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During his recent announcementaboutthe United Stateswithdrawalfromthe Paris climate agreement which makes our nation the third in the world to not be part of the accord, along with Syria and Nicaragua President Donald Trump repeatedly insistedthathis decision had to do with simple fairness. It was the same kind of sentiment that he frequently conveyed during his presidential campaign: The rest of the world has been disrespecting, mistreating and, worst of all, laughing atus for years.

At what point does America get demeaned? asked the president. At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? We want fair treatment for its citizens and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers. We dont want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they wont be.

Like candidate Trump, President Trump seems to hearsnickering voicesin his head (presumablyforeign, non-English voices) and believes they are laughing at him and his country. In Trumps paranoid mind, every nation on the planethastaken advantage of America in one way or another, and the Paris agreement is just the latest example of this abuse.Ironically, the insecure man who constantlydemands respect from the rest of the worldis actually in the process of driving his countrys reputation into the ground, and the Paris exit is simply the latestembarrassment.

It is often said it is easier to destroy than to create, and over the past months Donald Trump has proven this maxim correct when it comesto governing. Trumps presidency has been like a violent wreckingball demolishing everything in sight. And nothing has been more grievously damaged by Trump than the United States credibility in the world. Americas global image has collapsed in record time, and with the presidents decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, the most powerful country in the world is well on its way to becoming an international pariah. As the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson,declared,The U.S. reneging on its commitment to the Paris Agreement renders it a rogue state on the international stage.

As Americas standing in the world crumbles, many people will no doubt recall how Republican politicians regularly claimed during the previous administration that the country was no longer respected under the leadership of President Barack Obama. As with mostRepublican positions,this was flat-out delusional, and polling revealedthat the countrys global image steadily improved under Obama after having fallen to historic lows during George W. Bushs presidency.

One of the most vocal proponents of this fallacious line of attack was, of course, a conspiracy theorist named Donald Trump, who was convinced that everyone was laughing at his country because it had twice elected a Muslim foreigner as president. Today that unhinged man-child is making the world feel somewhat nostalgic for George W. Bushs America. According to Pew Research Center, countries around the world have almost no confidence in Trump(compared to theirhigh confidence in Obama), and the freshman presidenthas turnedthe U.S. intoalaughingstockthat can no longer be trusted by its allies, asGermanys Chancellor Angela Merkelindicatedlast week.

Of course, President Trump continues to maintain that he is restoring the countrys status in the world after the U.S. has been mistreated (and laughed at!) for so many years. For example, he claimed in his exit speech that the Paris agreement gives other countries an economic edge over the United States and handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our countrys expense. Not only that, continued Trump, but the nations that are asking America to stay in the agreement (that is, the rest of the world) are countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and in many cases lax contributions to our critical military alliance. Like most of his speeches, this one was full of falsehoodsand exaggerations, and the president cited industry-funded studies and misinterpreted other onesto make his harebrained case.

The great irony of Trumps begrudging speech (and his parochial worldview in general) is that America has long been the worlds leading imperialist force. If any country qualifies as a bully that has treated other nations unfairly over the past halfa century, it is the United States. This is evidencedby the many overseas coupsthat have been orchestrated by the U.S. government,often to serve the interests of American business,withthe classic case involvingthe United Fruit Company and Guatemala. The majority of Americans have not benefited personally from U.S. foreign policy; it has been themultinational corporations and the power elite, as C. Wright Millsonce called the countrys political and corporate establishments, that have benefited from such interventions.

Consider Americas economy, which Trump claims has been losing for decades because other countries have treated us horribly, stealing our jobs and thenlaughing at us to add insult to injury. This view is so facile and childishit seemsunworthy of comment. But, alas, it is espoused bya very powerful man. Itgoes without sayingthat American workers have suffered over the past 40 years due to numerous factors, including globalization andcorporatetrade deals; that doesnt mean the United Stateshas been losing to other countries. In fact, American businesses have done exceedingly well over the past three decades, as havethe top 1 percent of earners. Only working- and middle-class Americans have been losing in any real sense of the word and not because foreign governments are so cunning and inconsiderate but because of our capitalist economy.

In addition to arguing that the Paris agreement is designed to hurt Americaseconomy, Trump bitterly complained that it was unfair to the U.S. ascompared withthe fate of less-developed countries like China and India. China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years, said the president, claiming that the Chinese will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. The president then declared that the agreement doesnt eliminate coal jobs; it just transfers those jobs out of America . . .and ships them to foreign countries. This, in typical Trumpian fashion, is extremely misleading. China isactuallyin the process of canceling projects to build coal plants, and its coal consumption has declined since 2013, but such pesky facts are unwelcome in Trumps reactionary, zero-sum worldview.

Once again, the irony here is that America has contributed more than any other country in the worldto climate change and is responsible for nearly a third of the excess carbon that has built up in the atmosphere.In cumulative terms, we certainly own this problem more than anybody else does, saidclimate scholar David G. Victor to The New York Times. Furthermore, Americas per capita carbon emission is more than double that of China (and about eight times that of India).If one were truly interested in fairness, as Trump has claimedto be, thenthe U.S. would be doing much more than it agreed to in the Paris accords.

Withdrawing from the Paris agreement not only erodes Americas credibility and standing in the world, but is an importantstep toward dooming the planet or more accurately dooming the human species. It is somewhat fitting that the United States, under the leadership ofa vulgar and self-absorbedman who epitomizes the ugly American, may end up ensuring the collapse of human civilization. During the election campaign, many speculated that the narcissistic Trump was running for president because he had realized in old age that he would quickly be forgotten after he died. Whether that was true,Trumpwill doubtless be remembered now as the man who signaled the end of the American epoch and perhaps the human era as well.

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Donald Trump is destroying America's standing in the world and may end up destroying the world - Salon

Already in the basement, President Donald Trumps approval rating dug a little deeper into the cellar this week. But, in a small bit of good news,its still not as bad as the worst-ever rating for former President George W. Bush, the last Republican president.

Trumps approval rating among votersstood at just 34 percent, according to a new survey this week fromQuinnipiac University. That marked the lowest point yet for the president in the universitys survey.Fifty-seven percent disapproved of his job performance in the White House.

The poll was full of bad news for Trump. Forty percent of voters said they thought Trumps advisers did something illegal in their dealings with Russiawhich the intelligence community assessed had worked to get the GOP candidate elected through online hacks and a so-calledinfluence campaign. Sixty-eight percent of voters were either very concerned or somewhat concerned about Trumps relationship with Russia. Sixty-eight percent of voters said they thought Trump isnt levelheaded, including 32 percent of Republicans.

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There is zero good news for President Donald Trump in this survey, just a continual slide into a chasm of doubt about his policies and his very fitness to serve, said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a statement.If this were a prizefight, some in his corner might be thinking about throwing in the towel. This is counterpuncher Donald Trumps pivotal moment to get up off the mat.

Trumps 34 percent is far from stellar, but it could get worse, as its still a few percentage points betterthan Bushs lowest mark. In May 2008,Quinnipiac found Bush had an approval rating of just 28 percent, while 67 percent disapproved. Of course, that came toward the end of Bushs eight years in office, and amidtwo unpopular wars anda struggling economy. Former President Barack Obama, meanwhile, never dipped as low as Trump, the 44th president going only as low as 38 percent in 2013.

Its worth noting that early in their respective tenures, presidents typically experience a grace period of sorts when it comes to approval from the American people. At about this point in his first term, for instance, Bushs approval rating stood at 55 percent in the Gallup tracking poll.

Trumps approval this week did rise abovewhere former President Bill Clintons rating stood at the same point in his first term, but that seems like it could shift in the coming days. Clintons approval rating shot back up to the mid-40s by the end of June, but there have been no real signs of aturnaround for Trump.

The latestQuinnipiac survey interviewed 1,361 voters from May 31 through June 6. It had a margin of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

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Donald Trump's Approval Rating Is Better Than Bush's Worst (but They're Getting Closer) - Newsweek

What distinguishes All in the Family, which had 60 million viewers during the 1970s, from political satire today?

Donald Trump (AP Photo / Matt Rourke)

Norman Lear, who created All in the Family, reflects on why it succeeded in the Age of Nixonand on what is different about political satire in the Age of Trump.

Plus: The Nations Zo Carpenter reports on Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, who has taken the lead in fighting for an alternative to the GOPs repeal and replacement of Obamacare.

And: Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post discusses what happened when Paul Ryans hometown lost its GM plant. Her new book is Janesville.

Zo Carpenter: Jeff Merkley Is the Antithesis of Donald Trump

Amy Goldstein: What Happened When Paul Ryans Hometown Lost its GM Plant?

Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud for new episodes each Thursday. Start Making Sense is hosted by Jon Wiener and co-produced by the Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Norman Lear: Donald Trump Is the Middle Finger of the American Right Hand - The Nation.

On Wednesday Voxs Ezra Klein publisheda long pieceabout the current crisis in our government. He wrote that our president lacks legitimacy, our government is paralyzed, our problems are going unsolved. I would say that legitimacy, the first of those issues,is the source of all the others.

Donald Trumps legitimacy problem is not just a matter of losing the popular vote. Other presidents have assumed office after such an outcome. In 1824 John Quincy Adams became president after the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes became president after losing the popular vote to Samuel Tilden by more than 250,000 although corruption was so rife in that election its fair to say no one will ever know for sure who got the most votes. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison won 233 electoral votes to Grover Clevelands 168, but lost the national count by about 90,000 votes. It didnt happen again for 112 years when George W. Bush was installed by the Supreme Court after a virtual tie in Florida and a dubious vote count. And then just16 years later, it happened again.

Throughout that last 16 years questions have been raised about our democracy, including the workings of the anachronistic Electoral College, the fact that every locality and state seems to have a different system andthe way Republicans have systematically disenfranchised voters they believe would be likely to vote for their opponents. There has been underlying doubt about the integrity of Americas electoral system simmering for a long time. This year it has come to a boil.

For at least a year weve been aware of social-media propaganda and foreign actors hacking the systems of various arms of the Democratic Party in order to influence the presidential campaign. The experts tell us that the Russian government has directed a number of similar cyber operations around the worldand that this one was their most sophisticated. Evidently, the idea was to sow chaos and undermine Americans already sorely tested faith in our electoral system.

According toa highly detailed investigative reportby Massimo Calabresi of Time, the evidence suggests that Russias President Vladimir Putin had a particular ax to grind against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what he termed a signal she sent in 2011, which he claimed sparked protests against him. The extent to which Putin truly favored Donald Trump is still unknown, and the question of whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government is now the focus of various investigations of Congress and a Justice Department special counsel. The odd behavior of Trumps close associates as well as his obsession with shutting down the investigation certainly raise suspicions. But at this point it is pure speculation to think about what kind of deal might have been made.

This weeks story byThe Intercept,reporting on an National Security Agency document that showed evidence the Russian military had made serious attempts to infiltrate voter information rolls around the country, suggests, however, yet another way the goals of Donald Trump and the Russian government were the same. Former FBI counterterrorism officer and cybersecurity expert Clinton Watts (best known for his quip follow the bodies of dead Russians in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee) raised some additional questions ina piece for the Daily Beast this week.He believes that the main objective of this operation was not to alter the vote count but rather to instill more doubt about the process.

Wattswrote, I noticed a shift in Kremlin messaging last October, when its overt news outlets, conspiratorial partner websites, and covert social-media personas pushed theories of widespread voter fraud and hacking. He cited aReuters articleindicating that a Kremlin-backed think tank report drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. So it would bebetter for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral systems legitimacy and damage Clintons reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency.

Its interesting to note that at the same moment the operation shifted in that direction, Trump himself was relentlessly flogging exactly the same accusation, saying in every rally from October on that Clinton and her campaign had rigged the system in her favor. Over and over againhe would suggestthat the outcome was predetermined:

When the outcome is fixed, when the system is rigged, people lose hope they stop dreaming, they stop trying

He routinely told his followers stories likethis:

One of the reasons Ive been saying that the system is so corrupt and is so rigged, is not only what happens at the voters booth and you know things happen, folks.

He passed alongtweets like this:

Trumpeven made bizarre accusations that John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling and notoriouslyrefused to saywhetherhe would abide by the results if Clinton won. It was obvious that Donald Trump was planning to challenge her legitimacy.

In fact, Trump did more to create mistrust and doubt in the U.S. electoral system than the Russian governments highly developed hacking and misinformation campaign. Whether they were working together is still unknown but they were definitely rowing in the same direction. As much as the president likes to whine and complain about the Democrats being sore losers, the irony is that Trump himself played the greatest role in undermining the legitimacy of his win.

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Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton and the true cause of Donald Trump's legitimacy crisis his own actions - Salon

But the current era of political obscenity also must be put in historical context. Privately, presidentsranging from Abraham Lincoln to Richard Nixonwere prone to use off-color language. But in public, their political rhetoric was loftier, aiming to be more sacred than profane. When America was on the cusp of the Civil War, Lincoln in his inaugural address evoked the better angels of our nature and the mystic chords of memory. Behind closed doors, though, Lincoln could be as coarse as anyone,and had a predilection for potty humor.

The novelist Norman Mailer was a pioneer in breaking down the division between private language and political speech. In 1969, he ran for New York mayor under the slogan No More Bullshit. He lost, but his political career shouldnt be dismissed as a Quixotic gesture. As a writer, Mailer was attuned to the fact that culture was changing. In his first novel,The Naked and the Dead (1948), he had to replace fuck with the euphemism fug. (According to a famous butapocryphalstory, Dorothy Parker asked Mailer if he was the young man who couldnt spell fuck.) By the late 1960s, due to the weakening of censorship laws, Mailer was allowed to swear all he wanted in his novels. Mailer concluded, accurately although prematurely, that foul language would soon have a place in politics.

The release of the Watergate tapes in 1974 did much to discredit Nixon in the eyes of his conservative supporters,especially since the tapes were littered with four-letter words rendered by newspapers as expletive deleted.The Chicago Tribune, which had long championed Nixon and then called for his resignation, lamented, He is devious. He is vacillating. He is profane.Yet the tapes seem to have opened the doors for greater acceptance of swearing in politics. Once it became know the f-bomb was commonplace in the Oval Office, politicians were freed from unrealistic expectations of public decorousness.Jimmy Carter ran as asqueakyclean alternative to the sordid Nixonian, but in 1979 hesaidof his political rival Ted Kennedy, Ill whip his ass.

The increasing obscenity in politics has a political salience. The word vulgarity is rooted in the Latin term for the multitude; to use coarse language is to speak in the tongue of the common people, and to reject the code of civility prescribedif not always followedby the political ruling class. Trump swore on the campaign trail to establish his populist bona fides and connect with the working class, while at the same timedistinguishing himself from typical Republicans like Jeb Bush, thehigh-minded WASP,or Mitt Romney, theprim Mormon. Trumps foul language showed his followers that he was serious about breaking the rules to upend the establishment.

Democrats use of profanity projects a comparable message. Foul words often come from politicians who are already populists or hope to be seen as such (Gillibrand, Sanders, Perez). And swearing has intensified as Democrats have become more recalcitrant in their resistance to the president. Just as Trump cursed as a way of rejecting the Obama-era politics of 2016, Democrats are now cursing as a way of rejecting the Trumpian politics of 2017. To call bullshit is to renounce compromise or a search for comity. It means you are raring for a fight. To yell obscenities at the president is to say that his politics are themselves obscene.

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Democrats Should Swear More at Donald Trump - New Republic