Thoughts From Trumpistan
Mano Ratwatte
In an unprecedented first, the legendary American Newspaper the New York Times (NYT), published an anonymous editorial page opinion purporting to be from a senior official in the highly dysfunctional unethical Trump White House. It is shocking. Of course predictably, His Excellency President Trump and his supporters including police officers etc. cheer when he attacks the “yankee” NYT. And he continues to spew divisive hateful speech and attacks the media.
Has anyone seen/heard a Sri Lankan PM or President ever attacking the media like this? relentlessly even encouraging violence towards them? Is that the new global norm to emulate? Any media view different from his are “fake news” now; seems like someone in Sri Lanka is using the same line now. In fairness most mainstream media including CNN which is attacked by name along with MSNBC by His Excellency Trump, devote almost all their time to negative news. FoxNews on the other hand, is better than Pravda and Communist media from the cold war era in being one-side propaganda bile ducts for his Excellency’s agenda.
Below is a section of that shocking op-ed that came out on Sept 5th. All Sri Lankan leaders should read and ponder.
Start Excerpt
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back
-End Excerpt (NYTIMES)
In addition, in a divisive issue pertaining to the biggest sport of them all: American NFL football, he denigrates and attacks the black players who kneel during the national anthem; he accuses them of being unpatriotic and against the US military; that is farthest from the truth, but his supporters lap it up. Far from being a unifier he wins by dividing the nation.
At rallies he says things like this.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b—- off the field right now,” “Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!” No elected or appointed President nor PM of Sri Lanka has ever spoken like that.
In a recent controversial marketing move, the global Giant Nike, features the young black man Colin Kaepernick who started the kneeling during the national anthem movement to highlight police brutalities, and alarming number of suspicious deaths by shooting at the hands of the police; even when black people are unarmed and running away from the police. But that issue does not matter to Trump and his ardent base of white voters. Time to step back into history of injustice.
