Leonard Pitts on telling the truth about the Republican Party.
Miami Herald
Here’s how The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group.
It is, they say, “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” That definition is offered preparatory to an explosive question:
Is the Republican Party a hate group?
I have my hand up. Pick me.
Granted, in its “official statements or principles,” the party doesn’t meet the SPLC standard.
Over here. I have an answer.
For half a century, then, the GOP has taught white voters racial resentment, taught them to prioritize concerns about white prerogative over concerns about shuttered factories, dirty water, lack of healthcare, foreclosed futures. It did this in code — “Willie Horton,” “tax cuts,” “welfare queen” — which, while obvious to all but the most gullible, still allowed respectable white men and women to maintain fig leaves of deniability.
So politicians accepted the votes, but never had to acknowledge the means of their manufacture. White voters gave them the votes, but never had to confront the reasons they did so.
Donald Trump is the payoff of that devil’s bargain. His “innovation” has been to shred subtlety and abandon code. With blunt, brutish clarity, he tells four black and brown women to “go back” where they came from, and if you don’t see racism there, you’ll never see it anywhere.
As Republicans have whittled down their definition of racism, they’ve whittled away their own morality. Until anything is acceptable, and nothing is indefensible. Not only are Republicans today willing to defend Joe McCarthy as a hero, if confronted by the “have you no decency” question … they’d be genuinely puzzled.
Come on. Let’s read pundits.
Jonathon Chait reminds us of the … unique history behind some Trump nominees.
New York Magazine
For the first four and a half years of his presidency, George W. Bush developed a cult following on the right comparable to the standing enjoyed by Donald Trump today. Bush signed two tax cuts, appointed scores of conservative judges, slashed regulations, launched two putatively successful wars, and infuriated liberals with his anti-intellectual machismo. Bush’s popular support began spiraling downward in his second term.
Conservatives did not want to blame his ardent campaigning for a failed initiative to privatize Social Security, nor to concede that Bush’s tax cuts and deregulation had failed to yield the promised prosperity. Conservatism never fails, Rick Perlstein archly observed at the time; it is only failed. And so, to insulate their ideology from any blame, they instead cast Bush as a heretic. It was his alleged failure to uphold conservative principles that did him in. Bush’s ideological heresies, which the right had largely ignored before, now suddenly loomed large.
Conservatives won’t have to worry about that this time around. One, because they’ve redefined conservatism as Trump-based National Conservatism, also known as “Nat-C? Nat-C? Come on now, you’re not even trying.” And two, because if Trump wins a second term, all other elections become moot.
The shorthand that conservatives used to drive home this new message was “corruption.” Bush and his party had sold out true conservatism, especially by spending too much money, out of greed. A series of high-profile corruption cases drove this home. Abramoff’s was the most notorious and became a shorthand for the broader outbreak of sleaze in Dubya’s Washington, but scandals took down several other high-profile Republicans: Bob Ney, Mark Foley, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay.
The short version of this is that Trump has place Abramoff’s right hand man in charge of the Acosta’s former chair, but only for the purposes of keeping it warm for Antonin Scalia’s son. Because nepotism is one of Trump’s favorite isms, and it’s absolutely clear no one will do a thing about it.
Hammid Dabashi lends an outsider’s perspective to a painful contrast.
al Jazeera
Parents across the United States these days have been taking their children to see the newest US animation blockbuster Toy Story. Schools have ended and long summer days require entertainment for children anywhere around the world.
But soon after watching Toy Story, these same families return home to switch on the TV and see shocking reports of children being kept in cages in appalling conditions at the US-Mexico border. They hear Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan ask for more funds to continue these terrible practices and read stories about an NGO director making millions out of the cruel detention of these children. Then they get sucked into the raging debate of whether these "family separation centres" can be called "concentration camps" or not.
The answer to that is absolutely yes. The detention centers are concentration camps in the sense for which the term was coined, doing the same thing as the camps for those colonial powers who used the term without shame.
At some point, they may then begin to wonder how they had just taken their children to see a platoon of white toys come to life and are now hearing about thousands of children being treated like lifeless objects. They may ponder what it means when they see inanimate toys become anthropomorphic characters while real children are treated like lifeless toys; what it means when a culture humanises lifeless toys and dehumanises living children.
This cognitive dissonance permeating American culture makes raising children in the US with some basic sense of decency indeed an excruciating task. How do you reconcile for yourself as a parent these two parallel realities which segregate children and assign them one of two categories - human and unhuman, deserving of a normal childhood and condemned to indefinite incarceration?
Yeah … don’t have an easy answer, or even a hard answer, for that one.
Paul Krugman still believes that Trump isn’t going to sail into 2020 riding a “good economy.”
New York Times
I’ve seen a number of people suggest that the 2020 election will be a sort of test: Can a sufficiently terrible president lose an election despite a good economy? And that is, in fact, the test we’d be running if the election were tomorrow.
On one side, Donald Trump wastes no opportunity to remind us how awful he is. His latest foray into overt racism delights his base but repels everyone else. On the other side, he presides over an economy in which unemployment is very low and real G.D.P. grew 3.2 percent over the past year.
But the election won’t be tomorrow, it will be an exhausting 15 months from now. Trump’s character won’t change, except possibly for the worse. But the economy might look significantly different.
So let’s talk about the Trump economy.
Since “the economy” and how it affects the average family got a divorce somewhere back around Ronnie Reagan time, I’m honestly not sure that it matters what the economy is like. After all, the people Trump made promises to aren’t making zillions of cars, or air conditioners, or iPhones, or even Oreos. All that stuff was just a lie. The farms are going bust. The mines are closing down. The steel industry hasn’t made any astounding rebound. But Trump says all that stuff is good, so what does it matter? His followers will follow even when he says that their job, the one they don’t have, is great.
The first thing you need to know is that the Trump tax cut caused a huge rise in the budget deficit, which the administration expects to hit $1 trillion this year, up from less than $600 billion in 2016. This tidal wave of red ink is even more extraordinary than it looks, because it has taken place despite falling unemployment, which usually leads to a falling deficit.
Sorry, that was only a problem for black presidents. Again, no matter what the actual economy is like, no matter if unemployment doubles, housing prices collapse, and inflation soars … Trump will just lie about it. The idea that Trump has managed the economy well is so pervasive that even people who should really know better seem to give him high marks.
Art Cullen may not seem like the first name in international relations, but …
Storm Lake Times
We were grateful for the opportunity to meet recently with the former Mexican ambassador to China, Jorge Guajardo, who served his nation from Beijing from 2007 to 2013 under President Felipe Calderon. He is a graduate of Georgetown and Harvard, and now works in consulting for former Bill Clinton aide Mac McLarty. Of course, our conversation went directly to agricultural trade.
“You will never see the Chinese market the way you had it,” Guajardo said. “China will never make the mistake of depending on the United States again.”
He said that China would say it will buy some soybeans after meeting with President Trump. That is exactly what happened. Except, China bought fewer soybeans than it had been buying. Its official sources said it would not increase agricultural trade in the current context.
Every time — every single time — that Trump has talked to a Chinese official, he’s come back with the news that China is just about to make some huge purchase of agricultural goods. Then, some times within days, Trump declares his disappointment that China didn’t follow through, but says he’s sure they will any day. Any day now.
Guajardo said that China will make some nice sounds about US soy and pork after trade discussions resume. However, he warned that the markets cultivated by agribusiness — with Iowa agriculture at the lead — will not recover for years, if ever. For the Chinese, food security is Number One. If Iowa cannot be the primary and low-cost dependable soy provider, Brazil can be. Guajardo said that it is difficult to get all the red tape cut for trade, once tariffs are removed. Brazil and Argentina will be the preferred providers. China already is investing in Latin and South America.
Why would China make a major commitment to the U.S. market at this point? Why would anyone?
Renée Graham and the myth of the teachable moment.
Boston Globe
Months into President Obama’s first term, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested for, well, attempting to enter his Cambridge home while black. Gates’s renown and the sheer outrageousness of what happened to him turned the incident into a national debate about race, racism, and the excessive policing of people of color.
After he was criticized for saying that Cambridge police “acted stupidly” — his poll numbers among whites dropped — Obama quickly retreated from that statement. He invited Gates and Sergeant James Crowley, the white arresting officer, to the White House for what the media dubbed “a beer summit” near the Rose Garden. Obama said he hoped the unfortunate event could be a “teachable moment” for the nation.
And then everything was better and nothing like that ever happened again.
That was 10 years ago this month. After countless episodes of people of color being confronted by police for doing mundane things like sitting in a Starbucks, canvassing for a campaign, or barbecuing in a park, it’s clear how much America learned from that teachable moment. Nothing.
No matter how extreme things get, with racism in America there’s never a teachable moment.
The president of the United States just told four Democratic congresswomen of color, all American citizens including Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley, to “go back” to the countries they came from, conjuring one of the nation’s most detestable racist tropes. At yet another rally, Trump’s rhetoric stoked chants of “Send her back” aimed at Representative Ilhan Omar who, because she is a Somalian-born Muslim, is a target of relentless right-wing venom.
And at that same rally, Trump absolutely and blatantly lied about what those women had said. The media seemed so caught up in their chant-shock, that they never even mentioned that the representatives had never said the things Trump accused them of saying.
Aisha Sultan on what it means to “go back where you came from.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A few years ago I went back to visit the country from where my parents had immigrated to America.
It’s in an important part of the world that fascinates me with its complexities. I still have relatives in Pakistan. I can understand the language. The food is delicious. The art is stunning, and the people have legendary hospitality. It’s also been on the brink of a failed state politically, with all the challenges and corruption that developing nations face.
It’s an odd experience when you’ve grown up a minority in your own country to suddenly be in a place where you are in the majority. I was particularly aware of my status as part of the privileged majority when I visited with the religious minority communities there. Members of the Ahmadiyya community face state-sponsored discrimination and some Christians also have been targets of persecution and targeted violence. Political leaders and journalists who have spoken out in defense of religious minorities risk violence and threats. For years, rising intolerance has been fueled by those with a political agenda.
Hatred and fear of the other can be powerful recruiting tools anywhere in the world.
There’s always a sense of relief when I come back home from traveling abroad. I’m hyper aware of my “Americanness” when I am in a different country — my beliefs, my mannerisms, my way of operating in the world are a clear giveaway.
You may guess where this is going, but Sultan takes this one in a really interesting direction. I’d like to clip it all, but I can’t. So go right along and read it.
Virginia Heffernan also has something to say about the send-her-backers.
Los Angeles Times
The founding lie of Donald Trump’s presidency is that he has a loyal, passionate and above all vast base of support. The lie was ludicrous on Day 1 of his presidency, and it’s ludicrous now, but a dangerous thing has happened with that lie: The public has come to believe it.
To recap: The crowd for Trump’s Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration — somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 — was about a third of the size of the record-breaking 1.8 million that showed up for President Obama’s inauguration in 2008.
The very next day, Trump’s ascent to the White House was greeted with perhaps the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, when more than 3 million people took to the streets carrying signs that denounced the president in unminced words.
By every measure, Trump was not just deeply unpopular from the get-go; he was widely despised. But instead of recognizing he’d have to work to win the trust of American voters, Trump lied.
Trump’s only move is the lie followed by double down, then the double double down. Then … I think you get it. It’s like not just the Big Lie. It’s the Bigger Lie. Even the Bigly Lie.
That was good for a laugh at the start. But because some people, against predictions and decency, had voted for Trump, the media seemed determined to style his supporters as a formidable movement. All the while, Trump has amplified the lie of his popularity, regularly referring to himself as “your favorite of all time president.”
Trump haters now imagine these passionate supporters as cultists, racists and enemies of liberalism. Others believe they’re principled Republicans holding their noses, or legitimately aggrieved white working-class men. In either case, Trump’s supporters are terrifying, oceanic, a force to be reckoned with.
I prefer to think of them as mindless cultists. Because believing that they are paying attention and still support Trump, is far worse.
Padma Lakshimi adds a personal reaction to Trump’s statement.
Washington Post
Wednesday night at a rally in Greenville, N.C., a sea of white faces in red hats bellowed “Send her back! Send her back!,” referring to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali refugee who disagreed with the president on policy.
It was a sickening escalation from Sunday, when the president tweeted at Omar and three other congresswomen of color who were born in the United States: “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” It was a longer version of the classic racist taunt “Go back to your country!” During the chanting on Wednesday, Trump watched over the crowd, seemingly satisfied. What followed, too, is now classic Trump — saying briefly that “he didn’t like it,” only to say later those very same chanters were “incredible patriots.” It’s Charlottesville 2.0. He has long been dog-whistling to white nationalists, and as he ramps up for 2020, that whistle has become a battle cry.
Those words, those hurtful, xenophobic, entitled words that I’ve heard all throughout my childhood, stabbed me right in the heart. They echoed the unshakable feeling that most brown immigrants feel. Regardless of what we do, regardless of how much we assimilate and contribute, we are never truly American enough because our names sound funny, our skin isn’t white, or our grandmothers live in a different country.
It’s hard for many white Americans to understand how hurtful the language the president used this week is to many of us.
The really terrible thing is that for many of those chanting, the hurt it causes is the point.
In elementary school, we used to sing, “This land is your land, this land is my land.” But out in the playground and at the arcade, we heard another tune: that no matter how hard we worked, and even if we kept our heads down, many in our nation were never going to accept us as equally American as our white fellow citizens. They snarled and smirked as they reminded us that they could yank away our identity at will.
And the secret of Trump’s success, the whole secret, is that he tells them that being a bully to those not like yourself isn’t just okay, it’s a virtue.
Nancy LeTourneau suggests that Paul Wellstone could teach “the squad” some lessons.
Washington Monthly
LeTourneau begins by recounting some of Wellstone’s early actions and how they backfired. Then moves onto his revised approach.
With the pushback against his unconventional tactics coming almost immediately, the senator from Minnesota decided that he needed to rethink his approach. It meant finding the balance between two roles.
Wellstone insists he can function as an inside player…and as an outsider. “I’ve reached a pretty firm conclusion that I should be substantive, be on top of the legislative program, make sure your word is good and stay in close touch with colleagues, let them know what you’re doing, don’t blindside people,” he says. “Those are, if you will, insider ethics. But by the same token, I’m even more convinced than ever that I want to push hard on the agenda. I want to continue to be a voice here for working with people on the outside of the process. I want to fight for change. I want to do it both ways.”
Over the course of his 11 years in the Senate, Wellstone continued to work to find the balance between those two roles, with some success as well as failures. He was no stranger to challenging Democratic leadership. For example, he advocated against passage of welfare reform and regularly forced senators to go on record with votes to raise their own pay. But he let down a lot of liberals when he voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, something he later came to regret.
If you come to the Daily Kos office (and everyone should at some point, it’s a very inspiring place to visit) you’ll find quite a bit of Wellstone memorabilia on the walls and in offices. Still, I wouldn’t push the idea that the women of the squad should go back and bone up on their collegiality. Paul Wellstone operated in a different era, and I think he’d be damned impressed by these four representatives. If he was still around D.C. today, I think he’d be taking lessons from them.
Charles Pierce is still thinking about something Neil Armstrong said … but not that “leap.”
Esquire
The Vietnam War went on for another three bloody years after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon; twenty-thousand more Americans would die over that span of time, and God alone knows how many Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. Senator Edward Kennedy drove his car into a pond on an island off Massachusetts and a woman named Mary Jo Kopechne died in it. York, Pennsylvania blew up in a race riot. The members of Charles Manson's cult slaughtered seven people in and around Beverly Hills, California. Sectarian riots exploded in Northern Ireland, leading to the arrival of British troops and almost 30 years of unremitting paramilitary—and military—violence. Woodstock and Altamont both happened, the Austerlitz and Waterloo of the counterculture. Hurricane Camille killed 256 people in Louisiana and Mississippi. Muammar Gadhafi became the leader of Libya in a coup, Ho Chi Minh died, and the very first message was sent over something called ARPANET. Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre and Spiro Agnew fired his first salvo at the media. And, on November 12, 1969, Charles Conrad and Alan Bean became the third and fourth men to land on the moon.
Those who regularly visit the site on Saturday might have been surprised to see that I did not do a Moon Landing 50th post. After all, I regularly subject everyone to my space-obsession. But honestly … I didn’t know what to do. There are some fantastic documentaries, videos, and tributes out there, and recounting my own memories of sitting on a shag carpet in my parent’s living room, listening to Cronkite instruct everyone on the best way to take a picture of your television screen. Or talking about the time I got to interview Buzz Aldrin. Or mentioning the awe I felt when recently getting close up with the Apollo 11 Command Capsule and all the items it carried, right down to a sextant and star charts. None of that seemed up to the moment.
So I let it go. Just know that I’m getting together with my aerospace engineer daughter and law and together we are going to assemble a 1000 piece Lego version of the Saturn V. That seemed appropriate.
The point is that history went on, blind, blundering, bloody, and stumbling, the way it always does. Apollo 11 did not stop history. In fact, looking back now over 50 years, it almost seems like an event outside of history. All of the moonflights do now. (Eugene Cernan is, for the moment, at least, as far as we know, the last human to walk on the moon. Win a beer at your local with that one.)
They were supposed to unite us, and they did. They were supposed to elevate our gaze beyond our differences and difficulties, and they did, for a while, anyway. (By the flight of the unfortunate Apollo 13, the networks weren't even carrying the live broadcasts from space any more.) But, in retrospect, they have been said to have redeemed us from that troubled time, and that's putting far too much on them for the moonflights to carry even in memory. History went on without them. They exist now in that place outside of history where we keep things both remarkable and fragile, both hard reality and delicate myth, both the solid reality of a moon rock and the pure imagination needed to look up at a large white dot in the night sky and think, yeah, we should go there.
That’s some very nice writing, Mr. Pierce.
Okay, I’m off to get my Lego on. Watch the heat, folks. Plenty of water. Stay in the shade.