No Regrets Journal Essay: Trump and Putin Shared "Values"

No Regrets Journal Essay

Trump and Putin Shared “Values” Clayton Medeiros October 27, 2018

Trump learned everything he knows about governing from Putin. They share the same “values”. They operate from positions of power in which everything is perceived as win or lose. They demand loyalty and constant adulation from their followers. Loyalty is not reciprocated. Any follower can be removed at anytime. They are bullies in their individual relationships and in their approach to other world leaders. They want to be unpredictable and feared. Sewing chaos among their enemies and friends is a major tool.

There is no such thing as truth. There are only opinions and the only opinion that counts at any moment in time is their opinion. To quote Trump about coverage by the news media, “What you see and what you read is not what’s happening.” He takes the position that he is the only one you can trust to tell you what is truly going on. This has been the position of dictators’s throughout history.

Trump constantly attacks journalists for speaking truth to his compulsive lies.

Demeaning the media is a key strategy. Trump would prefer to be in Putin’s shoes where there is absolute control over the press. Since he does not have that control, he constantly attacks what he calls fake news. The only possible real news would report and support exactly what he says regardless of its limited relationship to facts and reality or its consistency with what he said yesterday.

There is no such thing as objective reality. Reality is whatever Trump and Putin say it is. It can change on a regular basis. For example, Putin initially denied that there were any Russian troops involved in the take over of Crimea. Three months later, he announced that in keeping with his actual strategy, the take over had been effectively and carefully achieved by Russian soldiers.

Donald Trump takes a similar approach, he had the most attended inauguration ever which was not true. Whatever he is doing or achieving is the most, biggest and best, but in no instance have any of his claims proven to be the case.

The common ground Trump and Putin share is lying with impunity. It is a way to establish and maintain power. The truth is whatever they want it to be on any given day. They are the only ones who can save Russia and America and their respective citizens from being threatened by ethnic or racial minorities or by the attacks of international foes. Any one who criticizes them is not just their enemy, they are the enemy of the people, they are not true supporters of Russia and they are not real Americans.

Trump and Putin propaganda techniques use what a recent Rand Corporation article calls, “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model” The article was written by Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews and can be accessed for free on the Rand Corporation website. All available media tools are used to drive false and misleading information in to the public sphere—

television, the internet, advertisements, Twitter, Facebook, speeches, press conferences, talk radio and political rallies where only true believers are allowed to be present.

There is no need to fact check anything. The truth is whatever they say it is at any moment in time. Truth is flexible. It can be replaced by a new truth as needed. Their core supporters will believe whatever they are told to believe.

There is no commitment to consistency. There is no sense of objective reality.

Lies are repeated continually in as many forums as possible. Their surrogate official and unofficial spokespersons parrot them. For example, in Trump’s case, he is supported by Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page and other right wing media where facts, truth and consistency are irrelevant.

There is no respect for the rule of law. The Russian oligarchs and their kleptocracy are well met by the many indicted criminals and coconspirators who are associated with Trump. Trump has attacked the Justice Department for bringing cases before the midterm elections against Republican legislators accused of the misuse of campaign funds among other potential crimes. He considers the multiply indicted Paul Manafort, his campaign director, to be a “good guy”. He believes that the Attorney General should serve as his personal attorney and protect him from any outside interference or threats.

Trump and Putin create outright false sources of information, misrepresent information, or baldly present falsehoods. They take full advantage of the lack of journalistic integrity of the news outlets that support them. Fox News might as well be a Trump owned property. He envies Putin’s absolute control over the media. A key element for these two leaders is that they are always being unfairly treated or attacked by journalists or other foes. Trump’s critics are therefore attacking the values of true Americans who can only be truly represented by him.

Jason Stanley in How Fascism Works points out that “…fascism flourishes in moments of great anxiety, because you can connect that anxiety with fake loss.

The story is typically that a once-great society has been destroyed by liberalism or feminism or cultural Marxism or whatever, and you make the dominant group feel angry and resentful about the loss of their status and power.” Trumps favorite point of attack is to blame everything on Immigration and immigrants.

Putin has successfully established his dictatorship with a fully controlled over lay of elections. Trump would like to do the same.

Clayton Medeiros