{"id":20872,"date":"2024-10-01T06:48:31","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T10:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=20872"},"modified":"2024-10-01T06:50:36","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T10:50:36","slug":"trump-washing-u-s-history-endangers-our-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/01\/trump-washing-u-s-history-endangers-our-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Trump-Washing\u2019 U.S. History Endangers Our Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Trump-Washing\u2019 U.S. History Endangers Our Freedom<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

by James Bovard, October 1, 2024<\/p>\n

Kamala Harris seeks to capture the White House with a message built on vaporous \u201cpositive vibes\u201d and \u201cjoy.\u201d\u00a0The Harris campaign is bolstering that message by portraying Donald Trump as a deadly peril to democracy unprecedented in American histor<\/strong>y.\u00a0The former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who hit that theme as hard as anybody during Trump\u2019s administration, is back in the news after he endorsed Harris for the presidency.<\/p>\n

Some media coverage is treating Flake\u2019s declaration as another bellwether bailout for Republicans abandoning Trump.\u00a0But Flake openly endorsed Joe Biden for President in 2020 and spent the last three years as Biden\u2019s U.S. ambassador to Turkey.<\/p>\n

In fact, Flake effectively joined the Democratic Party six years ago when he delivered what was touted as a \u201clandmark<\/a>\u201d <\/a>speech on the Senate floor on how Trump\u2019s lies endanger democracy.\u00a0The exaltation that greeted Flake\u2019s performance settled any doubts about the venality or historical illiteracy of the U.S. media. Flake became the preeminent exponent of \u201cTrump-washing\u201d American history.<\/strong> Because the same myopic approach is permeating media coverage of the 2024 presidential race, Flake\u2019s weaselry deserves reconsideration.<\/p>\n

Prior to that January 17, 2018 speech, Flake received massive publicity after it was leaked that he would compare Trump to Soviet dictator<\/a> Josef Stalin. Flake assailed Trump for calling the media \u201cthe enemy of the people,\u201d since Stalin had used the same phrase 80 years earlier against his enemies.\u00a0Actually, \u201cenemy of the people\u201d is an ancient phrase\u2014and the title of a famous 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Flake\u2019s jibe is on par with touting a Hitler quote on motherhood and then accusing any American politician who praised mothers of being a Nazi sympathizer.<\/p>\n

Flake began his oration<\/a> by warning that \u201cwithout truth… our democracy will not last<\/a>.\u201d He then proclaimed that, thanks to Trump, \u201c2017 was a year which saw the truth more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Had Flake \u201cjust fallen off the turnip truck<\/a>,\u201d as the late Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd liked to say? Flake was correct that Trump flogged facts early and often.\u00a0But nothing\u00a0Trump had done compared to the vast deceptions and idealistic swindles <\/a>that Woodrow Wilson concocted to drag the U.S. into the First World War. Similarly, Trump\u2019s babble about inauguration crowd sizes was chump change compared to Lyndon Johnson\u2019s brazen deceits from 1965 to 1968 <\/a>to justify rendering half a million American troops to Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Flake idealized the pre-Trump era. Flake declared that America\u2019s Founders understood \u201cthat good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America\u201d and that without \u201cshared facts, our democracy will not last.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, but what happens if the rulers do not \u201cshare\u201d the facts? The federal government is classifying\u2014i.e., labeling secret\u2014trillions of pages of documents each year. Since 9\/11, the Freedom of Information Act has become practically a nullity,<\/a> stonewalling citizens and journalists seeking facts about federal policies. The Bush and Obama administrations vastly increased the use of the \u201cstate secrets\u201d doctrine to<\/a> cover up torture, targeted killing, and illegal surveillance. The Obama administration was also more aggressive than any other presidency in using Espionage Act prosecutions against journalists for disclosing<\/a> federal crimes or follies.<\/p>\n

Flake asserted that \u201c2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power\u201d and summoned fellow senators to help \u201crestore reverence for our institutions.\u201d But reverence is tricky to reconcile with honesty.<\/p>\n

In reality, deceit has long been the DC default.\u00a0Why else would the Pentagon get away with referring to \u201csmart bombs\u201d regardless of their perennial killing<\/a> of\u00a0women and children not bright enough to preemptively exit the blast area? The No Child Left Behind program was exalted regardless of how it swayed many, if not most, states to lower their academic standards <\/a>to create an illusion of progress to satisfy federal mandates.\u00a0And what about the Obama administration\u2019s arm-twisting to relabel felons and ex-convicts as merely \u201cjustice-involved individuals<\/a>\u201d?<\/p>\n

Counting on a shameless media for applause, Flake declared: \u201cHere in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful.\u201d\u00a0Did Flake ever attend a White House Correspondents dinner, where media attendees grovel shamelessly to anyone who has twice appeared on MSNBC\u2019s Morning Joe<\/em>? Groveling is the preferred form of worship in the District of Columbia.\u00a0Many senators relish the endless kowtowing they receive each day from parades of lobbyists and donors begging legislative favors.<\/p>\n

If presidential lying was as toxic as Flake claimed, democracy would have perished long ago.\u00a0History professor Leo Ribuffo observed in 1998, \u201cPresidents have lied so much to us about foreign policy that they\u2019ve established almost a common-law right<\/a> to do so.\u201d From Kennedy lying about the Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba, to Nixon lying about the secret bombing of Cambodia, to Reagan lying about Iran\u2013Contra,\u00a0entire generations have come of age since the ancient time when candor constrained presidents.<\/p>\n

Flake, going \u201cfull lofty,\u201d asserted that \u201cfrom our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth.\u201d But the Founding Fathers recognized that politicians are conniving rascals\u2014so the Constitution included a Bill of Rights that severely restricted the government\u2019s prerogative to trample Americans\u2019 freedom and privacy<\/a>.\u00a0As Associate Justice Hugo Black declared in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, \u201cThe Government\u2019s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flake warned that Trump\u2019s lies \u201chave the effect of eroding trust in our vital institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them.\u201d\u00a0But what if those institutions long since forfeited trust?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the day before his speech on lying, Flake took a dive on freedom.\u00a0Five years earlier, the former NSA analyst Edward Snowden revealed how the National Security Agency had carried out \u201cthe most significant change in the history of American espionage from the targeted surveillance of individuals to the mass surveillance of entire populations.\u201d Snowden offered a deluge of internal documents substantiating how NSA was ravaging Americans\u2019 rights. But\u00a0Flake voted to give new powers to the National Security Agency<\/a> to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans<\/a>. Perhaps Flake believed that denouncing Trump absolved him from his congressional oath of office to defend the Constitution.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Flake, like most Washington politicians, \u201ctruth\u201d is a flag of convenience.<\/strong> When he first ran for the House of Representatives, Flake pledged to serve only three terms in Congress.\u00a0In 2005, after winning his third election to the House, he announced that \u201cit was a mistake to limit my own terms\u201d\u2014and he continued on the congressional gravy train until 2019. Maybe the American people just got lucky to have Flake in Washington so long? His devotion to truth did not impede him from signing up with CBS News after he left Congress.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the starkest gauge of Flake\u2019s character comes from his zealous support for war with Iraq.\u00a0In October 2002, when the Bush administration was browbeating Congress for a resolution to give the president a blank check, Flake declared that supporting the resolution for going to war with Iraq \u201cis our only reasonable option. War will no doubt come at great cost. When we visit the war memorials, we see that cost, but the cost of appeasement is far greater.\u201d Supporting the war helped Flake get re-elected in 2002.<\/p>\n

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