The Imperial Presidency

So is he or isn’t he? A racist that is. And do we the American people care?  The dictionary defines racism as a belief that one race is inherently superior to all other races. The belief is manifestly dangerous when it enters the sphere of public policy, and begins to affect the rules by which citizens lead their lives.  During the period when slavery existed worldwide, Caucasian peoples, generally of European origin saw fit to treat other humans of different races as property, as distinct from humans. As such, they felt able to treat the human property as they saw fit, including elimination of those property-humans.

In other cases, e.g., the British Empire, the Caucasians from Britain traveled to other places on our globe and claimed ownership over everything therein, including the peoples who occupied those foreign climes. So, while the peoples of the Indian Subcontinent may not have been slaves per se, they could not operate independently from the new owners of their land.  Racism continued to operate in such places fostered by the illusion (belief) that the British (White) race was inherently superior to the local (non-white) and therefore deserved to control the land and all its occupants.  Thus, in 1857, the revolt by Indians against their British masters became known among Indians as the First War of Independence, whereas the British overlords referred to that same war as the Great Indian Mutiny.  Perspective is all.

In this country, slavery was the defining context for American racism. One was either European or a slave (largely from Africa). At the time, there were no competing races to interfere with the purity of the racist concept.  And then came the Great War—the “Civil War” of the 1860s. One side, largely the Northern states within that new United States decided that slavery should no longer exist. The Southern states then rebelled and began shooting at the North. The ending we all now know resulted in considerable bloodshed—it is estimated that 620,000 died in that conflict, perhaps the largest in the history of American warfare, although there is some dispute about whether the losses in Vietnam equal or exceed that number.

But the problem is that the war may have settled the argument about whether slavery was legal or illegal, but it never really resolved the underlying issue of racism. Even if you agreed that it was now illegal to own slaves, it did not mean you would agree that, therefore, all races were equal in all respects. Quite the contrary. Within the southern region of the US, racism continued unabated. And, racism existed in all states and regions—see all areas formerly claimed by Native Americans, and subsequently claimed by Caucasians of European descent.

Growing up in midtown Manhattan during the 1930s and 1940s, I virtually never encountered a person of color. African Americans all lived north of 125^th Street in Harlem.  Then I moved to New City Park in Rockland County, NY. Again, no people of color. I think in my elementary school, we had not one single person of color. Then I went to high school in Spring Valley, NY. Again, few, very few people of color.  And all this whiteness was not because slaves were still maintained in the North. No, it is because northern whites did not wish to live next to northern people of color. Racism? You betcha.

Oddly (odd to me) we had army units during every war we fought, consisting mainly of segregated units. During WWII alone we had 125,000 African American soldiers in distinguished fighting units. For a brief history, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_African_Americans.

Despite the fact that these units were segregated by race, the soldiers died in combat, regardless of their race. But we should be clear, it was racism that kept these units apart from their white counterparts. 

Now, that Donald Trump issue.  It seems fairly clear that the Donald’s entire family has always operated from a base of racism.  Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a useful article in the New York Times about the Trump family racism.  It can be viewed at: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/donald-trump-racist.html. Also, The Atlantic published a piece on the Trump family racism, which describes the same issues as Kristof identified. It can be viewed at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-racism-comments/588067/

As these and other articles make clear Trump’s racism is born and bred. His family was racist and he simply adopted these family traits, and carried them over into his businesses. Note that housing has traditionally been the touchstone of racism.  Entire housing units, or housing developments have been denied to people of color. In the case of Trump, housing units developed and operated by Trump were racist by design and operated as such.

And Trump’s problem in denying the racism, (“I don’t have a racist bone in my body”--see the Kristof article specifically) is that he lies almost every time he opens his mouth. The truth-watchers (PolitiFact and others) stopped counting after he passed his 10,000^th lie while in office. So, for Trump to decry the calls of racism is somewhere between laughable and outrageous.

But the more important question, beyond whether Trump is a racist (he is), is the same question about the American people.  There seem to be several types of people in America:

Hard-Core Racists (KKK lovers) – the folks who think the wrong side won the Civil War, and that folks of a different color, but especially African-Americans, should not be living here, and maybe should “go home”, despite the fact that Georgia might well be “home”.  You know them. They refuse to live within any community that houses people of color, hate the fact that schools are even vaguely integrated, and refuse to have anything to do with such folks.

Ordinary Racists – many Americans do not practice their racism openly and would be offended were the term applied to them.  But they still prefer living in communities that are largely devoid of people of color, and seek out schools for their kids that are predominantly, if not completely white. Charter schools are largely a direct response to such people.  They are polite when encountering people of color, but prefer not mixing socially or even in business settings. They will not create scenes when encountering black folks, but they prefer not encountering them.

Largely non-Racist—many (percentages would be handy, but . . .) Americans who are largely free of racism. While they might not seek out communities of color within which to house themselves, they do not shy away from housing communities that have a black component. They will send their kids to integrated schools, and will mix easily both socially and in business with people of mixed race.  These are the folks who voted for Barack Obama, and who continue to think that Obama was a successful president.

I assume there is some component of our population that simply has no racial bias at all. They treat everyone equally, regardless of skin color.  Percentages would be nice, but I assume this group is fairly small.

Now, growing up in this country, I have also observed a concept that may not be racist, but operates in similar ways. Many folks who migrated to the US from many different countries have often tended to seek out others of the same characteristics, be they color, language, or ethnic background. Thus, within many cities, German villages emerged, or Chinatowns, or Irish neighborhoods, or Hispanic neighborhoods. People feel more comfortable with other folks who seem to be like them. I once spoke with a Hispanic man who functioned as a translator. He attended a large meeting of sales people in Los Angeles, and came away with the conviction that these people never needed to speak/learn English, because they lived their lives entirely within Hispanic communities.

Similarly, African Americans have learned to be cautious in all aspects of their lives. They know they are at greater risk than white Americans. Over time, they may well seem themselves to be racist. Mainly, it is a defensive style of living, borne of many years/decades of life experiences in which their communities suffer different fates than their white community counterparts.  Thus, “driving while black”, “dining while black”, and other similar tropes have arisen in our language to describe the plight of African Americans in encounters with our various police forces.

At any one time, these differing racist views coalesce and produce different political environments. Groups such as the KKK and white supremacists, like Neo-Nazi’s have arisen and taken on a political identity. In most previous Administrations, these groups were marginalized and considered “undesirables”.  Now, with our current Trump Administration, these groups seem to form the core of the supporters. Others, the “not-quite full racists”, or the MAGAHeads, join in to forge a new hard core Trump support group, one that hopes to re-elect him in 2020.  They are the ones now chanting “Send her back”, thus replacing the “Lock her up” chants of his 2016 campaigns.  But it is the same campaign strategy—define his opposition as evil, Anti-Americans, who should be either in prison, or kicked out of the country. “This country is for whites only” seems to be their campaign slogan, or motto.

And now that Fox News has given up all pretense at being a neutral news organization, they can now turn up their own amplifiers and broadcast his message as though it was coming directly from Trump’s mouth.  He has a full-time political PR firm at his disposal 24-7, and it doesn’t even cost him any campaign money.

So, it seems clear that not only is Trump a racist, but his entire campaign is a racist trope.

Now that is a damning thought, assuming I am accurate. But it may not be the worst we can deduce from the Trump campaign. We need to remember that Trump is the compleat narcissist. By that I mean that all of his actions and reactions are derived from his immense sense of self. In his world, he is the only human that matters. Nobody else is of even the slightest concern.  If, in the course of pursuing some end in which he is interested, someone or some set of somebodies, gets hurt, he does not care. He is the only thing that matters. In his eyes, he can do no wrong.  And, his desires are what matters. Nothing else.

Now, what does that mean with a US President? I think it means that he views himself as somehow above the US Presidency. That he views as simply a high level job. What he may want is to be a king-emperor, in fact if not in title.  He may see himself, now that he has been elevated to the Presidency, as an historic figure, who will forever be remembered reverently.  And I think he may do anything to so elevate himself into that historic picture. He may in some fashion declare a war—think Iran. He may act so as to corrupt our election process to yield his desired objective—him elevated for another four years.  And then he may begin acting to remain longer than four years in that high office.

His entire campaign is built on creating in the minds of his supporters a fear and a hatred of the other, and “the other” is anyone who fails to fully support Donald Trump. He casts them as traitors to the country—anyone who does not support his every whim is, therefore a Traitor.

This folks, is the stuff of radical dictators everywhere in history. It is the stuff of absolute monarchs. It is the stuff of fascist dictators, such as Hitler and Mussolini.  It is the stuff of the Iranian Ayatollah. It is the stuff of Kim in North Korea, of MBS in Saudi Arabia.  It has no relationship to any of our past presidents—NONE.  He has placed himself in a class, the likes of whom we have never seen in this country.

He is an existential threat to the security of our very democracy.  He is not simply the “worst president in our history”.  He is in a different class, a class that degrades to the point of elimination the very concept of our Presidency.

The fact that his republican allies in Congress support him is a sign that our entire system is now at risk. This is not simply a political disagreement over policy. It is a battle for survival of our nation.

We dare not lose this battle.

Racism and Religion

The signs are all about us.  So much so that we might barely be paying attention, but we are bombarded with the signals, as from outer space. Yes, racism is alive and well and living in America. And not just the American South. No, the racism cursing through America is all over the country.  That it seems to be increasing in scope and intensity with the onset of Trump also seems apparent. It is as though a storm is sweeping the country and increasing in intensity with each passing day.

Recently, President Trump issued a pardon to the most racist sheriff in America, someone who has been noted exclusively for his racism virtually his entire life and long term in office. Now President Trump knows about Sheriff Arpaio; everyone in America knows of him, and his concentration camps, killing fields really, given the numbers of people who have died under his incarceration. His action in pardoning Arpaio has sent out a signal loud and clear that racism is alive and well under his care.

And I read about a second phenomenon running about our country, sending out messages loud and clear—that our Christian (mainly evangelical) church leaders are frankly racist. Recently, a church leader promised there would be a civil war should Trump be impeached. Think of that. A church leader exhorting his body faithful to take up arms and kill other members of our national society, our American brethren should we dare to impeach President Trump. He wants them dead, all those who actively oppose our President.  He wants them dead. Now isn’t that a Christian act?  And then we have that dust-rag, Joel Osteen, with his megachurch in Texas, refusing to allow folks to rest and perhaps be literally saved by coming into his church that could house thousands.  If ever there was an opportunity to demonstrate the caring nature of Christianity, it was there and then, and pastor Osteen turned his back and retreated to his multimillion dollar mansion to suck his thumb and perhaps have a martini.

We are seeing these signs that organized Christianity at the least, is a fraud, and the more organized and the stricter, the more corrupt. How any pastor still in his right mind can endorse Trump to the point of exhorting his followers to take up arms and kill others beggars belief. Trump has virtually no Christian characteristics. He seems not to be an actual practicing anything. He has trashed that very Christian concept of marriage, by blasting through three marriages after serial infidelities (his third seems done, just not yet announced).  He cheats those who work for him, even to refusing to pay them for work done, resulting in hundreds, perhaps thousands of law suits against him. He is in incompetent at almost everything in which he engages, having gone through multiple bankruptcies, during which his investors have lost millions of dollars. Does he care? No, not at all.

And then he engages in what we might easily call anti-American behavior by consorting with some of our enemies. Whether his acts of “collusion” amount to treason is a question still to be decided, but the fact that it is an actual open question about a sitting US president is astounding on its face.

So I have now concluded that much of organized Christianity is racist at its heart. This statement delivers no surprise to many, but would be obviously distressing to the many pastors who are actually caring, humanistic in nature and real practitioners of what folks think of as Christianity.  It would seem there is a schism between the fake churches (think Joel Osteen in Houston, David Jones in Tennessee), and the many real, caring church organizations in America.

So, a Civil War, the preacher advocates. To protect a philandering, corrupt, unsuccessful businessman, who has never actually been any good at anything. Although I have a largely private sector background, mixed in with some government experience, our dear President convinces me that we really, really do not want a “businessman” running our government.  People in business operate under different premises than do people with mixed or largely public experience.  It is not that one is good, and one is bad, but rather, they are just very different.  The profit motive dominates the thinking of private sector people, as it should.  Good public sector people are motivated by effectiveness, i.e., effective delivery of whatever services, or programs being managed. Congress authorizes, but Congress does not manage, or even, for that matter, oversee the execution of its legislative programs.

But mainly, I believe, as do most rational beings that we do not want a racist at the head of our government. He encourages the racists among us, and brings out of their respective closets all the crazy, racists who have been biding their time. Our country is way more multicultural than it was even 20-50 years ago. Many of our racists harken back to those “good old days” of the 1940s and 1950s, when white men dominated America, and when there were many jobs for the population of white men, especially white men of limited talents.  Now, those jobs have fled our country, and the racist white men wish to “take back America” and, even, “Make America Great Again”.

America has indeed left those shores of 1950, and it isn’t sailing back any time soon. The only outcome of President Trump’s thinking, if it ever becomes reality, is a fractured country in which the heavily armed, racist folks run around killing other people, just because they can.

We need to step up, all of us, unless these people actually do “take back America”, because it may well not be a place the rest of us wish to inhabit. Voting is really our only recourse. So, register, get your friends registered, and vote. It is vital.

Oh, and on the sending prayers thing, folks in Texas and probably Louisiana need tangible stuff—money, clothes, water and food, shelter, even blood products. Prayers may make the sender feel good, but prayers won’t solve the problems of folks drowning in flood waters.

By for now.

The "Race Card" Card

Ever since our President became President, one segment of the American public has gone ballistic—the racist element. Practically before he took office, the right wing billionaire set decided to form a “Tea Party” to oppose him. And the GOP leadership decided that he was not to be treated seriously as a President, but instead, they would do everything within their power to oppose anything and everything he might say or propose.  Their goal—Make Obama a one term President.

In part, I guess, one might think that the far right rhetoric could be construed as simply the “other party” wishing to marginalize a Democrat, so that they could regain the power they had exercised under their right wing GOP leaders—you know, those paragons of American virtue—St. Ronald of Reagan, Bush I and Shrub. But the nearly hysterical quality to the opposition, especially from such as the “Tea Party”, seemed to go way beyond the normal right wing politics.  I finally decided that the only explanation that made sense was racism. And then the “Birther” movement began and it became very clear that racism was not only the preferred explanation, it was really the only plausible explanation, especially since he had not even proposed anything yet.

And then, Fox News (aka the Faux News Network), the PR wing of the far right GOP, began its campaign of hammering the President at every turn, amplifying every statement made by the most right wing of our GOP political establishment.

Finally, other real news commentators began saying the obvious—racism had taken over the GOP and its commentator wing.  And then came the response—“ahhh, they’re playing the “Race Card”.

And so, the “Race Card” card was born.  What, you ask, is the “Race Card” Card? Well, it is the standard reply to a charge of racism, averting the need to actually respond with facts. When someone calls out an obvious racist remark, the standard response now is, “oh, you’re playing the “Race Card.” And what that means is, “ I don’t have to explain myself, because you have adopted the standard ad hominem attack by calling me a racist. Whether I am a racist, or whether I am acting like a racist is irrelevant. If I say you are playing the “Race Card”, I no longer have to explain anything. And so, the “Race Card” Card became the standard rhetorical response by the right wing establishment, and the game continues today, six years later.

When I read articles in various papers and journals about some issue vaguely affecting our foreign policy, I often get distressed at the inevitable comments by the right wing folks in the land.  Think of the right wing  politicians writing to the leaders in Iran, telling them to ignore the President's efforts to rein in any possible Iranian nuclear arms efforts. Or think of the GOP's Ron Johnson, saying, "when it comes to a nuclear deal with Iran, he’s “not so sure” he trusts President Obama over the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei." What might the right wing have said, had any Democrat said something similar about St. Ronald of Reagan?

The level of vitriol against anything the President or his Administration does, or says is amazing. I keep thinking, where were you all, and what were you saying when St. Ronald of Reagan was selling arms to the Iranian terrorist regime, so he could arm the Nicaraguan terrorist thugs? Were you as hysterical then as you seem to be now?  And how about, when Shrub declared victory in Iraq, standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier? Did you huff and puff and threaten to blow the house down? And have any of you begun screaming about Ted Cruz, born in Canada to a Cuban father and American mother? Is there a Ted Cruz “birther” movement? No??? How come? Oh, yeah, he isn’t black is he?

When I read some of the commentary, including especially from people I actually know well, and they yell (writing in caps) that “every action taken by this President had made this Nation less safe—yes, every action,” I have to ask whether they have taken leave of their senses, or is their commentary just a racist rant?  “Do you mean that when the President arranged to kill Osama Bin Laden, and, unlike Shrub,  followed through with an actual kill, he made us less safe?”  

“And were you thinking that, when he signed into law the Affordable Care Act, making health insurance available to millions formerly uninsured, he was making us less safe?”

“Or were you just finding a way to label him as awful without actually calling him a Nigger”?

Is that what we have come to in this nation? We have governors threatening to secede from the country (think Texas), and even considering calling out their National Guard because of some military exercises in their state? Would they do that had John McCain (born in Panama by the way) won the Presidency? Oh, I thought not.

The right wing in this country seems no longer to care about what ordinary Americans think of them. Reminds me a bit actually of Russia and their view of Emperor Vlad. The Russians no longer seem to care what he says, how outrageously and obviously he is lying, so long as he continues to sing the song of the Russia of old (i.e., the old Soviet Empire days).  So, perhaps, the right wing here feels the same way. They hate having a Black man as President, and long for the days of old (when St. Ronald of Reagan was ruling as emperor here). And they don’t care how much they have to lie about that Black man President. They want a return to the days of olde (although in some respects they seem to want to return to, say, 1850, rather than 1980).

I no longer think this schism within this country will heal during my lifetime (increasingly short). In fact, I believe it is getting worse, mainly because the right wing seems to believe that it is ok again to be a racist—after all, that was one of St. Ronald of Reagan’s great accomplishments during his term.

I continue to hope that my grandchildren will work to overcome this racist element within our nation. But I am not any longer certain. One of my worries is that the worst elements in this nation actually take over the government in 2016 (think the British elections), and they encounter that Emperor Vlad Soviet Empire place, and that really bad things happen. But that’s for the kids to sort out.