Im-Politic: Charlottesville & Trump: A Never-Ending Story?

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American South, anti-semitism, Charlottesville, Confederate monuments, free speech, hate groups, Im-Politic, neo-Nazis, racism, Trump, white supremacists

And so President Trump has stepped in it once again, and guaranteed that, unless something major changes, self-inflicted wounds will become the hallmarks of his presidency.

Of course, I’m talking about his impromptu remarks at yesterday’s press appearance, in which new, explicit denunciations of racist and anti-semitic hate groups were accompanied by descriptions of some of their individual members present in Charlottesville, Virginia as “very fine people” – along with comments that at least could reasonably be read as establishing a moral equivalence between the marchers and those who came to the region to protest their planned rally.

Among the least defensible:

>The contention that the torchlight marchers last Friday night included “people protesting very quietly the taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee”;

>The charge that supporters of removing Confederate memorials are “changing culture” – which closely resembles the specious claim that the memorials were erected to honor the American South’s distinctive “heritage.”

As per the views I expressed on Saturday, I still don’t believe that Mr. Trump is a racist or an anti-semite. I still believe that his behavior mainly reflects a “pathetically mistaken” belief that a big chunk of his largely white, working class base will take offense at overly harsh attacks on bigoted, fringe figures like David Duke and Richard Spencer.

But upon reflection, I’d add that he’s stunningly inarticulate, and terminally – and in many ways childishly – argumentative. And although I’m not concerned that his verbal indiscipline will needlessly spark a war or some other kind of domestic or global crisis, those are worrisome traits in a figure whose every syllable is (understandably) put under a microscope. Nor is much simple common sense visible on the President’s part, or at least not often enough.

After all, how difficult would it have been to draw up sometime over the weekend and deliver on TV a statement along the lines of:

“My fellow Americans [or whatever standard presidential speech introductory wording you like]. I loathe the Charlottesville protesters and everything they represent. The neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and their ilk have deliberately associated themselves with historical atrocities and injustices that are not only appalling. They are uniquely evil in nature. It is indeed infuriating to see them openly displaying their perverse and destructive views in our streets and parks and squares. In fact, I am personally infuriated that they keep invoking my name, and portraying my efforts to reinvigorate the ideal of a practical, healthy nationalism as an endorsement of racism and anti-semitism and xenophobia.

“But we also must remember something crucial about our democratic values – which of course are values that the hate groups’ evil historical idols have tried to destroy. They demand that even loathsome figures and voices enjoy the freedom to exercise their Constitutional speech rights. So in that respect, attempts to disrupt their activities, or the First Amendment freedoms of other unpopular speakers, must be condemned, too.

“Therefore, law-breakers will be prosecuted – whatever their political views and associations.

“But much more important, I hope that the vast majority of Americans angered by the disgraceful Charlottesville marchers and their supporters understand, and take to heart, that the best way to counter, and defeat, the hatred they spew is not by joining them in the gutter and resorting to violence – unless it’s a matter of self-defense. The best way is to expose their sick lies with the power of reason. The best way is to remember our love, compassion, and respect for each other, and take every opportunity to show it. The best way is to strengthen our nation’s unity of spirit. And the best way is to fulfill our sacred duty each and every day to keep our great national experiment in self-government a beacon for all of humanity.”

Now the President is reaping the whirlwind. I have no idea whether this latest uproar will simply blow over (as with the Access Hollywood video episode), or become superseded by another headline news development, or will doom Mr. Trump to a single term, or will erode his political support so drastically that his presidency becomes impossible to continue. What does seem certain is that the prospects of a successful Trump presidency, and especially of promises kept to economically struggling middle class and working class Americans, have taken a body blow, and that something on the order of a dramatic display of executive competence, an equally dramatic display of contrition and/or explanatory eloquence – plus a tidal wave of dumb luck – will be needed for even a partial recovery.

Im-Politic: First Thoughts on Charlottesville

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ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, anti-semitism, Charlottesville, civil liberties, Civil War, Confederacy, Constitution, David Duke, Founding Fathers, free speech, Im-Politic, neo-Nazis, racism, Robert E. Lee, secession, slavery, treason, Trump, Virginia

It’s as tempting to offer timely thoughts about today’s Charlottesville, Virginia violence and the reactions it’s generated as it is difficult – for new developments keep taking place, and incontrovertible facts are hard to come by. That said, here are what strike me as as points worth making at present.

First, as I’ve previously written, the triggering complaint of the white nationalist/neo-Nazi/confederate revivalist/call-them-what-you-wish protest and the narrowest-gauge cause it represents should be unacceptable to all Americans who truly love their country. Confederate statues and other monuments to the rebellion (e.g., street and high school names) have no place in our national life. And removing them has nothing to do with erasing history. The history of the Civil War must of course be taught in the most intellectually honest way possible. But statues and street names etc are unmistakable efforts to honor and memorialize.

And whether you view the secession as motivated by intertwined racism and slavery issues (where in my view the bulk of the evidence points) or more legitimate federalist and states rights claims, the decision to revolt violently against the federal government was a simple act of treason, which should always be condemned in the harshest possible terms.

Moreover, please don’t respond with observations that the Founding Fathers’ ranks included slave-owners (like Washington and Jefferson) or that many subsequent American leaders were racists (like Woodrow Wilson). For slavery was, tragically, legal under the Constitution until emancipation. And as I’ve written (in the post linked above), most of the historical national figures with inadequate records on race were, first, to great extents products of their time and, second, known for playing many other roles and making many other contributions to the nation and its success.

As for the protesters’ broader supposed grievances about repressed and endangered white rights and even safety, I have no doubt that economic stresses and anxieties are at work in many cases. But feeling the need, or advisability, to fly the Confederate flag or wear the swastika simply signals a form of derangement that our society has rightly decided is beyond the pale politically and morally speaking. So public figures should decry this message and reject any association with those sending them.

Which brings us to the question of the Trump response. It was, as critics have charged, far too weak. What I can’t figure out is the “why”. Is the president a racist? He’s had too many African-American friends and supporters for that charge to stick. He and his advisers and aides also have too often argued for restricting immigration by pointing to the benefits U.S. blacks would reap.

Related anti-semitism make even less sense, given that Mr. Trump’s daughter married an orthodox Jew (who he has anointed as a top White House aide) and then converted herself to Judaism. I know that the “some of my best friends are….” argument can be and has been abused by anti-semites (as well as racists). But insisting that “some of my children and grandkids….” is much harder to dismiss.

The only explanation that makes even some sense to me (meaning of course that I’m not totally convinced) is that the president worries that a substantial part of his (largely white) base either covertly or (much likelier) subconsciously sees itself as racially repressed or marginalized, too, and would suddenly desert him if he went after the David Dukes and Richard Spencers of this country. In other words, Mr. Trump’s troubling words reflect a political calculation, not a shared bigotry.

If so, his position is not only timorous, but pathetically mistaken. Because for every hater he retains by his silence or anodyne words at times like this weekend, he risks losing many more moderates and independents who have no use for the identity-politics obsessed, and therefore intrinsically divisive, Democrats but who are disgusted by overt racists – much less neo-Nazis. In fact, Duke’s tweets today show that this arch-racist and anti-semite is infuriated by the president’s Charlottesville remarks.

More important, the president will earn much more durable support from independents and moderates – especially those who have actually lost economic ground or fear such losses – by keeping the campaign promises he made to restore living wage jobs than by even minimal pandering to prejudice.

Finally, the role of the Charlottesville police and any other law enforcement authorities tasked with handling the protests needs to be scrutinized thoroughly – along with our notions of protesters’ rights. I’m pretty certain that most Americans would agree with the right of Nazis and the like to stage a protest over the treatment of Confederate memorials (or any other reprehensible) cause, and to display symbols that should disgust all people of good will. And of course, these are Constitutionally protected rights.

But I’ve long thought that the right to protest also entails the right of protesters to be protected from those seeking to disrupt their events. In other words, once counter-protesters started physically interfering with the Nazis, the police force present should have stepped in and started making arrests. Even better, they should have taken much more effective measures to keep the counter-protesters physically apart from the protesters, to reduce the odds of violence breaking out to begin with. To my knowledge, law enforcement authorities have never been sued for such failures (not even by the American Civil Liberties Union, which admirably supported the Nazis’ etc right to demonstrate in Charlottesville). I hope the organization will consider bringing such a case in the wake of Charlottesville, if the circumstances merit this action.

For failing to establish protesters’ right to security could easily turn into an open invitation for harassment that could crimp free speech rights yet further. And what would induce the Nazis – and violence-prone lefties – to start licking their chops more eagerly?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Middle East Refugee Admissions Must be Hyper-Cautious

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anti-semitism, elites, ISIS, liberals, libertarians, Marco Rubio, media, Middle East, neoconservatives, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris attacks, progressives, refugees, Syria, terrorism, The New York Times, World War II, xenophobia

If there are good arguments against hyper-cautious U.S. policies towards accepting Middle East refugees, I haven’t heard them yet. Instead, those urging lenient, “generous” approaches have simply supplied the latest burst of evidence that large percentages of America’s political and media elites, as well as other avowed progressives, neo-conservatives, and libertarians, have lost most of their common sense and even their instinct for self-preservation.

It’s also important to note that too many advocates of tighter restrictions for those fleeing the wars in Syria and Iraq and the Middle East’s general turmoil have taken butt-headed positions, too. (The main example – admitting only Christians.) But on balance, the restrictionists have been much more realistic than their opponents – whose ranks of course include President Obama.

I’d quote from his remarks on the subject earlier this week in Turkey but they were so narrow and shallow (focusing solely on that religious discrimination issue) that they’re easily dismissed. No better was the New York Times’ main editorial on refugees. Its writers – rightly seen as leading voices of what passes for American liberalism these days – endorsed Mr. Obama’s claim that the restrictionists were “betraying” American values. But they also accused the restrictionists (without naming them) of “confusing refugees with terrorists” and of “absurdly” portraying Muslims as “inherently dangerous,” thereby running the risk of validating terrorist propaganda about the Western world’s implacable hostility.

Most revealingly, it handled the crucial issue of vetting refugees streaming in large numbers from lands completely convulsed by chaos simply by scoffing at Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s concern that “you can have 1,000 people come in and 999 of them are just poor people fleeing oppression and violence, but one of them is an ISIS fighter.” Surely, The Times contended, “America can offer a smarter and more generous response.” But it seems that presenting specific recommendations would have meant exceeding space limits, since none were mentioned.

My perusal of the Mainstream and social media has turned up several prominent arguments for leniency that at least make a nod toward history and logic – but only in the most superficial and tendentious ways.

For example, one supposed “Aha!” point made by the lenience backers consists of citing polls from the 1930s indicating strong U.S. public opposition to admitting (often Jewish) refugees fleeing the Nazi-fication of Germany and outbreaks of similar persecution elsewhere in central and eastern Europe. Those past restrictionists unmistakably were motivated by anti-semitism and broader xenophobia. Therefore, imply the modern refugees’ avowed champions, so are today’s restrictionists.

But was the world of the 1930s threatened by anti-American Jewish- or other European-dominated terrorist groups? That’s news to me. One Facebook friend noted that (at least two) German spies had made it to the United Kingdom in December, 1940 disguised as refugees, suggesting that this kind of danger did exist.

But at that time, the U.K. had been at war and fully mobilized for more than a year. Normal peacetime transport between the continent and the British Isles was non-existent, the government was closely guarding the coast against spies and saboteurs, and whatever refugees who managed to leave (perhaps more heavily guarded) Germany, its allies, or occupied Europe, were few in number and easily identified. Indeed, the aforementioned spies came in a rowboat that was escorted to British shores by British forces. Such episodes are supposed to hold lessons for Americans today?

Others advocating for today’s refugees have noted that terrorists can also enter the United States as travelers using valid foreign or forged passports, and that threats can also come from domestic “lone wolves” and cells. All true. But are those observations supposed to demonstrate that there’s no point in vetting Middle East refugees today with the greatest care? That no vetting at all should take place? That today’s procedures should be loosened? If so, that’s tantamount to saying that since many crimes will never be prevented or solved, all law enforcement is pointless.

In fact, this kind of reasoning most plausibly buttresses the restrictionist argument. That is, it’s possible that some refugees or others in the Middle East and elsewhere who are politically inactive may be so enraged by restrictive U.S. and other Western policies that they wind up signing up with ISIS or similar groups. But the strength of these organizations makes clear that many other individuals in many countries have responded to many other terrorist recruiting pitches over many years. So why not use the greatest possible vetting prudence to at least boost the odds that dangerous extremists won’t cross American borders?

Of course, many supporters of lenience do agree that vetting is essential. Logically, this implies a confidence that the current system is satisfactory. But it’s difficult to see why this confidence is justified. It’s true that the current screening process is rigorous and protracted. It’s equally true, however, that significant numbers of Middle East refugees haven’t been admitted into the United States in the Age of ISIS. And although the United States has indeed safely admitted many such individuals previously, not until the latest round of Middle East conflicts had refugee numbers themselves reached flood-tide proportions.

Moreover, precisely because of these conflicts, today’s refugees present unusually difficult vetting challenges. As made clear even by Obama administration officials, the data needed to corroborate identity, criminal records, and other crucial details simply don’t exist or aren’t available.

Ironically, on the one hand, the detailed scrutiny refugees already receive makes clear that, under current U.S. procedures, there’s no chance of the country being flooded with large numbers any time soon. So unless these procedures are considerably eased, and/or American leaders decide to expand greatly the refugee numbers the nation has promised to take (currently “at least 10,000”), neither the threats feared by the restrictionists, nor the humanitarian relief desired by their opponents, will significantly increase any time soon.

But the ability of fewer than ten terrorists to turn Paris into a war zone for hours last week demonstrates that even overwhelming screening success may not prevent unacceptable danger. And the administration’s stated determination to bring all 10,000 Syrian refugees next year troublingly indicates a desire to expedite vetting, not reenforce it.

So anyone listening with intelligence and genuinely wanting maximum possible protection for the American people should recognize that most restrictionists are saying, “Better safe than sorry,” not urging completely closed doors. It’s also obvious that their critics don’t have a message remotely this responsible, or even coherent.