Category Archives: Viktor Orbán

Trump’s Brand is Con.

So don’t be a sucker.

“Don’t Be a Sucker” was designed to warn pre-internet moviegoers about the dangers of being taken in by a populist demagogue. It’s seventy five years old, so it barely predates Don the Con. It also perfectly encapsulates a what he is, and always has been, a dyed-in-the-wool conman.

However, the fact that he is a Russian-backed conman puts him in another category. He and his family are not just in it for their personal gain (in the form of Russian hotels, and even possibly huge shares of Rosneft. 

Go down this incomplete list of pro-Russia actions Don the Con has taken in direct contravention to American commitments and interests:

  1. Exiting the Iran deal. Oil price rises, American influence declines.
  2. Praising strongmen: Duterte, Erdogan, Kim, Orban have all been praised by Trump, making Putin’s mob-run government seem legitimate and normal. American style democratic norms have been criticized as dumb and weak. How is it in our best interests to criticize the form of government we use and promote while praising an adversarial system?
  3. Attempting to lift Russia Sanctions for seizing Crimea: the sovereignty of a country is a primary tenet of the rule of law. Nevertheless, Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula doesn’t seem to be sanction-worthy for Trump. Our NATO allies depend on this precept for their survival! The negative impact on our NATO alliance is extreme and this rewards Russia’s aggression.
  4. Korean military exercises: our armed forces and South Korea’s require regular cooperative exercises to maintain readiness. We have gained neither security nor specific commitments from North Korea. But Russia has gained a reduced military readiness stance by U.S. forced near its borders.

This man is not in office for you, people like you, or even people you like. His policies on trade directly harm his own narrow constituency. His  rhetoric has consistently targeted minorities and his slogan itself is dredged from the darkest parts of American history. He’s in office for himself and for Putin (to save himself). He came into office in violation of his oath of office on day one. His actions and the actions of a still rising number of convicted flunkies indicate he’s guilty, psychologically duplicitous and fully-compromised. This cannot end well, but it will end. Let your conscience be your guide and most of all …

Don’t be a sucker!

Hungarians cave to fear and xenophobia.

Fidesz makes bogeymen out of people fleeing war, famine, poverty and hopelessness making it’s citizens fear for their Christianity, itself a dying religion. As a result they cede their own liberty, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and rights to petition the courts for a redress of grievances. This strategy, to wage a campaign based on self-generated fantasies, pushed into the minds of citizens in an environment of limited news resources is the surest way to degrade a democracy. Hungary as a Democracy is at its lowest point since the fall of Communism. But don’t worry! The “Viktator” has a lovely view of it all from his home overlooking his football stadium. Life is grand at the top, that it sits atop a wobbley mountain of corruption is of no importance.

We can see this will end badly, as all authoritarian regimes do. The question is how to the Hungarians organize a diverse opposition to this coalescing of power? Jobbik is a rude and inappropriate joke of a political party. Anti-Semitic fear-mongering is so last millennium but even they oppose Orbán in coalition with the left wing parties. However the election results show this will not have much effect on the FIdesz party’s ability to maul the constitution in the foreseeable future.

How the citizens of Hungary reassert Democratic principles is an open question. The Atlantic recently interview one of the lone independent investigative journalists about the state of affairs there and I recommend it.