Via UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office photostream https://www.flickr.com/photos/foreignoffice/

Madeleine Albright, the architect of the dog’s breakfast we created in the Balkans and a key figure in preventing the UN from responding to the Rwanda genocide, has a new book out called Fascism: A Warning. about what a Hillary Clinton administration would have looked like.

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Just joking. It’s a book that ostensibly warns about creeping totalitarianism in places like North Korea (I swear to heaven I am not making that up) but, in reality, seems like a low-brow effort to draw a line from Europe in the 1930s to America under Trump.

She was on NPR, naturally, to flog the book and flog the Trump administration.

She takes some juvenile shots:

On President Trump’s “America First” ideology and criticism of NATO

I see it as the most unbelievable step backwards, because I do believe that the United States is stronger when we have friends and allies to deal with the various issues. … As a European who has spent her life in the United States, I see the Euro-Atlantic alliance as one of the most important bulwarks of our society, so seeing this go on, I find appalling. And what is the issue — again, it’s this lack of understanding of what this alliance is about. …

What Trump is doing is making America seem like a victim. Everything is somebody else’s fault: Countries are taking advantage of us. The Mexicans are sending drug dealers. Countries are not paying their dues. The trading system is unfair. And by making Americans seem like victims all the time, it then is able to, again, make the divisions stronger in terms of who is with us, who is not with us, and it’s totally anti-American foreign policy. And so I think it’s very, very worrisome in terms of this victimhood.

I don’t see America as a victim. I see America as the most powerful country in the world that has a role to play, standing up for democratic ideals and human rights across the board.

This is mostly crap. As Lord Palmerston said, “nations don’t have friends, they have interests.” Thinking of nations as friends is one of the main warnings George Washington issued in his Farewell Address. Of course you are stronger with allies, but only if those allies actually help you out.

But let’s be clear, when President Trump criticized NATO only three member nations were meeting the goal of spending 2% of GDP on defense. Today 15 of 29 have met the goal and all of the remainder have increased military outlays.

Pointing out when people are crapping on you doesn’t make you a victim (or so the #MeToo people have been claiming). Pointing out unacceptable behavior and demanding that it stop is actually the way adults are supposed to treat one another.

Then we get this:

While Albright does not call Trump a fascist [that’s mighty charitable of her], she says that he is “the most anti-democratic leader that I have studied in American history.”
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What he’s trying to do is undermine the press and [he] has disdain for the judiciary, and the electoral process and minorities, and I think that his instincts are not ones that are democratic. He is interested, basically, I think, in exacerbating those divisions that I talked about. … I’ve picked up that phrase “see something, say something,” and I am seeing some things that are the kinds of things that we have seen in other countries, and so I am saying not only should we say something, but we have to do something about it. …

I think people may disagree with the president of the opposing party … but we normally have believed that the president tells the truth. And I know I’m very worried about the fact that there are deliberate ways of misstating the issue, and then the people think, “If the president said it, it must be right,” when it’s just a deliberate untruth.

This might sound attractive if you are completely ignorant of American history. To date, Trump hasn’t passed a law criminalizing the ability of the press to criticize him (John Adams and the Sedition Act). He hasn’t frog-marched aliens out of the Eastern half of the United States (Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act), he hasn’t segregated the US government or had the Department of Justice raid meetings of the #Resistance (Woodrow Wilson), he hasn’t rounded up naturalized US citizens and resident aliens and had them interned in prison camps (FDR).

When any of these happen then start talking about the “most anti-democratic leader” ever, until then, you beclown yourself.

The press is just a business like any other. Trump challenging them is something that GOP presidents should have done in the past. I haven’t seen any less disdain for the judiciary or the electoral process than the typical press release coming from the Democrat party. I feel the same about minorities but I realize that it is now a #Resistance article of faith that Trump and his administration are all racists. So I’ll give her that one.

As to presidents and the truth I only have two things to add: “I did not have sex with that woman,” and “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

Madeleine Albright was a failure of monumental proportions. Her tenure as UN Ambassador and Secretary of State marked a grotesque waste of American power accumulated over half a century. She has nothing to offer the country in the way of advice. And this book proves it.