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?

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Im-Politic: The Latest Anti-Trump Smear is Anything but a New Low

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2016 election, Colbert King, David Duke, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Foreign Affairs, Hobart Rowen, Im-Politic, Immigration, Japan, Japan-bashing, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, racism, Richard Holbrooke, The New York Times, Trade, Washington Post, xenophobia

I was tempted to say that Colbert King’s Washington Post column today – which tarred as race-baiting Donald Trump’s attacks on not only current U.S. immigration policy but trade policy as well – marked a new low in Establishment Media elitism and plutocracy coddling. Then I remembered that both the mainstream press and the broader Beltway political class have been using these underhanded tactics literally for decades.

According to King, when it comes to trade and immigration, in this year’s presidential campaign, Trump is using the formula employed by former Ku Klux Klan member, racist, and anti-Semite David Duke when he ran for Louisiana governor in 1991 – wooing “economically discontented and politically alienated white voters by playing to their fears and resentments.”

King rightly reminds that Duke – who has endorsed Trump’s presidential candidacy – is an unapologetic bigot. But he pointedly included in his attack on Duke’s success in appealing to voters who were “frustrated, insecure, angry and ready to blame someone” popular concerns over predatory Japanese trade policies and “massive immigration.” And he just as pointedly observed that these themes “echo today” in the rhetoric of the current Republican front-runner.

Sadly, he’s just the latest in a long line of U.S. leaders and Beltway scolds who have made lucrative careers working to ostracize any reservations about globalist trade and immigration policies that have enriched and empowered one percent-ers at the expense of the nation’s working and middle classes.

I first encountered these tactics in the early 1990s, while working at the Economic Strategy Institute. This think tank sought to challenge the free trade absolutism that then reigned virtually unchallenged in American policy circles. In the process, it tried to focus particular attention on Japanese economic successes that strongly indicated that a brand of capitalism differing significantly from the U.S. version could achieve impressive results and create major problems for American industries, their workers, and the country’s overall economic vitality.

An all-too-common response from the establishment pundits of the day, along with prominent think tanks created expressly to uphold conventional wisdom, was to brand the Institute as a “Japan-basher,” whose arguments were fueled by prejudice. Nor were the perpetrators shy about leveling these charges.

According to the late prominent American diplomat Richard Holbrooke – writing in no less than foreign policy establishment house organ Foreign Affairs in an effort to lower then-elevated U.S.-Japan tensions – “there may still be an underlying racism, not always conscious, in the attitudes of some Americans toward Japanese.” And the late Washington Post economics Hobart Rowen had no compunction in making this point to Members of Congress critical of Japan’s protectionism.  (Both these points are made in this Rowen column.)   

Immigration-boosting zealots in establishment ranks have committed the same intellectual crimes – and years before Donald Trump became a leading political figure. For example, when the Senate passed an immigration bill containing a path to legalization, The New York Times moaned, “It is hard to understand what — besides election-year pandering and xenophobic hostility — motivates [the House of Representative’s] unwillingness” to approve the measure. That was in 2006.

Commenting on the immigration policy environment, a junior Senator from Illinois charged, “A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen.” That was Barack Obama, and the year was 2008.

House [Democratic] Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has stated, “I think race has something to do with them not bringing up the immigration bill. I’ve heard them say to the Irish, ‘If it was just you, it would be easy.’” That remark came in 2014. And if you Google the right search terms, you’ll see that these examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s no doubt that there’s entirely too much anger in American politics today, and that Trump is responsible for much of it. But many of his opponents are in no position to single out Trump’s contribution. As King’s column make clear, their ranks include smear merchants, too. And their paper trail long predates the current campaign.

Im-Politic: Trump-ism on the Brink

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2016 election, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, David Duke, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Im-Politic, John Kasich, Ku Kux Klan, Marco Rubio, racism, Republicans, Ted Cruz

On the eve of the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, which could make Republican front-runner Donald Trump that party’s presumptive nominee, Trump-fever is peaking throughout the country. At least until Wednesday morning. Whether he takes the crown, or the fall election, or not, no one should underestimate this development’s revolutionary impact and importance, given Trump’s apolitical background, out-there personality, and rule-smashing campaign. In fact, this Washington Post article from yesterday helpfully reminds us how long the (incestuous) national political and media establishments refused to take the Trump phenomenon seriously.

At the same time, it’s also crucial to keep in mind how little effect the Trump surge has had in two crucial respects.

First – and arguably foremost due to the rising odds of his ultimate success – Trump’s recent and impending triumphs haven’t seemed to have changed Trump much at all. Not that there’s been no progress at all since he declared his candidacy back in June. Most encouragingly, he’s steadily, if unevenly, been blaming foreign culprits like Mexico and China less for America’s problems, and fingering domestic special interests more.

Trump has also made more explicit the promise that previously was only implicit in his campaign of realigning U.S. politics ideologically. Early in his presidential run, he generally ignored or soft-pedaled both the social issues (like abortion) that have long strongly animated the Republican party’s social conservatives, and the tax, spending, and regulation issues that have excited GOP free market enthusiasts. Now, he’s openly praising pro-life movement villain Planned Parenthood, and making clear his belief that all Americans deserve decent health care, whether its government provided or not.

Yet Trump’s style generally remains as stupidly – largely because it is so unnecessary – abrasive as ever. Some examples cited over the weekend have now been exposed as off-target, and pathetically ignorant, examples of gotcha journalism. Read this Bloomberg column for a devastating tear-down of the “Mussolini” controversy propagated by no less than The New York Times, the BBC, and TIME – for starters.

But other charges are more valid. I think Trump has a point in this remark on the Today Show that “I disavowed [former Ku Kux Klan leader] David Duke all weekend long, on Facebook, on Twitter, and obviously, it is never enough.” He could have added that he had disavowed Duke at his Friday press conference unveiling Republican New Jersey governor and former presidential rival Chris Christie as a new supporter – not exactly a low-profile event.

But Trump’s disavowal was perfunctory at best. And his claims of ignorance about Duke – in the face of previous evidence – hardly inspire confidence, especially since Trump has no problems denouncing opponents and others who attract his ire. In fact, these claims raise major questions about his judgment and temperament precisely because it would have been so easy for him to respond by agreeing that Duke is a long-time racist and anti-Semite and then mocking him as an almost equally long-time nothing-burger politically. Further, if reporters and others kept bringing Duke up, Trump simply could have kept repeating this point. So although I think it’s nonsensical (at best) to portray Trump as a white supremacist, it’s far from nonsensical to insist that these kinds of political tests be passed much more effectively – the more so since he’s been at this presidential candidate thing for months now.

Similarly, it’s high time for Trump to give the nation some idea of his policy team. He’s promised for months to release a list of advisers on national security and foreign policy, but still hasn’t come through. (Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has been slow in this regard, too. But at least he’s a long-time Member of the House and Senate.) Maybe Trump is worried about revealing how few well-known specialists are willing to help him out? Possibly. There’s no shortage, however, of less well-known specialists – who have the decided advantage of distance from the bipartisan policy failures of recent decades. Trump might be on the verge of taking the first of the two big steps he needs to take to become president. He needs to get on the stick. And this goes for domestic advisers as well.

The second feature of the political landscape that hasn’t changed significantly since Trump threw his hat in the ring – that intertwined political and media establishment is still overwhelmingly responding to Trump not by seriously addressing the legitimate economic grievances of his growing legions of supporters, but by doubling down on demon-ization. I’ve written extensively on the press’ dreadful performance – because it’s supposed to be reasonably objective, not flagrantly partisan and/or self-interested like politicians in an election fight.

But even a cynic with the lowest expectations of politicians should be dumbfounded by the failure of Trump’s major Republican rivals to budge much from their long-time records on his core immigration and trade issues – at least not credibly. Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz are both running as immigration hard-liners. But the former was an original sponsor of the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill, and though the latter voted against it, he also attempted to attach a legalization amendment to it (which he has since called a “poison pill” gambit designed to kill the legislation.) During this campaign, Cruz has become a critic of the H-1B visa program that technology companies in particular have used as a means of lowering wages in their industry. But previously, he backed not only increasing their numbers but quintupling them. Rubio’s pre-2016 H1B position has been comparably bad .

As for Ohio Governor John Kasich, his main immigration strategy has been (Jeb Bush-like) depicting Trump as a “divider” and belittling the complaints of American workers who have lost either jobs or wages to legal and illegal immigrants.

When it comes to trade, both Cruz and Rubio voted in the Senate for the fast-track authority successfully sought by President Obama last year to grease the Congressional skids for a Pacific Rim trade deal (TPP) based on the current, offshoring-friendly model. (Cruz then switched his vote once it became clear that the legislation was a done deal.) In 2013, the Texas Republican opposed a measure that would have expanded use of the federal government’s Buy American regulations and increased Washington’s mandated purchases of U.S.-made products.

Rubio’s votes have been more numerous and worse, including approval of the disastrous, deficit-boosting U.S.-Korea free trade agreement, and opposition to sanctioning China for predatory currency policies along with that Buy American expansion. Reports that the Florida Republican is now backing away from his TPP enthusiasm merit the skepticism warranted by death-bed conversions in general.

Although Kasich has vaguely complained about predatory trade practices by America’s competitors, he’s on board with TPP, too. The Ohio Republican hasn’t served in Congress since 2000, but his overall mixed trade vote record got steadily more supportive of offshoring-friendly trade policies – including a vote in favor of the crucial decision to admit China into the World Trade Organization in his final year.

(Yes, I’m omitting Dr. Ben Carson’s views because his campaign has been driven so deep into long-shot territory.)

So seven months after Trump debuted so rancorously on the American presidential stage, the nation’s politics keep getting ever angrier, and the heat clearly is being generated on both sides of the elite-electorate divide.