President-For-Life Hopeful Donald Trump Issues Executive Order Mandating 'Patriotic' Education For Kids

from the King-Bumblefuck-the-Orange dept

When schools finally re-open to everyone and COVID is behind us (est. 2025), students will possibly have the chance to join their friends in some good old-fashioned American reeducation. God bless this autocracy.

For all of his socialism bashing, Donald Trump and his admin staff sure seem to want to align the United States with the great Communist dictatorships of the past and present. Trump welcomed America to join him in the erection of a police state and just kept going from there. Cops received even more presidential coddling and the Administration decided the state of free speech might improve if the federal government directly meddled with social media moderation.

Then there's the erection of walls and the increase in inland Checkpoint Charlies as the result of the president's focus on brown people from foreign lands. Protests against police brutality have been met with Gestapo tactics designed to limit the effect of people uniting against fascism. And the President's hatred of a free press, "closed" defamation laws, and non-sycophants has been noted repeatedly.

The latest Presidential proclamation is as problematic as his call for flag burning prosecutions. In reaction to people sensibly suggesting a lot of this country's "greatness" is built on the backs of slave labor and racist policies, President Trump has developed a plan for patriotic indoctrination of the nation's students. A new Executive Order mandates the formation of a committee to push for more jingoism in our schools. Better red-white-and-blue than dead, indeed.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Here's some of the "as follows," written in the way so few Executive Orders have historically been written. Taking a cue from stunt lawyer Larry Klayman's legal complaints, the Order lays on the overheated rhetoric early and often.

The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions.

[...]

[I]n recent years, a series of polemics grounded in poor scholarship has vilified our Founders and our founding. Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains. This radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured. Failing to identify, challenge, and correct this distorted perspective could fray and ultimately erase the bonds that knit our country and culture together.

This would be laughable if it weren't delivered by a sitting President. I mean, it's still pretty laughable but there's considerable executive power behind it.

The "bonds that knit this country together" are white people and their preferred religions/traditions, as far as I can tell. Any suggestion founding fathers and other political figures may have embraced racism and/or trafficked in the slave trade is apparently going to be excised in favor of a more flag-humping narrative. Also presumably on the chopping block is the history of our nation's law enforcement agencies, which were instrumental in ensuring the slave trade went uninterrupted and openly engaged in hostile acts against blacks and other minorities once slavery was abolished. The latter practice continues to this day.

Without whitewashing the past, the nation's future is in jeopardy, the President argues.

A loss of national confidence in these principles would place rising generations in jeopardy of a crippling self-doubt that could cause them to abandon faith in the common story that binds us to one another across our differences. Without our common faith in the equal right of every individual American to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, authoritarian visions of government and society could become increasingly alluring alternatives to self-government based on the consent of the people. Thus it is necessary to provide America’s young people access to what is genuinely inspiring and unifying in our history, as well as to the lessons imparted by the American experience of overcoming great national challenges. This is what makes possible the informed and honest patriotism that is essential for a successful republic.

I've got news for Trump. A whole lot of America has already "abandoned faith" in the "common story," primarily because the story isn't "common." It doesn't cross race lines and it's never been available to everyone. The idea that America is a meritocracy is ridiculous. Donald Trump is a prime example. He's a rich white man whose fortune was derived from the rich white man who raised him and gave him his fortune. It's been buttressed by favorable bankruptcy laws and a bank that now regrets propping up the finances of the most powerful man in the world.

America does offer more freedom than most countries, but the percentage of people bootstrapping themselves into financial security is a much, much smaller percentage than those who have never had to worry about financial security and have done little more than parlay their considerable riches into immense amounts of personal wealth that generally benefits no one but themselves. Any suggestion the government might want to spend less money on unwinnable wars (Terror, Drugs, etc.) and more on social services that might prevent millions of struggling Americans from going under is treated with disdain usually reserved for the long-dead Soviet Union. Meanwhile, banks run by billionaires are bailed out, even as the mortgage holders they fucked into insolvency are ignored.

Then there's this set of sentences, which sure as fuck sounds like some Maoist treacle.

Vigorous participation in local government has always been America’s laboratory of liberty and a key to what makes us exceptional. The best way to preserve the story of America’s founding principles is to live it in action by local communities reasserting control of how children receive patriotic education in their schools.

The reeducation will continue until the President's morale improves.

To that end, a bunch of current and former government officials from a number of federal agencies are being ordered to do a bunch of committee stuff and report to the President within one (1) year on how to better bathe the nation's children in red, white, and blue. Someone has to locate the "core principles" of this country's founding and connect them to the "blessings of liberty" and put all of that into a three-ring binder that had better say something about "forming a more perfect Union" if the committee members know what's good for them.

The committee also needs to plan a really kick-ass semiquicentennial celebration for the USofA. Given the President's predilection for shows of power by foreign authoritarians, this will presumably include a parade of military equipment and personnel. There are also some latent threats about funding, suggesting schools with less-than-patriotic curriculum will get the federal shaft for refusing to participate in this embarrassing charade.

This is a lousy cover of Lee Greenwood's inescapable hit d/b/a an Executive Order. This is a call for mandatory patriotism targeting the most impressionable minds in our population. This is dangerous stuff and there's no adult in the (Oval) room willing to call bullshit on Trump's masturbatory fantasies. Hopefully this will all be behind us by the end of January 2021. But if Trump retains power, we're in for a lot more flag-waving at order-point. And things like this ironically make it that much harder to be proud to be an American.

Filed Under: donald trump, executive order, history, indoctrination, patriotism, propaganda, schools

Mike Rogers Says Google Is Unpatriotic For Not Wanting NSA To Spy On Its Users

from the because-mike-rogers-is-a-hypocrite dept

This past Wednesday, the CIA held its first ever Conference on National Security at Georgetown University. It included plenty of the usual talking heads spouting nonsense, but I wanted to focus in on one particular talking head spouting particularly ridiculous nonsense. It's our old friend, Rep. Mike Rogers, who is retiring from Congress to try to become an even bigger blowhard on talk radio (as if that's possible). Apparently, Rogers is using this conference to practice the classical blowhard strategy of making a variety of absolutely ridiculous claims that directly contradict each other.

So, for example, he kicked it off by attacking Silicon Valley tech companies for fighting back against NSA surveillance, and for arguing (accurately) that the NSA's efforts have created a major business problem for them around the globe, as people outside the US no longer trust them. In Rogers' mind, that means these companies are putting "European profits above national security." This isn't even close to true, but that's what Rogers is claiming (at about 2 hours 10 minutes into the video, which is also embedded below):

While I'm on my soapbox, we should be really mad at Google and Facebook and Microsoft, because they're doing a very interesting, and I think, very dangerous thing. They've decided to come out and say "we oppose this new FISA bill, because it doesn't go far enough." And when you peel that onion back a bit and say "Why are you doing this? This is a good bill, it's safe, it's bi-partisan, it's rational. It meets all the requirements for 4th Amendment protections and privacy protection and allowing the system to work."

And they say, "Well, we have to do this because we're trying to make sure we don't lose our European business." I don't know about the rest of you but that offends me from the words "European business." Think about what they're doing. They're willing to, in their mind, justify the importance of their next quarter's earnings in Europe versus the national security of the United States. Everybody on those boards should be embarrassed and their CEOs should be embarrassed and their stockholders should be embarrassed. That one quarter cannot be worth the national security of the United States for the next ten generations."

This is wrong and ridiculous on so many levels, but let's just jump to the biggest one and then circle back later to the rest. Less than 15 minutes later (at about 2 hours 25 minutes into the video), Rogers was arguing how important the internet is to our economy, and how a cyberattack might destroy it. He's basically discussing his beloved CISPA and its "information sharing" components, which is really a backdoor way to "legalize" companies handing over all their data to the NSA without warrants.

One sixth of our economy now, is through the internet! One sixth! So this notion that we're all going to say "well the government should do nothing and just completely keep away" -- and I'm not for regulation, by the way, that's not what I mean, but I mean in some way to... to help defend these private networks or allow them to defend themselves -- if we don't get it right, one-sixth of our economy is going to go away. Like that (*snaps*). If every time you turn it on, you lose money, how many times are you going to turn it on and use the internet for commerce? You're not!

Right. Did you get that? If the NSA is violating all of your privacy, no big deal, and people will continue to use the internet and contributing to the economy -- and if it hurts the economy, well that's just the price we pay for national security. But, if those evil foreign governments violate your privacy, well, then all of you will stop using the internet and it will destroy our economy.

In short: if NSA hacking into Europeans eats into US companies' profits: that's patriotism. But if Europeans hack into US companies, then everyone will stop using the internet and it will destroy us all.

And then he goes even further:

If one financial institution -- we have one particular financial institution that clears somewhere about $7 trillion in global financial transactions every single day. Imagine if tomorrow that place gets in there, and through an attack of which we know does exist -- the potential does exist -- where the information is destroyed and manipulated. Now you don't know who owes what money. Some of that, they have lost transactions completely, forever. Imagine what that does to the economy? $7 trillion. Gone. Right? Gone! It's that serious!

So, profits of Wall Street banks are patriotic. But profits of Silicon Valley companies... well, they can be sacrificed for national security.

Except, of course, the underlying assumption in all of this -- which has been proven time and time again to be false, is that these efforts actually help with national security. Mike Rogers was one of the leading FUDspreaders, concerning the claim that the section 215 bulk phone records collection helped national security. Except that's been proven to be false time and time again. Both judges and the President's own task force have marvelled at the total lack of evidence that the bulk records provision was necessary.

The complaints from various tech companies (who Rogers himself admits makes up a huge part of our economy) is not about their "next quarter" of European profits, but about the very idea that he and his friends have more or less convinced the rest of the world that American internet companies are not trustworthy. That's not about next quarter's profits, it's about violating the privacy of everyone around the globe -- for no actual benefit.

So, in the end, we see what hypocritical views Rogers has. It's shameful and unpatriotic for Silicon Valley to be concerned about the privacy rights of their users, because that might lead to an attack on national security, and that attack on national security might harm the profits of Silicon Valley and (more importantly) Wall Street, and any attack on profits is unpatriotic (except, apparently, the profits he wanted them to give up first). Confused? Don't be. What Rogers is really saying is he doesn't give a shit, so long as the NSA gets to violate everyone's privacy, and he'll make any ridiculous argument to keep that happening. And, of course, to keep it secret, because if you don't know about it, he still thinks your privacy hasn't been violated.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, cia, cia conference, fisa, fud, mike rogers, national security, nsa, patriotism, privacy, section 215, usa freedom act
Companies: facebook, google, microsoft

Don't Insult Our Intelligence, Mr. President: This Debate Wouldn't Be Happening Without Ed Snowden

from the the-big-joke dept

One of the more ridiculous claim's during President Obama's press conference on NSA surveillance today was the claim that he had already started this process prior to the Ed Snowden leaks and that it's likely we would end up in the same place. While he admitted that Snowden may have "accelerated" the process, he's also claiming that the leaks put our national security at risk. There is, of course, little to support any of this. Tim Lee has the best response to this so far, noting that it's clearly bogus that this debate would have happened without Snowden:

... the Obama administration showed little interest in subjecting the NSA to meaningful oversight and public debate prior to Snowden’s actions. When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for a “ballpark figure” of the number of Americans whose information was being collected by the NSA last year, the agency refused to give the senator any information, arguing that doing so would violate the privacy of those whose information was collected.

In March, at a Congressional hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper answered “no sir” when Wyden asked whether the NSA had collected “any type of data at all on millions of Americans.” We now know his statement was incorrect.

Wyden and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) had also been pressing for almost four years for access to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s legal opinions interpreting Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Until Snowden’s disclosures, the senators made no headway. Now, the Obama administration has announced it intends to release its legal interpretation of Section 215.

As Lee's colleague Ezra Klein points out in response, the fact that Obama is still attacking Snowden is simply ridiculous.

“What makes us different from other countries is not simply our ability to secure our nation,” Obama said. “It’s the way we do it, with open debate and democratic process.”

If that’s so, then Edward Snowden should be hailed as a hero. There’s simply no doubt that his leaks led to more open debate and more democratic process than would’ve existed otherwise.

Or, in the shortest possible form, NY Times' reporter Binyamin Appelbaum summed it up thusly:

Obama is really mad at Edward Snowden for forcing us patriots to have this critically important conversation.

This is an important discussion, but President Obama has had five years to have it, and has actively resisted it at multiple key opportunities to do so. To pretend that any of this would have happened without Snowden is ridiculous. At the same time, to insist that people who care about our civil liberties are patriots, while still trying to attack and demonize Snowden, just screams of insincerity on the issue. Snowden should be proud: he did this to start the debate and to create change, and it appears that's happening. But President Obama should be ashamed to pretend that this would have happened without Snowden. It's insulting the intelligence of the American public.

Filed Under: barack obama, debate, ed snowden, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriotism