T R U M P I S M : N O N - C O O P E R A T I O N A S A F A I L E D

P O L I T I C A L S T R A T E G Y

The scoundrel has said in his heart

There is no God
They corrupt, they make loathsome their acts.
There is none who does good.

(Ps. 14.1, trans. Robert Alter)1

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influencethe jealousy of a free people

ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that for-
eign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.
(president George Washington farewell speech) 2

Under our Constitution, the people rule. Our elected ocials, including the
president, are accountable to us.3
WHY NON-CO OPERATIO N I S A FAIL ED PO LITICAL STRATEGY

Hannah Arendt coined the term the banality of evil to describe Adolph
Eichmanns argument against his responsibility for transporting millions of
Jews to their deaths in the Camps. Eichmann denied any responsibility for
their deaths as he was only doing his job as Transport Minister under Hitler.
That is, anything beyond transport was immaterial to Eichmanns moral or
ethical stance in doing his job.4

Cooperation is Fundamental to Survival of the Human Experiment. What

biologists have determined is that: only in conditions of heightened (or sta-
ble) cooperation could breakthroughs in our evolutionary past of major sig-

1Robert Alter comments: The thrust of this line is more moral than theological. The concern is not a philosophical
question of Gods existence but the scoundrels lack of conscience, his feeling that he can act with impunity, be-
cause he thinks he need not fear divine retribution (Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms [New York & London: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2007], 9). Essentially, autocracy rather than faith in reason and reaching common ground).
2 President George Washington farewell speech (1796) at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp.
3See Ordinary Americans carries out inhumane acts for Trump at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/
oped/bs-airport-inhumanity-20170206-story.html.
4Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, (New York: Viking, May 17, 1963). The
disavowal of moral and/or ethical considerations in decision-making is called adiaphora. Adiaphora has produced
more terror for the human condition than any act of what we conveniently label terrorism has ever or may ever pro-
duce. See https://www.scribd.com/document/15260699/Adiphorization-of-Christian-Ethics-in-Society-and-the-
Church. Adiaphora may actually be a twisted form of intolerance denigrating the responsibility of citizenship.

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nificance have occurred in the first place.5 That is, competition or the selfish
gene theory of evolution is known today as NOT how evolution, at least evo-
lution on earth, that resulted in the human experiment is best described. Co-
operation (common ground) turns out to be as or more important a driver of
successful evolutionary advancement and democratic governance. 6

Cooperation Requires Lawful, Reality-Based Decision-Making. But, what

does cooperation look like? Does it mean holding hands while singing kum-
bya? No. What it means for governance is making policy decisions based on
facts, NOT ideology. This is called reality-based decision-making.7

Reality-Based Decision-Making Starts with Analytics NOT Ideology. An-

alytics is pretty straightforward. It means using mathematical and acceptable
processes (as developed by a community of knowledgeable minds) to ana-
lyze data thoroughly. In other words, there are decisions that are defensible
based on the data. And, there are decisions that the data do not and will
never support for a sound policy decision, but may fit ones ideological or
comfort level. That is, policy that can be described as a conservative" or
liberal agenda is disingenuous as it denotes ideological-based rather than
reality-based policy.

5
Martin A. Nowak and Sarah Coakley, eds., Evolution, Games and God: The Principle of Cooperation (Cambridge,
MA.: Harvard University Press, 2013), 2.
6 Liberal democracy based on cooperation has been the driver of US global power and economic success. In many
parts of the world, the concept of a liberal democracy that strives for the common good for all people is to be
laughed at. Instead, governance is primarily to enrich the elite. For example, after Trump was elected in the US,
Dmitri Kiselyov, the host of News of the Week, a popular current-aairs show on Russian state-controlled television
praised Trump because the concepts of democracy and human rights are not in his lexicon.
7 The argument against lawful, reality-based decision-making is Carl Schmitts state of exception that argues The
core of Schmitts argument that a political order centered on the rule of law must sooner or later come face to face
with the problem of the exception, a situation that is essentially inchoate but can be approximated as one of dire
emergency or extreme peril to the state. Because the form of the exception cant be anticipated or defined, Schmitt
argued, no law or structure of law can predict what powers will be needed by the government to grapple with the
emergency that exception represents. See https://www.lawfareblog.com/donald-trumps-state-exception. Schmitt
was a leading intellectual architect of Hitlers Nazi takeover of German during the 1930s that neutralized the German
judiciarys enforcement of Constitutional due process and rule of law. For example, Schmitt devoted himself, with
undue enthusiasm, to such tasks as the defense of Hitler's extra-judicial killings of political opponents. See https://
plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/'

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Since 9-11 we have been living in a state of exception.8 Our post 9-11 gov-
ernment often achieves its utilitarian objective of control through identity
politics that fractures community into atomized and powerless individuals
and small, ineective groups each doing what was right in his/her own
eyes (see Book of Judges 20:1-21:25). Thus, conservative versus liberal
as a means to divide and confuse rather than actually solve problems. Might
this state of exception be better thought of as a state of deception?9

Gravity Always Wins. HIV does not cause AIDS. The world was created
in 4004 BCE. Smoking does not cause cancer. If climate change is hap-
pening, it is nothing to do with man-made CO2 emissions. Peak Oil is just
a figment of doomsayers imaginations run wild.

The consequences of policies based on ideologically based views such as

these can be fatal, as fatal as any terrorist attack with larger economic and
lost human life costs than any terror attack yet. Thabo Mbeki's denial that
that HIV caused AIDS prevented thousands of HIV positive mothers in South
Africa receiving anti-retrovirals so that they, unnecessarily, transmitted the
disease to their children. His health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang,
famously rejected evidence of the ecacy of these drugs, instead advocat-
ing treatment with garlic, beetroot and African potato.... The rejection of sci-
entific evidence is also apparent in the popularity of creationism, with an es-
timated 45% of Americans in 2004 believing that God created man in his
present form within the past 10,000 years. While successive judgements of
the US Supreme Court have rejected the teaching of creationism as science,
many American schools are cautious about discussing evolution. In the Unit-
ed Kingdom, some faith-based schools teach evolution and creationism as
equally valid 'faith positions'. It remains unclear how they explain the emer-
gence of antibiotic resistance....

8 See Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
9 The intellectual basis of Trumpism is to push this enduring state of exception to the limits of racial purity, similar to
that of Nazi Germany, but focused on a dierent class of scapegoats immigrants, both illegal and legal, and Mus-
lims. The intellectual theory behind Trumpism developed by Michael Anton is that both conservatism, Republican-
ism, liberalism, and the resulting liberal democracy embodied in the American experiment has failed. In order to
Make America Great Again requires the suspension of normal democratic functioning and an autocratic regime that
is capable of responding to what is perceived as an existential crisis for the nation. See http://www.unz.com/article/
toward-a-sensible-coherent-trumpism/.

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There is also a variant of conspiracy theory, inversionism, in which some of

one's own characteristics and motivations are attributed to others. For ex-
ample, tobacco companies describe academic research into the health ef-
fects of smoking as the product of an 'anti-smoking industry, described as 'a
vertically integrated, highly concentrated, oligopolistic cartel, combined with
some public monopolies' whose aim is to 'manufacture alleged evidence,
suggestive inferences linking smoking to various diseases and publicity and
dissemination and advertising of these so-called findings to the widest pos-
sible public'....10

Whatever the motivation, it is important to recognize denialism when con-

fronted with it. The normal academic response to an opposing argument is
to engage with it, testing the strengths and weaknesses of the diering
views, in the expectations that the truth will emerge through a process of
debate. However, this requires that both parties obey certain ground rules,
such as a willingness to look at the evidence as a whole, to reject deliberate
distortions and to accept principles of logic. A meaningful discourse is im-
possible when one party rejects these rules. Yet it would be wrong to prevent
the denialists having a voice. Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the
debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public
scrutiny the tactics they employ and identifying them publicly for what they
are.11

Might denialism is best thought of as the preaching of falsehoods out of a

utility whether that utility be avarice, payment for services rendered, in-
group acceptance, unchecked desire, pure cantankerousness, an unwilling-
ness to admit one is/was wrong, or a character flaw that renders one men-
dacious and deceitful by nature. These falsehoods are malicious or injurious
in that they ultimately are false. They provide an untrue and oftentimes dis-
sembling assessment of reality. However, what makes deniers ultimately ac-
countable is that they preach these falsehoods. Deniers engage in an active

10 A close cousin to inversionism is gaslighting where a more powerful voice denies the reality of a weaker party.
Gaslighting only requires a belief by a perpetrator that it is acceptable to overwrite the reality of the actual victim. The
foreign political influence version of gaslighting is kompromat (compromising material) used to destroy the credibility
of individuals by sullying reputations through leaks or faked documentation of compromising information.
11 Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee, Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond? in The European
Journal of Public Health 2009 19(1):2-4; doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckn139 quoted in Mark Hoofnagle, Denialism in the
Literature at http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/denialism_in_the_literature.php (accessed 8/28/09).

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stance to convince others of their wrongful beliefs. But why are deniers lis-
tened to and are their promulgating of falsehoods, always also lies?

Errol Morris wrote an informative article discussing the Seven Lies About
Lying (Part 2):

1. Lying is the opposite of telling the truth. It is often assumed that when
we lie, we know the truth that our brains are reality recorders or truth
recorders.... But we can think something is false, without it being false. And
we can think something is true, without it being true.... The idea that the
brain is a truth recorder persists despite overwhelming evidence to the con-
trary. The phenomenon of false memories, the unreliability of eyewitness tes-
timony and so on all emphasize our ability to stray from the truth and to be
unaware of it. They all speak to the fact that what we believe to be true and
what is true are two very dierent things.12

2. Lying is telling a falsehood. This is the flip-side of No. 1, and it leads to

the preposterous idea that truth and falsehood can be determined with a
machine.... The machine, at best, does not determine whether a statement is
true or false, but only whether there is a disparity between what is believed
and what is communicated to others.

3. Lying leads to narrative inconsistencies. The common wisdom is that

people whose stories change are telling lies. But its often liars (not truth-
tellers) who are able to tell consistent stories.... Sir Walter Scott wrote, O
what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to
deceive. (Marmion, Canto VI, XVII) But why should we think that the truth is
less tangled than a lie? Scott also wrote, although it is rarely quoted, per-
haps because it isnt part of a cautionary tale, I cannot tell how the truth
may be; I say the tale as it was said to me.13

4. Lying can never be justified....The philosopher Immanuel Kant insisted

that one should always tell the truth. His argument is linked to the categori-

12 For example, a gaslighter specifically attempts to bend reality (what is truth) to benefit themselves while discount-
ing and disparaging anothers sense of reality. This type of relationality is abuse that destroys the self-esteem of vic-
tims. Information warfare cares little about truth. Its express objective is to disrupt normally functioning systems of
power through disinformation, misinformation, or lies.
13
The big lie is that the imperium (governing elites) gets to determine what the truth is, independent of analysis,
relevant data or real discourse where alternate versions of reality-based speech gets to be heard.

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cal imperative, Kants standard from which all moral law is derived.... St.
Augustine, who became one of the first taxonomers of prevarication, provid-
ed a hierarchy of really rotten lies, sort of acceptable lies, indierent lies and
beneficial lies. He was even willing to admit that lying was sometimes not so
bad.14

5. Lying will be punished. Perhaps. But not as often as truth-telling. Lying

eectively in many situations is generally superior than telling the truth, be-
cause often we have to search our minds for the truth, whereas a good lie
can be easier to produce (though of course caution is indicated if the lie can
be easily unmasked).

6. Lying is avoidable. Mark Twain, in his essay On the Decay of the Art of
Lying, realized the importance of skillful lying, No high-minded man, no
man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the
present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. Twain goes
on to make an event stronger point: that lying is unavoidable.15

7. Lying is a threat to the truth. No. Lying and the truth can exist side-by-
side.... We lie based on what we believe.... But the real problem is not lies
but people believing them.... Lies are eective because we are insecure
about many of our beliefs and are quite vulnerable to the suggestion that
those beliefs might be false. And they work because we might be predis-
posed to believe them already.... And there is another dirty little secret about
lying in the pursuit of truth, some lying is invariably necessary.... My hunch
is that if we ever find so-called intelligent life on other planets or in other gal-
axies, they will be adept liars, too.16

Truthiness Does of Equal Truth. Truthiness is bending facts to arrive at

pre-determined truths that fit ones ideology, or if necessary inventing

14 For example, the Soviet Union specifically used lying or in more technical terms, information warfare, to control its
population under communism and the Federal Security Service (FSB; successor to the KGB) and GRU (military intel-
ligence service) uses these techniques, especially kompromat, today to control the Russian population.
15Ideologues almost always end up lying as they are busy twisting facts to fit their preconceived notions, indepen -
dent of what thoughtful analysis the data reveals. That is not to say there exists a perfectly objective observer of
reality, only that the ideologue is often disconnected from any useful reality necessary for sound decision making.
16 See http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/seven-lies-about-lying-part-2/.

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facts that not only support but confirm ones ideology.17 Naomi Klein might
suggest that the Plan of these deniers of reality is, after all, one of disaster
capitalism.18 Making money from the crisis that ensues by waiting for things
to fall apart. Sort of a Katrina on a global scale. A time when public assets
and public services can be privatized at pennies on the dollar. Mass confu-
sion that ensues during a crisis is pure opportunity. So much money to be
made. Made possible by deniers who persuade the public not to worry.
Everything is under control. Change is not necessary. Crises are good for
business. Wall Street demonstrated this so blatantly during the most recent
financial industry meltdown between 2008-2010. The bonuses continued,
the salaries ballooned. Even as taxpayers were footing all the bills; so much
for real capitalism. Its now more accurate to think corporatism: socialism
for the very rich. 19

This has all happened before and is likely to happen again. Even 2,600 years
ago during Jeremiahs time. It was also a time of competing truth claims.

17
Truthiness as a strategy may be thought of as a form of information warfare that is not so much about creating an
alternate truth, but an active attempt for eroding ones basic ability to distinguish truth at all. It is not propaganda or
disinformation as was used by the Germans during WWII, but more along the lines of what the Gerasimov Doctrine
for Putins strategy to improve Russian world standing might describe as active measures and reflexive control. Ac-
tive measures is information warfare designed to create a landscape of smoke and mirrors. Its purpose is to disable
normal discourse to make sound decisions. Reflexive control is designed to persuade a stronger opponent to essen-
tially adopt policies that favor a weaker opponent. Both are designed to make its targets act against their own best
interests. In todays world much of this non-linear warfare is conducted through digital means.
18 Despite the hand wringing and distress over the federal deficit and mounting public debt, the larger deficits and
mounting o balance sheet debts are being generated by the private sector in the United States via disaster capital-
ism. Disaster capitalism is a particularly pernicious form of aberrant capitalism that is dis-economic (wealth destroy-
ing) rather than wealth producing. This form of capitalism is often rationalized by the myth of free markets unencum-
bered by government regulations. But, unfortunately, the end-result of disaster capitalism is market ineciencies that
radically misprice the economic costs of inputs and outputs to the economy. When these particular markets fail
(which they always will), often the economic costs of market failure are accounted for by the public sector. Essential-
ly, the private risk from disaster capitalism is socialized to the public sector. See Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine:
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007).
19 Today, corporatism, the resistance to economically productive change and preservation of dis-economic activities
may be more a threat to capitalism than socialism. The economist, Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950, Austria/Hun-
gary), in his book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, discussed capitalisms greatest strength as creative de-
struction old ways of doing things are destroyed and replaced by new ways through entrepreneurship. For
Schumpeter, socialism was no match for capitalism. However, he predicted that corporatism would threaten and
could finally undermine capitalism. See http://www.scribd.com/doc/19538880/.

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Deniers were plentiful. They claimed to be the voice of conventional wisdom.

Wisdom that assaulted and contradicted Jeremiahs message to the people.
So Jeremiah raised his speech to cries of anguish.20 His cries rang out
against the drumbeat of the deniers conventional wisdom: Conventional
forms of strategy and policy have failed. All leadership has failed. Our entire
future is now under assault. This history-making change is not a secret mat-
ter. All this is happening in our midst, in public.21 All we need is eyes to see
and ears to hear.22 Our leaders are adamant to maintain the status quo. They
are immune to the notion that their denial will result in the death of our com-
munity, our world. The leaders even claimed Jeremiah, the carrier of this
discordant message, an enemy of the state.23 Jeremiah summarized his
view of these deniers:

Therefore their way shall be to them

like slippery paths in the darkness,
into which they shall be driven and fall;
For I will bring disaster upon them
in the year of their punishment,

20The current Russian Gerasimov Doctrine under Putin is specifically designed to silence or at the very least render
inconsequential these cries of anguish by attacking the speakers motivations rather than the arguments substance.
21This is the exact objective of information warfare to flood the media with so much conflicting news that it be-
comes impossible or at least exceedingly dicult and labor intensive to sort out fact from fiction. Further, info war
often uses sophisticated religious memes to hook ones prevailing frames for processing new information that
sound right according to ones preexisting understandings, however biased, prejudiced, and wrong.
22O mortal, you dwell among the rebellious breed. They have eyes to see but see not, ears to hear but hear not; for
they are a rebellious breed (Ezekial, 12:2, JPS).
23Historically, scarring torture was used against enemies of the state. During Greek and Roman times it was appro-
priate to torture slaves and barbarians, but citizens of the Empire were o limits. Only much later in the history of the
Roman Empire were citizens also tortured. During Stalinist times, this form of torture was industrialized in the Soviet
Union. Millions of Soviet citizens who fell into the displeasure of Stalin, for whatever reason, were tortured solely as a
means to maintain civil order through terror. The intent of this torture is to leave scars as a public reminder of what
the State can do to the body of those whom it deems a threat.

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says YHWH. (Jeremiah 23:12, NRSV)24

Terrorism as the Willful Use of Denialism to Destroy Lives.25 Truthiness

is bending facts to arrive at pre-determined truths that fit ones ideology, or
if necessary inventing facts that not only support but confirm ones ideolo-
gy. Terror-ism26 is a life-game27 pitting two opposing sides with diering
world-pictures28 against one another. The objective of the life-game of terror-
ism is to elicit fear of suering and pain in the Other.29 A game is won if one
side is able to establish and maintain control over the other side through this
fear. An easy example is the denialism regarding Anthropogenic Climate Dis-
ruption (ACD).30 Best estimates is that ACD is already claiming 200,000 lives

24 Conventional forms of strategy and policy have failed. All leadership framed as a conservative agenda vs. a lib-
eral agenda has failed. Our entire future is now under assault. Yet, as a diversion from the real, more salient prob-
lems of terror we face as a nation, as a species, we focus our attention and resources ($7,000 billion since 9-11) on a
never ending cycle of violence counter violence against the Other. There are political realities that engender ter-
rorism: (1) population pressures and demographics, (2) auence dierentials, (3) technology access, (4) relative
poverty, (5) market failures such as ``perverse pricing of externalities, (6) political failures of inclusiveness and power-
sharing arrangements, (7) rate of economic growth, (9) cultural and religious values, and (10) local impacts of global-
ization.
25Terrorism: systemized violence against a predominantly civilian population that may take the form of lethal force,
symbolic violence, economic disruption, and other forms that impinge or impede on the normal human freedoms
that are reasonably expected by such civilian population.
26
Terror-ism indicates that we have objectified and reified this activity and turned it into an aberrant life-game.
Terrorism, as a human activity, is almost as old as human civilization. What is new today is how we talk about terror-
ism. We have changed our world-picture to include terrorism as a central aspect, almost a doctrine, for how we view
reality. This is new.
27 Games of importance played against one or more opponents that have non-trivial outcomes (i.e., life or death).
28World-picture, according to Ludwig Wittgenstein, might be thought of as a frame or framework through which
we look to discern what is real and what is not, and what is important, from our vantage point. Ultimately, this look-
ing creates a picture of the world that we use to decipher new data. New data needs to fit this picture. It must
make sense within our world-picture. Otherwise, new data (ideas, experiences, paradigms) are nonsense, even
though they are real in a larger sense.
29 Used in this context, Others are the opponent(s), in all his/her manifestations, in a game. Other describes
someone dierent than our self and our preferred reference group. Otherness is typically perceived as a symptom
of godlessness and degeneration. Others are those who inhabited the camps of Auschwitz and the Gulag. Oth-
ers are those whom the modern state wages genocide, the categorical killing of those who are classified as Oth-
er. See Zygmunt Bauman, A Century of Camps? (1995) in Peter Beilhartz, ed., The Bauman Reader (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 277, 280.
30 Previously referred to as global warming or climate change or abrupt climate change.

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each year and soon will cause anywhere from 2 million to 20 million deaths
annually. That is, deaths directly attributable to ACD. We presently know
about as much and are as confident that ACD is real as we know and under-
stand about gravity. There are criminal and civil penalties for yelling fire at a
movie theatre when there is no fire creating a false alarm. But, with ACD
we have a serious problem with denying a raging fire and doing anything
useful about it. Where are the criminal and civil penalties for this denialism of
a physical fact as clear and present as gravity? How is this form of denialism
that claims lives, 100s of thousands of real lives annually, any less a terrorist
act than ISIS killing a few tens of people in a night club? Why should free
speech absolve such denialism of legal recourse when freely shouting fire
if there is no fire be subject to the full weight of the law for the harm it caus-
es?

HOW DO KNO W TR UM P ISM I S A FAILE D ST RAT E G Y ?

Just reflect on Trumps proposed cabinet and advisors:

Mike Pense Vice President

Je Sessions Attorney General

Rex Tillerson Secretary of State

James Mattis Secretary of Defense

Rick Perry Secretary of Energy

Steven Mnuchin - Secretary of Treasury

Dr. Ben Carson Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Scott Pruitt Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Ryan Zinke Secretary of the Interior

John Kelly Secretary of Homeland Security

Dan Coats Director of Oce of National Intelligence

Steve Bannon Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor

etc.

What characterizes the collective mindset of these proposed cabinet mem-

bers is NOT their conservative credentials, but their demonstrated capabili-
ty to defer reality-based decision-making in favor of ideologically comfort-
able policy positions. That is, in the world of these policy decision-makers
truthiness trumps the truth. In their public statements, if such statements are

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to be believed and taken at face value, facts are bent or invented to support
positions, rather than positions shaped by the facts.31

While individually each of these nominees may be good people or even

honorable, collectively, as policy makers, they represent the banality of evil.
For their modus operandi, at least under the auspices of Trumpism is likely
to be non-cooperation as a political strategy.32 In other words, they wield
power as employers of terrorism the willful use of non-cooperation to de-
stroy lives, not only of US citizens, but of people over the world.33 A clown

31 Could Trumpism be a doomsday machine? Unlike in the 1950s when the doomsday game strategy of mutual as-
sured destruction (MAD ) was invented, nuclear weapons are just one of todays doomsday machines. Throughout
history doomsday machines, although attractive in principle, have never worked in practice. Whether the doomsday
machine was the wrath of God, some imaginative SciFi invention or the Soviet-era Perimeter system, they fail. The
narrative of human history is the collapse of even the best of plans. Does Trumpism, as a potential doomsday ma-
chine drive global GDP instead of going from $60 to $240 trillion by 2050, declining to $6 trillion. Is denialism of An-
thropogenic Climate Change worth the potential cost of eliminating a large portion of the worlds population either
directly or indirectly by altering the earths biologic capacity to support life (as we know it today). Today fundamental
and structural ineciencies enable global and national markets to misprice inputs and outputs by either: (a) deferring
known economic costs to the future or; (b) failing to account for known economic costs and pushing these private
costs to public taxpayers. Will these market ineciencies be further enabled by Trumpism?
32As Richard B. Hays in his Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, Tx: Baylor University Press, 2016) reminds us:
Human discourse is inherently intertextual and allusive. However, as most US presidents speech echo values
found prominently in the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament, the speech of Trumpism echoes values found in
Putinism and the texts of autocrats who historically led their nations to ruinous conflict with Others on the global
stage. Thus, the burning question today is the question that Mark asks in his Gospel: do we have eyes to see and
ears to hear (Mark 8:18) or do we remain blind and deaf to the proleptic revelation of Gods kingdom good news?
33 We live daily with violence all around us. Why some forms of violence and not others become constituted as
moves is terrorism is due to the language-games used to describe the violence. If the language-games discuss the
violence as symbolic and associated with specific deeper objectives that challenge the world-picture of those to
whom the violence is being done, then oftentimes the violence is referred to a terrorism. In other words, terrorism
does not have to kill or maim people in some horrendous explosion to be classified as a terrorist attack. An ac-
count of the meaning of the situation is in no way given, but must be constructed in light of the system of inter-
ests revealed as the policy-maker addresses issues of contingency and particularity related to the crisis situation en-
gendered by the treat of terrorism. See Paul H. Ballard, Pastoral Theology as Theology of Reconciliation, Theology
91, 1988, 375 quoted in Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics (London: HarperCollinsPublishers,
1992), 556, 562.

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car they may be at the most superficial level, but at a deeper level, merely
potential reincarnations of Adolf Eichmann in his prime.34 All gaslighters?35
Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of treachery,
therefore they have become great and rich, they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds and wickedness;
they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphans, to make
it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
(Jeremiah 5:27-28, trans. Walter Brueggemann)36

34Adolf Eichmann could be considered the ultimate loser in todays lexicon. Someone who has no moral compass,
but is willing to be a lackey for someone more powerful spouting truths that fit the prevailing dominant or current (of
the moment) ideology for personal gain. This is defended on the basis of atavistic, unreconstructed honor as a legit-
imate and recognizable rationale. Policies are chosen based on nothing stronger than ones desire, independent of
any rational analysis, because for our honor we need them to be so. This is a return to an honor-shame world of
black and white, right and wrong, where men are manly and regard for the Other is as extinct as the dinosaurs. Poli-
cy must embody a reconstructed world that defines manliness with the warrior, with destructive acts of violence,
and with oppression of the Other. For honor, one must do his/her duty to fight for what one believes is right, come
what may, no matter what results from it truth be damned. Arguing policy with non-consequential deontologists
when their honor is at stake is dicult, but constitutes todays decision landscape. This is duty-bound honor without
the caveats essentially the same argument as Krishnas high deontology in the Bhagavad-Gita portion of the Ma-
habharata epic: for honor, one must do his/her duty to fight for what one believes is the truth come what may, No
matter what results from it. Is this is the type of unreconstructed pagan honor that Trumpism is pedaling? Or are
comrades of Trumpism just polezniye duraki (useful fools) in the Russian game of information warfare?
35 Gaslighters or naive adherents to Putins Gerasimov Doctrine of non-linear war? The Gerasimov Doctrine stems
from an article by General Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of Sta of the Russian Federations military. The doctrine
posits that the rules of war have changed, that there is a blurring of the lines between war and peace, and nonmil-
itary means of achieving military and strategic goals has grown and, in many cases, exceeded the power of weapons
in their eectiveness. Gerasimov argues for asymmetrical actions that combine the use of special forces and infor-
mation warfare that create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state. Thus, non-
linear war conflict and competition not based on old alliances among nation states, but merging of interests be-
tween Russian elites, criminal organizations and multinational corporations where the objective is the use of Russian
organized crime and corporate interests as instruments of state policy. Ends that forgo considerations of the com-
mon good for Russias citizens or of Russias adversaries (especially the US). In these respects, the presumed autoc-
racy of Trumpism may be almost a perfect example of the results of Russias successful non-linear warfare against
US power and competitiveness in global markets.
36Too often, it is characteristically the powerful and the auentthat is, the autonomous[who fail to remember
that] God as agent is said both to set limits on practices that are prohibited and to summon to practices that are
commended (Walter Brueggemann, God Neighbor Empire: The Excess of Divine Fidelity and the Command of
Common Good [Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016], 29).

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