My List

Trump, in his malignant infuriating way, is clearly a PR genius. His messaging strategy has perfectly followed and vindicated Goebbels’ famous formula: “Make the lie big. Keep it simple. Keep repeating it, and eventually they will believe it.”

So to this point, his Big Lies are winning the day against the complicated, careful truths we Progressives are mostly trying to tell. It occurs to me that we need to restrain our love of nuance and work more on distilling our worldview into a few Big Truths that we repeat as doggedly as the other side does its slogans. Here goes my attempt at putting together a list. Of course I had to resist might and main the urge to elaborate on each assertion, and am no doubt still too wordy and iffy for prime time in most cases: a telling weakness.

1.    Trump is the worst president in history. 

2.    And the worst human being ever to have held that office. The most dishonest, the most self-centered, the most devoid of ordinary human scruple and emotion.  

3.    Trump and his minions are using their government positions to loot the country.

4.    Promising and pretending to “make America great again,” Trump has in fact done colossal damage to our standing in the world. So far the damage is largely obscured in an ongoing tempest of lies, but its full dimensions will emerge soon and last for a long, long time. 

5.    The recent summit with North Korea was a shameful surrender, preposterously disguised as some kind of diplomatic breakthrough. 

6.    The much-ballyhooed economy owes its vitality mainly to long-term, worldwide trends, and especially to actions of the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration in 2008-2009. Trump deserves as much credit for it as a rooster does for making the sun rise. 

7.    Trump has begun a trade war whose effects will be felt most by those who supported him most. 

8.    Though little attended to, Trump’s stance on the #MeToo movement is clear. He supports the Harvey Weinsteins. 

9.    Trump’s assault on democratic institutions — the press, the courts, law enforcement — is an assault on the liberty of all of us, no matter how we pretend otherwise. When he says he wants Americans to act like North Koreans — like miserable, terrified slaves — he really means it.  

10.   This administration tortures children. Just foreign children, so far, but that can change. 

11.    No one has yet explained how Trump emerged from his bankruptcies of the nineties and aughts. The most likely hypothesis is: with Russian dirty money, establishing the warm working relationship that later brought him the presidency. 

12.    Those who voted for Trump made a calculated decision to “believe” what they knew very well to be lies, because they thought their interests would be served. The onus is now on them to prove their honesty, their common sense, and perhaps their humanity. 

13.    But there is an onus on liberals, too: to get real about the costs of globalism, population flows, economic progress, cultural change, national defense, nuclear proliferation, and yes, rights reform and political correctness. To field candidates who will speak fearlessly about the how of reform as well as the what, with particular attention to the price tags of good policies. To dial back just a bit the moralism and shaming and non-negotiable demands.