Tag Archives: Trump

Shooting The Messenger

A recent report from the Brookings Institution began rather predictably:

A leader who portrays himself as one of the persecuted, the target of an incessant witch-hunt by the so-called deep state. A liberal media intent on revisiting an election gone badly. And a left-wing political machine supposedly out to get him.

The surprise came in the next sentence. “This leader, of course, is Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel.” The article was an investigation into what the author called “the politics of grievance” employed by both Netanyahu and Trump.

According to the article, at a recent rally in Israel,

Netanyahu seemed to channel Donald Trump. He even explicitly (mis)used the English phrase “fake news” to attack the supposedly biased mainstream media that’s out to get him. While Netanyahu and Trump are profoundly different—Bibi’s many faults aside, he is erudite, cautious, and experienced—the two men share an approach to confronting political adversity: divide and conquer, turn the spotlight on the “other,” create an other when none is available, and always, always, feed the base.

The parallels between these two flawed leaders include explicit attacks on so-called “elites,” including –prominently, especially–the press. And that assault is no small matter, because in democratic societies, the press is an essential watchdog, the only institution that mediates between the governed and their government. Imperfect, uneven and beleaguered as it is, the media is our only window into the world of politics and policy.

Autocrats want to break that window.

On “Meet the Press,” John McCain recently underlined the danger of attacks on the press.

“I hate the press. I hate you especially,” McCain told NBC’s Chuck Todd, according to excerpts of the interview set to air Sunday. “But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital. If you want to preserve – I’m very serious now – if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.”

McCain’s comments came in response to a question about Trump’s recent declaration, made via Twitter, that the press is the “enemy of the American People.”

A recent article in Newsweek considered the nature of Trump’s persistent assaults on the press, and considered the potential consequences:

The President’s attacks may be reckless – who knows whether someone in his audience will take the President’s word as license to take action against enemies of the American people ? – but they are not without purpose.

They have concrete aims: to intimidate reporters into certain kinds of coverage, or clarify for his favored outlets what coverage he desires, or plant the seeds of doubt about news stories (such as the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller).

The article goes on to detail the ways in which Trump’s hostility to investigative journalism is driving policy–efforts to shut down whistleblowers and others who might provide the press with information about government wrongdoing, and attacks on net neutrality:

For instance, the FCC’s proposal to undo network neutrality rules – those rules that implement a policy disfavoring content-discrimination by digital network operators – threatens the long-term viability of independent media, and does most damage to reporters and outlets that lack the audience and resources of existing media powerhouses.

These attacks on the media are reinforced by the proliferating propaganda sites on line, and by the ability to choose the “news” that reinforces one’s preferred worldview. Educators desperately need to teach news literacy, the ability to distinguish between responsible journalism and irresponsible click-bait.

In our political environment characterized by civic ignorance, hyper-partisanship and confirmation bias, how effective are the efforts by would-be autocrats and political partisans to undermine genuine journalism? How effective is persistent propaganda?

Unfortunately, as Vox tells us, a lot more effective than we like to think.

Comments

A Confederacy of Dunces

We now know what an “anti-elitist” Administration looks like.

It isn’t simply Keystone Kop Cabinet-level appointees who know nothing about the agencies they lead: Betsy DeVos, who lacks any background or training in education, never attended public schools, and never sent her children to public schools; Rick Perry, who barely eked out an agriculture degree and cheerfully admits he had no idea what the Department of Energy did; Scott Pruitt, who scorns “elitist” scientists, denies climate change, and is methodically dismantling the EPA at a time when its expertise is most needed. Etc.

Trump’s roster of White House advisers and Cabinet officials has been called the least experienced in recent presidential history.

But Trump’s war on “elitists”–defined as people who know what they’re talking about–extends well into the bureaucracy. Some recent examples:

  • Sam Clovis, a former right-wing radio talk-show host and failed Senate candidate from Iowa, has been nominated to be the chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ProPublica reports that Clovis is a vocal climate change denier who has no formal training in science at all.
  • Appointments to the Department of Health and Human Services have been anti-evidence culture warriors. The Hill reports that “Trump has appointed some of the nation’s worst anti-women’s health extremists to top cabinet posts in the agency, including the designation of birth control skeptic Teresa Manning to lead the nation’s family planning program.” One of the newest HHS additions — Valerie Huber — is a vocal advocate for discredited and misleading abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
  • Of the 28 appointments to the Department of Energy analyzed by Pro Publica, only 10 had any relevant experience, and most of those had worked as lawyers, advocates or spokespeople for coal, oil or gas companies. (Then there are those appointees that Pro Publica calls “wild cards,” like Kyle Yunaska, a tax analyst at Georgetown University whose primary connection to the administration appears to be his status as the brother-in-law of Eric Trump.)

Media has focused more upon Trump’s paucity of nominations than the appalling nature of the nominations he has made; hundreds of positions remain vacant seven months into his term. Given the “quality” of his nominees, that may actually be a blessing.

The one area in which he has sent numerous nominees to be confirmed is the Judiciary, and those nominees are terrifying. Two examples:

  • John Kenneth Bush, Trump’s nominee for the Sixth Circuit, contributed regularly to Elephants in the Bluegrass, a political blog run by his wife, posting far-fetched parallels between Barack Obama and Monica Lewinsky and calling slavery and abortion two of America’s greatest tragedies. He consistently cited WorldNetDaily, an extremist publication known for peddling conspiracy theories and white nationalism, including the lie that Obama was not born in the United States.
  • Damien Schiff is Trump’s nominee for the US Court of Federal Claims. He has called Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy a “judicial prostitute” in a post,  strongly disagreed with the Court’s decision ending punishment for sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas, and criticized a school district for teaching students that homosexual families and heterosexual families are equally moral.

When “elitism” is defined as expertise, and people who know what they are doing are for that reason disqualified, ideology and incompetence fill the void.

There’s a saying to the effect that the only foes that truly threaten America are the enemies at home: ignorance, superstition and incompetence.  Trump is the trifecta.
Comments

(Un)Civil Religion

What is “Christian Nationalism” and how is it operating to support Donald Trump? Think Progress has an illuminating history,  and an effort to explain the continued devotion of many Evangelical Christian pastors to Trump and his Presidency.

It is notable that, in response to Trump’s moral equivocations following Charlottesville, when business executives resigned en masse from the administration’s advisory panels, only one minister followed their lead.

Others have actively defended those equivocations.

Jerry Falwell, Jr. tweeted his “pride” in the President:

Finally a leader in WH. Jobs returning, N Korea backing down, bold truthful stmt about tragedy.So proud of @realdonaldtrump

Falwell’s relationship with Trump, and his inability to see anything “unChristian” about the President’s behavior, led some graduates of Liberty University, which Falwell heads, to return their diplomas.

Chris Gaumer, a former Student Government Association president and 2006 graduate, said it was a simple decision.

“I’m sending my diploma back because the president of the United States is defending Nazis and white supremacists,” Gaumer said. “And in defending the president’s comments, Jerry Falwell Jr. is making himself and, it seems to me, the university he represents, complicit.”

The Think Progress article quotes liberally from Sam Haselby, author of The Origins of American Religious Nationalism. Haselby identifies three elements of our national history that give rise to Christian Nationalism:  Reverence for the country’s founders;  persistence of the “Jeremiad” narrative, defined as the insistence of activists (left and right) that their cause is consistent with the spirit of America’s founding; and the “undeniable prevalence of religious rhetoric or ‘God talk’ in political spaces, no matter which party is in power.”

But few groups indulge in this tradition more fervently than today’s Christian nationalists, whose repeated (and disputed) calls for America to be “restored” as a “Christian nation” mixes all three of Haselby’s elements. When leaders such as Franklin Graham say God has blessed America more than any other nation on earth, they often mean it in a very specific way: Namely, that America is somehow special to God, and has been since its founding, when it supposedly was “built on Christian principles.”

Haselby points out that today’s Christian Nationalists use these elements very differently than their predecessors.  Modern Christian nationalism—characterized by antipathy towards science, so-called “secular” institutions, and government overreach—would have confused and repelled their 18th- and 19th-century forbears.

America’s current version of Christian Nationalism bears an unsettling resemblance to the German version that enabled the rise of Hitler:

The result was broad support for Hitler’s rise to power among German Christians and their leaders, some of whom took their devotion to an extreme. Hitler’s numerous flaws were often explained away or, in some cases, replaced with complete fabrications about his faith.

Interweaving authoritarianism with American-style Christian nationalism isn’t just theoretical: it’s happened before.

“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,” Ericksen said. “[Hitler] was happy to nurture or not confront those kind of misconceptions, because he wanted that kind of Christian support. And the Christians were so willing to bend over backwards — they accepted or in some ways maybe even invented explanations of how he could be a real Christian leader.”

By the time his power crescendoed, the difference between the Hitler and religious leaders was almost nonexistent. The most extreme form of Christian nationalism had taken hold.

The article is lengthy, but well worth a read in its entirety.

It has been said that although history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme. Fortunately, America’s Christian Nationalists are a decided minority within the faith community; we can take comfort in the significant numbers of American religious leaders who have forcefully rejected Trump’s endorsements of racism and various bigotries.

But we also need to learn from history, and recognize the threat posed by those who are willing to twist and deform their theologies in the service of cultural dominance.

Comments

Dreaming…

From Reuters (as well as a number of other media outlets) we learn that

President Donald Trump is expected to rescind an Obama administration policy that protects from deportation nearly 800,000 immigrants who as children entered the country illegally, setting the stage for a fight with U.S. business leaders and lawmakers over tough immigration policy.

The article goes on to detail the negative response of the business community to the proposed action, and economists’ prediction that such a move would hurt economic growth and depress tax revenues.

Leave aside the economic consequences. Trump’s willingness to inflict immense human misery is what’s truly appalling. This would be the most immoral action taken thus far by a profoundly immoral administration.

The targets of this move are not criminals. They aren’t even immigration scofflaws; they didn’t choose to come to the United States illegally. They were children. They were brought here by their parents. Most of them have never known another home; significant numbers speak only English. They are productive citizens, small businesspeople and dependable employees, whose value to their communities has been amply documented. Why on earth would Trump want to deport them?

I think we all know the answer to that.

Reuters tells us that the overwhelming majority of the Dreamer immigrants came from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Most are brown, and brown and black people are  by definition un-American “others” to the White Supremacists, neo-Nazis and other assorted bigots who are Trump’s core supporters.

Trump’s utter lack of human empathy has been obvious for a long time; it was prominently on display during his trip to Houston. So it is pointless to expect him to understand or care about the wrenching reality of his proposed order.

Vox has focused on that reality.

Hundreds of thousands of families in the US are anxiously awaiting a decision from President Donald Trump that could change the course of their lives. Will they lose their jobs? Will they have to drop out of college? Will immigration agents knock on their doors to kick them out of the country they consider home? And what will happen to their American kids if they have to leave?…

In the five years since DACA went into effect, thousands of undocumented immigrants have been able to go to college, get driver’s licenses and get jobs and pay taxes for the first time. Many now have their own children, who are American citizens. Parents with DACA are wrestling with the question of what to tell their children, and whether it would be best to leave them in the United States or take them away if they are forced to leave.

When comprehensive immigration reform once again failed to pass Congress, Obama addressed the situation of the so-called “Dreamers” with an executive order creating DACA–Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It allowed a defined subset of young undocumented immigrants to get temporary Social Security numbers and deportation protection. They had to pass criminal background checks, pay taxes, and renew their DACA status every two years. The program was a temporary fix, but during the campaign, Clinton vowed to maintain it.

Trump, of course, made anti-immigrant rhetoric the centerpiece of a campaign that pandered, bigly, to rightwing bigotries.

It is heartbreaking to read the comments of DACA recipients interviewed in the Vox article. These are good people who are in an untenable situation because for years, Congress has consistently failed to pass an immigration bill. Most recently, rather than give President Obama a political “win,” the GOP simply blocked efforts to negotiate a legislative solution to a problem everyone recognized.

Now we have a President whose terrifying ignorance of government is matched only by his inability to think of anyone but himself. If Congress cannot be moved to action by the plight of 800,000 innocent DACA immigrants, there’s no reason to believe they will ever summon the moral courage to defy this bigot-in-chief.

This is a test, and I’m very much afraid America will fail it.

As a current Internet meme puts it: It’s no longer about whether Trump has any decency. It’s about whether we do.

Comments

GOP R.I.P.

There is more than one way for a political party to die.

If you ask people of my vintage–the party volunteers, candidates, office holders and party functionaries who populated the Indiana Statehouse and the Hudnut Administration’s sixteen years in City Hall–the GOP we worked for and supported is long gone. We don’t recognize the party that bears the name.

The death of a political party via this sort of transformation into something much darker and different is less visible than the sort of death experienced by the Whigs, but it is no less real.

For the last two decades, at least, I’ve been predicting a split between the GOP’s “business wing”–those we used to call Country Club Republicans–and its far-Right fringe. (Helpful hint: don’t ever bet money on predictions I make; I’m notoriously wrong about nearly all of them.) It seemed inevitable that members of the sober business community, fixated on fiscal prudence and economic issues, would be increasingly unwilling to partner with and vote for the religious fanatics, flat-earthers and white nationalists who had become the party’s base.

If the divorce I saw as likely back in 2000 (the year I “came out” as a Democrat) is ever going to occur, it will be precipitated by Donald Trump–an unstable and self-engrossed con man no rational businessperson would hire for any responsible position.

I may still be proven wrong, but I’m no longer prophesying in the wilderness. Others have begun predicting the fracturing of what’s left of the GOP.

On August 8th–before Trump’s horrifying reaction to Charlottesville–the Guardian devoted an article to the defection of GOP conservatives from the party that had embraced (or at least tolerated) Trump. The article began with the highly visible unhappiness of Senator Jeff Flake.

Jeff Flake of Arizona, among 17 conservative politicians, activists, officials and pundits interviewed over two months, revealed that while the president has given rightwing fringe groups a seat at the table, his alliance with his own party remains highly precarious.

The article proceeds to quote a number of prominent Republicans who shared their disdain for Trump and his enablers. Eliot Cohen, a former state department counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, said:

“This fundamentally boils down to character, and his character is rotten. He’s a narcissist who happens to have taken control of the Republican party. Trump has taken conservatives back to a different era, before William F Buckley drove out the Birchers, the bigots and the antisemites. We’re now back in a different world.

British conservative historian Niall Ferguson agreed:

The Republicans have surprised me in one respect and that was the poor discipline of the party. If you think of this in British terms, essentially we are now in a quasi-monarchy, kind of what Alexander Hamilton vaguely had in mind. But it’s a monarchy in the sense that the White House is a court and Trump is like one of those people who becomes king who’s not terribly well-suited to the role. And so there’s rampant factionalism and infighting and erratic decisions by the king, and Paul Ryan’s the prime minister who’s trying to manage affairs in the estates general. But the problem is that from a British vantage point, the party discipline’s very weak.

The article goes on to quote a significant number of prominent conservatives, some still supportive and others noting that Trump’s erratic and uninformed behavior is inflicting substantial damage on the party, and widening, not healing, the rifts that have been growing for some time. Two of the most critical were Charlie Sykes, a talk-radio conservative, and Michael Steele, former Chair of the national GOP.

Sykes pointed to the obvious danger of “going along”: you end up accepting  “someone who mocks the disabled and insults women because he gets you a social policy win.”

For his part, Steele says out loud what so many long-time Republicans say quietly:

This is my 40th year as a Republican and it is the first time I can honestly say I don’t recognise this party and some of the people who are leading it.

And this was before Charlottesville.

The GOP I once belonged to is already dead. The question for conservatives now is: what will become of its distasteful, immoral, unAmerican remains?

Comments