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A White Nationalist Hail Mary

Too bad Covid-19 isn’t black or brown. Perhaps then, Trump would be enthusiastic about defeating it.

As the Presidential campaign moves into high gear, the White Nationalist buffoon in the Oval Office is trying out one racist “Hail Mary” after another. He’s claimed that if Biden is elected, “our suburbs” would be destroyed. And he wasn’t subtle about the nature of that destruction; he specifically called out a 2015 Obama-era fair-housing initiative that requires local governments to address historic patterns of racial desegregation.

NPR quoted Trump’s warning:

“Your home will go down in value, and crime rates will rapidly rise,” Trump said. “People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they’re going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I’m here.”

White housewives, apparently, will be sufficiently terrified by the prospect of darker-skinned neighbors to ignore Trumpian chaos and failures to even pretend to govern, and vote Republican in November.

Never particularly tethered to facts, Trump has also warned that Biden will abolish the police. Biden, of course, has said nothing of the kind, but hey–a “law and order” President has to remind voters of the dangers posed by “antifa” and the leftists, even if his own government’s data shows pretty convincingly that there is no actual “antifa” movement, and that the real threat to public safety comes from the right.

As the Guardian has recently reported, 

Donald Trump has made warnings about the threat of antifa and “far-left fascism” a central part of his re-election campaign. But in reality leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists, new research indicates, and antifa activists have not been linked to a single murder in decades.

A new database of nearly 900 politically motivated attacks and plots in the United States since 1994 includes just one attack staged by an anti-fascist that led to fatalities. In that case, the single person killed was the perpetrator. 

Over the same time period, American white supremacists and other rightwing extremists have carried out attacks that left at least 329 victims dead, according to the database.

There’s so much else: Trump’s defense of the Confederate flag, and promises to “protect our historic monuments,” his attack on African American NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, and his constant and misleading rants against peaceful protesters rallying to the cause of Black Lives Matter. (No, Mr. Pretend-President, the protests are not being mounted by Americans who are trying to destroy the country.)

As Jennifer Rubin noted in a Washington Post opinion column criticizing the New York Times for its understated description of Trump’s “racially charged” references,

Trump is not conducting a seminar on race and culture. He is not calling attention to violence against racial minorities. He is making racist statements and venerating racist symbols. Period.

Rubin also reminds readers that Trump’s explicit and nauseating racism has effectively been endorsed by his political party.

And when the media generously describe Republicans as “bothered” or “uneasy” about Trump’s blatant racism, they exaggerate Republicans’ reaction and distort reality. The overwhelming number of elected Republicans do not say and do not act as though they are bothered or uneasy. The few Republican voices (other than openly Never Trumpers) whom mainstream reporters dig up to say negative things about Trump are generally retired pols (e.g., former congressman Carlos Curbelo) and lesser-known strategists who do not really take Trump on as much as they disagree with his premises and assertions, as if racist words and accusations are floating free in the atmosphere, untethered to a particular person. Let’s be accurate: Whatever personal qualms they might have, virtually every elected Republican either ignores, rationalizes or minimizes Trump’s racist appeals.

In November, Americans won’t just elect people to critically important public offices. We will render a verdict on the country’s original sin. 

The GOP has chosen to make defense of racism its political strategy. The party needs to be so soundly defeated that even the very stupid partisans willing to place party above both morality and country recognize the folly of that approach. 

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Americans Can Hear Trump’s “Dog Whistles”

It occurs to me that calling the Trump campaign’s racist messaging “dog whistles” is increasingly inaccurate.

An actual dog whistle– a high-pitched whistle used to train dogs– typically has a sound inaudible to humans. Politically, the term has been used to describe messages aimed at particular constituencies that can hear them, but using language or imagery that the broader public will not “hear” or understand.

Trump’s messaging, on the other hand, has gotten less and less subtle. We’ve gone well beyond the “very fine people on both sides” response to the Neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville. These days, messages aimed at his most reliable supporters–racists–are heard and understood by growing numbers of the general, non-racist public.

Just this year, we’ve had several examples. There was the rally scheduled for Tulsa on June 19th. In 1921, Tulsa was the site of one of the most horrific racial pogroms in American history, and June 19 is Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the day slaves in Texas learned they were free. Until recently, most white Americans were unaware of both, but that has been changing as history texts have begun including the less savory parts of the country’s past. (Ironically, given the blowback to Trump’s announcement, many Americans who were unaware of that history now know about both.)

Then there was the announcement that Trump’s acceptance speech would take place in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27. Black people in Jacksonville know August 27th as “Ax Handle Saturday”–a day when  people participating in a 1960 NAACP demonstration were chased through downtown Jacksonville streets and beaten. Another “coincidence.”

More recently, Trump retweeted a supporter shouting “White Power.”

And of course, there was the truly horrifying campaign message conveyed along with Trump’s current fixation on the ANTIFA of his imagination. A campaign attack on ANTIFA was illustrated with the same upside-down red triangle the Nazis had used in concentration camps to designate political prisoners.

Fewer Americans are familiar with the history of the red triangle, so its use by the campaign probably fits the dictionary definition of a “dog whistle.” The symbol was used in Facebook ads and on the “Team Trump” page, alongside warnings of “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups” and requests that supporters sign a petition about ANTIFA.

And as if the triangle wasn’t explicit enough, the campaign placed exactly 88 ads using the symbol–88 is a white supremacist numerical code for “Heil Hitler.”

Nixon had his “Southern Strategy.” Reagan was regularly accused of dog whistles to bigots. The GOP has long been accused of covert messaging to America’s distressingly large number of voters who exhibit “racial grievance”–or are outright white supremacists. Even at the GOP’s worst, however, most campaigns have tried to have it both ways–appealing to the racists while not being blatant enough to alert the people in their own party who would be repelled by such messages.

Not Trump. For one thing, he can’t spell subtle. For another, his personal history suggests that he is entirely sympathetic to the “cause” of white supremacy. The evidence stretches from his early refusal to rent apartments to African-Americans, to his truly reprehensible vendetta against the young boys wrongly accused of a Central Park rape, to his ridiculous, disgusting “birther” campaign and his obvious, obsessive effort to destroy anything and everything done by Barack Obama.

Let’s not dignify the Trump campaign by suggesting that it uses “dog whistles.” Let’s call it what it is: a campaign by a white supremacist, for white supremacists.

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Why Judges Matter

Note: For those who follow this blog on Facebook, apologies; changes by FB resulted in automatic posting failing for the last ten days. I’ve manually posted the past three; for others, you will need to access the site.

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Here in Indiana, in recognition of the pandemic, the state’s Election Commission authorized mail-in voting without excuse for the recent primary election. Thus far, they are refusing to allow no-excuse voting by mail in November.

Hey, we’re a Red state, and–in defiance of available data that says neither party benefits from voting by mail–the GOP is convinced that making it easier to vote will help the Democrats. (Besides–as I pointed out recently–mail-in ballots make it impossible to play the minority-vote-suppressing games Republicans have long played in this state.)

Given this official intransigence, several individuals and Indiana Vote By Mail have filed suit in federal court, asserting that the denial violates the constitutional rights of voters, and asking that the judge order the Election Commission and Secretary of State to authorize no-excuse mail ballots.

The complaint notes that these officials “have failed to take necessary actions to protect Indiana voters” and that as a result, many voters will have to make a choice between their personal safety and health, and exercising their right to vote. They want the court to rule that they can cast an absentee ballot “in precisely the same manner in which these same election officials have allowed in the June 2 primary election.”

The pleading points out that a majority of Hoosiers are vulnerable to COVID-19, that the disease is potentially fatal, and that it is readily spread from person to person. They offer medical testimony to the effect that it is “highly likely” to be with us in November, and that  minimizing the risk requires people to “spend the shortest amount of time in the best ventilated, least contaminated environment, where the fewest number of people are generating the fewest virus particles.”

The pleadings identify a variety of ways in which the refusal to allow absentee voting under these circumstances violates the constitution–especially Equal Protection–and cite dozens of cases in support of that argument. (Interestingly, they also cite the 26th Amendment, which prohibits abridging the right to vote due to age. Data suggests that refusal to allow no-excuse absentee voting disproportionately harms the elderly.)

It’s been quite awhile since I was a practicing lawyer, but as I read the pleadings, the plaintiffs make a strong–even conclusive– case. And here’s the “teachable moment,” as we in academic life like to say:

  • The right to vote is one of the most important rights Americans (presumably) enjoy. Every other right ultimately depends upon the conduct of fair elections in which the voice of the people–all of the people–is reflected and honored.
  • When government officials representing the executive or legislative branches act in ways that threaten American liberties–not just our right to cast ballots, but the other rights guaranteed by the Constitution–the courts are our only redress  short of violence. If the judiciary is corrupted, we’re up that creek without a paddle.

For the past three and a half years, Mitch McConnell and the GOP have been intent on corrupting the federal judiciary, confirming ideologues and partisans to lifetime positions, despite the fact that many of them aren’t qualified to be on the bench and have demonstrated no commitment to the rule of law.

Politically, arguments about the importance of the judiciary have tended to be about reproductive rights, but overturning Roe v. Wade is just a minuscule part of the damage that can be done when the courts can’t be counted on to restrain nakedly partisan infringements of the Constitution.

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Mad As Hell And Unwilling To Take It Any More

There’s a famous scene from the movie Network in which–prompted by a furious anchorman–people lean out of their windows and scream “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Any honest American knows that racist, dehumanizing and frequently violent attacks on black people, most of whom are simply going about their business and trying to live their lives, have been a constant of American life. With the ubiquity of cellphone cameras, however, it has become much more difficult to rationalize these incidents away–to tell ourselves, well, it couldn’t have happened the way it’s being reported, there must have been more to the story, or to engage in other denial mechanisms allowing those of us privileged by our whiteness to avoid really knowing.

It’s so much easier not to know, because if we know, we will also know we should do something, even if we’re not sure what that something is.

Over the past several years, there has been a constant stream of videos documenting unjustified and frequently horrific treatment of African-Americans–too often by the police who are charged with protecting members of the public, too often in striking contrast to the way those same officers are shown treating white hoodlums, and too often encouraged by the White Nationalist currently defiling the Oval Office.

The protests underway around the country are a response to the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by a police officer; they’re the equivalent of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Those protests began as peaceful demonstrations, but a number have morphed into violence and looting.

Violence and property destruction, of course, give the Trumpers an excuse to double-down on the racism and ignore the appalling behavior that triggered civil unrest in the first place. It plays into their hands. And it is beginning to look as if some of them weren’t going to wait for black rage to ignite those fires and break those windows.

Minneapolis officials have charged that “outside forces” (mainly White Nationalists, some of whom are eager for civil war) are infiltrating peaceful protests and kicking off the violence and mayhem.

At a press conference, Gov. Tim Walls, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison alleged that outside forces infiltrated the state, and began setting fire to historic businesses in communities of color. Ellison cited a widely circulating video (cameras, again!) of a white man in a gas mask holding an umbrella who was caught by protestors on video methodically breaking windows.

The Mayor reported that every person arrested during the protests was from out of state.

Authorities will begin releasing the names of those arrested, and those individuals will be “contact-traced” to determine whether they are known members or sympathizers of the white nationalist groups that have been encouraging members to wreak havoc in Minneapolis and other cities where protests are occurring.

So here we are.

After three-and-half years in which Trump has engaged in racist rhetoric, modeled bullying behavior, and displayed contempt for the rule of law, the Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists are understandably emboldened.

The people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 weren’t all racists–although a substantial proportion of them demonstrably were. In 2020, a vote for Trump or for any of the Republicans who continue to enable him will unequivocally be a vote for racism– and for the complete abandonment of what I have called “the American Idea.

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Yes, Donald, It Is Your Fault

I still remember being furious with my middle son over something (a high school test he’d blown off, as I recall); I was beginning a long “motherly” diatribe when he absolutely shut me down by saying “yes, it was my fault.”

Admitting when one is wrong isn’t just a sign of maturity–although it is certainly that. As my son had figured out, it’s also an effective counter to other people’s anger. That’s one of the many, many things our profoundly immature President doesn’t get.

In the Washington Post, Paul Waldman recently noted an exchange between a (simpering) Maria Bartiromo and Trump, in which Trump insisted that “no one” blames him for the economic havoc wreaked by the pandemic.  And of course, he has also disclaimed any and all responsibility for the spread of the virus–it was The W.H.O. or the CDC or China, or his favorite target, Obama.

Medical professionals beg to differ.

My cousin, a cardiologist, recently blogged about a recent editorial in the Lancet, a well-regarded medical journal.  The editorial pinned responsibility squarely on the Trump administration for its  marginalization of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It called the extent of that marginalization dangerous for both the U.S. and the world. In the editorial, the journal pled with Americans to put a president in the White House who will understand that “public health should not be guided by partisan politics,” and enumerated the ways in which the Trump administration had weakened the agency.

As Waldman pointed out, absolving Trump of responsibility for our economic disaster requires accepting the “misleading formulation” that we must choose between saving lives or reopening the economy. In his opinion,

this depression is absolutely Trump’s fault. He made a series of disastrous decisions that led us to this point, and other countries that have had far different experiences illustrate what might have happened if we had a president who wasn’t so utterly incompetent…we lost two months when we could have been preparing for the pandemic that would inevitably arrive in the United States. Though Trump was repeatedly warned by people inside and outside his administration beginning in early January that a pandemic was on its way, he continued to dismiss the threat, praise the Chinese government for its response and insist that there was nothing to worry about.

It is now late May, and the U.S. still doesn’t have a national testing and tracing strategy to contain the pandemic. Meanwhile, Waldman points to the experience of countries fortunate enough to have competent leadership.

South Korea saw its first case of covid-19 on the same day we did, Jan. 20. But its government acted quickly with an aggressive program of testing and tracing to contain the spread. The result is that, as of this writing, we have nearly 85,000 deaths, while South Korea has just 260.

Like us, South Korea is facing economic challenges stemming from the pandemic. But its unemployment rate in April was 3.8 percent.

To take another example, Germany has been hit harder than many places by the virus. The Germans have recorded a few less than 8,000 deaths — a lot, but still only about a third as many as the United States on a per capita basis. But because Germany had a system in place in which the government covers payrolls in an emergency, its unemployment rate is only 5.8 percent, while ours heads past 20 percent.

I have a son who lives in Amsterdam. The Netherlands, like Germany, has covered payrolls, and is projecting an eventual “cataclysmic” unemployment rate of something under 9%. (The Netherlands also keeps its infrastructure in tip-top shape, but that’s a matter for a different rant.)

Waldman says our disastrous situation could have been avoided “if Trump wasn’t so shortsighted, so ignorant, so inept and so unwilling to believe what experts were telling him.”

True. And if he wasn’t a walking, incessantly-talking illustration of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, or even if he was enough of an adult to acknowledge when he was wrong. But then, he’d be a different person.

A functioning adult.

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