Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies analysing Trump's strange, nationalistic, belligerant speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, Trump's 'Dissociation from Reality' at UNThe Real News 09/25/2018:
Abby Bard of the Center for American Progress characterizes the speech in this way, which is consistent with my impression, in Trump's UN Speech Hurts America and the International System The National Interest 09/26/2018:
The speech sounded as if it could have been given by a dictator who wanted the world to know why other countries had no business interfering in their country’s repressive domestic policies and bore a striking resemblance to China’s “non-interference” policy. It’s particularly ironic and deeply disturbing that Trump has couched his speech in the language of equity and diversity given his promotion of white supremacist talking points and use of racist language against immigrants.
She also notes that Trump's "theory of sovereignty only appears to extend into the humanitarian realm."
But she also notes in relation to Trump's verbal attacks on Venezuela, include humanitarian concerns, that it seems forTrump, "human rights only matter when there is an economic gain for the United States."
It's an important speech because he is the former President and because he is such a widely respected figure within the Democratic Party and beyond. And because he explicitly condemns Trump and today's Republican Party for what they are, radical threats to liberal democracy. This struck me as an especially important clarifying moment:
We're supposed to stand up to discrimination. And we're sure as heck supposed to stand up, clearly and unequivocally, to Nazi sympathizers.
How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad.
This was also an important, quotable statement, "over the past few decades, the politics of division, of resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party."
And he elaborated:
This Congress has championed the unwinding of campaign finance laws to give billionaires outsized influence over our politics; systemically attacked voting rights to make it harder for the young people, the minorities, and the poor to vote.
Handed out tax cuts without regard to deficits. Slashed the safety net wherever it could. Cast dozens of votes to take away health insurance from ordinary Americans. Embraced wild conspiracy theories, like those surrounding Benghazi, or my birth certificate.
Rejected science, rejected facts on things like climate change. Embraced a rising absolutism from a willingness to default on America's debt by not paying our bills, to a refusal to even meet, much less consider, a qualified nominee for the Supreme Court because he happened to be nominated by a Democratic President. None of this is conservative. I don't mean to pretend I'm channeling Abraham Lincoln now, but that's not what he had in mind, I think, when he helped form the Republican Party.
It's not conservative. It sure isn't normal. It's radical. It's a vision that says the protection of our power and those who back us is all that matters, even when it hurts the country. It's a vision that says the few who can afford a high-priced lobbyist and unlimited campaign contributions set the agenda. And over the past two years, this vision is now nearing its logical conclusion.
And, yes, it's in the video and the transcript:
The point [George] Washington made, the point that is essential to American democracy, is that in a government of and by and for the people, there should be no permanent ruling class. [my emphasis]
Don't expect to hear that phrase "ruling class" from Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer! Obama even said that NOT having such a "permanent ruling class" is "essential to American democracy."
I'm also going to take a deep breath here and say I like Obama's image of American history. If you were discussing it with him in an academic forum, he would probably agree that what he is doing in a speech like that is presenting a narrative of American history that highlights the development of democracy and human rights.
I wish I could say that was a cliche narrative. But these days, it's not really. Because the Democratic Party is unwilling to defend its own Democratic (and democratic) symbolism prior to 1860. And on the left and center-left, the Whig narrative in which monarchist Alexander Hamilton and plutoratic-minded John Quincy Adams are the heroes of democracy has become dominant at the expense of other democratic traditions in early and antebellum American history.
That is partially because the left and center-left are very aware of the disgraceful histories of slavery and the Indian Wars, and that's a good and necessary thing. As time pushes forward, it becomes harder for Americans to look at the pre-Civil War United States and see something familiar. And most Democrats are too timid to express any admiration for the guerrilla fighter ("terrorist!") John Brown, who is the only well-known white public figure prior to the Civil War who had attitudes toward equal rights for blacks and women that were pretty much like those considered democratic norms now.
But Obama described the development of democracy by holding up the slave-owner and Indian-fighter George Washington as quoted above as an example of responsible democratic governance and leadership and an opponent of a "ruling class". And quoted the slaveowner and Indian-fighter Thomas Jefferson (though not by name) in the Delaration of Independence, invoking the American Revolution as an important democratic development that should still inform and and inspire defenders of democracy today.
This is a sensible way of looking at democratic history, both in terms of political symbolism and historical analysis. And it's the kind of framing that the Democratic Party needs to use on a wider scale. Leaving the symbolism of the Revolution and the Constitution to be mangled by the Republicans is just nuts. (Trump's thing about Andrew Jackson being a prime example.)
As Charlie Pierce wrote of the speech in his appreciative analysis of it, "Yes, toward the end he got back into how there are people of good will on both sides who are drowned out by the noise of our politics. Low, high, you know the spiel." And he explained, "He could say nothing else because that hope is his entire political raison d'être. This is the way it is with Barack Obama."
This doesn't mean that I didn't have to resist the urge to bite my arm several times listening the long speech.
Because Obama steps on his own better messages when he starts singing the praise of Bipartisanship and "common ground". Even though he included in this speech an excellent description of the real existing Republican Party's version of the kind of bipartisanship they will accept:
And that doesn't mean, by the way, abandoning our principles or caving to bad policy in the interests of maintaining some phony version of "civility." That seems to be, by the way, the definition of civility offered by too many Republicans: We will be polite as long as we get a hundred percent of what we want and you don't call us out on the various ways that we're sticking it to people. And we'll click our tongues and issue vague statements of disappointment when the President does something outrageous, but we won't actually do anything about it. That's not civility. That's abdicating your responsibilities.
Although the fighting passages will get more play in the media, and I'm happy about that, most of his talk about "common ground" steps on or even contradicts those fighting messages. Because that passage just quoted is the reason that his Presidential model of Bipartisanship and Grand Bargains was such a flat-out failure. No, that doesn't mean his whole Administration was failure. It means that his no-red-America-no-blue-America paradigm isn't founded in reality.
In that connection, this passage for me was a real WTF moment:
So if you don't like what's going on right now – and you shouldn't – do not complain. Don't hashtag. Don't get anxious. Don't retreat. Don't binge on whatever it is you're bingeing on. Don't lose yourself in ironic detachment. Don't put your head in the sand. Don't boo. Vote.
Don't boo?!? I get his point that without mobilizing votes, those things in themselves won't change government in the way that is needed. Do not complain? Do not hashtag? Please. I know he's making a standard community-organizer motivational appeal here to focus his audience on taking the action he's advocating. But that doesn't just step on but stomps on the activist message he tries to convey in other parts of the speech.
It will be a great day when Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer can give a speech like that without mentioning the word "deficit." Obama rightly called out the Republicans' hypocrisy on deficit spending and deficit taxing. Republican politicians don't care about the deficit and neither do their voters. The thing is, nobody cares about the deficit outside of the mainstream talking heads who appears on Morning Joe and economists who are more concerned about professional respectability that actual public policy in the real world.
Also, yes, Obama is Obama, so he's always going to say things like this:
And it also means appreciating that progress does not happen all at once, but when you put your shoulder to the wheel, if you're willing to fight for it, things do get better. And let me tell you something, particularly young people here. Better is good. I used to have to tell my young staff this all the time in the White House. Better is good. That's the history of progress in this country. Not perfect. Better. The Civil Rights Act didn't end racism, but it made things better. Social Security didn't eliminate all poverty for seniors, but it made things better for millions of people.
Do not let people tell you the fight's not worth it because you won't get everything that you want. The idea that, well, you know there's racism in America so I'm not going to bother voting. No point. That makes no sense. You can make it better. Better's always worth fighting for. [my emphasis]
There no point in trying to quibble about the specific words there, because they are on an abstract level not connected to pending controversies. Here the tone is the important thing, the idea being that anyone who suggests that a compromise might be a bad one or that right now is not the time to surrender to the opposition is a naif who doesn't understand the Real World. This is his way of poo-pooing the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
But, gosh, look at this! Another passage that got a lot of coverage says:
So Democrats aren't just running on good old ideas like a higher minimum wage, they're running on good new ideas like Medicare for all, giving workers seats on corporate boards, reversing the most egregious corporate tax cuts to make sure college students graduate debt-free. [my emphasis]
He didn't go so far as to say he endorses Medicare For All or free college. But he's only talking about them because progressives like Bernie Sanders pushed for them, campaigned on them, and exposed the ideas to a wide enough public that they became popular with a signiicant number of voters.
If your a strict political careerist, platitudes like "better is good" or "better's always worth fighting for" are useful excuses. But they are unlikely to inspire militant commitment to ideas that aren't already widely accepted.
I won't go into detail here, but Obama's political legacy also needs to be carefully evaluated in understanding why we wound up with the Orange Clown in the White House backed in his destructive policies by a fanaticized Republican Party. A good starting point would be the Grand Bargain he made a centerpiece of his Prsidential strategy. It involved repeated attempts by Obama himself to convince Republicans to cut Social Security and Medicare. That was not a strategy of better is good. It was very much a position of worse is better.
The conservative Heinrich Brüning (German Chancellor 1930–32) was better than Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. The reactionary Paul von Hindenburg was better than Adolf Hitler as President. Which is why the Social Democratic Party supported Hindurburg in the final round of the 1932 election over Hitler. But Brüning's disastrous Herbert Hoover economic policies had a great deal to do with Hitler's becoming Chancellor in January 1933. A position for which President Hindenburg accepted him.
In thoses cases, better was not good enough.
Very importantly, Obama's Administration had a solemn obligation under the Torture Convention to seriously legally investigate and prosecute the torture crimes of the Cheney-Bush Administration. They didn't. Giving that kind of de facto immunity to Presidential crimes has the problem I described in a post in 2008 (Why the Obama Justice Department has to prosecute the torture perpetrators 11/25/2008):
It's precisely because the Cheney-Bush administration broke the law extensively while preserving the basic governmental structure that makes prosecutions even more necessary in our present case. What's the point in having a rule of law if the Executive can arbitrarily set it aside? And what's the deterrence for the next set of Cheneys and Roves if there are no legal consequences for the criminal acts of the current administration?
Cheney and Bush created a real-life template for who an American government can use an authoritarian political party to establish a truly lawless Presidential government. The next set of Roves and Cheneys that come to power need to think that if they are ordered to implement similar lawless actions, that the law may very well catch up to them.
If the guilty participants in this administration don't experience direct legal consequences, i.e., prosecution and legal punishment, for what they did, then the Cheney authoritarian model has worked. Next time around, it's just a matter of finding the right combination of voter suppression, fear, de facto control of the media and suppression of real dissent to make it permanent.
Cheney's idea of democracy was articulated back in 1949 by East German Communist leader Walter Ulbricht, as he explained to his Party comrades in 1949 what kind of government they were founding in the new "German Democratic Republic": "Es muss demokratisch aussehen, aber wir müssen alles in der Hand halten." (It has to look democratic, but we have to control everything.)
Not prosecuting known major crimes from this [Cheney-Bush] administration would validate the Cheney-Ulbricht approach to governance. And that would definitely not be a good thing.
Because, as Dark Lord Cheney himself said at a reception in Poland for Auschwitz survivors in 2006,, presumably with no irony intended, "Men without conscience are capable of any cruelty the human mind can imagine." (Vice President's Remarks at Reception for Survivors of Auschwitz George W. Bush White House Archives 01/26/2005)
The Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki scheduled for July 16 is providing a focal point for political and foreign policy analysts to understand the current state of US-Russia and EU/NATO-Russia relations.
Several parties in power in European governments see Putin and his party as some kind of model for their countries. Viktor Orbán's government in Hungary is currently the leader in EU in moving to what Orbán calls "illiberal democracy," i.e., an autoritarian government validated through elections, on something like CKarl Schmitt's notion of validation through plebiscite.
In the German literature, for example the use of plebiscites was supported by Carl Schmitt, an apologist for the NSDAP-regime, who proposed that a dictator, as a “single trusted representative”, could use plebiscites to “decide in the name of the…people”[v], and it was denounced by democratically inclined writers like Robert Michels, who dismissed the plebiscite as it would allow “a Führer to lead the people astray through unclear questions, which he himself would be solely entitled to interpret afterwards”[vi]. (Encyclopedia Princetoniensis; accessed 07/06/2018)
No, even Hungary isn't that far gone yet. But, yes, Carl Schmitt is in fashion again, it appears. Schmitt would probably approve of Putin's manner of maintaining what is in fact a dictatorship while leaving the empty forms of democracy in place.
But it's also worth noting at this point that the Manichean notion that the US so often uses of democracy (Our Side) vs. dictatorship (The Bad People) is very often more slogan and propaganda than real understanding. Elections in Hungary, for instance, still do happen. And the EU rules do require free elections, which so far has put limits on how far toward authoritarian government EU member states can go. Though the Merkelized EU has far more diligent about enforcing Herbert Hoover-Heinrich Brüning economic policies than it has been about moving against "democractic deficits" in member states' governance. Not least because the EU has its own very real democratic deficits.
The point is that there is a continuum between democracy and dictatorship. And even dictatorships have to secure the practical support of some significant portions of their populations. In the case of "Putinist" parties and groups in Europe, the danger from such groups is not that they will suddenly stage a Putsch. Even Putin didn't come to power that way. The more immediate practical reality is that they are pushing for restrictions on democratic paticipation and seeking to further weaken or undermine the EU and NATO.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte heads a still-new coalition government of the left-populist Five Star Movement and the right-populist Lega. Wolfgang Münchau's Eurointelligence conveys the concerns of Alberto Nardelli, Europe editor for Buzzfeed, about the Lega and the Interior Minister of that party, Matteo Salvini (What to make of Salvini's relations with Russia? 07/05/2018))
The key issue is the partnership agreement between the Lega and United Russia, Putin's Party. It contains a clause on information-sharing relevant to bilateral and multilateral affairs. The question is whether there is a deeper level of communication happening between the two parties, or whether they are simply united in their distaste for the EU and their admiration for Donald Trump. The diplomats said that European governments were playing close attention to Italy's behaviour especially during international meetings. Nardelli notes that Giuseppe Conte did not make good on previous threats by Italy to refuse a renewal of the Russian sanctions. But Conte took time with the decision, and made the point in the discussions that the sanctions should not hit Russian civil society. The officials Nardelli spoke to expressed concern that Conte may not be his own man, but may be under the direct control of Salvini and [Deputy Prime Minister and Five Star leader] Luigi Di Maio. [my emphasis]
Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), currently the junior partner in Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz' government, also concluded such a partnership agreement with United Russia in 2016 (Austrian far right signs deal with Putin's party, touts Trump ties Reuters 12/19/2016):
Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache and the FPO’s recently defeated presidential candidate Norbert Hofer attended the signing ceremony in Moscow, as did officials of Putin’s United Russia party including Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy chairman of the lower house of parliament.
The FPO has long taken a pro-Russia stance, calling for an end to European Union sanctions against Moscow imposed over the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine. It has also denied allegations that it receives funding from Moscow.
Strache is now the Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister for Austria.
Here the questions of pragmatic foreign policy, political ideology, and subversion get mixed together in ways than can be confusing. These partnership agreements with United Russia have at least an analogous relationship to the role of the Soviet Communist Party to other Communist Parties. But historical analogies are often as misleading as they are clarifying. The USSR saw itself as the legitimate leader of the world Communist movement, with the idea that the Soviet leadership provided worldwide guidance for how Communist Parties could come to power in other countries. Not surprisingly, non-Communist governments didn't view that as an entirely friendly arrangement.
But also not surprisingly, the reality was much more complicated. As Communist Parties did come to power in other countries, they had disagreements with the Soviet leadership. Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet leadership in 1948. The split between the USSR and China would become far more significant. Having formal partnerships with parties in other countries did not guarantee the Soviet Union even consistent pro-Soviet foreign policies on their part.
Politics is politics, and countries are countries. So of course countries try to influence other parties and other international actors in their favor. Anyone who is of a mind to do so can paint those influences as subversive or espionage will find some audience for those claims. Although for most people in most circumstances, the difference in admiring a foreign party or leader and committing illegal acts of espionage or treason is a clear one.
All of which is to say that we can view Russian governmental interference in elections in violation of national laws as a legal and factual matter. And the appeal to some constituencies of the Putinist forms of government and doctrine as a political and ideological matter. And the question of a country's relations to Russia as a practical and diplomatic concern.
So, whether a "Putinist" party's position on relations with Russia is good or bad depends very heavily on how one views what national and international interests and goals should be protected. Austria, for instance, gained some definite national advantages from its role as a neutral country between East and West. It would be very much to Austria's benefit as a country if its government was able to contruct a similar arrangement that would enable it to play a genuine role of reconcilation on the lines of its Cold War practice.
But Austria's best chance to do that is to strengthen the EU. And they haven't been good at that for quite a while. Strache's FPÖ has a strong anti-EU bent. In that way, the FPÖ's nationalism and hostility to the EU are in line with Putin's goals of dividing and weakening the EU and NATO. (Austria itself is not a NATO member.) The FPÖ has been banging the drums of xenophobia and Islamophobia for years, something also in line with Russia's own nationalistic policies. But that is a sign of parallel ideological development and not manipulation by Russian "special measures," however much inspiration the FPÖ may draws from Russian-style nationalism. But a policy course that actively undermines the EU and tends toward the Union's dissolution would certainly damage Austria's real interests.
The other factor currently at work is the erratic American President, who has displayed considerable hostility to both NATO and the EU. It's one thing for Austria to act as some kind of diplomatic mediator among the US, Russia, and the EU. But joining the US and Russia in wrecking the EU is a whole different matter. That's not a mediating strategy. It's sucker diplomacy.
Sadly, Chancellor Babyface seems so focused on short-term nationalist demagoguery ("Close the borders!") that he risks squandering the chance to reposition Austria as a more significant European player. Especially since he's been recklessly intervening in internal German politics and is already drawing Angela Merkel's anger and retaliation because of it.
It is no secret that U.S. President Donald Trump has an instinctive animus against the European Union and NATO. He supported the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, reportedly advised French President Emmanuel Macron that his country should leave the union too, and last week falsely claimed that the EU was created “to take advantage of the United States.” (This last statement raises an obvious question: Does Trump know any history at all? The answer appears to be no.) He has long complained that NATO’s European members aren’t paying enough for defense and has offered only tepid support for the mutual defense clause that is at the heart of the NATO treaty.
So, it’s not surprising that both Europeans and Americans are now looking ahead to the NATO summit in July with a certain foreboding. Coming on the heels of Trump’s petulant tantrums during and after the G-7 summit in June, and taking place just before he is scheduled to meet one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the summit could turn out to be the diplomatic equivalent of a 29-car pileup.
Correction 07/15/2018: The Foreign Minister of Austria in the Kurz government from 12/18/2017 to now has been Karein Kneissl; Heinz-Christian Strache has not been Foreign Minister. Strache is Vice Chancellor and Minister of the Civil Service and Sport.
One might be tempted to think this incompetence is a blessing in disguise, considering Trump's authoritarian impulses. But as we've seen with the travel ban and the manufactured border crisis, his incompetence is no protection against cruelty and inhumanity. An unfit president is no less powerful.
The good news for Republicans is that when all is said and done, this train-wreck of a presidency will be repurposed as yet another example of how government can't do anything right. They'll tell us that the only solution for that problem is another round of tax cuts, the cure for whatever ails you. It's quite a racket.
That's an updated-for-the-Trump-Age version of the old Democratic saying, now more accurate than ever: Republicans run on the idea that government can't do anything right, then they get elected and prove it.
The story [from Susan Glasser] goes on to handwring about how this [kidnapping immigrant children] is the one wedge issue that really works for Trump and how dangerous it is for Democrats to stray from their positive message of health care and the minimum wage. The implication is that talking about Trump's incompetence and malevolence will just make his voters love him so we need to complain about the Republicans trying to repeal Obamacare and pretend it's 2008 and say "yes we can!" (Don't say si se puede, though. That might rile up the Trumpies and we need to keep them as happy as possible at all times.)
Trying to appease these people and motivate the Democratic base by re-running their old campaigns and presenting a sunny vision of America is delusional. Republicans can't be appeased by Democrats because they are completely delirious that their Dear Leader is holding a national hatefest. That's what makes them happy. Meanwhile, Democratic voters will think these Democratic politicians are as depraved as Trump if they don't describe this grotesque insanity for what it is.
Pretending that what is happening isn't happening will simply not work. Trump is going to spend the next few months doing what he always does: spew racist to thrill his racist base. The only thing Democrats can do is get their own base out and acting like a bunch of cynical cowards isn't going to get the job done. [my emphasis]
Medium just reposted (05/25/2018) an essay by linguist George Lakoff from December 2016 with advice for Democrats in particular on how to respond to Trump. It was posted at his blog as How to Help Trump 12/15/2016.
Lakoff is famous for his work on political "framing," how political actors define issues and narratives. Usually whenever I mention him, I say that while I have some reservations about parts of his argument, he's basically right about the Democratic Party's problems in framing political issues in ways that are most likely to win support for them. So I've now made that ritual qualification for this post.
His 12/15/2016 piece falls more in my "reservations" category. Because he seems to be arguing there that Democrats should try to ignore what Trump says:
Without knowing it, many Democrats, progressives and members of the news media help Donald Trump every day. The way they help him is simple: they spread his message.
Think about it: every time Trump issues a mean tweet or utters a shocking statement, millions of people begin to obsess over his words. Reporters make it the top headline. Cable TV panels talk about it for hours. Horrified Democrats and progressives share the stories online, making sure to repeat the nastiest statements in order to refute them. While this response is understandable, it works in favor of Trump.
When you repeat Trump, you help Trump. You do this by spreading his message wide and far.
Nobody knows this better than Trump. Trump, as a media master, knows how to frame a debate. When he picks a fight, he does so deliberately. He tweets or says outrageous things, knowing they will be repeated millions and millions of times. When the news media and Democrats repeat Trump’s frames, they are strengthening those frames by ensuring that tens of millions of Americans hear them repeated over and over again.
Phrased like that, it sounds suspiciously like a concern-troll argument trying to get Democrats to shut up. That's not what he's trying to do. But this is one of his weaker pitches.
This clip from Sam Seder's Majority Report features Sam and Henry Farrell talking about the posturing of conservative intellectuals on political ideology, What The 'Intellectual Dark Web' Fears The Most 05/24/2018. They also discuss the argument that criticizing rightwingers' ideas and policies just makes them even more rightwing, a variation on the undying "things will be worse if you protest" argument.
Lakoff is on much firmer ground in other posts on his blog, like The President Is The Nation: The Central Metaphor Trump Lives By 08/01/2017, where he analyzes some of Trump's own self-framing. "From all of these considerations, it seems clear that the President is living by the metaphor, with enormous repercussions for our nation and the world. We see this in his speeches, his tweets, and his official actions."
And he elaborates his idea about how Democrats can do positive framing on the issues of press freedom in A Modest Proposal: #ProtectTheTruth 01/03/2018.
So when the president attacks the press ..., don’t take the bait. Instead, focus on truth and its moral context. Truth is under attack. Let’s protect it, and express our appreciation for those brave journalists whose job is to spotlight it.
Some ground rules:
Don’t use any of his terms, images, or hashtags.
Ignore his antics — if you retweet it you can’t defeat it, and when you embed it you spread it. Deny him the virality he craves. Ignore his antics.
Shift the frame to focus on powerful, truthful reporting.
And he cites three examples that he considers good instances of framing by the left/center-left while staying true to factual reporting: Mother Jones' reporting on The Russian Connection; "Rachel Maddow’s steely-eyed focus on the Republican Party’s culpability in this mess and the need to hold them accountable" (although good framing in her case doesn't necessarily equate to the best reporting, given her frequent perkiness in reporting very serious material; and, Mark Hertsgaard's reporting on the climate crisis, e.g., Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch Have Set Our Future on FireThe Nation 12/11/2017.
But I don't think it's realistic to ask people to ignore Trump's tweets. He is the President of the United States, and his tweets can have major effects on how domestic and international issues are understood. I'm reminded of someone years ago writing to Miss Manners (Judith Martin) relating an instance of being at a party and the hostess tripped and fell onto the food table and the punch bowl. The question was whether guests should comment on it, or just pretend to ignore it. Her response was that if you consider it normal for a hostess to fall face-first into the punch bowl, in that case it would be appropriate to ignore it. Trump's tweets are pretty much face-down-in-the-punch-bowl every day.
Josh Marshall is saying the press and TV commentators should stop tiptoeing around the serious of Trump's misdeeds by talking vaguely about how he violating "norms" (Stop Talking about ‘Norms’ TPM 05/23/2018):
The President is trying to obstruct and stymie and hamstring a lawful investigation into his own crimes and those of his associates: by repeatedly lying, firing and threatening to fire people, intervening in law enforcement decisions in his own interest, fabricating fake stories to impede the investigation. The list goes on and on and even those who know better are becoming inured to it. The President is in the midst of a massive, more or less public and months-long effort to cover up his own crimes and the crimes of his associates. That’s really clear-cut. It’s obvious to anyone why that’s not okay. So we need to state that clearly so everyone will know what is at stake. Otherwise, everything becomes a blur. [my emphasis]
He also takes issue with the euphemistic use of "conflicts of interest":
A ‘conflict of interest’ is a case in which the nature of a situation makes it impossible for a person to separate their personal interests from their public responsibilities (or to appear to do so). All previous Presidents put their private wealth into blind trusts. We assume they weren’t going to try to directly make money off the presidency. But they wanted to remove any question of it and avoid situations where there own financial interests would bump up against their public responsibilities. What we’re seeing now are not conflicts of interest. They’re straight-up corruption. It’s like “norms”. Defining “conflicts of interest” is meant to keep relatively honest people on the straight and narrow or create tripwires that allow others to see when people in power crossing the line. Nothing like that is happening here. We have an increasingly open effort to make vast sums of money with the presidency. It’s happening in front of our eyes, albeit not quite as visibly as the coverup. [my emphasis]
I'm a day behind. And I'm going to cheat a bit, because this post is in yesterday's slot, but it's something that happened today. This one is too good to pass up.
Our distinguished President appeared on his favorite daily show "FOX & Friends Today." He got into history a bit. Drawing from the Washington Post transcript (Aaron Blake, Trump’s unwieldy ‘Fox and Friends’ interview, annotated 04/26/2018), Brian Kilmeade asked, "Have Republicans done a bad job ignoring the black community up until now?"
Trump responded:
TRUMP: You know, I think it was just a custom. People don’t realize, you know, if you go back to the Civil War it was the Republicans that really did the thing. Lincoln was a Republican. I mean, somehow it changed over the years, and I will say I really believe it's changing back. Remember, I was going to get no black votes?
DOOCY: Right.
TRUMP: I was going to get none? Well, I got a lot. I got a lot of support, you know, and I should have gotten much more. Now — in fact, I used to go around saying what do you have to lose? I'd say that at speeches, remember? I'd go into a stadium. I'd talk about the African American vote. I said the education is not good. The — obviously, the law enforcement that your community — the crime is at levels that nobody's ever seen before. You know, I'd go through like seven, 10 stats. I'd say vote for me. What do you have to lose?
DOOCY: Right.
TRUMP: So now they've voted for me, crime is way down, and really importantly, the unemployment picture —
DOOCY: [Um-huh].
TRUMP: — is the best it's been in the history of our country for African Americans.
Before it's buried in the daily flow of scandal and corruption news, it's worth remembering that Trump tweeted this on Sunday, June 21, the second day of the shutdown and the day before the first weekday of it:
This was a threat escalation on Trump's part. It also meant that there was a good possibility that the Republicans might bypass the brief delay that the Democrats' stand over DACA was causing.
If the Republicans had done that, the Democrats would still have lost on their stand. But they wouldn't be seen as clearly capitulating.
Here the show business and professional wrestling experience serves the Orange Clown well. After they folded their cards on Monday, he knew how to claim that he had punked the Democrats:
Big win for Republicans as Democrats cave on Shutdown. Now I want a big win for everyone, including Republicans, Democrats and DACA, but especially for our Great Military and Border Security. Should be able to get there. See you at the negotiating table!
Even Crazy Jim Acosta of Fake News CNN agrees: “Trump World and WH sources dancing in end zone: Trump wins again...Schumer and Dems caved...gambled and lost.” Thank you for your honesty Jim!
Nobody knows for sure that the Republicans & Democrats will be able to reach a deal on DACA by February 8, but everyone will be trying....with a big additional focus put on Military Strength and Border Security. The Dems have just learned that a Shutdown is not the answer!
Cryin’ Chuck Schumer fully understands, especially after his humiliating defeat, that if there is no Wall, there is no DACA. We must have safety and security, together with a strong Military, for our great people!
Alfred McCoy takes a snapshot of US foreign policy after a year of Donald Trump as President with a Secretary of State committed to a systematic dismantling of his own department in The World According to TrumpTomDispatch 01/16/2018:
... American leaders have been on top of the world for so long that they no longer remember how they got there. Few among Washington’s foreign policy elite seem to fully grasp the complex system that made U.S. global power what it now is, particularly its all-important geopolitical foundations. As Trump travels the globe, tweeting and trashing away, he’s inadvertently showing us the essential structure of that power, the same way a devastating wildfire leaves the steel beams of a ruined building standing starkly above the smoking rubble.
The architecture of the world order that Washington built after World War II was not only formidable but, as Trump is teaching us almost daily, surprisingly fragile. At its core, that global system rested upon a delicate duality: an idealistic community of sovereign nations equal under the rule of international law joined tensely, even tenuously, to an American imperium grounded in the realpolitik of its military and economic power.
And he suggests that we could "think of this duality as the State Department versus the Pentagon."
In a real sense, US power has been on the decline since the end of the Second World War. The US ended the war in overall great shape, militarily and economically, despite the large number of American lives lost in the war. The USSR was also victorious and constituted a major opposing pole of political orientation and a fundamentally different economic system. But it has also been devastated in the war.
And the "bipolar" confrontation between the two systems continued to reduce the relative strength of the United States, especially after the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949.
Adherents of the "realist" perspective in foreign policy argue that among nations there is a continuing shifting in balances of power, with each nation calculating its moves based on its own national self-interest. Self-interest isn't a constant factor, nor a simple one, nor one that is independent of the judgments and ideologies of the decision-makers. But some things, like an adversary power building up military bases on the border, are elements that any decision-maker about foreign policy in a country would regard as a potentially threatening factor that had to be taken into full account.
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union increased the relative strength of the US in the world system, because its largest competitor for world power had exited the historical stage. This gave rise to a triumphal attitude by American policymakers and politicians and, in the tendency that the realists recognized, led to arrogant and incautious actions. Prior to his death in 2005, the leading realist thinker, George Kennan, was warning that expanding NATO closer and closer to Russian borders would lead to offsetting reactions by Russia.
Ebbs and flows of influence will continue. But the longterm trend of US power and influence has been in decline since the end of World War II. That's not good or bad in itself. The British Empire fell apart after the Second World War, but Britain itself has remained one of the richest countries in the world and has basically only been involved in wars by its own choice, e.g., the Iraq War, the Libyan intervention. There are costs of various kinds to trying to maintain overwhelming military dominance in all parts of the world. Not least of which is the damage to democratic institutions and personal freedoms in the United States that comes from a condition of permanent war.
But it's one thing to pull back from overly costly or excessively risky commitments in other countries, military and otherwise. It's another to just blunder along without coherent or sensible political leadership McCoy:
If all great empires require skilled leadership at their epicenter to maintain what is always a fragile global equilibrium, then the Trump administration has failed spectacularly. As the State Department is eviscerated and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson discredited, Trump has -- uniquely for an American president -- taken sole control of foreign policy (with the generals he appointed to key civilian posts in tow).
McCoy gives this impressive list of examples of shifts occurring due to Trump's nationalistic "American First" policies:
All you have to do is note headlines in the daily media over the past year to grasp that Washington’s world dominion is crumbling, thanks to the sorts of cascading setbacks that often accompany imperial decline. Consider the first seven days of December, when the New York Times reported (without connecting the dots) that nation after nation was pulling away from Washington. First, there was Egypt, a country which had received $70 billion in U.S. aid over the previous 40 years and was now opening its military bases to Russian jet fighters; then, despite President Obama’s assiduous courtship of the country, Myanmar was evidently moving ever closer to Beijing; meanwhile, Australia, America’s stalwart ally for the last 100 years, was reported to be adapting its diplomacy, however reluctantly, to accommodate China’s increasingly dominant power in Asia; and finally, there was the foreign minister of Germany, that American bastion in Europe since 1945, pointing oh-so-publicly to a widening divide with Washington on key policy issues and insisting that clashes will be inevitable and relations “will never be the same.”
And that’s just to scratch the surface of one week’s news without even touching on the kinds of ruptures with allies regularly being ignited or emphasized by the president’s daily tweets. Just three examples from many will do: President Peña Nieto’s cancelation of a state visit after a tweet that Mexico had to pay for Trump’s prospective “big, fat, beautiful wall” on the border between the two countries; outrage from British leaders sparked by the president’s retweet of racist anti-Muslim videos posted on a Twitter account by the deputy leader of a neo-Nazi political group in that country, followed by his rebuke of British Prime Minister Theresa May for criticizing him over it; or his New Year’s Day blast accusing Pakistan of “nothing but lies & deceit” as a prelude to cutting off U.S. aid to that country. Considering all the diplomatic damage, you could say that Trump is tweeting while Rome burns.
Like many accounts of Trump's diplomacy, McCoy also points to the pullback from trade treaties like TPP also represents a ceding of diplomatic and strategic advantage to others, especially China in the case of TPP.
You don't have to think that TPP style "trade" treaties, which are primarily corporate deregulation treaties that have become an important tool to lock in Herbert Hooverish neoliberal economic policies, are good in themselves to also recognize that Trump's approach has been a one-sided yielding of diplmatic and strategic power. A more progressive approach to trade treaties would have the potential to restore some of that influence but on a basis that would benefit ordinary people more substantially. Obviously, that's not the approach Trump is taking.
He makes this point about whether Trump is "normal." The Democrats in 2017 generally stressed how abnormal Trump's Presidency is. And it's not hard to find points in favor of that argument: the blustering nationalism, the reckless tweeting, the blantant authortarian actions and threats, the narcissistic bombast, his obvious contempt for members of the female gender, his crass mixing of the Presidency and his family business.
But Grunwald also makes a reasonable observation here:
The most consequential aspect of President Trump — like the most consequential aspect of Candidate Trump — has been his relentless shattering of norms: norms of honesty, decency, diversity, strategy, diplomacy and democracy, norms of what presidents are supposed to say and do when the world is and isn’t watching. As I keep arguing in these periodic Trump reviews, it’s a mistake to describe his all-caps rage-tweeting or his endorsement of an accused child molester or his threats to wipe out “Little Rocket Man” as unpresidential, because he’s the president. He’s by definition presidential. The norms he’s shattered are by definition no longer norms. His erratic behavior isn’t normal, but it’s inevitably becoming normalized, a predictably unpredictable feature of our political landscape. It’s how we live now, checking our phones in the morning to get a read on the president’s mood. The American economy is still strong, and he hasn’t started any new wars, so pundits have focused a lot of their hand-wringing on the effect his norm-shattering will have on future leaders, who will be able to cite the Trump precedent if they want to hide their tax returns or use their office to promote their businesses or fire FBI directors who investigate them. But Trump still has three years left in his term. And the norms he’s shattered can’t constrain his behavior now that he’s shattered them. [my emphasis]
To recognize Trump's antics and misconduct as a "new normal" is not the same as endorsing them.
Grunwald adds this accurate observation:
... after campaigning as an anti-establishment populist, Trump has mostly governed as a partisan corporatist, earning loyalty points from congressional Republicans by stocking his administration with movement conservatives and embracing their unpopular agenda, ditching his promises to protect Medicaid and close tax loopholes for hedge funds while consistently siding with business owners and investors over workers and consumers. Congressional Republicans, even those who once called him unfit to serve, have mostly ignored his antics and even his sporadic attacks on them, kissing his ring in public even as they roll their eyes in private. They’d prefer their tax cuts without the white nationalist retweets, but it’s a package deal.
As he puts it later in the long article, "The point is that the crazy stuff Trump does is not a distraction from the important stuff Trump does. It’s important when the president does crazy stuff."
An Inaugural Address that was at once a statement of triumph and a manifesto of change. A Supreme Court nomination fight that altered the Senate’s customs and transformed its rules. Repeated efforts to overturn Obamacare. Heightened tensions with North Korea — and with the mainstream media. A final push for a tax overhaul. Ferocious opposition, and ferocious devotion. ...
He has changed how presidents behave. He has changed how presidents talk. He has changed how presidents communicate. He has changed how presidents deal with Congress. He has changed how presidents approach the press. He has changed how presidents regard international trade. He has changed how prsidents deal with foreign countries. He has changed how presidents interact with scientists. He has changed how presidents treat the agencies and departments of their own government.
As Disrupter in Chief, Mr. Trump is arguably more in tune with the national zeitgeist than was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton who, though she would have been the first female president, would have comported herself more like previous modern presidents, from FDR to Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama, than has Mr. Trump, for whom there seems no antecedent, although John Tyler, Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson might be the closest approximations.
Is this analysis, criticism, or praise? For Trump's fans, Trump being a "disrupter" is a good thing. He's shaking things up, challenging the Establishment, yadda, yadda, and - most importantly - doing it in the pursuit of goals that free-market zealots, white supremacists and corporate tax-cutters and deregulators can enthusiastically support.
Also, a special moment of garment-rending for Shribman's choice of Presidential comparisons: Jackson, Tyler and Andrew Johnson?!?
As Grunwald accurately notes, "Republicans have made it pretty clear that they don’t plan to stand up to Trump." And he reminds us of various ways in which the Republican Party has long been practicing a radical approach to politics while the Democrats take a conservative approach to preserving political norms even when it works to their disadvantage:
In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, which was perhaps the most effective shattering of Washington norms—first by helping elect Trump, by giving skeptical conservatives a pressing reason to vote for him, and later by enabling Trump to fill the vacancy with Justice Gorsuch, who will keep pulling American jurisprudence to the right long after Trump has left office.
Kirsten Gillibrand's national political visibility got an obvious boost from her taking the initiative to pressure Al Franken to resign over vague allegations of sexual misconduct on the level of rudeness, most of them from anonymous sources, as of this writing and at the time of Franken's resignation speech in the Senate.
In announcing her demand that Franken resign in a Facebook post of 12/06/2017, she included this remarkable statement:
While it’s true that his behavior is not the same as the criminal conduct alleged against Roy Moore, or Harvey Weinstein, or President Trump, it is still unquestionably wrong, and should not be tolerated by those of us who are privileged to work in public service.
As the mother of two young boys, we owe it to our sons and daughters to not equivocate, but to offer clarity. We should not have to be explaining the gradations between sexual assault, harassment and unwelcome groping. And what message do we send to our sons and daughters when we accept gradations of crossing the line? None of it is ok and none of it should be tolerated. [my emphasis]
It's quite a double message to acknowledge that the vague and publicly unproven claims against Franken are not "criminal conduct" but then immediately after to insist that in public life and in private standards ("our sons and daughters") we should not "accept gradations of crossing the line" among "sexual assault, harassment and unwelcome groping."
That a reckless and foolish standard. For law, for private life, for business, for public life. Telling a dirty joke in the office may deserve a reminder from the boss not to be vulgar. But to be a good reason to fire someone, much less imprison them, it would need to be an exceptionally dirty joke.
And, yes, to be clear, I'm being sarcastic on the last point, although there might be circumstances - doing so in front of a customer, or a junior executive inserting one into a presentation to the company board of directors, in which a single instance might be justifiable. But by the Gillibrand Standard, we should accept no "gradations" of seriousness of an offence among "sexual assault, harassment and unwelcome groping." We should assume that an attempted kiss, one of the sins of which Franken is accused, also fits in that category of the Gillibrand standard, since it was the Franken case that was the occasion of her statement.
As a practical matter, the Republicans will look at the Democratic Senate revolt against Franken as a sign of weakness, including Franken's decision to resign while denying the accuracy of the charges. Republicans are very adapt at using these kinds of claims against Democratic opponents, or "weaponizing" them as the pundits now say.
Also as a practical matter, Gillibrand's initiative removes Franken as a potential competitor for the Presidential nomination in 2020. Other potential/likely Democratic Presidential candidates that joined in the call for Franken's resignation before he publicly declared his intention to do so were Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
But Gillibrand was the one whose leadership on the matter earned her a couple of valuable puff pieces in the days since. The New York Times reported the same day as her Facebook post: Shane Goldmacher, On Sexual Misconduct, Gillibrand Keeps Herself at the ForeNew York Times 12/06/2017. The flattering graphic below accompanied Politico's story on her:
Her earlier use of the Roy Moore scandal to score points with Democrats suspicious of Clinton paved the way for her Franken publicity bonanza: Jennifer Steinhauer, Bill Clinton Should Have Resigned Over Lewinsky Affair, Kirsten Gillibrand SaysNew York Times 11/16/2017. Politics is politics, and her positions on that issue and Franken have been politically beneficial to her in the short term. When even a Gillibrand Presidential candidacy can survive the incredibly low barrier set by the Gillibrand Standard remains to be seen. If there's a photo of her from some time in her life playfully pinching somebody on the butt, that could be embarrassing.
Now Trump has decided to make her the same kind of target he made Hillary Clinton:
Gillibrand responded:
You cannot silence me or the millions of women who have gotten off the sidelines to speak out about the unfitness and shame you have brought to the Oval Office. https://t.co/UbQZqubXZv
I won't try to predict how this will play out. I will say that Trump's base doesn't care about sexual harassment and assault charges against him. And the Franken case gives good reason to worry that Democrats will not be able to outplay the Republicans on the politics of this. To the extent that Democratic responses to this and future Trump outbursts on the subject comes off to Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters as, "You can't criticize me because I'm a girl," that will not be good for the Democrats.
Trump operates as a professional wrestler. He portrays a theatrical image of toughness with blowhard nonsense like this. But it has so far worked remarkably well for him politically. And Trump's professional wrestling instinct may be telling him Kirsten Gillibrand would be a useful foil for him.
The Democrats need to use their advantage on the sexual harassment issue without forgetting that Republicans can do the same. And the radical difference between how the parties' respective voting bases regarding the issue. And that makes it more complicated for the Democrats. Because the Democratic base has a lot of people, male and female, who are more inclined toward "believe the evidence" than simply "believe women." Especially ones who remember the Clinton pseudoscandals of the 1990s. And a lot of the Democratic base will not feel the least bit comfortable with the Gillibrand Standard of treating "sexual assault, harassment and unwelcome groping" as a set of equivalent sins.
And even in the midst of justifiable outrage about Trump's obviously sexist and sleazy tweet above, it can also be read and understood by the Republican base as a swipe at political corruption. It's a joke to think of Trump as an opponent of corruption. But the effect of political symbolism is not purely a matter of logical reflection. John Marshall has an insightful take on the corruption angle of the tweet and how Trump more generally works the issue, The Only Honor Is CorruptionTPM 12/12/2017.
And that was the approach that White House publicity hack Sarah Huckabee Sanders took in her daily briefing today, beginning just after 21:30 (PBS Newshour 12/12/2017). She returns to it later in the press conference and works it hard:
Also, am I the only one to think that Trump's reference to Sen. Schumer in that tweet was a bit of anti-Semitism? Sarah Huckabee Sanders referred to Gillibrand as a "puppet" of Schumers, "puppet-master" being a long-time feature of anti-Semitic propaganda.
The President has been venting on Twitter again. Like most every day. But this round could be seriously self-incriminating.
Trump now admits he tried to block the FBI’s investigation of Michael Flynn knowing he had lied to the FBI — further evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice. https://t.co/DxlEjbMdQz
NEW: Trump's tweet about knowing Flynn lied to the FBI "adds to the evidence that Trump was attempting to obstruct or impede the investigation of a crime," ex-federal prosecutor tells me.https://t.co/m2AR2lwR0A
Trump’s lawyer John Dowd drafted the president’s tweet, according to two people familiar with the twitter message. Its authorship could reduce how significantly it communicates anything about when the president knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI, but also raises questions about the public relations strategy of the president's chief lawyer.
Ian Millhiser notes:
Just so we’re clear, a vetted statement drafted by counsel that admits to a crime is MUCH MORE INCRIMINATING than a tweet tossed off by a suspect with a well-known reputation for saying things that aren’t true.
Brent Griffiths reports on the latest round in Trump doubles down on Flynn defense, draws scrutiny with FBI tweet Politico 12/02/2017:
Legal experts quickly pointed out Trump could have just publicly admitted he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when the president approached then-FBI Director James Comey and asked him to drop the investigation into his national security adviser several days after Flynn's Jan. 24 interview, which could then indicate an attempt to obstruct justice had taken place.
Flynn's Friday plea includes an admission that he lied to FBI agents about conversations with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak about U.S. sanctions against Russia and about a pending United Nation Security Council vote targeting Israeli settlements.
Later Saturday evening, Trump doubled down on his defense of Flynn, saying that his former national security adviser's life was "ruined," but that former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton escaped any punishment for "lies."
So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday “interrogation” with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times...and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?
Many people in our Country are asking what the “Justice” Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and “acid washed” 33,000 Emails? No justice!
In yesterday's post on Arlie Russell Hochschild and her study on Louisiana Tea Party supporters, I mentioned an article of hers that appears in the current (10:1917) Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, Weiß und stolz und abgehängt.Donald Trump und der Südstaaten-Rassismus (behind subscription at this writing).
Part of her point in this article is that Southern Tea Party adherents - it would be redundant to say "white" adherents - focus on the government as the image and main instrument of the groups they see as the enemy: Yankees, coastal elites, Hollywood, black people, professional women, the mainstream media. In part, this is because of the eternal complaint against alleged freeloaders: "Und zudem gab der Staat Leuten Geld, die nicht arbeiteten, und untergrub damit die mit der Arbeit verknüpfte Anerkennung und Ehre." ("On top of it all, the government gave money to people who don't work and thereby undermined the recognition and honor tied up with work.")
The article notes that it is a translation into German from English, so I'm reverse-translating here without having the English original available.
But Tea Partiers do not view the government as a whole as their enemy. On the contrary, they worship the military and the police, worship in the Christian theological sense of idolatry even. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE agents terrorizing Latino parents picking up their children and school - those actual coercive agents of the state, they ones that are charged with using physical violence on behalf of law-and-order, they are big fans of those!
No, it's the civilian government that raises their hatred. And particularly those aspects of civilian government that they imagine to benefit people less fortunate and/or less white than they are.
Hochschild describes a related aspect of Tea Partiers' admiration for Donald Trump's demagoguery and his rejection of "political correctness":
Daher hörten viele mit freudiger Erleichterung einen Donald Trump reden, der offenbar hemmungslos, omnipotent und wunderbar frei von jeglichen Einschränkungen durch politische Korrektheit war. Er äußerte sich verallgemeinernd über alle Muslime, alle Mexikaner, alle Frauen – unter anderem auch darüber, dass Frauen menstruierten, was er „ekelhaft” fand. (So sagte er über Megyn Kelly, die Nachrichtenmoderatorin von „Fox News“, sie „blute aus was auch immer”). Munter imitierte er einen behinderten Journalisten, indem er seine Arme schüttelte und so eine Zerebralparese nachahmte – in den Augen seiner Gegner alles zutiefst abfällige Äußerungen, die jedoch befreiend auf all jene wirkten, die sich durch die Mitleidsverpflichtung geknebelt fühlten. Trump ermöglichte es ihnen, sich als gute, moralische Amerikaner zu empfinden und zugleich überlegen gegenüber Menschen zu fühlen, die sie für „anders” oder unter ihnen stehend hielten.
[From that viewpoint, many listen to Donald Trump speak with happy relief, he being clearly unrestrained, omnipotent and miraculously free from any limitations from political correctness. He made sweeping declarations sweepingly about all Muslims, all Mexicans, all women - including even about women menstruating, which he finds "disgusting." (So he said about Megyn Kelly, the news moderator for Fox News, that she "had blood coming out of her wherever.") He jauntily imitated a disabled journalist by shaking his arms in order mimic cerebral palsy - in the eyes of his opponents, all the most deeply derogatory expressions, which nevertheless had a liberating effect on all those who felt themselves gagged by the obligation to feel pity. Trump made it possible for them to experience themselves as good, moral Americans and at the same time to feel superior to people that they regarded as "other" or beneath them.]
Or, to put it more succinctly, they got a thrill by identifying with Trump's meanness. This is a typical characteristic of authoritarian followers. Trying to understand this in terms of their "deep story," a Hochschild term that is otherwise useful, complicatres rather than clarifies understanding of how this attitude translates into the politics of Trumpism.
We could say that a normative issue imposes itself here. At what point does explaining this kind of collective joy in meanness cross over from understanding it to justifying it?
And this is not jsut a matter of show business. We see in Trump's callous and irresponsible response to Puerto Rico's hurricane disaster right now that this kind of meanness has ugly, real-world consequences. No matter how "liberating" Trump-adoring white people in Louisiana might feel it is to see Puerto Ricans suffer and die due to the kind of meanness Trump practices as President or how much "happy relief" it may give the Louisiana Tea Partiers.
If the reference above to white conservatives' complaints about welfare loafers seems like a throwback to the 1960s, Hochschild is also aware that the throwback goes even further.
In explaining the historical and sociological background of Southern whites, Hochschild relies heavily on the classic by W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South (1941). Cash's book is a standard work and often quoted. But it was published in 1941. It has historical value. But it doesn't directly address the political of white Republicans in the Deep South in 2017. And even her historical accounts rely on confusingly wide descriptions. It likely wouldn't be clear to readers who weren't history with the history of sharecropping, for example, that this system was a post-Civil war institution, not an antebellum one.
But her historical account in this article recounts the neo-Confederate pseudohistory:
Dann brach der Bürgerkrieg aus, und der Norden schlug den Süden vernichtend. Städte wurden niedergebrannt, Felder verwüstet – teils von konföderierten Truppen auf dem Rückzug. Nach dem Bürgerkrieg ersetzte der Norden die Regierungen der Südstaaten durch eigene, handverlesene Gouverneure. Profitgierige Glücksritter kamen als Agenten des dominierenden Nordens. Ausbeuter aus dem Norden, eine wütende, traumatisierte schwarze Bevölkerung zu Hause und von allen Seiten moralische Verurteilung – das war das Bild, das mir die wütenden Südstaatler zeichneten.
[Then the Civil War broke out, and the North pulverized the South. Cities were burned down, fields wasted - partially by retreating Confederate troops. After the war, the North replaced the governments of the Southern state with its own hand-picked Governors. Profit-seeking adventurers came as agents of the domineering North. Exploiters from the North, an angry, traumatized black population at home and moral judgments from all sides - that was the picture that the furious Southerners drew.]
That's my translation from the German. And this is my supplemental translation out of Neo-Confederate-Speak:
Then the Civil War broke out when Southern slaveowners insisted on seceeding to defend slavery when they rejected the democratic results of the Presidential election of 1860. The North pulverized the South in four years of bloody warfare initiated by the white southern planters to defend their "right" to own other human beings as property. Cities were burned down, fields wasted - partially by retreating Confederate troops. And when the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederate states, mass abandonment of the plantations by black ex-slaves, most of them native Southerners by birth, played a massive part in the "pulverizing" of the traitor Rebel government.After the war, the North replaced the governments of the Southern state with its own hand-picked Governors.(That one is too much of a fiction to even qualify.) Profit-hungry adventurers came as agents of the domineering North, according to the WATB grumbling of many former Confederates, even though massive capital investment from the hated North was desperately needed. Many Northern whites also came to act in such roles as schoolteachers, motivated by a patriotic and Christian desire to create a better future for the South that had been wrecked due to the treason of the slaveholding planter class. Exploiters from the North, as Southern white supremacists were wont to call any of their fellow Americans from the North, an angry, traumatized black population eager to become responsible free citizens, voters and full participants in civil life, and moral judgments from all sides - except from that of white supremacists who still hated democracy and Constitutional government, judgments that came because even Northerners who had previously been indifferent to slavery had been confronted with the true horror and destructiveness of the slave system - that was the picture that the furious white Southerners who rejected the American form of government and the American way of life drew, even though a significant number of Southern whites also supported the new democratic governments established during Reconstruction.
A very similar passage appears in her book Strangers in Their Own Land (2016), although she includes a couple of phrases there to slightly distance herself from the narrative, indicating that she's describing the version her Tea Party subjects gave her.
As a native-born white Mississippian, I'm tempted to say that only a Yankee would swallow that white Southerners actually believe that Lost Cause, neo-Confederate version of history. Yankees in my experience tend to be generous-minded in that way.
But for the most part, for any adult white Southerners that present the view of the Civil War and its aftermath that she describes there, one of three things is going on: (1) they are shooting off their mouths without putting their brains in gear; or, (2) they've made no effort to fact-check even the most superficial aspects of that story, even though the information is readily available; or, (3) they know it's hogwash and they are just repeating it because they see it as the White Man's tribal narrative and they identify with it and doing give a flying flip if it's actually true.
All of this points to a basic problem in trying to understand and explain a political phenomenon like the Tea Party or Trumpism in terms of a "deep story" that is heavily based on long-established ideological constructs. And deeply dishonest ones, at that.
These two articles give a good glimpse of how the disaster that hurricane/tropical storm Harvey represents is in critical ways a result of the dominance of neoliberal economics and politics in the last four decades. And that's neoliberal in the Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, IFM, Washington Consensus kind of ideology.
Once, long ago, the conservative activist Grover Norquist famously said that he wanted to shrink "government" to a size at which it could be drowned in the bathtub. Well, people actually are drowning in Houston now, and so is the political philosophy that reached its height when Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural that government wasn't the solution, but the problem itself. We all moved onto a political flood plain then, and we're being swept away.
We live in a world in which the governing powers have shown themselves all too willing to exploit the diversion of a large-scale crisis, and the very fact that so many are focused on life-and-death emergencies, to ram through their most regressive policies, policies that push us further along a road that is rightly understood as a form of “climate apartheid.” We saw it after Hurricane Katrina, when Republicans wasted no time pushing for a fully privatized school system, weakening labor and tax law, increasing oil and gas drilling and refining, and flinging the door open to mercenary companies like Blackwater. Mike Pence was a key architect of that highly cynical project — and we should expect nothing less in Harvey’s wake, now that he and Trump are at the wheel.
We are already seeing Trump using the cover of Hurricane Harvey to push through the hugely controversial pardoning of Joe Arpaio, as well as the further militarization of U.S. police forces. These are particularly ominous moves in the context of news that immigration checkpoints are continuing to operate wherever highways are not flooded (a serious disincentive for migrants to evacuate), as well as in the context of municipal officials tough-talking about maximum penalties for any “looters” (it’s well worth remembering that after Katrina, several African-American residents of New Orleans were shot by police amid this kind of rhetoric.)
Another reminder that, while Mike Pence less erratic and emotionally deranged as Trump, he's also committed to a series of disastrous policies.
One of things about the President of the United States is that he is head of state (like kings and queens and the presidents in several countries of Europe) and head of government (like Chancellors and Prime Ministers in Europe).
A head of government and a head of state should be able to straightforwardly condemn a murderous white supremacist terrorist attack without mealy-mouthing about "both sides" being to blame.
