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This Is Scary

Speaking of collusion…

CommonDreams recently reported on evidence of “explosive” and “extraordinary” coordination between a controversial Madrid campaign group and far-right parties across Europe.

A controversial Madrid-based campaign group, supported by American and Russian ultra-conservatives, is working across Europe to drive voters towards far-right parties in next month’s European Parliament elections and in Spain’s national elections this Sunday, openDemocracy can reveal today.

Our findings have caused alarm among lawmakers who fear that Trump-linked conservatives are working with European allies to import a controversial US-style ‘Super PAC’ model of political campaigning to Europe – opening the door to large amounts of ‘dark money’ flowing unchecked into elections and referenda.

The Madrid-based campaign group CitizenGo is best known for its online petitions against same-sex marriage, sex educationand abortion– and for driving buses across cities with slogans against LGBT rights and “feminazis”.

But now openDemocracy can reveal new evidence of “extraordinary coordination” between this group and far-right parties across Europe – from Spain to Italy, Germany and Hungary.

Former United States Senator Russ Feingold, who worked with John McCain to reform political finance in the U.S., described the report’s findings as “frightening” and called on European leaders to protect the democratic process.

“Europe has an opportunity to get ahead of this and not make the same mistakes that were made here in the United States.”

During the past few years, there has been explosive growth of far-right–essentially fascist–parties here in the U.S. and in Europe.  Spain is just one example:

The Spanish far-right party Vox has pledged to build walls around Spanish enclaves in North Africa, jail Catalan independence leaders, loosen gun control laws and “make Spain great again”. The party also opposes “political correctness”, marriage equality for gay people and laws against gender-based violence.

Sound familiar?

The cited article goes into considerable detail about the global links among far right groups and the sources of their financing, but what is truly chilling is the extent of this movement and the fears that motivate its supporters.

We’ve been here before. Change can be terrifying to those who believe that their positions are being threatened. And societies today–especially western, democratic societies–are facing enormous changes.

Technology is rapidly transforming economies, and automation is threatening millions of jobs. Previously marginalized populations–women, LGBTQ citizens, African-Americans, immigrants–are demanding an equal place at the civic table. Longstanding traditions are under assault from a variety of directions–from the arts, from globalization, from liberal religions, and from growing secularization.

People–okay, mostly straight white Christian males– fear the loss of their traditional dominance ; they experience these changes as existentially threatening. That isn’t new. What is new is the ability–courtesy of the Internet– to connect with others around the world who share their fears.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric coming from Trump and his white nationalist ilk gives them permission to be far more candid about their bigotries. (You might even say that the bigots are leaving their closets and “coming out.”)

White nationalism appeals to people who are fundamentally insecure–who believe, deep down, that they can’t compete in the world that is dawning, that shorn of their traditional privilege they will be insignificant.

The problem is, that fear is powerfully motivating.

People of good will who are willing–even eager– to live in our evolving world cannot afford complacency. There’s a quote by someone whose name I’ve long forgotten, to the effect that a rattlesnake, if cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That, of course, is exactly what happens to these people who are consumed with hate and resentment against the Other — they are biting themselves.

But the rest of us are collateral damage.

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Who’s Really Playing The Race Card?

Whenever a member of the African-American community objects to an injustice, or points out that a public figure has made a racially-insensitive (or worse) remark, Right-wingers immediately respond by accusing the person voicing the protest of “playing the race card.”

Evidently, it’s just not polite to call out racism.

Similarly, those of us who have called attention to the numerous studies concluding that “racial resentment” was the characteristic most predictive of a 2016 vote for Donald Trump have been dismissed as “partisan” and worse.

Well, they need to polish their invective once more, because there’s additional research confirming the proposition.

Following the attacks on New Zealand mosques, the Washington Post reported on the effects of Trump’s rallies–and those effects are neither ambiguous nor pretty. Counties that hosted such rallies in 2016 saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes.

During an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” this past Sunday, Sen. Tim Kaine(D-Va.) lambasted President Trump for emboldening white nationalism after a young man killed at least 50 people at two New Zealand mosques. Kaine was referring to Trump’s answer after a reporter asked whether he sees “today that white nationalism is a rising threat around the world?” Trump responded, “I don’t really.”

This is not the first time Trump has been accused of catering to white nationalists after a terrorist attack. At an August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, a young white man rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer. Afterward, Trump insisted that “there’s blame on both sides” for the violence.

Then in October 2018, a gunman killed 11 congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. When Trump announced plans to visit the synagogue, many people in Squirrel Hill, the city’s predominantly Jewish neighborhood, took to the streets demanding first that Trump renounce white nationalism before paying his respects to the victims.

Trump, of course, has pooh-poohed any suggestion that his rhetoric might be encouraging these horrific events. Those denials prompted a study to determine whether Trump’s behavior and language has emboldened white nationalists. (It is worth noting that white nationalist leaders– including Richard Spencer and David Duke– have publicly supported Trump’s candidacy and presidency, and the New Zealand shooter even referred to Trump as a “renewed symbol of white identity.”)

To test the effect of Trump’s rallies, the study aggregated hate-crime incident data and Trump rally data to the county level and then used statistical tools to estimate a rally’s impact, including controls for factors such as the county’s crime rates, its number of active hate groups, its minority populations, its percentage with college educations, its location in the country and the month when the rallies occurred.

The result?

We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally…

Additionally, it is hard to discount a “Trump effect” when a considerable number of these reported hate crimes reference Trump. According to the ADL’s 2016 data, these incidents included vandalism, intimidation and assault.

What’s more, according to the FBI’s Universal Crime report in 2017, reported hate crimes increased 17 percent over 2016. Recent research also shows that reading or hearing Trump’s statements of bias against particular groups makes people more likely to write offensive things about the groups he targets.

It’s pretty obvious–and obviously dangerous–that Trump and his base are actually the ones playing the race card.

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Twisted And Hateful

I often quote Ed Brayton, who follows crackpots and lunatics on the far fringes of the Religious Right and reports on their activities in his blog, Dispatches from the Culture Wars.  (I honestly don’t know how he manages to keep both his sanity and his sense of humor after daily encounters with these deeply disturbed individuals, but  he has–I’ve met him and he’s very smart, very astute–and very funny.)

Just a few days ago, Ed revisited Randall Terry.

Anyone familiar with the effort to deny women our reproductive rights has encountered news of Terry at some point. He founded Operation Rescue, the group that blocked clinic entrances around the country and engaged in other semi-terrorist “pro life” activities. (Give him props for honesty, though–he admits what so many of his fellow “pro life” warriors pretend is untrue– he’s as opposed to birth control as he is to abortion. Keep those women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen like God intended!)

Not surprisingly, he’s also homophobic, and he’s recently fixated on Mayor Pete. As Ed writes,

Mayor Pete Buttigieg is polling well in Iowa and raising lots of money in the Democratic primary for president and now he’s going to be hounded by anti-choice crackpot Randall Terry. He’s headed to Iowa to confront Butegieg for being a babykiller who is locked in the sexual bondage of homosexuality. Or something.

Ed shared Randall Terry’s press release:

We are going to Iowa to confront the “new political sensation;” Pete Buttigieg.

We’ve sent a press release to every daily newspaper in the state of Iowa…telling them we are coming to welcome “Mayor Pete” AT ALL FIVE of his campaign stops next week!

As I read and read about this 37 year old, poor lost soul, I am filled with grief and rage.

I grieve for Pete Buttigieg – for his endangered soul, his sexual bondage – and I am enraged by what he is really doing.

He is a baby-killing politician, who is recruiting young people into homosexual bondage by his example, and trying to normalize what is an intrinsically evil behavior.

This rant reminds me of the greeting cards I got one Easter when I was Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU; there were a couple dozen of them, all with a praying Virgin Mary on the front. The inside of the cards was blank, and on each one, someone had written  “We are praying for your sinful soul.”

Unfortunately, I still have my old, sinful soul. And from all accounts, Mayor Pete is still gay and still running for President.

People like Terry would be funny if they weren’t dangerous. Most simply pose a threat to religious liberty and the Constitution, which is troubling enough, but others are violent. All of them are locked in to an alternate reality.

And speaking of alternate realities, Ed also had a post about crazy lady Michelle Bachmann.

Michele Bachmann, the “pastor to the United Nations,” told crackpot Jan Markell that she had never seen a more Biblical president than Donald Trump and that she prays that God will help destroy the “deep state” so that Trump can “expose the hidden deeds of darkness” done by that amorphous, universal bunch of baddies.

If only the “deep state” of rightwing fever dreams really did exist and could do something about Trump…

How detached from reality do you have to be to consider Donald Trump “Biblical”?

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Mayor Pete And The Long Shot

My husband keeps telling me he’s not falling in love with any of the Democratic candidates for President until the field is narrowed. I know he’s right–and I also know that no matter who emerges at the top of the Democratic ticket, I’m going to work my you-know-what off to get that candidate elected.

I’d vote for my cat if it was running against Donald Trump–and I don’t have a cat.

That said, I’ve been blown away by Indiana’s own Mayor Pete Buttigieg. I was first impressed by him several years ago, when I attended a South Bend hearing on the addition of sexual orientation to the city’s human rights ordinance, and heard his eloquent, off-the-cuff testimony. I’ve been even more impressed by his recent performances on CNN and in various interviews.

And I just finished his book: Shortest Way Home. 

Most books by politically ambitious politicians are predictable “PR” efforts. Here’s why you should vote for me; here’s why I’m a good guy/gal. Here are my somewhat-fudged-in-order-not-to-piss-people-off policy positions. See my somewhat forced smile on the book’s cover?

Mayor Pete’s book isn’t like that. (For one thing, it’s readable and enjoyable–I finished it in less than two days.)

Not only is the book extremely well-written (wouldn’t it be nice to have a President who actually is familiar with the English language? the other seven languages Mayor Pete speaks are just icing on that cake), but it avoids both the typical “look at me” approach of such books, as well as the equally common phony modesty. It is basically the story of a learning curve, as he recounts lessons learned through his academic life, business and military experience, and personal tests.

Because I once was part of a city administration, I particularly liked the discussions of the challenges and rewards of his years as South Bend’s mayor, and the growth in his understanding of both the technical, data-driven aspects of the job and the  symbolic value of appearances that he had initially viewed as time-wasters. In large part, the book is the story of his success revitalizing a city that had been left behind by previous economic trends, with plenty of examples that other struggling urban areas might adopt. (Smart sewers, anyone?)

In fact, the book is a chronological story through which Mayor Pete shares life lessons–including forthright acknowledgments of what he learned from mistakes made and losses experienced.

If the book was written with his current Presidential campaign in mind, it doesn’t show.

I know that Mayor Pete is the longest of long shots for the nomination. But I’m so hungry for authenticity, for intellect, for someone who is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know, and human enough to demonstrate compassion and self-awareness. It helps that I agree with every forthright (non-fudged) policy position I’ve heard him take. It helps that he understands the issues of urban governance and the conservative Midwest. It helps that he so clearly understands the complexities of policy. It helps that his book reflects a thoughtfulness, emotional maturity and value structure that is so obviously missing, not just from Trump, but from most members of the current political class.

I know my husband is right–that it is too early to fall in love with a candidate. But I’ve certainly fallen in passionate like with this one….

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This Isn’t Democracy…

Tim Wu recently had an interesting–albeit depressing–op ed in the New York Times.

Wu disagreed with the constant emphasis on American polarization and division, pointing out that there is really remarkable consensus among voters on a number of policy issues.

About 75 percent of Americans favor higher taxesfor the ultrawealthy. The idea of a federal law that would guarantee paid maternity leave attracts 67 percent support. Eighty-three percent favor strong net neutrality rulesfor broadband, and more than 60 percent want stronger privacy laws. Seventy-one percent think we should be able to buy drugs imported from Canada, and 92 percent want Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. The list goes on.

The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the inability of even large bipartisan majorities to get what they want on issues like these. Call it the oppression of the supermajority. Ignoring what most of the country wants — as much as demagogy and political divisiveness — is what is making the public so angry.

There is considerable research confirming this point. The opinions and desires of even large majorities of ordinary American citizens are far less likely to be the basis of policy than the desires and opinions of the wealthy and well-connected.

As Wu notes, this state of affairs is generally defended by arguing that “rank and file” of Americans aren’t experts on economic issues, and that economic policies should be developed by those who are.

It is true that policymaking requires expertise. But I don’t think members of the public are demonstrating ignorance when they claim that drug prices are too high, taxes could be fairer, privacy laws are too weak and monopolies are too coddled.

It is also true that majorities sometimes want things — “like bans on books, or crackdowns on minorities — that they should not be given.” But the issues under discussion do not implicate the restrictions imposed by the Bill of Rights. And many of these same policy preferences were legislated during the Progressive period.

In our era, it is primarily Congress that prevents popular laws from being passed or getting serious consideration. (Holding an occasional hearing does not count as “doing something.”) Entire categories of public policy options are effectively off-limits because of the combined influence of industry groups and donor interests. There is no principled defense of this state of affairs — and indeed, no one attempts to offer such a justification.

It is “the combined influence of industry groups and donors” that is the problem; those interests wield far more clout with lawmakers than We the People. They have effectively bought the federal government ‘s lawmaking apparatus–and the governments of the states have not been exempt.  (Thanks to gerrymandering and vote suppression, they have largely been able to ensure the electoral success of the candidates they’ve purchased.)

There is some hope that candidates who raise most of their funds from small-dollar donors will eventually “crowd out” the big-money interests, but it is unlikely that things will change much unless and until the Supreme Court overturns its previous decisions equating money with speech–or in the alternative, there is a constitutional amendment to that effect.

Meanwhile, we can argue about the proper terminology to apply to our governing system–plutocracy, oligarchy, kakistocracy–but we need to recognize that it is neither a republic or a democracy.

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