Confronted with the bloody behavior of autocrats, Trump, instead, blames the world; The Washington Post, November 22, 2018

Kristine Phillips, The Washington Post; Confronted with the bloody behavior of autocrats, Trump, instead, blames the world

[Kip Currier: We must call out and hold accountable those leaders who engage in blurring the boundaries of objective truth, as in the example excerpted below, in which Donald Trump asserts that:

"Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place."

Such a statement is the amoral apotheosis made manifest of a Gospel of the Inherent Unaccountability of Actors and States:

If everyone is culpable, then no one is culpable.

All are equal in blame.

No one is accountable to anyone else.

No system shall stand in judgment above any other.

Such a nakedly irreproachable manifesto flies in the face of bedrock principles undergirding the rule of law and the U.S. Constitutional system of checks and balances. It is a credo for unchecked anarchy, the very antithesis of originalism. It is the recurrent rhetoric and obfuscatory modus operandum of the oppressor, the despot, the tyrant. The aspiring authoritarian conman.

Its Orwellian aims--to cloud conceptions of "right and wrong", to gum up and break down the imperfect but fine-tuned cogs of systems and rules that hold people responsible for their action and inaction, to "gaslight", confuse, overwhelm with disinformation, demoralize, divide, and manipulate--must be named, called out, and rejected by those who see such self-serving machinations for what they are, and the threats to democracy, the rule of law, and free thinking peoples that they represent.

Inspired by and building upon the prescient words of George Orwell's 1984, to speak truth to power:

Mr. Trump--and those of your ilk, who weaponize facts and wield misinformation to attempt to delegitimize truth and reason--War is NOT peace. Freedom is NOT slavery. Ignorance is NOT strength.]

"In fielding questions from reporters about the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump avoided blaming Mohammed bin Salman, despite the CIA’s findings that the Saudi crown prince had ordered the assassination.

“Who should be held accountable?” a reporter asked Trump Thursday. Sitting inside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the president took a deep breath, seemingly mulling his response.

Then he said: “Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place.""

Trump is not a champion of human rights. He is a clueless clown.; The Washington Post, November 22, 2018

Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post; Trump is not a champion of human rights. He is a clueless clown.

"There is no mention in his statement of human rights, no mention of freedom of the press. There is no notion of the United States as an advocate for liberty or a foe of despotism. There is only the amoral pursuit of what Trump sees — not very clearly — as U.S. national interests."