alternet--2020-10-15--Americans have always spun tales of conpiracy — but Trump takes delusion to a new level

News is `` faked '' ; elections are `` rigged '' ; a `` deep state '' plots a `` coup '' ; Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died suspiciously in bed with a pillow over his face ; aides of ex-president Barack Obama conspire to undermine foreign policy from a `` war room '' ; Obama himself was a Muslim mole ; the National Park Service lied about the size of the crowd at the president 's inauguration ; conspiracies are afoot in nearly every department and agency of the executive branch , including the State Department , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Federal Drug Administration , the Department of Homeland Security , and the FBI ( `` What are they hiding ? ''
) .
Thus saith , and maybe even believeth , the president of the United States .
Donald Trump is not the first commander-in-chief to believe in conspiracies .
And some of those conspiracies were real enough , but he is our first conspiracist president .
`` Conspire '' in Latin means to `` breathe together . ''
Conspiracy thinking is the oxygen that sustains the political respiration of Trumpism .
Oval @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and ignite passions -- fear and anger especially -- that leave armies of Trump partisans vigilant and at the ready .
Members of the administration 's inner circle keep the heat on .
Michael Flynn , whose career as national security adviser lasted but a nanosecond , tweets `` New York Police Department blows whistle on new Hillary emails : Money Laundering , Sex Crimes with Children , etc ... MUST Read . ''
Michael Caputo , now on leave from his post at the Department of Health and Human Services , uncovered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committed to undermining the president , even if it meant raising the Covid-19 death toll .
On a planet far , far away -- but not so far as to prevent the president from visiting when he 's in the mood or the moment seems propitious -- is QAnon , where the conspiratorial imagination really exhales and goes galactic .
The earliest moments of QAnon , the conspiracy theory , centered around `` Pizzagate , '' which alleged that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex-trafficking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , pizzeria where children were supposedly stockpiled in tunnels below the store .
( There were no tunnels -- the restaurant did n't even have a basement -- but that did n't stop it from nearly becoming a murder scene when a believer in Pizzagate walked into the shop armed with an assault rifle and began shooting wildly . )
But QAnon was playing for bigger stakes than just child sex-trafficking .
Q ( him or herself a purported ex-government agent ) supposedly relayed inside information on Trump 's heroic but hidden plans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deep state '' -- a conspiracy to stop a conspiracy , in which the president was being assisted by the Mueller investigation flying under a false flag .
QAnon supporters are only the best known among conspiracy-oriented grouplets issuing alerts about a covert CIA operation to spread lesbianism or alt-right warnings that FEMA storm shelters are really `` death domes '' and/or places where `` Sharia law will be enforced '' ; or dark revelations that the `` mark of the beast '' is affixed to the universal price code , smart cards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grislier , radio talk show performer Alex Jones 's rants about `` false flag '' events like the slaughter of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown , Connecticut , where ( he claimed ) `` crisis actors '' were employed , paid by George Soros , to simulate a massacre that never happened .
The point of it all is to make clear how close we are to The End ; that is , to the overthrow or destruction of the Constitution and the Christian Republic for which it stands .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of conspiracy thinking .
He coyly acknowledges an affinity with it , then draws back from complete consummation , still sensing that it 's good medicine for what otherwise threatens to shorten his political life expectancy .
QAnon `` members '' show up in the thousands at Trump rallies with signs and shirts reading `` We Are QAnon . ''
( And 26 QAnon-linked candidates are running for Congress this November . )
Conspiracy thinking has always been an American pastime , incubating what the novelist Phillip Roth once called `` the indigenous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time , it 's cropped up on the margins of American life and stayed there .
Under certain circumstances , however , it 's gone mainstream .
We 're obviously now living in just such a moment .
What might ordinarily seem utterly bizarre and nutty gains traction and is ever more widely embraced .
It 's customary and perhaps provides cold comfort for some to think of this warped way of looking at the world as the peculiar mental aberration of the sadly deluded , the uneducated , the left-behind , those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and esteem , in a word ( Hillary Clinton 's , to be exact ) , the `` deplorables . ''
Actually , however , conspiracy mongering , as in the case of Trump , has often originated and been propagated by elites with fatal effect .
Sometimes , this has been the work of true believers , however well educated and invested with social authority .
At other times , those at the top have cynically retailed what they knew to be nonsense .
At yet other moments , elites have themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But one thing is certain : whenever such a conspiratorial confection has been absorbed by multitudes , it 's arisen as a by-product of some deeper misalignment and fracturing of the social and spiritual order .
More often than not , those threatened by such upheavals have resorted to conspiracy mongering as a form of self-defense .
There at the Creation Witch-hunting , of which the president tediously reminds us he is the victim , began long , long ago , before the country was even a country .
Cotton Mather , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the church exercised enormous power and influence , detected a `` Diabolical Compact '' in Salem , Massachusetts , in 1692 .
There , Satan 's servants were supposedly conspiring to destroy the righteous ( sicken and kill them ) and overthrow the moral order .
By the time the witch frenzy had run its course , it had infected 24 surrounding towns , incarcerated 150 people , coerced 44 into confessing diabolical designs , executed 20 of the irredeemable , left four to languish and die in prison , and killed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pressing him to death under a pile of heavy rocks .
Salem is infamous today , mainly as a cautionary tale of mass hysteria , but from its outset it was sanctioned and encouraged by New England 's best and brightest .
Cotton Mather was joined by local ministers and magistrates eager to allow `` spectral evidence '' to convict the accused .
Social fissures fueled anxiety .
Worries about uppity women ( widows in particular ) , especially with their own sources of income and so free of patriarchal supervision , added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the undercurrent of fear and foreboding it generated among the enslavers may also have raised temperatures .
Can it be a mere coincidence that the first to `` confess '' her knowledge of satanic gatherings was Tituba , a slave whose fortune-telling to a group of four young girls set the witch-hunt process in motion ?
Fear of slave conspiracies , real or imagined , was part of the psychic underbelly of the colonial enterprise and continued to be so for many years after independence was won .
Elites , whether theocratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Mather , to resort to conspiracy mongering and even engage in their own conspiracies when the social order they preside over seems seriously out of joint .
Take the founding fathers .
Soon after independence was won , the founding fathers began conspiring against their fellow revolutionists among the hoi polloi .
The Constitution is a revered document .
Nonetheless , it was born in the shadows , midwifed by people who feared for their social position and economic well-being .
Most , if not all , of the revolution 's leaders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trans-Atlantic commerce as planters , ship owners , merchants , bankers , slave brokers , lawyers , or large-scale landowners .
But the revolution had given voice to another world of largely self-sufficient small farmers in towns and villages , as well as frontier settlers , many of them at odds with the commercial and fiscal mechanisms -- loans , debts , taxes , stocks and bonds -- of their seaboard-bound countrymen .
Tax revolts erupted .
State legislatures commanded by what was derisively referred to as the `` democratical element '' declared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or issued paper currencies effectively devaluing the assets of creditors .
Civil authority was at a discount .
Farmers took up arms .
Men of property responded .
They drafted a constitution designed to restore the authority of the prevailing elites .
The new federal government was to be endowed with powers to tax , to borrow , to make private property inviolate , and to put down local insurrections .
That was the plan .
Gaining consent for this , however , was n't easy in the face of so much turmoil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fathers met secretly in Philadelphia -- all the windows and doors of Independence Hall were deliberately closed despite stifling heat -- so no word of their deliberations could leak out .
And for good reason .
The gathering was authorized only to offer possible amendments to the existing Articles of Confederation , not to do what it did , which was to concoct a wholly new government .
When the Philadelphia `` conspirators '' eventually presented their handiwork to the public , there was a ferocious reaction and the Constitution was nearly stillborn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traitors .
Less than 10 years later the Constitution 's godfathers would themselves dissolve in fraternal enmity .
Once again , charges of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary cabals would superheat the political climate .
John Adams and Alexander Hamilton would denounce Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as agents of godless Jacobinism , conniving in secret with revolutionary French comrades to level the social landscape and let loose a mobocracy of `` boys , blockheads , and ruffians . ''
Jefferson and Madison returned the favor by accusing their erstwhile brothers of conspiring to restore @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to persuade George Washington to accept a kingship ) , of being `` tory aristocrats '' seeking to reestablish a hierarchical society of ranks and orders .
( Again , it was true that Hamilton had advocated a lifetime presidency and something along the lines of the House of Lords . )
Everything seemed to hang in the balance back then , so much so that the feverish conspiratorial imaginings of the high and mighty became the emotional basis for the first mass political parties in America : Jefferson 's Republican-Democrats and Adams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump has introduced an unprecedented level of vitriol and character assassination into public life , think again .
Little was considered out of bounds for those founding fathers , including sexual innuendo linked to political deceit and scabrous insinuations about `` aliens '' infecting the homeland with depraved ideologies .
It was a cesspool only a conspiracy monger could have completely enjoyed .
Two centuries later those ventures into the dark side , even if largely forgotten , should have a familiar ring .
Conspiracy mongering may not have been the happiest legacy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a lasting one .
New England 's social and religious elites , for instance , feared the atheism that seemed embedded in the revolution and its implicit challenge to all hierarchies , not merely clerical ones .
So , for example , Timothy Dwight , the president of Yale College and a pastor , had nightmares about `` our daughters '' becoming the `` concubines of the Illuminati , '' an alleged secret society , atheist to the core , whose members , it was claimed , used pseudonyms and arranged themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engineering the godless French revolution .
Those `` Illuminati '' came and went , but the specter of atheism endured as a vital element of the pre-Civil War conspiratorial political imagination .
An anti-Masonic movement , for instance , emerged in the 1830s to deal with the Freemasons , a secret order alleged to harbor anti-republican and especially unchristian intentions and to engage in pagan rituals , including drinking wine out of human skulls .
Anti-Masonic sentiments became a real force and even developed into a political party ( the Anti-Masonic Party ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York , Pennsylvania , Vermont , and elsewhere -- yet more evidence of how easily the specter of conspiracies against God could inflame public life .
We are reliving that today .
Along with American culture more generally , the conspiratorial imagination of the upper classes became increasingly secular as time passed .
What most came to alarm them was class rather than spiritual warfare .
From the years after the Civil War through the Great Depression of the 1930s , this country was the site of a more or less uninterrupted battle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , between `` the masses and the classes '' ; between , that is , the exploited and their exploiters or what we might now call the 99 % and the 1 % .
One way to justify dealing harshly , even murderously , with the chronically restless lower orders was to claim that scheming among them were the covert agents of social revolution .
If there were uprisings by anthracite coal miners in Pennsylvania , blame and then hang the Molly Maguires , alleged Irish terrorists imported from the old country .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ relief and work during five miserable years of economic depression in the 1870s , blame it on refugee subversives from the Paris Commune , workers who had only recently taken rebellious control of that city and now threatened the sanctity of private property in the United States .
If there were nationwide strikes for the eight-hour day in the 1880s , it must be the work of secret anarchist cells inciting `` mongrel firebugs '' -- immigrants , also known to respectable opinion as `` Slavic wolves '' -- to riot in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the Colorado National Guard and the Rockefeller company 's private army of guards to machine gun a tent colony of striking Colorado miners , including their wives and children , killing at least 21 of them , because they were , after all , the pawns of syndicalist plotters from the Industrial Workers of the World ( colloquially known as `` Wobblies '' ) who advocated One Big Union for all working people .
Upper-class hysteria , which consumed the captains of industry , leading financiers , the most respectable newspapers like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all the mainstream Protestant denominations , hierarchs of the Catholic Church , and politicians from both parties , including presidents , ran amuck through World War I .
It culminated in the infamous Red Scare that straddled the war and post-war years .
Mass arrests and deportations of radicals and immigrants ; the closing down of dissenting newspapers and magazines ; the raiding and pillaging of left-wing headquarters ; the banning of mass meetings ; the sending in of the Army , from the Seattle waterfront to the steel country of Pennsylvania and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were perpetrated by national and local political elites who claimed the country was mortally threatened by a global Bolshevik conspiracy headquartered in St. Petersburg , Russia .
Attempts to overthrow the government by force and violence were , so they also claimed , just around the corner .
So it was that the conspiratorial mentality in those years became weaponized and the night terrors it conjured up contagious , leaping from the halls of Congress and the cabinet room in the White House into the heartland .
A Connecticut clothing salesman went to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin was smart .
In Indiana , a jury took two minutes to acquit a man for killing an `` alien '' who had shouted , `` To hell with the United States . ''
Evangelist Billy Sunday thought it might be a good idea to `` stand radicals up before a firing squad and save space on our ships . ''
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer best expressed the imagined reach of `` the Great Fear , '' an all-embracing dread of a fiendish conspiracy that supposedly sought to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life .
Denouncing `` the hysterical neurasthenic women who abound in communism , '' he warned of a hellish conspiracy `` licking at the altars of churches , leaping into the belfry of the school bell , crawling into the sacred corners of American homes to replace marriage vows with libertine laws . ''
You can hear something similar echoed in Donald Trump 's recent inveighing against `` socialism '' and the way Joe Biden and the Democrats threaten God , family , and country .
Arguably , America never truly recovered from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later that same cosmological nightscape , brought to a fever pitch during the early years of the Cold War by the claims of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy that communists lurked in the highest reaches of the government , would terrify legions of Americans .
His notorious `` conspiracy so immense '' reached everywhere , he claimed , from the State Department and the Army to movie studios , the Boy Scouts , advertising agencies , and the Post Office .
No place in America , it seemed , was free of red subversion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remember that McCarthy 's Cold War conspiracy culture was , in fact , set in motion soon after World War II not by him but by highly positioned figures in the administration of President Harry Truman , as loyalty oaths became commonplace and purges of the government bureaucracy began .
And note the irony here : it was n't communist conspirators but the national security state itself , in particular the Central Intelligence Agency , which first conducted an ever-expanding portfolio of mind control and behavioral modification experiments , while launching disinformation campaigns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every other variety of covert action globally .
That , as it happened , was America 's true new reality and it was indeed as conspiratorial as any on offer from the lunatic zone .
All of this nationalized the conspiratorial mindset at the highest levels of our society and helped make it into a permanent part of how millions of people came to understand the way the world works .
Donald Trump might then be seen as but the latest in a long line of the empowered who either believed in or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interest , or political calculation , feigned a belief in grand conspiracies .
Yet , as in so many other ways , Trump is , in fact , different .
Past conspirators offered a general worldview , which also came with meticulously detailed descriptions of how all the parts of the conspiracy supposedly worked together .
Sometimes these proved to be dauntingly intricate jigsaw puzzles that only the initiated could grasp .
Such cosmologies were buttressed by `` evidence , '' at least of a sort , that tried to trace links between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how wily the conspiracy was in its diabolical designs .
And there was always some great purpose -- a Satanic takeover or world domination -- for which the whole elaborate conspiracy was put in motion , something , however loathsome , that nonetheless reached into the far beyond where the fate of humankind would be settled .
None of this characterizes the reign of the present conspirator-in-chief .
Trump and his crew simply load up the airwaves and Internet with a steady flow of disconnected accusations , a `` data set '' of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind is thought necessary .
Indeed , when evidence is actually presented to disprove one of his conspiracies , it 's often reinterpreted as proof of a cover-up to keep the plot humming .
Nor is there any grand theory that explains it all or points to a higher purpose ... except one .
Abroad in the land is , in Senator McCarthy 's classic 1950s phrase , a `` conspiracy so immense '' to -- what else ?
-- do in the Donald .
The Donald is the one and only `` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We live in conspiratorial times .
The decline of the United States as an uncontestable super-power and its descent into plutocratic indifference to the wellbeing of the commonwealth is the seedbed of such conspiracy-mindedness .
Soldiers are sent off to fight interminable wars of vague purpose against elusive `` enemies '' with no realistic prospect of resolution , much less American-style `` victory '' whatever that might mean these days .
`` Dark money '' undermines what 's left of democratic protocols and ideals .
Gross and still growing inequalities in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year after year as business as usual .
All of this breeds entirely justified resentment and suspicion .
To the degree that political conspiracies take root among broader populations today , it is in part as a kind of folk sociology that tries to make some sense , however addled , of a world in which real conspiracies flourish .
It 's a world where the complexities of globalization threaten to overwhelm everybody and a sense of loss of control , especially in pandemic America , is now a chronic condition as mere @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the chief accomplice in this to be sure .
And his narcissism has produced a distinctive , if degraded and far less coherent version of the grander conspiracies of the past .
Still , as in the past , when we try to come to terms with what one historian of the CIA has called this conspiratorial `` wilderness of mirrors '' we are all compelled to inhabit , we might better turn our attention to America 's `` best and brightest '' than to the `` deplorables '' who are so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a TomDispatch regular , is the author of Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property : Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History .
His previous books include Class Matters , The Age of Acquiescence , and The Limousine Liberal .
He is a co-founder and co-editor of the American Empire Project .
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook .
Check out the newest Dispatch Books , John Feffer 's new dystopian novel ( the second in the Splinterlands series ) Frostlands , Beverly Gologorsky 's novel Every Body Has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nation Unmade by War , as well as Alfred McCoy 's In the Shadows of the American Century : The Rise and Decline of U.S .
Global Power and John Dower 's The Violent American Century : War and Terror Since World War II .

By Steve Fraser
News is "faked"; elections are "rigged"; a "deep state" plots a "coup"; Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died suspiciously in bed with a pillow over his face; aides of ex-president Barack Obama conspire to undermine foreign policy from a "war room"; Obama himself was a Muslim mole; the National Park Service lied about the size of the crowd at the president's inauguration; conspiracies are afoot in nearly every department and agency of the executive branch, including the State Department, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Federal Drug Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI ("What are they hiding?"). Thus saith, and maybe even believeth, the president of the United States.
Donald Trump is not the first commander-in-chief to believe in conspiracies. And some of those conspiracies were real enough, but he is our first conspiracist president. "Conspire" in Latin means to "breathe together." Conspiracy thinking is the oxygen that sustains the political respiration of Trumpism. Oval Office paranoid fantasies metastasize outside the Beltway and ignite passions -- fear and anger especially -- that leave armies of Trump partisans vigilant and at the ready.
Members of the administration's inner circle keep the heat on. Michael Flynn, whose career as national security adviser lasted but a nanosecond, tweets "New York Police Department blows whistle on new Hillary emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes with Children, etc... MUST Read." Michael Caputo, now on leave from his post at the Department of Health and Human Services, uncovered a supposed "resistance unit" at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committed to undermining the president, even if it meant raising the Covid-19 death toll.
On a planet far, far away -- but not so far as to prevent the president from visiting when he's in the mood or the moment seems propitious -- is QAnon, where the conspiratorial imagination really exhales and goes galactic.
The earliest moments of QAnon, the conspiracy theory, centered around "Pizzagate," which alleged that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria where children were supposedly stockpiled in tunnels below the store. (There were no tunnels -- the restaurant didn't even have a basement -- but that didn't stop it from nearly becoming a murder scene when a believer in Pizzagate walked into the shop armed with an assault rifle and began shooting wildly.)
But QAnon was playing for bigger stakes than just child sex-trafficking. Q (him or herself a purported ex-government agent) supposedly relayed inside information on Trump's heroic but hidden plans to stage a countercoup against the "deep state" -- a conspiracy to stop a conspiracy, in which the president was being assisted by the Mueller investigation flying under a false flag.
QAnon supporters are only the best known among conspiracy-oriented grouplets issuing alerts about a covert CIA operation to spread lesbianism or alt-right warnings that FEMA storm shelters are really "death domes" and/or places where "Sharia law will be enforced"; or dark revelations that the "mark of the beast" is affixed to the universal price code, smart cards, and ATMs; or, even grislier, radio talk show performer Alex Jones's rants about "false flag" events like the slaughter of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where (he claimed) "crisis actors" were employed, paid by George Soros, to simulate a massacre that never happened.
The point of it all is to make clear how close we are to The End; that is, to the overthrow or destruction of the Constitution and the Christian Republic for which it stands.
President Trump flirts with such a world of conspiracy thinking. He coyly acknowledges an affinity with it, then draws back from complete consummation, still sensing that it's good medicine for what otherwise threatens to shorten his political life expectancy. QAnon "members" show up in the thousands at Trump rallies with signs and shirts reading "We Are QAnon." (And 26 QAnon-linked candidates are running for Congress this November.)
Conspiracy thinking has always been an American pastime, incubating what the novelist Phillip Roth once called "the indigenous American berserk." Most of the time, it's cropped up on the margins of American life and stayed there. Under certain circumstances, however, it's gone mainstream. We're obviously now living in just such a moment. What might ordinarily seem utterly bizarre and nutty gains traction and is ever more widely embraced.
It's customary and perhaps provides cold comfort for some to think of this warped way of looking at the world as the peculiar mental aberration of the sadly deluded, the uneducated, the left-behind, those losing their tenuous hold on social position and esteem, in a word (Hillary Clinton's, to be exact), the "deplorables." Actually, however, conspiracy mongering, as in the case of Trump, has often originated and been propagated by elites with fatal effect.
Sometimes, this has been the work of true believers, however well educated and invested with social authority. At other times, those at the top have cynically retailed what they knew to be nonsense. At yet other moments, elites have themselves authored conspiracies that were all too real. But one thing is certain: whenever such a conspiratorial confection has been absorbed by multitudes, it's arisen as a by-product of some deeper misalignment and fracturing of the social and spiritual order. More often than not, those threatened by such upheavals have resorted to conspiracy mongering as a form of self-defense.
There at the Creation
Witch-hunting, of which the president tediously reminds us he is the victim, began long, long ago, before the country was even a country. Cotton Mather, a leading Puritan theologian in a society where the church exercised enormous power and influence, detected a "Diabolical Compact" in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. There, Satan's servants were supposedly conspiring to destroy the righteous (sicken and kill them) and overthrow the moral order. By the time the witch frenzy had run its course, it had infected 24 surrounding towns, incarcerated 150 people, coerced 44 into confessing diabolical designs, executed 20 of the irredeemable, left four to languish and die in prison, and killed the husband of an alleged witch by pressing him to death under a pile of heavy rocks.
Salem is infamous today, mainly as a cautionary tale of mass hysteria, but from its outset it was sanctioned and encouraged by New England's best and brightest. Cotton Mather was joined by local ministers and magistrates eager to allow "spectral evidence" to convict the accused. Social fissures fueled anxiety.
Worries about uppity women (widows in particular), especially with their own sources of income and so free of patriarchal supervision, added to the sense of disorientation. Slavery and the undercurrent of fear and foreboding it generated among the enslavers may also have raised temperatures. Can it be a mere coincidence that the first to "confess" her knowledge of satanic gatherings was Tituba, a slave whose fortune-telling to a group of four young girls set the witch-hunt process in motion? Fear of slave conspiracies, real or imagined, was part of the psychic underbelly of the colonial enterprise and continued to be so for many years after independence was won.
Elites, whether theocratic or secular, may be inclined, like Mather, to resort to conspiracy mongering and even engage in their own conspiracies when the social order they preside over seems seriously out of joint. Take the founding fathers.
Revolution and Counter-Revolution
Soon after independence was won, the founding fathers began conspiring against their fellow revolutionists among the hoi polloi. The Constitution is a revered document. Nonetheless, it was born in the shadows, midwifed by people who feared for their social position and economic well-being.
Most, if not all, of the revolution's leaders were men of affairs, embedded in trans-Atlantic commerce as planters, ship owners, merchants, bankers, slave brokers, lawyers, or large-scale landowners. But the revolution had given voice to another world of largely self-sufficient small farmers in towns and villages, as well as frontier settlers, many of them at odds with the commercial and fiscal mechanisms -- loans, debts, taxes, stocks and bonds -- of their seaboard-bound countrymen.
Tax revolts erupted. State legislatures commanded by what was derisively referred to as the "democratical element" declared moratoria on, or cancelled, debts or issued paper currencies effectively devaluing the assets of creditors. Civil authority was at a discount. Farmers took up arms.
Men of property responded. They drafted a constitution designed to restore the authority of the prevailing elites. The new federal government was to be endowed with powers to tax, to borrow, to make private property inviolate, and to put down local insurrections. That was the plan.
Gaining consent for this, however, wasn't easy in the face of so much turmoil. For that reason, the founding fathers met secretly in Philadelphia -- all the windows and doors of Independence Hall were deliberately closed despite stifling heat -- so no word of their deliberations could leak out. And for good reason. The gathering was authorized only to offer possible amendments to the existing Articles of Confederation, not to do what it did, which was to concoct a wholly new government. When the Philadelphia "conspirators" eventually presented their handiwork to the public, there was a ferocious reaction and the Constitution was nearly stillborn. Its authors were frequently labeled counter-revolutionary traitors.
Less than 10 years later the Constitution's godfathers would themselves dissolve in fraternal enmity. Once again, charges of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary cabals would superheat the political climate.
John Adams and Alexander Hamilton would denounce Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as agents of godless Jacobinism, conniving in secret with revolutionary French comrades to level the social landscape and let loose a mobocracy of "boys, blockheads, and ruffians." Jefferson and Madison returned the favor by accusing their erstwhile brothers of conspiring to restore the monarchy (some had indeed tried to persuade George Washington to accept a kingship), of being "tory aristocrats" seeking to reestablish a hierarchical society of ranks and orders. (Again, it was true that Hamilton had advocated a lifetime presidency and something along the lines of the House of Lords.) Everything seemed to hang in the balance back then, so much so that the feverish conspiratorial imaginings of the high and mighty became the emotional basis for the first mass political parties in America: Jefferson's Republican-Democrats and Adams's Federalists.
If you think Donald Trump has introduced an unprecedented level of vitriol and character assassination into public life, think again. Little was considered out of bounds for those founding fathers, including sexual innuendo linked to political deceit and scabrous insinuations about "aliens" infecting the homeland with depraved ideologies. It was a cesspool only a conspiracy monger could have completely enjoyed. Two centuries later those ventures into the dark side, even if largely forgotten, should have a familiar ring.
God Killers
Conspiracy mongering may not have been the happiest legacy of the revolutionary era, but it was a lasting one. New England's social and religious elites, for instance, feared the atheism that seemed embedded in the revolution and its implicit challenge to all hierarchies, not merely clerical ones. So, for example, Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College and a pastor, had nightmares about "our daughters" becoming the "concubines of the Illuminati," an alleged secret society, atheist to the core, whose members, it was claimed, used pseudonyms and arranged themselves in complex hierarchies for the purpose of engineering the godless French revolution.
Those "Illuminati" came and went, but the specter of atheism endured as a vital element of the pre-Civil War conspiratorial political imagination. An anti-Masonic movement, for instance, emerged in the 1830s to deal with the Freemasons, a secret order alleged to harbor anti-republican and especially unchristian intentions and to engage in pagan rituals, including drinking wine out of human skulls.
Anti-Masonic sentiments became a real force and even developed into a political party (the Anti-Masonic Party), which exercised considerable leverage in New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and elsewhere -- yet more evidence of how easily the specter of conspiracies against God could inflame public life. We are reliving that today.
Mongrel Firebugs
Along with American culture more generally, the conspiratorial imagination of the upper classes became increasingly secular as time passed. What most came to alarm them was class rather than spiritual warfare. From the years after the Civil War through the Great Depression of the 1930s, this country was the site of a more or less uninterrupted battle, in the phrase of the time, between "the masses and the classes"; between, that is, the exploited and their exploiters or what we might now call the 99% and the 1%.
One way to justify dealing harshly, even murderously, with the chronically restless lower orders was to claim that scheming among them were the covert agents of social revolution. If there were uprisings by anthracite coal miners in Pennsylvania, blame and then hang the Molly Maguires, alleged Irish terrorists imported from the old country. If there were hunger demonstrations demanding public relief and work during five miserable years of economic depression in the 1870s, blame it on refugee subversives from the Paris Commune, workers who had only recently taken rebellious control of that city and now threatened the sanctity of private property in the United States.
If there were nationwide strikes for the eight-hour day in the 1880s, it must be the work of secret anarchist cells inciting "mongrel firebugs" -- immigrants, also known to respectable opinion as "Slavic wolves" -- to riot in the streets. It was okay in 1913 for the Colorado National Guard and the Rockefeller company's private army of guards to machine gun a tent colony of striking Colorado miners, including their wives and children, killing at least 21 of them, because they were, after all, the pawns of syndicalist plotters from the Industrial Workers of the World (colloquially known as "Wobblies") who advocated One Big Union for all working people.
Upper-class hysteria, which consumed the captains of industry, leading financiers, the most respectable newspapers like the New York Times, elders of all the mainstream Protestant denominations, hierarchs of the Catholic Church, and politicians from both parties, including presidents, ran amuck through World War I. It culminated in the infamous Red Scare that straddled the war and post-war years.
Mass arrests and deportations of radicals and immigrants; the closing down of dissenting newspapers and magazines; the raiding and pillaging of left-wing headquarters; the banning of mass meetings; the sending in of the Army, from the Seattle waterfront to the steel country of Pennsylvania and Ohio, to suppress strikes -- all were perpetrated by national and local political elites who claimed the country was mortally threatened by a global Bolshevik conspiracy headquartered in St. Petersburg, Russia. Attempts to overthrow the government by force and violence were, so they also claimed, just around the corner.
So it was that the conspiratorial mentality in those years became weaponized and the night terrors it conjured up contagious, leaping from the halls of Congress and the cabinet room in the White House into the heartland. A Connecticut clothing salesman went to jail for six months for saying Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin was smart. In Indiana, a jury took two minutes to acquit a man for killing an "alien" who had shouted, "To hell with the United States." Evangelist Billy Sunday thought it might be a good idea to "stand radicals up before a firing squad and save space on our ships."
The Great Fear
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer best expressed the imagined reach of "the Great Fear," an all-embracing dread of a fiendish conspiracy that supposedly sought to strike at the very foundations of civilized life. Denouncing "the hysterical neurasthenic women who abound in communism," he warned of a hellish conspiracy "licking at the altars of churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes to replace marriage vows with libertine laws."
You can hear something similar echoed in Donald Trump's recent inveighing against "socialism" and the way Joe Biden and the Democrats threaten God, family, and country.
Arguably, America never truly recovered from that first Red Scare.
A generation later that same cosmological nightscape, brought to a fever pitch during the early years of the Cold War by the claims of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy that communists lurked in the highest reaches of the government, would terrify legions of Americans. His notorious "conspiracy so immense" reached everywhere, he claimed, from the State Department and the Army to movie studios, the Boy Scouts, advertising agencies, and the Post Office. No place in America, it seemed, was free of red subversion.
Still, it's instructive to remember that McCarthy's Cold War conspiracy culture was, in fact, set in motion soon after World War II not by him but by highly positioned figures in the administration of President Harry Truman, as loyalty oaths became commonplace and purges of the government bureaucracy began. And note the irony here: it wasn't communist conspirators but the national security state itself, in particular the Central Intelligence Agency, which first conducted an ever-expanding portfolio of mind control and behavioral modification experiments, while launching disinformation campaigns, assassination plots, coups, and every other variety of covert action globally. That, as it happened, was America's true new reality and it was indeed as conspiratorial as any on offer from the lunatic zone.
All of this nationalized the conspiratorial mindset at the highest levels of our society and helped make it into a permanent part of how millions of people came to understand the way the world works.
The Conspirator-in-Chief Lost in Space
Donald Trump might then be seen as but the latest in a long line of the empowered who either believed in or, for reasons of state, class interest, or political calculation, feigned a belief in grand conspiracies. Yet, as in so many other ways, Trump is, in fact, different.
Past conspirators offered a general worldview, which also came with meticulously detailed descriptions of how all the parts of the conspiracy supposedly worked together. Sometimes these proved to be dauntingly intricate jigsaw puzzles that only the initiated could grasp. Such cosmologies were buttressed by "evidence," at least of a sort, that tried to trace links between otherwise randomly occurring events, to prove how wily the conspiracy was in its diabolical designs. And there was always some great purpose -- a Satanic takeover or world domination -- for which the whole elaborate conspiracy was put in motion, something, however loathsome, that nonetheless reached into the far beyond where the fate of humankind would be settled.
None of this characterizes the reign of the present conspirator-in-chief. Trump and his crew simply load up the airwaves and Internet with a steady flow of disconnected accusations, a "data set" of random fragments. No evidence of any kind is thought necessary. Indeed, when evidence is actually presented to disprove one of his conspiracies, it's often reinterpreted as proof of a cover-up to keep the plot humming. Nor is there any grand theory that explains it all or points to a higher purpose... except one. Abroad in the land is, in Senator McCarthy's classic 1950s phrase, a "conspiracy so immense" to -- what else? -- do in the Donald. The Donald is the one and only "elect" without whom America is doomed.
We live in conspiratorial times. The decline of the United States as an uncontestable super-power and its descent into plutocratic indifference to the wellbeing of the commonwealth is the seedbed of such conspiracy-mindedness. Soldiers are sent off to fight interminable wars of vague purpose against elusive "enemies" with no realistic prospect of resolution, much less American-style "victory" whatever that might mean these days. "Dark money" undermines what's left of democratic protocols and ideals. Gross and still growing inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income are accepted year after year as business as usual.
All of this breeds entirely justified resentment and suspicion.
To the degree that political conspiracies take root among broader populations today, it is in part as a kind of folk sociology that tries to make some sense, however addled, of a world in which real conspiracies flourish. It's a world where the complexities of globalization threaten to overwhelm everybody and a sense of loss of control, especially in pandemic America, is now a chronic condition as mere existence grows ever more precarious.
Trump is the chief accomplice in this to be sure. And his narcissism has produced a distinctive, if degraded and far less coherent version of the grander conspiracies of the past. Still, as in the past, when we try to come to terms with what one historian of the CIA has called this conspiratorial "wilderness of mirrors" we are all compelled to inhabit, we might better turn our attention to America's "best and brightest" than to the "deplorables" who are so easy to scapegoat.
Steve Fraser, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History. His previous books include Class Matters, The Age of Acquiescence, and The Limousine Liberal. He is a co-founder and co-editor of the American Empire Project.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer's new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Copyright 2020 Steve Fraser


alternet--2020-10-15--How Democrats guaranteed Rudy Giuliani's 'October surprise' would backfire spectacularly

The case of Rudy Giuliani will go down as one of the more perplexing mysteries of our time .
Even though the man was a terrible mayor of New York City , he was likely going to be remembered fondly as the guy who actually stepped up and did his job on 9/11 .
But instead of spending his retirement years sipping martinis and resting on that particular laurel , Giuliani has apparently decided that being a basement-level launderer of Russian disinformation is the best use of his dotage .
And all on behalf of Donald Trump , whose guaranteed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at best , as our nation 's greatest embarrassment .
I 'm reminded of the words of wisdom dropped at the the end of every beer commercial : Drink responsibly .
But Giuliani is failing .
Hard .
His latest apparent effort to smear former Vice President Joe Biden with false accusations of Ukrainian corruption has imploded , as the narrative has morphed into questions about what kinds of shenanigans Giuliani might be involved with and the legalities thereof rather than anything Biden has done .
On the contrary , the story ends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , making the current Democratic presidential nominee look incorruptible .
For that , thank the House Democrats for impeaching Trump back in December .
If it were n't for the impeachment trial , there 's a very good chance that Giuliani 's efforts to get the mainstream media to elevate baseless smears against Biden would have worked .
To quickly recap the latest in Giuliani 's impotent machinations : Steve Bannon , the former Trump strategist currently indicted on federal money laundering and obstruction charges , tips off the New York Post that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his possession what they claim are emails from Biden 's son , Hunter Biden .
Giuliani 's story of how he got these emails is , to put it charitably , implausible .
He says they were obtained from a computer supposedly left at a Delaware repair shop which the owner then turned over to him , for some reason .
Perhaps a likelier explanation , as New York magazine 's Jonathan Chait suggests , is that the emails may have been sourced from Russian agents that Giuliani knows .
The emails , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purport to show the younger Biden trying to set up a meeting between his father , who was vice president at the time , and executives at a corrupt Ukrainian energy firm , Burisma , where he served on the board of directors .
Joe Biden 's schedule shows he did not attend such a meeting , and the campaign says the Post did n't ask for comment on that allegation .
But this is supposed to be evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt .
There 's every reason to be suspicious of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It 's important to remember that Trump got impeached because he tried to conjure up false evidence for these same bogus accusations by blackmailing the Ukrainian president into announcing a fraudulent `` investigation '' into Biden .
Moreover , it 's a matter of record that Joe Biden 's only involvement with Burisma was working with international authorities to fire a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor who had failed to investigate Burisma .
So even if there was an effort made by Burisma to corrupt Joe Biden , it failed .
The emails , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prove he refused to get involved .
And so the efforts to pump this up into a big deal are failing .
But without impeachment , there 's a very good chance that Giuliani 's gambit would have worked as intended , which is to flood baseless insinuations across the mainstream news media , including the New York Times .
These tactics worked in 2016 , when Julian Assange and the Russian intelligence community — working with other Trump associates , many of whom were later convicted of crimes — were able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's emails .
Clinton 's emails had nothing of note in them — we did learn she likes `` The Good Wife '' — but the constant repetition of the words `` Clinton '' and `` emails '' by the gullible news media lulled voters into seeing a scandal where none existed .
Giuliani appears to have been laying similar groundwork to smear Biden , starting in May 2019 , when he spoke to the New York Times for a widely-criticized article about Biden and Ukraine .
We can see how Giuliani and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As I wrote yesterday for Salon , these fake scandals Republicans concoct to smear Democrats work by being too complicated for anyone to follow .
Instead , there 's a drip-drip-drip of confusing stories filled with buzzwords and noise , all working together to build the illusion of scandal where none exists .
The goal is to keep the words `` Biden , '' `` Burisma '' and `` Ukraine '' in the headlines so people start to assume there must be something shady going on , even if there 's nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his involvement in this conspiracy by a whistleblower who was , rightfully , concerned when he heard Trump blackmailing the Ukranian president into getting involved in the plot , and the impeachment trial followed .
Impeachment derailed the scheme by refocusing press attention away from the smears against Biden and towards the real story , which is Trump 's corruption .
It was a clarifying moment , one that showed the extent of Trump 's malicious intentions and exposed the workings of the machinery that exists to inject specious right wing narratives into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knows that trying to make hay out of this latest stunt only makes you look like a stooge of Trump and Russian intelligence , and so they 're staying away .
The only outlet that would touch it was the New York Post .
Even social media corporations , which have a terrible track record of letting Russian disinformation ops run rampant on their platforms , have gone to great lengths to push back against its spread .
There 's a moral here for Democrats : It 's worth it to fight back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immediate payoff .
A lot of folks wonder if impeachment was worth the time and energy because , in the end , the corrupt Republicans who controlled the Senate refused to remove Trump , despite his obvious guilt .
But the long-term effects of impeachment have been largely positive for Democrats .
Impeachment made it toxic for even the most shameless mainstream journalists to pretend there is any legitimacy to Trump 's lies .
It made it so that , in these final weeks before the election , the focus is where it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ failures , not on some made-up nonsense about his opponent .
There are a lot of difficult fights ahead for Democrats , starting with the fight to keep Amy Coney Barrett off the Supreme Court , but also future ones like the fight to save the economy if Biden is elected and the fight to rebalance the courts after years of Republican court-packing .
Some of those fights will be hard , if not impossible , to win .
But , as impeachment shows , it 's worth having the fight anyway , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long run .
Just look at the current headlines at the New York Times .

The case of Rudy Giuliani will go down as one of the more perplexing mysteries of our time. Even though the man was a terrible mayor of New York City, he was likely going to be remembered fondly as the guy who actually stepped up and did his job on 9/11. But instead of spending his retirement years sipping martinis and resting on that particular laurel, Giuliani has apparently decided that being a basement-level launderer of Russian disinformation is the best use of his dotage. And all on behalf of Donald Trump, whose guaranteed role in American history will be, at best, as our nation's greatest embarrassment.
I'm reminded of the words of wisdom dropped at the the end of every beer commercial: Drink responsibly.
But Giuliani is failing. Hard. His latest apparent effort to smear former Vice President Joe Biden with false accusations of Ukrainian corruption has imploded, as the narrative has morphed into questions about what kinds of shenanigans Giuliani might be involved with and the legalities thereof rather than anything Biden has done. On the contrary, the story ends up painting Biden in a glowing light, making the current Democratic presidential nominee look incorruptible.
For that, thank the House Democrats for impeaching Trump back in December. If it weren't for the impeachment trial, there's a very good chance that Giuliani's efforts to get the mainstream media to elevate baseless smears against Biden would have worked.
To quickly recap the latest in Giuliani's impotent machinations: Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist currently indicted on federal money laundering and obstruction charges, tips off the New York Post that the former NYC mayor has had in his possession what they claim are emails from Biden's son, Hunter Biden. Giuliani's story of how he got these emails is, to put it charitably, implausible. He says they were obtained from a computer supposedly left at a Delaware repair shop which the owner then turned over to him, for some reason. Perhaps a likelier explanation, as New York magazine's Jonathan Chait suggests, is that the emails may have been sourced from Russian agents that Giuliani knows.
The emails, which have not been independently verified, purport to show the younger Biden trying to set up a meeting between his father, who was vice president at the time, and executives at a corrupt Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma, where he served on the board of directors. Joe Biden's schedule shows he did not attend such a meeting, and the campaign says the Post didn't ask for comment on that allegation. But this is supposed to be evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt.
There's every reason to be suspicious of this weak attempt at an October surprise. It's important to remember that Trump got impeached because he tried to conjure up false evidence for these same bogus accusations by blackmailing the Ukrainian president into announcing a fraudulent "investigation" into Biden.
Moreover, it's a matter of record that Joe Biden's only involvement with Burisma was working with international authorities to fire a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor who had failed to investigate Burisma. So even if there was an effort made by Burisma to corrupt Joe Biden, it failed. The emails, even if they're real, just prove he refused to get involved.
And so the efforts to pump this up into a big deal are failing. But without impeachment, there's a very good chance that Giuliani's gambit would have worked as intended, which is to flood baseless insinuations across the mainstream news media, including the New York Times.
These tactics worked in 2016, when Julian Assange and the Russian intelligence community — working with other Trump associates, many of whom were later convicted of crimes — were able to steer endless media attention toward Hillary Clinton's emails. Clinton's emails had nothing of note in them — we did learn she likes "The Good Wife" — but the constant repetition of the words "Clinton" and "emails" by the gullible news media lulled voters into seeing a scandal where none existed.
Giuliani appears to have been laying similar groundwork to smear Biden, starting in May 2019, when he spoke to the New York Times for a widely-criticized article about Biden and Ukraine.
We can see how Giuliani and Trump might have seen this playing out. As I wrote yesterday for Salon, these fake scandals Republicans concoct to smear Democrats work by being too complicated for anyone to follow. Instead, there's a drip-drip-drip of confusing stories filled with buzzwords and noise, all working together to build the illusion of scandal where none exists. The goal is to keep the words "Biden," "Burisma" and "Ukraine" in the headlines so people start to assume there must be something shady going on, even if there's nothing there.
But Trump got outed for his involvement in this conspiracy by a whistleblower who was, rightfully, concerned when he heard Trump blackmailing the Ukranian president into getting involved in the plot, and the impeachment trial followed. Impeachment derailed the scheme by refocusing press attention away from the smears against Biden and towards the real story, which is Trump's corruption. It was a clarifying moment, one that showed the extent of Trump's malicious intentions and exposed the workings of the machinery that exists to inject specious right wing narratives into the mainstream press.
Now every journalist knows that trying to make hay out of this latest stunt only makes you look like a stooge of Trump and Russian intelligence, and so they're staying away. The only outlet that would touch it was the New York Post. Even social media corporations, which have a terrible track record of letting Russian disinformation ops run rampant on their platforms, have gone to great lengths to push back against its spread.
There's a moral here for Democrats: It's worth it to fight back hard, even if there's no immediate payoff.
A lot of folks wonder if impeachment was worth the time and energy because, in the end, the corrupt Republicans who controlled the Senate refused to remove Trump, despite his obvious guilt. But the long-term effects of impeachment have been largely positive for Democrats. Impeachment made it toxic for even the most shameless mainstream journalists to pretend there is any legitimacy to Trump's lies. It made it so that, in these final weeks before the election, the focus is where it belongs: On Trump's corruption and failures, not on some made-up nonsense about his opponent.
There are a lot of difficult fights ahead for Democrats, starting with the fight to keep Amy Coney Barrett off the Supreme Court, but also future ones like the fight to save the economy if Biden is elected and the fight to rebalance the courts after years of Republican court-packing. Some of those fights will be hard, if not impossible, to win. But, as impeachment shows, it's worth having the fight anyway, because it often pays off in the long run. Just look at the current headlines at the New York Times.


alternet--2020-10-15--Trump administration privately warned wealthy donors while publicly downplaying the coronavirus

The Trump administration publicly downplayed the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic while giving major Republican donors private warnings .
The information helped elite traders `` gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering , '' according to The New York Times .
President Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by the virus in February .
He claimed on Feb. 24 that it was `` very much under control '' in the U.S. , and the stock market was `` starting to look very good to me . ''
That same day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a less optimistic briefing to board members of the Hoover Institution , a conservative think tank whose members often donate to Republican candidates .
Top economic adviser Larry Kudlow also sought to publicly insist that the virus was `` contained , '' and the economy was `` holding up nicely '' on Feb. 25 .
But privately , Kudlow was not as certain in his Hoover presentation later that day , where he was quoted as saying the virus was `` contained in the U.S. , to date , but now we just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comments were included in a lengthy email by hedge fund consultant William Callanan , who detailed the three-day Hoover event to hedge fund manager and top Republican donor David Tepper before it was distributed it to others .
`` What struck me , '' Callanan wrote , was that nearly all officials brought up the virus `` as a point of concern , totally unprovoked . ''
Kudlow `` revised his statement about the virus being contained , '' he added .
Tomas Philipson , the chairman of Trump 's Council of Economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he had expressed uncertainty during the private briefing .
Kudlow also did not dispute that he had made the comments .
The former CNBC anchor told the outlet that he believed his comments were not materially different from his public ones .
`` There was never any intent on my part to misinform , '' he said .
The Hoover Institution , which is led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , includes board members like Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch , who did not attend the meeting .
There has also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tank and the Trump administration .
Joshua Rauh , one of the economists who spoke at the meeting , has since rejoined the institution .
Kevin Hassett , who moderated the panel and served as the top White House economist , is now a Hoover Institution fellow .
Dr. Scott Atlas , a Hoover fellow who has pushed the discredited `` herd immunity '' strategy , joined Trump 's coronavirus task force in August .
The stock market was already struggling as public health officials publicly contradicted the administration 's rosy outlook , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' of the private messaging , according to The Times .
Some investors stocked up on toilet paper and other essential items before a mad rush caused nationwide shortages , according to The Times .
Others decided to `` short everything , '' or bet that certain stocks would fail , to profit from the collapse .
Callanan reportedly sent the email to Tepper , the owner of the Carolina Panthers and the prominent hedge fund Appaloosa Management , detailing the `` level of concern '' among officials and how `` ill-prepared health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' The email was circulated throughout the company , and its warnings were shared with other investors , according to the report .
Those investors shared it with their own associates .
The email was shared between at least four financial firms over 24 hours , on the same day the Dow Jones fell 300 points .
Callanan told The Times that the email was shared `` without his knowledge or consent . ''
He claimed that the copy obtained by the outlet was `` materially different '' than the original one he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how .
Tepper disputed that the email was significant .
`` We were in the information flow on COVID at that point , '' he told The Times .
`` Because we were so public about this warning , people were calling us at this time .
The report highlights the disconnect between the rosy picture the Trump administration tried to paint to an unprepared public — before panic and supply shortages began — and growing concerns within the administration .
Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro distributed an internal memo on Feb. 23 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as 2 million Americans .
Trump told Bob Woodward even earlier on Feb. 7 that the virus was airborne and `` more deadly than even your strenuous flus , '' according to the journalist 's new book .
Democrats said The Times report showed where the administration 's priorities were before the pandemic killed more than 217,000 Americans .
`` If this does n't tell you who they prioritize then I do n't know what will , '' Michigan Democratic Senate leader Jim Ananich said .
`` People died and he lied .
@

The Trump administration publicly downplayed the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic while giving major Republican donors private warnings. The information helped elite traders "gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering," according to The New York Times.
President Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by the virus in February. He claimed on Feb. 24 that it was "very much under control" in the U.S., and the stock market was "starting to look very good to me."
That same day, Trump's economic team privately gave a less optimistic briefing to board members of the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank whose members often donate to Republican candidates.
Top economic adviser Larry Kudlow also sought to publicly insist that the virus was "contained," and the economy was "holding up nicely" on Feb. 25.
But privately, Kudlow was not as certain in his Hoover presentation later that day, where he was quoted as saying the virus was "contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don't know."
The private comments were included in a lengthy email by hedge fund consultant William Callanan, who detailed the three-day Hoover event to hedge fund manager and top Republican donor David Tepper before it was distributed it to others.
"What struck me," Callanan wrote, was that nearly all officials brought up the virus "as a point of concern, totally unprovoked."
Kudlow "revised his statement about the virus being contained," he added.
Tomas Philipson, the chairman of Trump's Council of Economic advisers, acknowledged to The Times that he had expressed uncertainty during the private briefing. Kudlow also did not dispute that he had made the comments. The former CNBC anchor told the outlet that he believed his comments were not materially different from his public ones.
"There was never any intent on my part to misinform," he said.
The Hoover Institution, which is led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, includes board members like Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch, who did not attend the meeting.
There has also been a revolving door between the think tank and the Trump administration. Joshua Rauh, one of the economists who spoke at the meeting, has since rejoined the institution. Kevin Hassett, who moderated the panel and served as the top White House economist, is now a Hoover Institution fellow. Dr. Scott Atlas, a Hoover fellow who has pushed the discredited "herd immunity" strategy, joined Trump's coronavirus task force in August.
The stock market was already struggling as public health officials publicly contradicted the administration's rosy outlook, but investors "spotted the immediate significance" of the private messaging, according to The Times.
The president's aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.
Some investors stocked up on toilet paper and other essential items before a mad rush caused nationwide shortages, according to The Times. Others decided to "short everything," or bet that certain stocks would fail, to profit from the collapse.
Callanan reportedly sent the email to Tepper, the owner of the Carolina Panthers and the prominent hedge fund Appaloosa Management, detailing the "level of concern" among officials and how "ill-prepared health agencies appeared to combat a pandemic."
The email was circulated throughout the company, and its warnings were shared with other investors, according to the report. Those investors shared it with their own associates. The email was shared between at least four financial firms over 24 hours, on the same day the Dow Jones fell 300 points.
Callanan told The Times that the email was shared "without his knowledge or consent." He claimed that the copy obtained by the outlet was "materially different" than the original one he created, though he would not say how.
Tepper disputed that the email was significant.
"We were in the information flow on COVID at that point," he told The Times. "Because we were so public about this warning, people were calling us at this time.
The report highlights the disconnect between the rosy picture the Trump administration tried to paint to an unprepared public — before panic and supply shortages began — and growing concerns within the administration.
Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro distributed an internal memo on Feb. 23 predicting the coronavirus could kill as many as 2 million Americans.
Trump told Bob Woodward even earlier on Feb. 7 that the virus was airborne and "more deadly than even your strenuous flus," according to the journalist's new book.
Democrats said The Times report showed where the administration's priorities were before the pandemic killed more than 217,000 Americans.
"If this doesn't tell you who they prioritize then I don't know what will," Michigan Democratic Senate leader Jim Ananich said. "People died and he lied."


alternet--2020-10-15--A 3-way fight between Pelosi, McConnell and Trump rages — and stimulus hangs in the balance

With less than three weeks until Election Day , Donald Trump faces the increasing likelihood that millions of struggling Americans will languish in needless poverty after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday that he does not plan to bring either the president 's or House Democrats ' stimulus proposals to the Senate floor .
The underlying issue is the proposed size of the stimulus legislation .
McConnell , a Republican , is pushing for a $ 500 billion proposal , claiming that pricier alternatives are too expensive .
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , a Democrat , is pushing for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trillion in relief , while Trump 's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been dispatched to suggest stimulus relief in excess of $ 1.8 trillion .
The dynamics behind these stimulus negotiations are unusual in at least one key respect : Trump , a Republican , is veering from his party 's traditional support for fiscal austerity and moving closer toward the Democratic proposals for more robust relief measures .
The Democratic proposal would include $ 600 in weekly enhanced unemployment benefits , checks of $ 1,200 to qualifying adults ( or $ 2,400 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their dependents , child care and education assistance , housing assistance , an extension of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program , an increase in SNAP benefits and increased funding for the Paycheck Protection Program .
Republicans , by contrast , want to strip relief to all but the barest bones , prompting Democrats to block a $ 300 billion plan that the GOP proposed last month .
While McConnell has subsequently slightly increased the measure to $ 500 billion , Trump has made it clear that he wants more from Senate Republicans , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to `` go big or go home ! ''
His underlying political rationale for wanting Republicans to break from their conservative orthodoxy and back more generous legislation was perhaps best summed up in a letter Pelosi sent to her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday .
`` A fly on the wall or wherever else it might land in the Oval Office tells me that the President only wants his name on a check to go out before Election Day and for the market to go up , '' Pelosi claimed .
This is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are ideologically motivated .
As Bloomberg reported earlier this week , many Senate Republicans believe Trump is going to lose to his Democratic opponent , former Vice President Joe Biden , and want to make sure he will be unable to benefit from a healthy economy : Trump himself is not opposed to accusing Democrats of excessive spending , telling Fox Business ' Stuart Varney that Pelosi is `` asking for all sorts of goodies .
She wants to bail out badly run Democrat states and cities .
She wants money for things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could n't — just — your pride could n't let it happen . ''
At the same time , it is conventional wisdom at this point that any hope Trump might have of winning the upcoming elections rests on at the very least being able to claim that the American economy is strong .
Instead , now that the stimulus passed earlier this year has worn off , the economy is getting progressively worse .
A pair of studies have found that anywhere from 6 million to 8 million Americans have fallen into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal stimulus check sent to American families had been disbursed .
Roughly 898,000 Americans filed initial jobless claims last week , an increase of 53,000 from the previous week and higher than economists had expected .
Research indicates that , to the extent that there has been any kind of economic recovery , it has been `` K-shaped , '' meaning that the wealthy have gotten even richer while ordinary Americans are worse off than before .
`` Both sides are gaming the election by calculations about what mix of specifics would , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' Dr. Richard D. Wolff , professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst , told Salon by email .
`` They may still reach some deal ( less likely with each passing day ) if they can find a mix that each thinks will advantage it in the election .
The delay for months now ( and especially since July 31 when the extra $ 600 for the unemployed was cut to $ 300-400 ) has kept the stimulus far below what is needed to offset the current depression . ''
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ most notably is a provision for public jobs for the 26 million now collecting state and federal unemployment benefits : ( 1 ) public jobs is what the unemployed want and need , ( 2 ) it would cost only a bit more than is now paid out in unemployment benefits , and ( 3 ) it would give back to society the product of those public employees .
That was done successfully during the 1930s ; it is a shameful display than today 's stimulus talks omit public jobs altogether . ''

With less than three weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump faces the increasing likelihood that millions of struggling Americans will languish in needless poverty after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday that he does not plan to bring either the president's or House Democrats' stimulus proposals to the Senate floor.
The underlying issue is the proposed size of the stimulus legislation. McConnell, a Republican, is pushing for a $500 billion proposal, claiming that pricier alternatives are too expensive. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, is pushing for a bill that would spend $2.2 trillion in relief, while Trump's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been dispatched to suggest stimulus relief in excess of $1.8 trillion.
The dynamics behind these stimulus negotiations are unusual in at least one key respect: Trump, a Republican, is veering from his party's traditional support for fiscal austerity and moving closer toward the Democratic proposals for more robust relief measures. The Democratic proposal would include $600 in weekly enhanced unemployment benefits, checks of $1,200 to qualifying adults (or $2,400 for couples) and $500 for their dependents, child care and education assistance, housing assistance, an extension of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, an increase in SNAP benefits and increased funding for the Paycheck Protection Program.
Republicans, by contrast, want to strip relief to all but the barest bones, prompting Democrats to block a $300 billion plan that the GOP proposed last month. While McConnell has subsequently slightly increased the measure to $500 billion, Trump has made it clear that he wants more from Senate Republicans, tweeting earlier this week that they need to "go big or go home!" His underlying political rationale for wanting Republicans to break from their conservative orthodoxy and back more generous legislation was perhaps best summed up in a letter Pelosi sent to her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday.
"A fly on the wall or wherever else it might land in the Oval Office tells me that the President only wants his name on a check to go out before Election Day and for the market to go up," Pelosi claimed.
This is not to say that McConnell and the Republicans are ideologically motivated. As Bloomberg reported earlier this week, many Senate Republicans believe Trump is going to lose to his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, and want to make sure he will be unable to benefit from a healthy economy:
A GOP strategist who has been consulting with Senate campaigns said Republicans have been carefully laying the groundwork to restrain a Biden administration on federal spending and the budget deficit by talking up concerns about the price tag for another round of virus relief. The thinking, the strategist said, is that it would be very hard politically to agree on spending trillions more now and then in January suddenly embrace fiscal restraint.
Trump himself is not opposed to accusing Democrats of excessive spending, telling Fox Business' Stuart Varney that Pelosi is "asking for all sorts of goodies. She wants to bail out badly run Democrat states and cities. She wants money for things that you would never, you just couldn't — just — your pride couldn't let it happen." At the same time, it is conventional wisdom at this point that any hope Trump might have of winning the upcoming elections rests on at the very least being able to claim that the American economy is strong.
Instead, now that the stimulus passed earlier this year has worn off, the economy is getting progressively worse. A pair of studies have found that anywhere from 6 million to 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since May, after the sole federal stimulus check sent to American families had been disbursed. Roughly 898,000 Americans filed initial jobless claims last week, an increase of 53,000 from the previous week and higher than economists had expected. Research indicates that, to the extent that there has been any kind of economic recovery, it has been "K-shaped," meaning that the wealthy have gotten even richer while ordinary Americans are worse off than before.
"Both sides are gaming the election by calculations about what mix of specifics would, if passed, boost their vote," Dr. Richard D. Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, told Salon by email. "They may still reach some deal (less likely with each passing day) if they can find a mix that each thinks will advantage it in the election. The delay for months now (and especially since July 31 when the extra $600 for the unemployed was cut to $300-400) has kept the stimulus far below what is needed to offset the current depression."
He added, "Absent from it most notably is a provision for public jobs for the 26 million now collecting state and federal unemployment benefits: (1) public jobs is what the unemployed want and need, (2) it would cost only a bit more than is now paid out in unemployment benefits, and (3) it would give back to society the product of those public employees. That was done successfully during the 1930s; it is a shameful display than today's stimulus talks omit public jobs altogether."


Democratic Rep. Katie Porter has spent her first couple of years in Congress really working hard to point out the corruption and greed being perpetrated by the CEOs of major industries .
She 's exposed the banking industry and its moral bankruptcy , and she has time and time again exposed the criminal negligence , greed , and corruption in the Trump administration .
She is frequently using her time in House committee hearings to face off against the smartest men in the room : the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies .
These are men that can buy and sell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with big brains , right ?
Not really .
They 're just good at taking money from people .
That 's usually the entirety of their personal acumen .
On Wednesday , former Celgene CEO Mark Alles joined two other pharmaceutical company CEOs to testify about drug pricing at a House Oversight Committee hearing .
Porter decided to pull out her big white board and give Alles—and America—a lesson in what exactly CEOs of these companies do for a living : Price gouge the American people .
Porter first asked Alles to answer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Revlimid was in 2005 , 2013 , 2017 , and today .
Alles could n't readily come up with those numbers because he 's a big shot CEO .
The short story is that Revlimid cost $ 215 per pill in 2005 and right now it costs $ 763 per pill .
Obviously , the pill must have gotten better and/or the demand has diminished for the pill !
Wrong .
In fact , Alles admits that a lot more uses for the pill were discovered , meaning a ton more patients , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or its efficacy has changed .
So why is the price going up ?
Why is Medicare paying out $ 3.3 billion for Revlimid ?
Rep. Porter has some ideas if CEO Alles does n't .
It turns out that Mr. Alles made $ 13 million , which is `` 200 times the average American 's income and 360 times what the average senior makes on Social Security , '' she kindly explained to him .
And lo and behold !
Mr. Alles gets nice big bonuses if he raises the cost , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Remlivid .
In fact , to bring an average monthly course cost of the cancer drug to a patient up to $ 16,023 , Mr. Alles was able to pocket an extra $ 500,000 .
Sweet deal .
Fuck those cancer patients , amiright ?
Do n't worry , everyone else will pay for it !
Finally , Rep. Porter gave a summation that even a smart guy like Alles can understand .
`` So to recap here : The drug did n't get any better .
The cancer patients did n't @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better at making money .
You just refined your skills at price gouging ! ''
Amen .
The Committee 's findings on Celgene price gouging can be found in their report here .

Democratic Rep. Katie Porter has spent her first couple of years in Congress really working hard to point out the corruption and greed being perpetrated by the CEOs of major industries. She's exposed the banking industry and its moral bankruptcy, and she has time and time again exposed the criminal negligence, greed, and corruption in the Trump administration. She is frequently using her time in House committee hearings to face off against the smartest men in the room: the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
These are men that can buy and sell all of us! Manly men, with big brains, right? Not really. They're just good at taking money from people. That's usually the entirety of their personal acumen. On Wednesday, former Celgene CEO Mark Alles joined two other pharmaceutical company CEOs to testify about drug pricing at a House Oversight Committee hearing. Porter decided to pull out her big white board and give Alles—and America—a lesson in what exactly CEOs of these companies do for a living: Price gouge the American people.
Porter first asked Alles to answer what the cost of the cancer drug Revlimid was in 2005, 2013, 2017, and today. Alles couldn't readily come up with those numbers because he's a big shot CEO. The short story is that Revlimid cost $215 per pill in 2005 and right now it costs $763 per pill. Obviously, the pill must have gotten better and/or the demand has diminished for the pill! Wrong. In fact, Alles admits that a lot more uses for the pill were discovered, meaning a ton more patients, and shockingly, nothing about the pill or its efficacy has changed.
So why is the price going up? Why is Medicare paying out $3.3 billion for Revlimid?
Rep. Porter has some ideas if CEO Alles doesn't. It turns out that Mr. Alles made $13 million, which is "200 times the average American's income and 360 times what the average senior makes on Social Security," she kindly explained to him. And lo and behold! Mr. Alles gets nice big bonuses if he raises the cost, say triples the cost since 2005, of Remlivid. In fact, to bring an average monthly course cost of the cancer drug to a patient up to $16,023, Mr. Alles was able to pocket an extra $500,000. Sweet deal. Fuck those cancer patients, amiright? Don't worry, everyone else will pay for it!
Finally, Rep. Porter gave a summation that even a smart guy like Alles can understand. "So to recap here: The drug didn't get any better. The cancer patients didn't get any better. You just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price gouging!"
Amen. The Committee's findings on Celgene price gouging can be found in their report here.


alternet--2020-10-15--Trump's plan to send out $200 election bribes to seniors is already falling apart

Remember Donald Trump 's big `` healthcare plan '' from three weeks ago ?
The one that did nothing except promise a bribe to seniors in the form of $ 200 cash cards to be used to by their prescriptions ?
We subsequently found out that he had sprung that brilliant plan on his administration officials , who were tasked with figuring out and implementing what is now estimated to be an $ 8 billion plan by November 3 .
That wo n't happen , not for the majority of the 33 million cards that will need to be sent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In addition to the $ 8 billion that they 're taking out of Medicare to pay the $ 200 per beneficiary , this is going to cost taxpayers $ 20 million just in administrative costs to print and send 33 million letters telling seniors to look for the cards eventually .
They ca n't get the cards out in time to bribe seniors for the votes , so they 'll try it with these letters .
It seems they have n't entirely determined exactly who is going to be getting these cards .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ be lower-income Medicare beneficiaries who do n't already get financial assistance for prescriptions .
The money will probably come out of `` two Medicare trust funds , according to the administration official .
It would run out of a CMS office that tests new models for providing or paying for health care . ''
That program was created to run demonstration projects to find more efficient and cost-effective ways of delivering care without effecting quality .
Sending $ 200 to a huge bunch of people without a real plan beyond `` give them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the program was designed for .
At all .
But the administration official is doing his or her best to sell it , telling the WSJ that it `` could be designed to test if people are more adherent to medications if they are given a discount . ''
Of course they 're not going into this to try to figure out what 's the best way to help people adhere to a medication schedule .
They 're not going to identify a control group to test against , or conduct interviews with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 8.2 billion of Medicare funding that could have gone to a real program to find ways to improve Medicare and senior health .
Instead it 's on this folly of Trump 's , an attempt to shore up the base of older voters who are abandoning him because he 's so fucked up the coronavirus response .

Remember Donald Trump's big "healthcare plan" from three weeks ago? The one that did nothing except promise a bribe to seniors in the form of $200 cash cards to be used to by their prescriptions? We subsequently found out that he had sprung that brilliant plan on his administration officials, who were tasked with figuring out and implementing what is now estimated to be an $8 billion plan by November 3.
That won't happen, not for the majority of the 33 million cards that will need to be sent, the Wall Street Journal reports. In addition to the $8 billion that they're taking out of Medicare to pay the $200 per beneficiary, this is going to cost taxpayers $20 million just in administrative costs to print and send 33 million letters telling seniors to look for the cards eventually. They can't get the cards out in time to bribe seniors for the votes, so they'll try it with these letters.
It seems they haven't entirely determined exactly who is going to be getting these cards. The WSJ source says that it would be lower-income Medicare beneficiaries who don't already get financial assistance for prescriptions. The money will probably come out of "two Medicare trust funds, according to the administration official. It would run out of a CMS office that tests new models for providing or paying for health care." That program was created to run demonstration projects to find more efficient and cost-effective ways of delivering care without effecting quality. Sending $200 to a huge bunch of people without a real plan beyond "give them Trump money" isn't really what the program was designed for. At all. But the administration official is doing his or her best to sell it, telling the WSJ that it "could be designed to test if people are more adherent to medications if they are given a discount."
Of course they're not going into this to try to figure out what's the best way to help people adhere to a medication schedule. They're not going to identify a control group to test against, or conduct interviews with recipients. They're going to spend $8.2 billion of Medicare funding that could have gone to a real program to find ways to improve Medicare and senior health. Instead it's on this folly of Trump's, an attempt to shore up the base of older voters who are abandoning him because he's so fucked up the coronavirus response.