Im-Politic: Looking Backward and Forward on Trump and Trumpism

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cancel culture, Capitol Hill, Capitol riots, China, climate change, Congress, Conservative Populism, Constitution, Democrats, election 2016, election 2020, election challenge, Electoral College, establishment Republicans, Hillary Clinton, identity politics, Im-Politic, Immigration, impeachment, incitement, insurrection, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, left-wing authoritarianism, mail-in ballots, nationalism, Populism, Republicans, sedition, separation of powers, tariffs, Ted Cruz, Trade, trade war, Trump, violence

(Please note: This is the linked and lightly edited version of the post put up this morning.)

The fallout from the Capitol Riot will no doubt continue for the foreseeble future – and probably longer – so no one who’s not clairvoyant should be overly confident in assessing the consequences. Even the Trump role in the turbulent transition to a Biden administration may wind up looking considerably different to future generations than at present. Still, some major questions raised by these events are already apparent, and some can even be answered emphatically, starting off with the related topic of how I’m viewing my support for many, and even most, of President Trump’s policies and my vote for him in both of his White House runs.

Specifically, I have no regrets on either ground. As I’ll make clear, I consider Mr. Trump’s words and deeds of the last few weeks to represent major, and completely unnecessary, failures that will rightly at least tarnish his place in history.

All the same, legitimate analyses of many developments and resulting situations need to think about the counterfactual. Here, the counterfactual is a Trump loss to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. And I’m confident that her presidency would have been both disastrous in policy terms (ranging from coddling China to moving steadily toward Open Borders immigration policies to intervening militarily more often and more deeply in numerous foreign conflicts of no importance to the United States) and heatedly divisive in political terms (because of her grifting behavior in fundraising for the various supposedly philanthropic initiatives she started along with her husband, former President Bill Clinton; because of her campaign’s payment for the phony Steele dossier that helped spur the unwarranted and possibly criminal Obama administration investigation of the Trump campaign; and because of intolerant and extremist instincts that would have brought Identity Politics and Cancel Culture to critical mass years earlier than their actual arrivals).

As for the worrisome events of the last several weeks:

>As I’ve written, I don’t regard Mr. Trump’s rhetoric at his rally, or at any point during his election challenges, as incitement to violence in a legal sense. But is it impeachable? That’s a separate question, because Constitutionally speaking, there’s a pretty strong consensus that impeachment doesn’t require a statutory offense. And since, consequently, it’s also a political issue, there’s no objective or definitive answer. It’s literally up to a majority of the House of Representatives. But as I also wrote, I oppose this measure.

>So do I agree that the President should get off scot free? Nope. As I wrote in the aforementioned post, I do regard the Trump record since the election as reckless. I was especially angered by the President’s delay even in calling on the breachers to leave the Capitol Hill building, and indeed the entire Capitol Hill crowd, to “go home.” In fact, until that prompting – which was entirely too feeble for my tastes – came, I was getting ready to call for his resignation.

>Wouldn’t impeachment still achieve the important objective of preventing a dangerously unstable figure from seeking public office again? Leaving aside the “dangerously unstable” allegation, unless the President is guilty (as made clear in an impeachment proceding) of a major statutory crime (including obstruction of justice, or incitement to violence or insurrection), I’d insist on leaving that decision up to the American people. As New York City talk radio host Frank Morano argued earlier this week, the idea that the Congress should have the power to save the nation from itself is as dangerously anti-democratic as it is laughable.

>Of course, this conclusion still leaves the sedition and insurrection charges on the table – mainly because, it’s contended, the President and many of his political supporters (like all the Republican Senators and House members who supported challenging Electoral College votes during the January 6 certification procedure) urged Congress to make an un-Constitutional, illegal decision: overturning an election. Others add that the aforementioned and separate charge not includes endorsing violence but urging the January 6 crowd to disrupt the certification session.

>First, there’s even less evidence that the lawmakers who challenged the Electoral College vote were urging or suggesting the Trump supporters in the streets and on the lawn to break in to the Capitol Building and forcibly end the certification session than there’s evidence that Mr. Trump himself gave or suggested this directive.

>Second, I agree with the argument – made by conservatives such as Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul (often a Trump supporter) – that authorizing a branch of the federal government unilaterally to nullify the results of elections that the Constitution stipulates should be run by the states is a troubling threat to the Constitutional principle of separation of powers. I’m also impressed with a related argument: that sauce for the goose could wind up as sauce for the gander.

In other words, do Trump supporters want to set a precedent that could enable Congress unilaterally to overturn the election of another conservative populist with something like a second wave of Russia collusion charges? Include me out.

>Further, if the Trump supporters who favored the Electoral College challenge are guilty of insurrection or fomenting it, and should be prosecuted or censured or punished in some way, shouldn’t the same go for the Democrats who acted in the exact same ways in other recent elections? (See here and here.) P.S. Some are still Members of Congress.

>Rather than engage in this kind of What About-ism, and help push the country further down the perilous road of criminalizing political behavior and political differences, I’d much rather consider these challenges as (peaceful) efforts – and in some cases sincere efforts – to insert into the public record the case that these elections were marred by serious irregularities.

>How serious were these irregularities? Really serious – and all but inevitable given the decisions (many pre-pandemic) to permit mass mail-in voting. Talk about a system veritably begging to be abused. But serious enough to change the outcome? I don’t know, and possibly we’ll never know. Two things I do know, however:

First, given the thin Election 2020 margins in many states, it’s clear that practices like fraudulent vote-counting, ballot-harvesting, and illegal election law changes by state governments and courts (e.g., Pennsylvania) don’t have to be widespread. Limiting them to a handful of states easily identified as battlegrounds, and a handful of swing or other key districts within those states, would do the job nicely.

Second, even though I believe that at least some judges should have let some of the Trump challenges proceed (if only because the bar for conviction in such civil cases is much lower than for criminal cases), I can understand their hesitancy because despite this low-ish bar, overturning the election results for an entire state, possibly leading to national consequences, is a bridge awfully far. Yes, we’re a nation of laws, and ideally such political considerations should be completely ignored. But when we’re talking about a process so central to the health of American democracy, politics can never be completely ignored, and arguably shouldn’t.

So clearly, I’m pretty conflicted. What I’m most certain about, however, is that mass mail-in ballots should never, ever be permitted again unless the states come up with ways to prevent noteworthy abuse. Florida, scene of an epic election procedures failure in 2000 (and other screwups), seems to have come up with the fixes needed. It’s high time for other states to follow suit.

As for the politics and policy going forward:

>President Trump will remain influential nationally, and especially in conservative ranks – partly because no potentially competitive rivals are in sight yet, and possibly because Americans have such short memories. But how influential? Clearly much of his base remains loyal – and given his riot-related role, disturbingly so. How influential? Tough to tell. Surely the base has shrunk some. And surely many Independents have split off for good, too. (See, e.g., this poll.) Perhaps most important, barring some unexpected major developments (which obviously no one can rule out), this withering of Trump support will probably continue – though the pace is tough to foresee also.

>The Republican Party has taken a major hit, too, and the damage could be lasting. In this vein, it’s important to remember that the GOP was relegated to minority status literally for decades by President Herbert Hoover’s failure to prevent and then contain the Great Depression. Those aforementioned short American memories could limit the damage. But for many years, it’s clear that Democratic political, campaigns, and conservative Never Trumper groups like the Lincoln Project, will fill print, broadcast, and social media outlets with political ads with video of the riot and Mr. Trump’s rally and similar statements, and the effects won’t be trivial.

>What worries me most, though, is that many of the urgently needed policies supported and implemented by the Trump administration will be discredited. Immigration realism could be the first casualty, especially since so many of the establishment Republicans in Congress were such willing flunkies of the corporate Cheap Labor Lobby for so much of the pre-Trump period, and Open Borders- and amnesty-friendly stances are now defining characteristics of the entire Democratic Party.

The Trump China policies may survive longer, because the bipartisan consensus recognizing – at least rhetorically – the futility and dangers of their predecessors seems much stronger. But given Biden’s long record as a China coddler and enabler, the similar pre-Trump views of those establishment Republicans, and their dependence on campaign contributions from Wall Street and offshoring-happy multinational companies, important though quiet backtracking, particularly on trade, could begin much sooner than commonly assumed. One distinct possibility that wouldn’t attract excessive attention: meaningfully increasing the number of exemptions to the Trump China and remaining metals tariffs to companies saying they can’t find affordable, or any, alternatives.

>Much of the political future, however, will depend on the record compiled by the Biden administration. Not only could the new President fail on the economic and virus-fighting fronts, but on the national unity front. Here, despite his reputation as a moderate and a healer, Biden’s charge that Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have used Nazi-like tactics, and race-mongering comments accusing law enforcement of handling the overwhelmingly white Capitol Rioters more gingerly than the racial justice protesters earlier this year represent a lousy start. And as his harsh recent rhetoric suggests, Biden could also overreach greatly on issues like climate change, immigration, and Cancel Culture and Identity Politics. Such Biden failures could even shore up some support for Mr. Trump himself.

>How big is the violence-prone fringe on the American Right? We’ll know much more on Inauguration Day, when law enforcement says it fears “armed protests” both in Washington, D.C. and many state capitals. What does seem alarmingly clear, though – including from this PBS/Marist College poll – is that this faction is much bigger than the relatively small number of Capitol breachers.

>Speaking of the breachers, the nature of the crimes they committed obviously varied among individuals. But even those just milling about were guilty of serious offenses and should be prosecuted harshly. The circumstances surrounding those who crossed barriers on the Capitol grounds is somewhat murkier. Those who knocked down this (flimsy) fencing were just as guilty as the building breachers. But lesser charges – and possibly no charges – might be justifiable for those who simply walked past those barriers because they were no longer visible, especially if they didn’t enter the Capitol itself.

>I’m not security expert, but one question I hope will be asked (among so many that need asking) in the forthcoming investigations of the Capitol Police in particular – why weren’t the Capitol Building doors locked as soon as the approach of the crowd became visible? The number of doors is limited, and they’re anything but flimsy. The likely effectiveness of this move can be seen from an incident in October, 2018 – when barred Supreme Court doors left anti-Brett Kavanaugh protesters futilely pounding from the outside when they attempted to disrupt the new Supreme Court Justice’s swearing in ceremony. Window entry into the Capitol would have remained an option, but the number of breachers who used this tactic seems to have been negligible.

What an extraordinary irony if one of the worst days in American history mightn’t have even happened had one of the simplest and most commonsensical type of precaution not been taken.

Im-Politic: Goya Adds to the Progressives’ Losing Streak

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, authoritarianism, boycotts, cancel culture, CCP Virus, consumers, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, Goya, Hispanics, identity politics, Im-Politic, Julian Castro, Latinos, Lin-Manuel Miranda, progressives, Robert Inanue, The Squad, Trump, Wuhan virus

It’s almost enough to make even their opponents feel sorry for New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her fellow members of Congress’ “Squad,” and the rest of Progressive World, especially those who have tried to use Cancel Culture to enforce their party line.

Since the Election 2020 period results have come in, these lefties, and their intolerant, extremist positions have been pilloried for their party’s setbacks in the House and lost opportunities in the Senate by many of their more moderate fellow Democrats.

Recently, however, reliable evidence also has appeared that one of their leading recent Cancel Culture campaigns has backfired spectacularly – their call for a boycott of Goya Foods products.

Goya says it’s America’s biggest Hispanic-owned food company, so at first glance, it would seem an odd target for the ire of Identity Politics-obsessed progressives. But at a July White House event for Hispanic business leaders, CEO Robert Unanue (whose family hails from Spain) committed the supposedly cardinal sin of praising President Trump.

Out came the progressive thought police, including not only Ocasio-Cortez (known of course by the pop culture-type monicker “AOC”) snarkily urging supporters to make their own adobo sauce without Goya’s popular seasoning mix, but Obama administration Housing and Urban Development Secretary and failed presidential candidate Julian Castro, and Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda.  (See here for the details.)  

For several months afterwards, I tried to find some hard data on the boycott’s impact, but failed – mainly because Goya is a privately held company. The boycotters and much of the press coverage contended that Goya was taking it on the chin, while Unanue claimed his business was profiting from a powerful backlash. But nothing more solid was available.   

Now it is. In October (sorry I didn’t spot this earlier), Goya announced plans for an $80 million investment in a factory in the Houston, Texas area. The facility, which serves as the company’s main hub for producing and distributing its products to the western United States, will be adding equipment needed for a product line that includes new organic offerings. Moreover, this project comes just two years after Goya completed a doubling of the factory’s square footage. So it should be clear that Unanue’s claims were reality-based.

And yesterday the coup de grace was delivered – in a devilishly clever way. Unanue revealed that the company had named AOC “Employee of the Month” for “bringing attention to Goya and our adobo.”

Ocasio-Cortez responded by calling descriptions of her boycott role “made up fantasies” and arguing that Goya’s increased sales stemmed from the shift from restaurant dining to home cooking prompted by CCP Virus lockdowns. And maybe there’s some truth to the latter – although American consumers have plenty of choices other than Goya for Hispanic food products. As for the former, though, it’s just an example of AOC lacking the courage of her convictions, and trying to wipe the huevos off her face.

I can’t help but close, though, by noting that even though President Trump – who joined the Twitter war on behalf of Goya – not only suffered no damage from this episode, but notably increased his support from Latino voters in last month’s election, can learn a lesson from Unanue. The Goya CEO (who also professed to excuse AOC for being “young” and “naive”) just killed a leading critic with kindness. Imagine if even just some of that kind of wit and subtlety had characterized the Mr. Trump’s own statements as candidate and President.

Im-Politic: Biden as National Soul-Saver?

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cancel culture, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, left-wing authoritarianism, Michelle Obama, morality, politics, progressives, stimulus package, Trump, Trump World, wokeness, Wuhan virus

This Joe Biden thing about “a battle for the soul of America” and “restoring the soul of America” — I’ve never liked the self-righteousness of it from the start. And the more I’ve thought about it since Election Day, and especially as the odds of his becoming President seem to grow, the more worried I get, and the more troubled you should be, too. Two reasons stand out.

First, it’s far from clear that the Democratic nominee has thought through the demographics of his ambition. It’s of course clear that what he means by soul-restoring is that Donald Trump’s election as President – or perhaps more specifically his supposed trafficking in racist and other despicable dog whistles – means that something about America morally has gone badly off-track. But what and among whom exactly? Surely he doesn’t believe that his own soul needs to be restored. Ditto for other Trump opponents.

But what about Trump supporters? Let’s assume for a moment that his personal ethical antennae are finely tuned enough to guide the nation’s as a whole. He’s now promising to be a President for all Americans – including the Trumpers. But if their souls are at best badly corrupted (and at worst, no longer exist at all), then why should he take any of their concerns into account, at least until some semblance of what he considers an acceptable moral fabric is somehow regenerated?

As a result, unless he believes that most of Trump World has simply been duped, and that the scales will steadily drop from their eyes after he’s out of the White House, his recent urging that his compatriots recognize that “We are not enemies. We are Americans” is just as incoherent. After all, when one side of a political contest has no collective soul, then clearly their differences with their moral superiors entail more than (presumably acceptable) disagreements over, say, levels of taxing and spending, or the terms of a trade agreement, or defining foreign policy interests. After all, people lacking a soul, or whose soul is badly broken, are far worse, or qualitatively more difficult to contend with. Arguably, they aren’t even human at all, but something genuinely debased. How can reason and persuasion possibly work with the likes of them?

The second reason for concern about Biden’s rhetoric follows logically from the first. Precisely because consigning large numbers of Americans into the soul-less or broken-soul category clearly precludes dealing with them via conventional political means, this belief indicates that the former Vice President doesn’t even believe that he’s operating in the political realm at all – at least when it comes to Trump supporters. Instead, he’s an agent of virtue itself whose objectives are spiritual – and thereby rule out the idea of significant, and perhaps any compromise.

To be sure, there will remain areas of public policy where meaningful compromise is relatively – e.g., taxing and spending and particularly economic stimulus while the CCP Virus is in pandemic mode. But as has been seen in the stimulus debate so far, both parties in Congress have tried to use such legislation to advance goals not so conducive to give-and-take (e.g., the question of whether illegal aliens should receive any relief).

Everything known about Biden’s temperament also indicates that he’s a compromiser, not a crusader, by nature. Indeed, at various times during the campaign, that’s what he’s claimed he would do.

But there also remain areas of public policy that have never been conducive to meaningful compromise – like immigration, and social issues like abortion. In this vein, one of my own principal worries is still that whatever Biden thinks personally, he’ll lack the spine to resist progressive Democrats pushing their increasingly authoritarian impulses and consequent determination to make Cancel Culture The American Way (along with ever more woke Big Business).

He may also lack much interest in pushing back against the kind of anger and sanctimony and intolerance expressed so congently yesterday by, e.g., Michelle Obama – who tweeted, “Let’s remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division.”

Perhaps because the former First Lady is hardly the most extreme member of the Democratic Party, she also added, “We’ve got a lot of work to do to reach out to these folks in the years ahead and connect with them on what unites us.” But she deserves to be asked the same question posed in this post to Biden – from this standpoint, how much important common ground could exist with supporters of “lies, hate, chaos” etc.? Moreover, Biden himself has said that this soul-restoring business was what motivated him to seek the presidency again in the first place. (See the article in The Hill linked above.) So maybe lately there’s a lot more common ground between him and the progressive authoritarians than widely realized.

Here’s one way Biden could begin to ease concerns like this whether he becomes the next President or not. He could spell out in reasonably concrete terms just which of the motivations that have fueled two massive national Trump votes he does view as legitimate – and therefore where he’s ready in principle respond with more than tokenism. Unless and until he does, literally tens of millions of Americans will be perfectly justified in assuming that Biden’s talk of national unification and reconciliation is completely hollow, that they’ll return to Forgotten American status (and maybe worse), and that their own and the nation’s best future hopes rest with making sure he’s a one-term President, too.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! A New Correction Coming from The New York Times?

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cancel culture, editing, fact check, Glad I Didn't Say That!, journalism, op-ed page, peaceful protests, Portland, protests, The New York Times, Tom Cotton

“[T]he published [op-ed] piece [by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton] presents as facts assertions about the role of ‘cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa in infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes’; in fact, those allegations have not been substantiated and have been widely questioned. Editors should have sought further corroboration of thoseassertions, or removed them from the piece.”

– The New York Times, June 5, 2020

“Antifa, which stands for anti-fascist, is a radical, leaderless leftist

political movement that uses armed, violent protest as a method to

create what supporters say is a more just and equitable country.

They have a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest, including the

current protests in Portland.”

– The New York Times, August 7, 2020

(Sources: “Editor’s Note,” The New York Times, June 5, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html and “Abolish the Police? Those Who Survived the Chaos in Seattle Aren’t So Sure,” by Nellie Bowles, The New York Times, August 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/defund-police-seattle-protests.html . Thanks to “CTIronman.”)

 

Im-Politic: Signs That The Mob is Starting to Rule

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cancel culture, Chicago, Christopher Columbus, Confederate monuments, Connecticut, election 2020, freedom of the press, history wars, ImPolitic, Nelson Lee, peaceful protests, press freedom, protests, public safety, Seattle, Seattle Police Department, Seattle Times, shield laws, Ulysses S. Grant, violence, Washington Post

The next time you hear or read that the vast majority of protests during these turbulent times in America are peaceful (which will surely be within the next five minutes if you’re a news follower), keep in mind this pair of developments. They give me the willies and should so unnerve you, even if you (like me) believe that the vast majority of the protests have indeed been peaceful.

The first matters because it makes clear as can be that some of the protest groups contain individuals who make the cohort of brazen looters that’s emerged in so many violence-wracked cities look nearly harmless. What else can be reasonably concluded from this Washington Post account (yes, the same Washington Post whose journalism I slammed yesterday) of a court case in Seattle dealing with whether news organizations in the city could be ordered to turn over to the Seattle Police Department photos and video their staffers had taken of protesters who had “smashed windows, set police cars on fire, and looted businesses.” The cops’ intent – use this material to find the perpetrators and arrest them.

I was hugely relieved to read that the judge presiding over the case did rule that most of the material (all unpublished or posted) must be provided. But I was aghast at the reason given for the news organizations’ resistance. The Seattle Times, for its part, did cite freedom of the press concerns – involving Washington State’s shield laws, which entitle news organizations to protect source materials. These laws, which in various forms are practically universal throughout the United States, are indeed essential for enabling journalists to secure information that governments would rather keep secret for self-serving reasons.

The Times also made the reasonable (though in this case, not necessarily dispositive) claim that such cooperating with the police would put its credibility at risk. As contended by Executive Editor Michele Matassa Flores:

“The media exist in large part to hold governments, including law enforcement agencies, accountable to the public. We don’t work in concert with government, and it’s important to our credibility and effectiveness to retain our independence from those we cover.”

But these weren’t the only reasons cited by the paper. In an affidavit, Times Assistant Managing Editor Danny Gawlowski attested “The perception that a journalist might be collaborating with police or other public officials poses a very real, physical danger to journalists, particularly when they are covering protests or civil unrest.”

Moreover, Gawlowski stated, this danger wasn’t hypothetical. It had already happened. According to the Post‘s summary of his affidavit;

“The request could significantly harm journalists, the Times argued, at a time when reporters already face violence and distrust from protesters. One Times photographer was hit in the head with a rock thrown by a protester and punched in the face by another demonstrator.”

In other words, the Seattle Times, anyway, wanted to refuse to help law enforcement protect public safety because at least in part it was afraid that some protesters might attack them even more violently than they already had.

That sure sounds like intimidation to me, and successful intimidation at that. And even though the judge thankfully ordered substantial (though not full) cooperation, who’s to say that the Times won’t pull its protests coverage punches anyway? Even more important, what if violence-prone protesters elsewhere in the country read about this case, try to strong-arm local or national news media, too, and succeed? And what if not every judge holds the same priorities as Seattle’s Nelson Lee? Talk about a danger to democratic norms – as well as public safety.

The second development concerns decisions by governments in at least two parts of the country to take down controversial statues – a major front in the nation’s history wars. Don’t get me wrong: Elected authorities removing these monuments is sure better than unelected mobs toppling or defacing them – as long as these actions follow legitimate procedures and aren’t arbitrary. And as I’ve written repeatedly, in the case of Confederate monuments, it’s usually not only completely justified, but long overdue.

But in these cases, it’s the rationale for these actions that’s deeply disturbing. In both Connecticut and in Chicago, statues of Christopher Columbus and former President and Civil War Union supreme Union commander Ulysses S. Grant, respectively, were removed (as Windy City Mayor Lori Lightfoot explained her reasoning) “in response to demonstrations that became unsafe for both protesters and police, as well as efforts by individuals to independently pull the Grant Park statue down in an extremely dangerous manner.”

Translation: “I was afraid of the mob. And I decided to let them win.” No better definition could be found of the kind of appeasement that only spurs further violence. And no more important challenge will confront the President and candidates for Congress who will be elected or reelected in November. 

Im-Politic: Why the Cancel Culture Can Be Really Useful These Days

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1619 Project, Adam Silver, Adrian Wojnarowski, arts, Ben & Jerry's, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, celebrities, China, Dan Snyder, entertainment, ESPN, free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, history, human rights, Im-Politic, Jefferson Starship, Josh Hawley, National Basketball Association, NBA, Nike, police brutality, racism, Roger Waters, sports, Starbuck's, The New York Times, Washington Redskins, wokeness

Of course, what sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski thinks about Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, or the Black Lives Matter movement, or racial justice and police brutality issues generally, or even the proper role of politics in sports, has no intrinsic importance.

I mean, he’s a…sports reporter. As a human being, he’s entitled to his views, and in principle he’s entitled to express them in public. But although he’s great at scooping the competition on the latest roster moves by the Minnesota Timberwolves or whoever, he brings no special qualifications to these matters, and based on what we know, has no distinctive, much less especially valuable, insights to offer. Indeed, he does’t even apparently have any interest in offering them (unless you’re the kind of person impressed with the eloquence of an F-bomb).

Nonetheless, Wojnarowski’s outburst, and suspension by his employer, ESPN, represents a particularly informative opportunity for explaining why the industries like sports and entertainment should stay away from politics not necessarily for the good of the country (a subject that’s unexpectedly beside the point for this discussion), but for their own good. Just as important, his moments of fame outside the professional basketball world make clear that the so-called Cancel Culture that’s emerged with special force recently in the United States has some genuinely constructive uses in these current fraught times.

To recap, Wojnarowski covers pro basketball for sports cable network and website ESPN, and clearly has strong feelings about racial justice/policing etc issues. We know this from his reaction last Friday to message sent by Hawley to the National Basketball Association (NBA) protesting its decision for allowing players to wear “messages that promote social justice on its jerseys this summer but not allow messages that support law enforcement or are critical of China’s Communist Party.” He responded by emailing his F-bomb to Hawley, who proceeded to send out a tweet containing the communication’s image. (See this account for the details.)

To his credit, Wojnarowski has apologized completely, and with apparent sincerity for showing disrespect. But regardless of what you think about the issues above, the NBA’s decision under Commissioner Adam Silver, to “uphold” and even “stand for” values that no one of good will could object to in the abstract is bound to be a recipe for continuing trouble and a hornet’s nest it would do well to avoid for two main and overlapping reasons.

First, what non-arbitrary yardsticks, if any, does the NBA, or a similar organization, use to decide which views it endorses. As widely noted, the NBA is a strongly majority African American league, and Silver has explained that he therefore has tried to be sensitive to the concerns of black players, many of whom have experienced firsthand the varied socioeconomic problems and forms of prejudice that have plagued the black community for so long. That’s perfectly fine, and in my opinion laudible, when it comes to supporting these players expressing their views off the court, as individuals. But as representatives of a team or entire league? And when the league itself takes stances?

This is when a raft of thorny issues rears its head, especially if the league’s policy isn’t “anything goes.” For example, what if – as Hawley suggested – a player wants to wear on his jersey a pro-police or pro-military slogan, or perhaps “All Lives Matter”? Would the league allow that? And if not, on what grounds? Does the NBA really want to permit some forms of Constitutionally protected expression but not others? Would it be willing to establish an issue-oriented inspired litmus test for permission to be drafted or otherwise sign a contract? Would non-playing employees be subjected to the same requirements, too? Or would the league impose a “shut up and dribble”-type rule on players who dissent from its orthodoxy?

These questions may seem academic. But what if the day comes when most NBA players aren’t African Americans? As the league keeps proudly observing, athletes from abroad keep pouring in even now. Maybe they’ll care a lot about police brutality in America’s inner cities, either because they’ve been following the issue closely or because their consciousness has been raised by their African American teammates. But what if, some day, Bosnian-born players wanted to wear jerseys decrying what they see as Serbia’s ar crimes during the Balkans wars that broke out in the 1990s? (Intra-ethnic tensions in the region remain high to this day.) What if Lithuanian-born players wanted to use their uniforms to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent designs on their homeland? If enough European players filled NBA rosters, would the league relish the thought of taking institutional stands on these matters? And if it did, how would it decide which positions to take? Majority vote of the players? The owners? Both? The fans?

Or take an international issue on which (as Hawley noted) on which the league has already made clear it prefers not to speak out – human rights in China. What if a player wanted to wear a slogan that slammed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping? What if a player of Chinese descent sought to protest Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong? What if one of the NBA’s Muslim players wanted to publicize atrocities committed by China against his co-religionists in the Xinjiang region? Would such players be censored? That option certainly can’t be ruled out, because the league’s lucrative China business has unmistakably led it to tread warily on this ground – even though its influence in the People’s Republic is considerable precisely because of the huge numbers of ardent Chinese NBA fans. But could the league proscribe this or any other kind of selective censorship on the basis of principle? Good luck with that. In fact, as with the other international issues mentioned above, it’s hard to imagine a better formula for sowing bitter divisions up and down league rosters and throughout the fan base. What intelligently led business would want to stir up that hornet’s nest?

Which brings us to the second major reason to de-politicize the NBA – and the related entertainment industry: They’re businesses. Any efforts to impose official orthodoxies will antagonize significant shares of their customer bases as sure as it’s bound to please others. And the league would expose itself to the Cancel Culture – which would have every right to rear its head, and which in these circumstances arguably would serve useful social, political, and economic purposes. After all, if it’s OK for the NBA as a business to take a stand I don’t like, it’s just as OK for me to register my dislike, and/or try to change its mind through the most effective legal means available to me and other individual customers – our pocketbooks.

These actions would by no means amount to calls to censor the NBA, or deny it or any of its franchises a right to free speech. If business owners want to use their assets to push certain agendas, that’s their prerogative. (I’m much less comfortable with permitting businesses to use unlimited amounts of money to fund campaigns for political office – but let’s leave that subject for another time.) It’s anyone’s prerogative, however, to object by not purchasing the product – just as it’s anyone’s prerogative to turn the channel if they decide they don’t like a TV or radio program. If these consumer actions endanger a business’ profits – too bad for them, and no great loss for the nation. If these organizations aren’t willing to pay a commercial price for their principles, chances are they’re not that deeply held to begin with.

The same rule of thumb, by the way, should apply to organizations as such that are resisting becoming politicized – like the Washington Redskins football team, which just yesterday announced that it will be changing its name because many (though no one knows exactly how many) view that monicker as a racial slur. As I see it, owner Dan Snyder has the God-given right to name the team anything he wants. And fans have the right to object by avoiding games in person or on TV, shunning team merchandise etc.

At this point, it’s crucial to note that skepticism about the wisdom of sports leagues and their teams (and other businesses) taking institutional stands on public issues doesn’t automatically translate into opposition to individual athletes or owners or other employees of sports leagues and other businesses taking such positions as individuals, without identifying themselves with their employers. That freedom needs to be respected – or at least that’s how I see it.

But how I see it, it turns out, isn’t the law. Private businesses generally can fire employees for any reason they like, including speaking out politically outside the workplace, as long as the reason has nothing to do with race, religion, gender and, now, sexual orientation. One reason surely is that such actions can reflect poorly on a business, reduce its earnings, and wreak non-trivial collateral damage – e.g., via a revenue drop big enough to endanger salary and wage levels, and even jobs. In other words, in most cases, you as an individual worker can legally be canceled.

Another reason evidently is that this kind of firing doesn’t inherently prevent you from expressing yourself. It simply prevents you from expressing yourself and holding a particular job. Given how important jobs are, that can easily look like a distinction without a difference. But again, if a principle is held strongly enough, it should be worth an economic price.

Speaking of reflecting poorly on business, that’s apparently what the Washington, D.C. pro football team’s sponsors decided when they started threatening Snyder recently with withdrawing sponsorships if he didn’t relent and drop “Redskins.” In effect, they told him they’d fire his business, as they had every right to do And Snyder quite understandably decided that his profits were more important than preserving his memories of his boyhood sports idols. (He’s a native Washingtonian and lifelong-fan,)

Celebrity status, as in sports, of course, creates interesting wrinkles – mainly, a team could in theory fire an athlete for expressing a view that owners consider objectionable, but enough fans might disagree strongly enough to retaliate commercially against the team. In these cases, the only reasonable conclusions to draw are that (1) life is sometimes unavoidably unfair and (2) some decisions are risky, and businesses that employ and even foster outspoken stars, like sports franchises, need to hope they have the judgment to come out on top. The same goes for keeping or dumping controversial names and mascots.

Generally speaking, Cancel Culture-type entertainment issues play out like Cancel Culture-type sports issues, but some crucial differences should be taken into account. Principally, whereas sports as such have absolutely nothing to do with public issues, literature, music, theater, the movies, and the like have always been closely connected with these matters. How could they not? Of course, the arts have created any amount of pure fluff. Much so-called serious art plays purely to our pure emotions, too.

But from their beginnings, the arts have represented expressions of ideas as well, and any healthy society that wants to stay healthy should hope that individual artists and organizations keep sounding off vigorously on “politics.” Moreover, logically speaking, there’s no built-in problem with entertainment companies and those institutions that organize the industry (and administer awards) championing and condemning specific positions as well.

By the same token, however, whether you denigrate the practice as intolerant Cancel Culture or not, it’s any art or entertainment consumer’s right to choose not to patronize any individual entertainer or artist or entertainment business or organization they disagree with about anything, and even to encourage others to join in. The market and the consciences of individuals and companies and organizations in the arts and entertainment fields will decide what kind of arts and entertainment products will be produced, with whose sponsorship (if any) and how influential and commercially successful they’ll be.

The real dilemmas for consumers come in when, say, your favorite singer makes terrific music but expresses offputting ideas on public affairs. In those cases, there’s no reasonable alternative to each individual figuring out which he or she values more – the instrumentals and vocals, or the lyrics – and there’s no ready formula for doint so. For me, it’s how I justify continuing to play Jefferson Starship’s musically magnificent but politically infantile (putting it mildly) 1970 album “Blows Against the Empire,” but also how I’ve decided that I’ll probably keep ignoring Roger Waters’ new material because I find the Pink Floyd co-founder’s anti-Israel invective so despicable.

Of course, Cancel Culture-type issues have arisen in connection with other industries as well. For me, because they generally have nothing to do with ideas and values, the sports rules of thumb seem to be appropriate for them, too. So I’ll keep passing up Ben & Jerry’s – and not simply because they always put in too many fill-ins and too little ice cream. Ditto for Nike’s various social justice kicks (which the athletic shoe company apparently views as being perfectly compatible with its massive job and production offshoring). And since I can now get a good cup of joe, find a comfortable place to sit, take a load off, and use free WiFi at any number of coffee bars around the country, so long to Starbuck’s and its insufferable in-my-face “commitment to racial justice and social equity.”

Whatever you think of the above arguments, they still leave unresolved three big aspects of the intertwined rise-of-institutional “wokeness/“Cancel Culture debate still unresolved.

The first, concerning historical monuments, markers, and names etc. I’ve already dealt with extensively, and you can examine my views by entering terms like “Confederacy” or “history” in RealityChek‘s search engine.

The second concerns the view that the kind of voting with your pocketbook that I’m recommending clashes with the idea that vigorous debate is a cornerstone of any sound democracy. I strongly agree with that notion. But it strikes me as naive to believe that at present, or in the foreseeable future, the conditions exist or will exist for any kind of helpful debate about the emergence of woke corporate culture.

For decisions like the NBA’s to take up certain causes (but not others) didn’t result from any engagement with the fan base. I’m sure some polls have been taken, but those were undoubtedly market research exercises to try to see whether such moves would pass muster with its customers – or whether they mattered at all. But to my knowledge, neither the league nor any of its corporate counterparts offered the general public the option of commenting substantively, much less indicated that these comments would be taken into account. The decisions were made by fiat. And given the vast disparity between the power and influence of a huge, well-financed business on the one hand, and individual customers or fans on the other, who can reasonably doubt that these debates won’t even happen until it’s clear that fan objections are impacting bottom lines?

If anything, these points are even stronger when it comes to institutions that are widely supposed to be in the debate-fostering business themselves, at least in part. It’s true, I’ve argued, that at least when we’re talking about the news media, or the broader information industries, these suppositions are largely misconceptions. It’s also true that I wouldn’t advise anyone to stop reading, say, The New York Times, because it’s chosen to enter the field of education and create the (in my view recklessly slanted) “1619 Project” to rewrite American history, or because its news coverage too often seems to be shaped by a widely held staff view that the sins of President Trump are great enough to warrant abandoning traditional journalistic ideals like objectivity.

But these Times decisions also were made by fiat, with no substantive input sought from readers. So if at some point I or anyone else concludes that the Times‘ reporting and analysis has become so unreliable as to be useless, I’ll cancel my subscription with a perfectly good conscience, and hope others do likewise.

The third dimension of the wokeness/Cancel Culture debate concerns wrongs committed or controversial remarks made by high profile individuals, and the proper responses both of the general public and of whatever employers or constituencies to which they’re responsible. Simply put, should such words and deeds be forgiven or punished, and if the latter, is there a statute of limitations?

Clearly, some of the deeds (like sex crimes) bring into the picture the criminal justice system, which I assume everyone views as the way society should deal with these actions. More difficult to decide, at least in principle, is how to treat those convicted once they’ve paid their debt (assuming they get released). At this point, I don’t see any viable alternative to engaging in or avoiding Cancel Culture-type responses, since the offenses cover such a wide range of actions, and since the subsequent behavior of the guilty is certain to vary greatly as well. Therefore it seems impossible to figure out a cookie-cutter blueprint for forgiveness or lack thereof. Case-by-case seems to be the best strategy for their employers, too.

Nor do I see any viable alternative to dealing with case-by-case to speech that’s legal but that offends for all sorts of valid reasons. In other words, there’s no escaping judgment calls.

So let’s give the Cancel Culture one or two cheers (as opposed to the full three). I just wish I was more confident that America’s national supply of judgment was adequate or increasing strongly.  

Im-Politic: Ivy League Princeton Turns Bush League in the History Wars

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cancel culture, Christopher L. Eisgruber, Founding Fathers, history wars, Im-Politic, Ivy League, James Madison, Princeton University, race relations, racism, slavery, Washington Post, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Full disclosure: Although I graduated from Princeton University and believe that I got a great education there (for a princely sum, to be sure), for various reasons, I never felt much affinity to the place (except for the basketball and other athletics teams – long story). As a result, I’ve never given it a dime . Even so, it’s depressing to learn that for the last seven years, the school as been run by a leadership team that’s full either of guilt-driven liberals, ignoramuses, utter ditzes, or some combination of the two.

I know this because the university’s president, Christopher L Eisgruber, has just explained in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post why he persuaded Princeton’s Board of Trustee to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs.

My scorn for this move and those responsible for it has nothing to do with any doubt concerning the racist views and policies of a figure who was not only President of the United States, but president of Princeton. I’ve fully recognized Wilson as a racist here and here. Nor do I hold the former Woodrow Wilson School in any special regard. In fact, I’ve long considered “public and international affairs” as being about as legitimate a university course of study as sports communications.

Instead, I view the Wilson name removal as (to quote Eisgruber) “an excess of political correctness” precisely because he’s also expressed strong agreement with one of the few sensible notions that have emerged from America’s recent history wars – that there’s a crucial distinction between figures who are known only or mainly for supporting treasonous and racist and other odious views and policies, and those whose role in U.S. history entailed much much more. More.

In this vein, Eisgruber acknowledges explicitly that Wilson “is a far different figure than John C. Calhoun or Robert E. Lee, people whose pro-slavery commitments defined their careers and who were sometimes honored for the purpose of supporting segregation or racism.” He recognizes that many of Wilson’s achievements both at the university and in the White House can legitimately be called “genuine” and even “grand.” And he goes on to admit that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate his life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

Weirder still: As Eisgruber explains, responding in 2015 to student demands that the university “de-Wilson-ize” itself Eisgruber asked the Board to study how Princeton was presenting Wilson’s record and legacy, and the school ultimately decided to “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.”

In my view, that’s exactly the right way to handle the matter, and I’ve since urged that participants in the national debate to think harder about similarly thoughtful ways to deal with other historical figures who also deserve to be remembered as more than racists whatever flaws on the issue they demonstrated or embodied.

But Eisgruber and the Princeton board have taken the easy, and simplistic way out. Although nowadays the concept of “slippery slope” is abused way too often (because it too conveniently defines out of existence any need and ability to make intelligent choices or draw important distinctions), Princeton’s decision raises the question of why Abraham Lincoln or the Founding Fathers, with their own problematic racial records and actual slave-owning, shouldn’t be expunged from the nation’s public places as well (or from whatever private places honor them).

According to Eisgruber, he changed his mind because even with the 2015 changes, Princeton was still honoring Wilson

“without regard to, and perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism.

“And that, I now believe, is precisely the problem. Princeton is part of an America that has too often disregarded, ignored and turned a blind eye to racism, allowing the persistence of systems that discriminate against black people.”

But of course, the university had taken specific steps to (as Eisgruber told us) “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.” So what’s changed between then and now?

Similar questions arise from Eisgruber’s associated contention that “When a university names its public policy school for a political leader, it inevitably offers the honoree as a role model for its students. However grand some of Wilson’s achievements may have been, his racism disqualifies him from that role.”

If so, however, why keep Wilson’s name on one of its residential colleges and on it’s “highest award for undergraduate alumni”? (As Eisgruber calls the Woodrow Wilson Prize. Unless that, too, has changed? Eisgruber didn’t specify.)

Finally, why have Eisgruber and the Board stopped with Wilson? The university also still honors the slave-owning (and pretty consistent slavery supporter) Founding Father and former President of the United States James Madison in at least two ways: a scholarly program called the James Madison Society, and a dining option called “Madison Society”. What the heck is so special about him? Why not kick this racist SOB’s name off the campus, too? 

Nothing could be clearer than that Eisgruber has no rational answers to these questions – and may not have even asked them. In fact, the only intellectually honest or competent sentence in his entire article is his confession that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate [Wilson’s] life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

In other words, Princeton’s decision stands as a monument – to ignorance. And you can probably throw in intellectual cowardice and faddism as well.