As of this moment, we have no Attorney General, no White House Chief of Staff, no Interior Secretary, no Director of the EPA, the Secretary of Education is a religious nut trying to destroy education, the VP is a religious nut who believes women should be subjugated, the Secretary of State is a political hack helping cover up the murder of a Saudi journalist, the Director of National Security wants to bomb Iran, 18 countries have no US ambassador (including Australia), half of the positions in the State Department remain unfilled, the stock market is down almost 3,000 points, China now owns Pacific rim trade, the US is the only major power to NOT be in the Paris accords, the entire world is either terrified or laughing at us, and the president has shut down the government for the last 10 days over his 5th century solution to a 21st century problem. Notice I didn’t mention anything about everyone convicted, in jail, or on the way to jail, or Trump’s current average of telling over 500 lies per month.
This is great? Are we tired of winning yet?
The answer to her (entirely rhetorical) question is: yes, some 60% of us are very tired of Trump and his version of “winning.
The question that is harder to answer is, what the f**k is wrong with that other 40%?”
After noting the current roster of bullies in power in various countries–he calls them ‘Trumpists’– and noting the very different political and economic environments of those countries, he points to the one threat they all share: women.
But the more you examine global Trumpism, the more it challenges the story lines that dominate conversation in the United States. Ask commentators to explain the earthquake that has hit American politics since 2016, and they’ll likely say one of two things. First, that it’s a scream of rage from a working class made downwardly mobile by globalization. Second, that it’s a backlash by white Christians who fear losing power to immigrants and racial and religious minorities.
Yet these theories don’t travel well. Downward mobility? As Anne Applebaum pointed out in this magazinejust a few months ago, “Poland’s economy has been the most consistently successful in Europe over the past quarter century. Even after the global financial collapse in 2008, the country saw no recession.” In the years leading up to Duterte’s surprise 2016 victory, the Philippines experienced what the scholar Nicole Curato has called “phenomenal economic growth.” The racial-and-religious-backlash theory leaves a lot unexplained, too. Immigration played little role in Duterte’s ascent, or in Bolsonaro’s. Despite his history of anti-black comments, preelection polls showed Bolsonaro winning among black and mixed-race Brazilians. Racism has been even less central to Duterte’s appeal.
The problem with both American-born story lines is that authoritarian nationalism is rising in a diverse set of countries. Some are mired in recession; others are booming. Some are consumed by fears of immigration; others are not. But besides their hostility to liberal democracy, the right-wing autocrats taking power across the world share one big thing, which often goes unrecognized in the U.S.: They all want to subordinate women.
Beinart quotes Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist at Texas A&M, who reminds us that for most of human history, leaders and their male subjects agreed that men would be ruled by other men in return for all men ruling over women. Since this hierarchy mirrored that of the home, it seemed natural. As a result, Hudson says, men, and many women, have associated male dominance with political legitimacy. Women’s empowerment disrupts this order.
The article mines history to illustrate the ways revolutionaries have used “the specter of women’s power” to discredit the regime they sought to overthrow.
French revolutionaries made Marie Antoinette a symbol of the immorality of the ancien régime and that Iranian revolutionaries did the same to Princess Ashraf, the “unveiled and powerful” sister of the shah. After toppling the monarchy, the French revolutionaries banned women from holding senior teaching positions and inheriting property. Ayatollah Khamenei made it a crime for women to speak on the radio or appear unveiled in public….
When the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi replaced the longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Morsi quickly announced that he would abolish the quota guaranteeing women’s seats in parliament, overturn a ban on female circumcision, and make it harder for women to divorce an abusive husband. After Muammar Qaddafi’s ouster, the first law that Libya’s new government repealed was the one banning polygamy.
Beinart draws a comparison to Trump, whose attitudes toward women were shared by supporters whose hatred of Hillary was blatantly–even exuberantly– sexist. The misogyny theory even explains Trump’s improbable support among Evangelicals.
Commentators sometimes describe Trump’s alliance with the Christian rightas incongruous given his libertine history. But whatever their differences when it comes to the proper behavior of men, Trump and his evangelical backers are united by a common desire to constrain the behavior of women.
The article is lengthy, and filled with concrete examples. It’s persuasive, and well worth reading in its entirety. Assuming the accuracy of the analysis, it’s hard to disagree with this observation near the end of the essay:
Over the long term, defeating the new authoritarians requires more than empowering women politically. It requires normalizing their empowerment so autocrats can’t turn women leaders and protesters into symbols of political perversity. And that requires confronting the underlying reason many men—and some women—view women’s political power as unnatural: because it subverts the hierarchy they see in the home.
It would seem that the personal really is the political; misogyny evidently begins at home.
I recently read an article that identified pluralism as the great challenge of our time.
Most Americans no longer live among people who look, pray and think as they do; we are no longer surrounded by people whose minor differences offer no challenge to the assumptions that ground our worldviews.
Will our tribal differences allow us to create genuine, supportive communities?
Psychiatrists can probably explain why some people are comfortable in a diverse environment and others are threatened, but that diversity is an inescapable aspect of modern life. The challenge facing lawmakers is how to craft rules that respect the right of threatened folks to hold their beliefs while protecting the targets of their disapproval or hatred from harm.
A very different perspective was offered by Michael Huber, who heads the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, and Ann Murlow, CEO of United Way of Central Indiana. In a column written for the Indiana Business Journal, they reminded readers that Indiana is one of only five states without a hate crimes law.
It’s a blind spot in our justice system and a flaw in our business climate that becomes more conspicuous with each passing year.
Nationally, reports of crimes motivated by a victim’s unchangeable characteristics—such as race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity—increased 17 percent from 2016 to 2017. Stories of violence and vandalism from across the state show that Hoosiers aren’t immune to this trend.
The column reported on the establishment of a coalition called Forward Indiana by members of the business, nonprofit, education, faith, government and philanthropy communities.
That coalition understands that an inclusive bias-crimes law is good for people, employers and our state. The Indy Chamber has also reactivated the statewide Indiana Competes coalition, extending its anti-discrimination mission to make the business case for action against bias crimes.
Together, we represent thousands of companies, civic organizations, religious and social service groups, and individuals from all walks of life in support of a strong law with a clear list of personal characteristics that reflects the diversity of modern-day Hoosiers.
Simply put, we want Indiana to reject hate without loopholes or ambiguity.
Indiana Forward recognizes that failure to declare, in no uncertain terms, that government will forcefully protect its citizens from crimes motivated by the bigotries of other citizens would send a positive signal to self-righteous haters.
Huber and Murtlow are also absolutely right when they point out that passage of a hate crimes bill that is not inclusive, a bill that surrenders to theocratic demands to exclude certain citizens from its protection, would be an endorsement of the position that it is acceptable to hate members of that group.
If we go to the Statehouse ready to exclude some of our fellow citizens— trading equality for expediency—any victory would be a hollow one that surrenders any claim to real leadership….
If Indiana passes a bias-crimes bill in 2019 that pointedly excludes gender identity, it would only amplify the negative perceptions that hinder our economic development efforts.
No one wants another Religious Freedom Restoration Act; our partners still struggle with the fallout as they try to appeal to skilled workers, attract conventions and convince employers that Indiana is an inclusive and inviting state.
But the lesson of RFRA isn’t to avoid controversy, it’s that discrimination is bad for business and wrong for Indiana. Leaving gender identity out of bias-crimes legislation would leave us on the defensive, limiting our ability to welcome a diverse workforce and the business opportunities that follow.
It’s not enough to lead with an affordable business climate when human capital is also a top priority. Passing a watered-down bias-crimes law would force CEOs to rethink Indiana as a competitive place to recruit and retain talent.
We shouldn’t squander this opportunity to lead with hesitation or half-measures; the General Assembly should pass a strong bias-crimes law that doesn’t leave any Hoosiers behind.•
In other words, let’s bring Indiana into the 21st Century.
What American politicians call privatization has been a focus of much my academic work.(If you go to the “Academic papers” section of this blog and search for privatization, you’ll find a lot of entries.)
I phrase it as “what American politicians call privatization” because–as Morton Marcus pointed out to me years ago– genuine privatization is what Margaret Thatcher did in England. She sold off government-owned assets like railroads and steel mills to the private sector, after which they were private. They paid taxes, and either prospered or failed, but government no longer had much to do with them.
What Americans call “privatization” is very different. The accurate term is “contracting out” –and it refers to the decision by government agencies to provide government services through for-profit or non-profit surrogates. That process should not be confused with procurement–no one expects city hall to manufacture its own computers or the myriad other items it requires in order to function. (Admittedly, the line can get blurry: contracting with a private paving company to fill potholes, for example. But few privatization critics are troubled by those long-standing practices.)
It is important to recognize that when a government agency contracts with a surrogate to provide services that the agency is legally required to provide, government remains legally responsible for the proper delivery of those services.
Robert Reich recently enumerated five rules that should govern these decisions. His rules are very similar to those on my class lecture on the subject. It should be obvious, for example, that government shouldn’t contract out when keeping a service in-house will be more efficient and cost-effective.
Other rules are less obvious, but no less important.
Don’t privatize when the purpose of the service is to bring us together – reinforcing our communities, helping us connect with one another across class and race, linking up Americans who’d otherwise be isolated or marginalized.
This is why we have a public postal service that serves everyone, even small rural communities where for-profit private carriers often won’t go. This is why we value public education and need to be very careful that charter schools and other forms of so-called school choice don’t end up dividing our children and our communities rather than pulling them together.
Don’t privatize when the people who are supposed to get the service have no power to complain when services are poor.
This is why for-profit prison corporations have proven again and again to violate the constitutional rights of prisoners, and why for-profit detention centers for refugee children at the border pose such grave risks.
Don’t privatize when those who are getting the service have no way to know they’re receiving poor quality.
The marketers of for-profit colleges, for example, have every incentive to exploit young people and their parents because the value of the degrees they’re offering can’t easily be known. Which is why non-profit colleges and universities have proven far more trustworthy.
Don’t privatize where for-profit corporations face insufficient competition to keep prices under control.
Giant for-profit defense contractors with power over how contracts are awarded generate notorious cost overruns because they’re accountable mainly to their shareholders, not to the public.
Perhaps the most troubling contracting practices involve the military; contract soldiers are uncomfortably similar to mercenaries, and the growing use of private companies in America’s various wars and military actions generates a number of very thorny issues, a topic I’ve explored elsewhere.
One of America’s many overdue conversations should address what services we expect our various levels of government to provide and the nature and extent of the evidence needed to support a decision to outsource service delivery.
As most of you know by now, a conservative judge in Texas struck down the entire Affordable Care Act, ruling it unconstitutional.
The decision is a reminder that when judges are appointed on the basis of party loyalty rather than legal acumen, the results can hurt a lot of innocent people.
The most obvious loss would be that part of the law that forbids insurance companies from excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions. But as the author noted, if the law were really to disappear, that’s just a part of what would be lost.
As many as 17 million people could lose their coverage in a single year. The 15 million people covered under Medicaid expansion could lose their coverage. The improvements to Medicare that have saved the program billions of dollars—and reduced prescription drug costs for seniors—would be erased. Young people wouldn’t be able to stay on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26. The ban on annual and lifetime caps would be gone, and medical bankruptcies would escalate. Having lady parts would again cost women more than men, and being over age 50 would cost everyone more again. Limits on out-of-pocket costs would be gone. The tax credits that 9 million people are receiving to help them pay premiums would be gone.
The post focused on the political fallout of the threatened losses. (Even Republicans concede that the issue hurts them.) But the real lessons aren’t partisan.
There are two obvious “take-aways” here.
First is the incredible amount of damage that can be done by elevating ideologues to the bench. This sort of “smash and burn” judging is a direct result of viewing the federal courts as a partisan political prize rather than a constitutional safeguard to be protected by the appointment of dispassionate, knowledgable and qualified legal scholars.
The second is equally obvious. As important as the ACA is, as much of a step forward that it represents, it falls far short of what Americans need and most other wealthy countries have long had. Not only is it vulnerable to the sort of judicial assassination we’ve just experienced, it is simply insufficient.
It would be poetic justice–not to mention actual justice–if this effort by a radical judge prompted Congress to pass Medicare for All, or at least a “public option” allowing citizens of all ages to “opt in” to the program.
