn't go down with McCarthy when Edward R. Murrow exposed him on his CBS show, "See it Now." But not Cohn, who continued his operations in New York where he ended up working for mob bosses and, yes, Donald Trump's father, Fred, until later years when he made his McCarthy-like methods of strong-arm manipulation available to Donald.

Bernie Sanders on what Donald Trump did not say in his speech to Congress:

Cohn also introduced Trump to the man who was his campaign chair, Paul Manafort, someone who made a fortune representing dictators. Salon has an interesting analogy between Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump...

"So the ghost of Joseph McCarthy lives on in Donald Trump as he accuses President Obama of treason, slanders women, mocks people with disabilities and impugns every politician or journalist who dares call him out for the liar and bamboozler he is. The ghosts of all the past American demagogues live on in him as well, although none of them have ever been so dangerous."

Returning to the present and Balko's charge that Donald John has conditioned us to just accept him the way he is and go on with our business, letting him run the country in the ground. Balko says, "We need to be better than that." And we should. The writer comments...

"We’ve been conditioned to accept behavior from the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth that we’d never have accepted from his predecessors (and I have pretty low expectations of presidents) — that we’d never accept from a friend, relative, pastor or community leader — as long as he spares us and our group from his attacks."

Trump's speech to Congress included the same lies that we have heard over and over, except that this time he delivered them in a toned-down rhetoric that is as much like the normal Trump as Scotch is like bourbon. Where it came from I do not know, but I suspect it is another of his underhanded tactics to appease a few concerned Republicans along the way who get their skivvies in a dither when he's too much the bad boy. Balko is really up in arms over the bi-partisan praise when this wasn't the man talking who has been ranting and raving such absurdities for his first month in office.

Balko disparages Trump's speech grammar, saying it was "terribly written," and "full of his typical doom-and-gloom pronouncements about America," quoting one of his most egregious passages...

"Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms."

Just hours before the speech Donald John had indicated that some of the attacks, above, had been perpetrated by Jews themselves. More extreme exaggeration almost to the point of lying...

"We’ve defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross — and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate."

At best, this statement is borderline bogus. More on drugs...

"I have further ordered the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, along with the Department of State and the Director of National Intelligence, to coordinate an aggressive strategy to dismantle the criminal cartels that have spread across our nation."

Balko documents that when George W. Bush attempted the same thing, by coercing the Mexican

Mexican drug casualties

government into militarizing its drug war, the country’s homicide rate jumped by nearly 250 percent. Regarding Trump's "banned" list...

"It is not compassionate, but reckless, to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting cannot occur. Those given the high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values. We cannot allow a beachhead of terrorism to form inside America — we cannot allow our nation to become a sanctuary for extremists."

Now here's a refuting fact, "The odds of your average American being killed by a terrorist attack committed by a refugee are astronomical, about one in 3.6 billion."

There is more and Radley Balko's opinion is chock full of solid facts and a good reasoning where the United States stands after only a month of the reign of Donald Trump you can read here. It's up to us where we go from there.

Trump Congress speech doesn't fact check-What's new?

Donald Trump at his best

Donald Trump in a more presidential mode talked to Congress last Tuesday and while Presidents in the past have realized the importance of such a speech and refrained from "stretching the truth," as The Washington Post put it, Donald John performed his usual feat of slaughtering it. Here they are...

Harking back to boasting of forcing Ford's hand on Mexico, T-rump takes responsibility for Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, SoftBank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart and many others have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs.”

Turns out all these plans had been made long before his election. 

T-rump takes credit for the lowered cost of the F-35 program.

The Pentagon had earlier announced budget cuts for this very same project which covered what he was taking credit for, but at times in his rantings Donald John not even sure if "he" saved $600 or $700 million.

T-rump makes the statement, “Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.”

The Washington Post gives this 4 Pinocchios for absurdity. There are only 7.6 million people actively looking for a job that cannot find one, an unemployment rate of 4.8%, inherited from Barack Obama.

Claims we spent $6 trillion in the Middle-East, when we should be spending it at home. 

The truth is we spent $1.6 trillion. 

There's much more that deserves more serious reading to understand just how the President of the United States can stand before a group of people, the U.S. Congress, no less, and lie to them and the American public. Read it here.

At least there was an upside; however, for Republicans only. Politico reports the GOP was "...relieved there were no embarrassing moments." How does it look before the entire world for the American party in power in both Houses of Congress, and also in control of the White House, to feign relief just because their President didn't embarrass them and the rest of the country? And I question whether anyone is in control at the White House. The general consensus is among Democrats and Republicans that the speech was less vitriolic but full of the same generalities that is T-rump' boilerplate message.

But suck up Newt Gingrich had to put in his two cents, worth not anywhere near that, saying, “It would have been very ineffective had you been involved in some kind of long, detailed step-by-step laundry list.” Interpreted: Donald Trump hasn't the slightest idea what he is doing, which translates into the fact that he has no plan where to lead this country. And there was yet even more comfort taken by a senior Republican aide, “He didn’t alienate anybody." We have already seen the damage this man can do offending the heads of Mexico and Australia. Who is next?

Donald Trump-Jeff Sessions share history of racism

How many times has Donald Trump said, "[I'm] the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered?" However, history tells us that is not the case, an example of which is during Trumps' presidential campaign when he...

"...repeatedly made explicitly racist and otherwise bigoted remarks — from calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists to proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the US to suggesting that a judge should recuse himself from a case solely because of the judge’s Mexican heritage."

Vox tracks it back to the 1970s when Donald John was sued by the feds for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African-Americans. It goes even further...

"It would be one thing if Trump simply misspoke one or two times. But when you take all of Trump’s actions and comments together, a clear pattern emerges — one that suggests that bigotry is not just political opportunism on Trump’s part but a real element of Trump’s personality, character, and career."

This white supremacist attitude has stayed with the man for all of his career, ushering in a spate of appointments in his administration that are racists and white nationalists. Like Steve Bannon, White House chief strategist and Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general. After the 1973 incident, it was in the 1980s when a black teenager accused the Trump Castle Casino of forcing him and other black employees off the floor when Donald John and Ivana visited. It was 1991 in a book written by a former employee quoting Trump on the handling of his money...

"Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control."

Here's a real loser, The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in 1992, paid a $200,000 fine for moving black and women dealers off a particular table to accommodate a gambler's prejudices. There's much more and you can see it here at Vox.

Jeff Sessions was the US attorney in Mobile, Alabama, in the 1980s, talking about a case with colleagues about a young black man who had been kidnapped and brutally murdered by two members of the Ku Klux Klan. His throat had been cut and they hung his body from a tree. This was Sessions reaction...

"As Sessions learned that some members of the Klan had smoked marijuana on the evening of the slaying, he said aloud that he thought the KKK was: 'OK until I found out they smoked pot.'"

That should say it all but there's more. David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, is a supporter of Sessions, as well as Trump. Sessions became infamous in Alabama for calling a black attorney, "boy," at the same time prosecuting three of Martin Luther King Jr.'s rights organizers for bogus voter fraud. It was done to, "...discourage voting rights for poor and elderly people in several "black belt" Alabama counties." After Sessions testimony Tuesday, the New York Times in an editorial...

"[Sessions'] defense against charges of racism that caused the Senate to reject him for a federal judgeship in 1986 was largely to say it hurt his feelings to be called a racist, but his two decades in the Senate provide little hope that he has changed."

Sessions calls the Voting Rights Act "intrusive," and is a strong supporter of voter ID laws that disenfranchise blacks, Hispanics and the poor. He has voted against every comprehensive immigration reform bill, and back in 2016 called Islam a "toxic ideology." A firm opponent of Roe v. Wade, Jeff Sessions also opposed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and hate crimes protections for LGBTQ people and he voted to ban same-sex marriage. You can read additional critique on this man who is now the attorney general for the United States.

It was the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. When Lyndon Johnson sighed this Act into law, he had no idea that the U.S. would still be this racist in 2017, fifty-four years later. It's almost as if the paper he signed was meaningless. To Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, it was.

Is Charlie Manson's "Helter Skelter" lurking in the White House?

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's chief strategist and top adviser, has already established his credentials as a white nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic. As an avid reader, he espouses to "The Fourth Turning, a book by William Strauss and Neil Howe, that history unfolds in cycles of 80 to 100 years. At the end of the cycle, the old order is destroyed and replaced." It would appear that Stevo plans to be there at the end of the cycle and implant the Trump/Bannon, perhaps the other way around, vision of common national purpose Trump announced in his first address to Congress on Monday.

As far as the speech goes, it was well received by Republicans as one would suspect but Sen. Chuck Schumer's comment was that, "Trump's speeches and the realities are very, very far apart. Until his reality catches up with his speeches, he's got big trouble," Others said he even looked a bit presidential, hoping he might maintain that and not revert to the crude behavior he has exhibited on Twitter and otherwise since entering office. But these hopes were born and played out before and it only took one news cycle to send Donald John romping down the crass road to vulgarity again.

Here are some comments by Lacy MacAuley, an activist and member of the Washington DC Antifascist Coalition...

"I absolutely think Steve Bannon is connected to a network of white nationalists. Just in the last few years there have been contractual obligations between white supremacist James O’Keefe at Project Veritas and Breitbart."

"Mr O'Keefe was known, she said, for taking down institutions and organisations via fake news."

"I would say that Steve Bannon is the advocate for white nationalism in the White House and there’s no doubt in my mind on that. It’s not just through Breitbart, it’s through his entire line of work."

There is the indication that Steve Bannon, when recruiting to fill out the National Security Council position, added himself to the NSC without Donald John knowing. Grounds for dismissal by most anyone, except someone with a hidden agenda. He was able to do this since he was the one writing the Executive Order, not Trump. The President was pissed but the fact that Bannon stays put is evidence of just how powerful the man is. Daryle Lamont Jenkins, executive director of the anti-racist organisation One People's Project exclaims...

"We've been dealing with a cluster of white supremacists within the beltway of the Washington DC area who do just that (using theories and academia to justify their racism): they try to back up their racism and justify why they should have a separation of the races, and justify a more strident attack on African Americans in the name of 'fighting crime'."

That's about as scary as it gets. Beginning to sound like Charlie Manson's Helter Skelter, starting a war between blacks and whites. Charlie was a confirmed white supremacist who went to the extreme of carving a swastika into his forehead with a knife. He had a following he mesmerized by convincing them that he was Jesus Christ, turning them into killers that would do his bidding. I'm not saying Steve Bannon is another Charlie Manson, but I am saying that Donald Trump, normally a man who seems to need no one, is definitely enthralled by Stevo's philosophies. That's what's scary.

The UK Independent reports that last July Breitbart had "...become the 'platform for the alt-right'. Now his platform has become the government." Well, that's even scarier. Donald John has been guilty of racially insensitive remarks in the past, and during his campaign refused to condemn the white supremacists who advocated for him, like David Duke and Richard Spencer. Here are some examples during his drive for the presidency...

• He attacked Muslim Gold Star parents
• He claimed a judge was biased because “he’s a Mexican”
• He questioned whether President Obama was born in the United States
• He even trashed Native Americans
• He stereotyped Jews and shared an anti-Semitic image created by white supremacists

Just a few, but you can see more here. Huff Post says in a blazing headline, "President Trump’s VOICE Is About Justifying White Supremacy." VOICE means, Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. So far it sounds like... 

"...the program will be limited simply to undocumented immigrants, but will also include crimes committed by legitimate VISA holders, Green Card holders and possibly even permanent residents who are not naturalized citizens.

But then HP blasts, "Let’s call this what it is: VOICE is racist government propaganda." And isn't it interesting that Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart, had a section called Black Crime, which documented the crimes of immigrant communities, when it is known that immigrants are actually less likely to commit a crime than non-immigrants. Brian Stone of Huff Post adds...

"Creating this hate-list will do nothing except provide official government sanction to the opinions of white supremacist groups and the alt-right."

Remember Pat Buchanan, a presidential wanna-be from 1992, 1996 and 2000, who ran on a platform of right-wing populism and who also was a white supremacist? As far back as 2015, he was backing Trump along with other white supremacists, including David Duke. Buchanan regretted what he called the end of white America "...due to immigration and increasing rights for people of color." This is a statement that is hard to believe coming from someone who is supposedly educated and worldly. It can only be attributed to someone who is a true racist and white supremacist.

Most of this crowd doesn't believe in violence, a fact that is not true of Trump’s rank-and-file supporters. One such Donald John follower was Dionisio Garza III, 25, also a Muslim hater, who went on a shooting spree back in early 2016 in Houston, leaving one dead and six injured. In another instance...

"Jim Sherota, 53, [who]works for a landscaping company and attended Trump’s rally in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, [August 2015] told The New York Times before Trump’s arrival that he hoped Trump would announce a plan to issue licenses for hunting undocumented immigrants and offer $50 for 'every confirmed kill.'”

Couldn't stand the heat

A bounty? Now that's interesting because back in 2015 just escaped El Chapo placed a $100 million
bounty on Donald Trump's head when the then candidate accused the Mexican government of letting him go tweeting...

"El Chapo and the Mexican drug cartels use the border unimpeded like it was a vacuum cleaner, sucking drugs and death right into the U.S."

Jake Tapper of CNN pushed Trump to disavow David Duke and rebuke any vote from him or any other white supremacists. It was a typical brainless meandering by the candidate...

"Trump claimed that he didn’t know anything about white supremacists or about Duke himself. When Tapper pressed him twice more, Trump said he couldn’t condemn a group he hadn’t yet researched."

A Virginia leader of the Ku Klux Klan told a TV reporter, “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.” And that's the scariest yet. In closing, here is a list of his "white supremacist fan club" compiled by Huff Post reporters...

"The Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace."