The Washington Post editorial board opines—An un-American registry:
In recent days, Kris Kobach, a prominent anti-illegal immigration hard-liner working on Mr. Trump’s transition, said the team was considering whether to formally recommend a national registry for visitors and immigrants from Muslim countries. A day later, Carl Higbie, who was spokesman for a highly visible super PAC behind the Trump campaign, said a registry for Muslims would “pass constitutional muster.” As precedent, he cited the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II — not that he is urging prison camps for Muslims, Mr. Higbie noted comfortingly.
At the least, those incendiary remarks suggest that the transition team hasn’t gotten the memo from Mr. Trump, who has pledged publicly to seek national reconciliation. If the president-elect’s camp is trying to scare the bejeezus out of America’s 3.3 million Muslims, it’s doing a fine job.
Mr. Kobach, the Republican secretary of state in Kansas, suggested that a registry might revive elements of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, a measure enacted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that required visitors and immigrants from higher-risk countries, mainly Muslims, to submit to fingerprinting, interrogations and in some cases parole-like check-ins with authorities. [...]
A registry for Muslims, even if masquerading as one for people from “risky” countries,” is no less odious than Newt Gingrich’s proposal this summer, after the terrorist attack in the French city of Nice, to submit all Muslims in the United States to a “test” and deport those who believe in sharia law. Both approaches would screen people based on identity — faith or ethnicity — rather than deeds, and single them out for intrusive and indiscriminate government snooping. [...]
One doesn’t have to be a Muslim or have Muslims in the family to find these xenophobic, Islamophobic proposals scary, unjust and infuriating. Just being a human being should be enough. But Muslims are part of my family. Two step-children and four grandchildren. American citizens all. And my fury and fear have been rising with every pronouncement that soon-to-be prominent officials in the Trump administration have been uttering.
When my step-children arrived in the United States in 2000 after being forcibly separated incommunicado from their mother for 15 years by her Libyan ex-husband, each of them at the airport bought a small U.S. flag, the kind some people put on their car antennas. Proud to be Americans. They have since become more critical, exercising their constitutional right to free speech by, for example, opposing the Iraq war. If their names wound up on a registry and their outspokenness came to the attention of officials who think such registries are a good idea, what action might be taken? How far would our incoming leaders go?
Patrick Eddington at Just Security writes—The Islamophobia Administration:
Trump, Bannon, Sessions, Pompeo, former DIA Director (and Trump National Security Adviser designee) Mike Flynn, and Trump transition team adviser and long-time Islamophobe Frank Gaffney are poised to further derange our counterterrorism policy. By increasing the demonization and stigmatization of Arab or Muslim immigrants, they will legitimize the ISIS narrative that America is at war with Islam as a whole—giving public relations oxygen to Salafist-oriented terrorist organizations from Africa to Southeast Asia, facilitating their recruitment efforts globally.
Even more ominously, if Trump picks similar Islamophobes to lead the Department of Homeland Security and fill out sub-cabinet positions with the Department of Justice, Arab- and Muslim-Americans will see still more of their tax dollars go to potentially fund the persecution of them and their families. Some key positions in DHS—namely the Chief Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer and the head of DHS’s Office of Community Partnerships (the department’s “countering violent extremism” office)—do not require Senate confirmation. Some of Gaffney’s acolytes have already been floated as possible Trump national security team members in slots that the Senate will have no say over. The implications are truly chilling.
Juan Cole at Informed Comment writes—Why Internment of Japanese Americans is an outrageous model for registering Muslim-Americans:
Trump adviser Carl Higbie told Megyn Kelly on Fox “News” that the new administration wanted to create a registration list of US Muslims, and he compared this step to the interment of the Japanese-Americans during WW II:
It is legal. They say it’ll hold constitutional muster. I know the ACLU is going to challenge it, but I think it’ll pass,” Higbie said. “… We did it during World War II with Japanese, which, you know, call it what you will, maybe —
What is truly weird is that Higbie volunteered to compare such a registration list to the internment of Japanese Americans. It raises questions of just how far zealots such as he are willing to take this hatred of Americans of Muslim faith.
The internment of Japanese-Americans was not a policy precedent but a massive crime against innocents who had not been proven to have done anything wrong. Many Japanese-Americans fought bravely in the US military even while their families had lost their homes.
This is sort of like saying, of course the Federal government can commit genocide. Why, we did it to the Native Americans.
Paul Krugman at The New York Times writes—Build He Won’t:
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s chief strategist, is a white supremacist and purveyor of fake news. But the other day, in an interview with, um, The Hollywood Reporter, he sounded for a minute like a progressive economist. “I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan,” he declared. “With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything.”
So is public investment an area in which progressives and the incoming Trump administration can find common ground? Some people, including Bernie Sanders, seem to think so.
But remember that we’re dealing with a president-elect whose business career is one long trail of broken promises and outright scams — someone who just paid $25 million to settle fraud charges against his “university.” Given that history, you always have to ask whether he’s offering something real or simply engaged in another con job. In fact, you should probably assume that it’s a scam until proven otherwise.
John Naughton at The Guardian writes—A moment of truth amid the fake news for Mark Zuckerberg:
...Zuckerberg says that he doesn’t want fake news on Facebook, but it turns out that getting rid of it is very difficult because “identifying the ‘truth’ is complicated”. Philosophers worldwide will agree with that proposition. But you don’t need to have a Nobel prize to check whether the pope did indeed endorse Trump or whether Clinton conducted the supposed purchases of arms or a Maldives house.
Zuckerberg’s problem is that he doesn’t want to engage in that kind of fact-checking, because that would be a tacit acknowledgement that Facebook is a publisher rather than just a technology company and therefore has some editorial responsibilities. And what he omits to mention is that Facebook has a conflict of interest in these matters. It makes its vast living, remember, from monitoring and making money from the data trails of its users. The more something is “shared” on the internet, the more lucrative it is for Facebook.
Just to put some numbers behind that assertion, research by BuzzFeed journalistsdiscovered that “top fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from 19 major news outlets combined”. The study found that over the last three months of the election campaign, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyper-partisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook, whereas the 20 best-performing election stories from 19 major news websites generated a total of 7,367,000 shares, reactions and comments. In other words, if you run a social networking site, fake news is good for business, even if it’s bad for democracy.
Jessica Valenti at The Guardian writes—‘Vote shaming’ Trump supporters is fair. What they have done is shameful
Trump voters sure are sensitive lately. They’re upset that the cast of the hit play Hamilton made a statement to Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, and that the audience booed him. They’re displeased that their vote is costing them relationships with family and friends. And for some reason not entirely clear to me, they’re unhappy with Starbucks and decided to demonstrate as much by … buying lots of coffee at Starbucks.
The same people who wear shirts that read “fuck your feelings” and rail against “political correctness” seem to believe that there should be no social consequences for their vote. I keep hearing calls for empathy and healing, civility and polite discourse. As if supporting a man who would fill his administration with white nationalists and misogynists is something to simply agree to disagree on.
Absolutely not. You don’t get to vote for a person who brags about sexual assault and expect that the women in your life will just shrug their shoulders. You don’t get to play the victim when people unfriend you on Facebook, as if being disliked for supporting a bigot is somehow worse than the suffering that marginalized people will endure under Trump. And you certainly do not get to enjoy a performance by people of color and those in the LGBT community without remark or protest when you enact policies and stoke hatred that put those very people’s lives in danger
David Atkins at The Washington Monthly writes—Stop Blaming the Voters
Torched by the surprise election of Donald Trump, the greatest minds of the establishment classes have convened and made their proclamation: it’s not their fault. The voters of America just aren’t moral enough to embrace their message.
Of course, it’s not the voters’ fault. The voters did exactly what many of us predicted they would. In a race featuring a status quo Democrat insisting that America is already great against an angry GOP populist, the populist shifted voters making under $50K/year by 25 points away from the Democrats and made gains in almost every single demographic category except one: rich people making over $100K per year. Clinton did better than Obama among the well-heeled by 10 points! Pour the champagne, pull out your diamond-studded safety pins and raise a toast.
Only the brilliant minds of the establishment could have taken a race featuring a 68-year-old white lifetime civil servant, running against a comically corrupt billionaire real estate tycoon who rides in a gilded elevator to a gaudy sex palace highrise home befitting a Sasha Baron Cohen character, and turn it into a referendum on temperament and multiculturalism instead of inequality.
Richard Wolffe at The Guardian writes—Michael Flynn will be a disaster as national security adviser:
Say what you like about past presidents and their international legacies, but it’s hard to dispute the caliber of their national security advisers.
From Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, from Zbig Brzezinski to Sandy Berger, from Condi Rice to Susan Rice: the list is a long line in smart, seasoned and strategic thinkers.
Until now. Donald Trump’s decision to pick Lt Gen Michael Flynn as his most senior national security aide is a rupture with the past and with sane foreign policy.
Flynn is a conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe who hangs around the darker corners of the white nationalist internet. He also lost his last job in the intelligence services, I suspect because he can’t manage his way out of a paper bag.
All of which would be mildly amusing if Flynn wasn’t about to take on a job that will determine the immediate fate of large parts of the globe.
Yes. Hard to dispute the intellectual caliber of those past advisers, but the moral caliber of several of them is another matter. Flynn, on the other hand, falls short in both categories.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—What Democrats owe the country:
However attractive an old-fashioned let’s-pass-good-stuff strategy might seem, the alarming signals emanating from Trump Tower require more than politics as usual.
If Democrats do not issue very clear warnings and lay out very bright lines against the most odious and alarming aspects of Trumpism, they will be abdicating their central obligation as the party of opposition. This is not a time for ideological and factional positioning or for focusing on the 2018 elections.
Before they even get to infrastructure, Democrats and all other friends of freedom must make clear that if Trump abandons the basic norms of our democracy, all the roads in the world won’t pave over his transgressions.
Jamelle Bouie at Slate writes—Government by the Worst Men:
What would it look like to live under a kakistocracy, Greek for “government by the worst men”?
You would have grifters and cronies and unqualified loyalists, but what else? What does it mean for someone to be the worst, and what does it mean for those people to have the reins of power?
After this presidential transition, we are going to find out. Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump said he would hire “the best people” to staff his administration. If “best people” means experienced politicians, dedicated experts, or even skilled businesspeople, then he’s stretching the truth. Few people with those qualifications are on board for an appointment to the Trump White House. But if “best people” means the hangers-on of the Trump campaign—the white nationalists, petty authoritarians, and conspiracy-mongers—then we’re on target.
The New York Times editorial board concludes—Keeping the Drillers From Sacred Grounds:
A ceremony all too familiar to American Indian tribes — the signing of still another agreement with federal officials — took place Wednesday in the Blackfeet country of Montana. But this time, instead of winding up on the losing end, the tribe enjoyed a welcome reversal of fortune in its long struggle to protect its sacred grounds. With Blackfeet leaders in ceremonial headdress, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell canceled 15 energy exploration leases in the Badger-Two Medicine Area along the majestic Rocky Mountain Front, halting the feared desecration of lands at the heart of the tribe’s creation story.
Tribal history warned of usurpers: “If they gain a footing here, trouble for you will follow.” The federal order denies any future foothold to Devon Energy, the leaseholder, which did not challenge the administration’s finding that the necessary environmental reviews had never been completed and that the tribe was never properly consulted. The decision is also in keeping with the Obama administration’s broader pledge when it came to power to take a more measured and protective approach to energy exploration on public lands.
Dave Kamper at In These Times writes—Jane McAlevey Is Right About Labor’s Problem—But Wrong About the Solution:
No one who cares about the future of the American labor can disagree with the conclusion of Jane McAlevey’s new book, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age.
She calls for a “bottom-up organizing model, one that encourages and equips workers to resist the multifaceted assault on their interests inside and outside the workplace.” That sort of organizing is necessary for unions to survive and thrive, McAlevey writes, outlining both her book’s greatest virtue and its biggest problem. She is right that organizing needs to be what the labor movement does, but wrong in her analysis of why unions aren’t doing enough of it now. [...]
I share McAlevey’s belief that unions can and should do better, and that they need to involve workers in all aspects of a campaign. But their failures aren’t the consequence of a deeply-ingrained, all-encompassing flawed philosophy. Nor is the solution, as McAlevey argues, the wholesale adoption of a different model of organizing. Trying to find an ideal “model” is a distraction. Organizing is hard. It is expensive, risky and even in ideal circumstances fails a lot. The lesson of the stories in McAlevey’s new book is that the best organizing isn’t done by adhering to an abstract organizing model, but by properly assessing where you are, where you need to go and how to get there.
John Nichols at The Nation writes—The Koch Brothers’ Favorite Congressman Will Be in Charge of the CIA:
In the “Republican Wave” election of 2010, when brothers Charles and David Koch emerged as defining figures in American politics, the greatest beneficiary of Koch Industries largess was the newly elected Congressman Mike Pompeo. Since his election, Pompeo has been referred to as the “Koch Brothers’ Congressman” and “the congressman from Koch.” [...]
Pompeo came out of the same Wichita, Kansas, business community where the Koch family’s oil-and-gas conglomerate is headquartered. Indeed, Pompeo built his own company with seed money from Koch Venture Capital.
More importantly, from a political standpoint, is the fact that Pompeo made the leap from business to government with a big boost from the Koch brothers and their employees. “I’m sure he would vigorously dispute this, but it’s hard not to characterize him as the congressman from Koch,” says University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis.
In fact, that’s a strikingly appropriate characterization for the man who Donald Trump wants “to serve as head of the United States intelligence community; act as the principal adviser to the President for intelligence matters related to the national security; and serve as head of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Jeet Heer at The New Republic writes—Fake News Isn’t the Problem:
Rather than blaming the “fake news” sites or social-media purveyors like Facebook, Democrats need to realize they compounded the problem by gearing their general-election strategy to winning over moderate or Trump-averse Republicans. This strategy had the effect of blunting a message of economic populism, which got sidelined despite the fact that Clinton was running on the most progressive platform in history. Pursuing suburban college-educated Republicans who were always going to be reluctant to support her clouded over the very economic message that would’ve appealed to working class voters of all races, leading to a fatally lower turnout from the Obama coalition in decisive states like Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Social media may have empowered the spread of fake news—and Trump’s candidacy surely fueled it. But it’s the Democrats’ own flawed political strategy that made the rise of fake news so important—and perhaps so decisive—in 2016.