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Patriots of Two Nations is showing up in the media — you can find some of my latest interviews at the McDavid Media site.

I spoke with Los Angeles Times staff writer Tyrone Beason for a July 28, 2020 News Analysis piece, “‘Something’s got to give’: Trump stirs old racial hatred, but this time feels different.”

Excerpt:

Trump’s critics should know that he and many other Americans hold a competing view of the country, said Spencer Critchley, former communications consultant for Barack Obama.

They simply don’t see America as inherently unfair and racist, Critchley said. They believe the U.S. possesses a distinct identity and noble traditions that must be fiercely defended, not challenged.

Given that outlook, no one should be surprised that Trump — who launched his 2016 campaign by disparaging Mexicans as rapists and murders, called NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem “sons of bitches” and refers to COVID-19 as the “Kung Flu” — resorts to the same formula of crude references and bigoted slights that helped previous presidential candidates curry favor with white voters, Critchley said.

“There’s this overlap between ethnic nationalism and racism,” said Critchley, author of the new book “Patriot of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next.” “It’s built into the foundation of the country, but he does have an instinctual sense of how to exploit it.”

What Trump fails to take seriously enough, Critchley said, is that successive generations of Americans have been denied the privileges and opportunities that make the country special. They love the country too, but they’ve been tormented by it instead of embraced.

Thoughts on the #SOTU:

1. A man who has repeatedly insulted and dishonored the military, who offers to rent them out to as if they were mercenaries, and who is recklessly sending more troops away to foreign battlefronts, shamelessly exploited a military family reunion for his own political ends. Of course he did. Because he understands, in a way his opponents don’t, that our culture now runs on emotional moments, and those moments don’t need to make any sense—sense is beside the point. They just need to deliver a jolt of entertainment. Neil Postman called it way back in 1985 in “Amusing Ourselves To Death:”

“Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian. It does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves.

“Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse.“

2. I feel real compassion for Rush Limbaugh for his cancer diagnosis. But you can feel compassion for someone and see them clearly at the same time. Limbaugh got rich harming his country. Like a modern day Father Charles Coughlin, he exploited the power of media to stoke ignorance, fear, and hatred, and their inevitable compound, bigotry.

He was a ringleader of the racist birther conspiracy. He described the modern NFL as looking like a game between Crips and Bloods. He insulted and belittled women, only gudgingly apologizing after calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” for days on end.

This quote from 2009 brings together Limbaugh’s major themes in the perfect symbolism of a white woman — an annoyingly independent one — kissing a black man’s grave:

“But now you got the Clintons back in the news cycle taking credit for all these wonderful things, Hillary’s over in Kenya kissing Obama’s grandfather’s grave and talking about whatever corruption she’s finding over there. Just a bunch of total BS. It’s all just a bunch of BS.”

He finishes the thought with this:

“There is no truth. And to the extent that they think you believe in truth, you are the target. You have to be disabused of that notion.”

It’s the essence of the right wing media bubble in all its resentment, paranoia, and profiteering (“Only we will tell you the truth”), captured in a few phrases by its poet laureate.

No wonder Trump gave Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, thereby inverting the meaning of that honor, like he has so much else.

Limbaugh helped create Trump.

3. And then there were the lies. Big, in a blizzard, Soviet-style. No this is not the best-ever economy; it’s performing well below levels set in multiple previous administrations — including the Obama administration. No, manufacturing is not coming back, it’s declining under Trump. No, his administration is not protecting coverage of pre-existing conditions, it’s attacking it in court, trying to have it declared un-Constitutional.

And on and on and on. The state of our union is that it is being Sovietized.

To understand Congressional Republicans’ lack of shame — and even righteous pride — in defending an obvious crook, we can look at how a tribe works in a failed state: it would be wrong not to lie or cheat to help any member of your tribe, no matter how unworthy, just because they’re in the tribe — and without fail if they’re the leader. If, in your world, everyone is corrupt, then the tribe is your only protection, and loyalty is the paramount value.

How did the Republican Party achieve the status of a failed state? It was eaten by its own scam.

For decades, the GOP duped “rubes” into siding with the rich by spinning tales of the supposedly endless corruption of the government, the elites, and minorities. A hugely profitable industry sprang up to profit from reselling those stories in the guise of news, and made “real Americans” angrier and angrier.

As long as GOP leaders could control the messaging, they were able to ride this tiger. But they lost that control. Thanks to the Internet, the rubes were able to talk to each other and compare notes. They still believed the conspiracies they’d already been sold, but now they discovered their own side was screwing them too.

Triggered by the 2008 financial crash, they revolted, with the Tea Party. Then they took over, with Trump. In this brash, crass, regular guy who had succeeded (or so they believed) by beating a crooked system at its own game, they found the perfect expression of that revolt, and its perfect leader.

The target was 100,000. But volunteers across the country blew past that goal by early afternoon yesterday. New goal: 200,000. The result? More than 300,000 calls in one day! All in support of the health care reform this country needs so badly.

And Monterey County Democrats were part of it. When health care reform is achieved, people like these callers will have the quiet, lasting satisfaction of knowing they helped make it happen:

“I think the overwhelming message with yesterdays calling was gratitude. People still want to talk about their health care stories. Many are so grateful that the Democratic Party hasn’t given up this fight. We kept hearing thank you, thank you, we know you are in a battle, so thank you for fighting for me.” – Teri Short

“My story is of the woman who just lost her job and has NO insurance of any kind.This has happened to several of her friends also. We were just about crying at the end of her story. After I told her about the Public Option she was encouraged and hoped Obama would follow through.” – Ed Weinstein

“I was calling people who were registered Democrats, but not known to be supporters of health care reform. Everyone I reached was incredibly happy to hear from me and glad to take action. All were strong supporters of single-payer healthcare, and also very willing to support President Obama’s current reform efforts. They expressed a desire for a healthcare system that is more responsive to the needs of patients and their families rather than to the needs of corporations and shareholders.” – Liz Ward

Posted via email from Spencer’s posterous