Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Complicity

Racism is not going to be my topic this week. But there are those who say that silence is complicity, so let me get this out of the way. Of course Donald Trump is racist. It could not be more obvious. It did not come out of nowhere when he made his comment last week about “shithole countries”. It goes back further than his statement regarding Charlottesville that there were fine people on both sides. It didn’t begin when he called Mexicans rapists when he announced his campaign. It wasn’t just a matter of Trump playing to his base when he promoted the birther myth about Barack Obama. Donald Trump is not simply playing to his base when he says and does these things. It is not an act. The record goes all the way back to his first public acts, discriminating against potential black tenants in his properties, even in defiance of an order from the Department of Justice. It took a second order to get the discrimination to stop, and this was forty years ago. The times when Donald Trump’s racism emerges are the few times when we are seeing honesty from this man, and his honesty is even uglier than his lies.

But that is all I want to say on the subject, because it has been covered by better writers than I. If you need to see more, you can start here. Also, being a lifelong resident of New Jersey, I count Corey Booker as one of my Senators. We have our differences, but he made me proud last week with this. Booker uses the word “complicity” several times, and that is the topic I want to address. Donald Trump can be openly racist because his Party does not mind. They make excuses for it and for him, in the name of serving their donors. Secretary Nielsen, the target of Corey Booker’s ire, has convenient memory lapses, but she is hardly the only one. And it isn’t just about racism either.

Consider the state of the investigations concerning the 2016 election and the Russian interference therein. Robert Mueller’s investigation continues apace, but the committees in the House and Senate have veered into dangerous territory. We are hearing the term “deep state” all over the place suddenly. The term has broader application, but the current usage in Washington comes from right wing media sources such as Breitbart, where Steve Bannon championed it. It is the basis of a conspiracy theory that says there are unelected officers, especially within the FBI, who are seeking to undermine the Trump administration. According to this idea, the Mueller investigation is biased, and is part of this supposed conspiracy. So now we have calls by prominent Republicans to investigate this instead of the Russian involvement in the election. Some of this is surely self defense, since it started when Mueller announced he was expanding his investigation to examine the role of the Republican National Committee in the possible compromising of not only the presidential race, but possibly Senate and House races as well. But the upshot is that committees which are supposed to be investigating the election are instead working to promote right wing propaganda designed to delegitimize Mueller and his investigation. This is not thoroughness on the part of these committees, and the Democrats on the committees rightfully want no part of it. No, let us call this what its: obstruction of justice. The Republicans promoting the “deep state” theory are seeking to interfere in and undermine an ongoing investigation. It is time for us as citizens to call on Mueller and other relevant authorities to call witnesses and bring charges if necessary against members of the House and Senate who are engaging in these tactics. We must send a clear message that these tactics are unacceptable. We must shut down calls for any investigation of the “deep state”, before this goes any further.

As I say this, I can hear the cries of “witch hunt”. I can imagine comparisons to the last time there was an attempt to root out “evil doers” in Congress, and the name Joe McCarthy comes up. But I am not calling for a new McCarthy era. If anything, the McCarthy era represented an earlier time when a “deep state” theory took hold, and became a basis for policy decisions. I am calling for a Constitutional remedy to stop this in its tracks. McCarthyism was ultimately halted in disgrace, but not before political enemies were subdued and important progressive voices were permanently silenced. With new energy on the left, the country is at a critical point. The Republican strategy for attempting to turn back the blue wave is beginning to reveal itself, and the “deep state” theory is the opening salvo. Now is the time to end this, while we still can.

For music this week, I will circle back to the topic of racism after all. Joni Mitchell’s brilliant collaboration with Charles Mingus produced this gem, which sums it up nicely:

Monday, January 8, 2018

Rules of Engagement

Starting immediately after the election of Donald Trump, I began to see a lot of hand wringing over the question of how to talk to a Trump supporter. Some people agonized over losing a friendship of long standing, or even the prospect of banishing a family member from their lives. Then, last year, some of these same people began to report, almost with pride it seemed, that they had blocked these people on social media, or taken that step in some other way to cleanse these people from their lives. But now it is 2018, and we have an election to win. We need not just to capture both parties of Congress, but to reengage with the rest of our nation to make sure our victory is something we can build on in years to come. We need to talk to the enemy because it is still one country that belongs both to us and to them, and we all want a better future than we can expect if things go on as they are.

I am not suggesting that anyone is owed any apologies here. Nor do I expect that reengagement will be easy. But I think there is a way forward. Start by realizing that the typical Trump supporter does not respond to facts and figures, nor do they want to be told what is good for them. Yes, the facts are on our side, and yes, a vote for Trump was a vote for a set of policies that will hurt greatly most of those who made his presidency possible. But that was not why they voted for him in the first place. It was not a rational decision, and neither is their continued support, but it did and does follow its own weird logic. To successfully reengage with a Trump supporter, especially one who was once important in your life, you must first understand that logic.

As the 2016 election cycle wore on, there was an increasingly prevalent view that the system had failed. The working class, in this view, had no champion to turn to. Aided by what we now recognize as a sophisticated Russian propaganda operation, many came to believe that Bernie Sanders was the only politician who wasn’t part of the system, and who cared. Later, again with Russian assistance, the idea spread that Sanders was undone not by a late start or a key lack of organizational efforts in minority communities, but by a sinister conspiracy perpetrated by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. Almost all of the negatives that surrounded Hillary Clinton originated either in right wing media sources or in Russia, but the Russians especially made sure that this information found its way to left wing political sites, from whence it spread like wildfire. Of course this meant that anger was a prominent feature of the 2016 general election. It drove many to sit this one out, and many more saw in Donald Trump an instrument of revenge. His policy positions made no difference; he was going to destroy the system that gave us these awful choices in the first place. For many, that is still what they want from him. Don’t tell them that this is not normal, because normal never helped or cared about them. If you point out how horrible he is, you may be told how the resistance to Trump is something that never would have happened if someone less horrible sat in the White House. By this line of reasoning, we need Trump to give us something to get us activated and organized. That argument is harder to rebut because there is some truth to it, but it has a horrible cost.

So I think the way to reengage is to present an honest desire to understand where a Trump supporter is coming from. Ask key questions, and then listen like crazy. Don’t try to rebut their arguments; instead, use your questions to subtly guide them to common ground, because it does exist. Let’s consider some questions you could ask.

Do you think the healthcare system in this country could work better for you and your family? How would you change it if you could? How would you pay for those changes? The idea here is not to push universal healthcare on anyone. In answering the question, they may get there on their own, but they may also go somewhere else that is worth the trip. Your job when reengaging is to let them take you there, and then take their ideas seriously.

Can you name one action Donald Trump or the Republican Congress has taken on the economy that has benefitted you or your family personally? If you know someone else who has benefitted, it may be that they have left out important details, so please tell me your story. Here you have the chance to follow up with probing questions, but do not be confrontational. You are asking them not to share your viewpoint, but to help you understand. In doing so, you are helping them to understand as well.

Do you personally know any first generation immigrants to this country? Are any of them working at jobs that you or a family member would want and are qualified for ? Here you are asking them to challenge their own xenophobia, rather than challenging it yourself. Once again, avoid being confrontational; the confrontation that occurs must be within them, not between you. Not everyone you talk to will be a racist or a xenophobe at all. In that case, this question could be a great way to break the ice.

These are just suggestions. I’m sure you can now think of questions of your own, and I hope you will share them in the comments. I hope you will also seek out these conversations, and tell us in the comments how it went. Since the 2016, we have been getting better at fighting for what we want, and that is important. But we must also start to prepare for the peace that I hope will follow that fight. When we finally win back everything we are losing now, how do we keep those wins? I believe we start with a few simple conversations.

I plead guilty to the charge of irony, but there could really only be one song this week:

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Making Waves

2018 is here. This is supposed to be the year of what is being called the Democratic wave election. In November, the story goes, voters will show their displeasure with Donald Trump by electing Democrats in large numbers. The Democrats will take over the House, possibly the Senate as well. They will win in statehouses across the land, both governorships and control of state legislatures. Well, I have news for you. It may happen, and it needs to happen, but it won’t happen for all the wishing in the world. Instead, it will take hard work, money, and some intelligence about what we learned in 2016 and 2017.

I hope everyone learned in 2017 what too many did not know in 2016: the two parties are not even remotely the same, and it matters a great deal which one wins. The most flawed Democrat, and Hillary Clinton may own that distinction, would not have conducted an all-out assault on the Affordable Care Act. She would not have tried to ban immigration from Moslem countries. She would not have pushed for, or signed, a tax package drafted in darkness that is so clearly tilted towards the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. And she would not have done everything in her considerable power to load the judicial branch for a generation to come with judges who are openly hostile to the LGBT community in particular, and to individual rights more generally. She would not have implemented an environmental policy that is hostile to science and scientists. Finally, for now at least, she would have fully staffed the government with people who are genuinely qualified to do their jobs.

Having said all of that, it is still important for the Democrats to do a better job of choosing their candidates. In 2017, we saw in Alabama what can happen when it is done correctly. Doug Jones won in the end because he demonstrated a clear and easily understood difference between himself and his opponent. Black voters in Alabama didn’t show up in record numbers just to keep a pedophile out of the Senate; they voted for a man who persuaded them that he would be their champion in Washington. Jones did not try to win in one the reddest states in the nation by trying to be conservative enough to appeal to independents. He won as a progressive, and an answer to the deeply unpopular policies of the national Republican Party.

I am old enough to remember when the nation was split between conservatives and liberals. Nowadays, however, you hardly ever hear anyone proudly claiming to be a liberal when running for office. That’s because the right wing worked very hard over the course of many years to make “liberal” a poisonous brand. 2018 is the best chance we will ever have to start to do the same to the word “conservative”. To do so, we need candidates like Doug Jones in the reddest states and everywhere else. We need to make the differences between our side and theirs starkly obvious everywhere. We need to let Democrats in the House and Senate know that we support their decision to stand united against anything the Republicans try to do without them. And we need to link the word “conservative” to every policy Donald Trump pushes against the will of the American people.

In terms of policy, we must remember that many Trump voters did not care what his policy prescriptions were; they voted for him to get their revenge on a system that they felt had failed them. It doesn’t matter to a Trump supporter that “this is not normal”; it isn’t supposed to be normal, and the abnormality only proves that they got what they voted for. What does matter is that their healthcare is going to be needlessly more expensive. It matters that their sons and daughters will not have the same protections with Social Security and Medicare that they will have. It matters that corporate tax cuts will be used in part for corporate mergers that will threaten their jobs. Voters in states like Alabama will respond to appeals based on these issues, as long as the candidate pointing them out can make them believe he or she will do better. It will not be enough to point out these issues. The candidate must lay out a credible plan to address them. Bernie Sanders could not explain how he would pay for universal healthcare without hurting the people he wanted to help, and that more than anything else may have cost him the nomination. The negative branding of “liberal” is all about “tax and spend”, and Sanders fell into that trap. It follows that the negative branding of “conservative” will require a thorough debunking of the notion that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy create jobs.

We have our work cut out for us in 2018. We must do what we can to put forth the best candidates everywhere to oppose Trump and the Republicans. But, when the more establishment candidate wins a primary, we must still recognize that we need every Democratic win we can get. Majorities in the House and Senate mean the Democrats get the chairmanships of all committees, and control of investigations. Majorities can also keep noxious bills from going to the floor for votes, and they can keep horrible nominees from being voted on by the full Senate. So even if the Democrat in your state or district wasn’t your first choice, his or her election could empower someone from another part of the country who is more to your liking. For all of these reasons, we can not afford to sit back and watch, and hope for a blue wave. We must make it happen, and we will never have a better chance.

The famous quote that “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom” seems apt to me, and here is a song that expresses it on a personal level: