Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media’s Latest Immigration Fakery

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criminal aliens, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Mainstream Media, The Atlantic, Trump, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Just when I thought that it had become impossible for the Mainstream Media’s pro-Open Borders bias and Trump Derangement Syndrome to make me genuinely angry, along came The Atlantic‘s article yesterday on Trump administration policy toward refugees from Vietnam – including those who arrived in the Vietnam War’s tragic aftermath.

The piece – loudly advertised as an “exclusive” – clearly sought to convey the impression that the Trump administration has decided to start deporting certain groups within this population simply because it’s determined to rid America of as many foreign-born residents as possible, along with preventing the entry of as many newcomers as possible. In the case of the Vietnamese, of course, this policy would be morally outrageous both because so many refugees aided the U.S. military effort and (along with their descendants) face grim fates if they return; and because the United States inflicted so much damage on the country during its decade-plus of massive armed involvement. (I’m not trumpeting a position on the war – which I opposed – here. Just stating a fact.) When I saw the headline, I was up in arms myself.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover (in the fourth paragraph) what’s really changing:

“The administration last year began pursuing the deportation of many long-term immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries who the administration alleges are ‘violent criminal aliens.’”

Why is that a change? Because, in the authors’ view, this decision violates

“a unique 2008 agreement  [between Washington and Hanoi] that specifically bars the deportation of Vietnamese people who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995—the date the two former foes reestablished diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War.”

But Trump administration officials have concluded, and told The Atlantic on the record, that the agreement “does not explicitly preclude the removal of pre-1995 cases.”

Which seems eminently reasonable when the article finally makes clear that the U.S. intent now is not indiscriminately to round up Vietnamese-Americans and kick them out of the country in order to advance (circle one or both) nativist or racist goals. Instead, the intent was to treat as exempt from the 2008 deal “people convicted of crimes.”

Indeed, these folks were not only convicted of crimes. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Katie Waldman, “these are non-citizens who during previous administrations were arrested, convicted, and ultimately ordered removed by a federal immigration judge.”

But how did the Atlantic authors describe a U.S. government effort finally to get rid of convicted criminals who clearly have been using delaying tactics to put off removal orders by the American judicial system? As

>”the latest move in the president’s long record of prioritizing harsh immigration and asylum restrictions….”

>a ”new stance [that] mirrors White House efforts to clamp down on immigration writ large, a frequent complaint of the president’s on the campaign trail and one he links to a litany of ills in the United States.”

>a “shift” that “leaves the fate of a larger number of Vietnamese immigrants in doubt.”

>a betrayal of many “refugees from the Vietnam War. Some are the children of those who once allied with American and South Vietnamese forces, an attribute that renders them undesirable to the current regime in Hanoi, which imputes anti-regime beliefs to the children of those who opposed North Vietnam.”

In fact, if anything, the new Trump policy changes a 2017 administration decision that makes no sense at all for anyone who believes that criminal aliens have no business remaining in the United States one minute longer than necessary: exempting these criminals from deportation if they arrived in the country before 1995. What on earth was that about? And why does The Atlantic, by posting this “scoop” seem to object so strongly – especially since nowhere does this piece challenge the convictions?

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Im-Politic: Elizabeth Warren, Nationalist?

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Elizabeth Warren, Emmanuel Macron, global poverty, globalization, Im-Politic, nationalism, progressives, Seattle WTO protests, third world, Trade, World Trade Organization, WTO

Whatever its historical roots, “nationalism” has recently become a dirty word. Among the dangers embodied by this concept, as determined by political correctness authorities such as France’s (politically besieged) President Emmanuel Macron, it’s “a betrayal of patriotism. By saying ‘Our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what gives it grace, and what is essential: its moral values.”

How stunning, therefore, to read Elizabeth Warren’s recent speech on U.S. foreign policy. According to this definition, the Massachusetts Democratic Senator, progressive heroine, and likely 2020 presidential hopeful, is a card-carrying, selfish, immoral (amoral?) America First-style nationalist – at least when it comes to international trade and related globalization issues.

Skeptical? Just read the Warren transcript. On the one hand, she admitted that “The globalization of trade has opened up opportunity and lifted billions out of poverty around the world” – which by any standard is a pretty remarkable achievement. Yet on the other hand, Warren condemned the “trade and economic policies” behind this epic success for failing to deliver “the same kind of benefits for America’s middle class.”

In fact, she emphasized, “U.S. trade policy has delivered one punch in the gut after another to [U.S.] workers and to the unions that fight for them.”

It’s true that, elsewhere in her speech, Warren briefly referred to revamping American trade policy to ensure “that workers are meaningfully represented at the negotiating table and build trade agreements that strengthen labor standards worldwide.” But much more often, she lambasted agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) for encouraging “outsourcing jobs to Mexico.”

In other words, either such outsourcing somehow failed to ameliorate poverty in Mexico (even though Warren credits it with uplifting the poor elsewhere), or she assigns little importance to achieving that goal. In either case, Warren has some major explaining to do.

Also fascinating about Warren’s speech: If it’s to be taken seriously (never a sure thing when it comes to politicians’ rhetoric), it would represent a significant, and in my view, welcome change in progressives’ take on trade, globalization, and what’s fundamentally wrong with them.

For since these issues became front-page news during the debate over NAFTA, at the start of the 1990s, critics to the left-of-center have proclaimed that U.S. trade and related policies would remain unacceptable unless they boosted living standards everywhere, not just in America – and that they had betrayed workers in developing countries as completely as their counterparts in the United States.

American progressives’ emphasis on the devastation created in the third world by U.S.-spearheaded trade arrangements came to a head during the Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in 1999 – as did the companion belief that win-win solutions for workers and consumers everywhere should be and could be the very raison d’etre of the global economy. And as indicated by this 2015 statement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, it remains their party line today.

The point here is not that no conceivable form of globalization can ever produce globe-wide benefits. Instead, it’s that the road to mutual gain is unlikely to proceed in a straight, smooth, uninterrupted line, and that without recognizing that hard choices are likely for the foreseeable future, and that those global benefits may not be distributed evenly, the worst of all worlds is all too likely.

So here’s hoping that her speech is evidence that Warren is becoming aware of these at-least-likely complications, that she’ll start prompting such globalization realism on the American Left – and that she won’t be deterred by apologists for a failed status quo who, along with most of her fellow progressives, have been reduced to portraying nationalism as part of the problem, rather than potentially part of the solution.

Im-Politic: What Trump Can Learn from the Weekly Standard’s Woes

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Daniel McCarthy, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, neoconservatives, The American Conservative, Trump, Weekly Standard

To many readers, Daniel McCarthy’s excellent new article in the Spectator USA about the likely demise of the Weekly Standard magazine will be most interesting for his thoughts on what this apparently impending event says about how best to keep alive non-mass market political publications. After all, McCarthy edits another such publication: The American Conservative.

To me, his piece is most interesting for another reason: It briefly points to how President Trump can marginalize a Mainstream Media that has worrisomely transformed itself from an essential watchdog for democracy into an unapologetic defender of a failed bipartisan political establishment – and in a much more effective way than by hurling insults on Twitter or at political rallies. And it’s no coincidence that the relevant McCarthy observation supports some suggestions I’ve made along these lines. (See, e.g., here.) 

McCarthy is surely on target when he contends that the Weekly Standard chose the wrong business model – and especially the wrong business model for losing money (which he rightly notes is a feature of virtually all political magazines). And since a healthy democracy depends on the survival of a critical mass of such publications, his advice – stemming from years of experience in the field – seems well worth heeding.

But the following McCarthy passage matters much more now when it comes to Mr. Trump’s conflict with the Mainstream Media – which of course is largely self-serving, but which nonetheless has the potential, if conducted wisely and shrewdly, to push these news organizations into behaving more constructively:

“The Weekly Standard provided prestige and access to political leaders, especially Republicans.

“The Weekly Standard’s value lay in the fact that it was an insider magazine. It was a top-down product — there was never an independent mass audience clamoring for a second National Review or for a specifically neoconservative publication. (Commentary, as a monthly, already served that market as far as demand could justify.) What was important was that the magazine be read not by a mass market but by Republican officials and their staff and various other influential persons, primarily in Washington, D.C. If officialdom read the Weekly Standard, then it was worth continuing to spend millions on it. In business terms as well as ideologically and literarily, the Weekly Standard had a lot in common with the New Republic, which for decades was dependent upon Marty Peretz’s singular financial support as owner of a magazine that touted itself during the Clinton years as the ‘inflight magazine of Air Force One.’”

Although McCarthy doesn’t make this point explicitly, it captures what’s truly essential about the above analysis: The power and influence of the Standard and the rest of the Mainstream Media – and in the case of smallish political magazines, their ability to attract angel funders – depends on their access to leading political figures, and in particular, on enjoying such close access that their audiences can depend on them to reveal the so-called real inside story of big political and policy decisions.

To accomplish this goal, writers and editors from these organizations need (credibly) to make clear that they’re regularly welcomed into the confidences of bigwigs right on up to the presidency, specifically at chummy off-the-record or on-background lunches and dinners and other such get-togethers that advance the interests of each kind of participant. In addition to turning the favored journalists into must-follows for the political- and policy-minded (and into power-brokers of sorts themselves), these gatherings enable the hosts to make key points or send key messages (often about potentially controversial plans or proposals) to the public at large through sympathetic conduits. In the process, politicians can avoid being held accountable for the content of these messages if they backfire or fall flat.

It’s clear that Mr. Trump hasn’t treated Weekly Standard, or many other – if any – Mainstream Media figures like political intimates. And since it represents a neoconservative school of thought that has never enjoyed any notable popular following, the magazine’s obvious loss of insider status has undoubtedly contributed to its weakening viability under the current administration.

But as I’ve written (see, e.g., the post linked above), the President keeps giving exclusive interviews to other major news organizations – including to the most hostile – which inevitably enhances or sustains their prestige. On the one hand, it’s clear that, as widely observed, Mr. Trump is engaging with the Mainstream Media in the belief that any publicity is good publicity – and likely due to his own (arguably well founded) confidence that he always prevails politically whenever these encounters turn testy. (Think “Jim Acosta“.) On the other, this approach certainly hasn’t made the Mainstream Media pay any significant, much less prohibitive, price for propagating Fake News and too often flagrantly exhibiting bias.

As a result, the establishment press has little incentive to report more responsibly. And ultimately, by continuing to act as if there’s no adequate alternative to the increasingly fallen Washington- and New York-based press corps for his own communications purposes, and for serving larger national purposes, Mr. Trump is squandering a major opportunity for all Americans – even Never Trump-ers – along with a chance to undermine influential enemies and expand his base.

Im-Politic: George Bush’s Biggest Legacy

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alliances, America First, Cold War, George H.W. Bush, globalism, Im-Politic, international institutions, The Atlantic, The National Interest

OK, so that newspaper op-ed on the U.S.-China trade truce I mentioned in yesterday’s post won’t be appearing on-line till tonight. That enables me to sound off about the other big news of the past weekend: the passing of former President George H.W. Bush.

The fawning reactions by the nation’s intertwined bipartisan political establishment and Mainstream Media were off-putting in any number of ways – only beginning with the transparently crude, self-serving attempts to contrast the alleged courtly golden age of selfless, noble American politics and policy he represented (and that they allegedly champion today) with the triumph of coarseness, hyper-partisanship and grifter-ism supposedly represented by Donald Trump’s election as President.

Not that Bush wasn’t an admirable personality in many ways, including his unmistakable record as a devoted, loving husband and father, and his courageous service in World War II. And not that he didn’t display some equally admirable traits as President – including a willingness to compromise, an ability to learn and evolve, a refusal to demonize political opponents, and that famous “prudence” lampooned by Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey.

But Bush’s presidency was marked by way too many major blind spots and outright failures to deserve canonization, and it’s no coincidence that the most serious entailed a refusal to recognize the obsolescence and flaws of the globalist priorities and strategies to which the nation’s chattering classes still cling.

It’s possible to single out significant individual Bush blunders, like his enthusiasm for offshoring-friendly trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the global agreement that created the World Trade Organization (WTO); his indifference to predatory foreign trade and broader economic practices that were undermining American industrial competitiveness; and his belief that greater U.S. and other foreign engagement with China would produce a People’s Republic that was more democratic, capitalist, and friendly to the West.

Way more important, however, is the broader globalist outlook he almost defiantly epitomized, and which was responsible for his biggest, closely related strategic and political mistakes.

On the strategic front, Bush does deserve credit for contributing to the overwhelmingly peaceful demise of the Soviet Union and the equally smooth unification of Germany – neither of was inevitable. But he squandered a critical opportunity to begin preparing Americans for the kind of fundamental transition away from intertwined Cold War approaches to both national security and economics that would have left the nation much safer and more prosperous than today.

Bush’s fans have a point when they insist that strong support of America’s Cold War alliance system was essential to ensure that the fall of communism didn’t trigger broader and potentially dangerous worldwide instability. Too much simultaneous upheaval could well have produced worrisome consequences in Europe in particular.

Yet Bush wasn’t content to view or portray the preservation of alliances and other Cold War institutions as temporary expedients needed to ensure a successful closure to that era. He repeatedly spoke of these arrangements and their survival as ends in and of themselves that were vital to defend and advance core American interests because those interests required nothing less than a thoroughly peaceful, stable, prosperous world. And in this respect, he embodied what I have described in The National Interest as the fatal mistake of American globalism, and one that, through endeavors that sought to achieve this utopian ambition, over the longer term has kept the nation exposed to utterly unnecessary risks, strapped it with equally unnecessary economic burdens, and left it less secure and economically healthy in the long run.

In other words, Bush repeatedly championed the globalist conviction that the best guarantors of America’s security and prosperity were not America’s own power, wealth, and potential, but those very international institutions whose effectiveness he prioritized. As a result, he dismissed the idea that genuine pragmatism recognized the superiority of a fundamentally different approach – ensuring the well-being of an already substantially secure and prosperous nation regardless of international conditions. And therefore, whenever expanding or consolidating the nation’s own material capabilities, or capitalizing on its geopolitical blessings, clashed with expensive and or risky efforts to bolster the institutions and inch toward globalism’s grandiose worldwide goals, he invariably chose the latter.

The political results were devastating, and if you accept the above analysis, they rightly limited Bush to a single term as president. For, as I wrote in The Atlantic back then, the objectives of U.S. foreign policy became increasingly remote from the most pressing concerns of the American people, and Bush never understood the gap. Indeed, he not only became known as a “foreign policy president.” He actually admitted he found dealing with overseas matters much more interesting than addressing issues on the home front – notably a short, shallow recession that struck the electorate as much more serious because the recovery remained “jobless” for so long. When his main 1992 rival for the White House, Bill Clinton, ribbed Bush’s indifference with the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” the fate of “41” was all but sealed, and history served up what should have been a glaringly obvious lesson for the globalists.

That this political lesson has been both ignored and often emphatically rejected by America’s bipartisan globalist establishment is clear from its ostentatiously teary eulogies for Bush – and its contempt for a chief executive with at least a gut-level awareness of the popular appeal of the non-globalist approach he calls “America First.”

Moreover, in a stunning irony, the globalists keep ignoring how thoroughly their own approach has failed – and how quickly. How else to explain that, over the course of the three globalist post-41 presidents, Russia and China have reemerged as major security threats to the order they constantly deem an unprecedented and historic success? And don’t forget how globalism’s economic and political roots have been shredded by a worldwide financial crisis and painful recession stemming directly from its failures on the trade and investment front.

At the same time, precisely because this globalist establishment remains so powerful, and President Trump’s departure from its orthodoxy so partial, it’s premature to view George H.W. Bush’s passing as symbolizing the true end of a policy era. As the former president once said in another context, that would require more of a “vision thing” than the nation has been capable of producing for many decades.   

Im-Politic: Elites’ Learning Curve on Populism is Still Largely MIA

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American Enterprise Institute, asylum seekers, Brookings Institution, chattering classes, David Brooks, establishment, Europe, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jobs, migrants, migration, Open Borders, Populism, refugees, The Guardian, The New York Times, Trade, Trump, working class

While we’re still (I hope!) in a Thanksgiving frame of mind, let’s not forget to give thanks to America’s ever clueless bipartisan political establishment and chattering classes. As just made glaringly obvious by a Hillary Clinton interview and a New York Times pundit, these utterly intertwined – and indeed incestuous – elites not only mostly remain just as dumbfounded about the developments that have triggered the rise of populism in the Western world as they were the day after Donald Trump became president. They helpfully keep reminding us of how little they’ve learned – and therefore how completely undeserving they are of returning to power.

Clinton’s obliviousness (again) came through loud and clear in a lengthy sit-down earlier this week with the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper. According to the Democratic presidential nominee, whose inept campaign strategy and transparently canned messaging helped key Mr. Trump’s victory, Europe “needs to get a handle on migration.”

That contention’s hard to argue with. But Clinton’s main reason was anything but. According to the former Secretary of State, European leaders’ overly “generous and compassionate approaches” to migration “lit the flame” that have “roiled the body politic” and strengthened the positions of Trump-like populists who have used “immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government gone wrong, of attacks on one’s heritage, one’s identity, one’s national unity….”

In other words, Clinton apparently has no concerns that a massive influx of migrants – or refugees, or so-called asylum-seekers, or even economically motivated immigrants – could drive down wages for the working class or lower income cohorts of a country’s native-born population, or wind up admitting criminals and terrorists from violence-ridden regions, or swamp a country with newcomers either ignorant or actively contemptuous of its cultural values (e.g., its treatment of women).

She’s simply advocating that establishment politicians do the proverbial – but never well defined “something” – to keep on the fringes counterparts who are mindful of the above, and completely legitimate, concerns. In fact, Clinton’s continuing contempt for such leaders, and their followings, is made clear by her contention that populist voters are defined by

“a psychological as much as political yearning to be told what to do, and where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality.

“The whole American system was designed so that you would eliminate the threat from a strong, authoritarian king or other leader and maybe people are just tired of it. They don’t want that much responsibility and freedom. They want to be told what to do and where to go and how to live … and only given one version of reality.”

In other words, “deplorables,” anyone?

If anything, New York Times columnist David Brooks is even brain dead-er on the lessons of 2016. On Thanksgiving day, the paper posted a column of his contending that at least some of America’s establishment has been “chastened” by populism’s successes, and recently has been “working together across ideological lines” to “build the bipartisan governing coalitions” that “pay attention to actual Americans and actual solutions” to the problems that have so divided the nation.

One of his prime examples? A joint effort by the establishment liberal Brookings Institution and the establishment conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to develop policies aimed at “Restoring Opportunity for the Working Class.”

On the one hand, it’s good to see that Brookings and AEI aren’t simply dismissing American populism’s main political base as racists and xenophobes. Even better: The report they’ve just issued recognizes job and income loss resulting from offshoring-friendly trade deals and other wrongheaded globalization-related policies as major sources of working Americans’ economic decline and political anger. And the recommendations for trade policy fixes are pretty good – even including an endorsement of unilateral U.S. tariffs in certain situations. In fact, combining these ideas with many of the more purely domestic policy proposals in the study could make a real difference.

On the other hand, the study’s authors decided to ignore the impacts of Open Borders-friendly immigration policies, because they regard “the perception that immigration is responsible for what ails the working class” as “mistaken.”

And some skepticism is warranted on the trade front as well. After all, experts from both think tanks have been among the strongest critics of Trump administration trade policies – no doubt because so many of their donors are businesses that profit from the trade status status quo, and (in Brookings’ case), many of the very foreign governments in the same category.

But what I found especially revealing was Brooks’ description of the report. It ignored the trade recommendations completely and zeroed in on the measures that, unless accompanied by trade and/or immigration policy overhauls (at least), would wind up as an approach that essentially substitutes various forms of welfare for work: “wage subsidies, improved parental leave, work requirements for some federal benefits, child care tax credits.”

And by the way, of course Brooks endorses the study’s calls for more government aid for education that reduces the current emphasis on sending all young Americans to four-year colleges and increases the emphasis on “career education and training.” That’s fine except that there’s little point to vocational type training if family wage jobs keep fleeing overseas or becoming ever lower-wage jobs because immigrants keep supercharging the labor supply.

Nor have any of the education boosters ever responded to two related points I made in my globalization book, The Race to the Bottom: First, people all over the world as just as capable of being retrained and reeducated as Americans; and second, governments all around the world know this, especially in countries with such immense labor surpluses that they’ll long be able to under-sell American workers.

Brooks closes his article by wondering whether the United States contains “enough chastened members of establishments, who have governing experience, who acknowledge past mistakes, who take the time to reconnect with the country and apply their expertise in new ways” to lead the nation successfully. The Brookings-AEI report provides some grounds for optimism. Unlike Hillary Clinton and Brooks himself.

Im-Politic: The Real Veterans Day Hypocrites

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Armistice Day, Constitution, Emmanuel Macron, France, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, nationalism, patriotism, racism, Riverdale Park, sexism, Trump, Veterans Day, voting rights, white nationalists, World War I

Mentioning U.S. military cemeteries in France and my town of Riverdale Park, Maryland in the same sentence, or even the same piece of writing – that’s got to be a first. But due to the overlap of Veterans Day today with the hundredth anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I hostilities, both shed some light on the confused, often downright incoherent, and just as often hypocritical nature of America’s heated, intertwined political and philosophical battles over identity, nationalism, and related issues.

The military cemetery angle is clear enough, due to President Trump’s controversial decision to forego attending yesterday’s Armistice Day ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial outside of Paris. Mr. Trump’s administration attributed the decision to bad weather and the logistical complications it created. I’m no expert on these matters (chances are, neither are you) and for all I know, rain and the herculean task of moving American presidents in foreign countries may have genuinely rendered his initially announced schedule unrealistic. I also suspect that a major role was played by the simple exhaustion of a 72-year old man following a whirlwind last few weeks of criss-crossing America for speeches at campaign rallies aimed at electing Republican candidates in this month’s midterm elections.

Nonetheless, even though this event wasn’t the only, or even the main event on the Trump schedule, or even the only scheduled cemetery visit, I believe that the President should have sucked it up and attended. (Just FYI, he did wind up going to a second such ceremony today.) As a result, I have some sympathy for the critics’ charges that Mr. Trump’s decision undercut his high profile claims of championing patriotic values.

But I don’t have total sympathy, and here’s why: because these presidential opponents generally have a pretty dodgy, and thus often double-standard-infused, record on patriotic values themselves. Why else, for example, would they be so apoplectic about the President’s self-description as a “nationalist.” Many have not only equated this viewpoint with something they call “white nationalism” (a concept whose fatal internal contradictions are, revealingly, ignored only by them and by the fringe neo-Nazi types who have adopted it). They’ve also attacked it for clashing with the idea of diversity, as opposed to “inclusion,” and for asserting (in the words of France’s President, Emmanuel Macron), “our interests first, who cares about the others?”

At best, however, that’s a bizarre critique for at least two reasons. First, the United States exists in a world of other political units that are known as “nation-states,” and inevitably, their “national interests” (another term that’s not the least bit controversial) won’t always coincide. These interests aren’t always in conflict, either, and when they’re not, inclusion – in the form of fostering international cooperation in order to advance shared goals or repel share challenges – is a fine idea. But when these interests don’t coincide, and can’t be reconciled via diplomacy, inclusion can easily become a formula for delusion, and for harming U.S. interests. And Macron to the contrary, at that point, any national leader deserving his country’s trust would put their “interests first” and not care terribly “about the others.”

Second, Mr. Trump’s actual use of the word had nothing to do with jingoism or chauvinism, much less racism. Indeed, it had everything to do with promoting an entirely reasonable U.S. foreign policy goal. Here’s his description of the term: “All I want for our country is to be treated well, to be treated with respect. For many years other countries that are allies of ours, so-called allies, they have not treated our country fairly, so in that sense I am absolutely a nationalist and I’m proud of it.”

And here’s where Riverdale Park, Maryland comes in. This morning, the town held its annual Veterans Day observance. It took place at a pretty little patch created near the town center, complete with a memorial and a big American flag. Ever since I moved to the town in 2003, I’ve attended this ceremony nearly every year, along with the Memorial Day ceremony (when I was in town, which has usually been the case), and was proud to do so. This year, that streak came to an end.

I’m boycotting, and will continue to boycott, because earlier this year, as I’ve described, the town decided to permit illegal aliens to vote in local elections (along with 16-year olds). It’s a free country, and the decision is Constitutional, but it mainly rankled because, as I also wrote, during the debate, supporters of the idea made plain as day that they not only had no regard for the idea of citizenship, and of the community of values it has represented throughout our country’s history. They stated repeatedly their convictions that that community, along with the Constitution that organized its government and enshrined into law the liberties Americans enjoy, are nothing more than racist and sexist constructs concocted by a claque of dead white males determined to perpetuate their dominance and that of their descendants. Moreover, the town’s endorsement of non-citizen voting unquestionably represented endorsement of that perspective.

And these are folks – and the municipality – claiming to honor those currently serving in the military, and those who have lost their lives defending this political system? Sorry, but I found that proposition stomach-turning, along with the idea of taking part in this sham.

Further, these convictions are hardly confined to Riverdale Park. Polls – not a perfect measure of opinion, I know, but the best we have – show consistently that patriotic feelings are declining sharply among the American public as a whole, and among Democrats, liberals, and the young in particular – the last three categories are coming to dominate Riverdale Park’s population. (See, e.g., here and here. And according to the Gallup survey, the latter two trends predated Mr. Trump’s election as president.)

I have no evidence that most or even many of those with low patriotism levels have chortled at the President’s decision to skip the military cemetery ceremonies. But I’ll bet the number is more than a few. Ditto for a high correlation between the Trump cemetery critics and staunch opponents of his immigration policies – due to the President’s insistence that the United States as a sovereign nation, and even more important, one precious enough to be worth defending, has an absolute right to control its borders and decide who and how many are granted admission.  

There’s no obligation for any American to feel patriotic, and there’s certainly no obligation to like President Trump. Is it too much to ask, however, that Veterans Day, and associated professions of love of country, be made exempt from political football-dom?

Im-Politic: Will Trump Let Trump be Trump on Issues?

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Congress, conservatism, conservatives, Democrats, deregulation, establishment, Im-Politic, infrastructure, John McCain, Marco Rubio, midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi, Obamacare, Populism, regulation, Republicans, tax cuts, Trade, Trump

Ever since Donald Trump made clear his staying power in presidential politics, his more populist supporters have tried to beat back efforts of more establishment-oriented backers to “normalize” him by insisting that they “Let Trump be Trump.” The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections tell me that the populists’ arguments on substance (as opposed to the President’s penchant for inflammatory and/or vulgar rhetoric) are stronger than ever, but that the obstacles that they’ve faced remain formidable.

The “Let Trump” argument contends that the President’s best hope to attract the most voters has always been his willingness to reject positions that for decades have been conservative and Republican hallmarks, but that have become increasingly unpopular outside the realms of most national GOP office-holders, other Washington, D.C.-based professional Republicans and conservatives, and the donors so largely responsible for their power, influence, and affluence. These maverick Trump positions have included not only trade and immigration; but the role of government and the related issues of entitlements, healthcare, and infrastructure spending; and Wall Street reform.

But since his election, as I’ve argued, Mr. Trump’s willingness to embrace the full maverick agenda has been blunted by his vulnerability on the scandals front. Specifically, he’s seemed so worried about impeachment threats from Democrats that he’s been forced to shore up his support with the conventional Republicans that dominate the party’s ranks in Congress. Why else, I’ve written, would his first two years in office have so prominently featured strong support for right-of-center standbys like major tax and federal discretionary spending cuts; curbs on regulation; repeal of Obamacare; and bigger military budgets, rather than, say a massive push to repair and retool America’s aging or simply outdated transportation, communications, energy, and other networks?

It’s true that Trump remained firmly in (bipartisan) populist mode on trade (notably, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and slapping tariffs on metals imports and many Chinese-made products), and just as firmly in (conservative) populist mode with various administrative measures and proposals to limit and/or transform the makeup of legal immigration – though many of his most ardent backers accuse him of punting on his campaign promise to build a Border Wall.

Yet this Trump populism strongly reflected the views of the Republican base – a development now not lost on conventional conservatives when it comes to immigration, even though they’ve been slow to recognize the big shift among Republican voters against standard free trade policies. By contrast, the President has apparently feared that Congressional Republicans would draw the line on the rest of their traditional agenda – or at least that he could curry favor with them by pushing it.

The midterm results, however, might have brought these political calculations to a turning point. On the one hand, there’s no doubt that most House and Senate Republicans, along with the donors and most of the party’s D.C.-based establishment, are still all-in on their tax, spending, regulatory, and Obamacare positions.

On the other hand, according to the exit polls and other surveys, the tax cuts didn’t even greatly impress Republican voters (let alone independents). And most Americans aren’t willing to risk losing Obamacare benefits they already enjoy (especially coverage for pre-existing medical conditions) by supporting Republican replacement ideas that may be less generous.

The message being sent by all of the above trends and situations is that President Trump may have even more latitude than he’s recognized to cut deals with Democrats. At the same time, the Democrats’ capture of the House of Representatives on Tuesday and signs that they’ll ramp up the scandal investigations could keep preventing him from “being Trump” on such issues and possibly antagonize most Republican lawmakers.

Of course, my political neck isn’t on the line here. But I’d advise Mr. Trump to follow his more unconventional instincts. The Congressional Republicans still uncomfortable with him ideologically must be aware that his personal popularity with GOP supporters has grown significantly since mid-2017, and that this surge owes almost nothing to their own priorities. So if they don’t help staunchly resist any intensified Democratic probes, their political futures could look pretty dicey, too.

One big sign that ever more establishment Republicans are getting “woke” on the obsolescence of much establishment conservatism: the efforts by long-time mainstream conservative/Republican favorites like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to develop a Trump-ian agenda that can survive Mr. Trump’s presidency. Further, resistance in Washington to their efforts is likely to continue weakening, since so many of the President’s ideological opponents on the Republican side are leaving the House and Senate. (And of course, their spiritual leader, veteran Arizona Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain recently passed away.)

To be sure, Mr. Trump yesterday (rhetorically, anyway) erected his own obstacle to deal-cutting – his declaration that he won’t be receptive if investigations persist and broaden. House Democratic leader (and still favorite to become Speaker again) Nancy Pelosi has pretty clearly, however, signaled that she herself is not impeachment-obsessed, even if those exit polls say most of the Democratic base is.

As a result, I can’t entirely blame the President for still feeling spooked by the Democrats – at least this week. But what an irony if the most important opponent “letting Trump be Trump-ism” – whose broad popularity could well combine with the advantages of incumbency to outflank the Democrats, win the President a second term, and pave the way for a truly earth-shaking, lasting realignment of American politics – turned out to be President Trump himself.

Im-Politic: So Farmers (Especially Soybeans Growers) Were Going to Punish Trump on Trade?

Tags

2018 elections, agriculture, China, farmers, Im-Politics, midterms 2018, soybeans, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump

Since I’ve long followed U.S. trade policy, since it’s long been one of President Trump’s signature issues, and since for months the President’s tariffs had been widely described as a major danger to the coalition that carried him and other Republicans to victory in 2016, I thought one of the most useful post-midterms exercises I could conduct would be to see if these analyses held up. The verdict: Anything but.

At the heart of this narrative were America’s farmers, and especially its soybean growers. In brief, the Trump China tariffs sparked retaliatory Chinese levies on a wide range of U.S. exports, including soybeans. Soybeans had become the nation’s leading agricultural export to China, and China exports represented a large share of total American soybean production. And since those soybean exports to the People’s Republic were endangered (and have in fact plummeted), the soybean farmers (along with the rest of U.S. agriculture, since its exports were threatened by various foreign retaliatory tariffs, too) were likely to take their anger out on Republican candidates for the House and Senate this year, and reward Democrats with significant wins.  (See here, here, and here for some examples.)

Last night’s midterm results, however, make clear that nothing of the kind happened. To see how off-base the “Republican Soy-Mageddon” (“Soy-Pocalypse”?) predictions were, let’s first look at the returns from the Top Twenty districts in the House of Representatives in terms of total agricultural output. Republicans held sixteen and Democrats four when the evening began.

When it ended, the number of those seats flipped by the Democrats (i.e., where one of their candidates beat a Republican incumbent) totaled one: the First District of Iowa. The other three Democratic victories were scored by Democratic incumbents.

Republicans flipped none of these 20 seats. But they held on to 15. Moreover, three of these seats were open seats – that is, a Republican incumbent had retired. So all else equal, the Democratic candidate’s chances of winning were increased.

The race for the twentieth seat on this list – Minnesota’s First District – was too close to call at the time of this writing. It’s an open seat also, but the previous incumbent was a Democrat. So no sign of any blue wave, or any notable Democratic strength in this group of Districts, whatever.

But what about the soybeans-dominated Districts? The results from this Top Twenty show nothing like a Republican Soy-Mageddon, either.

During the previous Congressional session, Republicans held 16 of these seats as well, and the Democrats four. The Democrats flipped two of these Districts – that First in Iowa, along with that state’s Third. The Democrats’ four other victories in this group were by incumbents.

The Republicans, again, didn’t flip any Democratic soybeans seats. But they held onto 15 of their original 16 seats. In addition, three of those seats were open, so again, the GOP candidates’ advantage was smaller than it would have been had the incumbent run. The election in the twentieth District in this soybeans group – Minnesota’s First – is that still-undecided race.

Again no Soy-Mageddon for Republicans.

These developments won’t come as a major surprise to careful news buffs. Several reports (see, e.g., here, here, and here) have been published in recent weeks containing evidence that, however worried they were about their own individual prospects, many American farmers continued to support Mr. Trump – and in principle even his efforts to use pressure to extract more equitable terms of trade from China and other foreign economies. But you had to be quite the careful news buff.

At the same time, last night’s results by no means give Mr. Trump a free pass on trade policy from American agriculture. Before too long, unless his efforts start delivering results for U.S. farmers, or removing the trade threats they still face, or unless other administration policies open up new opportunities (at home or abroad), their patience could well run out. For now, however, ag is hanging tough with an America First trade approach at the grassroots level.  It’s high time that its whiny Inside the Beltway spokespeople start paying attention. 

Im-Politic: Caravans and Open Borders Grandstanding

Tags

asylum seekers, caravans, Central America, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, migrants, refugees, Trump

By now it’s become an article of faith among President Trump’s critics that his stated determination to prevent the caravans of Central American migrants from entering the United States represents a shameful, and possibly racist, break with America’s longstanding tradition of providing haven for victims of poverty, persecution, and numerous other hardships and outrages that remain all too common abroad.

In other words, in striking contrast to the Statue of Liberty’s message of welcome for the world’s “tired…poor…[and] huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Mr. Trump and his supporters are cruelly telling the Central Americans to return to their destitute and violence-wracked countries.

So what do the critics believe should be done instead? Specifics are often lacking, but let’s do a thought experiment and try to figure out how a policy that literally doesn’t “turn its back” on downtrodden foreign populations would like. That is, let’s try to imagine the gist of what a President Hillary Clinton would say about the caravans if she took seriously claims that the Trump approach to the problem is unforgivably callous and wrongheaded – claims that she’s made clear she agrees with via her strong condemnation of Trump administration policies that have resulted in frequent separation of migrant children from their parents:

“My fellow Americans:

“As you have seen in many news reports, several so-called caravans of Central Americans are heading north, through Mexico, filled with men, women, and children hoping to make new lives in the United States.

“Many politicians and news organizations in conservative and Republican ranks, along with out-and-out right-wing extremists, have portrayed this caravans as an impending ‘invasion’ of our country. They’ve urged my administration to deal with this ‘national security emergency’ by taking all necessary steps to turn the migrants back – including stationing the American military at the border.

“I come before you tonight to make clear that I will strongly reject such measures. They would represent a violation of our solemn international treaty obligations. They would amount to a betrayal of America’s long, proud history of welcoming immiserated populations from all corners of the world. And they would ignore simple human decency. In fact, some who urge a hard line toward the migrants are clearly playing on longstanding dark, but completely unjustifiable, fears about foreigners and even about racial and ethnic minorities.

“So I will not send regular military or even national guards units to the border. I will not beef up Border Patrol deployments. And I certainly will not begin building a Wall – as my chief opponent in the last election so foolishly and crudely recommended.

“Nor will I outsource my migrants policy to Mexico, or to the migrants’ home country governments. For none of these countries can guarantee the migrants the safety from crime and violence and the escape from poverty that they, like all members of the human family, deserve.

“In fact, I’m issuing an Executive Order that explicitly establishes gang and domestic violence as valid reasons for granting asylum. For aren’t these dangers just as appalling and inexcusable as the religious, political, and other forms of persecution to which grants of asylum have historically been restricted? Further, this new directive will abolish the artificial distinction between refugees from these horrors and refugees from joblessness, threadbare wages, hunger, homelessness, and other forms of economic privation. For if you’re being victimized for your political leanings or religion or nationality, you’re almost surely trapped in grinding, dehumanizing poverty as well.

“Of course, I’ll be directing that much more of the Justice Department’s budget be allotted to end the shortage of immigration judges that has produced immense backlogs in our immigration courts. Yet until the shortage ends, I will also mandate the construction of high quality accommodations for asylum applicants awaiting a hearing, including first-rate schooling for their children. And needless to say, applicants will enjoy the full come-and-go freedom to and from these facilities. Otherwise, we’d be putting them in cages, however gilded.

“Moreover, I will immediately put into effect my campaign promise to increase five-fold America’s admissions of refugees from Syria’s horrendous civil war. In fact, I apologize to these refugees for waiting so long to address their plight.

“And finally, because too many recent arrivals – from Central America and elsewhere – continue living precariously in the shadows, I will restrict the enforcement of domestic immigration law to finding and deporting dangerous criminals. For far too long taxpayers – including these many of these Aspiring Americans – have paid far too much money for the hounding of individuals and families whose only illegal behavior has been seeking better lives.

“We Americans need to remember: Except for our native American and native-born African-American populations, practically all of our ancestors came to this country for the exact same reasons motivating the Central Americans and so many others today. The Pilgrims were seeking freedom of religion. The Jamestown settlers were economic migrants. How can we deny caravan members and others like them the same opportunities that our nation has extended to our own forebears?

“The answer, it must be clear, is that we mustn’t and we can’t – if we want to be law-abiding global citizens, if we want to be true to our country’s best traditions, and if we want to be able to look ourselves squarely in the mirror.”

Pretty inspiring, isn’t it? But before you pick up the phone to call your Member of Congress (or the White House) to demand implementation of this agenda right now, ask yourself about the impact of an announcement like this. According to Gallup, as of last year, nearly 150 million people around the world would like to move to the United States. That includes 37 million Latin Americans.

Yet since the situation in Central American has clearly worsened over the last year, along with the crisis in Venezuela, that figure now is surely conservative. Additionally, the Trump administration’s current attitude towards migrants could well be depressing the number who consider migrating to the United States an option worth thinking about even idly. The kind of welcoming position Trump critics seem to want – i.e., one that further and greatly strengthens already powerful magnets that have attracting enormous foreign populations to this country – could well supercharge their ranks.

The lessons of this exercise couldn’t be clearer. If you believe that the United States could easily absorb anything close to this inflow in the near future, go right on lambasting the Trump administration and supporters of its immigration policies as modern day [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE ARCH-VILLAIN FROM HISTORY OR LITERATURE HERE]’s. But if you’re genuinely interested in devising an immigration and migrants and refugee policy that acceptably reflects your version of America’s values but recognizes the inevitable limits on such good intentions, you’ll start grandstanding less and thinking about the who, what, how, why, when, and where more.

Im-Politic: Antisemitism by Any Other Name

Tags

academia, antisemitism, Im-Politic, Lila Corwin Berman, Mainstream Media, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, The Washington Post, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome

Leave it to American academia today to produce an article that simultaneously claims that anti-semitism in the United States is and has always been much worse than commonly believed, and suggests that “the opportunities and privileges [American Jews] gained came not because America held particular promise for Jews, but rather because it withheld that promise in so many ways to so many other people.”

And leave it to the Mainstream Media to publish such simultaneously incoherent and offensive garbage – perhaps in part because author Lila Corwin Berman managed to inject into her diatribe major swipes at President Trump.

I’ve read and re-read the sentence quoted above, which appeared in this morning’s Washington Post, numerous times for fear of misinterpreting it. But I can’t understand how it can mean anything other than that throughout their history in this country, Jews in general have at the very least selfishly “seen no evil” as they’ve basked in America’s tolerance – and at the most bear significant responsibility for the oppression of other minorities, either actively, or passively, through their determination to keep affixed their self-serving blinder.

Not that anyone, including me, should rule any of these possibilities out of hand. But the author – a Temple University historian of American Judaism – offers no serious evidence or even detailed argumentation to support the charges. And absent any grounding in fact, how are the allegations not simple antisemitic slurs? Alternatively, to employ some terms widely used these days to link the President to atrocities like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, how does their simple voicing not “activate” or “encourage” or “release” or “embolden” such prejudice?

Further, how does Berman square these contentions with her belief – strengthened by the Pittsburgh murders – that the United States has not been “an exceptional place for Jews,” and that they have been wrong to “see an exceptional future for themselves and their children in the United States”? Spoiler alert: She can’t. Worse, she doesn’t even try. And her editors at the Washington Post somehow missed this whopping contradiction.

What could possibly explain such evident incompetence? How about Berman’s decision to make sure to blast President Trump for displaying:

“how easily [American] exceptionalism can become a weapon for exclusion; this is the very purpose of ‘Make America Great Again.’ The president legitimizes white supremacy as one of ‘both sides’ of American life. He declares himself to be a nationalist without bothering to distinguish between his nationalism and the dark history of xenophobic and genocidal nationalism. He routinely gives cover to those who abuse vulnerable populations — trans people, refugees, immigrants, Muslims, people of color, children and women — by telling his followers that they are the victims. In all cases, what he calls the ‘greatness’ of this country is its ability to exclude whole classes of people as unfit and undesirable for its blessings.”

In other words, Trump Derangement Syndrome has reached new lows. As the Washington Post has just made clear, a newspaper’s flagship opinion section will publish in the same article claims that American Jews have had no reason to be grateful for the haven the United States has provided them, and insinuations that these Jews have been complicit in the nation’s failures to treat other groups justly. Just be sure to depict the President as an enabler of every form of bigotry under the sun.