Im-Politic: Ensnared in the History Wars

Tags

Confederacy, Confederate monuments, Holocaust, Im-Politic, racism, Staunton, Stonewall Jackson, Stonewall Jackson Hotel, Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, Virginia, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

I finally had my own personal brushes with the History Wars this past week, receiving a first-hand reminder of the complications entailed in presenting the American past with accuracy and therefore with true integrity. Nothing I experienced has shaken me of the conviction that most of the nation’s Confederate monuments shamefully honor traitors (I discussed some of the exceptions here), and should be removed (lawfully) from public places. Ditto for displays of Confederate symbols on private property – although such displays should remain Constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. But what about dealing with these affronts on a personal level? That, it became clear to me, is another matter altogether.

My encounter with the History Wars resulted from a two-day trip my wife and I took to Staunton, Virginia, a picturesque town of about 25,000 located between the Blue Ridge Mountains and recent History Wars battlefield Charlottesville. We went to the area to check out a big regional book sale, and to take in two plays staged by the town’s renowned Shakespearean theater.

And we scored a deal: a package from a local hotel that included not only two nights’ stay, but two performances and a sumptuous breakfast. What could have been better? Here’s what. The hotel was the “Stonewall Jackson” – named of course after the famous Confederate general.

By the time we put one and one together, it was too late to cancel without a charge (yes, how convenient), so we held our noses and took the trip. The hotel was in all other respects exemplary – including a very friendly, helpful staff. It employed some African-American workers as well, and we saw no signs of dissatisfaction on their part. Moreover, the town lying beneath the (big) “Stonewall Jackson Hotel” sign seemed perfectly pleasant as well. True, we saw very few African-American pedestrians or working at local businesses. On the other hand, Staunton features tony restaurants with fashionable farm-to-table menus, as well as a (quintessentially progressive) fair trade products shop.  In other words, a hotbed of racism and reaction it isn’t. 

I thought of sharing (politely) my opinion of the hotel’s name with the staff, but wound up keeping my thoughts to myself. After all, it’s the owners’ views that really count. I probably will communicate my feelings on Facebook in hopes of persuading them to change – and will let them know (regretfully) that unless they do, I can’t in good conscience stay there again.

History Wars encounter Number Two was much easier to deal with – my visit to the town’s Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, located in Staunton because the 28th president was born in the town (and lived there briefly during his infancy before his family moved to Georgia).

Although Wilson held deplorable racial views even for his time, and although he is among my least favorite presidents (overwhelmingly because of his disastrously naive foreign policies), the decision was a no-brainer for me on moral grounds. For as I’ve explained previously – and as with similar figures like the Founding Fathers – Wilson’s role in American history far transcended his record on race. And he didn’t take up arms against his own country.

Moreover, the facility handled these issues very appropriately. In addition to the exhibits describing Wilson’s re-segregation of the Federal government and paternalistic – at best – views of his fellow black citizens, the guide who conducted the tour of the actual Wilson family home forthrightly told our little group that the former president’s parents employed three house slaves – rented from a local farmer for Wilson’s father, a minister, by his congregation. And she made plain as day how low the living standards of these slaves were.

Encounter Number Three came on our drive back, when we decided to take local roads (including one dubbed the “Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway”) part of the way and came upon the kind of big antiques store that my wife can’t resist. I find these places eminently resistible, but as usual, gave it a quick once over. I wasn’t offended by the Nazi memorabilia I saw. (They can be genuine collector’s items – as with the Japanese sword a childhood friend’s father took back from his World War II service in the Pacific. That didn’t make him an Axis supporter.) Ditto for the “George Wallace for President, 1964” sign displayed in a side room. (The arch-segregationist then-Alabama governor made his first run for the White House that year.) For the record, my wife was much more creeped out by these items.   

What did offend me was the conversation I heard between the young man at the cash register (who was unfailingly polite toward both of us), and two other customers. On top of dredging up the usual canard about Confederate memorial opponents wanting to “erase history” (What? You never heard of history books or museums?), they made the kind of remarks about the Holocaust so ignorant that they were surely in part willful (though they obviously were not Deniers).

As I was in earshot, I was sorely tempted to interject. But I decided that no useful purpose educational purpose would be served. Indeed, far likelier that I would have reinforced any prejudices they had about rude, self-righteous Yankees. Or Jews. Or both.

Since I have no reason to believe that the employee owned the store, or that the owners condoned his views (or even knew about them), I don’t at this point have any issue with patronizing that store again. And getting the cashier in trouble seems way over the top – especially since he didn’t initiate that exchange and could well have been agreeing with his customers largely to be polite, and make sure he completed the sale.

My wife wound up getting some truly beautiful items there. In fact, she considers it one of the best antique stores she’s ever seen – both in selection and price terms. We also still love central Virginia – its countryside is mostly stunning. But as we continued back north on the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, heading toward I-81 and home, we both realized more than ever, how long America’s History Wars, and the collective and individual challenges they pose, are bound to last.

Advertisements

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

Tags

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

Tags

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?

Im-Politic: Race, Conspiracies, and Double Standards

Tags

2016 election, Courtland Milloy, David J. Rothkopf, Donald Trump, establishment, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, middle class, Obama, Occupy Wall Street, One Percent, racism, The Washington Post, working class

It’s more than a little strange to praise an establishment newspaper column that all but calls Donald Trump a racist. And yet the bar for simple sanity has sunk abysmally low for opinion journalists (who aren’t supposed to be objective – like their increasingly unprofessional counterparts in hard news). So it’s more than appropriate to tout the virtues of Washington Post pundit Courtland Milloy’s October 11 piece on charges that if the Republican presidential nominee loses the presidency, African-Americans and other minorities could face an “apocalypse.”

Milloy’s article contains the by-now standard accusation that Trump’s rhetoric has been “racist” (as well as “misogynist”). But he departs insightfully from the emerging conventional wisdom that many of Trump’s backers are such vicious bigots that they will respond to defeat at the polls by going on a violent rampage that targets non-whites of all kinds. In addition to disputing the claims that all or most or lots or too many of Trump’s supporters are racists, Milloy points to a lesson he argues African-Americans have learned about even seemingly hostile whites over the…centuries:

“[F]or those who are racists, their views may not lead to threatening actions. When blacks and whites work on jobs where cooperation is a matter of life and death — such as in the military or on a construction site — people, no matter their beliefs, tend to find a way to get along.”

Along the way, he lampoons contentions that Trump’s campaign is responsible for a significant rise in racism throughout American society.

Even more important, Milloy writes that even many Trump critics are missing “the villain that lurks in the shadows” for both minorities and whites in the middle and working classes, and in the ranks of the poor: “the extremely rich who own the politicians, manipulate Wall Street and exploit cheap labor worldwide at the expense of America’s working class.”

If that last phrase sounds familiar, it should. It revealingly mirrors Trump’s own latest line:

“For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind. Our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven’t seen before,” Trump said.

“It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.”

As Milloy observes (approvingly), it also sounds a lot like what we’ve heard from the left wing of American liberalism since the “Occupy Wall Street” movement began (and of course before). In addition, this phenomenon has been the subject of extensive recent study – e.g., in a 2009 book titled Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. And the author in this case is David J. Rothkopf, a quintessential establishmentarian who currently edits FOREIGN POLICY magazine.

Curiously, though, when these words come from Trump’s mouth, they’re simply ridiculed (as in this speech from President Obama last week), or they’re ascribed to historic anti-Semitism (as in this October 13 post).

Milloy offers vastly superior advice: urging black and white working-class people [to] come together and stop falling for these political con games….” Clearly, such cooperation is impossible to envision in the near-term future. Is it too much to hope that, by the 2020 campaign cycle, someone who deserves the adjective “presidential” might take on the challenge?

Im-Politic: A Common Sense Approach to the National Anthem

Tags

1968 Olympics, Colin Kaepernick, Constitution, First Amendment, Im-Politic, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali, national anthem, National Football League, professional sports, race relations, racism, Tommie Smith

Ever since pro football player Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers decided to protest racial injustice in America by kneeling during the national anthem, I’ve been asking myself why I’ve found his (and similar recent) actions so unimpressive, while remaining moved by the political actions of black athletes in the 1960s. And I’ve come to conclude that it’s not because I’m a fogeyish baby boomer who by definition believes everything was better back in the day.

I say this for two related reasons. But first, let me express agreement with those who have noted that Kaepernick’s gesture is completely protected by the First Amendment. Also, I’ve heard some arguments to the effect that athletes and other employees in many other industries routinely sign contracts holding them for public relations reasons to certain standards of behavior both on the job and off, and that as a result, the quarterback (voluntarily) surrendered some of his freedom of speech.

But both the 49ers and the National Football League deny that this has been the case.  And although I’m not a lawyer (and don’t even play one on TV!), I doubt that it’s constitutional for employers to deny or even curb the free speech rights of their employees unless exercising them can be shown to either interfere significantly with carrying out their responsibilities, or significantly harm the company’s image. 

Let’s get another matter out of the way, too. Although Kaepernick can’t be legitimately criticized for this, he and other football players pros who made national anthem protests can be knocked for timing last Sunday. I mean – on September 11? Seriously? The merits of the case aside, what could be likelier to forfeit public sympathy, especially among those not already with them?

But I would have been put off by the protests regardless of date – in contrast to my admiration for, say, Muhammad Ali and the two sprinters who bowed their heads and gave black power salutes when awarded medals at the 1968 Olympics.

The first reason has to do with the context. In the late 1960s, the involvement of athletes in politics was brand new, and taking non-mainstream stances was virtually unprecedented, especially for high profile performers. In fact, genuine courage was required – as made clear in Ali’s case when he was fined and  suspended from pro boxing simply for conscientiously objecting to military service during the Vietnam War. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos had no opportunities to cash in on their triumph in Mexico City by running track professionally, but they paid significant personal prices, too.

Although Kaepernick et al have caught non-negligible flack, athlete and broader celebrity involvement in political and social issues has now become so routine that many causes use their Congressional testimony as core elements of their strategy. Even better, athletes and celebrities who take left-of-center positions can count on strong support from the country’s media and entertainment establishments.

My second reason for disquiet with the current generation of athletic and celebrity activists concerns the targeting of the national anthem. Actually, I have some sympathy for the view that patriotic displays have no place at sporting events, and that however traditional playing the anthem has become, the fabric of American life would remain fundamentally unchanged if the practice was ditched.

But here’s what matters more, as I see it. National anthem-like protests had more merit decades ago, when channels of protest, even for prominent individuals, were much fewer and further between simply because the media universe was so small. You had the three major commercial broadcast networks, along second-tier operations like Metromedia (essentially the ancestor of Fox). You had three national newspapers, three weekly newsmagazines, a few publications like Life and Look that didn’t deal with hard news controversies and opinion quite so consistently, and that was it. National syndicates did offer commentaries from the likes of Walter Lippman and Drew Pearson and the team of Evans and Novak. But the op-ed page didn’t exist until 1970. So if you hoped to reach broad audiences, and weren’t already world or nationally famous, you were for all intents and purposes out of luck. And this was also true if your renown came from a career not associated with journalism or public affairs.

Need I explicitly mention you that we’ve come an awfully long way since then? Indeed, we’ve come so long that unless you’re actively seeking to avoid them, there’s almost no escape from commentaries about political issues, and about controversial social and cultural issues. And in this environment, it seems reasonable to me to view an event like the playing of the national anthem as a valuable and constructive opportunity. It’s a chance to capitalize, on occasions when large numbers of us gather together in person, to affirm our common American identity in ways diametrically unlike the current smash-mouth style of most current politics and opinionizing.

As a result, although no one is legally obligated to stand or sing, those who decide to kneel or otherwise demonstrate at that moment strike me as at the very best off-putting, and at worst not so much unpatriotic as unreasonably hostile to acknowledging anything positive about the nation’s history and achievements. And I’d like to think that I’d take this stance even if the protest supported a cause I favored.

So here’s my plea to Kaepernick and other athletes moved to continue national anthem protests, for whatever reason: Given all the other powerful platforms you have to make your points, could you keep at least this particular ceremony a haven from the constant din of our ubiquitous public conversation? Americans today are anything but short of ways and means of expressing our disagreements and divisions, genuine and concocted. Questions of constitutional liberties aside, how about preserving at least one occasion for expressing our common bonds?

Im-Politic: What the Hell Many Black Voters Really Have to Lose

Tags

2008 election, 2016 election, African Americans, Bill Clinton, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Donald Trump, Employment, government jobs, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, race, race relations, racism, subsidized private sector

Even by the off-the-wall standards of this presidential campaign, one of the most stunning spectacles has entailed the reactions by many African-Americans (and many of their supposed leaders) to Donald Trump’s appeal for their votes. The Republican presidential candidate’s insistence that Democratic politicians like his rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton, have failed blacks, and therefore don’t deserve the overwhelming support they enjoy, has been met with everything from howls of bitter laughter to outbursts of outrage. And this despite an almost non-stop litany of complaints from these same voices about how too many African-Americans still lag economically and face debilitating racism.

Major reasons for the blowback triggered by Trump’s appeal have already been widely highlighted – ranging from the claim that his pitch has ignored black progress that has been made to the sluggishness with which he has failed to disavow support from a former Ku Klux Klan leader and other white supremacists to (unproven) charges that his family’s real estate ventures discriminated against black tenant applicants. Then add to these Republicans’ reluctance to use government to solve this community’s biggest problems and what leading conservative lights often admit is the GOP’s decades-long failure to court African-American voters systematically.

As a result, it’s easy to see why so many African-Americans apparently have decided to overlook criticisms raised (often by African Americans) about the race relations record of Clinton and her husband, the former president. These include Clinton administration welfare reform and policing measures unpopular with much of the minority population, and both Clintons’ use of supposedly insensitive racial rhetoric during her 2008 Democratic primary race versus then Senator Barack Obama.

But there’s one possible factor behind African-Americans’ evident mass support for Clinton, and their equally evident alarm that Trump might win, that deserves more attention. And this consideration is especially important since it looms as a major barrier to future Republican success with blacks as long as the GOP remains the party of limited government, and no matter how lousy the economy or the state of much of Black America gets.

It has to do with African-Americans’ outsized dependence on jobs both in the public sector and in parts of the economy heavily subsidized by government spending. What the data shows is that American blacks have good reason to view government not only as a provider of many essential services and resources, but as an engine of jobs (and therefore financial stability) and opportunity. Perhaps equally important – this government role has grown steadily during the economy’s generally weak recovery under President Obama.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data could not make these conclusions clearer. Take its “public administration” jobs category. In 2002 (the first 21^st century year for which data exist), African Americans made up 10.9 percent of Americans over the age of 16 employed either in the public or private sectors. But their share of “public administration” jobs was much higher: 16.5 percent. Moreover, that category doesn’t include government groupings like “urban transit” (where African-Americans comprised 28.1 percent of all workers. Or the U.S. Postal Service (23.1 percent).

Blacks were also over-represented in the government-subsidized industries like healthcare services and social assistance agencies. There are no 2002 statistics combining the most conspicuous of these together. But African-American workers accounted for 16.7 percent of all the nation’s hospital workers that year, 15.1 percent of healthcare workers outside hospitals, and nearly one in five employees at social assistance agencies.

During the year the Great Recession ended, 2009, blacks’ share of all adult U.S. workers fell to 10.7 percent – indicating how hard they were hit by the downturn. But here’s their representation in the public and government-subsidized sectors:

Public administration: 15.6 percent (surely because public payrolls started shrinking)

Subsidized private sector total: 14.0 percent

Urban transit: 28.3 percent (an increase)

Postal Service: 20.3 percent (a decrease)

The cuts in government employment accelerated for most of the time through 2015 (the last year for which data is available). Thanks to the economic recovery, the African-American share of total U.S. adult employment regained a full percentage point, to 11.7 percent. But blacks’ share of falling government employment grew as well:

Public administration: 16.9 percent (despite the continued cuts in overall government employment)

Subsidized private sector total: 14.8 percent

Urban transit: 30.5 percent

Postal Service: 24.2 percent (back above 2002 levels)

Not that this African-American employment pattern is a first in U.S. history. Far from it. Especially in northeastern cities, new European immigrant groups used the patronage and overall powers won via political victories to employ their former fellow compatriots. These government jobs, in turn, became pillars of the nation’s rapidly growing middle class and the widespread prosperity it helped foster.

These data, however, also show what a mortal threat at least in principal Small Government conservatives and Republicans pose to government employment’s role in the advances the black community has achieved. The Right may have completely valid points in contending, for example, that this recipe for economic and financial success has left too many sidelined and outright failed too many others; resulted in huge opportunity costs even for the beneficiaries; encouraged attitudes of dependency; or (at best) run out its string for all the black wealth it has generated.

But especially to a population whose sense of economic security is understandably fragile, and whose faith in the career potential available in private industry is understandably limited, Small Government conservatism amounts to a proposal to exchange a bird in the hand for two in the bush. (On top of the reduced services implicitly promised to the less well-off.) So unless Republicans change their philosophy significantly, or more convincingly argue that African-Americans should take this kind of chance, the answer they’ll get from most blacks to Trump’s question, “What the hell do you have to lose” will continue to be “More than you can know.”

Im-Politic: What if This Time It’s Really Different for Trump?

Tags

2016 election, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, fascism, Gonzalo Curiel, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mexico, racism, Trade

Not that I have my finger on the pulse of public opinion, or even opinion in the political and media establishments I try to monitor, but the current Trump Moment strikes me as being different, and more serious politically than its predecessors.

You know which ones I mean. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s statement about Mexico sending criminals and rapists into the United States. His trashing of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain’s years as a Vietnam War POW. His statement that “There has to be some form of punishment” for women who undergo abortions. His proposal to ban foreign Muslims from entering the United States. His apparent mockery of a reporter with a physical disability.

Of course, these items by no means exhaust the list of outrageous or at least bizarre and/or unnerving Trump-isms. And their impact on his campaign so far seems to be negligible. But his allegation that Judge Gonzalo Curiel is incapable of presiding impartially over one of his Trump University trials because of his Mexican heritage appears to have touched off condemnations from his opponents and frustration among his supporters orders of magnitude greater than those sparked by previous remarks.

I have no idea if This Time It’s Different or not, but the current uproar prompted two thoughts I hope you agree are worth sharing. First, if by some jaw-dropping turn of events, Trump is forced out of the race or is denied the Republican nomination at the Cleveland convention by delegates overcome with buyers’ remorse, all serious talk of two major issues corroding the vitals of America’s economy and its politics almost surely comes screeching to a halt. I’m talking about trade and immigration.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has spent the entire campaign trying to out-pander her intra-party rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, as a champion of ever more reckless Open Borders policies. And her opposition to the next big job-killing trade agreement to come down the pike – President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has all the trappings of election-year expediency. In fact, in her foreign policy speech in San Diego last Thursday, the former Obama administration Secretary of State left little doubt that she’s chomping at the bit to revive the push for such offshoring-friendly globalization agreements. Why else would she take such pains to condemn Trump for seeking a “trade war with China” and dredging up the red herring about such moves materially worsening the Great Depression in the 1930s?

Sanders, of course, has staunchly opposed not only the TPP but all of its predecessors. So if Clinton’s irresponsible handling of classified information and/or damaging disclosures about her family foundation’s operations wind up derailing her candidacy, a bona fide trade policy critic would still be running for the presidency this fall. But as suggested above, Sanders has become as ardent an advocate of highly permissive immigration policies as any card-carrying member of the corporate cheap labor lobby. So the odds of American workers losing their livelihoods or suffering wage decline because of cheap or subsidized foreign competition could go down. But the odds of these harmful results coming from cheap domestic competition would stay high.

The second thought concerns all the allegations of demagoguery and fascism that have been leveled against Trump. I’m sure at least many are sincerely believed, even by some of the Never Trump Beltway Republican and conservative stalwarts. Few have expressed any problems with the at least equally dangerous and anti-democratic practices of making policy behind closed doors at gatherings of politicians and plutocrat lobbyists. All, however, have dusted off their European history books to insist how fragile the foundations of democracy can be at a time of widespread economic distress.

And yet the example of interwar Europe is revealing in ways the anti-Trump-ians either don’t recognize or don’t want to recognize. Those societies were not only devastated economically by depression and, in the case of Germany, hyperinflation. They had suffered losses during the Great War that are literally unimaginable for Americans (unless they immigrated from those countries at that time). And except in Britain, democracy’s roots were shallow or weak.

Economic times today unquestionably are hard for far too many Americans, but otherwise, the United States in no way fits the description of a country about to reject representative government or the rule of law. In fact, precisely because the national situation is so entirely manageable in comparison, it’s nothing less than striking that the avowed champions of democracy, who profess to be so terrified about the Trump-ist threat, have taken virtually none of the decidedly modest steps that surely would have sufficed to slow Trump’s momentum, possibly halt it altogether – and quash the danger for the time being.

Yes, Clinton has abandoned the TPP. But even many Democrats don’t believe her conversion will have legs. Yes, the Beltway Republicans and conservatives have jumped on the Border Security train. But their still heavy dependence on Big Business donations will surely tempt them to support a relatively permissive immigration reform bill shortly after the election – and as long before the next presidential cycle as possible. Moreover, their surrogates in the (corporate-funded) think tanks and the establishment media keep doubling down on their own arguments that returning to maximum trade liberalization and mass immigration are essential for varying combinations of partisan political, economic, and strategic reasons.

In fact, here’s a rule of thumb I feel pretty confident about. The more stridently these Democratic and Republican establishmentarians defend the trade and immigration status quos, the louder and more often they’ll condemn public anger and resentment as signs of incipient fascism.

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

Tags

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

Tags

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.

Im-Politic: Black Belt Lessons on Race

Tags

Alabama, Black Belt, civil rights movement, Im-Politic, poverty, race relations, racism, segregation, Selma, South, voting rights

Glass half empty? Half full? Somewhere in between? I was confronted with those questions last week when a flood of civil rights-era memories was unleashed in my head from the least likely of sources.

It all began on Wednesday night, as I was watching a college basketball game. During one of the commercial breaks, an ad was broadcast that jerked me to attention with the phrase “black belt.” Anyone alive and alert to the news during the 1960s, or schooled in its history, should link these words with a stretch of counties in Alabama originally named for its unusually rich ebony soil, but later known for large African-American populations. (Geologically, the Belt stretches through the entire south, from Texas to Maryland.)

The Alabama portion in particular was the site of landmark civil rights movement events. Some were peaceful and inspiring, like the Montgomery bus boycott resulting from Rosa Parks’ refusal to submit to segregationist seating laws in public transit. Others, like the police suppression of the Selma voting rights march, were shamefully violent.

Wednesday night’s TV commercial mentioned none of this. Instead, it touted the region as a great place for hunting and fishing. My first reaction was pleasant surprise, given the Belt’s tumultuous history. Initially, it looked like another example of the South putting its tragic past behind it. A little further investigation, though, revealed a more complicated reality.

According to at least one scholar, like much of the majority black South today, the Alabama Black Belt is marked by “low taxes on property, high rates of poverty and unemployment, low-achieving schools, and high rates of out-migration” along with “a high number of single-parent households, high teen birth rates, and poor access to health-care services.”

Nor has the region become entirely free of discrimination, or at least charges thereof. Last fall, for example, in what it described as a budget-cutting move, Alabama’s Republican controlled state government closed 31 driver’s license offices. According to critics, an outsized share of these closings came in the Black Belt, and they looked suspiciously like an effort to create new obstacles to voting in this predominantly Democratic area.

It seems beyond legitimate dispute that times have changed dramatically for the better in the Belt. How, for example, can anyone not take as a small encouraging sign the Wednesday night ad, sponsored by a “public-private partnership committed to promoting and enhancing outdoor and tourism opportunities” and “sustainable economic development” in the region? I can personally remember days when this would have been inconceivable.

At the same time, as signs of racial tensions resurface throughout the country, the Black Belt’s continuing economic and political struggles raise questions more and more Americans are asking: Should the nation mainly be proud of how much has been accomplished in this sphere? Or troubled that, more than half a century after official segregation began ending, so much more needs to be done?