The Trump-ocalypse

The Trump-ocalypse
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http://www.newstatesman.com/2016/11/new-statesman-cover-trump-apocalypse

In light of this presidential election, whether talking to friends in Middle America or family back in Louisiana, one thing is consistent - outside of large U.S. cities, few seem to grasp the magnitude of potential horrors that a Trump presidency implies. Friends in Germany, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and every other country (outside of Russia and the Persian Gulf) are more terrified than most Americans.

So in order to help friends and family understand the legitimacy of these concerns, I’ve rounded up the most astute warnings from our country’s most intelligent, respected, and perceptive. Please take note - these are not people prone to hyperbole.

On Trump’s white nationalism:

On the election:

On the threat of our democracy:

On the failure of the media:

On Paul Ryan’s budget under President Trump:

On Trump’s lies and distortions:

On the Trump presidency:

The long and ruthless corporate assault on the working class, the legal system, electoral politics, the mass media, social services, the ecosystem, education and civil liberties in the name of neoliberalism has disemboweled the country. It has left the nation a decayed wreck. We celebrate ignorance. We have replaced political discourse, news, culture and intellectual inquiry with celebrity worship and spectacle. Trump, with no democratic institutions left to restrain him, will accelerate the corporate assault, from privatizing Social Security to exonerating militarized police forces for the indiscriminate murder of unarmed citizens, while he unleashes the fossil fuel industry and the war industry to degrade and most probably extinguish life on earth. His administration will be populated by the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, men and women characterized by profound intellectual and moral impoverishment, as well as a stunning ability to ignore reality. These ideologues speak exclusively in the language of intimidation and violence...Half the country lives in poverty. Our former manufacturing centers are decayed wrecks. Our constitutional rights, including due process and habeas corpus, have been taken from us by judicial fiat. Corporations and the billionaire class carry out legal tax boycotts. Police gun down unarmed citizens in the street...Racism, nationalism, misogyny, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, intolerance, white supremacy, religious bigotry, hate crimes and a veneration of the hypermasculine values of military culture will define political and cultural discourse. The ruling elites will attempt to divert the growing frustration and rage toward the vulnerable—undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, homosexuals, feminists and others. White vigilante violence will be directed at those the state demonizes with little or no legal ramifications...The rot of our failed democracy vomited up a con artist who was a creation of the mass media—first playing a fictional master of the universe on a reality television show and later a politician as vaudevillian...We face the most profound crisis in human history. Our response is to elect a man to the presidency who does not believe in climate change. Once societies unplug themselves from reality, those who speak truth become pariahs and enemies of the state. They are subject to severe state repression. Those lost in the reverie of the crisis cult applaud the elimination of these Cassandras. The appealing myths of magical thinking are pleasant opiates. But this narcotic, like all narcotics, leads to squalor and death. —Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, November 11, 2016

On Trumps disregard of science:

“We are afraid that four years of denial and delay might commit the planet to not just feet, but yards, of sea level rise, massive coastal flooding (made worse by more frequent Katrina and Sandy-like storms), historic deluges, and summer after summer of devastating heat and drought across the country. We also fear an era of McCarthyist attacks on our work and our integrity. It’s easy to envision, because we’ve seen it all before. We know we could be hauled into Congress to face hostile questioning from climate change deniers. We know we could be publicly vilified by politicians. We know we could be at the receiving end of federal subpoenas demanding our personal emails. We know we could see our research grants audited or revoked. I faced all of those things a decade ago, the last time Republicans had full control of our government... And then there have been the threats of violence. I’ve received email warnings that “the public will come after you,” suggesting that I’ll find myself “six feet under” and hoping to read that I had “committed suicide.” Such threats could spike again under a president and Congress hostile to climate science. As we’ve seen recently, a segment of Americans is receptive to fake news, and some are eager to act on it. Wild conspiracy theories have propelled a woman to make death threats against the parent of a child killed at Sandy Hook Elementary and motivated a man to discharge an assault rifle in a family pizza restaurant in Washington. I fear the chill that could descend. I worry especially that younger scientists might be deterred from going into climate research (or any topic where scientific findings can prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests). As someone who has weathered many attacks, I would urge these scientists to have courage. The fate of the planet hangs in the balance.” - Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science

On Russia’s hacking:

We, the undersigned scholars who conduct research on cyber-security, national defense, authoritarian regimes, and free and fair elections, are deeply troubled by reports of hacking by foreign powers apparently intent on influencing our November 2016 elections. Reports are serious enough that former senior national security aide Michael Allen, as well as Senators Bob Corker and Lindsey Graham, have raised concerns that Russia in particular may have been involved...our polarized political climate must not prevent our elected representatives from doing what is right. In this case, what is right is simple: our country needs a thorough, public Congressional investigation into the role that foreign powers played in the months leading up to November.Abu El-Haj, Tabatha (Drexel Kline School of Law) Adams, Laura (Institute for International Education, NED) Ahlquist, John (University of California, San Diego) Alexseev, Mikhail (San Diego State University) Andreas, Peter (Brown University) Ashworth, Scott (University of Chicago) Beissinger, Mark (Princeton University) Bernhard, Michael (University of Florida) Bondarenko, Eugene (University of Michigan) Boylan, Jennifer (University of Florida) Breslauer, George (University of California, Berkeley) Brock, Jeffrey (Brown University) Bunce, Valerie (Cornell University) Clunan, Anne (Naval Postgraduate School) Condit, Deirdre (Virginia Commonwealth University) Connelly, John (University of California, Berkeley) Darden, Keith (American University) Duvanova, Dinissa (Lehigh University) Eppinger, Monica (Saint Louis University) Fidelis, Malgorzata (University of Illinois at Chicago) Finnin, Rory (Cambridge University) Fish, Steven (University of California, Berkeley) Fredrikson, Matt (Carnegie Mellon University) Froitzheim, John (Virginia Commonwealth University) Frye, Timothy (Columbia University) Gehlbach, Scott (University of Wisconsin, Madison) George, Julie (CUNY) Gerber, Theodore (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Gorenberg, Dmitry (Harvard University) Greene, Samuel (King's College London) Greenspan, Elizabeth (University of Pennsylvania) Grossman, Guy (University of Pennsylvania) Grzymala-Busse, Anna (Stanford University) Hatcher, Laura (Southeast Missouri State University) Henry, Laura (Bowdoin College) Herrera, Yoshiko M. (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Holmgren, Beth (Duke University) Hirsch, Herbert (Virginia Commonwealth University) Ilnytzkyj, Oleh (University of Alberta) Isaac, Jeffrey (Indiana University) Judge-Lord, Devin (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Kelertas, Violeta (University of Washington) Kempner, Joanna (Rutgers University) Kinsella, Helen M. (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Kopstein, Jeffrey (University of California, Irvine) Kravets, Nadiya (Harvard University) Ladokhin, Alexey (University of Kansas) LeBas, Adrienne (American University) Levi, Margaret (Stanford University) Levinson, Chad (University of Chicago) Levitas, Anthony (Brown University) Levitsky, Steven (Harvard University) Livezeanu, Irina (University of Pittsburgh) Lobasz, Jennifer K. (University of Delaware) Lynch, Julia (University of Pennsylvania) Marcolli, Matilde (Caltech) Markowitz, Lawrence (Rowan University) McLean, Eden (Auburn University) Newmann, William W. (Virginia Commonwealth University) Novy, Marianne (University of Pittsburgh) Omelicheva, Mariya Y. (University of Kansas) Orttung, Robert (George Washington University) Pearce, Katy (University of Washington) Pepinsky, Thomas (Cornell University) Perrin, Andrew J. (University of North Carolina) Peterson, Maya (University of California, Santa Cruz) Pylypiuk, Natalia (University of Alberta) Richter, James (Bates College) Roberts, Kenneth (Cornell University) Rodine-Hardy, Kirsten (Northeastern University) Saivetz, Carol (MIT) Schaffer, Frederic (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Schatz, Edward (University of Toronto) Schmemann, Alex (George Washington University) Schoenman, Roger (University of California, Santa Cruz) Shapiro, Jacob (Princeton University) Shevel, Oxana (Tufts University) Shore, Marci (Yale University) Sievers, Sara (Notre Dame University) Slater, Dan (University of Chicago) Smith, Benjamin (University of Florida) Snyder, Timothy (Yale University) Sokhey, Sarah Wilson (University of Colorado, Boulder) Solonari, Vladimir (University of Central Florida) Sperling, Valerie (Clark University) Staniland, Paul (University of Chicago) Svolik, Milan (Yale University) Tillman, Erik (DePaul University) Truex, Rory (Princeton University) Twigg, Judy (Virginia Commonwealth University) Van Horn, David (University of Maryland) Vlasic, Mark (Georgetown Law) Way, Lucan (University of Toronto) Wedeen, Lisa (University of Chicago) Weeks, Jessica (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Weiss, Meredith (University at Albany, SUNY) Welch, David (University of Waterloo) Weldon, Laurel (Purdue University) Werner, Cynthia (Texas A&M University) Wishnick, Elizabeth (Montclair State University) Wong, Wendy (University of Toronto) Yang, Jean (Carnegie Mellon University), 102 signatures, Tuesday November 22, 2016

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